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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CHR-CLI |
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CHURCHILL, CHARLES (1731-1764) , English poet and satirist, was born in Vine Street, Westminster, in February 1731. His father, rector of Rainham, Essex, held the curacy and lectureship of St John's, Westminster, from 1733, and the son was educated at Westminster school, where he became a good classical scholar, and formed a close and lasting intimacy with Robert Lloyd. Churchill was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge , in 1749, but never resided. He had been refused at Oxford, ostensibly on the unlikely ground of lack of classical knowledge, but more probably because of a hasty marriage which he had contracted within the rules of the Fleet in his eighteenth year. He and his wife lived in his father's house, and Churchill was afterwards sent to the north of England to prepare for holy orders. He became curate of South Cadbury, Somersetshire, and, on receiving priest's orders (1756), began to act as his father's curate at Rainham. Two years later the elder Churchill died, and the son was elected to succeed him in his curacy and lectureship. His emoluments amounted to less than loo a year, and he increased his income by teaching in a girls' school. He fulfilled his various duties with decorum for a while, but his marriage proved unfortunate, and he spent much of his time in dissipation in the society of Robert Lloyd. He was separated from his wife in 1761, and would have been imprisoned for debt but for the timely help of Lloyd's father, who had been an usher and was now a master of Westminster school.Churchill had already done some work for the booksellers, and his friend Lloyd had had some success with a didactic poem, " The Actor." His intimate knowledge of the theatre was now turned to account in the Rosciad, which appeared in March 1761. This reckless and amusing satire described with the most disconcerting accuracy the faults of the various actors and actresses on the London stage. Its immediate popularity was no doubt largely due to its personal character, but its real vigour and raciness make it worth reading even now when the objects of Churchill's wit are many of them forgotten. The first impressicn was published anonymously, and in the Critical Review, conducted by Tobias Smollett, it was confidently asserted that the poem was the joint production of George Colman, Bonnell Thornton and Robert Lloyd. Churchill owned the authorship and immediately published an Apology addressed to the Critical Reviewers, which, after developing the subject that it is only the caste ofauthors that prey on their own kind, repeats the fierce attack on the stage. Incidentally it contains an enthusiastic tribute to Dryden, of whom Churchill was a not unworthy scholar. In the Rosciad he had given warm praise to Mrs Pritchard, Mrs Cibber and Mrs Clive
Davies
He now became a close ally of John Wilkes, whom he regularly assisted with the North Briton. The Prophecy of Famine: A Scots Pastoral
bear in torn clerical bands hugging a pot of porter
insolent and loud, Vain idol of a scribbling crowd." Other poems are " The Conference " (1763); " The Author " (1763), highly praised by Churchill's contemporaries; " Gotham (1764), a poem on the duties of a king, didactic rather than satiric in tone; " The Candidate " (1764), a satire on John Montagu, fourth earl
In October 1764 he went to Boulogne to join Wilkes. There he was attacked by a fever of which he died on the 4th of November. He left his property to his two sons, and made Wilkes his literary executor with full powers. Wilkes did little. He wrote an epitaph for his friend and about half a dozen notes on his poems, and Andrew Kippis acknowledges some slight assistance from him in preparing his life of Churchill for the Biographia Britannica (178o). There is more than one instance of Churchill's generosity to his friends. In 1763 he found his friend Robert Lloyd in prison for debt. He paid a guinea a week for his better maintenance in the Fleet, and raised a subscription to set him free. Lloyd fell ill on receipt of the news of Churchill's death, and died shortly afterwards. Churchill's sister Patty, who was engaged to Lloyd, did not long survive them. William Cowper was his schoolfellow, and left many kindly references to him. A partial collection of Churchill's poems appeared in 1763. They are included in Chalmers's edition of the English poets, and were edited (1804) by W. Tooke. This was reprinted in the Aldine edition (1844). There is a revised edition (1892) in the same series , The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill, with a Memoir by J. L. Hannay and copious notes by W. Tooke. For Churchill's biography,see Genuine Memoirs of Charles Churchill, with an account of and observations on his writings; together witk some Original
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