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Chatterton's Profit And Loss Reckoning


Chatterton, the marvellous boy, wrote a political essay for the North

Briton, Wilkes's journal; but, though accepted, the essay was not

printed, in consequence of the death of the Lord Mayor, Chatterton's

patron. The youthful patriot thus calculated the results of the

suppression of his essay, which had begun by a splendid flourish about

"a spirited people freeing themselves from insupportable slavery:"



"Lost, by the Lord Mayor's death, in this essay, L 1 11 6

Gained in elegies, L 2 2 0

Do. in essays, 3 3 0

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5 5 0

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Am glad he is dead by L 3 13 6"



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