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They conclude with contrasting him with Smollet, in comparison of whom he is "a puny antagonist, who must write many more poems as good as the Rosciad, before he will be considered as a respectable enemy." Upon these extracts I will beg leave to make two observations.
As the field which is thus opened to me is almost unbounded, I will confine myself to two of the most striking examples, in Tristram Shandy, and the Rosciad of Churchill. In the Monthly Review, vol. 24, p, 103, I find these words: "But your indiscretion, good Mr. Tristram, is not all we complain of in the volumes before us.
Of late he had set up for theatrical censor and satirist, and, in a paper called Thespis, in emulation of Churchill's Rosciad, had harassed many of the poor actors without mercy, and often without wit; but had lavished his incense on Garrick, who, in consequence, took him into favor. He was the author of several works of superficial merit, but which had sufficient vogue to inflate his vanity.
Sheridan have upon the language of this great country by his narrow exertions? Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover to show light at Calais." Boswell, however, was acquainted with Davies, an actor turned bookseller, now chiefly remembered by a line in Churchill's Rosciad which is said to have driven him from the stage He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.
Flexney, the bookseller, and Mr. Griffin, the printer. Candour certainly did not require that they should acknowledge Mr. Churchill, whose name was now inserted in the title-page, as the author, or if author of any, at least not of a considerable part of the poem. That this was their sense of the matter, appears from their account of the apology for the Rosciad, p. 409.
John's, Westminster. In 1761 he pub. the Rosciad, in which he severely satirised the players and managers of the day. It at once brought him both fame and money; but he fell into dissipated habits, separated from his wife, and outraged the proprieties of his profession to such an extent that he was compelled to resign his preferments.
"This apologist has very little reason to throw out behind against the Critical Reviewers, who in mentioning The Rosciad, of which he calls himself author, commended it in the lump, without specifying the bald lines, the false thoughts, and tinsel frippery from which it is not entirely free."
The Critical Review, vol II, p. 212, has the following account of the Rosciad: "It is natural for young authors to conceive themselves the cleverest fellows in the world, and withal, that there is not the least degree of merit subsisting but in their own works: It is natural likewise for them to imagine, that they may conceal themselves by appearing in different shapes, and that they are not to be found out by their stile; but little do these Connoisseurs in writing conceive, how easily they are discovered by a veteran in the service.
"This is another Brutum Fulinen launched at the Critical Review by one Churchill, who it seems is a clergyman, and it must be owned has a knack at versification; a bard, who upon the strength of having written a few good lines in a thing called The Rosciad, swaggers about as if he were game-keeper of Parnassus."
The impulses of his wit were satirical; he was not dismayed by failure; the stage had entertained him and irritated him, and he made the stage the subject of his first triumph. "The Rosciad" was in every sense a triumph. Its stings galled the vanity of the players to frenzy.
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