behind, laurels beside it, and bays, myrtles, laburnums, and other shrubs in the foreground. A tablet, on the pillar, bore this inscription:

CAROLO CHURCHILL,

AMICO JUCUNDO,

POETÆ ACRI,

CIVI OPTIME DE PATRIA MERITO

P.

JOHANNES WILKES.

M DCC LXV.

The same words he inscribed upon a sepulchral alabaster urn, sent him from Rome by the Abbe Winckelman, who was then the superintendent of the antiquities in that city.

The only laudable part of Churchill's conduct during his short career of popularity was that he carefully laid by a provision for those who were dependent on him. This was his meritorious motive for that greediness of gain with which he was reproached", .. as if it were any reproach to a successful author that he doled out his writings in the way most advantageous for himself, and fixed upon them as high a price as his admirers were willing to pay. He thus enabled himself to bequeath an annuity of sixty pounds to his widow, and of fifty to the more unhappy woman, who, after they had both re

49 "Go on, illustrious bard! (said a Monthly Reviewer, vol. xxxi. p. 275.) Thou art in the right road to independence. Indulge the reigning depravity of taste; get deeper still in dirt; the half crowns will wash thee clean. Leave elegance and harmony to others; in these stirring times they will not procure thee sixpence. To use thy own phraseology," they will not go to market."

pented of their guilty intercourse, had fled to him again for the protection which she knew not where else to seek. And when these duties had been provided for, there remained some surplus for his two sons. Well would it be if he might be as fairly vindicated on other points. He left for publication ten sermons, which he had sold to his publishers for two hundred and fifty pounds, that price being afforded in consideration of a dedicatory poem to Bishop Warburton, in a strain of the severest sarcasm. The dedication was found unfinished among his papers, but there was enough of it to secure the sale of an otherwise unsaleable book 50, and to evince once more the vigour and the acrimony of the writer. Such an introduction to a volume of

50 The Monthly Reviewer, however, seems to have thought that Churchill's name would have been attraction sufficient. He says, "though there is scarce any species of composition which meets with a cooler reception from the generality of readers than sermons, Churchill's Sermons will undoubtedly excite great curiosity. Those who admire the bold and daring genius of the poet, will expect something extraordinary in the preacher, and will open the volume with great impatience."

The whole satire is extracted in this reviewal;-which concludes with a remark not the less striking for being obvious:"We cannot help observing that Churchill the poet and Churchill the preacher appear to be very different characters. In his poems he is an outrageous and merciless satirist; in his sermons a meek and peaceable Christian. Yet strange as the mixture may seem, in the present publication he is both characters in one! It is really an extraordinary appearance to see a commentary on that form of prayer composed by Benevolence itself, preceded by a virulent libel!—But let us not forget, that when this enraged wasp, for the last time, darted his sting at Warburton, it BROKE, and the poor angry soul expired!"Vol. xxxii. pp. 101. 109.

S. C.-2.

M

sermons would have excited the indignation of any well-regulated mind if it had appeared during the author's life; as a posthumous work, it occasioned a more painful feeling; and Warburton may have contemplated with sorrow what he would otherwise have regarded with scorn.

Churchill hated Warburton, for no apparent cause, except that he thought himself bound in friendship to take up all Wilkes's quarrels, and the Bishop had complained in the House of Lords of a gross and flagitious insult which that profligate had offered him. Yet there were more points of resemblance between Warburton and Churchill than any other two men of their age; they resembled each other in strength of character, in vigour and activity of mind, in their contemptuous sense of superiority over all who opposed them, and in a certain coarseness of nature, which was marked in the countenance of both, which Churchill did not fail to note 51 in the object of his enmity,.. and of which he was not unconscious in himself 52.

51

'Tis not thy face,-though that by Nature's made
An index to thy soul; though there display'd
We see thy mind at large, and through thy skin
Peeps out that courtesy which dwells within.

52 The portrait of himself is a full length:—

A bear, whom from the moment he was born
His dam despised, and left unlick'd in scorn;
A Babel, which the power of Art undone,
She could not finish when she had begun;

An utter Chaos, out of which no might,

But that of God, could strike one spark of light.

Broad were his shoulders, and from blade to blade
A H might at full length have laid:

In his bitter dedication Churchill says,

Much did I wish, though little could I hope,

A friend in him who was the friend of Pope.

Perhaps that wish may have been really entertained; and if favourable circumstances had introduced them to each other before the revolution in Churchill's character was effected, he might have found as much pleasure and intellectual sympathy in Warburton's society as he afterwards did in Wilkes's; they would have admired and liked each other; and if the Bishop had failed to awaken in him a perception of the beauty of holiness and the truth of religion, he would at least have made him feel the rashness and the folly of infidelity.

Vast were his bones, his muscles twisted strong;
His face was short, but broader than 'twas long;
His features, though by nature they were large,
Contentment had contrived to overcharge
And bury meaning; save that we might spy
Sense louring on the penthouse of his eye.
His arms were two twin oaks; his legs so stout
That they might bear a mansion-house about;
Nor were they, look but at his body there,
Design'd by fate a much less weight to bear.

O'er a brown cassock, which had once been black,
Which hung in tatters on his brawny back,
A sight most strange and awkward to behold,
He threw a covering of blue and gold.
Just at that time of life, when man, by rule,
The fop laid down, takes up the graver fool,
He started up a fop, and, fond of show,
Look'd like another Hercules, turn'd beau!

Independence, v. 149–174.

As he hated Warburton for Wilkes's sake, so, perhaps, it may have been partly for Warburton's sake that he hated Pope, .. for his dislike of Pope amounted to hatred. He is said to have wished him alive, not only that he might have a struggle with him for preeminence, but that he might endeavour to break his heart. Though such bravados of malignity are, for the most part, far from meaning all that they express, they can never be uttered or conceived without self injury. He disliked Pope's manner as a poet, and his character as a man 53, and had formed the intention of attacking both 54. "Mr. Pope," said he, in a letter to Wilkes,

53

53 The Monthly Review observes that this" enmity, which broke out so long after Pope's death, is somewhat extraordi nary, and the more so, as the satirist's spleen seems chiefly to have been directed against his private character, a circumstance in regard to which, we believe, there are not many who hold the two poets in equal estimation. What ample room is there for recrimination on the traducer of Mr. Pope's heart! But it were unnecessary, as well as an ungrateful task, to enlarge on this topic-since few, if any, of our readers are strangers to the moral character and conduct of Charles Churchill.”— Vol. xli. p. 378.

54 Wilkes says, he "intended to have sifted every part of his character," and Wilkes gives his own opinion of Pope. "His writings," he says, " almost the only truly correct, elegant, and high-finished poems in our language, breathe the purest morality, the most perfect humanity and benevolence. In the commerce of life, however, he showed himself not scrupulously moral, and was a very selfish, splenetic, malevolent being. The friends whom he most loved, were the sworn enemies of the liberties of his country, Atterbury, Oxford, and Bolingbroke, on whom he lavished the sweet incense of a delicate exquisite praise, which ought only to have been purchased by virtue."