66

ought surely to feel some instinctive terrors, for against him I have double-pointed all my little thunderbolts; in which, as to the design, I hope I shall have your approbation when you consider his heart; and as to the execution, if you approve it, I can sit down easily and hear with contempt the censures of all the half-blooded, prudish lords." It is not to be regretted that Churchill contented himself with libelling the living, and never carried into effect this injurious intention which he had entertained against the dead: for the force of even just criticism is weakened when it is delivered with an asperity that savours of personal malevolence. But if "it disgusted Churchill to hear Pope extolled as the first of English poets," his own judgement was not less erroneous when he assigned that place to Dryden. Dryden was, indeed, the best model whom, with his power and turn of mind, he could have chosen for himself, even if that power had always taken its best direction. He followed him with success. The freedom and vigour of his versification, in which sense was never sacrificed to sound, which was never tricked out with tinsel, nor spangled with false ornaments, which, whatever were its faults, was free from nonsense, and which always expressed in genuine English its clear meaning, contributed to prepare the way for a better taste than prevailed during Pope's undisputed supremacy. The injurious effects which had been caused by that dictatorship were weakened by Churchill's rule as Tribune of the people.

His immediate imitators were a despicable race; among his numerous opponents there had been a few whose greatest disadvantage was that they took the

better side, which, under a tribunate, is always the unsuccessful one; but those who attempted to tread in his steps, and succeed him, were mere libellers 55, 55 with no other qualification than their impudence ;.." a Calmuck tribe of authors," they were called, "the brood of Churchill's spawn, and the heirs of his Billingsgate fortune." They passed away like a swarm of noxious insects; and Churchill himself was for a time depreciated 56 as unduly as he had been extolled. The first who rendered justice to his genius was Cowper:

While servile trick and imitative knack
Confine the million in the beaten track,
Perhaps some courser, who disdains the road,
Snuffs up the wind, and flings himself abroad.

55The dominions of Alexander the Great had not more competitors after his decease than the poetical demesnes of the late Mr. Churchill. Various, indeed, are the candidates, but their pretences are nearly the same ;-to measure couplets, to scatter abuse, and to praise the bard whose name they take in vain.' Their ambition, at the same time, is as sordid as their verse; for it is not Mr. Churchill's crown of laurel that they seek, but his half-crown sterling."-Monthly Review, February, 1765, vol. xxxii. p. 153.

Twenty years before a wretched precursor of these libelists complained of the restraint under which his "Indignant Muse" laboured

56

"Names must be conceal'd: O misfortune dire !
Law checks my rage, and lawyers damp my fire.

A remarkable instance," says Dr. Kippis,

of a sudden

and short-lived celebrity—and of a more than usual rapidity in the neglect paid to his writings."

"We all remember," says Dr. Warton, "when even a Churchill was more in vogue than a Gray."

:

Contemporaries all surpass'd, see one,
Short his career indeed, but ably run;
Churchill, himself unconscious of his powers,
In penury consumed his idle hours;

And like a scatter'd seed at random sown,
Was left to spring by vigour of his own.
Lifted at length by dignity of thought
And dint of genius to an affluent lot,
He laid his head on luxury's soft lap,
And took too often there his easy nap.

If brighter beams than all he threw not forth,
'Twas negligence in him, not want of worth.
Surly and slovenly, and bold and coarse,
Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force;
Spendthrift alike of money and of wit;
Always at speed, and never drawing bit,
He struck the lyre in such a careless mood,
And so disdain'd the rules he understood,
The laurel seem'd to wait on his command,

He snatch'd it rudely from the Muses' hand 57.

When Johnson's collection of the poets was lent to Cowper, he read but few of them: "those of established reputation," said he, " are so fresh in my memory, that it was like reading what I read yesterday over again and as to the minor classics, I did not think them worth reading at all. I tasted most of them, and did not like them." But Churchill had been included in Bell's collection, where he brought up the rear; and in the same letter which expresses his disrespect for the mediocrists, Cowper says, "I have read him twice, and some of his pieces three times over, and the last time with more pleasure than the first.-He is indeed a careless writer for the most part, but where

57 Table Talk.

shall we find in any of those authors who finish their works with the exactness of a Flemish pencil, those bold and daring strokes of fancy, those numbers so hazardously ventured upon and so happily finished, the matter so compressed and yet so clear, and the colouring so sparingly laid on and yet with such a beautiful effect? In short, it is not his least praise, that he is never guilty of those faults as a writer which he lays to the charge of others; a proof that he did not judge by a borrowed standard, or from rules laid down by critics; but that he was qualified to do it by his own native powers, and his great superiority of genius. For he that wrote so much and so fast would, through inadvertence and hurry, have departed from rules which he might have found in books; but his own truly poetical talent was a guide which could not suffer him to err

58"

When he was composing his first volume, Cowper reckoned it among his principal advantages that he had read no English poetry for many years. But as the poems whereby he became known to the public were all written when he was advanced considerably beyond the middle age, he was less likely to be tinctured by the manner of any favourite author than youthful aspirants must always be. And the same cause would have prevented him from being influenced by contemporary writers, even if his habits of retired life, and the total desuetude of poetical reading for so many years had not kept him unacquainted with any thing that had been published during half a generation. If

58 To Mr. Unwin.

there was any savour of other poets in his pieces, it was of Lloyd in some of the smaller ones, and of Churchill in his satires.

When Cowper, however, commenced author, he perceived the necessity of reading: "He that would write," said he, "should read, not that he may retail the observations of other men, but that being thus refreshed and replenished, he may find himself in a condition to make and to produce his own 59." Just after he had finished The Task, he purchased a Latin Dictionary. It is rather strange," said he to Mr. Unwin 60, "that at my time of life, and after a youth spent in classical pursuits, I should want one; and stranger still, that, being possessed at present of only one Latin author in the world, I should think it worth while to purchase one. I say that it is strange, and indeed I think it so myself. But I have a thought that when my present labours of the pen are ended, I may go to school again, and refresh my spirits by a little intercourse with the Mantuan and the Sabine bards; and perhaps by a reperusal of some others, whose works we generally lay by at that period of life when we are best qualified to read them,-when the judgement and the taste being formed, their beauties are least likely to be overlooked."—" I have bought a great dictionary," he says to Mr. Newton 6," and want nothing but Latin authors to furnish me with the use of it. Had I purchased them first, I had begun at the right end; but I could not afford it. I bescech you admire my

59 To Mr. Unwin, Nov. 26, 1781. 61 July 5, 1784.

60 July 3, 1784.