They filled the minds of their readers with images
of vague sublimity and desolation; the mountain torrent, the mist on the
hills, the ghosts of heroes half seen by the setting moon, the thistle
in the ruined courts of chieftains, the grass whistling on the windy
heath, the gray rock by the blue stream of Lutha, and the cliffs of
sea-surrounded Gormal.
"A tale of the times of old!"
"Why, thou wanderer unseen! Thou bender of the thistle of Lora; why,
thou breeze of the valley, hast thou left mine ear? I hear no distant
roar of streams! No sound of the harp from the rock! Come, thou huntress
of Lutha, Malvina, call back his soul to the bard. I look forward to
Lochlin of lakes, to the dark billowy bay of U-thorno, where Fingal
decends from Ocean, from the roar of winds. Few are the heroes of Morven
in a land unknown."
Thomas Chatterton, who died by his own hand in 1770, at the age of
seventeen, is one of the most wonderful examples of precocity in the
history of literature. His father had been sexton of the ancient Church
of St. Mary Redcliff, in Bristol, and the boy's sensitive imagination
took the stamp of his surroundings. He taught himself to read from a
black-letter Bible. He drew charcoal sketches of churches, castles,
knightly tombs, and heraldic blazonry.
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