A Parody on the Rosciad of Churchill. The Anti-Rosciad by the Author. (This was written by Against both houses Churchill draws his quill, In opposition dire he meets the town, And all they praise he labours to pull down; And say, "All this I do, because I dare." The Rosciad of Covent Garden, by the Author (H. J. Pye). Esq. The Battle of the Players, in imitation of Swift's Battle of the Books, in which are introduced the characters of all the Actors and Actresses on the English Stage, with an impartial estimate of their respective merits. By the Author. The Four Farthing Candles, a Satire. An Epistle to the Author of the Four Farthing Candles. By the Author of the Rosciad of Covent Garden. This man and his opponent should, leaving all poetic strains To those whom heaven has bless'd with brains, Some honest occupation choose, As sweeping streets or cleaning shoes. VOL. I. 15 MONTHLY REVIEW. An Epistle to the irreverend Mr. C. Churchill, in his own style and manner, 4to. The Jumble, a Satire, addressed to the Rev. Mr. Churchill. Epilogue to the Comedy of Have at ye All, intended to have been spoken by Mr. King on his benefit night, Against the Actors he declaims with rage, Out comes the Rosciad, and then, hit or miss, I mention not his impudence-pray who has most: It hurts not me, I hope the man has dined; Where we were born, where bred, and where we dwell, Who has a wife-who not, the bard can tell, Good soul, to serve us he took all this pain, And lest to him ungrateful I appear, Let me just drop this counsel in his ear: No more abroad to mend the manners roam, But know that charity begins at home; And ere to plays and players you turn your head, The popularity of the poem and of its author were evidenced and increased, rather than impaired by the injudicious attacks upon both; the Rosciad ran through twelve editions in its independent quarto shape at the price of half-a-crown, since which it has appeared in more than as many editions of the collected poems of C. Churchill. THE APOLOGY. ADDRESSED TO THE CRITICAL REVIEWERS. THIS poem, which was published in April, 1761, was occasioned by the very extraordinary critique upon the Rosciad which appeared in the Critical Review soon after the publication of that poem. The Monthly Review cautiously abstained from all mention of it, until a second edition proclaimed the author's name, but whether from the esprit du corps, or the personal pique of some of its conductors, Churchill gained but extorted and reluctant praise for his merits, while his defects were studiously exposed and minutely expatiated upon. The charge of unprovoked hostility cannot therefore in this instance be imputed with justice to our author. The Reviewers were decidedly the aggressors; they endeavoured, as far as their influence could extend, to prejudice the public mind against a poem that occasioned a greater sensation in it than had ever before been excited in England by any poetical performance. The Rosciad was modestly ushered into the world without the author's name, and consequently claimed for the author in common with all anonymous publications, an exemption from personal abuse: here this precaution was of no avail. A nominal author was selected by the reviewers for the purpose of censuring men far their superiors in intellectual attainments; and though they dared not impeach the general merit of the poem, for it had received the stamp and sanction of public approbation, yet they were sparing of commendation, and gratuitously undertook the defence of the histrionic band, whom they pretended to consider in the light of harmless victims to the insatiable vengeance of a satirical Drawcansir. The reader will be enabled to judge of the truth of the above statement from the following extract from the Critical Review for March, 1761: "The observations with regard to the respective merits of the actors are, for the most part, just, though not new, being indeed no more than the echo of the critics in every coffeehouse, put into tolerable good rhyme. The whole drift of the performance seems to be plainly and indisputably this: first, to throw all the players, like so many fagots, into a pile, and set fire to them by way of a sacrifice to the modern Roscius; and secondly, to do the same by all the wits and poets of the age, in compliment to Messrs. Lloyd and Colman, the heroes of the piece. Mr. Garrick is seated between these two gentlemen like Hercules Supported by the pillars he had raised. There he receives incense which they stuff up his nostrils at a most profuse rate. "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 style; but little do these connoisseurs* in writing know how easily they are discovered by a veteran in the service. In the title-page of this performance we are told, (by way of quaint conceit,) that it was written by the author; what if it should prove that the author and the * The Connoisseur, a periodical publication of the year 1754, of considerable merit and smartness, conducted and chiefly written by Bonnell Thornton and Colman, sen. under the assumed name of Mr. Town, and to which Lloyd, Churchill, and Cowper, with the other prime wits of the period occasionally contributed. Dr. Southey, in his Life of Cowper, attributes Nos. 111, 115, 119, 134, and 138, to him, and leaves it doubtful whether the letters by Mr. Town's cousin Village, in Nos. 13, 23, 41, 76, 81, 105, and 139, were also his, but thinks most probably not. Mr. Peake, however, in his Memoirs of the Colman family, alleges that the only papers contributed by Cowper, were Nos. 119, 134, and 138. actor are the same! certain it is, that we meet with the same vein of peculiar humour, the same facility of versification, the same turn of thought, the same affected contempt of the ancients, the same extravagant praise of the moderns, the same autophililism (there's a new word for you to bring into your next poem) which we met with in the other, When in discoursing of each mimic elf, We praise and censure with an eye to self. "Insomuch that we are ready to make the conclusion in the author's own words, Who is it?-LLOYD. "We will not pretend, however, absolutely to assert, that Mr. Lloyd wrote this poem, but we may venture to affirm that it is the production jointly or separately of the new triumvirate of wits, (Colman, Lloyd,* and Thornton,) who never let an opportunity slip of singing their own praises, caw me, caw thee, as Sawney says; and so it is, they go and scratch one another like Scotch pedlers." Besides his not being well pleased with the above account of his poem, Churchill wished to add something farther on the subject of it, and to justify the attack he had made upon the players. Whatever reasons the Reviewers had to be dissatisfied with this poem, the players themselves were not so much offended as they had been with the Rosciad. The author, indeed, treats the profession of acting with great contempt; and paints in the strongest colours the meanness and distress of itinerant companies, and the unhappy shifts to which they are occasionally reduced. But all this the London actors regarded as a trifling injury, compared with the * In answer to this indirect imputation by the Review, the following advertisement appeared in the public papers. "Mr. Lloyd was never concerned or consulted about the publication of this poem, or ever corrected or saw the sheets from the press, as we can testify. WILLIAM FLEXNEY, Publisher. |