Poetical Works | Page 7

and a boundless command of a loose, careless,
but bold and energetic diction; add to this, a constant tone of
self-assertion, and rugged independence. He was emphatically a John
Bull, sublimated. He rushed into the poetic arena more like a pugilist
than a poet, laying about him on all sides, giving and taking strong
blows, and approving himself, in the phrase of "the fancy," game to the
backbone. His faults, besides those incident to most satirists,--such as
undue severity, intrusion into private life, anger darkening into
malignity, and spleen fermenting into venom,--were carelessness of
style, inequality, and want of condensation. Compared to the satires of
Pope, Churchill's are far less polished, and less pointed. Pope stabs with
a silver
bodkin--Churchill hews down his opponent with a
broadsword. Pope whispers a word in his enemy's ear which withers the
heart within him, and he sinks lifeless to the ground; Churchill pours
out a torrent of blasting invective which at once kills and buries his foe.
Dryden was his favourite model; and although he has written no such
condensed masterpieces of satire as the characters of Shaftesbury and
Buckingham, yet his works as a whole are not much inferior, and
justify the idea that had his life been spared, he might have risen to the
level of "Glorious John." His versification, too, is decidedly of the
Drydenic type. It is a free, fierce, rushing, sometimes staggering, race
across meadow, moor, and mountain, dreading nothing except repose
and languor, the lines chasing, and sometimes tumbling over each other
in their haste, like impatient hounds at a fox-hunt. But more than
Dryden, we think, has Churchill displayed the genuine poetic faculty,
as well as often a loftier tone of moral indignation. This latter feeling is
the inspiration of "The Candidate," and of "The Times," which,
although coarse in subject, and coarse in style, burns with a fire of
righteous indignation, reminding you of Juvenal. The finest display of
his imaginative power is in "Gotham," which is throughout a glorious
rhapsody, resembling some of the best prose effusions of Christopher
North, and abounding in such lines as these:--

"The cedar, whose top mates the highest cloud,
Whilst his old father
Lebanon grows proud
Of such a child, and _his vast body laid
Out
many a mile, enjoys the filial shade_."
It is of "Gotham" that Cowper says that few writers have equalled it for
its "bold and daring strokes of fancy; its numbers so hazardously
ventured upon, and so happily finished; its matter so compressed, and
yet so clear; its colouring so sparingly laid on, and yet with such a
beautiful effect."
One great objection to Churchill's poetry lies in the temporary interest
of the subjects to which most of it is devoted. The same objection,
however, applies to the letters of Junius, and to the speeches and papers
of Burke; and the same answer to it will avail for all. Junius, by the
charm of his style, by his classic severities, and purged, poignant
venom, contrives to interest us in the paltry political feuds of the past.
Burke's does the same, by the general principles he extracts from, and
by the poetry with which he gilds, the rubbish. And so does Churchill,
by the weighty sense, the vigorous versification, the inextinguishable
spirit, and the trenchant satire and invective of his song. The wretched
intrigues of Newcastle and Bute, the squabbles of the aldermen and
councillors of the day, the petty quarrels of petty patriots among
themselves, and the poverty, spites, and frailties of forgotten players,
are all shown as in a magnifying-glass, and shine upon us transfigured
in the light of the poet's genius.
We have not room for lengthened criticism on all his separate
productions. "The Rosciad" is the most finished, pointed, and Pope-like
of his satires; it has more memorable and quotable lines than any of the
rest. "The Prophecy of Famine" is full of trash; but contains, too, many
lines in which political hatred, through its intense fervour, sparkles 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