To force plain nature from her usual way,
Each night a vigil, and a blank each day,
To match for speed one feather 'gainst another,
To make one leg run races with his brother,
'Gainst all the rest to take the northern wind,
Bute to ride first, and He to ride behind,
To coin newfangled wagers, and to lay 'em,
Laying to lose, and losing not to pay 'em ;
Lothario, on that stock which nature gives,
Without a rival stands, though March yet lives."

Admirable is all this, without doubt, and the last is a fine touch; yet it might perhaps be doubted, were we to compare it with the character of Buckingham by Dryden, whether it might not seem as an impressive and startling list of materials for satire, rather than as that subtler extract of the very spirit of satire itself which arrests us in the elder poet. But it is writing of a most rare order.

The Farewell, and the Times (the latter to be referred to only as Dryden refers to some of the nameless productions of Juvenal, tragical provocations tragically revenged), now followed in rapid succession; and Independence, the last work published while he lived, appeared at the close of September 1764. It is a final instance of Mr. Tooke's misfortunes in criticism, that though he admits this poem to display "vigour" in some scattered passages, he sets it down as "slovenly in composition, "hacknied in subject, and commonplace in thought." It is very far from this! A noble passage at the commencement is worthy of Ben Jonson himself, and very much in his manner.

"What is a Lord? Doth that plain simple word
Contain some magic spell? As soon as heard,
Like an alarum bell on Night's dull ear,
Doth it strike louder, and more strong appear
Than other words? Whether we will or no,
Through reason's court doth it unquestion'd go
E'en on the mention, and of course transmit
Notions of something excellent, of wit

Pleasing, though keen? of humour free, though chaste ?
Of sterling genius with sound judgment graced ?

Of virtue far above temptation's reach,
And honour, which not malice can impeach?
Believe it not. 'Twas Nature's first intent,
Before their rank became their punishment,

They should have pass'd for men, nor blush'd to prize
The blessings she bestow'd. She gave them eyes,
And they could see. She gave them ears, they heard :
The instruments of stirring, and they stirr'd.
Like us, they were design'd to eat, to drink,
To talk, and (every now and then) to think.
Till they, by pride corrupted, for the sake
Of singularity, disclaim'd that make ;
Till they, disdaining Nature's vulgar mode,
Flew off, and struck into another road
More fitting quality: and to our view
Came forth a species altogether new,

Something we had not known, and could not know,
Like nothing of God's making here below.

Nature exclaim'd with wonder, Lords are things,
Which, never made by Me, were made by Kings !"

The same poem contains a full-length portrait of the poet, with the unscrupulous but lifelike mark of his own strong, coarse, unflattering hand; in which he laughs at himself as an "unlick'd" bear; depicts himself "rolling" in his walk," much like a porpoise just before a storm;' plays in short the Hogarth to his own most ludicrous defects, and displays his ungainly foppery.

"Broad were his shoulders, and from blade to blade,
АН- might at full length have laid;

Vast were his bones, his muscles twisted strong,
His face was short, but broader than 'twas long,
His features, though by nature they were large,
Contentment had contrived to overcharge
And bury meaning, save that we might spy
Sense lowering on the pent-house of his eye;
His arms were two twin oaks, his legs so stout,
That they might bear a mansion-house about,
Nor were they, look but at his body there,
Design'd by fate a much less weight to bear.

"O'er a brown cassock, which had once been black,

Which hung in tatters on his brawny back,

A sight most strange, and awkward to behold,

He threw a covering of blue and gold.

Just at that time of life, when man, by rule
The fop laid down, takes up the graver fool,
He started up a fop, and, fond of show,
Look'd like another Hercules turn'd beau.
A subject, met with only now and then,
Much fitter for the pencil than the pen ;
Hogarth would draw him (Envy must allow)
E'en to the life, was Hogarth living now.”

Hogarth was "living now," but, at the moment when the words were written, within view of his death-bed. Churchill little knew how nearly he approached his own; and yet, in the unfinished Journey, the last fragment found among his papers (for the severe and masterly Dedication to Warburton, though posthumously published, was of earlier date), there was a strange, half conscious, glimmering sense of the fate that now impended. The lamentations of his good-natured friends, that, but for his unhappy lust of publishing so fast, "he might have "flourish'd twenty years or more, Though now, alas! poor man, worn out in four," were here noticed in some of his most vigorous verses. He proposes to take their

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advice, but finds the restraint too hard. Prose will run into verse. "If now and then I curse, my curses chime; "Nor can I pray, unless I pray in rhyme." He therefore entreats that they will once more be charitable even to his excesses, and read, "no easy task, but probably the last "that I shall ask," that little poem. He calls it the plain unlaboured Journey of a Day; warns off all who would resort to him for the stronger stimulants; exhorts the Muses, in some of his happiest satire, to divert themselves with contemporary poets in his absence; in that way, bids them their appetite for laughter feed; and closes with the line,

"I on my Journey all alone proceed!"

The poem was not meant to close here; but a Greater Hand interposed. That line of mournful significance is the last that was written by Churchill.

A sudden desire to see Wilkes took him hastily to

Dear Jack,

Boulogne on the 22nd of October 1764.
"adieu! C. C."-was the laconic announcement of his
departure to his brother. At Boulogne, on the 29th of
October, a miliary fever seized him, and baffled the
physicians who were called in. The friends who sur-
rounded his bed gave way to extreme distress it was a
moment when probably even Wilkes felt but Churchill
preserved his composure. He was described, afterwards,
checking their agitated grief, in the lines with which he
had calmly looked forward to this eventful time.

"Let no unworthy sounds of grief be heard,
No wild laments, not one unseemly word;
Let sober triumphs wait upon my bier,

I won't forgive that friend who sheds one tear.
Whether he's ravish'd in life's early morn,
Or, in old age, drops like an ear of corn,
Full ripe he falls, on nature's noblest plan,
Who lives to reason, and who dies a man.”

He sat up in his bed, and dictated a brief, just will. He left his wife an annuity of 607, and an annuity of 50/ to the girl he had seduced. He provided for his two boys. He left mourning rings to Lord and Lady Temple, and to Wilkes, Lloyd, Cotes, Walsh, and the Duke of Grafton; and he desired his "dear friend, John Wilkes, "to collect and publish his works, with the remarks and explanations he has prepared, and any others he thinks proper to make." He then expressed a wish to be removed, that he might die in England; and the imprudent measures of his friends, in compliance with this wish, hastened the crisis. On the 4th of November 1764, at Boulogne, and in the thirty-third year of his age, Charles Churchill breathed his last.

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Warburton said he had perished of a drunken debauch -a statement wholly untrue. Actor Davies said his last expression was "What a fool I have been !”—a statement contradicted by the tenor of his will, and specially denied by Wilkes. Garrick, who was in Paris at the time, wrote to Colman when their common friend had been six days

dead: "Churchill, I hear, is at the point of death at "Boulogne. I am sorry, very sorry for him. Such "talents, with prudence, had commanded the nation. I "have seen some extracts I don't admire." What is not to be admired in a satirist, is generally discovered just before or just after his death; what is admired runs equal danger of unseasonable worship. There was a sale of his books and furniture, at which the most extravagant prices were given for articles of no value. A common steel-pen brought five pounds, and a pair of plated spurs sixteen guineas. The better to supply, too, the demands of public curiosity, vulgar letters were forged in his name; one of which was a few years since reproduced for his in the Colman Correspondence. A death-bed scene by the same busy scribe (in which the dying man was made to rave of his poor bleeding country, and of her true friend Mr. Pitt, and of Scotchmen preying upon her vitals, and of dying the death of the righteous), was also served up to edify the public and satisfy their inquiring interest.

1 Two days after this date he wrote to his brother George, also from Paris, a letter which has not yet been published, and which one must sorrowrowfully confess bears out Foote's favourite jokes about his remarkably strong box, and his very keen regard for its contents. When he wrote to Colman he only knew that Churchill was dangerously ill; of the death he could not have heard till the day before, or the very day on which he wrote this letter, now to be published; yet the reader will perceive that it is certainly not the emotion of grief which he thinks primarily due to the memory of his friend :-"My dear George," he writes, "I have just time to send you "this scrap of a note by my friend "Mr. Burnett, a most sensible man,

"and
great Scotch lawyer. I have
"likewise sent the key of the table
"in the study window, where I
"believe is the key of the iron box.
"I thought it might be necessary to
"send you that, to look for Hubert's

bond, and a note of hand of

"Churchill, who you know is dead. "Mr. Wilkes tells me there is money "enough for all his debts, and money "besides for his wife, Miss Carr "whom he liv'd with, &c. &c. You'll "do with both what is proper, but "put in your claim. Colman will "tell you where the money is.

Churchill, you'll see, paid me 40% "(I think) of the note-which is "either in the iron chest with the "rest, or in the table itself in the "study. Make use of the Florence "wine, or what else belongs to "your ever affectionate brother, D. "Garrick." The subject is again adverted to in another letter to his brother of eight days later date, still from Paris-"I hope," he says, "you have received my key, and "done what is proper with regard to "the two debts of poor Hubert and "Churchill. Upon recollection, I "think, and am almost sure, that "Churchill gave me his bond. I "asked him for nothing-he was in "distress, and I assisted him."