ne foreign capital to
another, making friends and winning admirers everywhere, and employing
his enforced leisure in attempting great feats of literary enterprise.
A scheme for a Constitutional History of England was succeeded by a no
less difficult and, as it proved, no less impracticable scheme. During
Wilkes's exile he lost the most famous of his enemies and the most
famous of his friends. On October 26, 1764, Hogarth died. It was
commonly said, and generally credited, that he died of a broken heart
{69} in consequence of the furious attacks which had followed upon his
unhappy quarrel with Wilkes. It was a pity that the closing hours of
Hogarth's life should have been occupied with so petty and so
regrettable a squabble. Hogarth was entirely in the wrong. Hogarth
began the quarrel; and if Hogarth was eager to give hard knocks he
should have been ready to take hard knocks in return. But the world at
large may very well be glad that Hogarth did lurk in the court by
Justice Pratt and did make his memorable sketch of Wilkes. The sketch
serves to show us if not what Wilkes exactly was, at least what Wilkes
seemed to be to a great many of his countrymen. The caricaturist is a
priceless commentator. If Hogarth indeed indirectly shortened his life
by his portrait of Wilkes, he gave, as if by transfusion of blood, an
increased and abiding vitality to certain of the most interesting pages
of history.

Within a few days of Hogarth, Churchill died. His devotion to Wilkes
prompted him to join him in his Continental banishment. He got as far
as Boulogne, where Wilkes met him, and at Boulogne he died of a fever,
after formally naming Wilkes as his literary executor. Wilkes, who was
always prompted by generous impulses, immediately resolved that he
would edit a collected edition of Churchill's works, and for a time he
buried himself in seclusion in Naples with the firm intention of
carrying out this purpose. But the task was too great both for the man
and for the conditions under which he was compelled to work. In the
first place, annotations of such poems as Churchill's required constant
reference to and minute acquaintance with home affairs, such as it was
well-nigh impossible for an exile to command. In the second place, it
was not an easy task for a man even with a very high opinion of himself
to play the part of editor and annotator of poems a great part of which
had him for hero. In a very short time the work