ouragement from their editors. He
gained his point and started out for the great city.

His letters show that he called upon four editors the very day he
arrived. These were Edmunds of the _Middlesex Journal_; Fell of the
_Freeholders Magazine_; Hamilton of the _Town and Country Magazine_;
and Dodsley--the same to whom he had sent a portion of _AElla_--of the
_Annual Register_. He had received, he wrote, 'great encouragement
from them all'; 'all approved of his design; he should soon be
settled.' Fell told him later that the great and notorious Wilkes
'affirmed that his writings could not be the work of a youth and
expressed a desire to know the author.' This may or may not have
been true, but it is certain that Fell was not the only newspaper
proprietor who was ready to exchange a little cheap flattery for
articles by Chatterton that would never be paid for.[10]

We know very little about Chatterton's life in London--but that little
presents some extraordinarily vivid pictures. He lodged at first with
an aunt, Mrs. Ballance, in Shoreditch, where he refused to allow his
room to be swept, as he said 'poets hated brooms.' He objected to
being called Tommy, and asked his aunt 'If she had ever heard of a
poet's being called Tommy' (you see he was still a boy). 'But she
assured him that she knew nothing about poets and only wished he would
not set up for being a gentleman.' He had the appearance of being much
older than he was, (though one who knew him when he was at Colston's
Hospital described him as having light curly hair and a face round as
an apple; his eyes were grey and sparkled when he was interested or
moved). He was 'very much himself--an admirably expressive phrase.
He had the same fits of absentmindedness which characterized him as
a child. 'He would often look stedfastly in a person's face without
speaking or seeming to see the person for a quarter of an hour or
more till it was quite frightful.' We have accounts of his sitting
up writing nearly the whole of the night, and his cousin was almost
afraid to share a room with him 'for to be sure he was a spirit and
never slept.'[11]

He wrote political letters in the style of Junius--generally signing
them Decimus or Probus--that kind of vague libellous ranting which
will always serve to voice the discontent of the inarticulate. He
wrote essays--moral, antiquarian, or burlesque; he furbished up his
old satires on the worthies of Bristol; he wrote songs and a com