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again, as Lady Mary Montagu said of it a few years before, as common as taking snuff. Others compared it to an epidemical distemper-a sort of murrain. Beyond all doubt, it was the rage. "Poets increase and multiply to that stupendous degree, you see them at every turn, in embroidered coats, and pink-coloured topknots." Nor was it probable, as to Churchill himself, that he thought the dress less attractive than the verse-tagging, But his father, as we have said, had other views with respect to him. He must shade his fancies with a more sober colour, and follow the family profession.

It was an unwise resolve. It was one of those resolves which more frequently mar than make a life. The forced control of inclinations to a falsehood is a common parent's crime; not the less grievous when mistaken for a virtue. The stars do not more surely keep their courses, than an ill-regulated manhood will follow a misdirected youth. This boy had noble qualities for a better chosen career. Thus early he had made it manifest that he could see for himself and feel for others; that he had strong sensibility and energy of intellect; that where he had faith, he had steadiness of purpose and enthusiasm: but that, closely neighbouring his power, were vehemence, will, and passion; and that these made him confident, inflexible, and very hard to be controlled. From the bad discipline of such a mind, one

IMPRUDENT MARRIAGE.

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of two results was sure. He would resist or yield: in the one case, boasting exemption from vice, would become himself the victim of the worst of vices; or in the other, with violent recoil from the hypocrisies, would outrage the proprieties of life. The proof soon

came.

Churchill had given evidence of scholarship in Latin and Greek as early as his fifteenth year, when, offering himself a candidate for the Westminster foundation, he went in head of the election; but on standing for the studentship to Merton College, Oxford, three years later, he was rejected. Want of learning, premature indulgence of satirical tastes, and other as unlikely causes, have been invented to explain the rejection; but there can be little doubt that its real cause was the discovery of a marriage imprudently contracted some months before, with a Westminster girl named Scot, and accomplished within the rules of the Fleet. A marriage most imprudent-most unhappy. It disqualified him for the studentship. It introduced his very boyhood to grave responsibilities he was powerless to discharge, almost to comprehend. What self-help he might have exerted against the unwise plans of his father, it crippled and finally destroyed. There is hardly a mistake or suffering in his after life, which it did not originate, or leave him without the means of repelling. That it was

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entered into at so early an age, and that it was effected by the scandalous facilities of the Fleet-were among its evil incidents, but not the worst. It encumbered him with a wife from whom he could not hope for sympathy, encouragement, or assistance in any good thing; and to whom he could administer them as little. Neither understood the other; or had that real affection which would have supplied all needful knowledge.

The good clergyman received them into his house soon after the discovery was made. The compromise seems to have been, that Churchill should no longer oppose his father's wishes, in regard to that calling of the Church to which he afterwards bitterly described himself decreed, "ere it was known that he should learn to read." He was entered, but never resided, at Trinity, in Cambridge. There was a necessary interval before the appointed age of ordination (for which he could qualify without a degree), and he passed it quietly : the first twelve months in his father's house; the rest in retirement, for which "family reasons" are named but not explained, in the north of England. In that retirement, it is said, he varied church reading with "favourite poetical amusements;" with what unequal apportionment it might not be difficult to guess. The already congenial charm he may be supposed to bave found in the stout declamation of Juvenal, in the sly and

DRURY-LANE AND COVENT-GARDEN.

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insinuating sharpness of Horace, and in the indignant eloquence of Dryden-had little rivalry to fear from the fervid imagination of Taylor, the copious eloquence of Barrow, or the sweet persuasiveness of South.

In 1753 he visited London, to take possession, it is said, of a small fortune in right of his wife; but there is nothing to show that he got the possession, however small. It is more apparent that the great city tempted him sorely; that boyish tastes were once more freely indulged; and that his now large and stalwart figure was oftener seen at theatres than chapels. It was a great theatrical time. Drury Lane was in its strength, with Garrick, Mossop, Mrs. Pritchard, Palmer, Foote, Woodward, Yates, and Mrs. Clive. Even in its comparative weakness, Covent Garden could boast of Barry, Smith, Shuter, and Macklin; of Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Vincent; and, not seldom, of Quin, who still lingered on the stage he had quitted formally two or three years before, and seemed as loth to depart from really, as Churchill, on these stolen evenings of enjoyment, from his favourite front row of the pit. Nevertheless, the promise to his father was kept: and, having now reached the canonical age, he returned to the north in deacon's orders; whence he removed, with little delay, to the curacy of South Cadbury in Somersetshire. Here he

officiated till 1756, when he was ordained priest, and passed to his father's curacy of Rainham.

Both these ordinations without a degree, are urged in special proof of his good character and reputation for singular learning; but there is reason to suspect his father's influence as more powerful than either. "His behaviour," says Dr. Kippis, writing in the Biographia Britannica, "gained him the love and esteem of his parishioners; and his sermons, though somewhat raised above the level of his audience, were commended and followed. What chiefly disturbed him, was the smallness of his income." This, though connected with a statement as to a Welsh living now rejected, has in effect been always repeated since, and may or may not be true. It is perhaps a little strange, if his sermons were thus elcvated, commended, and followed, that no one recognised their style, or could in the least commend them, when a series of ten were published with his name eight years later; but the alleged smallness of his income admits of no kind of doubt. He had now two sons, and, as he says himself, "prayed and starved on forty pounds ayear." He opened a school. It was bitter drudgery. He wondered, he afterwards told his friends, that he had ever submitted to it; but necessities more bitter overmastered him. What solid help this new toil might have given was yet uncertain, when, in 1758, his father

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