"Tis a brave debt which gods on man impose,
To pay with praise the merit e'en of foes.
When the great warrior of Amilcar's race
Made Rome's wide empire tremble to her base,
To prove her virtue, though it gall'd her pride,
Rome gave that fame which Carthage had denied
Enough of Self-that darling luscious theme,
O'er which philosophers in raptures dream;
Of which with seeming disregard they write,
Then prizing most, when most they seem to
slight;

Vain proof of folly tinctured strong with pride!
What man can from himself himself divide?
For me, (nor dare I lie) my leading aim
(Conscience first satisfied) is love of fame;

120

as such proper to be commented on, approved or treated with contempt. By his bold and determined conduct in the case of the city printers, he annihilated the power of commitment assumed by the Speaker's warrant, and rendered the jurisdiction of the Serjeant-at-arms subject to the control of a constable. He punished arbitrary secretaries of state by holding them up to public scorn, abolished general warrants, and obliged even Lord Mansfield to declare them illegal. But this was not all: he contributed to render an Englishman's house his castle, for it is to him we are indebted for the benefit of having our papers considered as sacred in all cases short of high treason.

Horace Walpole thus writes, July 31, 1762, to Lady Clilesbury, "Election stock more buyers than sellers. Promotions -Mr. Wilkes as high as he can go. Apropos he was told, Lord Chancellor intended to signify to him that the King did not approve the city's choice; he replied, then I shall signify to his Lordship that I am at least as fit to be Lord Mayor as he is to be Lord Chancellor. This being more

Some little fame derived from some brave few,
Who prizing Honour, prize her votaries too.
Let all (nor shall resentment flush my cheek)
Who know me well, what they know, freely
speak

So those (the greatest curse I meet below)
Who know me not, may not pretend to know.
Let none of those, who bless'd with parts above
My feeble genius, still I dare to love,
Doing more mischief than a thousand foes,
Posthumous nonsense to the world expose,
And call it mine; for mine, though never known,
Or which, if mine, I living blush'd to own.
Know all the world, no greedy heir shall find,

136

gospel than every thing Mr. Wilkes says, the formal approbation was given."

When the Wilkes fever had subsided, Walpole says to his friend Conway, "We can go through the city without being mobbed, and through Brentford without having No. 45 chalked on one's coach-door. Wilkes is almost as dead as Sacheverill."

Wilkes, with his usual humour, while in exile wrote to his friend Garrick from Paris, Jan. 17, 1767.

"I keep a steady and a longing eye to clear England, but I do not know when I am likely to see its white cliffs again. Perhaps I may be doomed, like my predecessors in Plutarch, to pass the rest of my life in exile, so dangerous is it to do great service to any country."

In the full tide of Wilkes's popularity, on his return to London, through which he was carried on the shoulders of The mob Burke quoted from Horace's character of Pindar-■

140

Die when I will, one couplet left behind.
Let none of those, whom I despise though great,
Pretending friendship to give malice weight,
Publish my life; let no false sneaking peer,
(Some such there are) to win the public ear,
Hand me to shame with some vile anecdote,
Nor soul-gall'd bishop damn me with a note.
Let one poor sprig of bay around my head
Bloom whilst I live, and point me out when dead;
Let it, (may Heaven, indulgent, grant that prayer)
Be planted on my grave, nor wither there;
And when, on travel bound, some rhyming guest

145

188 Churchill, before his death, destroyed all his manuscripts, excepting the Dedication to his Sermons, and the Journey, though he completed neither of these poems, he had written a poem entitled the Conclave, previous to the Rosciad, but it was deemed too offensive for publication. A short poem called the Poetry Professors, was confidently attributed to him, but it was written by his friend Robert Lloyd, and published in the St. James's Magazine, of which he was the Editor.

141 John Boyle, Earl of Cork and Orrery, the translator of Pliny's Letters, was also the author of Observations on the Life of Swift, whose memory is not treated in them either with candour or impartiality. In them his Lordship attributes the humiliating condition, to which the Dean was reduced for many years before his death, to a judgment of heaven upon his vanity and ambition, and concludes with comparing him to one of his own Laputan Struldbrugs, and the Dean's head, by way of frontispiece to the book, does not disparage the resemblance. Warburton in one of his letters to Dr. Hurd, with his wonted power, and more than his wonted justice, well exposes this sample of lordly and pedantic biography.

"Lord Orrery's imperial flower of speech, the sovereign of

Roams through the Churchyard, whilst his din

ner's drest,

Let it hold up this comment to his eyes,

150

Life to the last enjoy'd, Here Churchill lies; Whilst (O, what joy that pleasing flattery gives!) Reading my Works, he cries-Here Churchill lives.

155

Enough of Satire-in less harden'd times Great was her force, and mighty were her rhymes. I've read of men, beyond man's daring brave, Who yet have trembled at the strokes she gave; Whose souls have felt more terrible alarms From her one line, than from a world in arms; When in her faithful and immortal page

this grove of delights is what the French call Galimatias-but seriously what would the noble lord say of his enemies when he draws so charming a picture of diablerie from his friend, yet he himself told me he pursued their friendship so sedulously that he suffered numberless indignities from Swift before he could be admitted to any degree of familiarity. Perhaps then he had taken his revenge in this representation which however I believe a true one. But it seems a strange office in a friend to acquaint the public with such truths; don't you think that age in want of a little truth and sense, which gave credit to the Bottle man, and applauses to Orrery's Letters, of which the bookseller told me he had sold twelve thousand, the first impression having been disposed of in one day."

142 The reader requires no prompter to remind him that Warburton is the person alluded to in this line.

149 A humble grave, in the churchyard of Dover, con tains all that was mortal of our author. His being buried in a place so much frequented by travellers almost gives an air of prophecy to these affecting lines.

166

They saw transmitted down from age to age
Recorded villains, and each spotted name
Branded with marks of everlasting shame,
Succeeding villains sought her as a friend,
And, if not really mended, feign'd to mend;
But in an age, when actions are allow'd
Which strike all honour dead, and crimes avow'd
Too terrible to suffer the report,

Avow'd and praised by men who stain a court,
Propp'd by the arm of Power; when Vice, high

born,

High-bred, high-station'd, holds rebuke in scorn ;
When she is lost to every thought of fame;
And, to all virtue dead, is dead to shame;
When Prudence a much easier task must hold
To make a new world, than reform the old;
Satire throws by her arrows on the ground,
And if she cannot cure, she will not wound.
Come, Panegyric-though the Muse disdains,
Founded on truth, to prostitute her strains
At the base instance of those men who hold
No argument but power, no god but gold,
Yet, mindful that from heaven she drew her birth,
She scorns the narrow maxims of this earth;
Virtuous herself, brings Virtue forth to view, 188

180

179 Churchill as well as Pope might justly say of him Belf-

I am not used to panegyric strains,

Besides a fate attends on all I write,

That when I aim at praise, they say I bite.