such strength can be rendered secure, both might, probably, at this crisis have been saved. But Lloyd had led a licentious life; and Churchill was beginning, in place of that faith whereby our happiness here and hereafter is assured, to entertain a system of earthly and sensual philosophy, which, if it has since been more insolently avowed in this country, has not yet been displayed with such flagitious profligacy as in those days. At what time he became a speculative infidel is not known; but it appears that there had been no open immorality in his conduct before his embarrasments, nor any cause for suspecting it. Pecuniary distress seems, by his own testimony, to have made him first plunge into excesses; and the arrangement which relieved had not the effect of reclaiming him. Once having relaxed the bonds of self-restraint, he broke loose. His home then became a scene of continual discord whenever he returned to it; just but irritating reproaches provoked him to recrimination, for which, it is said, there was too much cause; and these disgraceful disputes ended, in February, 1761, in a total separation. At this time he had begun to try his fortune as a poet. The first production which he offered to the booksellers was entitled "The Bard," in Hudibrastic verse; it was rejected without hesitation; and as he, who was little scrupulous what he published, could never be induced to bring this forward when his name would have given it vogue, it is evident that his own opinion of its worthlessness agreed with that which had disappointed his first hopes. A satire upon the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, called "The Conclave," was his next attempt, Dr. Zachary Pearse, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, being then the Dean. The characters are said to have been "nervously drawn, boldly coloured, and nicely discriminated;" that it was poignant and sarcastic may be easily believed; but it was so personal, and probably indeed so libellous, that the lawyer whose opinion was taken upon it, pronounced that it could not be printed without danger of a prosecution. This second disappointment made him seek for a safer subject, and one of more general interest. Lloyd's recent success with "The Actor" suggested the thought of" The Rosciad;" and after two months close attendance at the theatres, Churchill completed that poem. He offered it to several booksellers, but none could be found to give him five guineas, which he had fixed upon as its price. On this occasion, however, he confided in his own opinion of its merit, and in that of the friends to whom it had been shown; and relying also upon the attractiveness of the subject, he ventured to publish it on his own account, which, in his circumstances, was no trifling hazard. It was published in March, 1761, without the author's name. The Rosciad is said to have occasioned a greater sensation in the public mind than had ever before been excited by any poetical performance. If this were to be literally understood, a severer reproach could not be cast upon the taste and feeling of the British nation. When the Progress of Poetry and the Bard were published, four years before, the reviewers regretted that Gray should choose thus to seek for fame among the learned, and exert his talents in efforts which "at best, could amuse only the few, instead of studying the people ;" and they presumed he would not be greatly disappointed if he found the public backward in commending a performance not entirely suited to their apprehensions. Collins's "Odes" were at that very time covered with dust and cobwebs in the warehouse of the unlucky publisher. And we are told, that when Churchill affixed his name to the second edition of "The Rosciad," "he sprang, at one bound, from the most perfect obscurity to the first rank in literary fame!".. Fame were indeed a bubble if it could spring up so suddenly, and burst so soon! The poem, on its first appearance, was ascribed, in "the Critical Review," to Lloyd, with a degree of confidence in the critic's own discernment, and of personal insolence which has not often been surpassed by any modern professor of the ungentle craft. It was not in any spirit of emulation, still less of rivalry, that Churchill had entered upon the same field as his friend, nor is it to be believed that Lloyd partook, even for a moment, of any feeling akin to envy. The poem had no sooner been ascribed to him than he disclaimed it, by an advertisement in the newspaper; and when it was owned by Churchill, he generously and publicly acknowledged his own inferiority. For me who labour with poetic sin, 4 Monthly Review, Sept. 1757. To Churchill's muse can bow with decent awe, It has been injuriously said that Lloyd regarded with some disgust the extraordinary success of the Rosciad, which so greatly exceeded that of his own poem. They who said this were incapable of appreciating, and perhaps of understanding, the nobler parts of his cha racter. There was neither disgust nor mortification in the natural wish that his own ticket had been drawn as good a prize, living as he now did by the precarious profits of his pen, ..a wish not that Churchill had been less fortunate, but that he himself had been equally so. And when the reviewer insulted him with the gross imputation of having been his own eulogist, that provocation was not needed to make him regard his friend's cause as his own. But Churchill was not one of those authors who may be attacked with impunity. He knew where his strength lay, and that the public also knew it; and he speedily followed the Rosciad with his "Apology, addressed to the Critical Reviewers." This was as successful as its predecessor; and from the profits of the two he paid up his creditors to the full amount of those debts for which he had compounded, properly considering that the legal discharge could only be considered as conditionally a moral one. This was consistent with the generosity and straight-forward manliness of his character. But neither he nor Lloyd was happy; they had commenced authors by profession about the same time; and as the one had re nounced his scholastic employment, the other threw off the restraints of his order, and as if to show his contempt for it, appeared in a gold-laced waistcoat, a gold-laced hat, and ruffles. Both had rapidly attained the celebrity they desired, the one had no apprehension that poverty would ever overtake him in his course, and the other had opened for himself a source of immediate prosperity. Having exempted themselves from the ordinary business and ordinary duties of life, they lived as if present gratification were their sole object. Those who had been wounded by Churchill's satires, revenged themselves now by attacking him in his moral character, where alone he was vulnerable; Lloyd, whose name now was commonly associated with his, was reproached as the companion of his midnight excesses; and not enemies alone, but false friends also, who affected, if Wilkes may be believed, to pay the highest compliments to their genius, were most industrious in seizing every opportunity of condemning their conduct in private life. "These prudent persons,' says the arch-demagogue of his day, "found a malicious pleasure in propagating the story of every unguarded hour, and in gratifying that rage after the little anecdotes of admired authors upon which small wits subsist. The curiosity of the town was fed by these people from time to time; and every dull lecturer within the bills of mortality, comforted himself that he did not keep such hours as Mr. Churchill and Mr. Lloyd!" Wilkes defends "the two English poets," as he denominates them, for passing their nights after the manner of the first men of antiquity, "who knew," he says, "how to redeem the fleeting hours from |