The mode by which this intelligence was transmitted, he had adopted as a means of obtaining knowledge of the British, and he had on several former occasions, he averred, suoceeded in thus getting possession of much important information which he had improved to the advantage of the Americans. This explanation did not avail him, any more than the ardent and unreserved professions of attachment to the cause of the country, which he did not spare during his defence. The House of Representatives declared him guilty of holding a traitorous correspondence with the enemy, and deprived him of his seat. A court of inquiry at Cambridge, consisting of the officers of the army, passed the same judgment upon him, and referred the question of his punishment to Congress. A resolve of that body sentenced him to close confinement, and he was imprisoned some months in a jail in Connecticut, but his health suffering in this state, he was allowed occasional enlargement, and finally set at liberty. He went to Newport in Rhode Island, where he embarked in 1776 for the West Indies. The vessel in which he sailed was never heard from. Some writers, struck with the bold strain in which he protested his innocence during his trial, and the ingenuity he displayed in coloring the circumstances which had brought the charges upon him, have been inclined to doubt any treacherous intention on his part, and represent him as having been sacrificed to the blind and headlong jealousy of party, which swept away, with inconsiderate rashness, every object touched by the slightest taint of suspicion. But the facts brought against him at the time, regarded in connexion with what has been before alluded to of his writing secretly on the tory side in the early part of the contest, seem to afford no room for doubt in the matter. Church, we may reasonably suppose, was well affected to the country, and was ready to lend his influence and exertions to secure its ultimate welfare; so far his professions of patriotism and honesty were sincere. But he was led to believe that this object would be most effectually secured by making the sway of the mother country predominant, an error of the understanding which could have been pardoned him, had he not followed it up by playing a scheme of double dealing, at variance with every principle of political honesty. To have been a partizan of the British crown, would have subjected him only to the fate of being pitied for his misguided zeal, and classed among hundreds of others, who gave equally small proof of sagacity in political affairs without any abandonment of moral principle. But the duplicity of openly espousing an interest which he was practising every art underhand to defeat, brings him under a much severer censure than we feel called upon to bestow on the ordinary disaffected to the cause of independence. The poetical works of Dr Church which were the most widely known during his lifetime, are The Times, The Choice, An Elegy on the death of Dr Mayhew, An Elegy on the death of George Whitefield, An Address to a Provincial Bashaw, and a portion of the volume entitled Pietas et Gratulatio Collegii Cantabrigiensis apud Novanglos. This last was a poetical offering to George II, upon his accession to the throne, and consists of above thirty different pieces in Latin, Greek, and English, furnished chiefly by the officers of Harvard University. The part written by Church, may claim a just preeminence among them. The Times is a satirical piece, written just after the passing of the Stamp Act. The objects of the writer's denunciation are in some parts not very clearly manifest to the modern reader, but the general scope of the performance is sufficiently intelligible to those familiar with the history of the period, while the polish and spirit of the verse recommend it very favorably to our notice. THE TIMES. POLLIO, be kind! nor chide an early crime, "T is not great Churchill's ghost that claims your ear For even ghosts of wit are strangers here; The patriot-soul to other climes removed, Well-pleased enjoys that liberty he loved; No pang resents for Wto exile driven, Exults that worth and Pratt are dear to heaven: Cursed lack of genius, or thou soon should'st know, This humble cot conceals a tyrant's foe; By nature artless, unimproved by pains, No favor courts me, and no fear restrains, Wild as the soil, and as the heavens severe, All rudely rough, and wretchedly sincere; Whose frowning stars have thrown me God knows where, One glebe supports us, brethren cubs we run, No tutoring hand the tender sapling train'd Through walks of science, nor his growth sustain'd; Thou chaste instructress, Nature! thou art mine; No idle task the earliest muse began, Without one gleam of merit?-she'll create; Is there a scoundrel, has that scoundrel gold? From venal quills shall stream the sugar'd shower, Stamp me that blockhead, which (kind heaven be blest!) If sacred numbers I again desert, my We loved him, love him still, by heavens do more, last. And but compact to give their realms away; They mock at danger; what can those appal? See the new world their purchase, blest domain, And give the harvest of their blood away? Where am I hurried? Pollio, I forbear, And scorn the wretch who trembles at the grave. |