Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845

The mean resentment of his selfish soul;
Let freedom perish, if, to freedom true,
In the same ruin Wilkes may perish too.
"With all the symptoms of assur'd decay,
With age and sickness pinch'd and worn away,
Pale qiuv'ring lips, lank cheeks, and falt'ring tongue,
The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,
The body shrivell'd up, thy dim eyes sunk
Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk,
The body's weight unable to sustain,
The stream of life scarce trembling, thro' the vein,
More than half-kill'd by honest truths, which fell
Thro' thy own fault from men who wish'd thee well,
Canst thou, ev'n thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give,
And, dead to all things else, to malice live?
Hence, Dotard! to thy closet; shut thee in;
By deep repentance wash away thy sin;
From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,
And, on the verge of death, learn how to die."

What was Hogarth's unpardonable sin? Nature had lodged the unlovely soul of Jack Wilkes in an unlovely and ludicrous person, which the wicked and inimitable pencil of Hogarth had made a little unlovelier perhaps, and a little more ludicrous. Horace Walpole spoke in his usual clear-cutting style of Mr Charles Pylades and Mr John Orestes. They liked one another, and ran the scent, strong as a trail of rancid fish-guts, of the same pleasures – but let not such hunting in couples profane the name of friendship.

"For me, who warm and zealous for my friend,
In spite of railing thousands, will commend,
And, no less warm and zealous 'gainst my foes,
Spite of commending thousands, will oppose —
I dare thy worst, with scorn behold thy rage;
But with an eye of pity view thy age —
Thy feeble age! in which, as in a glass,
We see how men to dissolution pass.
Thou wretched being! whom, on reason's plan,
So chang'd, so lost, I cannot call a man —
What could persuade thee at this time of life,
To launch afresh into the sea of strife!
Better for thee, scarce crawling on the earth,
Almost as much a child as at thy birth;
To have resign'd in peace thy parting breath,
And sunk unnotic'd in the arms of death.
Why would thy gray, gray hairs resentment brave,
Thus to go down with sorrow to the grave?
Now, by my soul! it makes me blush to know
My spirit could descend to such a foe:
Whatever cause the vengeance might provoke;
It seems rank cowardice to give the stroke.
"Sure 'tis a curse which angry Fates impose
To mortify man's arrogance, that those
Who're fashion'd of some better sort of clay
Much sooner than the common herd decay.
What bitter pangs must humble Genius feel
In their last hours, to view a Swift and Steele!
How must ill-boding horrors fill her breast,
When she beholds men mark'd above the rest
For qualities most dear, plung'd from that height,
And sunk, deep sunk, in second childhood's night!
Are men, indeed, such things? and are the best
More subject to this evil than the rest;
To drivel out whole years of idiot breath,
And sit the monuments of living Death!
O! galling circumstance to human pride!
Abasing thought! but not to be deny'd.
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought.
Constant attention wears the active mind,
Blots out her pow'rs, and leaves a blank behind,
But let not youth, to insolence ally'd,
In heat of blood, in full career of pride,
Possess'd of genius, with unhallow'd rage
Mock the infirmities of rev'rend age:
The greatest genius to this fate may bow;
Reynolds in time may be like Hogarth now."

One makes allowance, in reading, for the inflamed temper of the times, for a judgment disturbed with personal anger, and for the self-consciousness which, hardly separable from talent, stirs and sustains its energies. But – Churchill demolishing Hogarth! It is startling – rather melancholy – and very amusing. One compares fame with fame – the transitory and the imperishable. The wave, lashed into fury, that comes on, mountain-swollen, all rage, and froth, and thunder, to dash itself into spray against some Atlas of the Deep – some huge brother of Time, whose cheeks the wings of the centuries caress, and of whose hand storms that distract heaven and earth are but toys.

Of the "Prophecy of Famine," Wilkes, before its publication, said he "was sure it would take, as it was at once personal, poetical, and political." And take it did – going off in thousands, and tens of thousands. The Whig coteries, of course, cried it up to the skies; and the established authorities declared that Pope must now hide his diminished head. Such nonsense Churchill swallowed; for he had tried to take it into his head that Pope was a fool to him, and in his cups was wont to vent a wish that little Alec were alive, that he might break his heart. That was the delusion of delirium. Inflated with vanity as he was, he must, when sober, have known well he could not with his cudgel, readily though he flourished it, have lived for five minutes before that Master of the rapier.

Scotsmen as we are to the spine, it is possible that we may be incapacitated by the strength of our backbone for perceiving the mighty merit of this astonishing satire. Steeped to the lips in national prejudices in favour of Scotland, (not against England – heaven forbid!) imbibed with the first gulp of Glenlivet that more than three quarters of a century ago went gurgling down our filial throats – inured to hunger from our tenderest years – "in life's morning march when our spirits were young," ignorant of shoes, though haply not inexpert of sulphur – to us, thus born and thus bred, it may not be given to behold with our outward eyes, and feel with our inward hearts, the full glory of "The Prophecy of Famine." Boswell, with an uneasy smirk, rather than a ghastly grin, said, "It is indeed falsely applied to Scotland, but may on that account be allowed a greater share of invention." Johnson in his heart loved Scotland, as all his jeers show; and perhaps on that account was, like ourselves, no fair judge of Churchill's genius. "I called the fellow a blockhead at first – and I call him a blockhead still," comprehended all his performances in one general contempt. In later times, Jeffrey has dismissed him with little ceremony to find his place at the Third Table. Campbell, who, though a Whig, cared nothing about Churchill, acknowledges having been amused by the laughable extravagance of the "Prophecy." And Lord Mahon says, "that it may yet be read with all the admiration which the most vigorous powers of verse and the most lively touches of wit can earn in the cause of slander and falsehood."

Suppose, rough-and-ready Readers, that you judge for yourselves. You have not a copy of Churchill – so passing over the first part of the poem – about three hundred lines – as dull as ditchwater in the season of powheads – let us give you the cream, or marrow, or pith of the famous "Prophecy of Famine," before which Scotia, "our auld respectit mither," bowed down and fell, and was thought by some to have given up the ghost, or at least "tined her dam."

"Two boys, whose birth, beyond all question, springs
From great and glorious tho' forgotten kings,
Shepherds of Scottish lineage, born and bred
On the same bleak and barren mountain's head;
By niggard Nature doom'd on the same rocks
To spin out life, and starve themselves and flocks;
Fresh as the morning which, enrob'd in mist,
The mountain's top with usual dulness kiss'd,
Jockey and Sawney, to their labours rose;
Soon clad I ween where Nature needs no clothes,
Where, from their youth inur'd to winter-skies,
Dress and her vain refinements they despise.
"Jockey, whose manly high-bon'd cheeks to crown,
With freckles spotted flam'd the golden down,
With meikle art could on the bagpipes play,
Ev'n from the rising to the setting day:
Sawney as long without remorse could bawl
Home's madrigals, and ditties from Fingal:
Oft at his strains, all natural tho' rude,
The Highland lass forgot her want of food;
And, whilst she scratch'd her lover into rest,