"Broad is the road, nor difficult to find, Which to the house of Satire leads mankind; Scarce found out in an age, which lead to Praise.” But it is not by the indifferent qualities in his works that Charles Churchill should be, as he has too frequently been, condemned. Judge him at his best; judge him by the men whom he followed in this kind of composition; and his claim to the respectful and enduring attention of the students of English poetry and literature, becomes manifest indeed. Of the gross indecencies of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, he has none. He never, in any one instance, that he might fawn upon power or trample upon weakness, wrote licentious lampoons. There was not a form of mean pretence, or servile assumption, which he did not denounce. Low, pimping politics, he abhorred: and that their vile abettors, to whose exposure his works are so incessantly devoted, have not carried him into utter oblivion with themselves, sufficiently argues for the sound morality and permanent truth expressed in his manly verse. He indulged too much in personal invective, as we have said; and invective is too apt to pick up, for instant use against its adversaries, the first heavy stone that lies by the wayside, without regard to its form or fitness. The English had not in his day bor " PROGRESS IN POETRY. 55 rowed from the French those nicer sharpnesses of satire which can dispense with anger and indignation; and which now, in the verse of Moore and Beranger, or the prose of our pleasant Mr. Punch, suffice to wage all needful war with hypocrisy and falsehood. In justice let us add to this latter admission, that Satire seems to us the only species of poetry which appears to be better understood than formerly. There is a painful fashion of obscurity in verse come up of late years, which is marring and misleading a quantity of youthful talent; as if the ways of poetry, like those of steam and other wonderful inventions, admitted of original improvements at every turn. A writer like Churchill, who thought that even Pope had cramped his genius not a little by deserting the earlier and broader track struck out by Dryden, may be studied with advantage by this section of Young England, and we recommend him for that purpose. Southey is excellent authority on a point of the kind; and he held that the injurious effects of Pope's dictatorship in rhyme, were not a little weakened by the manly, free, and vigorous verse of Churchill, during his rule as tribune of the people. Were we to offer exception, it would rest chiefly on the fourth published poem of Churchill, which followed his Night, and precedes what Southey would call his tribunitial career. This was the first book of the Ghost, con tinued, at later intervals, to the extent of four books. It was put forth by the poet as a kind of poetical Tristram Shandy-a ready resource for a writer who seized carelessly every incident of the hour; and, knowing the enormous sale his writings could command, sought immediate vent for even thoughts and fancies too broken and irregular for a formal plan. The Ghost, in his own phrase, was "A mere amusement at the most; The horrors of a rainy day; A slight shot-silk for summer wear, Just as our modern statesmen are." And though it contained some sharply written character, such as the well-known sketch of Dr. Johnson (Pomposo), and some graceful easy humour, such as the fortune-teller's experience of the various gullibility of man ; it is not, in any of the higher requisites, to be compared with his other writings. It is in the octo-syllabic measure, only twice adopted by him. The reason of his comparative failure in this verse may be guessed. Partly no doubt it was, that he had less gusto in writing it; that, not having a peremptory call to the subject, he chose a measure which suited his indolence. Partly also we must take it to be, that the measure itself, by the constantly recurring necessity of rhyme THE BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER. 57 (an easy necessity), tends to a slatternly diffuseness. The heroic line must have muscle as it proceeds, and thus tends to strength and concentration. The eight-syllable verse relies for its prop on the rhyme; and, being short, tends to do in two lines what the heroic feels bound to do in one. Nevertheless he could show his mastery here also, when the subject piqued or stirred him; and there are few more effective things in his writings than some parts of his character of Warburton, to be found in the Duellist. BISHOP WARBURTON. "He was so proud, that should he meet That he would cringe, and creep, be civil, Brought up to London, from the plow And was the Poet's Parasite. With wits conversing (and Wits then Were to be found 'mongst Noblemen), He drank with drunkards, lived with sinners, With such an emphasis and grace In shape scarce of the human kind, |