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Poetical Works by Charles Churchill
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mourning rings to his more intimate friends. Wilkes got the charge of all
his works. His body was brought to Dover, where he now sleeps in an old
churchyard, which once belonged to the church of St Martin, with a stone
over him, bearing his age, the date of his death, and this line from one
of his own poems--

"Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies."

The words which he is reported to have used on his deathbed, _should_
have been inscribed on the stone--

"What a fool I have been!"

Hogarth had expired on the 25th of October, ten days before his opponent.
Lloyd was finishing his dinner, when the news of his friend's death
arrived. He was seized with sudden sickness, and crying out, "I shall
soon follow poor Charles," was carried to a bed, whence he was never to
rise. Churchill's favourite sister, Patty, who had been engaged to Lloyd,
soon afterwards sank under the double blow. The premature death of this
most popular of the poets of the time, excited a great sensation. His
furniture and books sold excessively high; a steel pen, for instance, for
five pounds, and a pair of plated spurs for sixteen guineas. Wilkes
talked much about his "dear Churchill," but, with the exception of
burning a MS. fragmentary satire, which Churchill had begun against
Colman and Thornton, _two of his intimate friends_, and erecting an urn
to him near his cottage in the Isle of Wight, with a flaming Latin
inscription, he did nothing for his memory. The poet's brother, John, an
apothecary, survived him only one year; and his two sons, Charles and
John, inherited the vices without the genius of their father. There was,
as late as 1825, a grand-daughter of his, a Mary Churchill, who had been
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