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his own powers too completely to lay any false strain upon them. The ease with which he composed is often mentioned by him, though with a difference. To his Friend he said that nothing came out till he began to be pleased with it himself, while to the Public he boasted of the haste and carelessness with which he set down and discharged his rapid thoughts. Something between the two would probably come nearest the truth. No writer is at all times free from what Ben Jonson calls, "pinching throes;" and Churchill frequently confesses them. It may have been, indeed, out of a bitter sense of their intensity that he used the energetic phrase, afterwards remembered by his publisher, that "blotting was like "cutting away one's own flesh." But though this and other marks of the genus irritabile undoubtedly declared themselves in him, he did not particularly affect the life of a man of letters, and, for the most part, avoided that kind of society; for which Dr. Johnson pronounced him a blockhead. Boswell remonstrated. "Well, sir," said Johnson, "I will acknowledge that I have a better opinion "of him than I once had; for he has shown more fertility "than I expected. To be sure, he is a tree that cannot "produce good fruit: he only bears crabs. But, sir, a "tree that produces a great many crabs is better than a "tree which produces only a few."

Such as it was—and it can afford that passing touch of blight-the tree was now planted on Acton-common. After the departure of Wilkes, he had moved from his Richmond residence into a house there, described by the first of his biographers, two months after his death, to have been furnished with extreme elegance; and where he is said, by the same worthy scribe, to have kept his post-chaise, saddle-horses, and pointers;" and to have "fished, fowled, hunted, coursed, and lived in an "independent, easy manner." He did not however so live, as to be unable carefully to lay aside an honourable provision for all who were dependent on him. This, it is justly remarked by Southey, was his meritorious motive

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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 to himself, and fixed upon them as high a price as his admirers were willing to pay. Cowper has made allusion to some of these points, in his fine delineation of his old friend and school-fellow, in the Table-Talk.

"read him twice, and some of his "pieces three times over, and the last "time with more pleasure than the "first. The pitiful scribbler of his "life seems to have undertaken that "task, for which he was entirely un"qualified, merely because it afforded "him an opportunity to traduce him. "He has inserted in it but one "anecdote of consequence, for which "he refers you to a novel, and intro"duces the story with doubts about "the truth of it. But his barrenness "as a biographer I could forgive, if "the simpleton had not thought him"self a judge of his writings, and "under the erroneous influence of "that thought, informed his reader "that Gotham, Independence, and "the Times, were catchpennies. "Gotham, unless I am a greater "blockhead than he, which I am far "from believing, is a noble and "beautiful poem, and a poem with "which I make no doubt the author "took as much pains as with any he

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ever wrote. Making allowance (and "Dryden, in his Absalom and Achi"tophel, stands in need of the same "indulgence) for an unwarrantable "use of Scripture, it appears to me "to be a masterly performance. In"dependence is a most animated "piece, full of strength and spirit, "and marked with that bold masculine "character which, I think, is the

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great peculiarity of this writer. "And the Times (except that the "subject is disgusting to the last "degree) stands equally high in my "opinion. He is indeed a careless "writer for the most part; but where "shall we find, in any of those authors "who finish their works with the

The Author, published almost contemporaneously with the Duellist, had the rare good fortune to please even his critics. Horace Walpole could now admit, that even when the satirist was not assailing a Holland or a Warburton, the world were "transported" with his works, and his numbers were indeed "like Dryden's." The Monthly Reviewers sent forth a frank eulogium, while even the Critical found it best to forget their ancient grudge. And in the admirable qualities not without reason assigned to it, the Author seems to us to have been much surpassed by his next performance, Gotham.

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When Cowper fondly talked, as it was his pleasure and his pride to do, of "Churchill, the great Churchill, for he well deserved the name," it was proof of his taste that he dwelt with delight on this "noble and beautiful" poem. Its object was not clearly comprehended at the first, but, as it proceeded, became evident. It was an Idea of a Patriot King, in verse; and in verse of which, with all its carelessness, we hold with Cowper that few exacter writers of his class have equalled, for its "bold and daring strokes of fancy; its numbers so

hazardously ventured upon, and so happily finished; its "matter so compressed, and yet so clear; its colouring so

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sparingly laid on, and yet with such a beautiful effect." Largely would we have added, if possible, to the quotations already given from this poem, and it is with much regret we necessarily restrict ourselves to but one passage more. It is a piece of descriptive poetry of a very high class. The reader's national pride, if he be a Scotchman, will not intercept his admiration of the wit of the verse which precedes the fine picture of the cedar; and he will admire through all the lines, but especially at their close, the excellent and subtle art with which the verse seconds the sense.

"Forming a gloom, through which to spleen-struck minds Religion, horror-stamp'd, a passage finds,

The Ivy, crawling o'er the hallow'd cell,

Where some old hermit's wont his beads to tell

By day, by night; the Myrtle ever green,

Beneath whose shade love holds his rites unseen;
The Willow, weeping o'er the fatal wave
Where many a lover finds a watery grave;
The Cypress sacred held, when lovers mourn
Their true love snatch'd away; the Laurel worn
By poets in old time, but destin'd now,
In grief to wither on a Whitehead's brow;
The Fig, which, large as what in India grows,
Itself a grove, gave our first parents cloaths;
The Vine, which, like a blushing new-made bride,
Clustering, empurples all the mountain's side;
The Yew, which, in the place of sculptur'd stone,
Marks out the resting-place of men unknown;
The hedge-row Elm; the Pine of mountain race;
The Fir, the Scotch Fir, never out of place;
The Cedar, whose top mates the highest cloud,
Whilst his old father Lebanon grows proud
Of such a child, and his vast body laid
Out many a mile, enjoys the filial shade ;
The Oak, when living, monarch of the wood;

The English Oak, which, dead, commands the flood;

All, one and all, shall in this Chorus join,

And, dumb to other's praise, be loud in mine

The Showers, which make the young hills, like young lambs,
Bound and rebound, the old hills, like old rams,
Unwieldy, jump for joy; the Streams, which glide,
Whilst Plenty marches smiling by their side,
And from their bosom rising Commerce springs;
The Winds which rise with healing on their wings,
Before whose cleansing breath contagion flies;
The Sun, who, travelling in eastern skies,
Fresh, full of strength, just risen from his bed,
Though in Jove's pastures they were born and bred,
With voice and whip can scarce make his steeds stir,
Step by step up the perpendicular;

Who, at the hour of eve, panting for rest,
Rolls on amain, and gallops down the west,
As fast as Jehu, oil'd for Ahab's sin,

Drove for a crown, or postboys for an inn;
The Moon, who holds o'er night her silver reign,
Regent of tides, and mistress of the brain,

Who to her sons, those sons who own her power,

And do her homage at the midnight hour,
Gives madness as a blessing, but dispenses

Wisdom to fools, and damns them with their senses;
The Stars, who, by I know not what strange right,
Preside o'er mortals in their own despite,
Who without reason govern those, who most
(How truly judge from hence !) of reason boast,
And, by some mighty magic yet unknown,
Our actions guide, yet cannot guide their own;
All, one and all, shall in this Chorus join,
And, dumb to others' praise, be loud in mine."

Gotham was less successful than the more personal satires, and the author might have felt, as his " great "high priest of all the nine" did, when he remembered the success of MacFlecknoe, amid the evil days on which the Religio Laici and Hind and Panther had fallen. Nothing ever equalled a satire for a sale, said the old bookseller Johnson to his son Samuel—a good swinging satire, “or a "Sacheverell's Trial!" There was no need, however, that Churchill should have had this recalled to his memory, for so timely a subject came unexpectedly to hand, that in no case could he have resisted it. Lord Sandwich became a candidate for the high stewardship of Cambridge University.