The balanced mizen, rending to the head, When in his veins the burning earthquake glows; And fate vindictive all their skill defies; To plunge the nerves of battle in the wave. From their high platforms thus the artillery thrown, While o'er the quivering deck, from van to rear, Like some strong watch-tower nodding o'er the deep, Whose rocky base the foaming waters sweep, 1 The well is an apartment in the ship's hold, serving to inclose the pumps. It is sounded by dropping a graduated iron rod down into it by a long line. Hence the increase or diminution of the leaks are easily discovered. The brake is the lever or handle of the pump, by which it is wrought. 3 The waist of a ship of this kind is a hollow space of about five feet in depth, contained between the elevations of the quarter deck and forecastle, and having the upper deck for its base or platform. Watching the roll, their forelocks they withdrew, [The tempest increases, but the dismantled ship passes the island of St George.] But now Athenian mountains they descry, With mournful look the seamen eyed the strand, The steersmen now received their last command While, in the general wreck, the faithful stay The hostile waters close around their head, Those who remain their fearful doom await, Inclosed with all the demons of the main, In vain the cords and axes were prepared, O were it mine with tuneful Maro's art, o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung, Some, from the main yard-arm impetuous thrown Next, O unhappy chief! the eternal doom With want, and hardships unforeseen enclosed; ROBERT LLOYD. By ROBERT LLOYD, the friend of Cowper and Churchill, was born in London in 1733. His father was under-master at Westminster school. He distinguished himself by his talents at Cambridge, but was irregular in his habits. After completing his education, he became an usher under his father. The wearisome routine of this life soon disgusted him, and he attempted to earn a subsistence by his literary talents. His poem called The Actor attracted some notice, and was the precursor of Churchill's 'Rosciad.' The style is light and easy, and the observations generally correct and spirited. contributing to periodical works as an essayist, a poet, and stage critic, Lloyd picked up a precarious subsistence, but his means were thoughtlessly squandered in company with Churchill and other wits 'upon town.' He brought out two indifferent theatrical pieces, published his poems by subscription, and edited the 'St James's Magazine,' to which Colman, Bonnel Thornton, and others, contributed. The magazine failed, and Lloyd was cast into prison for debt. Churchill generously allowed him a guinea Ia-week, as well as a servant; and endeavoured to raise a subscription for the purpose of extricating him from his embarrassments. Churchill died in November 1764. Lloyd,' says Mr Southey, 'had been apprised of his danger; but when the news of his death was somewhat abruptly announced to him, as he was sitting at dinner, he was seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, "I shall follow poor Charles," took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died, of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here: Churchill's favourite sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him during his illness; and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her brother and her lover to the grave.' Lloyd, in conjunction with Colman, parodied the Odes of Gray and Mason, and the humour of their burlesques is not tinctured with malignity. Indeed, this unfortunate young poet seems to have been one of the gentlest of witty observers and lively satirists; he was ruined by the friendship of Churchill and the Nonsense Club, and not by the force of an evil nature. The vivacity of his style (which both Churchill and Cowper copied) may be seen from the following short extract on [The Miseries of a Poet's Life.] The harlot muse, so passing gay, Too careless of the means to live; O glorious trade! for wit's a trade, But bad as the life of a hackney poet and critic seems to have been in Lloyd's estimation, the situation of a school-usher was as little to his mind: [Wretchedness of a School-Usher.] Were I at once empowered to show My utmost vengeance on my foe, To punish with extremest rigour, I could inflict no penance bigger, Than, using him as learning's tool, To make him usher of a school. For, not to dwell upon the toil Of working on a barren soil, And labouring with incessant pains, To cultivate a blockhead's brains, The duties there but ill befit The love of letters, arts, or wit. For one, it hurts me to the soul, To brook confinement or control; Still to be pinioned down to teach The syntax and the parts of speech; Or, what perhaps is drudgery worse, The links, and points, and rules of verse; To deal out authors by retail, Like penny pots of Oxford ale; Oh 'tis a service irksome more, Than tugging at the slavish oar! Yet such his task, a dismal truth, Who watches o'er the bent of youth, And while a paltry stipend earning, He sows the richest seeds of learning, And tills their minds with proper care, And sees them their due produce bear; No joys, alas! his toil beguile, His own lies fallow all the while. 'Yet still he's on the road,' you say, 'Of learning.' Why, perhaps he may, But turns like horses in a mill, Nor getting on, nor standing still; For little way his learning reaches, Who reads no more than what he teaches. CHARLES CHURCHILL. He A second Dryden was supposed to have arisen in Churchill, when he published his satirical poem, The Rosciad, in 1761. The impression was continued by his reply to the critical reviewers, shortly afterwards; and his Epistle to Hogarth, The Prophecy of Famine, Night, and passages in his other poemsall thrown off in haste to serve the purpose of the day-evinced great facility of versification, and a breadth and boldness of personal invective that drew instant attention to their author. Though Cowper, from early predilections, had a high opinion of Churchill, and thought he was indeed a poet,' we cannot now consider the author of the Rosciad' as more than a special pleader or pamphleteer in verse. seldom reaches the heart-except in some few lines of penitential fervour-and he never ascended to the higher regions of imagination, then trod by Collins, Gray, and Akenside. With the beauties of external nature he had not the slightest sympathy. He died before he had well attained the prime of life; yet there is no youthful enthusiasm about his works, nor any indications that he sighed for a higher fame than that of being the terror of actors and artists, noted for his libertine eccentricities, and distinguished for his devotion to Wilkes. That he misapplied strong original talents in following out these pitiful or unworthy objects of his ambition, is undeniable; but as a satirical poet-the only character in which he appears as an author-he is immeasurably inferior to Pope or Dryden. The 'fatal facility' of his verse, and his unscrupulous satire of living individuals and passing events, had, however, the effect of making all London ring from side to side' with his applause, at a time when the real poetry of the age could hardly obtain either publishers or readers. Excepting Marlow, the dramatic poet, scarcely any English author of reputation has been more unhappy in his life and end than Charles Churchill. He was the son of a clergyman in Westminster, where he was born in 1741. After attending Westminster school and Trinity college, Cambridge (which he quitted abruptly), he made a clandestine marriage with a young lady in Westminster, and was assisted by his father, till he was ordained and settled in the curacy of Rainham, in Essex. His father died in 1758, and the poet was appointed his successor in the curacy and lectureship of St John's at Westminster. This transition, which pro mised an accession of comfort and respectability, proved the bane of poor Churchill. He was in his twenty-seventh year, and his conduct had been up to this period irreproachable. He now, however, renewed his intimacy with Lloyd and other school companions, and launched into a career of dissipa tion and extravagance. His poetry drew him into notice; and he not only disregarded his lectureship, but he laid aside the clerical costume, and appeared in the extreme of fashion, with a blue coat, goldlaced hat, and ruffles. The dean of Westminster remonstrated with him against this breach of clerical propriety, and his animadversions were seconded by the poet's parishioners. Churchill affected to ridicule this prudery, and Lloyd made it the subject of an epigram : To Churchill, the bard, cries the Westminster dean, Leather breeches, white stockings! pray what do you mean? 'Tis shameful, irreverent-you must keep to church rules. If wise ones I will; and if not they're for fools. If reason don't bind me, I'll shake off all fetters, To be black and all black I shall leave to my betters. The dean and the congregation were, however, too powerful, and Churchill found it necessary to resign the lectureship. His ready pen still threw off at will his popular satires, and he plunged into the grossest debaucheries. These excesses he attempted to justify in a poetical epistle to Lloyd, entitled 'Night,' in which he revenges himself on prudence and the world by railing at them in good set terms. This vindication proceeded,' says his biographer, 'on the exploded doctrine, that the barefaced avowal of vice is less culpable than the practice of it under a hypocritical assumption of virtue. The measure of guilt in the individual is, we conceive, tolerably equal; but the sanction and dangerous example afforded in the former case, renders it, in a public point of view, an evil of tenfold magnitude.' The poet's irregularities affected his powers of composition, and his poem of The Ghost, published at this time, was an incoherent and tiresome production. A greater evil, too, was his acquaintance with Wilkes, unfortunately equally conspicuous for public faction and private debauchery. Churchill assisted his new associate in the North Briton, and received the profit arising from its sale. This circumstance rendered him of importance enough to be included with Wilkes in the list of those whom the messengers had verbal instructions to apprehend under the general warrant issued for that purpose, the execution of which gave rise to the most popular and only beneficial part of the warm contest that ensued with government. Churchill was with Wilkes at the time the latter was apprehended, and himself only escaped owing to the messenger's ignorance of his person, and to the presence of mind with which Wilkes addressed him by the name of Thomson.'* The poet now set about his satire, the Prophecy of Famine, which, like Wilkes's North Briton, was specially directed against the Scottish nation. The outlawry of Wilkes separated the friends, but they kept up a correspondence, and Churchill continued * Life of Churchill prefixed to works. London: 1804. When Churchill entered the room, Wilkes was in custody of the messenger. 'Good morning, Mr Thomson,' said Wilkes to him. How does Mrs Thomson do? Does she dine in the country? Churchill took the hint as readily as it had been given. He replied that Mrs Thomson was waiting for him, and that he only came, for a moment, to ask him how he did. Then almost directly he took his leave, hastened home, secured his papers, retired into the country, and eluded all search. to be a keen political satirist. The excesses of his daily life remained equally conspicuous. Hogarth, who was opposed to Churchill for being a friend of Wilkes, characteristically exposed his habits by caricaturing the satirist in the form of a bear dressed canonically, with ruffles at his paws, and holding a pot of porter. Churchill took revenge in a fierce and sweeping 'epistle' to Hogarth, which is said to have caused him the most exquisite pain. After separating from his wife, and forming an unhappy connexion with another female, the daughter of a Westminster tradesman, whom he had seduced, Churchill's career drew to a sad and premature close. In October 1764 he went to France to pay a visit to his friend Wilkes, and was seized at Boulogne with a fever, which proved fatal on the 4th of November. With his clerical profession Churchill had thrown off his belief in Christianity, and Mr Southey mentions, that though he made his will only the day before his death, there is in it not the slightest expression of religious faith or hope. So highly popular and productive had his satires proved, that he was enabled to bequeath an annuity of sixty pounds to his widow, and fifty to the more unhappy woman whom he had seduced, and some surplus remained to his sons. The poet was buried his grave a stone on which was engraved a line from at Dover, and some of his gay associates placed over one of his own poems Look back! a thought which borders on despair, The Conference. The most ludicrous, and, on the whole, the best of Churchill's satires, is his Prophecy of Famine, a Scots pastoral, inscribed to Wilkes. The Earl of Bute's administration had directed the enmity of all disappointed patriots and keen partisans against the Scottish nation. Even Johnson and Junius descended to this petty national prejudice, and Churchill revelled in it with such undisguised exaggeration and broad humour, that the most saturnine or sensitive of our countrymen must have laughed at its absurdity. This unique pastoral opens as follows:Two boys whose birth, beyond all question, springs From great and glorious, though forgotten kings, Shepherds of Scottish lineage, born and bred On the same bleak and barren mountain's head, By niggard nature doomed on the same rocks To spin out life, and starve themselves and flocks, Fresh as the morning, which, enrobed in mist, The mountain's top with usual dulness kissed, Jockey and Sawney to their labours rose ; Jockey, whose manly high cheek bones to crown, Who would, but cannot, with a master's skill, The characters of Garrick, &c., in the Rosciad, have now ceased to interest; but some of these rough pen-and-ink sketches of Churchill are happily executed. Smollett, who he believed had attacked him in the Critical Review, he alludes to with mingled approbation and ridicule Whence could arise this mighty critic spleen, In walks of humour, in that cast of style, In comedy, his natural road to fame, In 'Night,' Churchill thus gaily addressed his friend The reputation of Churchill was also an aërial structure. No English poet,' says Southey, had ever enjoyed so excessive and so short lived a popularity; and indeed no one seems more thoroughly to have understood his own powers; there is no indication in any of his pieces that he could have done any thing better than the thing he did. To Wilkes he said, that nothing came out till he began to be pleased with it himself; but, to the public, he boasted of the haste and carelessness with which his verses were poured forth. Had I the power, I could not have the time, While spirits flow, and life is in her prime, Without a sin 'gainst pleasure, to design A plan, to methodise each thought, each line, Highly to finish, and make every grace In itself charming, take new charms from place. Nothing of books, and little known of men, When the mad fit comes on I seize the pen ; Rough as they run, the rapid thoughts set down, Rough as they run, discharge them on the town. Popularity which is easily gained, is lost as easily; such reputations resembling the lives of insects, whose shortness of existence is compensated by its proportion of enjoyment. He perhaps imagined that his genius would preserve his subjects, as spices preserve a mummy, and that the individuals whom he had eulogised or stigmatised would go down to posterity in his verse, as an old admiral comes home from the West Indies in a puncheon of rum: he did not consider that the rum is rendered loathsome, and that the spices with which the Pharaohs and Potiphars were embalmed, wasted their sweetness in the catacombs. But, in this part of his conduct, there was no want of worldly prudence: he was enriching himself by hasty writings, for which the immediate sale was in proportion to the bitterness and personality of the satire.' MICHAEL BRUCE. MICHAEL BRUCE-a young and lamented Scottish poet of rich promise-was born at Kinnesswood, parish of Portmoak, county of Kinross, on the 27th of March 1746. His father was a humble tradesman, a weaver, who was burdened with a family of eight children, of whom the poet was the fifth. The dreariest poverty and obscurity hung over the poet's infancy, but the elder Bruce was a good and pious |