that of either of the preceding; the severe, exclusive duties of royalty, and the painful sacrifice of more alluring pursuits which they claim, are skilfully portrayed.

The contest for the high-stewardship of Cambridge afforded too tempting a subject to escape our author's pen. The desire of such a man as the Earl of Sandwich to preside over one of the great seminaries for the improvement of the youth of this kingdom in religion and learning, could not fail of inspiring Churchill with a wish to display to the public ironically the advantages that would accrue to the cause of virtue and morality in such an event. The scope afforded by the subject constitutes this perhaps the severest satire ever written.

The fire and spirit displayed by our author in the Candidate,* appear to have exhausted his

* In a note upon these lines of this poem,

To coin newfangled wagers, and to lay them,
Laying to lose, and losing not to pay them,

we adverted, from vague recollection, to bets on a race between two drops of water down a window pane, we since find in an old magazine that such a bet actually took place, and which was celebrated by the following lines, afterwards transcribed into the New Foundling Hospital for Wit, enti tled,

AMUSEMENT IN MODERN HIGH LIFE.

The Bucks had dined, and deep in council sat,
Their wine was brilliant, but their wit grew flat.
Up starts his lordship-to the window flies,
And lo! a race, a race! in rapture cries.

Where? quoth Sir John; Why, see two drops of rain
Start from the summit of the crystal pane:

A thousand pounds which drop with nimblest force
Performs its current down the slipp'ry course.
The bets were fix'd, in dire suspense they wait
For victory, pendent on the nod of fate.
Now down the sash, unconscious of the prize,
The bubbles roll, like pearls from Chloe's eyes.

present stock; and his next poem, the Farewell,* is in consequence unusually deficient in both.

In his succeeding production, the Times, his muse appears to have recovered her wonted vigour. Nothing can exceed the energy of this satire; the prominent vices of the principal European states are well discriminated, and the picture of the degraded state of Italy, and of its effemi nate inhabitants, is delineated in strong and glow ing colours.

Independence, the great theme of our author's aspirations, forms the subject of his next poem, and he draws in it no unfavourable portrait of his own soul, though he treats its case with little ceremony; he probably felt no hesitation in owning "ingenium Galba, male habitat." "Monsieur est mal logé." Lord Lyttelton, who was in the But O, the glitt'ring joys of life are short,

How oft two jostling steeds have spoil'd the sport:
So thus attraction, by coercive laws,

Th' approaching drops into one bubble draws;
Each cursed his fate that thus their project cross'd,
How hard their lot who neither won nor lost.

*The passing political themes and characters dealt with by Churchill in his poems, and the exaggerated importance ascribed to them, are aptly ridiculed by Walpole in one of his letters to Conway: "What lectures will be read to your children on this era-Europe taught to tremble, the great king humbled, the treasures of Peru diverted into the Thames, Asia subdued by the gigantic Clive, for in that age men were near seven feet high; France suing for peace at the gates of Buckingham House, the steady wisdom of the Duke of Bedford drawing a circle round the Gallic monarch, and forbidding him to pass it till he had signed the cession of America: Pitt, more eloquent than Demosthenes, and trampling on proffered pensions like I don't know who: Lord Temple sacrificing a brother to the love of his country; Wilkes as spotless as Sallust, and the Flamen Churchill knocking down the foes of Britain with statues of the gods."

"With the figure of a spectre and the gesticulations of a puppet, he talked heroics through his nose, made declamations at a visit, and played at cards with scraps of history or sentences of Pindar."-Earl of Orford's Memoires.

same predicament, is stigmatised with unjustifiable severity; this poem would have admitted of considerable improvement had the author lived to revise a second edition.

The Journey, and the Fragment of a Dedication, were posthumous publications, which did not detract from the merit of their author, though in each an honourable character is sacrificed at the shrine of private resentment.*

*

Being desirous of seeing his friend Wilkes, then, for sufficient cause, a voluntary exile in France, Churchill made arrangements for paying him a visit, and the only previous intimation given by him to his brother, John Churchill, of his intention was conveyed in the following laconic note, "Dear Jack, adieu, C. C." Accordingly, on the 22nd of October, 1764, he accompanied his friends Goy and Cotes to France, and met Wilkes at Boulogne, where, on the 29th, soon after his arrival, he was seized with a miliary fever, which baffled the skill of the two eminent physicians by whom he was attended. Mr. Cotes was a great advocate for Dr. James's powder, and insisted

*The following paragraph appeared in the St. James's Chronicle a few days after the news of Churchill's death reached England; we have every reason to believe that the assertion contained in it is wholly unfounded:

"It is confidently reported that there has been found among the papers of the late Mr. Churchill an unfinished poem, called the Contract, wherein he hath animadverted, with his usual spirit, upon a sort of men who, having plundered their country with impunity, have proceeded to lay out their unrighteous gains in purchasing the power of oppressing and enslaving their fellow subjects, &c. This curious fragment will, it is said, be given in due time to the public. The two following have been repeated as the first lines of the poem,

Whisper, presumptuous Satire, stand in fear,
Lest ermined Mansfield or Sir Fletcher hear."

upon administering it, to which the medical gentlemen consented, but observed that the battle was lost. They at the same time said, that if the powder produced any favourable effect, it would operate as a cathartic, or by perspiration, but that if it acted as an emetic, the patient would be immediately carried off. In this state he expressed a wish to return to England, which his friends imprudently indulged; but his removal from a warm bed, preparatory to undertaking the voyage, terminated his life in a few hours, on the 4th of November, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. At the moment when his danger was imminent, the physicians, according to the law of the country, were obliged to apprise the priests of his state, that they might attend to perform their spiritual functions, and, the patient being a protestant, to use their endeavours for his conversion. Accordingly they repeatedly demanded admission for this purpose, but their attempts were parried by Wilkes, with his usual address.

This gentleman has informed the world that the goodness of Churchill's heart and the firmness of his philosophy, shone in full lustre during the whole of his very severe illness, and that the comprehensive faculties of his mind remained unimpaired till within a few moments of his death.*

*Davies, in his Life of Garrick, confidently asserts, that the last words uttered by our author were, "What a fool have I been!" but while we admit the propriety of this exclamation, it is not, in this instance, entitled to any credit, having always been pointedly denied by Wilkes and others present.

Churchill's brother John survived him little more than one year, dying after a week's illness only, on 18 November, 1765. He was an apothecary in Church Street, St. John the Evan gelist, Westminister.

His friends considered it incumbent on them to persuade him to make a will, which with great formality he sat up in his bed to do, and bequeathed annuities to the amount of £110, though at the same time, if he had given himself the trouble to consider, he would know that he had not a single guinea, independent of the copyright and sale of his works, that he could call his own. Among the few manuscripts he left, was found the commencement of a satire against two of his most intimate friends, Colman and Thornton. Wilkes, who had the inspection of his papers, judiciously burnt the fragment, which consisted of upwards of one hundred lines.

His few books, furniture, &c. sold extravagantly dear. Party and the popularity of his name as a writer had stamped on them a factitious value, of which the reader will best judge when informed that a common steel pen sold for £5, and a pair of plated spurs for 16 guineas.

Churchill's body was brought to Dover,* and deposited in the old church-yard formerly belonging to the collegiate church of St. Martin, with a stone over it, on which are inscribed his age, the date of his death, and this line from his own works

"Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies."

A tablet sacred to his memory has since been placed in the church by Mr. Underwood, the author of several poetical pieces.

The unexpected death of a man who had for

Foote also died at Dover, on the 20th of October, 1774, just ten years afterwards, on which occasion the ships in the harbour lowered their flags half mast.-He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a tablet was erected to his

memory.