Churchill's favourite sister, Patty, who had been engaged to Lloyd,
soon afterwards sank under the double blow. The premature death of this
most popular of the poets of the time, excited a great sensation. His
furniture and books sold excessively high; a steel pen, for instance, for
five pounds, and a pair of plated spurs for sixteen guineas. Wilkes
talked much about his "dear Churchill," but, with the exception of
burning a MS. fragmentary satire, which Churchill had begun against
Colman and Thornton, _two of his intimate friends_, and erecting an urn
to him near his cottage in the Isle of Wight, with a flaming Latin
inscription, he did nothing for his memory. The poet's brother, John, an
apothecary, survived him only one year; and his two sons, Charles and
John, inherited the vices without the genius of their father. There was,
as late as 1825, a grand-daughter of his, a Mary Churchill, who had been
a governess, surviving as a patient in St George's Hospital,--a
characteristic close to such a wayward, unfortunate race.
For the errors of Churchill, as a man, there does not seem to exist any
plea of palliation, except what may be found in the poverty of his early
circumstances, and in the strength of his later passions.
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