Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/324

310 It is a clever little farce, the story founded on a runaway match. There is some broad humour in it; but the dialogue is not brilliant, and no punning is attempted. The Cupid is a postboy, and the farce differs from most others in this: that there are interludes, and the postboy Cupid is gifted with a supernatural power of changing the scenes and filling up the plot by rhyming narrative. Its having been accepted anonymously, shows clearly enough the wonderful effect of Churchill's satire. Whitehead, as Campbell has observed, was too amiable to reply. He could not have penned verses so bitter, but to the strength of his moral qualities, rather than a deficiency in intellectual power, his silence is to be attributed. What he thought of his brilliant antagonist may be guessed from this fragment, printed in the edition of his works published after his death:

Elsewhere he writes:

The following lines on the same subject were found by Mr. Mason:

That I'm his foe, ev'n Churchill can't pretend,

But—thank my stars!—he proves I am no friend:

Yet, Churchill, could an honest wish succeed,

I'd prove myself to thee a friend indeed;

For had I power, like that which bends the spheres

To music never heard by mortal ears,

Where, in his system, sits the central sun,

And drags reluctant planets into tune;