The public
judgment
was only too clear.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v10
Oldfield, with Mr Tong, transferred it to London.
Elsewhere
the Hoxton square a. is stated to have been founded by John Spade-
man, Joshua Oldfield and Lorimer. Spademan was succeeded by
Capel: but the a. became extinct after Oldfield's death in 1729. )
Bridgnorth a. (Started in 1726 by Fleming, with whom it died. Possibly
this was the John Fleming who conducted an a. at Stratford-on-Avon. )
Highgate a. , afterwards removed to Clerkenwell. (Under John Kerr or
Dr Ker, ? presbyterian).
Colyton (co. Devon) a. (Under John Short till 1698; then under Matthew
Towgood, till his removal in 1716. )
Alcester (co. Warwick) a. (Under Joseph Porter: removed to Stratford-
on-Avon under John Alexander, who died 1740 c. )
Manchester a. (Opened in 1698, after Henry Newcome's death, under his
successor, John Chorlton. Dissolved under his successor, James
Coningham. )
Islington a. (Under Ralph Button, at Brentford after 1662: from 1672
at Islington. He died in 1680. Sir Joseph Jekyll was a pupil. )
Coventry a. (Started 1663 by Dr Obadiah Grew and Dr John Bryan.
After Grew's death it was continued by Shewell (d. 1693) and
Joshua Oldfield. In 1699, William Tong took over a few of Oldfield's
pupils; but on his removal to London, 1702, the a. came to an end. )
E. L. X. CH, XVI,
25
## p. 386 (#412) ############################################
386 The Literature of Dissent, 1660—1760
Rathmell (Yorks. ) a. (Under Richard Frankland. Opened at Rathmell,
March 1669-70; removed, 1674, to Natland near Kendal; 1683, to
Calton in Craven; 1684, to Dawsonfield near Crosthwaite in West-
morland; 1685, to Hartleborough in Lancs. ; 1685-6, suspended; 1686-9,
reopened at Attercliffe near Sheffield; 1689, at Rathmell. Frankland
died in 1698, and his a. was then dissolved. Of his papils left at his
death, some went to John Chorlton at Manchester and some to
Timothy Jollie at Attercliffe. )
Attercliffe a. (Under Timothy Jollie, 1691, who rented Attercliffe hall and
called his a. Christ's college; among his many pupils, was Dr Thomas
Secker. J. died in 1714, when he was succeeded by Wadsworth.
The a. died out long before W. 's death in 1744. )
London a. (Under Dr George Benson, about 1750. Arian. )
Sheriff Hales (co. Salop) a. (Under John Woodhouse, 1676; broken up
about 1696. In this a. there were many lay students, among them
Robert Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford, and Henry St John
(afterwards viscount Bolingbroke), Matthew Clarke and Benjamin
Robinson were also pupils. )
Hungerford (co. Berks. ) a. (Under Benjamin Robinson, 1696, having been
open, three years earlier, at Findern in Derbyshire as a grammar
school only. )
Islington a. (Thomas Doolittle: started in 1662 as a boarding-school in
Moorfields, Doolittle being assisted by Thomas Vincent; in 1665 re-
moved to Woodford Bridge, Essex; in 1672 removed to Islington;
closed under the persecution, 1685-8; reopened 1688, but died out
before Doolittle's death in 1707. Edmund Calamy and Thos. Emlyn
were his pupils. )
Oswestry and Shrewsbury a. (Connected principally with the name of
James Owen, 1679 onwards, but actually started by his predecessor,
Francis Tallents. After Owen's death continued by Samuel Benion
and John Reynolds. Under the latter it was dissolved, before 1718. )
Taunton a. (Started by Matthew Warren and others after 1662. After
Warren's death, 1706, it was carried on by joint efforts of Stephen
James (d. 1725), Robert Darch and Henry Grove (d. 1738). After 1738
Thomas Amory became head of the whole a. ; but, under his Arian
tendencies, it collapsed before his removal to London in 1759. )
Gloucester and Tewkesbury a. (Under Samuel Jones, 1712–20. Arch-
bishop Secker, bishop Butler and Samuel Chandler were students here
together. After Jones's death the a. was removed to Carmarthen, and
there remained under Thomas Perrot till 1733. Then it was under
Vavasor Griffiths at Llwynllwyd (co. Brecknock) till 1741; then at
Haverfordwest under Evan Davies; then again at Carmarthen under
Samuel Thomas and Dr J. Jenkins. Under Samuel Thomas the
independents withdrew and formed a new a. at Abergavenny under
David Jardine. )
Stoke Newington or Newington Green a. (Under Charles Morton, 1667–
85. Defoe, Samuel Wesley and Samuel Palmer were students here.
Discouraged by persecution in 1685, Morton went to New England
and became vice-president of Harvard. His a. was continued by
William Wickens and Stephen Lobb, both of whom died in 1699, and
by Thomas Glasscock (d. 1706); but it probably died out not long
after 1696. )
Kendal a. (Under Dr Caleb Rotherham, 1733-52: (possibly as a oon-
tinuation of the extinct Attercliffe a. )
Brynllywarch (Llangynwyd, oo. Glamorgan) a. (Commonly regarded
## p. 387 (#413) ############################################
Appendix
387
as the germ of the Carmarthen Presbyterian college; but this is im-
possible. Started by Samuel Jones 1672. After his death in 1697,
Roger Griffith opened an a. at Abergavenny, which is regarded as a
continuation of Brynllywarch. It lasted only three or four years. At
Brynllywarch, Rees Price continued either Jones's or Griffith's school
but gave up between 1702 and 1704 when the a. was united with a
grammar school at Carmarthen started by William Evans, who died
1718. To this school Dr Williams left an annuity. William Evans
is considered the founder of the Welsh a. system. )
Stourbridge and Bromsgrove (co. Worcester) a. (Under [? Henry] Hick-
man, 1665. He was disabled by age, ? 1670 c. )
Tubney (Berks. ) a. (Under Dr Henry Langley, 1662–72. )
Bridgwater a. (Started by John Moore 1676: became Arian under his
son, who died 1747. )
Sulby (co. Northampton) a. (Under John Shuttlewood, about 1678; died
1689. )
Alkington (Whitchurch, co. Salop) a. (Under John Malden, 1668-80. )
Wickham Brook (co. Suffolk) a. (Under Samuel Cradock, from after
1672 to his removal in 1696. Edmund Calamy was one of his pupils. )
Tiverton a. (Under John Moor, 1688 C. , or possibly after. )
Shaftesbury (and afterward Semly) (co. Wilts. ) a. (Under Matthew Tow-
good, after 1662. He was the grandfather of Micaijah Towgood. )
Besides the above, there are stray references to private schools kept by
John Flavel of Dartmouth, [John, son of] Edward Rayner of Lincoln, John
Whitlock and Edward Reynolds of Nottingham, Ames Short of Lyme Dorset,
Samuel Jones of Llangynwydd, John Ball of Honiton.
Baptist academies
In 1702 the General Baptist association resolved to erect a school of
universal learning in London, with a view to training for the ministry. It is
not known what followed. In 1717 the Particular Baptist fund was started
for the support of ministers and for supplying a succession of them.
Trowbridge a. (Opened by John Davisson, who died in 1721. His
successor was Thomas Lucas, who died in 1740. )
Bristol a. (In its earliest form, founded by several London baptists in
1752 as an education society for assisting students. It was, at first,
under Dr Stennett, Dr Gill, Wallin and Brine. Subsequently it was
under Bernard Foskett and Hugh Evans; it was taken in hand, in
1770, by the Baptist education society, and firmly established by
Dr Caleb Evans. This a. became, subsequently, the Baptist Rawdon
college. )
25-2
## p. 388 (#414) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
POLITICAL LITERATURE
(1755—75)
9
The death of Henry Pelham in 1754 destroyed the equilibrium
of English politics. “Now,' said king George II, regretting, possibly,
the minister more than the man, ‘Now, I shall have no peace. '
And he was right, for the leading whigs entered on an angry
struggle for supreme power which only ended when, in 1757, the
domination of the elder Pitt was, virtually, established. Round
the duke of Newcastle, formidable by his phalanx of obedient
votes, Pitt, the man of genius and of the public confidence, and
the shrewd, but far from high-minded, Henry Fox arose a dense
dust of controversy.
It was not merely the conflict of personal ambitions that was
in question. Great public issues were rapidly raised and discussed,
if, as rapidly, let fall again. The sober middle class were weary
of the prevailing corruption which handed over the country's
government to glaring incompetence. Tories, abandoning their
vain hopes of a revolution, were eager to loose England from
the Hanoverian tether which involved her in the intricacies of
German politics, and to have done with the long feud with
France. And both parties were anxious to see power held by
men more representative than were the members of the existing
narrow whig oligarchy, who, on their side, still believed in their
hereditary mission to rule. Material for honest discussion there
was in plenty.
At first, it seemed as if this kind of discussion would hold the
field. In August 1755, The Monitor was founded by a London
merchant, Richard Beckford, and was edited, and part written,
by John Entick, of dictionary fame? Like its predecessors in
political journalism, it consisted of a weekly essay on current
events and topics: it was all leading article. The maintenance of
1 His extremely popular Spelling Dictionary (1764) was followed by his Latin and
English Dictionary (1771) and by other useful works.
## p. 389 (#415) ############################################
Shebbeare and Murphy. Pamphleteers 389
whig principles and the uprooting of corruption formed its policy:
good information, good sense and a kind of heavy violence of
style were its characteristics. Soon, it was supplemented by a
series of tory pamphlets, under the title The Letters to the People
of England, written by John Shebbeare, a physician of some
literary celebrity. They were not his first production ; he had
for some time been eminent in ‘misanthropy and literature’; but
they were distinguished beyond his other efforts by bringing him to
the pillory. His politics, not the scurrility that tinged them, were
in fault. He was a virulent tory, and in his Sixth Letter held up
the reigning dynasty to public scorn. His highest praise is that
he still remains readable. Logical, rhetorical, laboriously plain
and, occasionally, cogent, his short paragraphs pretty generally hit
the nail-often, no doubt, a visionary nail—on the head. Later,
he was to enjoy court favour and be a capable pamphleteer on
the side of George III; but his time of notoriety was gone.
Soon, however, the personal conflict asserted itself. In November
1756, Arthur Murphy, the dramatist, started The Test, with a
view to capturing public favour for Henry Fox. But his amiable
prosing and feeble giggle were soon over-crowed by the Pittite
Con-Test, a far more able, and, also, more scurrilous, print, in
some of the better essays of which we detect the pith and
point of Shebbeare.
Save the honest Monitor, these Grub-street railers vanished
with the whig feud which called forth their exertions, and the
splendid success of the great commoner's ministry almost suc-
ceeded in silencing criticism. It required a new ferment of public
opinion, a new conflict of principles and a renewed struggle for
the possession of power to reawaken the fires of controversy, wbich,
this time, were not to be quenched. George III's accession and
his personal policy gave the signal. The new king was determined
to choose his own ministers and break up the band of ruling whigs.
The now loyal tories were to share in the government, and the
system of king William's time was to be revived. The first literary
sign of the change was a rally of pamphleteers for the defence and
propagation of the royal views. In 1761, Lord Bath-the William
Pulteney who, in the last reign, had led the opposition to Walpole
and helped to set on foot The Craftsman-published his Seasonable
Hints from an Honest Man, which contained an able exposition
of the whig system and its vices, and outlined the new programme.
Others followed, professional writers for the most part, such as
the veteran Shebbeare and the elder Philip Francis—in his
## p. 390 (#416) ############################################
390
Political Literature (1755—75)
Letter from the Cocoa-Tree' to the Country Gentlemen, which
was not devoid of skill—and Owen Ruffhead, formerly editor of
The Con-Test. But, in spite of the real ability displayed by these
writers, their frequent ignorance of the true course of events and
the lack of good faith habitual to them prevented them from
attaining to any real excellence.
Meanwhile, events were moving rapidly. George III had been
able to oust Pitt and Newcastle from power and to promote his
Scottish favourite, Lord Bute, to the office of prime minister.
Bute had seen, from the first, that something beyond sporadic
pamphlets was needed for converting public opinion to the new
régime, discredited as it was by the dismissal of Pitt. For this, an
imitation of The Monitor was the only means, a steady drumming
of the same views and sentiments into the popular ear. It was all
the more necessary, at the moment of Bute's accession to power,
to set up a rival weekly journal, since The Monitor (in this repre-
senting the public) was a bitter opponent of the Scottish minister.
Bute, however, cannot be called happy in his choice of means,
Eminent literary talent was required, but not any sort of literary
talent, and Tobias Smollett, famous as a novelist, was only to
earn humiliation as a political controversialist. In vain his sheet,
The Briton, discharged a weekly broadside of ferocious epithets
on the opposition and its journalistic defenders. His persuasive
powers were small, and he was fairly distanced in argumentative
skill, raillery and vituperation. Arthur Murphy, writer of the dead
Test, was soon summoned to Smollett's aid with a new paper, The
Auditor ; but, although more bitter than of old, he was not less
feeble.
The public judgment was only too clear. Neither of the
ministerial papers would sell. Of course, Bute's unpopularity was
partly at fault; but the scanty merit of the two champions was
unable to surmount the weakness of their case.
The publication of The Briton provoked the appearance of the
only one of these fugitive periodicals which has any reputation,
The North Briton, edited by John Wilkes. That demagogue, on
whom the mob-ruling mantle of Sacheverell descended, was
sprung from a middle class family, typical of a respectability
alien to the manners of its celebrated scion. He was born in
1727, and was the son of a maltster of Clerkenwell. He received
a good education from a presbyterian minister and at the
university of Leyden ; and, before he was twenty-one, married,
1
i The celebrated tory club described by Gibbon in his letters.
## p. 391 (#417) ############################################
Wilkes and The North Briton
391
by his father's desire, an heiress much his senior in years. His
wife and her mother were dissenters, and he was gallant and
gay. Wilkes grew steadily estranged from his home and soon
exceedingly dissipated. A separation from his wife was arranged,
and he plunged into a course of profligate living in town. He
became a member of the Hellfire club, which met at Medmenham
abbey and included the most noted rakes of the day. It was in
the midst of these wild orgies that he took up politics. In 1755, he
obtained a seat in the commons as a member for Aylesbury, where
his wife's estate lay. He was a follower of Pitt and hoped for some
promotion—the embassy in Constantinople would have been most
congenial to him—from his patron. But George III was king, and
Bute intervened. His hopes of repairing his shattered fortunes
having thus vanished, Wilkes turned to journalism for his revenge
upon the favourite, whose incompetence filled him with indigna-
tion. After producing a successful pamphlet concerning the
breach with Spain, he proceeded to send contributions to The
Monitor, in which he developed with much ingenuity the history
of contemporary foreign favourites, and left his readers to point
the obvious moral. Then, on the appearance of The Briton, he, in
June 1762, started his rival print, The North Briton. Week by
week, the new periodical continued its attacks on the government.
It showed itself bold, to start with, in printing the ministers' names
in full, without the usual subterfuges of dashes and stars; and
it grew bolder as it went on, and as the odium into which Bute
had fallen became more obvious. Nothing, however, gave a handle
to the authorities by which, even under the existing law of libel,
the writers could be brought to book, although The Monitor was
subjected to lengthy legal proceedings. At last, Wilkes overstepped
the line in No. 45, which bitterly impugned the truthfulness of the
speech from the throne regarding the peace of Paris. The long
government persecution of the libeller, which followed the publica-
tion of No. 45, and which finally resulted in the abolition of the
tyrannic system of general warrants, also snuffed out The North
Briton. The paper was subsequently revived; but it proved only
the ghost of its former self. Wilkes, on the other hand, had yet
to play the part of a full-fledged demagogue in his contest with
king and parliament concerning the Middlesex election of 1768.
Triumphant at last, he ended his life in 1797 as chamberlain of
London and a persona grata with George III. In all his vicissi-
tudes, he had kept in touch with public opinion.
It is not easy to describe the blackguard charm of Wilkes,
## p. 392 (#418) ############################################
392
Political Literature (1755—75)
Notoriously self-interested and dissolute, ugly and squinting, he
enjoyed a popularity by no means confined to the mob. Much
may be ascribed to the singular grace of his manners. Even
Johnson fell a victim to these. But he, also, possessed some very
obvious virtues. He was brave, good-humoured and adroit. He had
a sort of selfish kindliness. He was, moreover, manifestly on the
right side: few people had any love for general warrants or for
the infringement of the liberty of election. And he turned all
these advantages to account.
His paper, The North Briton, may be regarded as the best
example of its kind, the brief periodical pamphlet. It represents
the type at which The Briton and the rest aimed, but which they
could not reach. Like its congeners, it consisted of a weekly
political essay. It was directed entirely to the object of over-
throwing Bute and of reinstating the old group of whig families
in alliance with Pitt. We notice at once in its polemic the scanti-
ness of serious argument. Satire, raillery, scandal and depreciation
in every form are there; but a real tangible indictment does not
readily emerge from its effusions. In part, this peculiarity was
due to the difficulty under which an opposition writer then lay in
securing information and in publishing what information he pos-
sessed. When the preliminaries of peace or the jobbery of Bute's
loan issues gave Wilkes his opportunity, he could be cogent enough.
But a more powerful reason lay in the main object of the paper.
Bute was safe so long as he was not too unpopular: he had the
king's favour and a purchased majority in parliament. Therefore,
he had to be rendered of no value to king and parliament. He was
to be written down and to become the bugbear of the ordinary
voter, while his supporters in the press were to be exposed to
derision and thus deprived of influence. Wilkes and his allies in
The North Briton were well equipped for this task. They were
interesting and vivacious from the first, making the most of the
suspicions excited by Bute. As the heat of battle grew and their
case became stronger, the violence and abusiveness of their expres-
sions increased till it reached the scale of their rivals. Still, even
so, they continued to display an apt brutality wanting in the latter.
In the earlier numbers, too, The Briton and The Auditor fell easy
victims to the malicious wit of Wilkes. Perhaps the best instance
of his fun is the letter which he wrote under a pseudonym to the
unsuspecting Auditor, descanting on the value of Floridan peat,
a mythical product, for mitigating the severity of the climate in
the West Indies. An exposure followed in The North Briton;
## p. 393 (#419) ############################################
Antipathy to the Scots. Churchill
393
and poor Murphy could only refer to his tormentor afterwards
as 'Colonel Cataline. '
But the scheme of The North Briton gave an easy opportunity
for ironic satire. The editor was supposed to be a Scot exulting
over the fortune of his countryman, and very ingenuous in repeating
the complaints of the ousted English. There was nothing exquisite
in this horseplay; but it was not badly done, and it had the advantage
of appealing to strong national prejudice. The antipathy to the
Scots, which was to disappear with startling suddenness during the
American war of independence, had not yet undergone any sensible
diminution. At root, perhaps, it was the dislike of an old-established
firm for able interlopers. Scots were beginning to take a leading
share in the common government, and their nationality was always
unmistakable. Accordingly, old legends of their national character
and a purseproud contempt for their national poverty lived
obstinately on; and The North Briton worked the vein ex-
haustively.
In the composition of his journal and in his whole campaign
against the minister, Wilkes had for his coadjutor a more eminent
man, who, unlike himself, is to be conceived of, not as a pleasant
adventurer, but as a principal literary figure of the time, the poet
and satirist Charles Churchill. The two men were fast friends,
although their lives had flowed in very different streams until they
became acquainted in 1761. Churchill was the son of a clergyman,
who was curate and lecturer of St John's, Westminster, and vicar
of Rainham in Essex. The younger Charles was born in 1731 and
early distinguished himself by his ability at Westminster school.
Thence, he proceeded, in 1748, to St John's college, Cambridgel;
but his residence there was not for long. With characteristic
impulsiveness, when only 18 years of age, he contracted a marriage
in the Fleet with a girl named Martha Scott, and bis university
education had to be discontinued. His kindly father took the
young couple into his house and had his son trained, as best he
might, for holy orders. In 1754, Churchill was ordained deacon
and licensed curate of South Cadbury in Somerset, whence, as
priest, he removed, in 1756, to act as his father's curate at Rainham.
Two years later, the father died, and the son was elected to succeed
him as incumbent of St John's in Westminster, where he increased
his income by teaching in a girls' school.
1 See Admissions to the College of St John the Evangelist, pt. n, ed. Scott, R. F. ,
p. 580.
## p. 394 (#420) ############################################
394
Political Literature (1755—75)
Such is the outline of Churchill's earlier life—bald enough,
if stripped of the malicious inventions which gathered round it.
His later career is full of evidence both of his good and of his bad
qualities. Burdened with two children and an extravagant wife, him-
self completely unsuited for his clerical profession and inclined to the
pleasures of the town, in two years he became bankrupt, and owed
the acceptance by his creditors of a composition to the generosity
of his old schoolmaster, Pierson Lloyd. Afterwards, Churchill was to
show his natural honesty and good feeling, not only by a constant
friendship to his benefactor's son, Robert Lloyd, a poet of secondary
rank, but, also, by paying his own debts in full, in disregard of his
bankruptcy. That he was able to do this was due to his own new
profession of poetry. He began, unluckily, with a Hudibrastic poem,
The Bard, in 1760, which could not find a publisher. His second
effort, The Conclave, contained matter against the dean and chapter
of Westminster so libellous that the intending publisher dared not
bring it out. A more interesting subject of satire presented itself
in the contemporary stage, and, in March 1761, there appeared, at
the author's own risk, The Rosciad. Its success was immediate
and extraordinary; Churchill was enabled to pay his debts, to make
an allowance to his wife, from whom he had now been for some
time estranged, and to set up in glaringly unclerical attire as a
man about town. But the penalty, too, for indulging in bitter
criticism-a penalty, perhaps, welcome to the combative poet-
was not long in coming; and, for the rest of his life, he was
involved in an acrid literary warfare. Yet, in these tedious
campaigns he was a constant victor. Few escaped unbruised from
the cudgel of his verse, and, vulnerable though his private life made
him to attack, the toughness of his fibre enabled him to endure.
In consequence of this literary celebrity, Churchill made the
acquaintance of Wilkes, whose friendship was responsible for the
turn his life took in his few remaining years. The last shred of
the poet's respectability was soon lost in the Medmenham orgies;
yet, his political satires, which, unlike those of his friend Wilkes,
do not admit doubt of their sincerity, gave him a permanent place
in English literature. Quite half of The North Briton was written
by him; his keenest satiric poem was The Prophecy of Famine,
which, in January 1763, raised the ridicule of Bute and his country-
men to its greatest height. Thanks to Wilkes's adroitness, Churchill
escaped the meshes of the general warrant, and was afterwards let
alone by government: he had not written No. 45. But he ceased
to reside permanently in London. We hear of him in Wales in
## p. 395 (#421) ############################################
The Rosciad. Night
395
1763, and, later, he lived at Richmond and on Acton common.
The stream of his satires, political and social, continued unabated
throughout. His days, however, were numbered. He died at
Boulogne, on 4 November 1764, while on his way to visit Wilkes
at Paris, and was buried at Dover.
‘Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies. ' This line of his
own was placed on his gravestone, and not inaccurately sums up
the man. The burly poet's faults are too manifest to need insisting
upon. It is pleasanter to remember that, as already stated, he
supported his brother rake, Robert Lloyd, when the unlucky man
was dying beggared in the Fleet. His devotion to Wilkes, like
the rest of him, was unbounded and whole-hearted. Nor is any
mean action recorded of him.
There is no denying that his verse is truculent and loud. What
most distinguishes it from contemporary couplets is its spirit and
strength. He may ramble, he may prose; but he never exhibits
the neat, solemn tripping which tires us in his contemporaries.
The Rosciad, with which he first won reputation, consists chiefly
of a series of severe sketches of the leading actors in 1761. Few,
save Garrick, escape unblamed; but the poet, although censorious,
can hardly be called unfair. His verse maintains a steady level of
force and skill, just within the bounds of poetry, lighted up, now
and then, by such shrewd couplets as: ;
Appearances to save his only care;
So things seem right, no matter what they are;
and, occasionally, phrases of stinging wit intensify the ridicule.
The Rosciad called forth many enemies, and, in reply to an
attack in The Critical Review, Churchill published The Apology,
under the impression that the critique was Smollett's. It cannot
be called an advance on its forerunner, although sufficiently tart
to make Garrick, who was victimised in it, almost supplicate his
critic's friendship. As a poem, it is much surpassed by Churchill's
next composition, Night, which appeared in October 1761. The
versification has become easier, the lines more pliant, without
losing vigour. There is a suggestion of a poetical atmosphere
not to be found in the hard, dry outlines of his earlier work. The
substance is slight; it is merely a defence of late hours and genial
converse over 'the grateful cup. ' Churchill was, in this instance
at all events, too wise to defend excess.
A year's rest given to the prose of The North Briton
seems to have invigorated Churchill for the production of his
6
## p. 396 (#422) ############################################
396
Political Literature (1755—75)
best satire, The Prophecy of Famine. Its main object was to
decry and ridicule Bute and the Scots, although there is an
undercurrent of deserved mockery at the reigning fashion of
pastoral. Churchill, as he owns, was himself half a Scot? ; but the
circumstance did not mitigate his national and perfectly sincere
prejudice against his northern kinsfolk. The probable reason was
that Bute was Wilkes's enemy, and the warm-hearted poet was
wroth, too, in a fascinated sympathy with his friend. The wit and
humour of the piece are in Churchill's most forcible and amusing
vein. His hand is heavy, it is true; more dreary irony was never
written; and he belabours his theme like a peasant wielding a
flail; but the eighteenth century must have found him all the
more refreshing. Compare him with the prose polemics of his
day, and he is not specially venomous. He only repeats in sinewy
verse the current topics of reproach against the Scots.
The painter Hogarth now crossed Churchill's path. A satiric
print of Wilkes by Hogarth roused the poet's vicarious revenge.
The savage piece of invective, The Epistle to William Hogarth,
was the result, which, if it has not worn so well as Hogarth's
pictures, yet, here and there, strikes a deeper note than is usual
with its author. Take, for instance, the couplet:
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought;
although his own fertility shows no sign of exhausting the soil.
He was beginning, however, in his own metaphor, to vary the crop.
The Duellist, published in January 1764, was written, not in the
stock heroic couplet, but in octosyllabics suggestive of Hudibras.
This was an attack on Samuel Martin, one of Wilkes's ministerial
enemies, with a few satirical excursions like that on Warburton. The
adoption of a new metre was not a success; its straggling move-
ment doubled the risk which Churchill always ran of being tedious,
and the extravagance of his vituperation is no antidote. In com-
pensation, the poem contains some of his finest lines. The curse on
Martin reveals an old and clearsighted pupil in the school of life:
Grant him what here he most requires,
And damn him with his own desires!
while the malicious criticism of Warburton's defence of Scripture
suggests a literary experience which approves itself to the instincts
of human nature:
So long he wrote, and long about it,
That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it.
| The Prophecy of Famine, ll. 221–2.
## p. 397 (#423) ############################################
Gotham.
The Conference. Later Poems 397
Contemporaneously with The Duellist, Churchill was writing,
in the heroic couplet, Gotham, a curious farrago, in the three
books of which a Utopian realm ruled by himself, a long de-
nunciation of the Stewart dynasty and a description of an ideal
king jostle one another. He does not appear at his best in this
attempt at non-satiric poetry. The usual mannerisms of eighteenth-
century poetry, the personifications, the platitudinous moralising,
the hackneyed, meaningless descriptions are all to be found here.
That entire absence of any taste for nature outside Fleet street
which was characteristic of Churchill as fully as it was of Johnson
places him at peculiar disadvantage when he imitates Spenser in
a hasty catalogue of flowers, trees, months and other poetic
properties. Not less did the straightforward vigour of his usual
metre and style disqualify him for the prophet of the ideal. In
short, in spite of Cowper's praise, he was off his track.
Only a few months before Gotham was printed, Churchill had
published a very different poem, The Conference. He was accused
of merely making his profit out of political satire, and he here,
in words of obvious sincerity, repudiates the charge that he was
looking for office or pension. At the same time, he refers to a
better-grounded cause of censure—his seduction of a girl, whose
father is said to have been a stone-cutter of Westminster. Instead
of pleading extenuating circumstances, such as, in this case,
certainly existed, he only confesses his fault and avows his re-
morse. On the other hand, his personal conduct throughout this
miserable affair must be described as callous.
The rest of Churchill's poems are of less interest. The Author
is a slashing attack on Smollett and other ministerial publicists
and agents. The Ghost, in octosyllabics, derives its only interest
from being, in part, his earliest work; it is tedious and rambling
to a degree. We may allow The Candidate, directed against
Lord Sandwich, to have deserved its share of praise for the defeat
of ‘Jemmy Twitcherl' as he was nicknamed, in the election for the
high stewardship of Cambridge university; but its appeal was
merely temporary. There is little to remark on any of the other
poems—The Farewell, Independence and The Journey-produced
by the prolific poet in 1764. They showed an increasing metrical
skill, and maintained his reputation, but they did not add to it.
The Times, which, from its greater fire, might have taken high
1. That Jemmy Twitcher should peach, I own surprises me. ' Sandwich, the com.
pletest rake of the day, had brought Wilkes's obscene Essay on Woman before the House
of Lords in a speech of extraordinary hypocrisy.
## p. 398 (#424) ############################################
398 Political Literature (1755—75)
place among his works, was, unfortunately, both hideous in subject
and extravagantly exaggerated in execution.
We find, in fact, that Churchill's talent remained almost
stationary during the four years of his poetic industry. Crab-
apples, according to Johnson, he produced from the first; and such
his fruits remained to the end. He never shows the greater quali-
ties of either of his two chief English predecessors in satire-either
those of Pope whom he underrated, or those of Dryden whom he
admired. His wit, though strong, is never exquisite. His characters
are vividly and trenchantly described; but they do not live to our
imagination. His good sense cannot be said to rise to wisdom;
and he is deficient in constructive skill. The Prophecy of Famine
is, after all, an ill-proportioned mixture of satiric epistle and
satiric eclogue; while his other satires have little unity except
what is provided by the main object of their attack. Although
he justly ridicules some of the current phrases of contemporary
lesser poetry, he cannot be said himself to rise superior to
eighteenth-century conventions. His incessant personifications,
'Gay Description,' 'Dull Propriety,' are, in the end, wearisome;
and many of his humorous couplets, constructed after the fashion
of the time, rather seem like epigrams than are such. His real
forte consisted in a steady pommelling of his adversary; with all
his fierceness and prejudice, acidity and spite were foreign to his
nature.
As a metrist, Churchill can claim some originality. He
uses the heroic couplet of the day with fresh freedom and
effectivity. At first, in The Rosciad, he can hardly be said to
form his paired lines into periods. Then, in The Epistle to
William Hogarth, the last line of his paragraph has a closing
sound and really ends a period. Perhaps, it was his long involved
sentences, compiled of many clauses, which led him, in later pieces,
to a further change. From time to time, he uses enjambement,
and even, by means of it, breaks up his couplets ? .
Churchill so overtops his rivals in political verse that they
scarcely seem worth mentioning. Mason, his frequent butt as
a writer of pastorals—'Let them with Mason bleat and bray
and coo'-shrouded himself in political satire under the name
Malcolm Macgregor? Falconer, a naval officer, attacked Pitt
.
a
from the court point of view. But both of these, and even
1 Cf. , for the effect gained by this occasional variation, Independence, ll. 199–206.
?
the Hoxton square a. is stated to have been founded by John Spade-
man, Joshua Oldfield and Lorimer. Spademan was succeeded by
Capel: but the a. became extinct after Oldfield's death in 1729. )
Bridgnorth a. (Started in 1726 by Fleming, with whom it died. Possibly
this was the John Fleming who conducted an a. at Stratford-on-Avon. )
Highgate a. , afterwards removed to Clerkenwell. (Under John Kerr or
Dr Ker, ? presbyterian).
Colyton (co. Devon) a. (Under John Short till 1698; then under Matthew
Towgood, till his removal in 1716. )
Alcester (co. Warwick) a. (Under Joseph Porter: removed to Stratford-
on-Avon under John Alexander, who died 1740 c. )
Manchester a. (Opened in 1698, after Henry Newcome's death, under his
successor, John Chorlton. Dissolved under his successor, James
Coningham. )
Islington a. (Under Ralph Button, at Brentford after 1662: from 1672
at Islington. He died in 1680. Sir Joseph Jekyll was a pupil. )
Coventry a. (Started 1663 by Dr Obadiah Grew and Dr John Bryan.
After Grew's death it was continued by Shewell (d. 1693) and
Joshua Oldfield. In 1699, William Tong took over a few of Oldfield's
pupils; but on his removal to London, 1702, the a. came to an end. )
E. L. X. CH, XVI,
25
## p. 386 (#412) ############################################
386 The Literature of Dissent, 1660—1760
Rathmell (Yorks. ) a. (Under Richard Frankland. Opened at Rathmell,
March 1669-70; removed, 1674, to Natland near Kendal; 1683, to
Calton in Craven; 1684, to Dawsonfield near Crosthwaite in West-
morland; 1685, to Hartleborough in Lancs. ; 1685-6, suspended; 1686-9,
reopened at Attercliffe near Sheffield; 1689, at Rathmell. Frankland
died in 1698, and his a. was then dissolved. Of his papils left at his
death, some went to John Chorlton at Manchester and some to
Timothy Jollie at Attercliffe. )
Attercliffe a. (Under Timothy Jollie, 1691, who rented Attercliffe hall and
called his a. Christ's college; among his many pupils, was Dr Thomas
Secker. J. died in 1714, when he was succeeded by Wadsworth.
The a. died out long before W. 's death in 1744. )
London a. (Under Dr George Benson, about 1750. Arian. )
Sheriff Hales (co. Salop) a. (Under John Woodhouse, 1676; broken up
about 1696. In this a. there were many lay students, among them
Robert Harley, afterwards earl of Oxford, and Henry St John
(afterwards viscount Bolingbroke), Matthew Clarke and Benjamin
Robinson were also pupils. )
Hungerford (co. Berks. ) a. (Under Benjamin Robinson, 1696, having been
open, three years earlier, at Findern in Derbyshire as a grammar
school only. )
Islington a. (Thomas Doolittle: started in 1662 as a boarding-school in
Moorfields, Doolittle being assisted by Thomas Vincent; in 1665 re-
moved to Woodford Bridge, Essex; in 1672 removed to Islington;
closed under the persecution, 1685-8; reopened 1688, but died out
before Doolittle's death in 1707. Edmund Calamy and Thos. Emlyn
were his pupils. )
Oswestry and Shrewsbury a. (Connected principally with the name of
James Owen, 1679 onwards, but actually started by his predecessor,
Francis Tallents. After Owen's death continued by Samuel Benion
and John Reynolds. Under the latter it was dissolved, before 1718. )
Taunton a. (Started by Matthew Warren and others after 1662. After
Warren's death, 1706, it was carried on by joint efforts of Stephen
James (d. 1725), Robert Darch and Henry Grove (d. 1738). After 1738
Thomas Amory became head of the whole a. ; but, under his Arian
tendencies, it collapsed before his removal to London in 1759. )
Gloucester and Tewkesbury a. (Under Samuel Jones, 1712–20. Arch-
bishop Secker, bishop Butler and Samuel Chandler were students here
together. After Jones's death the a. was removed to Carmarthen, and
there remained under Thomas Perrot till 1733. Then it was under
Vavasor Griffiths at Llwynllwyd (co. Brecknock) till 1741; then at
Haverfordwest under Evan Davies; then again at Carmarthen under
Samuel Thomas and Dr J. Jenkins. Under Samuel Thomas the
independents withdrew and formed a new a. at Abergavenny under
David Jardine. )
Stoke Newington or Newington Green a. (Under Charles Morton, 1667–
85. Defoe, Samuel Wesley and Samuel Palmer were students here.
Discouraged by persecution in 1685, Morton went to New England
and became vice-president of Harvard. His a. was continued by
William Wickens and Stephen Lobb, both of whom died in 1699, and
by Thomas Glasscock (d. 1706); but it probably died out not long
after 1696. )
Kendal a. (Under Dr Caleb Rotherham, 1733-52: (possibly as a oon-
tinuation of the extinct Attercliffe a. )
Brynllywarch (Llangynwyd, oo. Glamorgan) a. (Commonly regarded
## p. 387 (#413) ############################################
Appendix
387
as the germ of the Carmarthen Presbyterian college; but this is im-
possible. Started by Samuel Jones 1672. After his death in 1697,
Roger Griffith opened an a. at Abergavenny, which is regarded as a
continuation of Brynllywarch. It lasted only three or four years. At
Brynllywarch, Rees Price continued either Jones's or Griffith's school
but gave up between 1702 and 1704 when the a. was united with a
grammar school at Carmarthen started by William Evans, who died
1718. To this school Dr Williams left an annuity. William Evans
is considered the founder of the Welsh a. system. )
Stourbridge and Bromsgrove (co. Worcester) a. (Under [? Henry] Hick-
man, 1665. He was disabled by age, ? 1670 c. )
Tubney (Berks. ) a. (Under Dr Henry Langley, 1662–72. )
Bridgwater a. (Started by John Moore 1676: became Arian under his
son, who died 1747. )
Sulby (co. Northampton) a. (Under John Shuttlewood, about 1678; died
1689. )
Alkington (Whitchurch, co. Salop) a. (Under John Malden, 1668-80. )
Wickham Brook (co. Suffolk) a. (Under Samuel Cradock, from after
1672 to his removal in 1696. Edmund Calamy was one of his pupils. )
Tiverton a. (Under John Moor, 1688 C. , or possibly after. )
Shaftesbury (and afterward Semly) (co. Wilts. ) a. (Under Matthew Tow-
good, after 1662. He was the grandfather of Micaijah Towgood. )
Besides the above, there are stray references to private schools kept by
John Flavel of Dartmouth, [John, son of] Edward Rayner of Lincoln, John
Whitlock and Edward Reynolds of Nottingham, Ames Short of Lyme Dorset,
Samuel Jones of Llangynwydd, John Ball of Honiton.
Baptist academies
In 1702 the General Baptist association resolved to erect a school of
universal learning in London, with a view to training for the ministry. It is
not known what followed. In 1717 the Particular Baptist fund was started
for the support of ministers and for supplying a succession of them.
Trowbridge a. (Opened by John Davisson, who died in 1721. His
successor was Thomas Lucas, who died in 1740. )
Bristol a. (In its earliest form, founded by several London baptists in
1752 as an education society for assisting students. It was, at first,
under Dr Stennett, Dr Gill, Wallin and Brine. Subsequently it was
under Bernard Foskett and Hugh Evans; it was taken in hand, in
1770, by the Baptist education society, and firmly established by
Dr Caleb Evans. This a. became, subsequently, the Baptist Rawdon
college. )
25-2
## p. 388 (#414) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
POLITICAL LITERATURE
(1755—75)
9
The death of Henry Pelham in 1754 destroyed the equilibrium
of English politics. “Now,' said king George II, regretting, possibly,
the minister more than the man, ‘Now, I shall have no peace. '
And he was right, for the leading whigs entered on an angry
struggle for supreme power which only ended when, in 1757, the
domination of the elder Pitt was, virtually, established. Round
the duke of Newcastle, formidable by his phalanx of obedient
votes, Pitt, the man of genius and of the public confidence, and
the shrewd, but far from high-minded, Henry Fox arose a dense
dust of controversy.
It was not merely the conflict of personal ambitions that was
in question. Great public issues were rapidly raised and discussed,
if, as rapidly, let fall again. The sober middle class were weary
of the prevailing corruption which handed over the country's
government to glaring incompetence. Tories, abandoning their
vain hopes of a revolution, were eager to loose England from
the Hanoverian tether which involved her in the intricacies of
German politics, and to have done with the long feud with
France. And both parties were anxious to see power held by
men more representative than were the members of the existing
narrow whig oligarchy, who, on their side, still believed in their
hereditary mission to rule. Material for honest discussion there
was in plenty.
At first, it seemed as if this kind of discussion would hold the
field. In August 1755, The Monitor was founded by a London
merchant, Richard Beckford, and was edited, and part written,
by John Entick, of dictionary fame? Like its predecessors in
political journalism, it consisted of a weekly essay on current
events and topics: it was all leading article. The maintenance of
1 His extremely popular Spelling Dictionary (1764) was followed by his Latin and
English Dictionary (1771) and by other useful works.
## p. 389 (#415) ############################################
Shebbeare and Murphy. Pamphleteers 389
whig principles and the uprooting of corruption formed its policy:
good information, good sense and a kind of heavy violence of
style were its characteristics. Soon, it was supplemented by a
series of tory pamphlets, under the title The Letters to the People
of England, written by John Shebbeare, a physician of some
literary celebrity. They were not his first production ; he had
for some time been eminent in ‘misanthropy and literature’; but
they were distinguished beyond his other efforts by bringing him to
the pillory. His politics, not the scurrility that tinged them, were
in fault. He was a virulent tory, and in his Sixth Letter held up
the reigning dynasty to public scorn. His highest praise is that
he still remains readable. Logical, rhetorical, laboriously plain
and, occasionally, cogent, his short paragraphs pretty generally hit
the nail-often, no doubt, a visionary nail—on the head. Later,
he was to enjoy court favour and be a capable pamphleteer on
the side of George III; but his time of notoriety was gone.
Soon, however, the personal conflict asserted itself. In November
1756, Arthur Murphy, the dramatist, started The Test, with a
view to capturing public favour for Henry Fox. But his amiable
prosing and feeble giggle were soon over-crowed by the Pittite
Con-Test, a far more able, and, also, more scurrilous, print, in
some of the better essays of which we detect the pith and
point of Shebbeare.
Save the honest Monitor, these Grub-street railers vanished
with the whig feud which called forth their exertions, and the
splendid success of the great commoner's ministry almost suc-
ceeded in silencing criticism. It required a new ferment of public
opinion, a new conflict of principles and a renewed struggle for
the possession of power to reawaken the fires of controversy, wbich,
this time, were not to be quenched. George III's accession and
his personal policy gave the signal. The new king was determined
to choose his own ministers and break up the band of ruling whigs.
The now loyal tories were to share in the government, and the
system of king William's time was to be revived. The first literary
sign of the change was a rally of pamphleteers for the defence and
propagation of the royal views. In 1761, Lord Bath-the William
Pulteney who, in the last reign, had led the opposition to Walpole
and helped to set on foot The Craftsman-published his Seasonable
Hints from an Honest Man, which contained an able exposition
of the whig system and its vices, and outlined the new programme.
Others followed, professional writers for the most part, such as
the veteran Shebbeare and the elder Philip Francis—in his
## p. 390 (#416) ############################################
390
Political Literature (1755—75)
Letter from the Cocoa-Tree' to the Country Gentlemen, which
was not devoid of skill—and Owen Ruffhead, formerly editor of
The Con-Test. But, in spite of the real ability displayed by these
writers, their frequent ignorance of the true course of events and
the lack of good faith habitual to them prevented them from
attaining to any real excellence.
Meanwhile, events were moving rapidly. George III had been
able to oust Pitt and Newcastle from power and to promote his
Scottish favourite, Lord Bute, to the office of prime minister.
Bute had seen, from the first, that something beyond sporadic
pamphlets was needed for converting public opinion to the new
régime, discredited as it was by the dismissal of Pitt. For this, an
imitation of The Monitor was the only means, a steady drumming
of the same views and sentiments into the popular ear. It was all
the more necessary, at the moment of Bute's accession to power,
to set up a rival weekly journal, since The Monitor (in this repre-
senting the public) was a bitter opponent of the Scottish minister.
Bute, however, cannot be called happy in his choice of means,
Eminent literary talent was required, but not any sort of literary
talent, and Tobias Smollett, famous as a novelist, was only to
earn humiliation as a political controversialist. In vain his sheet,
The Briton, discharged a weekly broadside of ferocious epithets
on the opposition and its journalistic defenders. His persuasive
powers were small, and he was fairly distanced in argumentative
skill, raillery and vituperation. Arthur Murphy, writer of the dead
Test, was soon summoned to Smollett's aid with a new paper, The
Auditor ; but, although more bitter than of old, he was not less
feeble.
The public judgment was only too clear. Neither of the
ministerial papers would sell. Of course, Bute's unpopularity was
partly at fault; but the scanty merit of the two champions was
unable to surmount the weakness of their case.
The publication of The Briton provoked the appearance of the
only one of these fugitive periodicals which has any reputation,
The North Briton, edited by John Wilkes. That demagogue, on
whom the mob-ruling mantle of Sacheverell descended, was
sprung from a middle class family, typical of a respectability
alien to the manners of its celebrated scion. He was born in
1727, and was the son of a maltster of Clerkenwell. He received
a good education from a presbyterian minister and at the
university of Leyden ; and, before he was twenty-one, married,
1
i The celebrated tory club described by Gibbon in his letters.
## p. 391 (#417) ############################################
Wilkes and The North Briton
391
by his father's desire, an heiress much his senior in years. His
wife and her mother were dissenters, and he was gallant and
gay. Wilkes grew steadily estranged from his home and soon
exceedingly dissipated. A separation from his wife was arranged,
and he plunged into a course of profligate living in town. He
became a member of the Hellfire club, which met at Medmenham
abbey and included the most noted rakes of the day. It was in
the midst of these wild orgies that he took up politics. In 1755, he
obtained a seat in the commons as a member for Aylesbury, where
his wife's estate lay. He was a follower of Pitt and hoped for some
promotion—the embassy in Constantinople would have been most
congenial to him—from his patron. But George III was king, and
Bute intervened. His hopes of repairing his shattered fortunes
having thus vanished, Wilkes turned to journalism for his revenge
upon the favourite, whose incompetence filled him with indigna-
tion. After producing a successful pamphlet concerning the
breach with Spain, he proceeded to send contributions to The
Monitor, in which he developed with much ingenuity the history
of contemporary foreign favourites, and left his readers to point
the obvious moral. Then, on the appearance of The Briton, he, in
June 1762, started his rival print, The North Briton. Week by
week, the new periodical continued its attacks on the government.
It showed itself bold, to start with, in printing the ministers' names
in full, without the usual subterfuges of dashes and stars; and
it grew bolder as it went on, and as the odium into which Bute
had fallen became more obvious. Nothing, however, gave a handle
to the authorities by which, even under the existing law of libel,
the writers could be brought to book, although The Monitor was
subjected to lengthy legal proceedings. At last, Wilkes overstepped
the line in No. 45, which bitterly impugned the truthfulness of the
speech from the throne regarding the peace of Paris. The long
government persecution of the libeller, which followed the publica-
tion of No. 45, and which finally resulted in the abolition of the
tyrannic system of general warrants, also snuffed out The North
Briton. The paper was subsequently revived; but it proved only
the ghost of its former self. Wilkes, on the other hand, had yet
to play the part of a full-fledged demagogue in his contest with
king and parliament concerning the Middlesex election of 1768.
Triumphant at last, he ended his life in 1797 as chamberlain of
London and a persona grata with George III. In all his vicissi-
tudes, he had kept in touch with public opinion.
It is not easy to describe the blackguard charm of Wilkes,
## p. 392 (#418) ############################################
392
Political Literature (1755—75)
Notoriously self-interested and dissolute, ugly and squinting, he
enjoyed a popularity by no means confined to the mob. Much
may be ascribed to the singular grace of his manners. Even
Johnson fell a victim to these. But he, also, possessed some very
obvious virtues. He was brave, good-humoured and adroit. He had
a sort of selfish kindliness. He was, moreover, manifestly on the
right side: few people had any love for general warrants or for
the infringement of the liberty of election. And he turned all
these advantages to account.
His paper, The North Briton, may be regarded as the best
example of its kind, the brief periodical pamphlet. It represents
the type at which The Briton and the rest aimed, but which they
could not reach. Like its congeners, it consisted of a weekly
political essay. It was directed entirely to the object of over-
throwing Bute and of reinstating the old group of whig families
in alliance with Pitt. We notice at once in its polemic the scanti-
ness of serious argument. Satire, raillery, scandal and depreciation
in every form are there; but a real tangible indictment does not
readily emerge from its effusions. In part, this peculiarity was
due to the difficulty under which an opposition writer then lay in
securing information and in publishing what information he pos-
sessed. When the preliminaries of peace or the jobbery of Bute's
loan issues gave Wilkes his opportunity, he could be cogent enough.
But a more powerful reason lay in the main object of the paper.
Bute was safe so long as he was not too unpopular: he had the
king's favour and a purchased majority in parliament. Therefore,
he had to be rendered of no value to king and parliament. He was
to be written down and to become the bugbear of the ordinary
voter, while his supporters in the press were to be exposed to
derision and thus deprived of influence. Wilkes and his allies in
The North Briton were well equipped for this task. They were
interesting and vivacious from the first, making the most of the
suspicions excited by Bute. As the heat of battle grew and their
case became stronger, the violence and abusiveness of their expres-
sions increased till it reached the scale of their rivals. Still, even
so, they continued to display an apt brutality wanting in the latter.
In the earlier numbers, too, The Briton and The Auditor fell easy
victims to the malicious wit of Wilkes. Perhaps the best instance
of his fun is the letter which he wrote under a pseudonym to the
unsuspecting Auditor, descanting on the value of Floridan peat,
a mythical product, for mitigating the severity of the climate in
the West Indies. An exposure followed in The North Briton;
## p. 393 (#419) ############################################
Antipathy to the Scots. Churchill
393
and poor Murphy could only refer to his tormentor afterwards
as 'Colonel Cataline. '
But the scheme of The North Briton gave an easy opportunity
for ironic satire. The editor was supposed to be a Scot exulting
over the fortune of his countryman, and very ingenuous in repeating
the complaints of the ousted English. There was nothing exquisite
in this horseplay; but it was not badly done, and it had the advantage
of appealing to strong national prejudice. The antipathy to the
Scots, which was to disappear with startling suddenness during the
American war of independence, had not yet undergone any sensible
diminution. At root, perhaps, it was the dislike of an old-established
firm for able interlopers. Scots were beginning to take a leading
share in the common government, and their nationality was always
unmistakable. Accordingly, old legends of their national character
and a purseproud contempt for their national poverty lived
obstinately on; and The North Briton worked the vein ex-
haustively.
In the composition of his journal and in his whole campaign
against the minister, Wilkes had for his coadjutor a more eminent
man, who, unlike himself, is to be conceived of, not as a pleasant
adventurer, but as a principal literary figure of the time, the poet
and satirist Charles Churchill. The two men were fast friends,
although their lives had flowed in very different streams until they
became acquainted in 1761. Churchill was the son of a clergyman,
who was curate and lecturer of St John's, Westminster, and vicar
of Rainham in Essex. The younger Charles was born in 1731 and
early distinguished himself by his ability at Westminster school.
Thence, he proceeded, in 1748, to St John's college, Cambridgel;
but his residence there was not for long. With characteristic
impulsiveness, when only 18 years of age, he contracted a marriage
in the Fleet with a girl named Martha Scott, and bis university
education had to be discontinued. His kindly father took the
young couple into his house and had his son trained, as best he
might, for holy orders. In 1754, Churchill was ordained deacon
and licensed curate of South Cadbury in Somerset, whence, as
priest, he removed, in 1756, to act as his father's curate at Rainham.
Two years later, the father died, and the son was elected to succeed
him as incumbent of St John's in Westminster, where he increased
his income by teaching in a girls' school.
1 See Admissions to the College of St John the Evangelist, pt. n, ed. Scott, R. F. ,
p. 580.
## p. 394 (#420) ############################################
394
Political Literature (1755—75)
Such is the outline of Churchill's earlier life—bald enough,
if stripped of the malicious inventions which gathered round it.
His later career is full of evidence both of his good and of his bad
qualities. Burdened with two children and an extravagant wife, him-
self completely unsuited for his clerical profession and inclined to the
pleasures of the town, in two years he became bankrupt, and owed
the acceptance by his creditors of a composition to the generosity
of his old schoolmaster, Pierson Lloyd. Afterwards, Churchill was to
show his natural honesty and good feeling, not only by a constant
friendship to his benefactor's son, Robert Lloyd, a poet of secondary
rank, but, also, by paying his own debts in full, in disregard of his
bankruptcy. That he was able to do this was due to his own new
profession of poetry. He began, unluckily, with a Hudibrastic poem,
The Bard, in 1760, which could not find a publisher. His second
effort, The Conclave, contained matter against the dean and chapter
of Westminster so libellous that the intending publisher dared not
bring it out. A more interesting subject of satire presented itself
in the contemporary stage, and, in March 1761, there appeared, at
the author's own risk, The Rosciad. Its success was immediate
and extraordinary; Churchill was enabled to pay his debts, to make
an allowance to his wife, from whom he had now been for some
time estranged, and to set up in glaringly unclerical attire as a
man about town. But the penalty, too, for indulging in bitter
criticism-a penalty, perhaps, welcome to the combative poet-
was not long in coming; and, for the rest of his life, he was
involved in an acrid literary warfare. Yet, in these tedious
campaigns he was a constant victor. Few escaped unbruised from
the cudgel of his verse, and, vulnerable though his private life made
him to attack, the toughness of his fibre enabled him to endure.
In consequence of this literary celebrity, Churchill made the
acquaintance of Wilkes, whose friendship was responsible for the
turn his life took in his few remaining years. The last shred of
the poet's respectability was soon lost in the Medmenham orgies;
yet, his political satires, which, unlike those of his friend Wilkes,
do not admit doubt of their sincerity, gave him a permanent place
in English literature. Quite half of The North Briton was written
by him; his keenest satiric poem was The Prophecy of Famine,
which, in January 1763, raised the ridicule of Bute and his country-
men to its greatest height. Thanks to Wilkes's adroitness, Churchill
escaped the meshes of the general warrant, and was afterwards let
alone by government: he had not written No. 45. But he ceased
to reside permanently in London. We hear of him in Wales in
## p. 395 (#421) ############################################
The Rosciad. Night
395
1763, and, later, he lived at Richmond and on Acton common.
The stream of his satires, political and social, continued unabated
throughout. His days, however, were numbered. He died at
Boulogne, on 4 November 1764, while on his way to visit Wilkes
at Paris, and was buried at Dover.
‘Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies. ' This line of his
own was placed on his gravestone, and not inaccurately sums up
the man. The burly poet's faults are too manifest to need insisting
upon. It is pleasanter to remember that, as already stated, he
supported his brother rake, Robert Lloyd, when the unlucky man
was dying beggared in the Fleet. His devotion to Wilkes, like
the rest of him, was unbounded and whole-hearted. Nor is any
mean action recorded of him.
There is no denying that his verse is truculent and loud. What
most distinguishes it from contemporary couplets is its spirit and
strength. He may ramble, he may prose; but he never exhibits
the neat, solemn tripping which tires us in his contemporaries.
The Rosciad, with which he first won reputation, consists chiefly
of a series of severe sketches of the leading actors in 1761. Few,
save Garrick, escape unblamed; but the poet, although censorious,
can hardly be called unfair. His verse maintains a steady level of
force and skill, just within the bounds of poetry, lighted up, now
and then, by such shrewd couplets as: ;
Appearances to save his only care;
So things seem right, no matter what they are;
and, occasionally, phrases of stinging wit intensify the ridicule.
The Rosciad called forth many enemies, and, in reply to an
attack in The Critical Review, Churchill published The Apology,
under the impression that the critique was Smollett's. It cannot
be called an advance on its forerunner, although sufficiently tart
to make Garrick, who was victimised in it, almost supplicate his
critic's friendship. As a poem, it is much surpassed by Churchill's
next composition, Night, which appeared in October 1761. The
versification has become easier, the lines more pliant, without
losing vigour. There is a suggestion of a poetical atmosphere
not to be found in the hard, dry outlines of his earlier work. The
substance is slight; it is merely a defence of late hours and genial
converse over 'the grateful cup. ' Churchill was, in this instance
at all events, too wise to defend excess.
A year's rest given to the prose of The North Briton
seems to have invigorated Churchill for the production of his
6
## p. 396 (#422) ############################################
396
Political Literature (1755—75)
best satire, The Prophecy of Famine. Its main object was to
decry and ridicule Bute and the Scots, although there is an
undercurrent of deserved mockery at the reigning fashion of
pastoral. Churchill, as he owns, was himself half a Scot? ; but the
circumstance did not mitigate his national and perfectly sincere
prejudice against his northern kinsfolk. The probable reason was
that Bute was Wilkes's enemy, and the warm-hearted poet was
wroth, too, in a fascinated sympathy with his friend. The wit and
humour of the piece are in Churchill's most forcible and amusing
vein. His hand is heavy, it is true; more dreary irony was never
written; and he belabours his theme like a peasant wielding a
flail; but the eighteenth century must have found him all the
more refreshing. Compare him with the prose polemics of his
day, and he is not specially venomous. He only repeats in sinewy
verse the current topics of reproach against the Scots.
The painter Hogarth now crossed Churchill's path. A satiric
print of Wilkes by Hogarth roused the poet's vicarious revenge.
The savage piece of invective, The Epistle to William Hogarth,
was the result, which, if it has not worn so well as Hogarth's
pictures, yet, here and there, strikes a deeper note than is usual
with its author. Take, for instance, the couplet:
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought;
although his own fertility shows no sign of exhausting the soil.
He was beginning, however, in his own metaphor, to vary the crop.
The Duellist, published in January 1764, was written, not in the
stock heroic couplet, but in octosyllabics suggestive of Hudibras.
This was an attack on Samuel Martin, one of Wilkes's ministerial
enemies, with a few satirical excursions like that on Warburton. The
adoption of a new metre was not a success; its straggling move-
ment doubled the risk which Churchill always ran of being tedious,
and the extravagance of his vituperation is no antidote. In com-
pensation, the poem contains some of his finest lines. The curse on
Martin reveals an old and clearsighted pupil in the school of life:
Grant him what here he most requires,
And damn him with his own desires!
while the malicious criticism of Warburton's defence of Scripture
suggests a literary experience which approves itself to the instincts
of human nature:
So long he wrote, and long about it,
That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it.
| The Prophecy of Famine, ll. 221–2.
## p. 397 (#423) ############################################
Gotham.
The Conference. Later Poems 397
Contemporaneously with The Duellist, Churchill was writing,
in the heroic couplet, Gotham, a curious farrago, in the three
books of which a Utopian realm ruled by himself, a long de-
nunciation of the Stewart dynasty and a description of an ideal
king jostle one another. He does not appear at his best in this
attempt at non-satiric poetry. The usual mannerisms of eighteenth-
century poetry, the personifications, the platitudinous moralising,
the hackneyed, meaningless descriptions are all to be found here.
That entire absence of any taste for nature outside Fleet street
which was characteristic of Churchill as fully as it was of Johnson
places him at peculiar disadvantage when he imitates Spenser in
a hasty catalogue of flowers, trees, months and other poetic
properties. Not less did the straightforward vigour of his usual
metre and style disqualify him for the prophet of the ideal. In
short, in spite of Cowper's praise, he was off his track.
Only a few months before Gotham was printed, Churchill had
published a very different poem, The Conference. He was accused
of merely making his profit out of political satire, and he here,
in words of obvious sincerity, repudiates the charge that he was
looking for office or pension. At the same time, he refers to a
better-grounded cause of censure—his seduction of a girl, whose
father is said to have been a stone-cutter of Westminster. Instead
of pleading extenuating circumstances, such as, in this case,
certainly existed, he only confesses his fault and avows his re-
morse. On the other hand, his personal conduct throughout this
miserable affair must be described as callous.
The rest of Churchill's poems are of less interest. The Author
is a slashing attack on Smollett and other ministerial publicists
and agents. The Ghost, in octosyllabics, derives its only interest
from being, in part, his earliest work; it is tedious and rambling
to a degree. We may allow The Candidate, directed against
Lord Sandwich, to have deserved its share of praise for the defeat
of ‘Jemmy Twitcherl' as he was nicknamed, in the election for the
high stewardship of Cambridge university; but its appeal was
merely temporary. There is little to remark on any of the other
poems—The Farewell, Independence and The Journey-produced
by the prolific poet in 1764. They showed an increasing metrical
skill, and maintained his reputation, but they did not add to it.
The Times, which, from its greater fire, might have taken high
1. That Jemmy Twitcher should peach, I own surprises me. ' Sandwich, the com.
pletest rake of the day, had brought Wilkes's obscene Essay on Woman before the House
of Lords in a speech of extraordinary hypocrisy.
## p. 398 (#424) ############################################
398 Political Literature (1755—75)
place among his works, was, unfortunately, both hideous in subject
and extravagantly exaggerated in execution.
We find, in fact, that Churchill's talent remained almost
stationary during the four years of his poetic industry. Crab-
apples, according to Johnson, he produced from the first; and such
his fruits remained to the end. He never shows the greater quali-
ties of either of his two chief English predecessors in satire-either
those of Pope whom he underrated, or those of Dryden whom he
admired. His wit, though strong, is never exquisite. His characters
are vividly and trenchantly described; but they do not live to our
imagination. His good sense cannot be said to rise to wisdom;
and he is deficient in constructive skill. The Prophecy of Famine
is, after all, an ill-proportioned mixture of satiric epistle and
satiric eclogue; while his other satires have little unity except
what is provided by the main object of their attack. Although
he justly ridicules some of the current phrases of contemporary
lesser poetry, he cannot be said himself to rise superior to
eighteenth-century conventions. His incessant personifications,
'Gay Description,' 'Dull Propriety,' are, in the end, wearisome;
and many of his humorous couplets, constructed after the fashion
of the time, rather seem like epigrams than are such. His real
forte consisted in a steady pommelling of his adversary; with all
his fierceness and prejudice, acidity and spite were foreign to his
nature.
As a metrist, Churchill can claim some originality. He
uses the heroic couplet of the day with fresh freedom and
effectivity. At first, in The Rosciad, he can hardly be said to
form his paired lines into periods. Then, in The Epistle to
William Hogarth, the last line of his paragraph has a closing
sound and really ends a period. Perhaps, it was his long involved
sentences, compiled of many clauses, which led him, in later pieces,
to a further change. From time to time, he uses enjambement,
and even, by means of it, breaks up his couplets ? .
Churchill so overtops his rivals in political verse that they
scarcely seem worth mentioning. Mason, his frequent butt as
a writer of pastorals—'Let them with Mason bleat and bray
and coo'-shrouded himself in political satire under the name
Malcolm Macgregor? Falconer, a naval officer, attacked Pitt
.
a
from the court point of view. But both of these, and even
1 Cf. , for the effect gained by this occasional variation, Independence, ll. 199–206.
?
