refer the reader to one of them, for the author's sense of the provocation received from • own Hogarth. We are now arrived at the most painful part of our duty, that of relating an event which gave Churchill more real anxiety of mind than any other transaction of his life. Early in 1673, he formed an intimacy with Miss Carr, the daughter of a highly respectable sculptor in Westminster; this young creature he seduced, prevailed on her to quit her father's roof, and lead a life of infamy with him. Satiated by a fortnight's gratification of his passion, during which short period she had leisure for sorrow and repentance, they prevailed upon a friend to communicate her penitence and sufferings to her father, who, by their joint entreaties, was induced to readmit her into his family. This instance of parental tenderness sensibly affected her, and she probably would, by her future conduct, have justified the forbearance of her father, and having once felt the pangs of vice, never again deviate from the paths of virtue, had she not been exposed to the taunts of an elder sister, the bitterness of whose reproaches induced this unhappy young woman to apply once more to Churchill for protection. Actuated by a false sense of gratitude and honour, he thought himself bound to receive her anew; had he made liberal provision for her support, and declined all further intercourse, his former offence might admit of extenuation, but this renewal of the connexion aggravated the crime. While this transaction was fresh in the public mind, and with a view to efface the unfavourable impression it had made, he published the Conference, in which the emotions of a mind, not hardened in guilt, and writhing under the pressure of self-conviction, are pathetically described, while several passages are strongly expressive of manly and acute sensibility. This disgraceful transaction appears to have excited much notice, as we find the following allusion to it in a letter from Walpole to Lord Hertford : "I forgot to tell you, and you may wonder at hearing nothing of the Rev. Mr. Charles Pylades, while Mr. John Orestes is making such a figure; but Dr. Pylades the poet has forsaken his consort and the muses, and is gone off with a stonecutter's daughter. What if he should come and offer himself to you for chaplain to the embassy?" And again from Garrick, when at Rome, to Colman: "Where is the bold Churchill? what a noble ruin! When he is quite undone you shall send him here, and he shall be shown among the great fragments of Roman genius, magnificent in ruins." Accompanied by Miss Carr he, in the summer of 1763, made an excursion into Wales, and resided a few weeks at Monmouth, the rusticity of whose inhabitants he has celebrated in Gotham. On his return to London, he received the disagreeable information of his friend Lloyd's imprisonment in the Fleet. Impelled by that ardour, which on all occasions distinguished him, he flew to his assistance, and demonstrated, by his actions, the warmth and sincerity of his friendship. A few months after Lloyd's confinement, it was proposed, by his most intimate acquaintance, to raise a subscription for the purpose of extricating him from his immediate embarrassments. Our author made every possible exertion to forward this benevolent design, but his efforts were abortive. Unfortunately for Lloyd, his pretended friends were more ostentatious than liberal, and had meanly proposed what they did not possess sufficient spirit and generosity to effect. That which adversity alone can teach, he now learnt, the insincerity of the warmest professions, and the instability of the most inviolable friendships; Garrick, Thornton, Colman, and Hogarth, whom he had so frequently berhimed and bepraised, abandoned him to his fate; Wilkes was abroad, and while there, in a letter to Colman, thus alluded to Thornton's neglect of Lloyd: "I hope Lloyd's works will be reprinted in twelves, such an edition would certainly succeed. He was inded a very pretty poet as well as a very amiable man: ind he had subject of just indignation against Thornton, so had Churchill. I am a little inclined to revenge both their quarrels. Our dear friend Churchill wished I would. What is your opinion? If you wish to save Thornton, he will owe his salvation only to you. All this is quite between ourselves." Churchill, in fact, proved the only staunch and generous friend on whom Lloyd could rely. To the liberality of our author, and to some scant payments by the booksellers, Lloyd was indebted for a tolerably comfortable subsistence during his tedious confine ment. It is not to be wondered at that these depressisg circumstances should prey upon the mind of Lloyd, who, to use a vulgar but expressive phrase, had been no one's enemy but his own. The amiable mildness and affectionate warmth of his own attachments made him doubly feel the cruel neglect of his old school and college connexions. He seemed to wish to live for no other purpose than to express his gratitude to Churchill, whom, with a broken heart, he followed to an early grave. Accustomed on every occasion warmly to espouse the cause of his friends, the rencontre between Wilkes and Martin gave rise to Churchill's next poem the Duellist,* the first book of which was published in November, 1763, soon after that transaction. In this satire, which though in the same metre, much excels the Ghost in spirit and correctness, he did not confine himself to the subject of his muse, but indulged in some severe reflections on persons not immediately connected with the hero of the poem. The allegorical part of it is highly finished, and the personification of the various pursuits, passions, and vices of mankind, displays great animation, and force of imagery. The Cave of Fraud is admirably described, and its hateful inhabitants seem present to our view. Churchill closed his poetical labours for the year 1763 with the Author, with which poem his various critics and reviewers professed themselves to be better pleased than with any of his preceding publications. The satire, except in one or two instances, is of a public nature, and well directed; the supremacy of genius is asserted with spirit and supported by argument, and the shackles of ㄓ Walpole, in a letter to Lord Hertford, dated 22nd January, 1764, thus notices the appearance of this poem: "Churchill has published a new satire, called the Duellist, the finest and bitterest of his works. The poetry is glorious; some lines on Lord Holland, hemlock; charming abuse on that scurrilous mortal Bishop Warburton; an ill-drawn though deserved character of Sandwich, and one as much deserved and better written, of Norton.' a collegiate life are sarcastically exposed. His apology for quitting his profession is bold but unsatisfactory. For about six months after his return from Wales, Churchill lodged at Richmond, from whence he removed to a house on Acton Common, where he fixed his residence in the hope of retrieving a shattered constitution, and of sitting down in the quiet enjoyment of that competence which the patronage of the public had bestowed. Here, in the society of the friends he loved, he proposed to pass his days in lettered ease, removed from the seat of business, but sufficiently near to observe the progress of the grand machine of literature and politics, and occasionally to employ his active mind in animadverting on its prime agents. His first production, in 1764, was Gotham, in which he deviates from his usual style, and indulges in descriptive poetry to a greater degree than on any former occasion. In the first book, by the description of the several ages of mankind, he seems disposed to enter the lists with Shakespeare and Horace. In the second, the avocations of a poet are critically discussed, and while he bows to the superior merit of his great predecessors, and acknowledges the slovenly and careless texture of his own compositions, he yet seems conscious of their worth. Materials rich, though rude, inflamed with thought, His characters of the Stuarts, in the same book, a drawn with historical fidelity. The versification of the third book is more harmonious than |