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The sight sublime enrapts my thought,
And swift along the past it strays,
And much of strange event surveys,
What history's faithful tongue has taught,
Or fancy form'd, whose plastic skill
The page with fabled change can fill
Of ill to good, or good to ill.

But can my soul the scene enjoy,
That rends another's breast with pain?
O hapless he, who, near the main,
Now sees its billowy rage destroy!
Beholds the foundering bark descend,
Nor knows, but what its fate may end
The moments of his dearest friend!

PRIVATEERING.

How custom steels the human breast
To deeds that nature's thoughts detest!
How custom consecrates to fame
What reason else would give to shame!
Fair Spring supplies the favouring gale,
The naval plunderer spreads his sail,
And ploughing wide the wat'ry way,
Explores with anxious eyes his prey.
The man he never saw before,
The man who him no quarrel bore,
He meets, and avarice prompts the fight;
And rage enjoys the dreadful sight
Of decks with streaming crimson dy'd,
And wretches struggling in the tide,
Or, 'midst th' explosion's horrid glare,
Dispers'd with quivering limbs in air.
The merchant now on foreign shores
His captur'd wealth in vain deplores ;
Quits his fair home, O mournful change!
For the dark prison's scanty range;
By plenty's hand so lately fed,
Depends on casual alms for bread;
And with a father's anguish torn,
Sees his poor offspring left forlorn.

And yet, such man's misjudging mind,
For all this injury to his kind,
The prosperous robber's native plain
Shall bid him welcome home again;
His name the song of every street,
His acts the theme of all we meet,
And oft the artist's skill shall place
To public view his pictur'd face!

If glory thus be earn'd, for me
My object glory ne'er shall be;
No, first in Cambria's loneliest dale
Be mine to hear the shepherd's tale!
No, first on Scotia's bleakest hill
Be mine the stubborn soil to till!
Remote from wealth, to dwell alone,
And die, to guilty praise unknown!

CHILDHOOD.

CHILDHOOD, happiest stage of life!
Free from care and free from strife,
Free from memory's ruthless reign,
Fraught with scenes of former pain;
Free from fancy's cruel skill,
Fabricating future ill;

Time, when all that meets the view,
All can charm, for all is new;

How thy long-lost hours I mourn,
Never, never to return!

Then to toss the circling ball,
Caught rebounding from the wall;
Then the mimic ship to guide
Down the kennel's dirty tide;
Then the hoop's revolving pace
Through the dusty street to chase;
O what joy!-it once was mine,
Childhood, matchless boon of thine!--
How thy long-lost hours I mourn,
Never, never to return!

CHARLES CHURCHILL was born in 1731, in Vine-street, in the parish of St. John's, Westminster, the parish of which his father was curate and lecturer. He was educated at Westminster School, and gave early tokens of that genius, and, unhappily, also of that irregularity, by which his subsequent career was so remarkably distinguished. He married at the age of seventeen; entered into holy orders, the want of a degree having been dispensed with, and was appointed to a small curacy in Somersetshire. In 1758, his good father died; and, as a mark of respect for his memory, the parishioners appointed his son to succeed him. At this period, his character and habits were in keeping with his sacred profession; he laboured to increase his income by giving lessons in the classics; attended with punctuality to his parochial duties: and, in the pulpit, it is said, was "plain, rational, and emphatic." It is certain, however, that his "good intentions" were not long retained; but that he eagerly desired to find a more ready path to celebrity than the church held out to him. Pecuniary embarrassments too surrounded him; and while he looked to achieve fame, he also fancied he might obtain fortune. In 1760, his friend and school-fellow Lloyd, published with success his poem of "The Actor;" Churchill, whose poetical talent had until then lain dormant, took the hint, and a few months afterwards "The Rosciad," the most famous of all his works, made its appearance. The object he desired was accomplished; he bounded at once from obscurity to distinction; and-as the booksellers had refused to purchase his manuscript for five guineas, and it was consequently printed at his own cost-money came with reputation. He immediately threw off the "inconvenient restraints" of his order; and that the world might see how much he despised them, appeared in public with a blue coat, a gold-laced waistcoat, a laced hat, and ruffles; "got drunk, frequented stews, and, giddy with false praise, thought his talents a sufficient atonement for all his follies." The result was, of course, a formal complaint on the part of his parishioners, and a resignation of his cure. During the four years that followed, his poems were sent forth with amazing rapidity; the Apology to the Critical Reviewers, Night, the Prophecy of Famine, the Epistle to Hogarth, the Ghost, the Conference, the Duellist, the Author, Gotham, the Candidate, the Farewell, the Times, Independence, and the Journey-followed in quick succession. In the year 1764, during a visit to his friend Wilkes, at Boulogne, he died, in the thirty-third year of his age, and was buried at Dover; the grave-stone which records his death gives endurance to a falsehood:

"Life to the last enjoy'd-here Churchill lies."

The dissipated career of Churchill could not have been a happy one; the last words he uttered" What a fool I have been!"-supply the best comment on his epitaph. Churchill "blazed the comet of a season;" he is now forgotten; or remembered rather as one to be shunned for his evil example, than admired for the brilliancy of his genius, and the dazzling glory of his course. It is by no means surprising that nearly all which is now known of him is his name. "He was," says M. D'Israeli, "a spendthrift of fame, and enjoyed all his revenue while he lived. Posterity owes him little, and pays him nothing." He wrote only for his own age-all his compositions are satires-satires not general, but personal; and, as few of his heroes have made mankind their debtors, they have long since ceased to interest us either for praise or blame. Passages of manly sense and sound morality may, indeed, be selected from his poems; but almost invariably his muse was stimulated either by private pique or party prejudice. He was incapable of taking any enlarged view of an object, or of considering it beyond the limited circle to which his own interests confined him; and when he stood forth as a public censor, his own character was known to be most liable to censure, and his own conduct most needing the lash. He seems to have been conscious that he was not writing for immortality; his compositions were flung from him crude and unfinished, as if he considered them but as so many necessary acknowledgments for the tax of half-a-crown, which it was his custom to levy for each of them. The exaggerated praise he received not only corrupted his morals, but impaired his mind; and, probably, if he had lived a few years longer, he would have out-lived his reputation.

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'Tis a rank falsehood; search the world around
There cannot be so vile a monster found,
Not one so vile, on whom suspicions fall
Of that gross guilt which you impute to all.
Approv'd by those who disobey her laws,
Virtue from Vice itself extorts applause;
Her very foes bear witness to her state;
They will not love her, but they cannot hate.
Hate Virtue for herself! with spite pursue
Merit for merit's sake! Might this be true
I would renounce my nature with disdain,
And with the beasts that perish graze the plain;

Might this be true, had we so far fill'd up
The measure of our crimes, and from the cup
Of guilt so deeply drank, as not to find,
Thirsting for sin, one drop, one dreg, behind,
Quick ruin must involve this flaming ball,
And Providence in justice crush us all.
None but the damn'd, and amongst them the worst,
Those who for double guilt are doubly curst,
Can be so lost; nor can the worst of all
At once into such deep damnation fall;
By painful slow degrees they reach this crime,
Which e'en in hell must be a work of time.
Cease, then, thy guilty rage, thou wayward son!
With the foul gall of discontent o'errun;

FROM THE ROSCIAD.

[The character of Fribble was intended for Mr. Fitzpatrick, a person who had rendered himself remarkable by his activity in the playhouse riots of 1763, relative to the taking half prices. He was the hero of Garrick's Fribbleriad.]

WITH that low cunning, which in fools supplies,

And amply, too, the place of being wise,

Which Nature, kind indulgent parent, gave

To qualify the blockhead for a knave;

With that smooth falsehood, whose appearance charms,
And reason of each wholesome doubt disarms,
Which to the lowest depths of guile descends,

By vilest means pursues the vilest ends, ⚫
Wears Friendship's mask for purposes of spite,
Fawns in the day, and butchers in the night;
With that malignant envy, which turns pale,
And sickens, even if a friend prevail,
Which merit and success pursues with hate,
And damns the worth it cannot imitate;
With the cold caution of a coward's spleen,
Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen,
Which keeps this maxim ever in her view—
What's basely done, should be done safely too;
With that dull, rooted, callous impudence,
Which, dead to shame, and ev'ry nicer sense,
Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading Vice's snares,
She blunder'd on some virtue unawares ;
With all these blessings, which we seldom find
Lavish'd by Nature on one happy mind,

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