"Vivuntque commissi calores
AEoliae fidibus puellae."
The loves of Sappho _live_. They have not passed away. They _are_
immortally. Therefore the Poet, as we said, is the giver of fame. His
praise--his scorn--lives for ever.
All who are worthy to read Us know how well the rude primeval people
comprehended the worth of the poet. The song rang to the borders of the
land or of the name, and that was glory or ignominy alive in every heart.
Honour given by the poet was then a substantial possession; to be
disgraced by his biting vituperation was like the infliction of a legal
punishment. The whole condition of things--men's minds and their outward
relations--corresponded to that which seems now to us an extraordinary
procedure--that of constituting the poet, in virtue of that name, a state
functionary, holding office, rank, and power. Now, the poet is but a
self-constituted Censor. He holds office from the Muse only; or upon
occasion from the mighty mother, Dulness. The Laureateship is the only
office in the State of Poetry that is in the Queen's gift; and that,
thanks to her benignity and the good sense of the nineteenth century, has
become a sinecure conferred on an Emeritus.
"Hollo! my fancy, whether dost thou roam?"
Nay, she is not roaming at all--for we have been all along steering in the
wind's eye right to a given point. We come now to say a few words of
CHARLES CHURCHILL.
Of him it was said by one greater far, that he "blazed the meteor of a
season." For four years--during life--his popularity--in London and the
suburbs--was prodigious; for forty--and that is a long time after
death--he was a choice classic in the libraries of aging or aged men of
wit upon town; and now, that nearly a century has elapsed since he "from
his horrid hair shook pestilence and war" o'er slaves and Scotsmen, tools
and tyrants, peers, poetasters, priests, pimps, and players, his name is
still something more than a mere dissyllable, and seems the shadow of the
sound that Mother Dulness was wont to whisper in her children's ears when
fretting wakefully on her neglected breasts. The Satirist, of all poets,
calls the enquiry of the world upon himself. The Censor of manners should
in his own be irreproachable. The satirist of a nation should feel that in
that respect in which he censures he is whole and sound; that in assailing
others he stands upon a rock; that his arrows cannot by a light shifting
of the wind return to his own bosom. It was not so with Churchill. But he
had his virtues--and he died young.
"Life to _the last enjoy'd_!! here Churchill lies."
It is not of his life but his writings we purpose to speak. It is not to
be thought that his reputation at the time, and among some high critics
since, could be groundless. There is an air of power in his way of
attacking any and every subject. He goes to work without embarrassment,
with spirit and ease, and is presently in his matter, or in some matter,
rarely inane. It is a part, and a high part of genius, to design; but he
was destitute of invention. The self-dubbed champion of liberty and
letters, he labours ostentatiously and energetically in that vocation; and
in the midst of tumultuous applause, ringing round a career of almost
uninterrupted success, he seldom or never seems aware that the duties he
had engaged himself to perform--to his country and his kind--were far
beyond his endowments--above his conception. His knowledge either of books
or men was narrow and superficial. In no sense had he ever been a student.
His best thoughts are all essentially common-place; but, in uttering them,
there is almost always a determined plainness of words, a free step in
verse, a certain boldness and skill in evading the trammel of the rhyme,
deserving high praise; while often, as if spurning the style which yet
does not desert him, he wears it clinging about him with a sort of
disregarded grace.
The Rosciad--The Apology--Night--The Prophecy of Famine--An Epistle to
William Hogarth--The Duellist--Gotham--The Author--The Conference--The
Ghost--The Candidate--The Farewell--The Times--The Journey--Fragment of a
Dedication--such is the list of _Works_, whereof all England rung from
side to side--during the few noisy years he vapoured--as in the form of
shilling or half-crown pamphlets they frighted the Town from its
propriety, and gave monthly or quarterly assurance to a great people that
they possessed a great living Poet, worthy of being numbered with their
mightiest dead.
He began with the Play-house.
The theatre! Satire belongs to the day, and the theatre belongs to the
day. They seem well met. The spirit of both is the same--intense
popularity. Actors are human beings placed in an extraordinary relation to
other human beings: public characters; but brought the nearer to us by
being so--the good ones intimate with our bosoms, dear as friends. Their
persons, features, look, gait, gesture, familiar to our thoughts, vividly
engraven. They address themselves to every one of us personally, in tones
that thrill and chill, or that convulse us with merriment--and all for
pleasure! They ask our sympathy, but they task it not. No burthen of
distress that they may lay upon us do we desire to rid off our hearts. We
only call for more, more! They stir up the soul within us, as nothing else
in which, personally, we are quite unconcerned, does. Therefore the praise
or sarcasm that visits them, comes home to the privacy of our own
feelings. Besides, they belong to the service of the Muse; and so the
other servant of the Muse, the Satirist, as the superintendent of the
household, may reasonably reprehend or commend them. Further, they offer
themselves to favour and to disfavour, to praise, to dispraise; to the
applauding hands or to the exploding hisses of the public. There is, then
an attraction of fame-bestowing verse towards the stage. And yet does it
not seem a pity that the unfortunate bad actors should "bide the pelting
of _this_ pitiless storm," over and above that of others they are liable
to be assailed with? What great-minded Satirist could step down a
play-bill from the first rank of performers to the second and the
third--hunting out miserable mediocrities--dragging away the culprits of
the stage to flagellation and the pillory? Say then, at once, that the
Satirist is not great-minded, and his motives are not pure desires for the
general benefit. He is by the gift of nature witty, and rather
ill-natured. He very much enjoys his own wit, and he hopes that you have
fun enough in you to enjoy his jests, and so he breaks them. THE ROSCIAD
is, we believe, by far the best of Churchill's performances; very clever,
indeed, and characteristic; at the head of all theatrical criticism in
verse; yet an achievement, in spite of the talent and ingenuity it
displays, not now perusable without an accompanying feeling akin to
contempt.
"GOTHAM" is an irregular, poetical whim, of which it is easier to describe
the procedure than to assign the reasonable purpose. Gotham itself is a
country unknown to our geographers, which Churchill has discovered, and of
which, in right of that discovery, he assumes the sovereignty under his
own undisguised name, King Churchill. After spiritedly arraigning the
exercise in the real world of that right by which he rules in his
imaginary kingdom--a right which establishes the civilised in the lands of
the enslaved or expatriated uncivilised, he spends the rest of his first
canto in summoning all creatures, rational and irrational, to join the
happy Gothamites in the universal choral celebration of his mounting the
throne. The second canto, for some two hundred verses, insists upon the
necessity of marrying Sense with Art, to produce good writing, and
Learning with Humanity, to produce useful writing; and then turns off
bitterly to characterise the reigns in succession of the Stuarts, by way
of warning to his Gothamites against the temptation to admit a vagrant
Stuart for their king. The third canto delivers the rules by which he,
King Churchill, who purposes being the father of his people, designs to
govern his own reign. That is all. What and where is Gotham? What is the
meaning of this royalty with which the poet invests himself? What is the
drift, scope, and unity of the poem? Gotham is not, and is, England. It is
not England, for he tells us in the poem that he is born in England, and
that he is not born in Gotham; besides which, he expressly distinguishes
the two countries by admonishing the Gothamites to search "England's fair
records," for the sake of imbibing a due hatred for the House of Stuart.
It is England, for it is an island which "Freedom's pile, by ancient
wisdom raised, adorns," making it great and glorious, feared abroad and
happy at home, secure from force or fraud. Moreover, her merchants are
princes. The conclusion is, that Gotham is England herself, poetically
disidentified by a very thin and transparent disguise. The sovereignty of
King Churchill, if it mean any thing capable of being said in prose, may
shadow the influence and authority which a single mind, assuming to itself
an inborn call to ascendancy, wishes and hopes to possess over the
intelligence of its own compatriot nation; and this may be conjectured in
a writer who principally dedicates himself to the championship of
political principles. The rules, in the Third Book, for the conduct of a
prince, afford the opportunity of describing the idea of a patriot king,
of censuring that which is actually done adversely to these rules; and, at
the same time, they acquire something of a peculiar meaning, if they are
to be construed as a scheme of right political thinking--the intelligence
of the general welfare which is obligatory upon the political ruler being
equally so upon the political teacher. If this kind of deliberate,
allegorical design may be mercifully supposed, the wild self-imagination,
and apparently downright nonsense of the First Book, may pretend a
palliation of its glaring vanity and absurdity; since the blissful reign
of King Churchill over Gotham, which is extolled very much like the "Jovis
incrementum," in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue, thus comes to mean, when
translated into the language of men, the reign in England of the opinions
for which Churchill battles in rhyme. Or, this may be too much attribution
of plan to a caprice that meant little or nothing. The first book was
published by itself, and may have aimed at something to which the author
found that he could not give shape and consistency. Yet Cowper declares
Gotham to be a noble and beautiful poem.
THE AUTHOR might almost seem intended for a sequel to MacFlecnoe and the
Dunciad. Not that it assumes, like them, a fanciful vehicle for the
satire, but it undertakes the lashing of peccant authors, and recognises
DULNESS as an enthroned power to whose empire the writer is hostile; and
where he adverts to his own early life, and clerical destination, he
mentions her as the patroness upon whom his friends had relied for his
future church preferment.
"But now, when Dulness rears aloft her throne,
When lordly vassals her wide empire own;
When Wit, seduced by Envy, starts aside,
And basely leagues with Ignorance and Pride, &c.
* * * * *
Bred to the church, and for the gown decreed,
Ere it was known that I should learn to read;
Though that was nothing for my friends, who knew
What mighty Dulness of itself could do,
Never design'd me for a working priest,
But hoped I should have been a dean at least," &c.
The writers more formally and regularly attacked, are Smollett, Murphy,
Shebbeare, Guthrie, and one Kidgell, who contrived to earn shame, in
exposing to shame the printed but unpublished obscenity and blasphemy of
Wilkes. Johnson gets a good word as a state-pensioner, Francis, the
translator of Horace, for dulness apparently, and Mason, and even Gray,
are signalized, _en passant_, as artificial rhymesters! The general tenor
of the poem complains that in these days true learning, genius, and the
honesty of authorship are of no account; whilst the political profligacy
of the pen ensures favour and pay. The first hundred lines forcibly
express the inspiring indignation proper to the subject, and some of them
are still occasionally quoted; but how inferior all to corresponding
strains in Dryden and Pope! They were poets indeed--he was not a poet. He
has not fancy or imagination--they had both--they were consummate masters
in their art: he was but a bold bungler after all. In proof, take the best
passage in THE AUTHOR.
"Is this--O death to think!--is this the land
Where merit and reward went hand in hand?
Where heroes, parent-like, the poet view'd,
By whom they saw their glorious deeds renew'd?
Where poets, true to honour, tuned their lays,
And by their patrons sanctified their praise?
Is this the land where, on our Spenser's tongue,
Enamour'd of his voice, Description hung?
Where Jonson rigid Gravity beguiled,
While Reason through her critic fences smiled?
Where Nature listening stood whilst Shakspeare play'd,
And wonder'd at the work herself had made?
Is this the land where, mindful of her charge,
And office high, fair Freedom walk'd at large?
Where, finding in our laws a sure defence,
She mock'd at all restraints, but those of sense?
Where, Health and Honour trooping by her side,
She spreads her sacred empire far and wide;
Pointed the way, Affliction to beguile,
And bade the face of Sorrow wear a smile--
Bade those who dare obey the generous call
Enjoy her blessings, which God meant for all?
Is this the land where, in some tyrant's reign,
When a weak, wicked, ministerial train,
The tools of power, the slaves of interest, plann'd
Their country's ruin, and with bribes unmann'd
Those wretches, who ordain'd in Freedom's cause,
Gave up our liberties, and sold our laws;
When Power was taught by Meanness where to go,
Nor dared to love the virtue of a foe;
When, like a lep'rous plague, from the foul head
To the foul heart her sores Corruption spread,
Her iron arm when stern Oppression rear'd,
And Virtue, from her broad base shaken, fear'd
The scourge of Vice; when, impotent and vain,
Poor Freedom bow'd the neck to Slavery's chain?
Is this the land, where, in those worst of times,
The hardy poet raised his honest rhymes
To dread rebuke, and bade Controlment speak
In guilty blushes on the villain's cheek;
Bade Power turn pale, kept mighty rogues in awe,
And made hem fear the Muse, who fear'd not law?
"How do I laugh, when men of narrow souls,
Whom folly guides, and prejudice controls;
Who, one dull drowsy track of business trod,
Worship their Mammon, and neglect their God;
Who, breathing by one musty set of rules,
Dote from their birth, and are by system fools;
Who, form'd to dulness from their very youth,
Lies of the day prefer to Gospel-truth;
Pick up their little knowledge from Reviews,
And lay out all their stock of faith in news;
How do I laugh, when creatures form'd like these,
Whom Reason scorns, and I should blush to please,
Rail at all liberal arts, deem verse a crime,
And hold not truth as truth, if told in rhyme?"
These are commendable verses, but they are not the verses of a true poet.
For instance, when he will praise the greatest poets--
"Is this the land, where, on our Spenser's _tongue_,
Enamour'd of his _voice_, Description hung"--
the intention is good, and there is some love in the singling out of the
name; but Description is almost the lowest, not the highest praise of
Spenser. The language too is mean and trite, not that of one who is
"_inflammatus amore_" of the sacred poet whom he praises. How differently
does Lucretius praise Epicurus! The words blaze as he names him. How
differently does Pope or Gray praise Dryden! Even in Churchill's few words
there is the awkward and heavy tautology--tongue and voice. It is more
like the tribute of duty than sensibility. The well-known distich on
Shakspeare is rather good--it utters with a vigorous turn the general
sentiment, the nation's wonder of its own idol. But compare Gray, who also
brings Nature and Shakspeare together; or see him speaking of Dryden or
Milton, and you see how a poet speaks of a poet--thrilled with
recollections--reflecting, not merely commemorating, the power. Indeed, we
design to have a few (perhaps twenty) articles entitled Poets on Poets--in
which we shall collect chronologically the praises of the brotherhood by
the brotherhood. In the mean time we do believe that the one main thing
which you miss in Churchill is the true poetical touch and temper of the
spirit. He is, as far as he succeeds, a sort of inferior Junius in
verse--sinewy, keen--with a good, ready use of strong, plain English; but
he has no rapture. His fire is volcanic, not solar. Yet no light praise it
is, that he rejects frivolous ornament, and trusts to the strength of the
thought, and of the good or ill within. But besides the disparity--which
is great--of strength, of intellectual rank--this draws an insuperable
difference in kind between him and Pope or Dryden, that they are
essentially poets. The gift of song is on their lips. If they turn
Satirists, they bring the power to another than its wonted and native
vocation. But Churchill obtains the power only in satirizing. As Iago
says--
"For I am nothing if not critical."
Is this merely a repetition of Juvenal's "_facit indignatio versus_,"
rendered in prose, "Indignation makes _me_ a poet," who am not a poet by
nature? In the first place, Juvenal prodigiously transcends Churchill in
intellectual strength; and in the second, Juvenal has far more of
essential poetry, although hidden in just vituperation, and in the imposed
worldliness of his matter. But we must pull up.
The so-called "EPISTLE TO HOGARTH" is, after the wont of Churchill, a
shapeless, undigested performance. It is nothing in the likeness of an
epistle; but for three hundred lines a wandering, lumbering rhapsody,
addressed to nobody, which, after abusing right and left, suddenly turns
to Hogarth, whom it introduces by summoning him to stand forth at the bar
in the Court of Conscience, an exemplar of iniquities worse than could
have been believed of humanity, were he not there to sustain the
character, and authenticate the rightful delineation. Thenceforwards
obstreperously railing on, overwhelming the great painter with exaggerated
reproaches for envy that persecuted all worth, for untired self-laudation,
for painting his unfortunate _Sigismunda_; and oh! shame of song! for the
advancing infirmities of old age. The merits of Hogarth, as master of
comic painting, are acknowledged in lines that have been often quoted, and
are of very moderate merit--not worth a rush. "The description of his age
and infirmities," as Garrick said at the time, "is too shocking and
barbarous." It nauseates the soul; and unmasks in the Satirist the
rancorous and malignant hostility which assumes the disguise of a
righteous indignation.
"Hogarth! stand forth.--Nay, hang not thus aloof--
Now, Candor! now thou shalt receive such proof,
Such damning proof, that henceforth thou shalt fear
To tax my wrath, and own my conduct clear--
Hogarth! stand forth--I dare thee to be try'd
In that great court where Conscience must preside;
At that most solemn bar hold up thy hand;
Think before whom, on what account, you stand--
Speak, but consider well--from first to last
Review thy life, weigh ev'ry action past--
Nay, you shall have no reason to complain--
Take longer time, and view them o'er again--
Canst thou remember from thy earliest youth,
And, as thy God must judge thee, speak the truth;
A single instance where, self laid aside,
And justice taking place of fear and pride,
Thou with an equal eye did'st genius view,
And give to merit what was merit's due?
Genius and merit are a sure offence,
And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.
Is any one so foolish to succeed?
On Envy's altar he is doom'd to bleed;
Hogarth, a guilty pleasure in his eyes,
The place of executioner supplies:
See how he glotes, enjoys the sacred feast,
And proves himself by cruelty a priest.
"Whilst the weak artist, to thy whims a slave,
Would bury all those pow'rs which Nature gave;
Would suffer black concealment to obscure
Those rays thy jealousy could not endure;
To feed thy vanity would rust unknown,
And to secure thy credit blast his own,
In Hogarth he was sure to find a friend
He could not fear, and therefore might commend:
But when his Spirit, rous'd by honest shame,
Shook off that lethargy, and soar'd to fame;
When, with the pride of man, resolv'd and strong,
He scorn'd those fears which did his honour wrong,
And, on himself determin'd to rely,
Brought forth his labours to the public eye,
No friend in thee could such a rebel know;
He had desert, and Hogarth was his foe.
"Souls of a tim'rous cast, of petty name
In Envy's court, not yet quite dead to shame,
May some remorse, some qualms of conscience feel,
And suffer honour to abate their zeal;
But the man truly and completely great
Allows no rule of action but his hate;
Thro' ev'ry bar he bravely breaks his way,
Passion his principle, and parts his prey.
Mediums in vice and virtue speak a mind
Within the pale of temperance confin'd;
The daring spirit scorns her narrow schemes,
And, good or bad, is always in extremes.
"Man's practice duly weigh'd, thro' ev'ry age
On the same plan hath Envy form'd her rage,
'Gainst those whom fortune hath our rivals made,
In way of science and in way of trade:
Stung with mean jealousy she arms her spite,
First works, then views their ruin with delight.
Our Hogarth here a grand improver shines,
And nobly on the gen'ral plan refines:
He like himself o'erleaps the servile bound;
Worth is his mark, wherever worth is found;
Should painters only his vast wrath suffice?
Genius in ev'ry walk is lawful prize:
'Tis a gross insult to his o'ergrown state;
His love to merit is to feel his hate.
"When Wilkes, our countryman, our common friend,
Arose, his king, his country, to defend;
When tools of pow'r he bar'd to public view,
And from their holes the sneaking cowards drew;
When Rancour found it far beyond her reach
To soil his honour and his truth impeach;
What could induce thee, at a time and place
Where manly foes had blush'd to show their face,
To make that effort which must damn thy name,
And sink thee deep, deep, in thy grave with shame?
Did virtue move thee? No; 'twas pride, rank pride,
And if thou had'st not done it thou had'st dy'd.
Malice, (who, disappointed of her end,
Whether to work the bane of foe or friend,
Preys on herself, and driven to the stake,
Gives virtue that revenge she scorns to take,)
Had kill'd thee, tott'ring on life's utmost verge,
Had Wilkes and Liberty escap'd thy scourge.
"When that Great Charter, which our fathers brought;
With their best blood, was into question bought,
When, big with ruin, o'er each English head
Vile slav'ry hung suspended by a thread;
When Liberty, all trembling and aghast,
Fear'd for the future, knowing what was past;
When ev'ry breast was chill'd with deep despair,
Till reason pointed out that Pratt was there;
Lurking most ruffian-like behind a screen,
So plac'd all things to see, himself unseen,
Virtue, with due contempt, saw Hogarth stand,
The murd'rous pencil in his palsied hand.
What was the cause of Liberty to him,
Or what was Honour? let them sink or swim,
So he may gratify without control
The mean resentment of his selfish soul;
Let freedom perish, if, to freedom true,
In the same ruin Wilkes may perish too.
"With all the symptoms of assur'd decay,
With age and sickness pinch'd and worn away,
Pale qiuv'ring lips, lank cheeks, and falt'ring tongue,
The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,
The body shrivell'd up, thy dim eyes sunk
Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk,
The body's weight unable to sustain,
The stream of life scarce trembling, thro' the vein,
More than half-kill'd by honest truths, which fell
Thro' thy own fault from men who wish'd thee well,
Canst thou, ev'n thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give,
And, dead to all things else, to malice live?
Hence, Dotard! to thy closet; shut thee in;
By deep repentance wash away thy sin;
From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,
And, on the verge of death, learn how to die."
What was Hogarth's unpardonable sin? Nature had lodged the unlovely soul
of Jack Wilkes in an unlovely and ludicrous person, which the wicked and
inimitable pencil of Hogarth had made a little unlovelier perhaps, and a
little more ludicrous. Horace Walpole spoke in his usual clear-cutting
style of Mr Charles Pylades and Mr John Orestes. They liked one another,
and ran the scent, strong as a trail of rancid fish-guts, of the same
pleasures--but let not such hunting in couples profane the name of
friendship.
"For me, who warm and zealous for my friend,
In spite of railing thousands, will commend,
And, no less warm and zealous 'gainst my foes,
Spite of commending thousands, will oppose--
I dare thy worst, with scorn behold thy rage;
But with an eye of pity view thy age--
Thy feeble age! in which, as in a glass,
We see how men to dissolution pass.
Thou wretched being! whom, on reason's plan,
So chang'd, so lost, I cannot call a man--
What could persuade thee at this time of life,
To launch afresh into the sea of strife!
Better for thee, scarce crawling on the earth,
Almost as much a child as at thy birth;
To have resign'd in peace thy parting breath,
And sunk unnotic'd in the arms of death.
Why would thy gray, gray hairs resentment brave,
Thus to go down with sorrow to the grave?
Now, by my soul! it makes me blush to know
My spirit could descend to such a foe:
Whatever cause the vengeance might provoke;
It seems rank cowardice to give the stroke.
"Sure 'tis a curse which angry Fates impose
To mortify man's arrogance, that those
Who're fashion'd of some better sort of clay
Much sooner than the common herd decay.
What bitter pangs must humble Genius feel
In their last hours, to view a Swift and Steele!
How must ill-boding horrors fill her breast,
When she beholds men mark'd above the rest
For qualities most dear, plung'd from that height,
And sunk, deep sunk, in second childhood's night!
Are men, indeed, such things? and are the best
More subject to this evil than the rest;
To drivel out whole years of idiot breath,
And sit the monuments of living Death!
O! galling circumstance to human pride!
Abasing thought! but not to be deny'd.
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought.
Constant attention wears the active mind,
Blots out her pow'rs, and leaves a blank behind,
But let not youth, to insolence ally'd,
In heat of blood, in full career of pride,
Possess'd of genius, with unhallow'd rage
Mock the infirmities of rev'rend age:
The greatest genius to this fate may bow;
Reynolds in time may be like Hogarth now."
One makes allowance, in reading, for the inflamed temper of the times, for
a judgment disturbed with personal anger, and for the self-consciousness
which, hardly separable from talent, stirs and sustains its energies.
But--Churchill demolishing Hogarth! It is startling--rather
melancholy--and very amusing. One compares fame with fame--the transitory
and the imperishable. The wave, lashed into fury, that comes on,
mountain-swollen, all rage, and froth, and thunder, to dash itself into
spray against some Atlas of the Deep--some huge brother of Time, whose
cheeks the wings of the centuries caress, and of whose hand storms that
distract heaven and earth are but toys.
Of the "PROPHECY OF FAMINE," Wilkes, before its publication, said he "was
sure it would take, as it was at once personal, poetical, and political."
And take it did--going off in thousands, and tens of thousands. The Whig
coteries, of course, cried it up to the skies; and the established
authorities declared that Pope must now hide his diminished head. Such
nonsense Churchill swallowed; for he had tried to take it into his head
that Pope was a fool to him, and in his cups was wont to vent a wish that
little Alec were alive, that he might break his heart. That was the
delusion of delirium. Inflated with vanity as he was, he must, when sober,
have known well he could not with his cudgel, readily though he flourished
it, have lived for five minutes before that Master of the rapier.
Scotsmen as we are to the spine, it is possible that we may be
incapacitated by the strength of our backbone for perceiving the mighty
merit of this astonishing satire. Steeped to the lips in national
prejudices in favour of Scotland, (not against England--heaven forbid!)
imbibed with the first gulp of Glenlivet that more than three quarters of
a century ago went gurgling down our filial throats--inured to hunger from
our tenderest years--"in life's morning march when our spirits were
young," ignorant of shoes, though haply not inexpert of sulphur--to us,
thus born and thus bred, it may not be given to behold with our outward
eyes, and feel with our inward hearts, the full glory of "The Prophecy of
Famine." Boswell, with an uneasy smirk, rather than a ghastly grin, said,
"It is indeed falsely applied to Scotland, but may on that account be
allowed a greater share of invention." Johnson in his heart loved
Scotland, as all his jeers show; and perhaps on that account was, like
ourselves, no fair judge of Churchill's genius. "I called the fellow a
blockhead at first--and I call him a blockhead still," comprehended all
his performances in one general contempt. In later times, Jeffrey has
dismissed him with little ceremony to find his place at the Third Table.
Campbell, who, though a Whig, cared nothing about Churchill, acknowledges
having been amused by the laughable extravagance of the "Prophecy." And
Lord Mahon says, "that it may yet be read with all the admiration which
the most vigorous powers of verse and the most lively touches of wit can
earn in the cause of slander and falsehood."
Suppose, rough-and-ready Readers, that you judge for yourselves. You have
not a copy of Churchill--so passing over the first part of the poem--about
three hundred lines--as dull as ditchwater in the season of powheads--let
us give you the cream, or marrow, or pith of the famous "Prophecy of
Famine," before which Scotia, "our auld respectit mither," bowed down and
fell, and was thought by some to have given up the ghost, or at least
"tined her dam."
"Two boys, whose birth, beyond all question, springs
From great and glorious tho' forgotten kings,
Shepherds of Scottish lineage, born and bred
On the same bleak and barren mountain's head;
By niggard Nature doom'd on the same rocks
To spin out life, and starve themselves and flocks;
Fresh as the morning which, enrob'd in mist,
The mountain's top with usual dulness kiss'd,
Jockey and Sawney, to their labours rose;
Soon clad I ween where Nature needs no clothes,
Where, from their youth inur'd to winter-skies,
Dress and her vain refinements they despise.
"Jockey, whose manly high-bon'd cheeks to crown,
With freckles spotted flam'd the golden down,
With meikle art could on the bagpipes play,
Ev'n from the rising to the setting day:
Sawney as long without remorse could bawl
Home's madrigals, and ditties from Fingal:
Oft at his strains, all natural tho' rude,
The Highland lass forgot her want of food;
And, whilst she scratch'd her lover into rest,
Sunk pleas'd, tho' hungry, on her Sawney's breast.
"Far as the eye could reach no tree was seen,
Earth, clad in russet, scorn'd the lively green:
The plague of locusts they secure defy,
For in three hours a grasshopper must die:
No living thing, whate'er its food, feasts there,
But the chameleon, who can feast on air.
No birds, except as birds of passage, flew;
No bee was known to hum, no dove to coo:
No streams, as amber smooth, as amber clear,
Were seen to glide, or heard to warble here:
Rebellion's spring, which thro' the country ran,
Furnish'd with bitter draughts the steady clan:
No flow'rs embalm'd the air but one White Rose,
Which on the tenth of June by instinct blows,
By instinct blows at morn, and when the shades
Of drizzly eve prevail, by instinct fades.
"One, and but one, poor solitary cave,
Too sparing of her favours, Nature gave;
That one alone (hard tax on Scottish pride!)
Shelter at once for man and beast supply'd.
Their snares without entangling briers spread,
And thistles, arm'd against the invader's head,
Stood in close ranks, all entrance to oppose,
Thistles! now held more precious than the Rose.
All creatures which, on Nature's earliest plan,
Were form'd to loathe and to be loath'd by man,
Which ow'd their birth to nastiness and spite,
Deadly to touch, and hateful to the sight;
Creatures, which, when admitted in the ark,
Their saviour shunn'd, and rankled in the dark,
Found place within. Marking her noisome road
With poison's trail, here crawl'd the bloated toad;
There webs were spread of more than common size,
And half-starv'd spiders prey'd on half-starv'd flies;
In quest of food, efts strove in vain to crawl;
Slugs, pinch'd with hunger, smear'd the slimy wall:
The cave around with hissing serpents rung;
On the damp roof unhealthy vapour hung;
And Famine, by her children always known,
As proud as poor, here fix'd her native throne.
"Here, for the sullen sky as overcast,
And summer shrunk beneath a wintry blast,
A native blast, which, arm'd with hail and rain,
Beat unrelenting on the naked swain,
The boys for shelter made: behind the sheep,
Of which those shepherds ev'ry day take keep,
Sickly crept on, and, with complainings rude,
On Nature seem'd to call and bleat for food.
"_Jockey._ Sith to this cave by tempest we're confin'd,
And within ken our flocks, under the wind,
Safe from the pelting of this per'lous storm,
Are laid among yon' thistles, dry and warm,
What, Sawney! if by shepherds' art we try
To mock the rigour of this cruel sky?
What if we tune some merry roundelay?
Well dost thou sing, nor ill doth Jockey play.
"_Sawney._ Ah Jockey, ill advisest thou, I wis,
To think of songs at such a time as this;
Sooner shall herbage crown these barren rocks,
Sooner shall fleeces clothe these ragged flocks,
Sooner shall want seize shepherds of the south,
And we forget to live from hand to mouth,
Than Sawney, out of season, shall impart
Tho songs of gladness with an aching heart.
"_Jockey._ Still have I known thee for a silly swain;
Of things past help what boots it to complain?
Nothing but mirth can conquer Fortune's spite;
No sky is heavy if the heart be light:
Patience is sorrow's salve: what can't be cur'd,
So Donald right areeds, must be endur'd.
"_Sawney._ Full silly swain, I wot, is Jockey now;
How didst thou bear thy Maggy's falsehood? how,
When with a foreign loon she stole away,
Didst thou forswear thy pipe and shepherd's lay?
Where was thy boasted wisdom then, when I
Apply'd those proverbs which you now apply?
"_Jockey._ O she was bonny! all the Highlands round
Was there a rival to my Maggy found?
More precious (tho' that precious is to all)
Than the rare med'cine which we Brimstone call,
Or that choice plant, so grateful to the nose,
Which in I-know-not-what-far country grows,
Was Maggy unto me: dear do I rue
A lass so fair should ever prove untrue.
"_Sawney._ Whether with pipe or song to charm the ear,
Thro' all the land did Jamie find a peer?
Curs'd be that year by ev'ry honest Scot,
And in the shepherds' kalendar forgot,
That fatal year, when Jamie, hapless swain!
In evil hour forsook the peaceful plain:
Jamie, when our young laird discreetly fled,
Was seiz'd, and hang'd till he was dead, dead, dead.
"_Jockey._ Full sorely may we all lament that day,
For all were losers in the deadly fray;
Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains,
Well dost thou know were none more hopeful swains;
Five brothers there I lost, in manhood's pride,
Two in the field, and three on gibbets dy'd:
Ah! silly swains! to follow war's alarms;
Ah! what hath shepherd's life to do with arms?
"_Sawney._ Mention it not--There saw I strangers clad
In all the honours of our ravish'd Plaid;
Saw the Ferrara, too, our nation's pride,
Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side.
There fell our choicest youth, and from that day
Mote never Sawney tune the merry lay;
Bless'd those which fell! curs'd those which still survive!
To mourn Fifteen renew'd in Forty-five."
As our memory of our personal experiences about the period in Scottish
history at which the above scene is laid is extremely obscure, we cannot
take upon ourselves to speak authoritatively of the fidelity of the
picture. But Churchill, we grieve to say it, was a regular--a thorough
Cockney. The instant a Cockney opens his mouth, or puts pen to paper about
Scotland, he stands confessed. Here Charles's attempt at the Scottish
dialect betrays the taint. Not a single one of the words he chucklingly
puts into the lips of Jockey and Sawney as characteristically
Scoto-Arcadian, was ever heard or seen by the breechless swains of that
pastoral realm. Never does an alien look so silly to the natives, be they
who they may, as when instructing them in their own language, or mimicking
the niceties and delicacies of its dialects. They pardonably think him
little better than a fool; nor does he mend the matter much by telling
them that he is satirical and a wit.
Considerable latitude in the article of language must be allowed to the
poet, who presents to us engaged in dialogue two natives of a country
where clothes and victuals are nearly unknown. "Rude must they be in
speech--and little graced with the set phrase of peace." Churchill was
bound to have conceived for them an utterance natural to their condition,
as Shakspeare did for Caliban. But over and above the Cockneyisms
committed by him, he makes them twaddle like middle-aged men in
middle-sized towns, who had passed all their nights in blankets, and all
their days in breeches, with as liberal an allowance of food as parish
paupers.
"To mock the rigour of this cruel sky,"
"In all the honours of our ravish'd plaid"--
"Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side,"
have here no dramatic propriety we opine--and show the slobberer.
The Satirist betrays the same poverty of invention in the sentiments as in
the language of the Swains. They illustrate no concealed character--they
reveal no latent truth.
"Rebellion's spring, which through the country ran,
Furnished with bitter draughts _the steady clan_;"
and yet the swains are averse from war, and exclaim--
"Ah! silly swains! to follow war's alarms;
Ah! what hath shepherd's life to do with arms?"