will continue to be admired as long as the English language shall exist.-COLLET, STEPHEN, 1823, Relics of Literature, p. 159. Surely it is an accomplishment to utter a pretty thought so simply that the world. is forced to remember it; and that gift was Shenstone's, and he the most poetical of country gentlemen. May every shrub on the lawn of Leasowes be evergreen to his brow!-BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT, 1842-63, The Book of the Poets. Shenstone was naturally an egotist, and, like Rousseau, scarce ever contemplated a landscape without some tacit reference. to the space occupied in it by himself.MILLER, HUGH, 1847, First Impressions of England and Its People, p. 129. Shenstone was deficient in animal spirits, and condescended to be vexed when people did not come to see his retirement; but few men had an acuter discernment of the weak points of others and the general mistakes of mankind, as anybody may see by his "Essays;" and yet in those "Essays" he tells us, that he never passed a town or village, without regretting that he could not make the acquaintance of some of the good people that lived there. -HUNT, LEIGH, 1848, A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, p. 173. Nothing can appear more flat than many of Shenstone's pathetic verses. They are written usually in that sing-song, die-away measure, of which "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man" is the everlasting type. Here and there a happy epithet or wellchosen image relieves the insipidity of the strain; but in general a thorough LauraMatildaish tone, so admirably satirised in "Rejected Addresses," palls upon the ear with a dulcet but senseless monotone. . Some of his essays are pleasing, but devoted to quiet moralising or some insignificant theme.-TUCKERMAN, HENRY T., 1849, Characteristics of Literature, p. 40. There is much sweetness and grace in the verses of Shenstone; they formed part of the intellectual food which nourishes the strong soul of Burns.- ARNOLD, THOMAS, 1878, English Literature, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition. Shenstone is our principal master of what may perhaps be called the artificialnatural style in poetry; and the somewhat lasting hold which some at least of his poems have taken on the popular ear is the best testimony that can be produced to his merit. . It is difficult to believe that Shenstone ever gave much study to his work, or that he possessed any critical faculty. His elegies, though not always devoid of music, are but dreary stuff, and his more ambitious poems still drearier. His attempts at the style of Prior and Gay are for the most part valueless. Yet when all this is discarded, "My banks they are furnished with bees," and a few other such things, obstinately recur to the memory and assert that their author after all was a poet. . . As con cerns the formal part of poetry, his management of the anapaestic trimeter is unquestionably his chief merit. In the Spenserian stanza he is commendable, and dates fortunately prevent the charge that if "The Castle of Indolence" had not been written neither would "The Schoolmistress.' original. The metre is so incurably assoHis anapaests are much more ciated with sing-song and doggerel, that poems written in it are exposed to a heavy disadvantage, yet in the first two pastoral ballads at any rate this disadvantage is not much felt. Shenstone taught the metre to a greater poet than himself, Cowper, and these two between them have written almost everything that is worth reading in it, if we put avowed parody and burlesque out of the question.SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, pp. 271, 272. Most of his verse is artificial and unreal, and has rightly been forgotten, but what remains is of permanent interest. He is best known by the "Schoolmistress," a burlesque imitation of Spenser, which was highly praised by Johnson and by Goldsmith; but many will value equally, in its way, the neatly turned "Pastoral Ballad, supposed to refer to the author's disapin four parts," written in 1743, which is pointment in love, or the gently satirical Progress of Taste," showing "how great a misfortune it is for a man of small estate to have much taste." Burns warmly eulogised Shenstone's elegies, which are also to some extent autobiographical, though it is difficult to say how far they are sincere.-AITKen, George A., 1897, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LII, p. 50. Charles Churchill 1731-1764 Charles Churchill, 1731-1764. Born, in Westminster, Feb. 1731. Educated at Westminster School, 1739-49 (?). Made a "Fleet marriage" with Miss Scot, 1748. Entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, 1749, but did not take up residence. Ordained Curate to South Cadbury, Somersetshire, 1753. Ordained Priest, 1756; took curacy under his father at Rainham. Succeeded father at his death to curacy and lectureship of St. John's Westminster. Added to small income by tuition. Separation from his wife, Feb. 1761. Contrib. to "The Library," 1761. Resigned lectureship in consequence of protests of parishioners, Jan. 1763. Assisted Wilkes in editing "The North Briton," 1762-63. Copious publication of satires and poems. At Oxford during Commemoration, 1763. Died, at Boulogne, 4 Nov. 1764. Buried in St. Martin's Churchyard, Dover. Works: "The Rosciad" (anon.), 1761; "The Apology, addressed to the Critical Reviewers," 1761; "Night" (anon.), 1761; "The Ghost, bks. i., ii. (anon.), 1762; bk. iii., 1762; bk. iv., 1763; "The Prophecy of Famine, 1763; "The Conference," 1763; "An Epistle to W. Hogarth," 1763; "The Author," 1763; "Poems," 1763; "Gotham," 1764; "The Duellist," 1764 (2nd edn. same year); "The Candidate," 1764; "The Times" (anon.), 1764; "Independence" (anon.), 1764; "The Farewell" (anon.), 1764. Posthumous: "Sermons" (possibly by his father), 1765. Collected Works: in 4 vols., 1765; in 4 vols., 1774; in 2 vols., with life, 1804.-SHARP, R. FARQUHARSON, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 54. PERSONAL No more he'll sit in foremost row before the astonish'd pit; in brawn Oldmixon's rival as in wit; and grin dislike, and kiss the spike; and giggle, and wriggle; and fiddle, and diddle; and fiddlefaddle, and diddle-daddle.-MURPHY, ARTHUR, 1761, Ode to the Naiads of Fleet Ditch. Whenever I am happy in the acquaintance of a man of genius and letters, I never let any mean ill-grounded suspicions creep into my mind to disturb that happiness whatever he says, I am inclined and bound to believe, and, therefore, I must desire you not to vex yourself with unnecessary delicacy upon my account. I see and read so much of Mr. Churchill's spirit, without having the pleasure of his acquaintance, that I am persuaded that his genius disdains any direction, and that resolutions once taken by him will withstand the warmest importunities of his friends. At the first reading of his "Apology," I was so charmed and raised with the power of his writing, that I really forgot that I was delighted when I ought to have been alarmed; this puts me in mind of the Highland officer, who was so warmed and elevated by the heat of the battle that he had forgot, till he was reminded by the smarting, that he had received no less than eleven wounds in different parts of his body.-GARRICK, DAVID, 1761, Letter to Robert Lloyd. A bear, whom, from the moment he was born, Broad were his shoulders, and from blade A H-might at full length have laid; His face was short, but broader than 'twas His features, though by Nature they were Contentment had contrived to overcharge, Which hung in tatters on his brawny back, Churchill the poet is dead, -to the great joy of the Ministry and the Scotch, and to the grief of very few indeed, 1 believe; for such a friend is not only a dangerous but a ticklish possession.. . Churchill had great powers; but, besides the facility of outrageous satire, almost all his compositions were wild and extravagant, executed on no plan, and void of the least correction.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1764, To Sir Horace Mann, Nov. 15; Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. IV, p. 291. Your Lordship knows that owed the greatest share of his renown to the most incompetent of all judges, the mob; actuated by the most unworthy of all principles, a spirit of insolence; and inflamed by the vilest of all human passions, hatred to their fellow citizens. Those who joined the cry in his favour seemed to me to be swayed rather by fashion than by real sentiment. He therefore might have lived and died unmolested by me; confident as I am, that posterity, when the present unhappy dissensions are forgotten, will do ample justice to his real character. But when I saw the extravagant honours that were paid to his memory, and heard that a monument in Westminster Abbey was intended for one, whom even his admirers acknowledge to have been an incendiary and a debauchee, I could not help wishing that my countrymen would reflect a little on what they were doing, before they consecrated, by what posterity would think the public. voice, a character which no friend to virtue or to true taste can approve.—BEATTIE, JAMES, 1765, On the Report of a Monument to be Erected in Westminster Abbey to the Memory of a Late Author. Had he not been himself so severe a censor, his private irregularities would have been softened down to the eccentricities of genius, and his midnight parties would have been dignified with the amiable attributes of social enjoyment, "the feast of reason and the flow of soul;" instead of which, they were blazoned abroad as the orgies of brutal intemperance, and the scenes of vulgar and depraved gratification.-TOOKE, WILLIAM, 1804-44, ed., The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill. I stood beside the grave of him who blazed The comet of a season, and I saw The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed With not the less of sorrow and of awe On that neglected turf and quiet stone, With name no clearer than the names unknown, Which lay unread around it. -BYRON, LORD, 1816, Churchill's Grave. The unexpected death of a man in the flower of his age, who during four years had been one of the most conspicuous persons in England, and certainly the most popular poet, occasioned a strong feeling among the part of the public to whose political prepossessions and passions he had addressed himself. Some of his admirers were inconsiderate enough to talk of erecting a monument to him in Westminster Abbey; but if permission had been asked it must necessarily have been refused; it would indeed have been not less indecent to grant, than to solicit such an honour for a clergyman who had thrown off his gown, and renounced, as there appeared too much reason to apprehend, his hope in Christ. His associates undoubtedly wished to have it believed that he had shown as little regard to religion in the last hours, as in the latter years of his life; and though they obtained Christian burial for him, by bringing the body from Boulogne to Dover, where it was interred in the old cemetery which once belonged to the collegiate church of St. Martin, they inscribed upon. his tombstone, instead of any consolatory or monitory text, this epicurean line from one of his own poems, Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies. Wilkes erected a monument to his friend's memory, in the grounds of his cottage at Sandham, in the Isle of Wight. It was a broken pillar, fluted, and of the Doric order, nine feet high, five feet in diameter, placed in a grove, with weeping willows, cypresses, and yews behind, laurels beside it, and bays, myrtles, and other shrubs in the foreground. A tablet, on the pillar, bore this inscription: CAROLO CHURCHILL, CIVI OPTIME DE PARTRIA MERITO JOHANNES WILKES. M DCC LXV. The same words he inscribed upon a sepulchral alabaster urn, sent him from Rome by the Abbe Winckelman, who was then the superintendent of the antiquities. in that city.-SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1835, Life of Cowper, vol. 1, p. 325. Pope had a tall Irishman to attend him when he published the "Dunciad," but Churchill was tall enough to attend himself. One of Pope's victims, by way of delicate reminder, hung up a birch rod at |