CHURCHILL.

POET AND SATIRIST.

(1731-1764.)

In the Georgian period of our literary history no names are found more intimately associated than those of John Wilkes, Charles Churchill and William Hogarth. For years they were warm personal friends, and then they became bitter

enemies.

Few poets have achieved a greater contemporary fame than Churchill. He was a satirist, feared as few poets have been, but his verses are now hopelessly forgotten. Twenty years after Churchill's death, Cowper wrote: "It is a great thing to be indeed a poet, and does not happen to more than one man in a century. Churchill, the great Churchill, deserved the name of poet. I have read him twice, and some of his pieces three times over, and the last time with more pleasure than the first." But no one reads him even once

now except as students. And yet it is in the pages of the satirist that we find a portrayal of the customs and manners of the people such as historians do not always succeed in giving, and for that reason, if for no other, Churchill's poems will always have a place in literature. Hogarth's pencil and Churchill's pen give us views of English life that we elsewhere search for in vain.

Churchill was born in 1731, and was educated at Westminster school, where he had for schoolfellows, William Cowper, Warren Hastings, Richard Cumberland and George Colman. Without respect to his fitness, he was intended for the church, as he says in "The Author":

Born to the Church, and for gown decreed

Ere it was known that he should learn to read.

Certainly no one ever entered holy orders with fewer qualifications than Charles Churchill. To add to his difficulties he contracted a clandestine marriage when he was eighteen, a misstep in life from which he never recovered. At twenty-one he was given a small curacy, the pitiful income of which he endeavored to eke out in various ways, without much success. After struggling in this way for a number of years, unhappy in his domestic life and dissipated in his habits, he went to

London, intending to follow literature as a profession. He offered several poems to the booksellers without success, and then in desperation published "The Rosciad" at his own expense. This is a satire on the actors of the day, all of whom, except Garrick and Quin, were unsparingly ridiculed.

The poem met with immense success and the satirized actors threatened the author with personal violence, but when they saw the man they changed their minds. In one of his poems Churchill describes his personal appearance as follows:

"Vast were his bones, his muscles twisted strong,

His face was short, but broader than 'twas long,
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,
Designed by fate a much less weight to bear."

His next poem was "The Apology," and was a reply to his critics, Smollett particularly receiving a tremendous castigation.

These poems brought him both reputation and money, his first success in life. He gave up his profession which he despised, and separated from his wife whom he hated, though he made adequate provision for her maintenance. He became a

man of fashion and a boon companion of Wilkes, then noted as one of the most dissolute men of the time. He was a member of parliament and a radical. When George III. succceded to the throne, Wilkes opposed the ministry of Lord Bute, and started a newspaper, The North Briton, that became famous for the audacity of its attacks on the king and the government. Churchill joined with Wilkes in writing for the new paper, and his powerful satires contributed greatly to its success.

When Wilkes was banished from England in 1764 Churchill followed him to France and died of a fever at Boulogne shortly after. He had only attained his thirty-fourth year.

Had Churchill taken as much pains to polish. his lines as did Pope "The Rosciad" would be as immortal as "The Dunciad," and "The Author" as the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot." But he did not possess the necessary patience, and his poems have not lived except for the historian or the curious student. He was the scourge of bad men, himself not better than the very worst, but he has passed into oblivion with the most obscure of those he satirized.

JOHN WILKES,

SCHOLAR, WIT, AND PROFLIGATE.

(1720-1790.)

JOHN WILKES Occupies so prominent a chapter in English history, and was so remarkable a personality, that it is small wonder biographies of him are still written. His long contest with George III. has enrolled him among the champions of English freedom, his scholarship entitles him to a place among the cultivated and the learned, while his wit, fine manners and profligacy gave him the reputation of being "the most agreeable rake that ever trod the rounds of indulgence." And all this he gained in spite of the most forbidding aspect that ever afflicted any human being. Hogarth has preserved for us in two of his cartoons the lineaments that even he could not exaggerate, while the best of Wilkes' portraits seem almost like caricatures. His forehead was low and narrow, his nose short and