tires of laughing at); and some graceful easy humour, such as the fortune-teller's experience of the various gullibility of man; it is not, in any of the higher requisites, to be compared with his other writings. It is in the octosyllabic measure, only twice adopted by him.

The reason of his comparative failure in this verse may be guessed. Partly no doubt it was, that he had less gusto in writing it; that, not having a peremptory call to the subject, he chose a measure which suited his indolence. Partly also we must take it to be, that the measure itself, by the constantly recurring necessity of rhyme (an easy necessity), tends to a slatternly diffuseness. The heroic line must have muscle as it proceeds, and thus tends to strength and concentration. The eight-syllable verse relies for its prop on the rhyme; and, being short, tends to do in two lines what the heroic feels bound to do in one. Nevertheless he could show his mastery here also, when the subject piqued or stirred him; and there

strikingly reflected in it than the finegentleman airs with which men of the class of Mr. Whitehead affected to regard him. The distinguished laureat, it will be observed, is shocked to hear from Lord Nuneham (to whose letter he is replying) that he is alleged to have spoken disrespectfully of Churchill at Lady Talbot's, when he really cannot recollect having ever heard the name mentioned in such company. Nevertheless as he proceeds he seems substantially to admit the charge. "You interest yourself very obligingly "with regard to the abuse which the "Ghost has thought proper to bestow

upon me. But I think of all those "things as a man of reason ought to "do; if what is said is true the "world knows it already, if false it "will only in the end hurt the authors "of the calumny. In either case "one ought to rest contented.

As to

"the speech you talk of at Lady "Talbot's, I really remember nothing "at all of the matter, nor that I

ever heard Churchill's name men"tioned in such company. If I was 66 ever guilty of so vulgar and common place an expression, unless in "jest, in any company at all, I should "think I deserved a reprimand for it. "I may have lamented, and perhaps "with indignation, his throwing

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away his talents on subjects un"worthy of him, and chusing to be a "Poet upon the Town rather than 'consulting the moral dignity of the "character, particularly as he was a "clergyman. I think so still, and am "afraid the worst enemy he will ever "meet with will be himself. A little "of the dull method he complains of "in me would be of infinite service "to him, for as yet he has written "nothing but Rhapsodys with striking "parts in them. His Legitimate "Works are still to come; and if they

ever do come, I shall be one of the "first to applaud them, for I honour "the Art though I seldom practise it." -W. Whitehead to Lord Nuneham, Oct. 24, 1762.

are few more effective things in his writings than some parts of his character of Warburton, to be found in the Duellist.

He caught, or would have caught, the flame,
And would be nothing, or the same.

He drank with drunkards, lived with sinners,
Herded with infidels for dinners;
With such an emphasis and grace
Blasphemed, that Potter kept not pace :
He, in the highest reign of noon,
Bawl'd bawdry songs to a psalm tune;
Lived with men infamous and vile,
Truck'd his salvation for a smile;
To catch their humour caught their plan,
And laugh'd at God to laugh with man ;
Praised them, when living, in each breath,
And damn'd their memories after death.

"To prove his faith, which all admit
Is at least equal to his wit,
And make himself a man of note,
He in defence of Scripture wrote:
So long he wrote, and long about it,
That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it.

No husband, though he's truly wed;
Though on his knees a child is bred,
No father; injured, without end
A foe; and though obliged, no friend;

A heart, which virtue ne'er disgrac'd ;
A head, where learning runs to waste;
A gentleman well-bred, if breeding
Rests in the article of reading;

A man of this world, for the next
Was ne'er included in his text;
A judge of genius, though confess'd
With not one spark of genius bless'd;
Amongst the first of critics plac'd,
Though free from every taint of taste;
A Christian without faith or works,
As he would be a Turk 'mongst Turks;
A great divine, as lords agree,
Without the least divinity;

To crown all, in declining age,
Inflamed with church and party rage,
Behold him, full and perfect quite,

A false saint, and true hypocrite."

But to Churchill's career as fellow-tribune with Wilkes, we now return. The new system had borne rapid fruit. In little more than twelve months, Lord Bute, known simply before that date as tutor to the heir-apparent, and supposed holder of a private key to the apartments of the heir-apparent's mother, had made himself a privy-councillor; had turned the Duke of Cumberland and the Princess Amelia out of the liturgy; had given himself the rangership of Richmond Park; had dismissed Legge from the Exchequer, and emptied and filled other offices at pleasure; had made Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes's quondam associate and predecessor in the colonelcy of the Bucks militia, a King's minister; had made Bubb Dodington a lord; had turned out Pitt; had turned out Lord Temple; had turned out the Duke of Newcastle; had made himself Secretary of State; had promoted himself to be Prime Minister; had endued himself with the order of the Garter; had appointed to every lucrative

state office in his gift some one or other of his countrymen from the other side of the Tweed; and had taken under his special patronage a paper called the Briton, written by Scotchmen, presided over by Smollett, and started expressly to defend these things.

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They had not, meanwhile, passed unheeded by the English people. When Pitt resigned, even Bubb Dodington, whilst he wished his lordship of Bute all joy of being delivered of a "most impracticable colleague, his majesty "of a most imperious servant, and the country of a most dangerous minister," was obliged to add, that the people were sullen about it. "Indeed, my good friend," answered Bute, "my situation, at all times perilous, is "become much more so, for I am no stranger to the language held in this great city: Our darling's resig“nation is owing to Lord Bute, and he must answer for "all the consequences. The truth was, that the people of that day, with little absolute power of interference in public affairs, but accustomed to hear themselves appealed to by public men, were content to see their favourites in office, and to surrender the more substantial authority for a certain show of influence with such chosen Parliamentary leaders. But with the words of their "darling" ringing in their ears, that he had been called to the ministry by the voice of the people, that to them he was accountable, and that he would not remain where he could not guide,-they began to suspect that they must now help themselves, if they would be helped at all. It is a dangerous thing to overstock either House with too strong an anti-popular party; it thrusts away into irresponsible quarters too many of the duties of opposition. Bute was already conscious of this, when the first number of the North Briton appeared.

The clever Colonel of Buckinghamshire militia, like a good officer, had warily waited his time. He did not apply the match till the train was fully laid, and an explosion sure. It has excited surprise that papers of such small talent should have proved so effective; but

much smaller talent would have finished a work so nearly completed by Bute himself. It was the minister, not the demagogue, who had arrayed one section of the kingdom in bitter hostility against the other. Demagogues can never do themselves this service; being after all the most dependent class of the community-mere lackeys to the lowest rank of uninstructed statesmen. A beggarly trade in sooth is their's, and only better than the master's whom they serve; for though it is bad enough to live by vexing and exposing a sore, it is worse to live by making one. There was violence on Wilkes's side; but there was also, in its rude coarse way, success. On the side of his opponents, there was violence, and there was incapacity. Wilkes wrote libels in abundance; only, as he wittily expressed it, that he might try to ascertain how far the Liberty of the Press could go. But his opponents first stabbed the Liberty of the Press in a thousand places, and then, as Horace Walpole said with a happier wit than Wilkes's, wrote libels on every rag of its old clothes.

Churchill from the first assisted in the North Briton; and wherever it shows the coarse broad mark of sincerity, there seems to us the trace of his hand. But he was not a good prose satirist. He wanted ease, delicacy, and fifty requisites beside, with which less able and sincere men have made that kind of work effective. He could sharpen his arrow-heads well, but without the help of verse could not wing them on their way. Of this he became himself so conscious, that when a masterly subject for increase of the rancour against the Scotch presented itself, and he had sent the paper to press for the North Briton, he brought it back from the printer, suppressed it, and recast it into verse. Wilkes saw it in progress, and praised it exultingly. "It is personal, it is poetical, it is political," cried the delighted demagogue. "It must succeed!" The Prophecy of Famine, a satire on Scotland and Scotchmen, appeared in January 1763, and did indeed fulfil the prophecy of Wilkes.

Its success was most remarkable. Its sale was rapid