The first
pronounced him "a prolific blockhead," "a huge and fertile crab-tree;"
the second has wielded the knout against his back with peculiar gusto and
emphasis, in a paper on satire and satirists, published in _Blackwood_
for 1828. Had Churchill been alive, he could have easily "retorted
scorn"--set a "Christophero" over against the portrait of "Pomposo:" the
result had been, as always in such cases, a drawn battle; and damage
would have accrued, not to the special literateurs, but to the general
literary character. Prejudice or private pique always lurks at the bottom
of such reckless assaults, and all men in the long run feel so. In
Johnson's case, the _causa belli_ was unquestionably political
difference; and in Christopher North's it was the love of Scotland which
so warmly glowed in his bosom, and which created a glow of hatred no less
warm against Scotland's ablest, fiercest, and most inveterate poetical
foe.
Churchill's poetry only requires to be better known to be highly
appreciated for its masculine and thoroughly English qualities. In taking
our leave of him, we are again haunted by the signal resemblance he
bears, both in mental characteristics and in history, to Byron.
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