The Correspondence of John Wilkes and Charles Churchill. Edited with
an introduction by Edward H. Weatherly. (Geoffrey Cumber- lege, 23s.)
THIS correspondence between the editor of the Whig political weekly, The North Briton, and his friend and collaborator Charles Churchill, should prove invaluable to the student of the eighteenth century. It commences ten days after the first of the fifty-five numbers the paper ran into, and continues until Churchill's death at Boulogne in 17614. Neither of them was a great letter-writer but comment is pithy, lascivious and startling. Between the names of Pitt, Hogarth, Bute and Smollett are sandwiched accounts of one of Wilkes's two duels, the progress of Churchill's gonorrhoea, and their latest mis- tresses (1 long to introduce you here to the prettiest bubbies . . . I ever kiss'd or made a libation to').
Churchill may have faded away with his Rosciad, but Wilkes, whose name coupled with the cry of 'Liberty' inaugurated a serious riot and an uncomfortable demonstration of popular sentiment against George III, was too pre- posterous a figure to be forgotten. His sheer doggedness under the resolute persecution of Bute and Sandwich was remarkable. As an indirect result of his printing an obscene parody of Pope, The Essay on Woman, he fought a duel (the second of the two) with the Secretary to the Treasury, was badly wounded and escaped to France before he had recovered. He was, of course, formally expelled from Parliament and declared an outlaw. Four years later he returned to England and was sentenced to twenty-two months' imprisonment and £1,000 in fines. All for a book of which only twelve copies were printed and which was intended for an audience of friends whose morals, in Macaulay's words, 'were no more in danger of being corrupted by a loose book than a negro of being tanned by a warm sun.' However as a result of all this he became a popular hero and, surprising as it may seem, lived to be Lord Mayor of London and Chamberlain of the City.
GORDON WHARTON
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