The hostile waters close around their head, Those who remain their fearful doom await, Inclosed with all the demons of the main, And now, lashed on by destiny severe, In vain the cords and axes were prepared, O were it mine with tuneful Maro's art, As o'er the surf the bending mainmast hung, Some, from the main yard-arm impetuous thrown Next, O unhappy chief! the eternal doom To black adversity's approach exposed, With want, and hardships unforeseen enclosed; ROBERT LLOYD. By ROBERT LLOYD, the friend of Cowper and Churchill, was born in London in 1733. His father was under-master at Westminster school. He distinguished himself by his talents at Cambridge, but was irregular in his habits. After completing his education, he became an usher under his father. The wearisome routine of this life soon disgusted him, and he attempted to earn a subsistence by his literary talents. His poem called The Actor attracted some notice, and was the precursor of Churchill's 'Rosciad.' The style is light and easy, and the observations generally correct and spirited. contributing to periodical works as an essayist, a poet, and stage critic, Lloyd picked up a precarious subsistence, but his means were thoughtlessly squandered in company with Churchill and other wits 'upon town.' He brought out two indifferent theatrical pieces, published his poems by subscription, and edited the St James's Magazine,' to which Colman, Bonnel Thornton, and others, contributed. The magazine failed, and Lloyd was cast into prison for debt. Churchill generously allowed him a guinea a-week, as well as a servant; and endeavoured to raise a subscription for the purpose of extricating him from his embarrassments. Churchill died in November 1764. Lloyd,' says Mr Southey, had been apprised of his danger; but when the news of his death was somewhat abruptly announced to him, as he was sitting at dinner, he was seized with a sudden sickness, and saying, "I shall follow poor Charles," took to his bed, from which he never rose again; dying, if ever man died, of a broken heart. The tragedy did not end here: Churchill's favourite sister, who is said to have possessed much of her brother's sense, and spirit, and genius, and to have been betrothed to Lloyd, attended him during his illness; and, sinking under the double loss, soon followed her brother and her lover to the grave.' Lloyd, in conjunction with Colman, parodied the Odes of Gray and Mason, and the humour of their burlesques is not tinctured with malignity. Indeed, this unfortunate young poet seems to have been one of the gentlest of witty observers and lively satirists; he was ruined by the friendship of Churchill and the Nonsense Club, and not by the force of an evil nature. The vivacity of his style (which both Churchill and Cowper copied) may be seen from the following short extract on [The Miseries of a Poet's Life.] The harlot muse, so passing gay, Too careless of the means to live; O glorious trade! for wit's a trade, But bad as the life of a hackney poet and critic seems to have been in Lloyd's estimation, the situation of a school-usher was as little to his mind: [Wretchedness of a School-Usher.] Were I at once empowered to show My utmost vengeance on my foe, To punish with extremest rigour, I could inflict no penance bigger, Than, using him as learning's tool, To make him usher of a school. For, not to dwell upon the toil Of working on a barren soil, And labouring with incessant pains, To cultivate a blockhead's brains, The duties there but ill befit The love of letters, arts, or wit. For one, it hurts me to the soul, To brook confinement or control; Still to be pinioned down to teach The syntax and the parts of speech; Or, what perhaps is drudgery worse, The links, and points, and rules of verse; To deal out authors by retail, Like penny pots of Oxford ale; Oh 'tis a service irksome more, Than tugging at the slavish oar! Yet such his task, a dismal truth, Who watches o'er the bent of youth, And while a paltry stipend earning, He sows the richest seeds of learning, And tills their minds with proper care, And sees them their due produce bear; No joys, alas! his toil beguile, His own lies fallow all the while. 'Yet still he's on the road,' you say, 'Of learning.' Why, perhaps he may, But turns like horses in a mill, Nor getting on, nor standing still; For little way his learning reaches, Who reads no more than what he teaches. CHARLES CHURCHILL A second Dryden was supposed to have arisen in Churchill, when he published his satirical poem, The Rosciad, in 1761. The impression was continued by his reply to the critical reviewers, shortly afterwards; and his Epistle to Hogarth, The Prophecy of Famine, Night, and passages in his other poemsall thrown off in haste to serve the purpose of the day-evinced great facility of versification, and a breadth and boldness of personal invective that drew instant attention to their author. Though Cowper, from early predilections, had a high opinion of Churchill, and thought he was indeed a poet,' we cannot now consider the author of the Rosciad' as more than a special pleader or pamphleteer in verse. He seldom reaches the heart-except in some few lines of penitential fervour-and he never ascended to the higher regions of imagination, then trod by Collins, Gray, and Akenside. With the beauties of external nature he had not the slightest sympathy. He died before he had well attained the prime of life; yet there is no youthful enthusiasm about his works, nor any indications that he sighed for a higher fame than that of being the terror of actors and artists, noted for his libertine eccentricities, and distinguished for his devotion to Wilkes. That he misapplied strong original talents in following out these pitiful or unworthy objects of his ambition, is undeniable; but as a satirical poet-the only character in which he appears as an author-he is immeasurably inferior to Pope or Dryden. The 'fatal facility' of his verse, and his unscrupulous satire of living individuals and passing events, had, however, the effect of making all London ring from side to side' with his applause, at a time when the real poetry of the age could hardly obtain either publishers or readers. Excepting Marlow, the dramatic poet, scarcely any English author of reputation has been more unhappy in his life and end than Charles Churchill. He was the son of a clergyman in Westminster, where he was born in 1741. After attending Westminster school and Trinity college, Cambridge (which he quitted abruptly), he made a clandestine marriage with a young lady in Westminster, and was assisted by his father, till he was ordained and settled in the curacy of Rainham, in Essex. His father died in 1758, and the poet was appointed his successor in the curacy and lectureship of St John's at Westminster. This transition, which pro mised an accession of comfort and respectability, To Churchill, the bard, cries the Westminster dean, mean? 'Tis shameful, irreverent-you must keep to church If wise ones I will; and if not they're for fools. to be a keen political satirist. The excesses of his Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies. Look back! a thought which borders on despair, The Conference. with Wilkes in the list of those whom the mes sengers had verbal instructions to apprehend under the general warrant issued for that purpose, the execution of which gave rise to the most popular and only beneficial part of the warm contest that ensued with government. Churchill was with Wilkes The most ludicrous, and, on the whole, the best of at the time the latter was apprehended, and himself Churchill's satires, is his Prophecy of Famine, a only escaped owing to the messenger's ignorance of Scots pastoral, inscribed to Wilkes. The Earl of his person, and to the presence of mind with which Bute's administration had directed the enmity of all Wilkes addressed him by the name of Thomson,” .* disappointed patriots and keen partisans against the Even Johnson and Junius desThe poet now set about his satire, the Prophecy of Scottish nation. Famine, which, like Wilkes's North Briton, was cended to this petty national prejudice, and Churchill specially directed against the Scottish nation. The revelled in it with such undisguised exaggeration outlawry of Wilkes separated the friends, but they and broad humour, that the most saturnine or sensikept up a correspondence, and Churchill continued tive of our countrymen must have laughed at its absurdity. This unique pastoral opens as follows:Two boys whose birth, beyond all question, springs From great and glorious, though forgotten kings, Shepherds of Scottish lineage, born and bred On the same bleak and barren mountain's head, By niggard nature doomed on the same rocks To spin out life, and starve themselves and flocks, Fresh as the morning, which, enrobed in mist, The mountain's top with usual dulness kissed, * Life of Churchill prefixed to works. London: 1804. When Churchill entered the room, Wilkes was in custody of the messenger. 'Good morning, Mr Thomson,' said Wilkes to him. How does Mrs Thomson do? Does she dine in the country?" Churchill took the hint as readily as it had been given. He replied that Mrs Thomson was waiting for him, and that he only came, for a moment, to ask him how he did. Then almost directly he took his leave, hastened home, secured his papers, retired into the country, and eluded all search. Jockey and Sawney to their labours rose ; Soon clad I ween, where nature needs no clothes; Jockey, whose manly high cheek bones to crown, In the same poem Churchill thus alludes to himself: Who would, but cannot, with a master's skill, The characters of Garrick, &c., in the Rosciad, have now ceased to interest; but some of these rough pen-and-ink sketches of Churchill are happily executed. Smollett, who he believed had attacked him in the Critical Review, he alludes to with mingled approbation and ridicule Whence could arise this mighty critic spleen, In walks of humour, in that cast of style, * The birth-day of the old Chevalier. It used to be a great object with the gardener of a Scottish Jacobite family of those days to have the Stuart emblem in blow by the tenth of June. In comedy, his natural road to fame, In 'Night,' Churchill thus gaily addressed his friend The reputation of Churchill was also an aërial structure. No English poet,' says Southey, had ever enjoyed so excessive and so short-lived a popularity; and indeed no one seems more thoroughly to have understood his own powers; there is no indication in any of his pieces that he could have done any thing better than the thing he did. To Wilkes he said, that nothing came out till he began to be pleased with it himself; but, to the public, he boasted of the haste and carelessness with which his verses were poured forth. Had I the power, I could not have the time, While spirits flow, and life is in her prime, Without a sin 'gainst pleasure, to design A plan, to methodise each thought, each line, Highly to finish, and make every grace In itself charming, take new charms from place. Nothing of books, and little known of men, When the mad fit comes on I seize the pen; Rough as they run, the rapid thoughts set down, Rough as they run, discharge them on the town. Popularity which is easily gained, is lost as easily; such reputations resembling the lives of insects, whose shortness of existence is compensated by its proportion of enjoyment. He perhaps imagined that his genius would preserve his subjects, as spices preserve a mummy, and that the individuals whom he had eulogised or stigmatised would go down to posterity in his verse, as an old admiral comes home from the West Indies in a puncheon of rum: he did not consider that the rum is rendered loathsome, and that the spices with which the Pharaohs and Potiphars were embalmed, wasted their sweetness in the catacombs. But, in this part of his conduct, there was no want of worldly prudence: he was enriching himself by hasty writings, for which the immediate sale was in proportion to the bitterness and personality of the satire.' man, and trained all his children to a knowledge of their letters, and a deep sense of religious duty. In the summer months Michael was put out to herd cattle. His education was retarded by this employment; but his training as a poet was benefited by solitary communion with nature, amidst scenery that overlooked Lochleven and its fine old ruined castle. When he had arrived at his fifteenth year, the poet was judged fit for college, and at this time a relation of his father died, leaving him a legacy of 200 merks Scots, or £11, 2s. 2d. sterling. This sum the old man piously devoted to the education of his favourite son, who proceeded with it to Edinburgh, and was enrolled a student of the university. Michael was soon distinguished for his proficiency, and for his taste for poetry. Having been three sessions at college, supported by his parents and some kind friends and neighbours, Bruce engaged to teach a school at Gairney Bridge, where he received for his labours about £11 per annum! He afterwards removed to Forest Hill, near Alloa, where he taught for some time with no better success. His schoolroom was low-roofed and damp, and the poor youth, confined for five or six hours a-day in this unwholesome atmosphere, depressed by poverty and disappointment, soon lost health and spirits. He wrote his poem of Lochleven at Forest Hill, but was at length forced to return to his father's cottage, which he never again left. A pulmonary complaint had settled on him, and he was in the last stage of consumption. With death full in his view, he wrote his Ode to Spring, the finest of all his productions. He was pious and cheerful to the last, and died on the 5th of July 1767, aged twenty-one years and three months. His Bible was found upon his pillow, marked down at Jer. xxii. 10, Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him.' So blameless a life could not indeed be contemplated without pleasure, but its premature termination must have been a heavy blow to his aged parents, who had struggled in their poverty to nurture his youthful genius. afterwards included in Anderson's edition of the poets. The late venerable and benevolent Principal Baird, in 1807, published an edition by subscription for the benefit of Bruce's mother, then a widow. In 1837, a complete edition of the poems was brought out, with a life of the author from original sources, by the Rev. William Mackelvie, Balgedie, Kinrossshire. In this full and interesting memoir ample reparation is made to the injured shade of Michael Bruce for any neglect or injustice done to his poetical fame by his early friend Logan. Had Bruce lived, it is probable he would have taken a high place among our national poets. He was gifted with the requisite enthusiasm, fancy, and love of nature. There was a moral beauty in his life and character which would naturally have expanded itself in poetical composition. The pieces he has left have all the marks of youth; a style only half-formed and immature, and resemblances to other poets, so close and frequent, that the reader is constantly stumbling on some familiar image or expression. In Lochleven,' a descriptive poem in blank verse, he has taken Thomson as his model. The opening is a paraphrase of the commencement of Thomson's Spring, and epithets taken from the Seasons occur throughout the whole poem, with traces of Milton, Ossian &c. The following passage is the most original and pleasing in the poem : [A Rural Picture.] Now sober Industry, illustrious power! Hath raised the peaceful cottage, calm abode Of innocence and joy: now, sweating, guides The shining ploughshare; tames the stubborn soil; Leads the long drain along the unfertile marsh; Bids the bleak hill with vernal verdure bloom, The haunt of flocks; and clothes the barren heath With waving harvests and the golden grain. In rural pride, 'mong intermingled trees! Above whose aged tops the joyful swains, At even-tide descending from the hill, With eye enamoured, mark the many wreaths Of pillared smoke, high curling to the clouds. The streets resound with Labour's various voice, Who whistles at his work. Gay on the green, Young blooming boys, and girls with golden hair, Trip, nimble-footed, wanton in their play, The village hope. All in a reverend row, Their gray-haired grandsires, sitting in the sun, Before the gate, and leaning on the staff, The well-remembered stories of their youth Recount, and shake their aged locks with joy. How fair a prospect rises to the eye, Where Beauty vies in all her vernal forms, For ever pleasant, and for ever new! Swells the exulting thought, expands the soul, Drowning each ruder care: a blooming train Of bright ideas rushes on the mind, Imagination rouses at the scene; Fair from his hand behold the village rise, And backward, through the gloom of ages past, Encircled with her swains and rosy nymphs, |