Poetical Works | Page 2

dust off his feet, and, perhaps, vowing
vengeance against them--a vow which he has kept in his poetry. In his
"Ghost," for instance, he thus ridiculed those forms of admission--
"Which Balaam's ass
As well as Balaam's self might pass,
And with

his master take degrees,
Could he contrive to pay the fees."
Penniless, and soured by disappointment, Churchill returned to his
father's house; and, being idle, soon obtained work from the proverbial
"taskmaster" of all idle people. Having become acquainted with a
young lady, named Scott, whose father lived in the vicinity of
Westminster School, he, with true poetic imprudence, married her
privately in the Fleet, to the great annoyance of both their parents. His
father, however, was much attached to and proud of his son, and at last
was reconciled to the match, and took the young couple home.
Churchill passed one quiet domestic year under the paternal roof. At its
termination--for reasons which are not known--he retired to Sunderland,
in the north of England, and seems there to have applied himself
enthusiastically to the study of poetry--commencing, at the same time,
a course of theological reading, with a view to the Church. He
remained in Sunderland till the year 1753, when he came back to
London to take possession of a small fortune which accrued to him
through his wife. He had now reached the age of twenty-two, and had
been three years married.
During the residence in the metropolis which succeeded, he frequented
the theatres, and came thus in contact with a field where he was to
gather his earliest and most untarnished laurels. In "The Rosciad," we
find the results of several years' keen and close observation of the
actors of the period, collected into one focus, and pointed and irradiated
by the power of genius. As Scott, while carelessly galloping in his
youth through Liddesdale, and listening to ballads and old-world stories,
was "making himself" into the mighty minstrel of the border--so this
big, clumsy, overgrown student, seated in the pit of Drury Lane, or
exalted to the one-shilling gallery of Covent Garden, was silently
growing into the greatest poet of the stage that, perhaps, ever lived.
Soon after, he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Bath and Wells,
on the curacy of Cadbury, in Somersetshire, where he immediately
removed, and entered on a career of active ministerial work. Such were
the golden opinions he gained in Cadbury, that, in 1756, although he
had taken no degree, nor could be said to have studied at either of the

universities, he was ordained priest by Dr Sherlock, the Bishop of
London (celebrated for his Sermons and his "Trial of the Witnesses"),
on his father's curacy of Rainham, Essex. Here he continued diligent in
his pastoral duties--blameless in his conduct, and attentive to his
theological studies. He seemed to have entirely escaped from the
suction of the stage--to have forsworn the Muses, and to have turned
the eye of his ambition away from the peaks of Parnassus to the summit
of the Bishops' Bench.
But for Churchill's poor circumstances, it is likely that he would have
reached this elevation, as surely as did his great contemporary, and the
object of his implacable hatred and abuse, William Warburton. But his
early marriage, and his increasing responsibilities, produced pecuniary
embarrassments, and these must have tended gradually to sour him
against his profession, and to prepare his mind for that rupture with it
which ultimately ensued. To support himself and his family, he opened
a school, and met with considerable encouragement--although we
suspect that his scholars felt something of the spirit of the future satirist
stirring in the motions of his rod, and that he who afterwards lashed his
century did not spare his school. In the year 1758, his amiable and
excellent father died, and (a striking testimony both to his own and his
son's early worth) Charles was unanimously chosen to be his father's
successor in the curacy and lectureship of St John's. There he laboured
for a time, according to some statements, with much punctuality,
energy, and acceptance. After "The Rosciad" had established his name,
he sold ten of the sermons he had preached in St John's to a bookseller
for £250. We have not read them; but Dr Kippis has pronounced them
utterly unworthy of their author's fame--without a single gleam of his
poetic fire--so poor, indeed, that he supposes that they were borrowed
from some dull elderly divine, if not from Churchill's own father. This
reminds us of a story which was lately communicated to us about the
famous William Godwin. He, too, succeeded his father in his pastoral
charge. Tinged, however, already with heterodox views, he was by no
means so popular as his father had been. His own sermons were
exceedingly cold and dry, but he