induced, from concurrent testimonies, to select such anecdotes as seemed best entitled to credit, and to submit them to the judgment of the public.

Long before the press teemed with new editions of inferior poets, the present Editor undertook the illustration of Churchill; his materials had lain by for some years when the publication of his work was accelerated by the obliging kindness of Mr. Flexney, the original publisher of the Poet's Works, and who being in possession of several MSS. relating to the Life and writings of the Satirist, in the handwriting of the Rev. William Churchill, his brother,* communicated them to the Editor. The spirit of party had not subsided at the time they were written, and they were unfortunately too strongly imbued with that spirit to render them of much utility. Some novel and interesting particulars, however, have been extracted from them, and the Editor flatters himself that he has not been deficient in an assiduous endeavour to procure every possible information respecting his author.

Having detailed his sources of information, and his motives for publication, the Editor submits his work to the indulgence of the public. His name, unknown in the world of letters, could give no sanction to his work, and he sees no reason for incurring the risk of censure, where excellence could

*The Rev. W. Churchill was brought up with his brother at Westminster School, where he was class-fellow with Christopher Smart, and Bonnel Thornton. He was an amiable man, of very reserved and unobtrusive manners, and would probably never have emerged from the humble sphere of a country curate, but that late in life, his uncle, the Bishop of St. Asaph, presented him to the rectory of Orton on the Hill, in the county of Leicester, where he died in June, 1804, in the seventysecond year of his age.

not confer fame; he therefore does not obtrude his name upon the public, though he by no means wishes to be considered as screening himself from responsibility, while he only seeks a shield against the attacks of petulance or malignity.

Gray's Inn, January, 1804.

W. T.

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION. 1844.

THE former Edition of Churchill, although published anonymously, and with other unfavorable circumstances, having long since become scarce and out of print, the Editor, emboldened by the encouragement he then experienced from an indulgent public, has been induced to revise it, in the hope of rendering it more worthy of that public, and of the great Poet, once its distinguished favourite.

The interval of nearly half a century, which has elapsed since the former edition, has had the effect of converting what then wore the semblance of contemporary anecdote, to the more sober complexion of history. In 1804, several of the persons mentioned by the Satirist, or their immediate relatives, were living, and consequently many allusions were, from motives of delicacy, left in obscurity.

At this period, not one of the individuals named or alluded to by the Poet, remains alive. The mellowing hand of time has passed over the memories of all: a new era has commenced; and the petty interests and factions of the early part of the reign of George the Third having subsided, a temperate retrospection of those events, and of the prime movers in them, cannot now, it is hoped, excite any feeling of party or personal resentment against the impartial narrator: while, among other presumed advantages, the Editor ventures to place some reliance on the improvement in his own views and means of information, which has been effected by forty years of added experience.