The Lumley Autograph

n years later still--about the time, by the bye, when Chatterton's career came to such a miserable close in London, and when Gilbert was dying in a hospital at Paris--it happened that a worthy physician, well known in the town of Southampton for his benevolence and eccentricity, was on a professional visit to the child of a poor journeyman trunk-maker, in the same place. A supply of old paper had just been brought in for the purpose of lining trunks, according to the practice of the day. A workman was busy sorting these, rejecting some as refuse, and preserving others, when the doctor stopped to answer an inquiry about the sick child.

{Chatterton = Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), British poet, who created an imaginary Thomas Rowley, a supposed medieval monk, to whom he ascribed some of his poems. Chatterton committed suicide at the age of 18 when a poem of his, allegedly by Rowley, was rejected; he was buried in a pauper's grave. Susan Fenimore Cooper no doubt has this in mind in naming a character in t