Charles Churchill è stato uno scrittore britannico.
Scrittore satirico, raggiunse la notorietà nel 1761 con The Rosciad, per poi scrivere nel 1763 The prophecy of famine. Fu imitatore di Alexander Pope e John Dryden e a sua volta da Thomas Chatterton.
Wikipedia
“E ragni mezzi morti di fame cacciavano mosche mezze morte di fame.”
And half-starved spiders prey'd on half-starved spiders.
Origine: Da The Prophecy of Famine, 328; riportato nella raccolta The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill: With Copious Notes and a Life of the Author, a cura di William Tooke, 1854, p. 198 http://books.google.it/books?id=Xb8-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA198.
“With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought”
Epistle to William Hogarth (July 1763), line 645
Contesto: With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought:
Constant attention wears the active mind,
Blots out our powers, and leaves a blank behind.
“Of sovereign power, whom one and all
With common voice, we Reason call.”
The Ghost (1763)
Contesto: Within the brain's most secret cells
A certain Lord Chief Justice dwells
Of sovereign power, whom one and all
With common voice, we Reason call.
“Be England what she will,
With all her faults she is my country still.”
The Farewell (1764), line 27; comparable with: "England, with all thy faults I love thee still, My country!", William Cowper, The Task, book ii. The Timepiece, line 206
“Amongst the sons of men how few are known
Who dare be just to merit not their own?”
Epistle to William Hogarth (July 1763)
“Wherever waves can roll, and winds can blow.”
The Farewell (1764), line 38; comparable with: "Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam", Lord Byron, The Corsair, canto i. stanza 1
Apology addressed to the Critical Reviewers (1761), line 232, comparable with: "Steal! to be sure they may; and, egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disguise them to make 'em pass for their own", Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic, act i. sc. i
“No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours and excise our brains.”
Night, an Epistle to Robert Lloyd (1761), line 271
“But, spite of all the criticising elves,
Those who would make us feel—must feel themselves.”
The Rosciad (1761), line 961; comparable with: "Si vis me flere, dolendum est/ Primum ipsi tibi" (translated as "If you wish me to weep, you yourself must first feel grief"), Horace, Ars Poetica, v. 102
The Prophecy of Famine: A Scots Pastoral (1763), line 327
