Chatterton's Holiday-Afternoon 
 
W. B. Morris, Artist                               W. Ridgway, Engraver 
 
 
 
THOMAS CHA TTER TON, born at Bristol, England, in 1752, won 
        an unenviable distinction by his literary forgeries which for a long

        time deceived the uncritical public of his time. He pretended to

bave found the originals of his old English poems in the muniment-room of

Redcliffe Church. His discoveries created such a stir in the literary world

that be went to l.on don to seek his fortune.  Here he found only neglect
and 
poverty, and finally in 1770, at the age of eighteen, died by his own hand.

The picture shows the lad in the muniment-room where be passed his holiday-

afternoons dreaming and writing of the dream-world that became more real

to him, as it was more interesting than the world he saw about him with his

bodily eyes.