An Essay in Critical Biography—Charles Churchill

Abstract

A writer in The Annual Register, soon after the death of Charles Churchill, gave to the world the first account of his life; this was followed by The Genuine Memoirs of Mr. Charles Churchill. To Bell's edition of the poet's works is prefixed a life of the author by Doctor Johnson; this does not add anything new. Kippis, in his Biographia Britannica, followed most of the inaccuracies of the first biographer, but added some new material from his personal information. Anderson used these sources in the British Poets (1795). Robert Southey in his Life of Cowper, and William Tooke in an edition of Churchill's Works (1804) made more elaborate studies of the poet's life, but, unfortunately, were satisfied with earlier biographies or neglected to give careful references to original material. John Forster, in The Edinburgh Review (1845) pointed out many of Tooke's inaccuracies. Every biographer of Churchill from Chalmers in his English Poets to Leslie Stephen in The Dictionary of National Biography, followed Tooke, or Tooke modified by Forster. In 1903, R. F. Scott in his Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist in the University of Cambridge, made several valuable contributions to our knowledge about the early career of the satirist. Ferdinand Putschi, in Charles Churchill, sein Leben und seine Werke (1909), had not seen Mr. Scott's book, and followed the earlier biographers.