On the edge of the set, but apparently not in it, was Churchill, who was then running a course which to many seemed meteoric, and of whose verse, sometimes strong but always turbid, Cowper conceived and retained an extravagant admiration.
Churchill was a link to Wilkes; Hogarth too was an ally of Colman, and helped him in his exhibition of Signs.

The set was strictly confined to Westminsters.

Gray and Mason, being Etonians, were objects of its literary hostility and butts of its satire.

It is needless to say much about these literary companions of Cowper's youth: his intercourse with them was totally broken off, and before he himself became a poet its effects had been obliterated by madness, entire change of mind, and the lapse of twenty years.

If a trace remained, it was in his admiration of Churchill's verses, and in the general results of literary society, and of early practice in composition.