THE POETICAL WORKS OF CHARLES CHURCHILL.


With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes,

By The REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.

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CHURCHILL--HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS.

In Churchill we find a signal specimen of a considerable class of
writers, concerning whom Goldsmith's words are true--

"Who, born for the universe, narrow'd their mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind."

Possessed of powers and natural endowments which might have made him,
under favourable circumstances, a poet, a hero, a man, and a saint, he
became, partly through his own fault, and partly through the force of
destiny, a satirist, an unfortunate politician, a profligate, died early;
and we must approach his corpse, as men do those of Burns and Byron, with
sorrow, wonder, admiration, and blame, blended into one strange, complex,
and yet not unnatural emotion. Like them, his life was short and
unhappy--his career triumphant, yet checquered--his powers
uncultivated--his passions unchecked--his poetry only a partial discovery
of his genius--his end sudden and melancholy--and his reputation, and
future place in the history of letters, hitherto somewhat uncertain. And
yet, like them, his very faults and errors, both as a man and a poet,
have acted, with many, as nails, fastening to a "sure place" his