the troubled self-reproaches of later years, he recalled no pure self-satisfactions in the past. To have been

"Decent and demure at least,

As grave and dull as any priest,"

was all the pretence he made. It was his disgrace, if the word is to be used, to have assumed the clerical gown. It was not his disgrace to seek to lay it aside as soon as might be.

That such was the direction of his thoughts, as soon as his father's death removed his chief constraint, is plain. His return to Westminster had brought him back within. the sphere of old temptations; the ambition of a more active life, the early school aspirings, the consciousness of talents rusting in disuse, again disturbed him; and he saw, or seemed to see, distinctions falling on the men who had started life when he did, from the Literature which he might have cultivated with yet greater success. Bonnell Thornton and Colman were by this time established town wits; and with another schoolfellow (his now dissolute neighbour, Robert Lloyd, weary also of the drudgery of his father's calling, to which he had succeeded as an usher in Westminster school, and on the eve of rushing into the life of a professed man of letters), he was in renewed habits of daily intercourse. Nor, to the discontent thus springing up on all sides, had he any power of the least resistance in his home. His ill-considered marriage had by this time borne its bitterest fruit; it being always understood in Westminster, says Dr. Kippis, himself a resident there, "that Mrs. "Churchill's imprudence kept too near a pace with that "of her husband." The joint imprudence had its effect in growing embarrassment; continual terrors of arrest induced the most painful concealments; executions were lodged in his house; and his life was passed in endeavours to escape his creditors, perhaps not less to escape himself. It was then that young Lloyd, whose whole life had been a sad impulsive scene of licence, threw

open to him, without further reserve, his own reckless circle of dissipation and forgetfulness. It was entered eagerly.

In one of his later writings, he describes this time;" his credit gone, his pride humbled, his virtue undermined, himself sinking beneath the adverse storm, and the kind hand, whose owner he should love and reverence to his dying day, which was suddenly stretched forth to save him. It was that of good Dr. Lloyd, now under-master of Westminster: he saw the creditors, persuaded them to accept a composition of five shillings in the pound, and lent what was required to complete it. In this, with the generous wish to succour his favourite pupil, there may have been the hope of one more chance of safety for his son. But it was too late. At almost the same instant, young Lloyd deserted his ushership of Westminster to throw himself on literature for support; and Churchill, resolving to try his fate as a poet, prepared to abandon his profession. A formal separation from his wife, and a first rejection by the booksellers, date within a few months of each other.

At the close of 1760, he carried round his first effort in verse to those arbiters of literature, then all-powerful ; for it was the sorry and helpless interval (so filled with calamities of authors) when the patron was completely gone, and the public had not fairly come. The Bard, written in Hudibrastic verse, was contemptuously rejected. But, fairly bent upon his new career, he was not the man to waste time in fruitless complainings. He wrote again, in a style more likely to be acceptable; and the Conclave, a satire aimed at the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, would have been published eagerly, but for a legal opinion on the dangers of a prosecution, interposed by the bookseller's friend. This was at once a lesson in the public taste, and in the caution with which it should be catered for. Profiting by it, Churchill with better fortune

1 In The Conference, ii. 194-195.

planned his third undertaking. He took a subject in which his friend Lloyd had recently obtained success; in which severity was not unsafe, and to which, already firm as it was in the interest of what was called the Town, he could nevertheless give a charm of novelty. After "two "months' close attendance at the theatres," he completed The Rosciad.

It is not known to what bookseller he offered it, but it is certain that it was refused by more than one. Probably it went the round of The Trade: a trade more remarkable for mis-valuation of its raw material, than any other in existence. He asked five guineas for the manuscript (according to Southey, but Mr. Tooke says he asked twenty pounds), and there was not a member of the craft that the demand did not terrify. But he was not to be baffled this time. He possibly knew the merit of what he had done. Here, at any rate, into this however slighted manuscript, a something long restrained within himself had forced its way; and a chance he was determined it should have. It was no little risk to run in his position; but at his own expense he printed and published The Rosciad. It appeared without his name, after two obscure advertisements, in March 1761.

A few days served to show what a hit had been made. They who in a double sense had cause to feel it, doubtless cried out first; but Who is He? was soon in the mouths of all. Men upon town spoke of its pungency and humour; men of higher mark found its manly verse an unaccustomed pleasure; mere playgoers had its criticism to discuss; and discontented Whigs, in disfavour at Court for the first time these fifty years, gladly welcomed a spirit that might help to give discontent new terrors, and Revolution principles new vogue. Thus, in their turn, the wit, the strong and easy verse, the grasp of character, and the rude free daring of the Rosciad, were, within a few days of the appearance of its shilling pamphlet, the talk of every London coffeehouse.

One remarkable piece of writing in it might well startle the town by the power it displayed. It was the full length picture of a noted frequenter of the theatres in those days, who had originated some shameful riots against Garrick's management of Drury-lane, the very vileness of whose character had been hitherto his protection, but who now saw himself gibbeted to universal scorn, where no man could mistake him, and none administer relief. It is one of the masterpieces of English satire; and being dependent for its interest on something higher than the individual likeness, it may still be presented, as Churchill desired it should be left, without

a name.

A CHARACTER.

With that low cunning, which in fools supplies,
And amply too, the place of being wise ;

Which Nature, kind indulgent parent, gave

To qualify the blockhead for a knave ;

With that smooth falsehood, whose appearance charms,

And reason of each wholesome doubt disarms,
Which to the lowest depths of guile descends,

By vilest means pursues the vilest ends,
Wears friendship's mask for purposes of spite,
Fawns in the day, and butchers in the night;
With that malignant envy, which turns pale,
And sickens, even if a friend prevail,

Which merit and success pursues with hate,
And damns the worth it cannot imitate;
With the cold caution of a coward's spleen,
Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen,
Which keeps this maxim ever in his view—
What's basely done should be done safely too;
With that dull, rooted, callous impudence,
Which, dead to shame and ev'ry nicer sense,
Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading vice's snares,
She blunder'd on some virtue unawares ;
With all these blessings, which we seldom find,
Lavish'd by nature on one happy mind,
A motley Figure, of the Fribble tribe,
Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe,
Came simpering on to ascertain whose sex
Twelve sage, impannell'd matrons would perplex.

Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both;
Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth;
A six-foot suckling, mincing in It's gait;
Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate;
Fearful It seem'd, tho' of athletic make,
Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake
It's tender form, and savage motion spread
O'er It's pale cheeks, the horrid manly red.

Much did It talk, in It's own pretty phrase,
Of genius and of taste, of players and plays;
Much too of writings, which Itself had wrote,
Of special merit, though of little note;

For Fate, in a strange humour, had decreed
That what It wrote, none but Itself should read:
Much too It chatter'd of dramatic laws,
Misjudging critics, and misplac'd applause,
Then, with a self-complacent jutting air,

It smil'd, It smirk'd, It wriggled to the Chair;
And, with an awkward briskness not It's own,
Looking around, and perking on the throne,
Triumphant seem'd when that strange savage Dame,
Known but to few, or only known by name,
Plain Common Sense appear'd, by Nature there
Appointed with plain Truth to guard the Chair,
The pageant saw, and, blasted with her frown,
To It's first state of nothing melted down.

Nor shall the Muse (for even there the pride
Of this vain Nothing shall be mortified)

Nor shall the Muse (should fate ordain her rhymes,
Fond, pleasing thought! to live in after-times)
With such a trifler's name her pages blot;
Known be the Character, the Thing forgot!
Let It, to disappoint each future aim,

Live without sex, and die without a name !

Other likenesses there were, too, named as well as gibbeted, because taken from a more exalted and more public stage; and, prominent among them, the Scotch lawyer,

WEDDERBURNE.

To mischief train'd, e'en from his mother's womb,
Grown old in fraud, tho' yet in manhood's bloom,
Adopting arts by which gay villains rise,

And reach the heights which honest men despise ;