depreciate theirs. The partial pen of Lloyd, whe appears throughout all his poems desirous of expressing his admiration of his friend, forms nearly a solitary exception. We shall confine ourselves to the following extract, at once affording a pleasing specimen of his poetry and of his gratitude:

Is there a man, whose genius strong,
Rolls like a rapid stream along,

Whose muse, long hid in cheerless night,
Pours on us like a flood of light,
Whose active, comprehensive mind
Walks Fancy's regions, unconfined;

I know, as novice in the muse's train,

He'll curse me by his gods in proud disdain,
All these his midnight orgies gods invoke,

Revel the loud, loose laugh, the lewd, coarse joke,
And yet I'll face him, He in whom I trust
Shall lay the enormous giant in the dust.

*

Even where the painting's strongest I can trace
Low keen eyed malice in the outraged face;
Malice, which often prompts the illiberal tongue
To paint defects with energy of song,

Thou talk'st of freedom, what? without control
Do what we list in wantonness of soul.

Fly, ruffian, from the haunts of men repair
To Lybian wilds, and seek thy freedom there;
Mix with the tigers, and in savage joy,
Vagrant at large, be mangled, and destroy.

one of

The Country Curate was answered by some Churchill's champions, who introduced into his defence the following whimsical comparison between the poet and John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough:

In Anna's wars immortal Churchill rose,
And, great in arms, subdued Britannia's foes;
A greater Churchill now commands our praise,
And the palm yields her empire to the bays.
Though John fought nobly at his army's head,
And slew his thousands with the balls of lead;
Yet must the hero to the bard submit,

Who hurls unmatch'd the thunderbolts of wit.

Whom, nor the surly sense of pride,
Nor affectation, warps aside;
Who drags no author from his shelf,
To talk on with an eye to self;
Careless alike, in conversation,
Of censure, or of approbation;
Who freely thinks and freely speaks,
And meets the wit he never seeks;
Whose reason calm, and judgment cool,
Can pity, but not hate a fool:

Who can a hearty praise bestow,

If merit sparkles in a foe;

Who, bold and open, firm and true,
Flatters no friends, yet loves them too;
Churchill will be the last to know
His is the portrait, I would show.

Goldsmith is said to have spoken slightingly of Churchill, and would be induced, as well from partial dissimilarity of character and conduct, as from motives of duty and gratitude, to vindicate the fame of his friend and patron, Dr. Johnson.* Few writers have ventured to impeach their own judgment by committing to paper any remarks in derogation of Churchill's genius; though they would not commend, they dared not censure, and have preferred silence to praise.†

In the dedication prefixed to the Traveller, an observation occurs, which, though very general, may be supposed to allude more pointedly to Churchill.

"But there is an enemy to poetry still more dangerous, I mean party; party entirely distorts the judgment and destroys the taste. A mind capable of relishing general beauty, when once infected with this disease, can only find pleasure in what contributes to increase the distemper. Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man, after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader who has once gratified his ap. petite with calumny, makes ever after the most agreeablo feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally adrnire some half-witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having lost the character of a wise one. Him they dignify with the name of poet; his lampoons are called satires, his turbulence is said to be force, and his frenzy fire."

† Warton and Knox are exceptions to this observation; the

Cowper always retained and expressed a warm admiration for the talents of Churchill, and has recorded both in prose and verse his favorable opinion of his schoolfellow.

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 in 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 Muse's hand.
TABLE TALK.

In one of his letters he thus more fully discussed the merits of the departed bard.

“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

former, in his Essay on Poetry, immolates Churchill at the shrine of Gray; and the latter, in his frothy and flimsy "Essays," consigns Churchill to that oblivion in which his own writings have been most righteously overwhelmed. The vitality of Churchill's fame being sufficiently attested by the successive tributes paid to it by Cowper, Byron, Southey, and Campbell, the manes of the poet will not be greatly disturbed by the opinions either of Dr. Vicesimus Knox or of Mr. D'Israeli, who, in his Curiosities of Literature, has hazarded the assertion that "Churchill was spendthrift of fame, and enjoyed all his revenue while he lived. Posterity owes him little and pays him nothing."

the name. I have 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 unqualified, merely because it afforded an opportunity to traduce him. He has inserted in it but one anecdote of consequence, for which he refers you to a novel, and introduces the story, with doubts of the truth of it. But his barrenness as a biographer I could forgive, if the simpleton had not thought himself a judge of his writings, and under the erroneous influence of that thought informs 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, I think a noble and beautiful poem, and a poem with which I make no doubt the author took as much pains, as with any he ever wrote. Making allowance, (and Dryden, perhaps, in his Absalom and Achitophel, stands in need of the same indulgence) for an unwarrantable use of scripture, it appears to me to be a masterly performance. Independence is a most animated piece, full of strength and spirit, and marked with that bold masculine character, which I think is the great peculiarity of this writer. And the Times (except that the subject is disgusting in 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 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 sc

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, unavoidably have departed from rules. which he might have found in books; but his truly poetical talent was a guide which could not suffer him to err. A race horse is graceful in his swiftest pace, and never makes an awkward motion though pushed to his utmost speed. A cart horse might perhaps be taught to play tricks in the riding school, and might prance and curvet like his betters, but at some unlucky time would be sure to betray the baseness of his original. It is an affair of very little consequence, perhaps, to the well-being of mankind, but I cannot help regretting that he died so soon. Those words of Virgil, upon the immature death of Marcellus, might serve for his epitaph."

*

"Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra
Esse sinent."

It gives us pleasure to add the testimony of

Southey, in his Life of Cowper, observes on this letter: "That Cowper made Churchill more than any other writer his model. No two poets could be more unlike each other in habits, temper, and disposition. Their only sympathy was in a spirit of indignation, taking, in both, the form of satire. but which the one directed against individuals for what he deemed their political turpitude, or for offence given to him self or his friends, the other against the prevailing sins and errors of the age. Churchill's object was to annoy those whom he disliked, Cowper's to exhort and reclaim his fellow