Date: 1763

"O'er crabbed authors life's gay prime to waste, / To clamp wild genius in the chains of taste, / To bear the slavish drudgery of schools, / And tamely stoop to ev'ry pedant's rules."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Try, thou State-Juggler, ev'ry paltry art, / Ransack the inmost closet of my heart / Swear Thou'rt my Friend; by that base oath make way / Into my breast, and flatter to betray."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Grown old in villainy, and dead to grace, / Hell in his heart, and TYBURNE in his face; / Behold, a Parson at thy Elbow stands, / Low'ring damnation, and with open hands / Ripe to betray his Saviour for reward; / The Atheist Chaplain of an Atheist Lord."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"True Virtue means, let Reason use her eyes,Nothing with Fools, and Int'rest with the Wise."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Explore the dark recesses of the mind, / In the Soul's honest volume read mankind, / And own, in wise and simple, great and small, / The same grand leading Principle in All."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Doth Virtue in thy bosom brighter glow, / Or from a Spring more pure doth Action flow? / Is not thy Soul bound with those very chains / Which shackle us, or is that SELF, which reigns / O'er Kings and Beggars, which in all we see / Most strong and sov'reign, only weak in Thee?"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Think but one hour, and, to thy Conscience led / By Reason's hand, bow down and hang thy head; / Think on thy private life, recal thy Youth, / View thyself now, and own with strictest truth, / That SELF hath drawn Thee from fair Virtue's way / Farther than Folly would have dar'd to stray, / And ...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Quit then, in prudence quit, that idle train / Of toys, which have so long abus'd thy brain, / And captive led thy pow'rs; with boundless will / Let SELF maintain her state and empire still."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"No--'tis the tale which angry Conscience tells, / When She with more than tragic horror swells / Each circumstance of guilt; when stern, but true, / She brings bad actions forth into review; / And, like the dread hand-writing on the wall, / Bids late Remorse awake at Reason's call, / Arm'd at al...

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"May I be scorn'd by ev'ry man of worth, / Wander, like Cain, a vagabond on earth, / Bearing about a Hell in my own mind, / Or be to SCOTLAND for my life confin'd, / If I am one amongst the many known, / Whom SHELBURNE fled, and CALCRAFT blush'd to own."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)