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.
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