Till his thirtieth year, Warburton evinced a depraved taste, but a craving appetite for knowledge. His mind was constituted to be more struck by the Monstrous than the Beautiful, much like that Sicilian prince who furnished his villa with the most hideous figures imaginable:[153] the delight resulting from harmonious and delicate forms raised emotions of too weak a nature to move his obliquity of taste; roused, however, by the surprise excited by colossal ugliness. The discovery of his intellectual tastes, at this obscure period of his life, besides in those works we have noticed, is confirmed by one of the most untoward accidents which ever happened to a literary man; it was the chance-discovery of a letter he had written to one of the heroes of the Dunciad, forty years before. At the time that letter was written, his literary connexions were formed with second-rate authors; he was in strict intimacy with Concanen and Theobald, and other "ingenious gentlemen who made up our last night's conversation," as he expresses himself.[154] This letter is full of the heresies of taste: one of the most anomalous is the comment on that well-known passage in Shakspeare, on "the genius and the mortal instruments;" Warburton's is a miraculous specimen of fantastical sagacity and critical delirium, or the art of discovering meanings never meant, and of illustrations the author could never have known. Warburton declares to "the ingenious gentlemen," (whom afterwards with a Pharaoh's heart he hanged by dozens to posterity in the "Dunciad,") that "Pope borrowed for want of genius;" that poet, who, when the day arrived, he was to comment on as the first of poets! His insulting criticisms on the popular writings of Addison,—his contempt for what Young calls "sweet elegant Virgilian prose,"—show how utterly insensible he was to that classical taste in which Addison had constructed his materials. But he who could not taste the delicacy of Addison, it may be imagined might be in raptures with the rant of Lee. There is an unerring principle in the false sublime: it seems to be governed by laws, though they are not ours; and we know what it will like, that is, we know what it will mistake for what ought not to be liked, as surely as we can anticipate what will delight correct taste. Warburton has pronounced one of the raving passages of poor Nat "to contain not only the most sublime, but the most judicious imagery that poetry could conceive or paint." JOSEPH WARTON, who indignantly rejects it from his edition of Pope, asserts that "we have not in our language a more striking example of true turgid expression, and genuine fustian and bombast."[155] Yet such was the man whom ill-fortune (for the public at least) had chosen to become the commentator of our greater poets! Again Churchill throws light on our character:—

He, with an all-sufficient air Places himself in the critic's chair, And wrote, to advance his Maker's praise, Comments on rhymes, and notes on plays— A judge of genius, though, confest, With not one spark of genius blest: Among the first of critics placed, Though free from every taint of taste.

Not encouraged by the reception his first literary efforts received, but having obtained some preferment from his patron, we now come to a critical point in his life. He retreated from the world, and, during a seclusion of near twenty years, persevered in uninterrupted studies. The force of his character placed him in the first order of thinking beings. This resolution no more to court the world for literary favours, but to command it by hardy preparation for mighty labours, displays a noble retention of the appetite for fame; Warburton scorned to be a scribbler!

Had this great man journalised his readings, as Gibbon has done, we should perhaps be more astonished at his miscellaneous pursuits. He read everything, and, I suspect, with little distinction, and equal delight.[156] Curiosity, even to its delirium, was his first passion; which produced those new systems of hypothetical reasoning by which he startled the world; and his efforts to save his most ingenious theories from absurdity resembled, to use his own emphatic words applied to the philosophy of Leibnitz, "a contrivance against Fatalism," for though his genius has given a value to the wildest paradoxes, paradoxes they remain.

But if Warburton read so much, it was not to enforce opinions already furnished to his hands, or with cold scepticism to reject them, leaving the reader in despair. He read that he might write what no one else had written, and which at least required to be refuted before it was condemned. He hit upon a SECRET PRINCIPLE, which prevails through all his works, and this was INVENTION; a talent, indeed, somewhat dangerous to introduce in researches where Truth, and not Fancy, was to be addressed. But even with all this originality he was not free from imitation, and has even been accused of borrowing largely without hinting at his obligations. He had certainly one favourite model before him: Warburton has delineated the portrait of a certain author with inimitable minuteness, while he caught its general effect; we feel that the artist, in tracing the resemblance of another, is inspired by all the flattery of a self-painter—he perceived the kindred features, and he loved them!

This author was BAYLE! And I am unfolding the character of Warburton, in copying the very original portrait:—

"Mr. Bayle is of a quite different character from these Italian sophists: a writer, whose strength and clearness of reasoning can be equalled only by the gaiety, easiness, and delicacy of his wit; who, pervading human nature with a glance, STRUCK INTO THE PROVINCE OF PARADOX, as an exercise for the restless vigour of his mind: who, with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks of fortune, and a heart practised to the best philosophy, had not yet enough of real greatness to overcome that last foible of superior geniuses, the temptation of honour, which the ACADEMIC EXERCISE OF WIT is conceived to bring to its professors."[157]

Here, then, we discover the SECRET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton through all his works, although of the most opposite natures. I do not give this as an opinion to be discussed, but as a fact to be demonstrated.

The faculties so eminent in Bayle were equally so in Warburton. In his early studies he had particularly applied himself to logic; and was not only a vigorous reasoner, but one practised in all the finesse of dialectics. He had wit, fertile indeed, rather than delicate; and a vast body of erudition, collected in the uninterrupted studies of twenty years. But it was the SECRET PRINCIPLE, or, as he calls it, "the Academic exercise of Wit," on an enlarged system, which carried him so far in the new world of INVENTION he was creating.

This was a new characteristic of investigation; it led him on to pursue his profounder inquiries beyond the clouds of antiquity; for what he could not discover, he CONJECTURED and ASSERTED. Objects, which in the hands of other men were merely matters resting on authentic researches, now received the stamp and lustre of original invention. Nothing was to be seen in the state in which others had viewed it; the hardiest paradoxes served his purpose best, and this licentious principle produced unlooked-for discoveries. He humoured his taste, always wild and unchastised, in search of the monstrous and the extravagant; and, being a wit, he delighted in finding resemblances in objects which to more regulated minds had no similarity whatever. Wit may exercise its ingenuity as much in combining things unconnected with each other, as in its odd assemblage of ideas; and Warburton, as a literary antiquary, proved to be as witty in his combinations as BUTLER and CONGREVE in their comic images. As this principle took full possession of the mind of this man of genius, the practice became so familiar, that it is possible he might at times have been credulous enough to have confided in his own reveries. As he forcibly expressed himself on one of his adversaries, Dr. STEBBING, "Thus it is to have to do with a head whose sense is all run to system." "His Academic Wit" now sported amid whimsical theories, pursued bold but inconclusive arguments, marked out subtile distinctions, and discovered incongruous resemblances; but they were maintained by an imposing air of conviction, furnished with the most prodigal erudition, and they struck out many ingenious combinations. The importance or the curiosity of the topics awed or delighted his readers; the principle, however licentious, by the surprise it raised, seduced the lovers of novelties. Father HARDOUIN had studied as hard as Warburton, rose as early, and retired to rest as late, and the obliquity of his intellect resembled that of Warburton—but he was a far inferior genius; he only discovered that the classical works of antiquity, the finest compositions of the human mind, in ages of its utmost refinement, had been composed by the droning monks of the middle ages; a discovery which only surprised by its tasteless absurdity—but the absurdities of Warburton had more dignity, were more delightful, and more dangerous: they existed, as it were, in a state of illusion, but illusion which required as much genius and learning as his own to dissipate. His spells were to be disturbed only by a magician, great as himself. Conducted by this solitary principle, Warburton undertook, as it were, a magical voyage into antiquity. He passed over the ocean of time, sailing amid rocks, and half lost on quicksands; but he never failed to raise up some terra incognita; or point at some scene of the Fata Morgana, some earthly spot, painted in the heaven one knows not how.

In this secret principle of resolving to invent what no other had before conceived, by means of conjecture and assertion, and of maintaining his theories with all the pride of a sophist, and all the fierceness of an inquisitor, we have the key to all the contests by which this great mind so long supported his literary usurpations.

The first step the giant took showed the mightiness of his stride. His first great work was the famous "Alliance between Church and State." It surprised the world, who saw the most important subject depending on a mere curious argument, which, like all political theories, was liable to be overthrown by writers of opposite principles.[158] The term "Alliance" seemed to the dissenters to infer that the Church was an independent power, forming a contract with the State, and not acknowledging that it is only an integral part, like that of the army or the navy.[159] Warburton had not probably decided, at that time, on the principle of ecclesiastical power: whether it was paramount by its divine origin, as one party asserted; or whether, as the new philosophers, Hobbes, Selden, and others, insisted, the spiritual was secondary to the civil power.[160]

The intrepidity of this vast genius appears in the plan of his greater work. The omission of a future state of reward and punishment, in the Mosaic writings, was perpetually urged as a proof that the mission was not of divine origin: the ablest defenders strained at obscure or figurative passages, to force unsatisfactory inferences; but they were looking after what could not be found. Warburton at once boldly acknowledged it was not there; at once adopted all the objections of the infidels: and roused the curiosity of both parties by the hardy assertion, that this very omission was a demonstration of its divine origin.[161]

The first idea of this new project was bold and delightful, and the plan magnificent. Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity, the three great religions of mankind, were to be marshalled in all their pomp, and their awe, and their mystery. But the procession changed to a battle! To maintain one great paradox, he was branching out into innumerable ones. This great work was never concluded: the author wearied himself, without, however, wearying his readers; and, as his volumes appeared, he was still referring to his argument, "as far as it is yet advanced." The demonstration appeared in great danger of ending in a conjecture; and this work, always beginning and never ending, proved to be the glory and misery of his life.[162] In perpetual conflict with those numerous adversaries it roused, Warburton often shifted his ground, and broke into so many divisions, that when he cried out, Victory! his scattered forces seemed rather to be in flight than in pursuit.[163]

The same SECRET PRINCIPLE led him to turn the poetical narrative of AEneas in the infernal regions, an episode evidently imitated by Virgil from his Grecian master, into a minute description of the initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. A notion so perfectly new was at least worth a commonplace truth. Was it not delightful to have so many particulars detailed of a secret transaction, which even its contemporaries of two thousand years ago did not presume to know anything about? Father Hardouin seems to have opened the way for Warburton, since he had discovered that the whole AEneid was an allegorical voyage of St. Peter to Rome! When Jortin, in one of his "Six Dissertations," modestly illustrated Virgil by an interpretation inconsistent with Warburton's strange discovery, it produced a memorable quarrel. Then Hurd, the future shield, scarcely the sword, of Warburton, made his first sally; a dapper, subtle, and cold-blooded champion, who could dexterously turn about the polished weapon of irony.[164] So much our Railleur admired the volume of Jortin, that he favoured him with "A Seventh Dissertation, addressed to the Author of the Sixth, on the Delicacy of Friendship," one of the most malicious, but the keenest pieces of irony. It served as the foundation of a new School of Criticism, in which the arrogance of the master was to be supported by the pupil's contempt of men often his superiors. To interpret Virgil differently from the modern Stagirite, was, by the aggravating art of the ridiculer, to be considered as the violation of a moral feeling.[165] Jortin bore the slow torture and the teasing of Hurd's dissecting-knife in dignified silence.

At length a rising genius demonstrated how Virgil could not have described the Eleusinian Mysteries in the sixth book of the AEneid. One blow from the arm of Gibbon shivered the allegorical fairy palace into glittering fragments.[166]

When the sceptical Middleton, in his "Essay on the Gift of Tongues," pretended to think that "an inspired language would be perfect in its kind, with all the purity of Plato and the eloquence of Cicero," and then asserted that "the style of the New Testament was utterly rude and barbarous, and abounding with every fault that can possibly deform a language," Warburton, as was his custom, instantly acquiesced; but hardily maintained that "this very barbarism was one certain mark of a divine original."[167]—The curious may follow his subtile argument in his "Doctrine of Grace;" but, in delivering this paradox, he struck at the fundamental principles of eloquence: he dilated on all the abuses of that human art. It was precisely his utter want of taste which afforded him so copious an argument; for he asserted that the principles of eloquence were arbitrary and chimerical, and its various modes "mostly fantastical;" and that, consequently, there was no such thing as a good taste,[168] except what the consent of the learned had made; an expression borrowed from Quintilian. A plausible and a consolatory argument for the greater part of mankind! It, however, roused the indignation of Leland, the eloquent translator of Demosthenes, and the rhetorical professor at Trinity College, in Dublin, who has nobly defended the cause of classical taste and feeling by profounder principles. His classic anger produced his "Dissertation on the Principles of Human Eloquence;" a volume so much esteemed that it is still reprinted. Leland refuted the whimsical paradox, yet complimented Warburton, who, "with the spirit and energy of an ancient orator, was writing against eloquence," while he showed that the style of the New Testament was defensible on surer grounds. Hurd, who had fleshed his polished weapon on poor Jortin, and had been received into the arms of the hero under whom he now fought, adventured to cast his javelin at Leland: it was dipped in the cold poison of contempt and petulance. It struck, but did not canker, leaves that were immortal.[169] Leland, with the native warmth of his soil, could not resist the gratification of a reply; but the nobler part of the triumph was, the assistance he lent to the circulation of Hurd's letter, by reprinting it with his own reply, to accompany a new edition of his "Dissertation on Eloquence."[170]

We now pursue the SECRET PRINCIPLE, operating on lighter topics; when, turning commentator, with the same originality as when an author, his character as a literary adventurer is still more prominent, extorting double senses, discovering the most fantastical allusions, and making men of genius but of confined reading, learned, with all the lumber of his own unwieldy erudition.

When the German professor CROUSAZ published a rigid examen of the doctrines in POPE'S "Essay on Man," Warburton volunteered a defence of Pope. Some years before, it appears that Warburton himself, in a literary club at Newark, had produced a dissertation against those very doctrines! where he asserted that "the Essay was collected from the worst passages of the worst authors." This probably occurred at the time he declared that Pope had no genius! BOLINGBROKE really WROTE the "Essay on Man," which Pope versified.[171] His principles may be often objectionable; but those who only read this fine philosophical poem for its condensed verse, its imagery, and its generous sentiments, will run no danger from a metaphysical system they will not care to comprehend.

But this serves not as an apology for Warburton, who now undertook an elaborate defence of what he had himself condemned, and for which purpose he has most unjustly depressed Crousaz—an able logician, and a writer ardent in the cause of religion. This commentary on the "Essay on Man," then, looks much like the work of a sophist and an adventurer! Pope, who was now alarmed at the tendency of some of those principles he had so innocently versified, received Warburton as his tutelary genius. A mere poet was soon dazzled by the sorcery of erudition; and he himself, having nothing of that kind of learning, believed Warburton to be the Scaliger of the age, for his gratitude far exceeded his knowledge.[172] The poet died in this delusion: he consigned his immortal works to the mercy of a ridiculous commentary and a tasteless commentator, whose labours have cost so much pains to subsequent editors to remove. Yet from this moment we date the worldly fortunes of Warburton.—Pope presented him with the entire property of his works; introduced him to a blind and obedient patron, who bestowed on him a rich wife, by whom he secured a fine mansion; till at length, the mitre crowned his last ambition. Such was the large chapter of accidents in Warburton's life!

There appears in Warburton's conduct respecting the editions of the great poets which he afterwards published, something systematic; he treated the several editors of those very poets, THEOBALD, HANMER, and GREY, who were his friends, with the same odd sort of kindness: when he was unknown to the world, he cheerfully contributed to all their labours, and afterwards abused them with the liveliest severity.[173] It is probable that he had himself projected these editions as a source of profit, but had contributed to the more advanced labours of his rival editors, merely as specimens of his talent, that the public might hereafter be thus prepared for his own more perfect commentaries.

Warburton employed no little art[174] to excite the public curiosity respecting his future Shakspeare: he liberally presented Dr. BIRCH with his MS. notes for that great work the "General Dictionary," no doubt as the prelude of his after-celebrated edition. Birch was here only a dupe: he escaped, unlike Theobald, Hanmer, and Grey, from being overwhelmed with ridicule and contempt. When these extraordinary specimens of emendatory and illustrative criticism appeared in the "General Dictionary," with general readers they excited all the astonishment of perfect novelty. It must have occurred to them, that no one as yet had understood Shakspeare; and, indeed, that it required no less erudition than that of the new luminary now rising in the critical horizon to display the amazing erudition of this most recondite poet. Conjectural criticism not only changed the words but the thoughts of the author; perverse interpretations of plain matters. Many a striking passage was wrested into a new meaning: plain words were subtilised to remove conceits; here one line was rejected, and there an interpolation, inspired alone by critical sagacity, pretended to restore a lost one; and finally, a source of knowledge was opened in the notes, on subjects which no other critic suspected could, by any ingenuity, stand connected with Shakspeare's text.

At length the memorable edition appeared: all the world knows its chimeras.[175] One of its most remarkable results was the production of that work, which annihilated the whimsical labours of Warburton, Edwards's "Canons of Criticism," one of those successful facetious criticisms which enliven our literary history. Johnson, awed by the learning of Warburton, and warmed by a personal feeling for a great genius who had condescended to encourage his first critical labour, grudgingly bestows a moderated praise on this exquisite satire, which he characterises for "its airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy." He compared this attack "to a fly, which may sting and tease a horse, but yet the horse is the nobler animal."[176] Among the prejudices of criticism, is one which hinders us from relishing a masterly performance, when it ridicules a favourite author; but to us, mere historians, truth will always prevail over literary favouritism. The work of Edwards effected its purpose, that of "laughing down Warburton to his proper rank and character."[177]

Warburton designates himself as "a critic by profession;" and tells us, he gave this edition "to deter the unlearned writer from wantonly trifling with an art he is a stranger to, at the expense of the integrity of the text of established authors." Edwards has placed a N.B. on this declaration:—"A writer may properly be called unlearned, who, notwithstanding all his other knowledge, does not understand the subject which he writes upon." But the most dogmatical absurdity was Warburton's declaration, that it was once his design to have given "a body of canons for criticism, drawn out in form, with a glossary;" and further he informs the reader, that though this has not been done by him, if the reader will take the trouble, he may supply himself, as these canons of criticism lie scattered in the course of the notes. This idea was seized on with infinite humour by Edwards, who, from these very notes, has framed a set of "Canons of Criticism," as ridiculous as possible, but every one illustrated by authentic examples, drawn from the labours of our new Stagirite.[178]

At length, when the public had decided on the fact of Warburton's edition, it was confessed that the editor's design had never been to explain Shakspeare! and that he was even conscious he had frequently imputed to the poet meanings which he never thought! Our critic's great object was to display his own learning! Warburton wrote for Warburton, and not for Shakspeare! and the literary imposture almost rivals the confessions of Lander or Psalmanazar!

The same SECRET PRINCIPLE was pursued in his absurd edition of Pope. He formed an unbroken Commentary on the "Essay on Criticism," to show that that admirable collection of precepts had been constructed by a systematical method, which it is well known the poet never designed; and the same instruments of torture were here used as in the "Essay on Man," to reconcile a system of fatalism to the doctrines of Revelation.[179] Warton had to remove the incumbrance of his Commentaries on Pope, while a most laborious confederacy zealously performed the same task to relieve Shakspeare. Thus Warburton pursued ONE SECRET PRINCIPLE in all his labours; thus he raised edifices which could not be securely inhabited, and were only impediments in the roadway; and these works are now known by the labours of those who have exerted their skill in laying them in ruins.

Warburton was probably aware that the SECRET PRINCIPLE which regulated his public opinions might lay him open, at numerous points, to the strokes of ridicule. It is a weapon which every one is willing to use, but which seems to terrify every one when it is pointed against themselves. There is no party or sect which have not employed it in their most serious controversies: the grave part of mankind protest against it, often at the moment they have been directing it for their own purpose. And the inquiry, whether ridicule be a test of truth, is one of the large controversies in our own literature. It was opened by Lord Shaftesbury, and zealously maintained by his school. Akenside, in a note to his celebrated poem, asserts the efficacy of ridicule as a test of truth: Lord Kaimes had just done the same. Warburton levelled his piece at the lord in the bush-fighting of a note; but came down in the open field with a full discharge of his artillery on the luckless bard.[180]

Warburton designates Akenside under the sneering appellative of "The Poet," and alluding to his "sublime account" of the use of ridicule, insultingly reminds him of "his Master," Shaftesbury, and of that school which made morality an object of taste, shrewdly hinting that Akenside was "a man of taste;" a new term, as we are to infer from Warburton, for "a Deist;" or, as Akenside had alluded to Spinoza, he might be something worse. The great critic loudly protested against the practice of ridicule; but, in attacking its advocate, he is himself an evidence of its efficacy, by keenly ridiculing "the Poet" and his opinions. Dyson, the patron of Akenside, nobly stepped forwards to rescue his Eagle, panting in the tremendous gripe of the critical Lion. His defence of Akenside is an argumentative piece of criticism on the nature of ridicule, curious, but wanting the graces of the genius who inspired it.[181]

I shall stop one moment, since it falls into our subject, to record this great literary battle on the use of ridicule, which has been fought till both parties, after having shed their ink, divide the field without victory or defeat, and now stand looking on each other.

The advocates for the use of RIDICULE maintain that it is a natural sense or feeling, bestowed on us for wise purposes by the Supreme Being, as are the other feelings of beauty and of sublimity;—the sense of beauty to detect the deformity, as the sense of ridicule the absurdity of an object: and they further maintain, that no real virtues, such as wisdom, honesty, bravery, or generosity, can be ridiculed.

The great Adversary of Ridicule replied that they did not dare to ridicule the virtues openly; but, by overcharging and distorting them they could laugh at leisure. "Give them other names," he says, "call them but Temerity, Prodigality, Simplicity, &c., and your business is done. Make them ridiculous, and you may go on, in the freedom of wit and humour (as Shaftesbury distinguishes ridicule), till there be never a virtue left to laugh out of countenance."

The ridiculers acknowledge that their favourite art may do mischief, when dishonest men obtrude circumstances foreign to the object. But, they justly urge, that the use of reason itself is full as liable to the same objection: grant Spinoza his false premises, and his conclusions will be considered as true. Dyson threw out an ingenious illustration. "It is so equally in the mathematics; where, in reasoning about a circle, if we join along with its real properties others that do not belong to it, our conclusions will certainly be erroneous. Yet who would infer from hence that the manner of proof is defective or fallacious?"

Warburton urged the strongest case against the use of ridicule, in that of Socrates and Aristophanes. In his strong and coarse illustration he shows, that "by clapping a fool's coat on the most immaculate virtue, it stuck on Socrates like a San Benito, and at last brought him to his execution: it made the owner resemble his direct opposite; that character he was most unlike. The consequences are well known."

Warburton here adopted the popular notion, that the witty buffoon Aristophanes was the occasion of the death of the philosopher Socrates. The defence is skilful on the part of Dyson; and we may easily conceive that on so important a point Akenside had been consulted. I shall give it in his own words:—

"The Socrates of Aristophanes is as truly ridiculous a character as ever was drawn; but it is not the character of Socrates himself. The object was perverted, and the mischief which ensued was owing to the dishonesty of him who persuaded the people that that was the real character of Socrates, not from any error in the faculty of ridicule itself."—Dyson then states the fact as it concerned Socrates. "The real intention of the contrivers of this ridicule was not so much to mislead the people, by giving them a bad opinion of Socrates, as to sound what was at the time the general opinion of him, that from thence they might judge whether it would be safe to bring a direct accusation against him. The most effectual way of making this trial was by ridiculing him; for they knew, if the people saw his character in its true light, they would be displeased with the misrepresentation, and not endure the ridicule. On trial this appeared: the play met with its deserved fate; and, notwithstanding the exquisiteness of the wit, was absolutely rejected. A second attempt succeeded no better; and the abettors of the poet were so discouraged from pursuing their design against Socrates, that it was not till ABOVE TWENTY YEARS after the publication of the play that they brought their accusation against him! It was not, therefore, ridicule that did, or could destroy Socrates: he was rather sacrificed for the right use of it himself, against the Sophists, who could not bear the test."

Thus, then, stands the argument.—Warburton, reasoning on the abuses of ridicule, has opened to us all its dangers. Its advocate concedes that Ridicule, to be a test of Truth, must not impose on us circumstances which are foreign to the object. No object can be ridiculed that is not ridiculous. Should this happen, then the ridicule is false; and, as such, can be proved as much as any piece of false reasoning. We may therefore conclude, that ridicule is a taste of congruity and propriety not possessed by every one; a test which separates truth from imposture; a talent against the exercise of which most men are interested to protest; but which, being founded on the constituent principles of the human mind, is often indulged at the very moment it is decried and complained of.

But we must not leave this great man without some notice of that peculiar style of controversy which he adopted, and which may be distinguished among our LITERARY QUARRELS. He has left his name to a school—a school which the more liberal spirit of the day we live in would not any longer endure. Who has not heard of THE WARBURTONIANS?

That SECRET PRINCIPLE which directed Warburton in all his works, and which we have attempted to pursue, could not of itself have been sufficient to have filled the world with the name of Warburton. Other scholars have published reveries, and they have passed away, after showing themselves for a time, leaving no impression; like those coloured and shifting shadows on a wall, with which children are amused; but Warburton was a literary Revolutionist, who, to maintain a new order of things, exercised all the despotism of a perpetual dictator. The bold unblushing energy which could lay down the most extravagant positions, was maintained by a fierce dogmatic spirit, and by a peculiar style of mordacious contempt and intolerant insolence, beating down his opponents from all quarters with an animating shout of triumph, to encourage those more serious minds, who, overcome by his genius, were yet often alarmed by the ambiguous tendency of his speculations.[182]

The Warburtonian School was to be supported by the most licentious principles; by dictatorial arrogance,[183] by gross invective, and by airy sarcasm;[184] the bitter contempt which, with its many little artifices, lowers an adversary in the public opinion, was more peculiarly the talent of one of the aptest scholars, the cool, the keen, the sophistical Hurd. The lowest arts of confederacy were connived at by all the disciples,[185] prodigal of praise to themselves, and retentive of it to all others; the world was to be divided into two parts, the Warburtonians and the Anti.

To establish this new government in the literary world, this great Revolutionist was favoured by Fortune with two important aids; the one was a Machine, by which he could wield public opinion; and the other a Man, who seemed born to be his minister or his viceroy.

The machine was nothing less than the immortal works of Pope; as soon as Warburton had obtained a royal patent to secure to himself the sole property of Pope's works, the public were compelled, under the disguise of a Commentary on the most classical of our Poets, to be concerned with all his literary quarrels, and have his libels and lampoons perpetually before them; all the foul waters of his anger were deposited here as in a common reservoir.[186]

Fanciful as was the genius of Warburton, it delighted too much in its eccentric motions, and in its own solitary greatness, amid abstract and recondite topics, to have strongly attracted the public attention, had not a party been formed around him, at the head of which stood the active and subtle Hurd; and amid the gradations of the votive brotherhood, the profound BALGUY,[187] the spirited BROWN,[188] till we descend—

To his tame jackal, parson TOWNE.[189] Verses on Warburton's late Edition.

This Warburtonian party reminds one of an old custom among our elder poets, who formed a kind of freemasonry among themselves, by adopting younger poets by the title of their sons.—But that was a domestic society of poets; this, a revival of the Jesuitic order instituted by its founder, that—

By him supported with a proper pride, They might hold all mankind as fools beside. Might, like himself, teach each adopted son, 'Gainst all the world, to quote a Warburton.[190] CHURCHILL'S "Fragment of a Dedication."

The character of a literary sycophant was never more perfectly exhibited than in Hurd. A Whig in principle, yet he had all a courtier's arts for Warburton; to him he devoted all his genius, though that, indeed, was moderate; aided him with all his ingenuity, which was exquisite; and lent his cause a certain delicacy of taste and cultivated elegance, which, although too prim and artificial, was a vein of gold running through his mass of erudition; it was Hurd who aided the usurpation of Warburton in the province of criticism above Aristotle and Longinus.[191] Hurd is justly characterised by Warton, in his Spenser, vol. ii. p. 36, as "the most sensible and ingenious of modern critics."—He was a lover of his studies; and he probably was sincere, when he once told a friend of the literary antiquary Cole, that he would have chosen not to quit the university, for he loved retirement; and on that principle Cowley was his favourite poet, which he afterwards showed by his singular edition of that poet. He was called from the cloistered shades to assume the honourable dignity of a Royal Tutor. Had he devoted his days to literature, he would have still enriched its stores. But he had other more supple and more serviceable qualifications. Most adroit was he in all the archery of controversy: he had the subtlety that can evade the aim of the assailant, and the slender dexterity, substituted for vigour, that struck when least expected. The subaltern genius of Hurd required to be animated by the heroic energy of Warburton; and the careless courage of the chief wanted one who could maintain the unguarded passages he left behind him in his progress.

Such, then, was WARBURTON, and such the quarrels of this great author. He was, through his literary life, an adventurer, guided by that secret principle which opened an immediate road to fame. By opposing the common sentiments of mankind, he awed and he commanded them; and by giving a new face to all things, he surprised, by the appearances of discoveries. All this, so pleasing to his egotism, was not, however, fortunate for his ambition. To sustain an authority which he had usurped; to substitute for the taste he wanted a curious and dazzling erudition; and to maintain those reckless decisions which so often plunged him into perils, Warburton adopted his system of Literary Quarrels. These were the illegitimate means which raised a sudden celebrity, and which genius kept alive, as long as that genius lasted; but Warburton suffered that literary calamity, too protracted a period of human life: he outlived himself and his fame. This great and original mind sacrificed all his genius to that secret principle we have endeavoured to develope—it was a self-immolation!

The learned SELDEN, in the curious little volume of his "Table-Talk," has delivered to posterity a precept for the learned, which they ought to wear, like the Jewish phylacteries, as "a frontlet between their eyes." No man is the wiser for his learning: it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man. Sir THOMAS HANMER, who was well acquainted with Warburton, during their correspondence about Shakspeare, often said of him:—"The only use he could find in Mr. Warburton was starting the game; he was not to be trusted in running it down." A just discrimination! His fervid curiosity was absolutely creative; but his taste and his judgment, perpetually stretched out by his system, could not save him from even inglorious absurdities!

Warburton, it is probable, was not really the character he appears. It mortifies the lovers of genius to discover how a natural character may be thrown into a convulsed unnatural state by some adopted system: it is this system, which, carrying it, as it were, beyond itself, communicates a more than natural, but a self-destroying energy. All then becomes reversed! The arrogant and vituperative Warburton was only such in his assumed character; for in still domestic life he was the creature of benevolence, touched by generous passions. But in public life the artificial or the acquired character prevails over the one which nature designed for us; and by that all public men, as well as authors, are usually judged by posterity.

FOOTNOTES:

[141] One of his lively adversaries, the author of the "Canons of Criticism," observed the difficulty of writing against an author whose reputation so much exceeded the knowledge of his works. "It is my misfortune," says EDWARDS, "in this controversy, to be engaged with a person who is better known by his name than his works; or, to speak more properly, whose works are more known than read."—Preface to the Canons of Criticism.

[142] Aristotle's Rhetoric, B. III. c. 16.

[143] The materials for a "Life of Warburton" have been arranged by Mr. NICHOLS with his accustomed fidelity.—See his Literary Anecdotes.

[144] It is probable I may have drawn my meteor from our volcanic author himself, who had his lucid moments, even in the deliriums of his imagination. Warburton has rightly observed, in his "Divine Legation," p. 203, that "Systems, Schemes, and Hypotheses, all bred of heat, in the warm regions of Controversy, like meteors in a troubled sky, have each its turn to blaze and fly away."

[145] It seems, even by the confession of a Warburtonian, that his master was of "a human size;" for when Bishop LOWTH rallies the Warburtonians for their subserviency and credulity to their master, he aimed a gentle stroke at Dr. BROWN, who, in his "Essays on the Characteristics," had poured forth the most vehement panegyric. In his "Estimate of Manners of the Times," too, after a long tirade of their badness in regard to taste and learning, he thus again eulogizes his mighty master:—"Himself is abused, and his friends insulted for his sake, by those who never read his writings; or, if they did, could neither taste nor comprehend them; while every little aspiring or despairing scribbler eyes him as Cassius did Caesar: and whispers to his fellow—

'Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.'

No wonder, then, if the malice of the Lilliputian tribe be bent against this dreaded GULLIVER; if they attack him with poisoned arrows, whom they cannot subdue by strength."

On this Lowth observes, that "this Lord Paramount in his pretensions doth bestride the narrow world of literature, and has cast out his shoe over all the regions of science." This leads to a ludicrous comparison of Warburton, with King Pichrochole and his three ministers, who, in URQUHART'S admirable version of the French wit, are Count Merdaille, the Duke of Smalltrash, and the Earl Swashbuckler, who set up for universal monarchy, and made an imaginary expedition through all the quarters of the world, as Rabelais records, and the bishop facetiously quotes. Dr. Brown afterwards seemed to repent his panegyric, and contrives to make his gigantic hero shrink into a moderate size. "I believe still, every little aspiring fellow continues thus to eye him. For myself, I have ever considered him as a man, yet considerable among his species, as the following part of the paragraph clearly demonstrates. I speak of him here as a Gulliver indeed; yet still of no more than human size, and only apprehended to be of colossal magnitude by certain of his Lilliputian enemies." Thus subtilely would poor Dr. Brown save appearances! It must be confessed that, in a dilemma, never was a giant got rid of so easily!—The plain truth, however, was, that Brown was then on the point of quarrelling with Warburton; for he laments, in a letter to a friend, that "he had not avoided all personal panegyric. I had thus saved myself the trouble of setting right a character which I far over-painted." A part of this letter is quoted in the "Biographia Britannica."

[146] "Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian, not admitted into the collections of their respective works," itself a collection which our shelves could ill spare, though maliciously republished by Dr. PARR. The dedication by Parr stands unparalleled for comparative criticism. It is the eruption of a volcano; it sparkles, it blazes, and scatters light and destruction. How deeply ought we to regret that this Nazarite suffered his strength to be shorn by the Delilahs of spurious fame. Never did this man, with his gifted strength, grasp the pillars of a temple, to shake its atoms over Philistines; but pleased the childlike simplicity of his mind by pulling down houses over the heads of their unlucky inhabitants. He consumed, in local and personal literary quarrels, a genius which might have made the next age his own. With all the stores of erudition, and all the eloquence of genius, he mortified a country parson for his politics, and a London accoucheur for certain obstetrical labours performed on Horace; and now his collected writings lie before us, volumes unsaleable and unread. His insatiate vanity was so little delicate, as often to snatch its sweetmeat from a foul plate; it now appears, by the secret revelations in Griffith's own copy of his "Monthly Review," that the writer of a very elaborate article on the works of Dr. Parr, was no less a personage than the Doctor himself. His egotism was so declamatory, that it unnaturalized a great mind, by the distortions of Johnsonian mimicry; his fierceness, which was pushed on to brutality on the unresisting, retreated with a child's terrors when resisted; and the pomp of petty pride in table triumphs and evening circles, ill compensated for the lost century he might have made his own!

Lord o'er the greatest, to the least a slave, Half-weak, half-strong, half-timid, and half-brave; To take a compliment of too much pride, And yet most hurt when praises are denied. Thou art so deep discerning, yet so blind, So learn'd, so ignorant, cruel, yet so kind; So good, so bad, so foolish, and so wise;— By turns I love thee, and by turns despise. MS. ANON. (said to be by the late Dr. HOMER.)

[147] The "Quarterly Review," vol. vii. p. 383.—So masterly a piece of criticism has rarely surprised the public in the leaves of a periodical publication. It comes, indeed, with the feelings of another age, and the reminiscences of the old and vigorous school. I cannot implicitly adopt all the sentiments of the critic, but it exhibits a highly-finished portrait, enamelled by the love of the artist.—This article was written by the late Dr. Whitaker, the historian of Craven, &c.

[148] When Warburton, sore at having been refused academical honours at Oxford, which were offered to Pope, then his fellow-traveller, and who, in consequence of this refusal, did himself not accept them—in his controversy with Lowth (then the Oxford Professor), gave way to his angry spirit, and struck at the University itself, for its political jesuitism, being a place where men "were taught to distinguish between de facto and de jure," caustic was the retort. Lowth, by singular felicity of application, touched on Warburton's original designation, in a character he hit on in Clarendon. After remonstrating with spirit and dignity on this petulant attack, which was not merely personal, Lowth continues:—"Had I not your lordship's example to justify me, I should think it a piece of extreme impertinence to inquire where YOU were bred; though one might justly plead, in excuse for it, a natural curiosity to know where and how such a phenomenon was produced. It is commonly said that your lordship's education was of that particular kind, concerning which it is a remark of that great judge of men and manners, Lord Clarendon (on whom you have, therefore, with a wonderful happiness of allusion, justness of application, and elegance of expression, conferred 'the unrivalled title of the Chancellor of Human Nature'), that it peculiarly disposes men to be proud, insolent, and pragmatical." Lowth, in a note, inserts Clarendon's character of Colonel Harrison: "He had been bred up in the place of a clerk, under a lawyer of good account in those parts; which kind of education introduces men into the language and practice of business; and if it be not resisted by the great ingenuity of the person, inclines young men to more pride than any other kind of breeding, and disposes them to be pragmatical and insolent." "Now, my lord (Lowth continues), as you have in your whole behaviour, and in all your writings, remarkably distinguished yourself by your humility, lenity, meekness, forbearance, candour, humanity, civility, decency, good manners, good temper, moderation with regard to the opinions of others, and a modest diffidence of your own, this unpromising circumstance of your education is so far from being a disgrace to you, that it highly redounds to your praise."—Lowth's Letter to the Author of the D. L. p. 63.

Was ever weapon more polished and keen? This Attic style of controversy finely contrasts with the tasteless and fierce invective of the Warburtonians, although one of them is well known to have managed too adroitly the cutting instrument of irony; but the frigid malignancy of Hurd diminishes the pleasure we might find in his skill. Warburton ill concealed his vexation in the contempt he vented in a letter to Hurd on this occasion. "All you say about Lowth's pamphlet breathes the purest spirit of friendship. His wit and his reasoning, God knows, and I also, (as a certain critic said once in a matter of the like great importance), are much below the qualities that deserve those names."—He writes too of "this man's boldness in publishing his letters."—"If he expects an answer, he will certainly find himself disappointed; though I believe I could make as good sport with this devil of a vice, for the public diversion, as ever was made with him in the old Moralities."—But Warburton did reply! Had he ever possessed one feeling of taste, never would he have figured the elegant Lowth as this grotesque personage. He was, however, at that moment sharply stung!

This circumstance of Attorneyship was not passed over in Mallet's "Familiar Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living." Comparing, in the Spirit of "familiarity," Arnall, an impudent scribbling attorney and political scribe, with Warburton, he says, "You have been an attorney as well as he, but a little more impudent than he was; for Arnall never presumed to conceal his turpitude under the gown and the scarf." But this is mere invective!

[149] I have given a tempered opinion of his motive for this sudden conversion from Attorneyship to Divinity; for it must not be concealed, in our inquiry into Warburton's character, that he has frequently been accused of a more worldly one. He was so fierce an advocate for some important causes he undertook, that his sincerity has been liable to suspicion; the pleader, in some points, certainly acting the part of a sophist. Were we to decide by the early appearances of his conduct, by the rapid change of his profession, by his obsequious servility to his country squire, and by what have been termed the hazardous "fooleries in criticism, and outrages in controversy," which he systematically pursued, he looks like one not in earnest; and more zealous to maintain the character of his own genius, than the cause he had espoused. Leland once exclaimed, "What are we to think of the writer and his intentions? Is he really sincere in his reasonings?" Certain it is, his paradoxes often alarmed his friends, to repeat the words of a great critic, by "the absurdity of his criticism, the heterodoxy of his tenets, and the brutality of his invectives." Our Juvenal, who, whatever might be the vehemence of his declamation, reflected always those opinions which floated about him, has drawn a full-length figure. He accounts for Warburton's early motive in taking the cassock, as being

"——————thereto drawn By some faint omens of the Lawn, And on the truly Christian plan, To make himself a gentleman: A title, in which Form arrayed him, Tho' Fate ne'er thought of when she made him. To make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote: So long he wrote, and long about it, That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it. He wrote too of the Holy Ghost; Of whom, no more than doth a post, He knew; nor, should an angel show him, Would he or know, or choose to know him." CHURCHILL'S "Duellist."

I would not insinuate that Warburton is to be ranked among the class he so loudly denounced, that of "Free-thinkers;" his mind, warm with imagination, seemed often tinged with credulity. But from his want of sober-mindedness, we cannot always prove his earnestness in the cause he advocated. He often sports with his fancies; he breaks out into the most familiar levity; and maintains, too broadly, subtile and refined principles, which evince more of the political than the primitive Christian. It is certain his infidelity was greatly suspected; and Hurd, to pass over the stigma of Warburton's sudden conversion to the Church, insinuates that "an early seriousness of mind determined him to the ecclesiastical profession."—"It may be so," says the critic in the "Quarterly Review," no languid admirer of this great man; "but the symptoms of that seriousness were very equivocal afterwards; and the certainty of an early provision, from a generous patron in the country, may perhaps be considered by those who are disposed to assign human conduct to ordinary motives, as quite adequate to the effect."

Dr. Parr is indignant at such surmises; but the feeling is more honourable than the decision! In an admirable character of Warburton in the "Westminster Magazine" for 1779, it is acknowledged, "at his outset in life he was suspected of being inclined to infidelity; and it was not till many years had elapsed, that the orthodoxy of his opinions was generally assented to." On this Dr. Parr observes, "Why Dr. Warburton was ever suspected of secret infidelity I know not. What he was inclined to think on subjects of religion, before, perhaps, he had leisure or ability to examine them, depends only upon obscure surmise, or vague report." The words inclined to think seems a periphrase for secret infidelity. Our critic attributes these reports to "an English dunce, whose blunders and calumnies are now happily forgotten, and repeated by a French buffoon, whose morality is not commensurate with his wit."—Tracts by Warburton, &c., p. 186.

"The English Dunce" I do not recollect; of this sort there are so many! Voltaire is "the French buffoon;" who, indeed, compares Warburton in his bishopric, to Peachum in the Beggar's Opera—who, as Keeper of Newgate, was for hanging all his old accomplices!

[150] Warburton was far more extravagant in a later attempt which he made to expound the odd visions of a crack-brained Welshman, a prophesying knave; a knave by his own confession, and a prophet by Warburton's. This commentary, inserted in Jortin's "Remarks on Ecclesiastical History," considerably injured the reputation of Jortin. The story of Warburton and his Welsh Prophet would of itself be sufficient to detect the shiftings and artifices of his genius. RICE or ARISE EVANS! was one of the many prophets who rose up in Oliver's fanatical days; and Warburton had the hardihood to insert, in Jortin's learned work, a strange commentary to prove that Arise Evans, in Cromwell's time, in his "Echo from Heaven," had manifestly prophesied the Hanoverian Succession! The Welshman was a knave by his own account in subscribing with his right hand the confession he calls his prophecy, before a justice, and with his left, that which was his recantation, signed before the recorder, adding, "I know the bench and the people thought I recanted; but, alas! they were deceived;" and this Warburton calls "an uncommon fetch of wit," to save the truth of the prophecy, though not the honour of the prophet. If Evans meant anything, he meant what was then floating in all men's minds, the probable restoration of the Stuarts. By this prelude of that inventive genius which afterwards commented, in the same spirit, on the AEneid of Virgil, and the "Divine Legation, itself," and made the same sort of discoveries, he fixed himself in this dilemma: either Warburton was a greater impostor than Arise Evans, or he was more credulous than even any follower of the Welsh prophet, if he really had any. But the truth is, that Warburton was always writing for a present purpose, and believed, and did not believe, as it happened. "Ordinary men believe one side of a contradiction at a time, whereas his lordship" (says his admirable antagonist) "frequently believes, or at least defends both. So that it would have been no great wonder if he should maintain that Evans was both a real prophet and an impostor." Yet this is not the only awkward attitude into which Warburton has here thrown himself. To strain the vision of the raving Welshman to events of which he could have no notion, Warburton has plunged into the most ludicrous difficulties, all which ended, as all his discoveries have done, in making the fortune of an adversary who, like the Momus of Homer, has raised through the skies "inextinguishable laughter," in the amusing tract of "Confusion worse Confounded, Rout on Rout, or the Bishop of G——'s Commentary on Arise Evans; by Indignatio," 1772. The writer was the learned Henry Taylor, the author of Ben Mordecai's Apology.

[151] The correct taste of Lowth with some humour describes the last sentence of the "Enquiry on Prodigies" as "the Musa Pedestris got on horseback in a high prancing style." He printed it in measured lines, without, however, changing the place of a single word, and it produced blank verse. Thus it reads—

"Methinks I see her like the mighty Eagle renewing her immortal youth, and purging her opening sight at the unobstructed beams of our benign meridian Sun," &c.

Such a glowing metaphor, in the uncouth prose of Warburton, startled Lowth's classical ear. It was indeed "the Musa Pedestris who had got on horseback in a high prancing style;" for as it has since been pointed out, it is a well-known passage towards the close of the Areopagitica of Milton, whose prose is so often purely poetical. See Birch's Edition of Milton's Prose Works, I. 158. Warburton was familiarly conversant with our great vernacular writers at a time when their names generally were better known than their works, and when it was considered safe to pillage their most glorious passages. Warburton has been convicted of snatching their purple patches, and sewing them into his coarser web, without any acknowledgment; he did this in the present remarkable instance, and at a later day, in the preface to his "Julian," he laid violent hands on one of Raleigh's splendid metaphors.

[152] When Warburton was considered as a Colossus of literature, RALPH, the political writer, pointed a severe allusion to the awkward figure he makes in these Dedications. "The Colossus himself creeps between the legs of the late Sir Robert Sutton; in what posture, or for what purpose, need not be explained."

CHURCHILL has not passed by unnoticed Warburton's humility, even to weakness, combined with pride which could rise to haughtiness.

"He was so proud, that should he meet The twelve apostles in the street, He'd turn his nose up at them all, And shove his Saviour from the wall."

Yet this man

——"Fawned through all his life For patrons first, then for a wife; Wrote Dedications, which must make The heart of every Christian quake." The Duellist.

It is certain that the proud and supercilious Warburton long crouched and fawned. MALLET, at least, well knew all that passed between Warburton and Pope. In the "Familiar Epistle" he asserts that Warburton was introduced to Pope by his "nauseous flattery." A remarkable instance, besides the dedications we have noticed, occurred in his correspondence with Sir Thomas Hanmer. He did not venture to attack "The Oxford Editor," as he sarcastically distinguishes him, without first demanding back his letters, which were immediately returned, from Sir Thomas's high sense of honour. Warburton might otherwise have been shown strangely to contradict himself, for in these letters he had been most lavish of his flatteries and encomiums on the man whom he covered with ridicule in the preface to his Shakspeare. See "An Answer to certain Passages in Mr. W.'s Preface to Shakspeare," 1748.

His dedication to the plain unlettered Ralph Allen of Bath, his greatest of patrons, of his "Commentary on Pope's Essay on Man," is written in the same spirit as those to Sir Robert Sutton; but the former unlucky gentleman was more publicly exposed by it. The subject of this dedication turns on "the growth and progress of Fate, divided into four principal branches!" There is an episode about Free-will and Nature and Grace, and "a contrivance of Leibnitz about Fatalism." Ralph Allen was a good Quaker-like man, but he must have lost his temper if he ever read the dedication! Let us not, however, imagine that Warburton was at all insensible to this violation of literary decorum; he only sacrificed propriety to what he considered a more urgent principle—his own personal interest. No one had a juster conception of the true nature of dedications; for he says in the famous one "to the Free-thinkers:"—"I could never approve the custom of dedicating books to men whose professions made them strangers to the subject. A Discourse on the Ten Predicaments to a Leader of Armies, or a System of Casuistry to a Minister of State, always appeared to me a high absurdity."

All human characters are mixed—true! yet still we feel indignant to discover some of the greatest often combining the most opposite qualities; and then they are not so much mixed as the parts are naturally joined together. Could one imagine that so lofty a character as Warburton could have been liable to have incurred even the random stroke of the satirist? whether true or false, the events of his life, better known at this day than in his own, will show. Churchill says that

"He could cringe and creep, be civil, And hold a stirrup to the devil, If, in a journey to his mind, He'd let him mount, and ride behind."

The author of the "Canons of Criticism," with all his sprightly sarcasm, gives a history of Warburton's later Dedications. "The first edition of 'The Alliance' came out without a dedication, but was presented to the bishops; and when nothing came of that, the second was addressed to both the Universities; and when nothing came of that, the third was dedicated to a noble Earl, and nothing has yet come of that." Appendix to "Canons of Criticism," seventh edit. 261.

[153] The palace here alluded to is fully described in a volume of "Travels through Sicily and Malta," by P. Brydone, F.R.S., in 1770. He describes it as belonging to "the Prince of Palermo, a man of immense fortune, who has devoted his whole life to the study of monsters and chimeras, greater and more ridiculous than ever entered into the imagination of the wildest writers of romance and knight-errantry." He tells us this palace was surrounded by an army of statues, "not one made to represent any object in nature. He has put the heads of men to the bodies of every sort of animal, and the heads of every other animal to the bodies of men. Sometimes he makes a compound of five or six animals that have no sort of resemblance in nature. He puts the head of a lion on the neck of a goose, the body of a lizard, the legs of a goat, the tail of a fox; on the back of this monster he puts another, if possible still more hideous, with five or six heads, and a bush of horns. There is no kind of horn in the world he has not collected, and his pleasure is to see them all flourishing upon the same head." The interior of the house was decorated in the same monstrous style, and the description, unique of its kind, occupies several pages of Mr. Brydone's book.—ED.

[154] This letter was written in 1726, and first found by Dr. Knight in 1750, in fitting up a house where Concanen had probably lodged. It was suppressed, till Akenside, in 1766, printed it in a sixpenny pamphlet, entitled "An Ode to Mr. Edwards." He preserved the curiosity, with "all its peculiarities of grammar, spelling, and punctuation." The insulted poet took a deep revenge for the contemptuous treatment he had received from the modern Stagirite. The "peculiarities" betray most evident marks of the self-taught lawyer; the orthography and the double letters were minted in the office. [Thus he speaks of Addison as this "exact Mr. of propriety," and of his own studies of the English poets "to trace them to their sources; and observe what oar, as well as what slime and gravel they brought down with them."] When I looked for the letter in Akenside's Works, I discovered that it had been silently dropped. Some interest, doubtless, had been made to suppress it, for Warburton was humbled when reminded of it. Malone, fortunately, has preserved it in his Shakspeare, where it may be found, in a place not likely to be looked into for it, at the close of Julius Caesar: this literary curiosity had otherwise been lost for posterity; its whole history is a series of wonderful escapes.

By this document we became acquainted with the astonishing fact, that Warburton, early in life, was himself one of those very dunces whom he has so unmercifully registered in their Doomsday-book; one who admired the genius of his brothers, and spoke of Pope with the utmost contempt! [Thus he says, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for want of genius!"]

[155] Lee introduces Alexander the Great, saying,

"When Glory, like the dazzling eagle, stood Perch'd on my beaver in the Granic flood, When Fortune's self my standard trembling bore, And the pale Fates stood frighted on the shore; When the Immortals on the billows rode, And I myself appear'd the leading god!"

In the province of taste Warburton was always at sea without chart or compass, and was as unlucky in his panegyric on Milton as on Lee. He calls the "Paradise Regained" "a charming poem, nothing inferior in the poetry and the sentiments to the Paradise Lost." Such extravagance could only have proceeded from a critic too little sensible to the essential requisites of poetry itself.

[156] Such opposite studies shot themselves into the most fantastical forms in his rocket-writings, whether they streamed in "The Divine Legation," or sparkled in "The Origin of Romances," or played about in giving double senses to Virgil, Pope, and Shakspeare. CHURCHILL, with a good deal of ill-nature and some truth, describes them:—

"A curate first, he read and read, And laid in, while he should have fed The souls of his neglected flock, Of rending, such a mighty stock, That he o'ercharged the weary brain With more than she could well contain; More than she was with spirit fraught To turn and methodise to thought; And which, like ill-digested food, To humours turn'd, and not to blood."

The opinion of BENTLEY, when he saw "The Divine Legation," was a sensible one. "This man," said he, "has a monstrous appetite, with a very bad digestion."

The Warburtonians seemed to consider his great work, as the Bible by which all literary men were to be sworn. LOWTH ridicules their credulity. "'The Divine Legation,' it seems, contains in it all knowledge, divine and human, ancient and modern: it is a perfect Encyclopaedia, including all history, criticism, divinity, law, politics, from the law of Moses down to the Jew bill, and from Egyptian hieroglyphics to modern Rebus-writing, &c."

"In the 2014 pages of the unfinished 'Divine Legation,'" observes the sarcastic GIBBON, "four hundred authors are quoted, from St. Austin down to Scarron and Rabelais!"

Yet, after all that satire and wit have denounced, listen to an enlightened votary of Warburton. He asserts that "The 'Divine Legation' has taken its place at the head, not to say of English theology, but almost of English literature. To the composition of this prodigious performance, HOOKER and STILLINGFLEET could have contributed the erudition, CHILLINGWORTH and LOCKE the acuteness, TAYLOR an imagination even more wild and copious, SWIFT, and perhaps, EACHARD, the sarcastic vein of wit; but what power of understanding, except WARBURTON'S, could first have amassed all these materials, and then compacted them into a bulky and elaborate work, so consistent and harmonious."—Quarterly Review. vol. vii.

[157] "The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated," vol. i. sec. iv. Observe the remarkable expression, "that last foible of superior genius." He had evidently running in his mind Milton's line on Fame—

"That last infirmity of noble minds."

In such an exalted state was Warburton's mind when he was writing this, his own character.

[158] The author of "The Canons of Criticism" addressed a severe sonnet to Warburton; and alludes to the "Alliance":—

"Reign he sole king in paradoxal land, And for Utopia plan his idle schemes Of visionary leagues, alliance vain 'Twixt Will and Warburton—"

On which he adds this note, humorously stating the grand position of the work:—"The whole argument by which the alliance between Church and State is established, Mr. Warburton founds upon this supposition—'That people, considering themselves in a religious capacity, may contract with themselves, considered in a civil capacity.' The conceit is ingenious, but is not his own. Scrub, in the Beaux Stratagem, had found it out long ago: he considers himself as acting the different parts of all the servants in the family; and so Scrub, the coachman, ploughman, or justice's clerk, might contract with Scrub, the butler, for such a quantity of ale as the other assumed character demanded."—Appendix, p. 261.

[159] "Monthly Review," vol. xvi. p. 324, the organ of the dissenters.

[160] See article HOBBES, for his system. The great Selden was an Erastian; a distinction extremely obscure. Erastus was a Swiss physician of little note, who was for restraining the ecclesiastical power from all temporal jurisdiction. Selden did him the honour of adopting his principles. Selden wrote against the divine right of tithes, but allowed the legal right, which gave at first great offence to the clergy, who afterwards perceived the propriety of his argument, as Wotton has fully acknowledged.

[161] It does not always enter into the design of these volumes to examine those great works which produced literary quarrels. But some may be glad to find here a word on this original project.

The grand position of the Divine Legation is, that the knowledge of the immortality of the soul, or a future state of reward and punishment, is absolutely necessary in the moral government of the universe. The author shows how it has been inculcated by all good legislators, so that no religion could ever exist without it; but the Jewish could, from its peculiar government, which was theocracy—a government where the presence of God himself was perpetually manifested by miracles and new ordinances: and hence temporal rewards and punishments were sufficient for that people, to whom the unity and power of the Godhead were never doubtful. As he proceeded, he would have opened a new argument, viz., that the Jewish religion was only the part of a revelation, showing the necessity of a further one for its completion, which produced Christianity.

When Warburton was in good spirits with his great work (for he was not always so), he wrote thus to a friend:—"You judge right, that the next volume of the D. L. will not be the last. I thought I had told you that I had divided the work into three parts: the first gives you a view of Paganism; the second, of Judaism; and the third, of Christianity. You will wonder how this last inquiry can come into so simple an argument as that which I undertake to enforce. I have not room to tell you more than this—that after I have proved a future state not to be, in fact in the Mosaic dispensation, I next show that, if Christianity be true, it could not possibly be there; and this necessitates me to explain the nature of Christianity, with which the whole ends. But this inter nos. If it be known, I should possibly have somebody writing against this part too before it appears."—Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 551.

Thus he exults in the true tone, and with all the levity of a sophist. It is well that a true feeling of religion does not depend on the quirks and quibbles of human reasonings, or, what are as fallible, on masses of fanciful erudition.

[162] Warburton lost himself in the labyrinth he had so ingeniously constructed. This work harassed his days and exhausted his intellect. Observe the tortures of a mind, even of so great a mind as that of Warburton's, when it sacrifices all to the perishable vanity of sudden celebrity. Often he flew from his task in utter exhaustion and despair. He had quitted the smooth and even line of truth, to wind about and split himself on all the crookedness of paradoxes. He paints his feelings in a letter to Birch. He says—"I was so disgusted with an old subject, that I had deferred it from month to month and year to year." He had recourse to "an expedient;" which was, "to set the press on work, and so oblige himself to supply copy." Such is the confession of the author of the "Divine Legation!" this "encyclopaedia" of all ancient and modern lore—all to proceed from "a simple argument!" But when he describes his sufferings, hard is the heart of that literary man who cannot sympathise with such a giant caught in the toils! I give his words:—"Distractions of various kinds, inseparable from human life, joined with a naturally melancholy habit, contribute greatly to increase my indolence. This makes my reading wild and desultory; and I seek refuge from the uneasiness of thought, from any book, let it be what it will. By my manner of writing upon subjects, you would naturally imagine they afford me pleasure, and attach me thoroughly. I will assure you, No!"—Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 562.

Warburton had not the cares of a family—they were merely literary ones. The secret cause of his "melancholy," and his "indolence," and that "want of attachment and pleasure to his subjects;" which his friends "naturally imagined" afforded him so much, was the controversies he had kindled, and the polemical battles he had raised about him. However boldly he attacked in return, his heart often sickened in privacy; for how often must he have beheld his noble and his whimsical edifices built on sands, which the waters were perpetually eating into!

At the last interview of Warburton with Pope, the dying poet exhorted him to proceed with "The Divine Legation." "Your reputation," said he, "as well as your duty, is concerned in it. People say you can get no farther in your proof. Nay, Lord Bolingbroke himself bids me expect no such thing." This anecdote is rather extraordinary; for it appears in "Owen Ruffhead's Life of Pope," p. 497, a work written under the eye of Warburton himself; and in which I think I could point out some strong touches from his own hand on certain important occasions, when he would not trust to the creeping dulness of Ruffhead.

[163] His temerity had raised against him not only infidels, but Christians. If any pious clergyman now wrote in favour of the opinion that God's people believed in the immortality of the soul—which can we doubt they did? and which Menasseh Ben Israel has written his treatise, "De Resurrectione Mortuorum," to prove—it was a strange sight to behold a bishop seeming to deny so rational and religious a creed! Even Dr. Balguy confessed to Warburton, that "there was one thing in the argument of the 'Divine Legation' that stuck more with candid men than all the rest—how a religion without a future state could be worthy of God!" This Warburton promised to satisfy, by a fresh appendix. His volatile genius, however, was condemned to "the pelting of a merciless storm." Lowth told him—"You give yourself out as demonstrator of the divine legation of Moses; it has been often demonstrated before; a young student in theology might undertake to give a better—that is, a more satisfactory and irrefragable demonstration of it in five pages than you have done in five volumes."—Lowth's "Letter to Warburton," p. 12.

[164] Hurd was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and was placed by him at Rugely, from whence he was removed to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. At the age of twenty-six he published a pamphlet entitled "Remarks on a late Book entitled 'An Inquiry into the Rejection of the Christian Miracles by the Heathens, by William Weston,'" which met with considerable attention. In 1749, on the occasion of publishing a commentary on Horace's "Ars Poetica," he complimented Warburton so strongly as to ensure his favour. Warburton returned it by a puff for Hurd in his edition of Pope, and the two became fast friends. It was a profitable connexion to Hurd, for by the intercession of Warburton he was appointed one of the Whitehall preachers, a preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and Archdeacon of Gloucester. He repaid Warburton by constant praises in print, and so far succeeded with that vain man, that when he read the dedication he made to him of his "Commentary on the Epistle to Augustus," he wrote to him with mock humility—"I will confess to you how much satisfaction the groundless part of it, that which relates to myself, gave me." When Dr. Jortin very properly spoke of Warburton with less of subserviency than the overbearing bishop desired, Hurd at once came forward to fight for Warburton in print, in a satirical treatise on "The Delicacy of Friendship," which highly delighted his patron, who at once wrote to Dr. Lowth, stating him to be "a man of very superior talents, of genius, learning, and virtue; indeed, a principal ornament of the age he lives in." Hurd was made Bishop of Lichfield in 1775, and of Winchester in 1779. He died in the year 1808.—ED.

[165] The Attic irony was translated into plain English, in "Remarks on Dr. Warburton's Account of the Sentiments of the Early Jews," 1757; and the following rules for all who dissented from Warburton are deduced:—"You must not write on the same subject that he does. You must not glance at his arguments, even without naming him or so much as referring to him. If you find his reasonings ever so faulty, you must not presume to furnish him with better of your own, even though you prove, and are desirous to support his conclusions. When you design him a compliment, you must express it in full form, and with all the circumstance of panegyrical approbation, without impertinently qualifying your civilities by assigning a reason why you think he deserves them, as this might possibly be taken for a hint that you know something of the matter he is writing about as well as himself. You must never call any of his discoveries by the name of conjectures, though you allow them their full proportion of elegance, learning, &c.; for you ought to know that this capital genius never proposed anything to the judgment of the public (though ever so new and uncommon) with diffidence in his life. Thus stands the decree prescribing our demeanour towards this sovereign in the Republic of Letters, as we find it promulged, and bearing date at the palace of Lincoln's Inn, Nov. 25, 1755."—From whence Hurd's "Seventh Dissertation" was dated.

[166] Gibbon's "Critical Observations on the Design of the Sixth Book of the AEneid." Dr. Parr considers this clear, elegant, and decisive work of criticism, as a complete refutation of Warburton's discovery.

[167] It is curious enough to observe that Warburton himself, acknowledging this to be a paradox, exultingly exclaims, "Which, like so many others I have had the ODD FORTUNE to advance, will be seen to be only another name for Truth." This has all the levity of a sophist's language! Hence we must infer that some of the most important subjects could not be understood and defended, but by Warburton's "odd fortune!" It was this levity of ideas that raised a suspicion that he was not always sincere. He writes, in a letter, of "living in mere spite, to rub another volume of the 'Divine Legation' in the noses of bigots and zealots." He employs the most ludicrous images, and the coarsest phrases, on the most solemn subjects. In one of his most unlucky paradoxes with Lowth, on the age and style of the writings of Job, he accuses that elegant scholar of deficient discernment; and, in respect to style, as not "distinguishing partridge from horseflesh;" and in quoting some of the poetical passages, of "paying with an old song," and "giving rhyme for reason." Alluding to some one of his adversaries, whom he calls "the weakest, as well as the wickedest of all mankind," he employs a striking image—"I shall hang him and his fellows, as they do vermin in a warren, and leave them to posterity, to stink and blacken in the wind."

[168] Warburton, in this work (the "Doctrine of Grace,") has a curious passage, too long to quote, where he observes, that "The Indian and Asiatic eloquence was esteemed hyperbolic and puerile by the more phlegmatic inhabitants of Rome and Athens: and the Western eloquence, in its turn, frigid or insipid, to the hardy and inflamed imaginations of the East. The same expression, which in one place had the utmost simplicity, had in another the utmost sublime." The jackal, too, echoes the roar of the lion; for the polished Hurd, whose taste was far more decided than Warburton's, was bold enough to add, in his Letter to Leland, "That which is thought supremely elegant in one country, passes in another for finical; while what in this country is accepted under the idea of sublimity, is derided in that other as no better than bombast." So unsettled were the no-taste of Warburton, and the prim-taste of Hurd!

[169] The Letter to Leland is characterised in the "Critical Review" for April, 1765, as the work of "a preferment-hunting toad-eater, who, while his patron happened to go out of his depth, tells him that he is treading good ground; but at the same time offers him the use of a cork-jacket to keep him above water."

[170] Dr. Thomas Leland was born in Dublin in 1722, and was educated in Trinity College, in that city. Having obtained a Fellowship there, he depended on that alone, and devoted a long life to study, and the production of various historical and theological works; as well as a "History of Ireland," published in 1773. He died in 1785.—ED.

[171] In a rough attack on Warburton, respecting Pope's privately printing 1500 copies of the "Patriot King" of Bolingbroke, which I conceive to have been written by Mallet, I find a particular account of the manner in which the "Essay on Man" was written, over which Johnson seems to throw great doubts.

The writer of this angry epistle, in addressing Warburton, says: "If you were as intimate with Mr. Pope as you pretend, you must know the truth of a fact which several others, as well as I, who never had the honour of a personal acquaintance with Lord Bolingbroke or Mr. Pope, have heard. The fact was related to me by a certain Senior Fellow of one of our Universities, who was very intimate with Mr. Pope. He started some objections, one day, at Mr. Pope's house, to the doctrine contained in the Ethic Epistles: upon which Mr. Pope told him that he would soon convince him of the truth of it, by laying the argument at large before him; for which purpose he gave him a large prose manuscript to peruse, telling him, at the same time, the author's name. From this perusal, whatever other conviction the doctor might receive, he collected at least this: that Mr. Pope had from his friend not only the doctrine, but even the finest and strongest ornaments of his Ethics. Now, if this fact be true (as I question not but you know it to be so), I believe no man of candour will attribute such merit to Mr. Pope as you would insinuate, for acknowledging the wisdom and the friendship of the man who was his instructor in philosophy; nor consequently that this acknowledgment, and the dedication of his own system, put into a poetical dress by Mr. Pope, laid his lordship under the necessity of never resenting any injury done to him by the poet afterwards. Mr. Pope told no more than literal truth, in calling Lord Bolingbroke his guide, philosopher, and friend." The existence of this very manuscript volume was authenticated by Lord Bathurst, in a conversation with Dr. Blair and others, where he said, "he had read the MS. in Lord Bolingbroke's handwriting, and was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse."—See the letter of Dr. Blair in "Boswell's Life of Johnson."

[172] Of many instances, the following one is the most curious. When Jarvis published his "Don Quixote," Warburton, who was prompt on whatever subject was started, presented him with "A Dissertation on the Origin of the Books of Chivalry." When it appeared, it threw Pope, their common friend, into raptures. He writes, "I knew you as certainly as the ancients did the gods, by the first pace and the very gait." True enough! Warburton's strong genius stamped itself on all his works. But neither the translating painter, nor the simple poet, could imagine the heap of absurdities they were admiring! Whatever Warburton here asserted was false, and whatever he conjectured was erroneous; but his blunders were quite original.—The good sense and knowledge of Tyrwhitt have demolished the whole edifice, without leaving a single brick standing. The absurd rhapsody has been worth preserving, for the sake of the masterly confutation: no uncommon result of Warburton's literary labours!

It forms the concluding note in Shakspeare's Love's Labour Lost.

[173] Of THEOBALD he was once the companion, and to Sir THOMAS HANMER he offered his notes for his edition. [Hanmer's Shakspeare was given in 1742 to the University of Oxford, for its benefit, and was printed at the University Press, under the management of Dr. Smith and Dr. Shippon. Sir Thomas paid the expenses of the engravings by Gravelot prefixed to each play. The edition was published in 4to. in 1744, it was printed on the "finest royal paper," and does not warrant the severity of Pope, whose editing was equally faulty.] Sir Thomas says he found Warburton's notes "sometimes just, but mostly wild and out of the way." Warburton paid a visit to Sir Thomas for a week, which he conceived was to assist him in perfecting his darling text; but hints were now dropped by Warburton, that he might publish the work corrected, by which a greater sum of money might be got than could be by that plaything of Sir Thomas, which shines in all its splendour in the Dunciad; but this project did not suit Hanmer, whose life seemed greatly to depend on the magnificent Oxford edition, which "was not to go into the hands of booksellers." On this, Warburton, we are told by Hanmer, "flew into a great rage, and there is an end of the story." With what haughtiness he treats these two friends, for once they were such! Had the Dey of Algiers been the editor of Shakspeare, he could not have issued his orders more peremptorily for the decapitation of his rivals. Of Theobald and Hanmer he says, "the one was recommended to me as a poor man, the other as a poor critic: and to each of them at different times I communicated a great number of observations, which they managed, as they saw fit, to the relief of their several distresses. Mr. Theobald was naturally turned to industry and labour. What he read he could transcribe; but as to what he thought, if ever he did think, he could but ill express, so he read on: and by that means got a character of learning, without risking to every observer the imputation of wanting a better talent."—See what it is to enjoy too close an intimacy with a man of wit! "As for the Oxford Editor, he wanted nothing (alluding to Theobald's want of money) but what he might very well be without, the reputation of a critic," &c. &c.—Warburton's Preface to Shakspeare.

His conduct to Dr. GREY, the editor of Hudibras, cannot be accounted for by any known fact. I have already noticed their quarrels in the "Calamities of Authors." Warburton cheerfully supplied Grey with various notes on Hudibras, though he said he had thought of an edition himself, and they were gratefully acknowledged in Grey's Preface; but behold! shortly afterwards they are saluted by Warburton as "an execrable heap of nonsense;" further, he insulted Dr. Grey for the number of his publications! Poor Dr. Grey and his "Coadjutors," as Warburton sneeringly called others of his friends, resented this by "A Free and Familiar Letter to that Great Preserver of Pope and Shakspeare, the Rev. Mr. William Warburton." The doctor insisted that Warburton had had sufficient share in those very notes to be considered as one of the "Coadjutors." "I may venture to say, that whoever was the fool of the company before he entered (or the fool of the piece, in his own diction) he was certainly so after he engaged in that work; for, as Ben Jonson observes, 'he that thinks himself the Master-Wit is commonly the Master-Fool.'"

[174] Warburton certainly used little intrigues: he trafficked with the obscure Reviews of the times. He was a correspondent in "The Works of the Learned," where the account of his first volume of the Divine Legation, he says, is "a nonsensical piece of stuff;" and when Dr. Doddridge offered to draw up an article for his second, the favour was accepted, and it was sent to the miserable journal, though acknowledged "to be too good for it." In the same journal were published all his specimens of Shakspeare, some years after they had appeared in the "General Dictionary," with a high character of these wonderful discoveries.—"The Alliance," when first published, was announced in "The Present State of the Republic of Letters," to be the work of a gentleman whose capacity, judgment, and learning deserve some eminent dignity in the Church of England, of which he is "now an inferior minister."—One may presume to guess at "the gentleman," a little impatient for promotion, who so much cared whether Warburton was only "now an inferior minister."

These are little arts. Another was, that Warburton sometimes acted Falstaff's part, and ran his sword through the dead! In more instances than one this occurred. Sir Thomas Hanmer was dead when Warburton, then a bishop, ventured to assert that Sir Thomas's letter concerning their intercourse about Shakspeare was "one continued falsehood from beginning to end." The honour and veracity of Hanmer must prevail over the "liveliness" of Warburton, for Hurd lauds his "lively preface to his Shakspeare." But the "Biographia Britannica" bears marks of Warburton's violence, in a cancelled sheet. See the Index, art. HANMER; [where we are told "the sheet being castrated at the instance of Mr., now Dr. Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, it has been reprinted as an appendix to the work," it consisted in the suppression of one of Hanmer's letters.] He did not choose to attack Dr. Middleton in form, during his lifetime, but reserved his blow when his antagonist was no more. I find in Cole's MSS. this curious passage:—"It was thought, at Cambridge, that Dr. Middleton and Dr. Warburton did not cordially esteem one another; yet both being keen and thorough sportsmen, they were mutually afraid to engage to each other, for fear of a fall. If that was the case, the bishop judged prudently, however fairly it may be looked upon, to stay till it was out of the power of his adversary to make any reply, before he gave his answer." Warburton only replied to Middleton's "Letter from Rome," in his fourth edition of the "Divine Legation," 1765.—When Dyson firmly defended his friend Akenside from the rude attacks of Warburton, it is observed, that he bore them with "prudent patience:" he never replied!

[175] These critical extravaganzas are scarcely to be paralleled by "Bentley's Notes on Milton." How Warburton turned "an allegorical mermaid" into "the Queen of Scots;"—showed how Shakspeare, in one word, and with one epithet "the majestic world," described the Orbis Romanus, alluded to the Olympic Games, &c.; yet, after all this discovery, seems rather to allude to a story about Alexander, which Warburton happened to recollect at that moment;—and how he illustrated Octavia's idea of the fatal consequences of a civil war between Caesar and Antony, who said it would "cleave the world," by the story of Curtius leaping into the chasm;—how he rejected "allowed, with absolute power," as not English, and read "hallowed," on the authority of the Roman Tribuneship being called Sacro-sancta Potestas; how his emendations often rose from puns; as for instance, when, in Romeo and Juliet, it is said of the Friar, that "the city is much obliged to him," our new critic consents to the sound of the word, but not to the spelling, and reads hymn; that is, to laud, to praise! These, and more extraordinary instances of perverting ingenuity and abused erudition, would form an uncommon specimen of criticism, which may be justly ridiculed, but which none, except an exuberant genius, could have produced. The most amusing work possible would be a real Warburton's Shakspeare, which would contain not a single thought, and scarcely an expression, of Shakspeare's!

[176] Had Johnson known as much as we do of Warburton's opinion of his critical powers, it would have gone far to have cured his amiable prejudice in favour of Warburton, who really was a critic without taste, and who considered literature as some do politics, merely as a party business. I shall give a remarkable instance. When Johnson published his first critical attempt on Macbeth, he commended the critical talents of Warburton; and Warburton returned the compliment in the preface to his Shakspeare, and distinguishes Johnson as "a man of parts and genius." But, unluckily, Johnson afterwards published his own edition; and, in his editorial capacity, his public duty prevailed over his personal feelings: all this went against Warburton; and the opinions he now formed of Johnson were suddenly those of insolent contempt. In a letter to Hurd, he writes: "Of this Johnson, you and I, I believe, think alike!" And to another friend: "The remarks he makes, in every page, on my Commentaries, are full of insolence and malignant reflections, which, had they not in them as much folly as malignity, I should have reason to be offended with." He consoles himself, however, that Johnson's notes, accompanying his own, will enable even "the trifling part of the public" not to mistake in the comparison.—NICHOLS'S "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 595.