'
[1] 'The Burford:' Admiral Vernon's ship.
WILLIAM WHITEHEAD.
There was also a Paul Whitehead, who wrote a satire entitled 'Manners,'
which is highly praised by Boswell, and mentioned contemptuously by
Campbell, and who lives in the couplet of Churchill--
'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)
Be born a Whitehead, and baptized a Paul.'
William Whitehead was the son of a baker in Cambridge, was born in 1715,
and studied first at Winchester, and then in Clare Hall, in his own
city. He became tutor to the son of the Earl of Jersey, wrote one or two
poor plays, and in 1757, on the death of Colley Cibber, was appointed
Poet-Laureate--the office having previously been refused by Gray. This
roused against him a large class of those 'beings capable of envying
even a poet-laureate,' to use Gray's expression, and especially the
wrath of Churchill, then the man-mountain of satiric literature, who, in
his 'Ghost,' says--
'But he who in the laureate chair,
By grace, not merit, planted there,
In awkward pomp is seen to sit,
And by his patent proves his wit,' &c.
To these attacks Whitehead, who was a good-natured and modest man, made
no reply. In his latter years the Laureate resided in the family of Lord
Jersey, and died in 1785.
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