within their reach. Pitt's great administration, in the latter years of George II, merged these opening dissatisfactions in an overruling sense of national glory; but with the first act of the young King, with the stroke of the pen that made Lord Bute a privy councillor, they rose again. Party violence at the same time reawakened; and, parodying Voltaire's remark, we may say, that people were now existing who called William Pitt a pretender and Bubb Dodington a statesman. To "recover monarchy from the inveterate usurpation "of oligarchy," was, according to the latter eminent person's announcement to his patron, the drift of the Bute system. The wisdom of a younger party in more modern days, which (copying some peevish phrases of poor Charles I) compares the checks of our English constitution to Venetian Doges and Councils of Ten,' had its rise in the grave sagacity of Bubb Dodington. The method of the proposed "recovery" was also notable, and has equally furnished precedents to later times. It was simply to remove from power every man of political distinction, and replace him with a convenient creature. Good means were taken. The first election of the new reign was remarkable for its gross venality, nor had "undertakers" been so rife or so active since the reign of James I. One borough even publicly advertised itself for sale; and so far, by such means at least, the desired success appeared within easy reach. But any shrewd observer might foresee a great impending change under the proposed new system, in the reaction of all this on the temper of the people out of doors. Sir Robert Walpole did strange things with the House of Commons, but for great popular purposes; and already it was manifest enough that a mere bungling imitation of such things, for purposes wholly unpopular, would be quite a different matter. In a word, it was becoming tolerably clear to such a man as Wilkes, 1 When this Essay was written (early in 1845) Mr. Disraeli had taken what was called the Young England party under his protection, and the expressions referred to will be found in Coningsby. who had managed again to effect his return for the borough of Aylesbury, that a good day for a Demagogue was at hand. He had the requisites for the character. He was clever, courageous, unscrupulous. He was a good scholar, expert in resource, humorous, witty, and a ready master of the arts of conversation. He could "abate and dis"solve a pompous gentleman" with singular felicity. Churchill did not know the crisis of his fortune that had driven him to patriotism. He was ignorant, that, early in the preceding year, after loss of his last seven thousand pounds on his seat for Aylesbury, Mr. Wilkes had made an unsuccessful attempt upon the Board of Trade. He was not in his confidence when, a little later, Mr. Wilkes offered to compromise with Government for the embassy to Constantinople. He was dead when, many years later, Mr. Wilkes settled into a quiet supporter of the worst of "things as they were." What now presented itself in the form of Wilkes to Churchill, had a clear unembarrassed front,-passions unsubdued as his own, principles rather unfettered than depraved, apparent manliness of spirit, real courage, scorn of conventions, an open heart and a liberal hand, and the capacity of ardent friendship. They entered at once into an extraordinary alliance, offensive and defensive. It is idle to deny that this has damaged Churchill with posterity, and that Wilkes has carried his advocate along with him into the Limbo of doubtful reputations. But we will deny the justice of it. It is absolutely due to Churchill that we should regard Wilkes from the point of view he presented between 1761 and 1764. He was then the patriot untried, the chamberlain unbought, befriended by Temple, countenanced by Pitt, persecuted by Bute, and, in two great questions which affected the vital interests of his countrymen, he was the successful assertor of English liberty. It is impossible to derive from any part of their intercourse one honest doubt of the sincerity of the poet. He flung himself, with perhaps unwarrantable heat, into Wilkes's personal quarrels; but even in these, if we trouble ourselves to look for it, we find a public principle very often implied. The men who had shared with Wilkes in the obscene and filthy indulgences of Medmenham Abbey, were the same who, after crawling to the favourite's feet, had turned upon their old associate with disgusting pretences of indignation at his immorality. If, in any circumstances, Satire could be forgiven for approaching to malignity, it would be in the assailment of such men as these. The Roman senators who met to decide the fates of turbots, were not more worthy of the wrath of Juvenal. As to those Medmenham Abbey proceedings, and the fact they indicate, we have nothing to urge but that the fact should be treated as it was. The late wise and good Dr. Arnold lamented that men should speak of religious liberty, the liberty being irreligious; and of freedom of conscience, when conscience is only convenience. But we must take this time now under consideration as we find it, -politics meaning something quite the opposite of morals; and one side shouting for liberty, while the other cries out for authority, without regard in the least to what neither liberty nor authority can give us, without patient earnestness in other labour of our own, of obedience, reverence, and self-control. We before remarked, that Churchill's genius was affected by this characteristic of the time; and that what, as he so often shows, might otherwise have lain within his reach,-even Dryden's massive strength, even Pope's exquisite delicacy,—this arrested. It was this which made his writing the rare mixture it too frequently is, of the artificial with the natural and impulsive; which so strangely and fitfully blended in him the wholly and the partly true; which impaired his force of style with prosaical weakness; and (to sum up all in one extreme objection), controlling his feeling for nature and truth by the necessities of partisan satire, levelled what he says, in too many cases, to a mere bullying reissue of conventional phrases and moral commonplace. Yet he knew what the temptation should have weighed for, even while he yielded to it; and, from the eminence where satire had placed him, only yearned the more eagerly for the heights above. "Broad is the road, nor difficult to find Scarce found out in an age, which lead to Praise." But it is not by the indifferent qualities in his works that Charles Churchill should be judged, and, as he has too frequently been, condemned. Judge him at his best; judge him by the men whom he followed in this kind of composition; and his claim to the respectful and enduring attention of the students of English poetry and literature, becomes manifest. Of the gross indecencies of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, he has none. He never, in any one instance, whether to fawn upon power or to trample upon weakness, wrote licentious lampoons. There was not a form of mean "pretence, or servile assumption, which he did not denounce. Low, pimping politics, he abhorred and that their vile abettors, to whose exposure his works are so incessantly devoted, have not carried him into utter oblivion with themselves, sufficiently argues for the sound morality and permanent truth expressed in his manly verse. He indulged too much in personal invective, as we have said; and invective is too apt to pick up, for instant use against its adversaries, the first heavy stone that lies by the wayside, without regard to its form or fitness. The English had not in his day borrowed from the French those nicer sharpnesses of satire which can dispense with anger and indignation; and which now, in the verse of Moore and Beranger, or in the prose of our pleasant Mr. Punch, suffice to wage all needful war with hypocrisy and falsehood. In justice let us add to this latter admission, that Satire seems to us the only species of poetry which appears to be better understood than formerly. There is a painful fashion of obscurity in verse come up of late years, which is marring and misleading a quantity of youthful talent; as if the ways of poetry, like those of steam and other wonderful inventions, admitted of original improvements at every turn. A writer like Churchill, who thought that even Pope had cramped his genius not a little by deserting the earlier and broader track struck out by Dryden, may be studied with advantage by this section of young England, and we recommend him for that purpose. Southey is excellent authority on a point of the kind; and he held that the injurious effects of Pope's dictatorship in rhyme were not a little weakened by the manly, free, and vigorous verse of Churchill, during his rule as tribune of the people. Were we to offer exception, it would rest chiefly on the fourth published poem of Churchill, which followed his Night, and precedes what Southey would call his tribunitial career. This was the first book of the Ghost, continued, at later intervals, to the extent of four books. It was put forth by the poet as a kind of poetical Tristram Shandy-a ready resource for a writer who seized carelessly every incident of the hour; and who, knowing the enormous sale his writings could command, sought immediate vent for even thoughts and fancies too broken and irregular for a formal plan. The Ghost, in his own phrase, was "A mere amusement at the most ; The horrors of a rainy day; A slight shot-silk for summer wear, And though it contained some sharply written character, such as the well-known sketch of Dr. Johnson (Pomposo) and the allusions to laureat Whitehead' (whom he never 1 Mr. Cunningham has favoured me with a characteristic notice of this attack by Whitehead himself, copied from the Nuneham MSS, which is well worth preserving in a note. The popularity of Churchill is not more |