Churchill, Charles

(chûr´chĭl), 1731–64, English poet and satirist. Upon his family's insistence he took religious orders in 1756, but life as a London dandy suited him more, and he resigned his curacy. His first poem and perhaps his best work, The Rosciad (1761), a satire on the leading actresses and actors of the day, was an immediate success. His other works include The Prophecy of Famine (1763), a highly topical political satire, and An Epistle to William Hogarth (1763), attacking Hogarth for his heartless portrait of John Wilkes.

See his works (ed. by D. Grant, 1956); study by W. C. Brown (1953).