into poetry: such as--

"No birds except as birds of passage flew;"

the account of the creatures which, when admitted into the ark,

"Their saviour shunn'd, and rankled in the dark;"

and the famous line--

"Where half-starved spiders prey on half-starved flies."

"The Ghost" is the least felicitous of all his poems, although its
picture of Pomposo (Dr Johnson) is exceedingly clever. The "Dedication to
Warburton" is a strain of terrible irony, but fails to damage the
Atlantean Bishop. "The Journey" is not only interesting as his last
production, but contains some affecting personal allusions, intermingled
with its stinging scorn--like pale passion-flowers blended with nettles
and nightshade. The most of the others have been already characterised.

Churchill has had two very formidable enemies to his fame and detractors
from his genius--Samuel Johnson and Christopher North. The first
pronounced him "a prolific blockhead," "a huge and fertile crab-tree;"
the second has wielded the knout against his back with peculiar gusto and
emphasis, in a paper on satire and satirists, published in _Blackwood_
for 1828. Had Churchill been alive, he could have easily "retorted
scorn"--set a "Christophero" over against the portrait of "Pomposo:" the
result had been, as always in such cases, a drawn battle; and damage
would have accrued, not to the special literateurs, but to the general
literary character. Prejudice or private pique always lurks at the bottom