THE REV. C. CHURCHILL.
Enraged by the publication of Mr. Wilkes' portrait, Mr. Charles Churchill drew his gray goose quill, and wrote a most virulent and vindictive satire, which he entitled An Epistle to William Hogarth. The painter might be a very good Christian, but he was not blest with that meek forbearance which induces those who are smote on one cheek to turn the other also. He was an old man, but did not wish to be considered as that feeble, superannuated, helpless animal which the poet had described. He scarcely wished to live
"After his flame lack'd oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits."
Apprehensive that the public might construe his delaying a reply to proceed from inability, he did not wait the tedious process of a new plate, but took a piece of copper on which he had, in the year 1749, engraven a portrait of himself and dog, erased his own head, and in the place of it introduced the divine with a tattered band and torn ruffles,—"No Lord's anointed, but a Russian bear."
In this I must acknowledge there was more ill-nature than wit.[161] It is rather caricature than character, and more like the coarse mangling of Tom Browne than the delicate yet wounding satire of Alexander Pope. For this rough retort he might, however, plead the poet's precedent. His opponent had brandished a tomahawk; and Hogarth, old as he was, wielded a battle-axe in his own defence. A more aggravated provocation cannot well be conceived. The attack was unmerciful, unmanly, unjust. Let the following extracts speak for themselves:—
"Amongst the sons of men, how few are known
Who dare be just to merit not their own!