Poetical Works | Page 4

make humiliating concessions to the fearless satirist. Fearless, indeed, and strong he required to be, for many of his victims had vowed loud and deep to avenge their quarrel by inflicting corporal chastisement on their foe. He armed himself with a huge bludgeon, however, and stalked abroad and returned home unharmed and unattempted. None cared to meddle with such a brawny Hercules.
In another way his enemies soon had their revenge. He had gained one thousand pounds by his two poems, and this supplied him with the materials of unlimited indulgence, which he did not fail to use. He threw off every restraint. He donned, instead of his clerical costume, a blue coat and gold-laced waistcoat. He separated from his wife, giving her, indeed, a handsome allowance. His midnight potations became deeper and more habitual. Dean Zachary Pearce, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, in vain remonstrated. At last, on his parishioners taking the matter up, and raising an outcry as to his neglect of duty, and the unbecoming character of his dress, he resigned his curacy and lectureship, and became for the rest of his life a literary and dissipated "man about town."
In October 1761 he published a poem entitled "Night," addressed to Lloyd, in which, while seeking to vindicate himself from the charges against his morale, he in reality glories in his shame. His sudden celebrity had perhaps acted as a glare of light, revealing faults that might have been overlooked in an obscure person. With his dissipation, too, there mingled some elements of generosity and compassion, as in the story told of him by Charles Johnson in his "Chrysal" of the poet succouring a poor starving girl of the town, whom he met in the midnight streets,--an incident reminding one of the similar stories told of Dr Johnson, and Burke, and realising the parable of the good Samaritan. Yet his conduct on the whole could not be defended.
His next poem was "The Ghost," which he published in parts, and continued at intervals. It was a kind of rhymed diary or waste-book, in which he deposited his every-day thoughts and feelings, without any order or plan,--reminding us of "Tristram Shandy" or of "Don Juan," although not so whimsically delightful as the former, nor so brilliant and poignant as the latter.
But now, in 1762, the Poet was to degrade or to sublimate into the Politician, at the bidding of that gay magician, Jack Wilkes. That this man was much better than a clever and pre-eminently lucky scoundrel, is now denied by few. He had, indeed, immense pluck and convivial pleasantry, with considerable learning and talent. But he had no principle, no character, little power of writing, and did not even possess a particle of that mob eloquence which seduces multitudes. His depravities and vices were far too gross even for that gross age. In the very height of his reputation for patriotism, he was intriguing with the ministry for a place for himself. And he became in his latter days, as Burke had predicted (for we strongly suspect that Burke wrote the words in "Junius"), "a silent senator," sate down "infamous and?contented,"--proving that it had only been "the tempest which had lifted him from his place."
Wilkes introduced himself to Churchill, and they became speedily intimate. Soon after, indignant at the supremacy of Lord Bute, who, as a royal favourite, had obtained a power in the country which had not been equalled since Buckingham fell before the assassin Felton's knife, and was employing all his influence to patronise the Scotch, Wilkes commenced the North Briton. In this, from the first, he was assisted by Churchill, who, however, did not write prose so vigorously as verse. He had sent to the North Briton a biting paper against the Scotch. On reflection, he recalled and recast it in rhyme. It was "The Prophecy of Famine;" and became so popular as to make a whole nation his enemies, and all their enemies his friends. This completely filled up the measure of Churchill's triumph. He actually dressed his youngest son in the Highland garb, took him everywhere along with him, and instructed him to say, when asked why he was thus dressed, "Sir, my father hates the Scotch; and does it to plague them."
Lord Bute resigned early in 1763, and was succeeded by a ministry comprising such men as Sir Francis Dashwood, and Lord Sandwich, who had been intimates of Wilkes, and had shared with him in certain disgusting orgies at Medmenham Abbey. They now, however, changed their tactics, and became vehement upholders of morality and religion; and began to watch their opportunity for pouncing on their quondam associate. This he himself furnished by the famous North Briton, No. 45. That paper may now seem, to those who read it, a not very powerful, and not very