244 



CHURCHILL 



CHURCHING OF WOMEN 



entirely upon the town (January 1763). His 

 Eosciad, published in 1761, had already made him 

 famous and a terror to all the actors of the time. 

 The poem was modelled on Dryden, and had real 

 talent and vigour, as well as scurrilous and unspar- 

 ing personality to commend it. Later in the same 

 year, in The Apology, he made a savage onslaught 

 on his critics, and particularly Smollett. Night 

 (1762), along poetical epistle addressed to Llqyd, 

 and suggested by Day, Armstrong's somewhat un- 

 welcome poetical epistle to 'gay Wilkes,' contained 

 some nervous lines, but was on the whole a poor 

 production marred by an impudent bravado of 

 honesty, as if it were some justification of mis- 

 conduct to make a candid avowal of it. The Ghost 

 (1762) is an incoherent and tiresome poem of over 

 four thousand lines in octosyllabic metre, only 

 remembered now for the attempt to satirise Dr 

 Johnson as ' Don Pomposo ' on occasion of the 

 Cock Lane ghost-story, and the much more war- 

 rantable ridicule cast upon Whitehead the laureate. 

 Churchill next helped Wilkes in the North Briton, 

 and heaped timeous ridicule upon the Scotch in 

 The Prophecy of Famine (1763), an admirable 

 satire, bright with wit sharpened into stinging^ 

 verse undoubtedly his best work. ' It is indeed 

 falsely applied to Scotland, but on that account 

 may be allowed a greater share of invention,' says 

 Boswell, with characteristically wrong-foot-fore- 

 most but whimsically ingenious reasoning. Later 

 in the same year appeared Churchill's Epistle to 

 Hogarth, for which the great caricaturist paid 

 the poet by gibbeting him to all future time as a 

 bear in torn clerical bands and ruffles, with a pot 

 of porter, and a club inscribed ' Lies and North 

 Britons.' Other works of Churchill's were The 

 Duellist, an onslaught on Wilkes' assailants in the 

 House of Lords ; The Author, which pleased the 

 critics and even Horace Walpole ; The Conference, 

 interesting especially for one redeeming feature 

 a singularly touching and true confession of 

 remorse for the seduction (but not desertion) of 

 a Westminster tradesman's daughter ; Gotham, a 

 long and ambitious exposition of Ids political 

 ideas ; The Candidate, a splendid attack on Sand- 

 wich ; The Farewell, The Times, and Independ- 

 ence, the last containing an interestingly unflat- 

 tering portrait of the poet by his own pen, in 

 which he laughs at his burly frame and rolling 

 gait 'much like a porpoise just before a storm.' 

 Meantime the satirist had prospered and gained 

 enough not only to pay oft' all his old debts, but 

 to help others, for no man was ever more faith- 

 ful and unreserved in love towards his friends 

 than this sinning and repenting prodigal. In the 

 October of 1764 he crossed to Boulogne to see 

 Wilkes, was seized suddenly with a fever, and 

 died on 4th November. Just before the end he 

 sat up in bed to bequeath annuities of 60 to 

 his wife and 50 to his mistress, for which, how- 

 ever, there proved to be no funds. His body was 

 buried at Dover, and on a slab above his grave was 

 inscribed with less than dubious truth the line 

 from his poem The Candidate : ' Life to the last 

 enjoyed, here Churchill lies.' Fifty-four years later 

 Byron, leaving England for the last time, stood 

 beside his tomb, his mind filled with reflections on 

 ' the Glory and the Nothing of a Name,' which he 

 shaped into a poem scarce worthy of its theme. 



Churchill left two unfinished satires The Jour- 

 ney, broken off at a line of sadly ominous signifi- 

 cance : ' I on my journey all alone proceed ; ' and 

 the severe and masterly Dedication to the arrogant 

 Warburton. His satires are for the most part long 

 since forgotten. Though neither .' a blockhead ' 

 according to Johnson, nor ' the great Churchill ' as 

 described by Cowper with all an old schoolfellow's 

 extravagance of admiration, he was yet a satirist of 



high capacity, with a happy knack of turning strong 

 and honest thought into nervous and memorable 

 verse. At the same time he lacked the chief essen- 

 tials of true satire, a real insight into the heart of 

 man and that rarest power of nappy exaggeration, 

 of preserving likeness in unlikeness and verisimili- 

 tude in distortion. A fatal volubility in rhyming, 

 a kind of boisterous but unequal energy, and an 

 instinctive hatred of wrong, manly and honest, 

 although often scarce to be distinguished from the 

 mere reflex reaction of natural spleen and obstinacy, 

 combined to make him the hero of the hour and 

 its ephemeral interests, but was not equipment 

 enough for a Dryden, a Juvenal, or even a Butler. 

 See Forster's Historical and Biographical Essays 

 (vol. ii. 1858), and Southey's Life of Cowper. 



Churchill, LORD RANDOLPH HENRY SPENCER, 

 third son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, was 

 born on February 13, 1849, and educated at Eton 

 and Merton College, Oxford. Lord Randolph was 

 first returned for Woodstock in 1874 ; but it was 

 not until after the general election of 1880 that he 

 became prominent in politics, when he appeared 

 as the leader of a guerilla band of Conservatives 

 known as the ' Fourth Party. ' He was frequently 

 in collision with his leaders on questions or party 

 organisation and the conduct of the Opposition ; 

 but his vigorous attacks on Mr Gladstone s policy, 

 both foreign and domestic, were of unquestionable 

 value to the Conservative cause. Towards the end 

 of Mr Gladstone's ministry Lord Randolph began 

 to have a considerable following among the younger 

 Conservatives, who regarded him as the future 

 leader of the Tory Democracy. After a plucky 

 attempt to defeat Mr Bright at Birmingham in 

 1885, Lord Randolph was returned for South 

 Paddington. He was Secretary for India in Lord 

 Salisbury's first ministry (June 1885-January 1886), 

 his period of office being marked by the annexa- 

 tion of Burma. From July to December 1886 he 

 was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of 

 the House of Commons, when he resigned, being 

 resolved, as he wrote to Lord Salisbury, to sacri- 

 fice himself on the altar of thrift ana economy. 

 Still on most points he spoke and voted on the 

 Conservative side. In 1892, after a tour in South 

 Africa, he was re-elected, and in spite of enfeebled 

 health was recognised as one of the leaders of the 

 Conservative party. He died 24th January 1895. 

 In 1874 he had married Miss Jerome, a New York 

 lady. See his Life by Escott ( 1885). 



Churchill River, of Canada, rises between 

 the north branch of the Saskatchewan and the 

 Athabasca, under 55 N. lat., and flows generally 

 NE. through a series of lakes, first as the Beaver, 

 then as the Missinnippi, and finally as the Churchill 

 or English River, to Hudson Bay, which it enters 

 near Fort Churchill, after a course of nearly 1000 

 miles. There is plenty of traffic during summer 

 by canoes, which are conveyed by land portage 

 past the largest of the stream's many rapids. The 

 natural advantages of Churchill harbour have 

 caused it to be regarded as a possible terminus for 

 the railway from Winnipeg, and the starting-point 

 of the direct sea route to England by Hudson Bay 

 and Hudson Strait. 



Churching Of Women, a religious usage 

 prevailing in the Christian church from an early 

 period, of women, on their recovery after child- 

 bearing, going to church to give thanks. It appears 

 to have been borrowed from the Jewish law ( Lev. 

 xii. 6 ) ; and the earliest express mention of it is 

 in the pseudo-Nicene Arabic canons. No ancient 

 forms for the purpose are extant, and those in 

 actual use are of medieval date. The Greek rite 

 is only partially concerned with the woman, being 

 also the presentation of the new-born child in the 



