o the
spread of Christianity in the Roman empire is afforded by the
contemporary Mithraism. See Cumont's _Les Mysteres de Mithra_
(1900), Eng. tr. _The Mysteries of Mithra_ (1903).

CHURCHILL, CHARLES (1731-1764), English poet and satirist, was born in
Vine Street, Westminster, in February 1731. His father, rector of
Rainham, Essex, held the curacy and lectureship of St John's,
Westminster, from 1733, and the son was educated at Westminster school,
where he became a good classical scholar, and formed a close and lasting
intimacy with Robert Lloyd. Churchill was entered at Trinity College,
Cambridge, in 1749, but never resided. He had been refused at Oxford,
ostensibly on the unlikely ground of lack of classical knowledge, but
more probably because of a hasty marriage which he had contracted within
the rules of the Fleet in his eighteenth year. He and his wife lived in
his father's house, and Churchill was afterwards sent to the north of
England to prepare for holy orders. He became curate of South Cadbury,
Somersetshire, and, on receiving priest's orders (1756), began to act as
his father's curate at Rainham. Two years later the elder Churchill
died, and the son was elected to succeed him in his curacy and
lectureship. His emoluments amounted to less than L100 a year, and he
increased his income by teaching in a girls' school. He fulfilled his
various duties with decorum for a while, but his marriage proved
unfortunate, and he spent much of his time in dissipation in the society
of Robert Lloyd. He was separated from his wife in 1761, and would have
been imprisoned for debt but for the timely help of Lloyd's father, who
had been an usher and was now a master of Westminster school.

Churchill had already done some work for the booksellers, and his friend
Lloyd had had some success with a didactic poem, "The Actor." His
intimate knowledge of the theatre was now turned to account in the
_Rosciad_, which appeared in March 1761. This reckless and amusing
satire described with the most disconcerting accuracy the faults of the
various actors and actresses on the London stage. Its immediate
popularity was no doubt largely due to its personal character, but its
real vigour and raciness make it worth reading even now when the objects
of Churchill's wit are many of them forgotten. The first impression was
published anonymously, and in the _Critical Review_, conducted by Tobias
Smollett, it was confidently assert