elieve he finds himself
tolerably happy in the clay {62} cottage to which he is a tenant for
life, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order; while the
share of health and animal spirits which Heaven has given him shall
hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment peevish about
the outside of so precarious, so temporary a habitation, or will ever
be brought to own 'Ingenium Galbae male habitat:' 'Monsieur est mal
loge.'" Good-humored at the time, his good-humor persevered, and in
later life he was wont to say jestingly that he found he was growing
more and more like his famous portrait every day. But if it was
becoming of Wilkes to bear the attack in so serene and even so jocular
a spirit, it was not unbecoming, as it was not ungenerous, of his
friends to fail to imitate the coolness of their leader. It is not
quite easy to understand why, in an age of caricature, an age when all
men of any notoriety were caricatured, the friends of Wilkes were so
sensitive to the satire of Hogarth. Public men, and the friends of
public men, have grown less sensitive. However, Wilkes's friends were,
and showed themselves to be, as angry as Wilkes was, or showed himself
to be, indifferent, and the hottest and angriest of them all was
Churchill. Churchill could retaliate, and Churchill did retaliate with
a ferocity that equalled and more than equalled Hogarth's.

[Sidenote: 1763--Churchill's denunciation of Hogarth]

With a rage that was prompted by friendship, yet with a coolness that
the importance of the cause he championed called for, Churchill aimed
blow after blow upon the offending painter. The skill of a practised
executioner directed every stroke to a fresh spot, and with every
stroke brought blood. The satirist called upon Hogarth by his name, to
stand forth and be tried "in that great court where conscience must
preside," bade him review his life from his earliest youth, and say if
he could recall a single instance in which

Thou with an equal eye didst genius view
And give to merit what was merit's duet
Genius and merit are a sure offence,
And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.

The poet goes on to say that "when Wilkes our countryman, {63} our
common friend arose, his King, his country to defend," Malice

Had killed thee, tottering on life's utmost verge,
Had Wilkes and Liberty escaped thy scourge.

And then, in some two hundred lines of strenuous rage, Churchill
denounce