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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