Chapter XI: Part 11

"I remember nothing farther in life than that I made verses; I chose Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant before I was big enough for Westminster School. But I had two accidents in youth which hindered me from being quite possessed with the Muse. I was bred in a college where prose was more in fashion than verse,--and, as soon as I had taken my first degree, I was sent the King's Secretary to the Hague; there I had enough to do in studying French and Dutch, and altering my Terentian and Virgilian style into that of Articles and Conventions; so that _poetry, which by the bent of my mind might have become the business of my life, was, by the happiness of my education, only the amusement of it_; and in this, too, having the prospect of some little fortune to be made, and friendships to be cultivated with the great men, I did not launch much into _satire_, which, however agreeable for the present to the writers and encouragers of it, does in time do neither of them good; considering the uncertainty of fortune, and the various changes of Ministry, and that every man, as he resents, may punish in his turn of greatness and power."

Such is the wholesome counsel of the Solomon of Bards to an aspirant, who, in his ardour for poetical honours, becomes careless of their consequences, if he can but possess them.

I have now to bring forward one of those unhappy men of rhyme, who, after many painful struggles, and a long querulous life, have died amid the ravings of their immortality--one of those miserable bards of mediocrity whom no beadle-critic could ever whip out of the poetical parish.

There is a case in Mr. Haslam's "Observations on Insanity," who assures us that the patient he describes was insane, which will appear strange to those who have watched more poets than lunatics!

"This patient, when admitted, was very noisy, and importunately talkative--reciting passages from the Greek and Roman poets, or talking of his own literary importance. He became so troublesome to the other madmen, who were sufficiently occupied with their own speculations, that they avoided and excluded him from the common room; so that he was at last reduced to the mortifying situation of being the sole auditor of his own compositions. He conceived himself very nearly related to Anacreon, and possessed of the peculiar vein of that poet."

Such is the very accurate case drawn up by a medical writer. I can conceive nothing in it to warrant the charge of insanity; Mr. Haslam, not being a poet, seems to have mistaken the common orgasm of poetry for insanity itself.

Of such poets, one was the late PERCIVAL STOCKDALE, who, with the most entertaining simplicity, has, in "The Memoirs of his Life and Writings," presented us with a full-length figure of this class of poets; those whom the perpetual pursuits of poetry, however indifferent, involve in a perpetual illusion; they are only discovered in their profound obscurity by the piteous cries they sometimes utter; they live on querulously, which is an evil for themselves, and to no purpose of life, which is an evil to others.

I remember in my youth Percival Stockdale as a condemned poet of the times, of whom the bookseller Flexney complained that, whenever this poet came to town, it cost him twenty pounds. Flexney had been the publisher of Churchill's works; and, never forgetting the time when he published "The Rosciad," which at first did not sell, and afterwards became the most popular poem, he was speculating all his life for another Churchill, and another quarto poem. Stockdale usually brought him what he wanted--and Flexney found the workman, but never the work.

Many a year had passed in silence, and Stockdale could hardly be considered alive, when, to the amazement of some curious observers of our literature, a venerable man, about his eightieth year, a vivacious spectre, with a cheerful voice, seemed as if throwing aside his shroud in gaiety--to come to assure us of the immortality of one of the worst poets of the time.

To have taken this portrait from the life would have been difficult; but the artist has painted himself, and manufactured his own colours; else had our ordinary ones but faintly copied this Chinese grotesque picture--the glare and the glow must be borrowed from his own palette.

Our self-biographer announces his "Life" with prospective rapture, at the moment he is turning a sad retrospect on his "Writings;" for this was the chequered countenance of his character, a smile while he was writing, a tear when he had published! "I know," he exclaims, "that this book will live and _escape the havoc that has been made of my literary fame_." Again--"Before I die, I _think my literary fame may be fixed on an adamantine foundation_." Our old acquaintance, Blas of Santillane, at setting out on his travels, conceived himself to be _la huitieme merveille du monde_; but here is one, who, after the experience of a long life, is writing a large work to prove himself that very curious thing.

What were these mighty and unknown works? Stockdale confesses that all his verses have been received with negligence or contempt; yet their mediocrity, the absolute poverty of his genius, never once occurred to the poetical patriarch.

I have said that the frequent origin of bad poets is owing to bad critics; and it was the early friends of Stockdale, who, mistaking his animal spirits for genius, by directing them into the walks of poetry, bewildered him for ever. It was their hand that heedlessly fixed the bias in the rolling bowl of his restless mind.

He tells us that while yet a boy of twelve years old, one day talking with his father at Branxton, where the battle of Flodden was fought, the old gentleman said to him with great emphasis--

"You may make that place remarkable for your birth, if you take care of yourself. My father's understanding was clear and strong, and he could penetrate human nature. He already saw that _I had natural advantages above those of common men_."

But it seems that, at some earlier period even than his twelfth year, some good-natured Pythian had predicted that Stockdale would be "a poet." This ambiguous oracle was still listened to, after a lapse of more than half a century, and the decree is still repeated with fond credulity:--"Notwithstanding," he exclaims, "_all that is past_, O thou god of my mind! (meaning the aforesaid Pythian) I still hope that my future fame will decidedly _warrant the prediction_!"

Stockdale had, in truth, an excessive sensibility of temper, without any control over it--he had all the nervous contortions of the Sybil, without her inspiration; and shifting, in his many-shaped life, through all characters and all pursuits, "exalting the olive of Minerva with the grape of Bacchus," as he phrases it, he was a lover, a tutor, a recruiting officer, a reviewer, and, at length, a clergyman; but a poet eternally! His mind was so curved, that nothing could stand steadily upon it. The accidents of such a life he describes with such a face of rueful simplicity, and mixes up so much grave drollery and merry pathos with all he says or does, and his ubiquity is so wonderful, that he gives an idea of a character, of whose existence we had previously no conception, that of a sentimental harlequin.[139]

In the early part of his life, Stockdale undertook many poetical pilgrimages; he visited the house where Thomson was born; the coffee-room where Dryden presided among the wits, &c. Recollecting the influence of these local associations, he breaks forth, "Neither the unrelenting coldness, nor the repeated insolence of mankind, can prevent me from thinking that _something like this enthusiastic devotion may hereafter be paid to ME_."

Perhaps till this appeared it might not be suspected that any unlucky writer of verse could ever feel such a magical conviction of his poetical stability. Stockdale, to assist this pilgrimage to his various shrines, has particularised all the spots where his works were composed! Posterity has many shrines to visit, and will be glad to know (for perhaps it may excite a smile) that "'The Philosopher,' a poem, was written in Warwick Court, Holborn, in 1769,"--"'The Life of Waller,' in Round Court, in the Strand."--A good deal he wrote in "May's Buildings, St. Martin's Lane," &c., but

"In my lodgings at Portsmouth, in St. Mary's Street, I wrote my 'Elegy on the Death of a Lady's Linnet.' It will not be uninteresting to sensibility, to thinking and elegant minds. It deeply interested me, and therefore produced not one of my weakest and worst written poems. It was directly opposite to a noted house, which was distinguished by the name of _the green rails_; where the riotous orgies of Naxos and Cythera contrasted with my quiet and purer occupations."

I would not, however, take his own estimate of his own poems; because, after praising them outrageously, he seems at times to doubt if they are as exquisite as he thinks them! He has composed no one in which some poetical excellence does not appear--and yet in each nice decision he holds with difficulty the trepidations of the scales of criticism--for he tells us of "An Address to the Supreme Being," that "it is distinguished throughout with a natural and fervid piety; it is flowing and poetical; it is not without its pathos." And yet, notwithstanding all this condiment, the confection is evidently good for nothing; for he discovers that "this flowing, fervid, and poetical address" is "not animated with that vigour which gives dignity and impression to poetry." One feels for such unhappy and infected authors--they would think of themselves as they wish at the moment that truth and experience come in upon them and rack them with the most painful feelings.

Stockdale once wrote a declamatory life of Waller. When Johnson's appeared, though in his biography, says Stockdale, "he paid a large tribute to the abilities of Goldsmith and Hawkesworth, yet _he made no mention of my name_." It is evident that Johnson, who knew him well, did not care to remember it. When Johnson was busied on the Life of Pope, Stockdale wrote a pathetic letter to him _earnestly imploring_ "a generous tribute from his authority." Johnson was still obdurately silent; and Stockdale, who had received many acts of humane kindness from him, adds with fretful _naivete_,

"In his sentiments towards me he was divided between a benevolence to my interests, and a _coldness to my fame_."

Thus, in a moment, in the perverted heart of the scribbler, will ever be cancelled all human obligation for acts of benevolence, if we are _cold to his fame_!

And yet let us not too hastily condemn these unhappy men, even for the violation of the lesser moral feelings--it is often but a fatal effect from a melancholy cause; that hallucination of the intellect, in which, if their genius, as they call it, sometimes appears to sparkle like a painted bubble in the buoyancy of their vanity, they are also condemned to see it sinking in the dark horrors of a disappointed author, who has risked his life and his happiness on the miserable productions of his pen. The agonies of a disappointed author cannot, indeed, be contemplated without pain. If they can instruct, the following quotation will have its use.

Among the innumerable productions of Stockdale, was a "History of Gibraltar," which might have been interesting, from his having resided there: in a moment of despair, like Medea, he immolated his unfortunate offspring.

"When I had arrived at within a day's work of its conclusion, in consequence of some immediate and mortifying accidents, _my literary adversity_, and all my other misfortunes, took _fast hold of my mind; oppressed it extremely; and reduced it to a stage of the deepest dejection and despondency_. In this unhappy view of life, I made a sudden resolution--_never more to prosecute the profession of an author_; to retire altogether from the world, and read only for consolation and amusement. _I committed to the flames my History of Gibraltar and my translation of Marsollier's Life of Cardinal Ximenes_; for which the bookseller had refused to pay me the fifty guineas, according to agreement."

This claims a tear! Never were the agonies of literary disappointment more pathetically told.

But as it is impossible to have known poor deluded Stockdale, and not to have laughed at him more than to have wept for him--so the catastrophe of this author's literary life is as finely in character as all the acts. That catastrophe, of course, is his last poem.

After many years his poetical demon having been chained from the world, suddenly broke forth on the reports of a French invasion. The narrative shall proceed in his own inimitable manner.

"My poetical spirit excited me to write my poem of 'The Invincible Island.' I never found myself in a happier disposition to compose, nor ever wrote with more pleasure. I presumed warmly to hope that unless _inveterate prejudice and malice_ were as invincible as our island itself, it would have _the diffusive circulation_ which I earnestly desired.

"Flushed with this idea--borne impetuously along _by ambition and by hope, though they had often deluded me_, I set off in the mail-coach from Durham for London, on the 9th of December, 1797, at midnight, and in a severe storm. On my arrival in town my poem was advertised, printed, and published with great expedition. It was printed for Clarke in New Bond-street. For several days the sale was very promising; and my bookseller as well as myself entertained sanguine hopes; _but the demand for the poem relaxed gradually_! From this last of many literary misfortunes, I inferred that _prejudice_ and _malignity_, in my fate as an _author_, seemed, indeed, to be invincible."

The catastrophe of the poet is much better told than anything in the poem, which had not merit enough to support that interest which the temporary subject had excited.

Let the fate of Stockdale instruct some, and he will not have written in vain the "Memoirs of his Life and Writings." I have only turned the literary feature to our eye; it was combined with others, equally striking, from the same mould in which that was cast. Stockdale imagined he possessed an intuitive knowledge of human nature. He says, "everything that constituted my nature, my acquirements, my habits, and my fortune, conspired to let in upon me a complete knowledge of human nature." A most striking proof of this knowledge is his parallel, after the manner of Plutarch, between Charles XII. and himself! He frankly confesses there were some points in which he and the Swedish monarch did not exactly resemble each other. He thinks, for instance, that the King of Sweden had a somewhat more fervid and original genius than himself, and was likewise a little more robust in his person--but, subjoins Stockdale,

"Of our reciprocal fortune, achievements, and conduct, some parts will be to _his_ advantage, and some to _mine_."

Yet in regard to _Fame_, the main object between him and Charles XII., Stockdale imagined that his own

"Will not probably take its fixed and immoveable station, and shine with its expanded and permanent splendour, till it consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb!"

POPE hesitated at deciding on the durability of his poetry. PRIOR congratulates himself that he had not devoted all his days to rhymes. STOCKDALE imagines his fame is to commence at the very point (the tomb) where genius trembles its own may nearly terminate!

To close this article, I could wish to regale the poetical Stockdales with a delectable morsel of fraternal biography; such would be the life, and its memorable close, of ELKANAH SETTLE, who imagined himself to be a great poet, when he was placed on a level with Dryden by the town-wits, (gentle spirits!) to vex genius.

Settle's play of _The Empress of Morocco_ was the very first "adorned with sculptures."[140] However, in due time, the Whigs despising his rhymes, Settle tried his prose for the Tories; but he was a magician whose enchantments never charmed. He at length obtained the office of the city poet, when lord mayors were proud enough to have laureates in their annual pageants.

When Elkanah Settle published any _party poem_, he sent copies round to the chiefs of the party, accompanied with addresses, to extort pecuniary presents. He had latterly one standard _Elegy_ and _Epithalamium_ printed off with blanks, which, by the ingenious contrivance of filling up with the names of any considerable person who died or was married, no one who was going out of life or entering it _could pass scot-free_ from the _tax levied by his hacknied muse_. The following letter accompanied his presentation copy to the Duke of Somerset, of a poem, in Latin and English, on the Hanover succession, when Elkanah wrote for the Whigs, as he had for the Tories:--

"SIR,--Nothing but the greatness of the subject could encourage my
presumption in laying the enclosed Essay at your Grace's feet,
being, with all profound humility, your Grace's most dutiful
servant,

"E. SETTLE."

In the latter part of his life Settle dropped still lower, and became the poet of a booth at Bartholomew Fair, and composed drolls, for which the rival of Dryden, it seems, had a genius!--but it was little respected--for two great personages, "Mrs. Mynns and her daughter, Mrs. Leigh," approving of their great poet's happy invention in one of his own drolls, "St. George for England," of a green dragon, as large as life, insisted, as the tyrant of old did to the inventor of the brazen bull, that the first experiment should be made on the artist himself, and Settle was tried in his own dragon; he crept in with all his genius, and did "act the dragon, enclosed in a case of green leather of his own invention." The circumstance is recorded in the lively verse of Young, in his "Epistle to Pope concerning the authors of the age."

Poor Elkanah, all other changes past,
For bread in Smithfield dragons hiss'd at last,
Spit streams of fire to make the butchers gape,
And found his manners suited to his shape;
Such is the fate of talents misapplied,
So lived your prototype, and so he died.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] An elegant poet of our times alludes, with due feeling, to these
personal sacrifices. Addressing Poetry, he exclaims--

"In devotion to thy heavenly charms,
I clasp'd thy altar with my infant arms;
For thee neglected the wide field of wealth;
The toils of interest, and the sports of health."

How often may we lament that poets are too apt "to clasp the
altar with infant arms." Goldsmith was near forty when he
published his popular poems--and the greater number of the
most valued poems were produced in mature life. When the poet
begins in "infancy," he too often contracts a habit of writing
verses, and sometimes, in all his life, never reaches poetry.

[138] Vol. ii. p. 355.

[139] My old favourite cynic, with all his rough honesty and acute
discrimination, Anthony Wood, engraved a sketch of Stockdale
when he etched with his aqua-fortis the personage of a
brother:--"This Edward Waterhouse wrote a rhapsodical,
indigested, whimsical work; and not in the least to be taken
into the hand of any sober scholar, unless it be to make him
laugh or wonder at the simplicity of some people. He was a
cock-brained man, and afterwards took orders."

[140] It was published in quarto in 1673, and has engravings of the
principal scene in each act, and a frontispiece representing
the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens, where it was first acted
publicly; it had been played twice at court before this, by
noble actors, "persons of such birth and honour," says Settle,
"that they borrowed no greatness from the characters they
acted." The prologues were written by Lords Mulgrave and
Rochester, and the utmost _eclat_ given to the five long acts
of rhyming bombast, which was declared superior to any work of
Dryden's. As City Poet afterwards Settle composed the
pageants, speeches, and songs for the Lord Mayor's Shows from
1691 to 1708. Towards the close of his career he became
impoverished, and wrote from necessity on all subjects. One of
his plays, composed for Mrs. Mynns' booth in Bartholomew Fair,
has been twice printed, though both editions are now
uncommonly rare. It is called the "Siege of Troy;" and its
popularity is attested by Hogarth's print of Southwark Fair,
where outside of Lee and Harper's great theatrical booth is
exhibited a painting of the Trojan horse, and the announcement
"The Siege of Troy is here."--ED.

QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

OR,

SOME MEMOIRS FOR OUR LITERARY HISTORY.

"The use and end of this Work I do not so much design for
curiosity, or satisfaction of those that are the lovers of
learning, but chiefly for a more grave and serious purpose:
which is, that it will _make learned men wise in the use and
administration of learning_."--LORD BACON, "Of Learning."

PREFACE.

THE QUARRELS OF AUTHORS may be considered as a continuation of the CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS; and both, as some Memoirs for Literary History.

These Quarrels of Authors are not designed to wound the Literary Character, but to expose the secret arts of calumny, the malignity of witty ridicule, and the evil prepossessions of unjust hatreds.

The present, like the preceding work, includes other subjects than the one indicated by the title, and indeed they are both subservient to a higher purpose--that of our Literary History.

There is a French work, entitled "Querelles Litteraires," quoted in "Curiosities of Literature," many years ago. Whether I derive the idea of the present from the French source I cannot tell. I could point out a passage in the great Lord BACON which might have afforded the hint. But I am inclined to think that what induced me to select this topic was the interest which JOHNSON has given to the literary quarrels between _Dryden_ and _Settle_, _Dennis_ and _Addison_, &c.; and which Sir WALTER SCOTT, who, amid the fresh creations of fancy, could delve for the buried truths of research, has thrown into his narrative of the quarrel of _Dryden_ and _Luke Milbourne_.

From the French work I could derive no aid; and my plan is my own. I have fixed on each literary controversy to illustrate some principle, to portray some character, and to investigate some topic. Almost every controversy which occurred opened new views. With the subject, the character of the author connected itself; and with the character were associated those events of his life which reciprocally act on each other. I have always considered an author as a human being, who possesses at once two sorts of lives, the intellectual and the vulgar: in his books we trace the history of his mind, and in his actions those of human nature. It is this combination which interests the philosopher and the man of feeling; which provides the richest materials for reflection; and all those original details which spring from the constituent principles of man. JOHNSON'S passion for literary history, and his great knowledge of the human heart, inspired at once the first and the finest model in this class of composition.

The Philosophy of Literary History was indeed the creation of BAYLE. He was the first who, by attempting a _critical dictionary_, taught us to think, and to be curious and vast in our researches. He ennobled a collection of facts by his reasonings, and exhibited them with the most miscellaneous illustrations; and thus conducting an apparently humble pursuit with a higher spirit, he gave a new turn to our studies. It was felt through Europe; and many celebrated authors studied and repeated BAYLE. This father of a numerous race has an English as well as a French progeny.

JOHNSON wrote under many disadvantages; but, with scanty means, he has taught us a great end. Dr. BIRCH was the contemporary of JOHNSON. He excelled his predecessors; and yet he forms a striking contrast as a literary historian. BIRCH was no philosopher, and I adduce him as an instance how a writer, possessing the most ample knowledge, and the most vigilant curiosity--one practised in all the secret arts of literary research in public repositories and in private collections, and eminently skilled in the whole science of bibliography--may yet fail with the public. The diligence of BIRCH has perpetuated his memory by a monument of MSS., but his, touch was mortal to genius! He palsied the character which could never die; heroes sunk pusillanimously under his hand; and in his torpid silence, even MILTON seemed suddenly deprived of his genius.

I have freely enlarged in the _notes_ to this work; a practice which is objectionable to many, but indispensable perhaps in this species of literary history.

The late Mr. CUMBERLAND, in a conversation I once held with him on this subject, triumphantly exclaimed, "You will not find a single note through the whole volume of my 'Life.' I never wrote a note. The ancients never wrote notes; but they introduced into their text all which was proper for the reader to know."

I agreed with that elegant writer, that a fine piece of essay-writing, such as his own "Life," required notes no more than his novels and his comedies, among which it may be classed. I observed that the ancients had no literary history; this was the result of the discovery of printing, the institution of national libraries, the general literary intercourse of Europe, and some other causes which are the growth almost of our own times. The ancients have written history without producing authorities.

Mr. CUMBERLAND was then occupied on a review of Fox's History; and of CLARENDON, which lay open before him,--he had been complaining, with all the irritable feelings of a dramatist, of the frequent suspensions, and the tedious minuteness of his story.

I observed that _notes_ had not then been discovered. Had Lord CLARENDON known their use, he had preserved the unity of design in his text. His Lordship has unskilfully filled it with all that historical furniture his diligence had collected, and with those minute discussions which his anxiety for truth, and his lawyer-like mode of scrutinising into facts and substantiating evidence, amassed. Had these been cast into _notes_, and were it now possible to pass them over in the present text, how would the story of the noble historian clear up! The greatness of his genius will appear when disencumbered of its unwieldy and misplaced accompaniments.

If this observation be just, it will apply with greater force to literary history itself, which, being often the mere history of the human mind, has to record opinions as well as events--to discuss as well as to narrate--to show how accepted truths become suspicious--or to confirm what has hitherto rested in obscure uncertainty, and to balance contending opinions and opposite facts with critical nicety. The multiplied means of our knowledge now opened to us, have only rendered our curiosity more urgent in its claims, and raised up the most diversified objects. These, though accessories to the leading one of our inquiries, can never melt together in the continuity of a text. It is to prevent all this disorder, and to enjoy all the usefulness and the pleasure of this various knowledge, which has produced the invention of _notes_ in literary history. All this forms a sort of knowledge peculiar to the present more enlarged state of literature. Writers who delight in curious and rare extracts, and in the discovery of new facts and new views of things, warmed by a fervour of research which brings everything nearer to our eye and close to our touch, study to throw contemporary feelings in their page. Such rare extracts and such new facts BAYLE eagerly sought, and they delighted JOHNSON; but all this luxury of literature can only be produced to the public eye in the variegated forms of _notes_.

WARBURTON, AND HIS QUARRELS;

INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS LITERARY CHARACTER

The name of Warburton more familiar to us than his Works--declared
to be "a Colossus" by a Warburtonian, who afterwards shrinks the
image into "a human size"--Lowth's caustic retort on his
Attorneyship--motives for the change to Divinity--his first
literary mischances--Warburton and his Welsh Prophet--his
Dedications--his mean flatteries--his taste more struck by the
monstrous than the beautiful--the effects of his opposite
studies--the SECRET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton through all
his Works--the _curious_ argument of his Alliance between Church and
State--the _bold_ paradox of his Divine Legation--the demonstration
ends in a conjecture--Warburton lost in the labyrinth he had
ingeniously constructed--confesses the harassed state of his
mind--attacked by Infidels and Christians--his SECRET PRINCIPLE
turns the poetical narrative of AEneas into the Eleusinian
Mysteries--Hurd attacks Jortin; his Attic irony translated into
plain English--Warburton's paradox on Eloquence; his levity of ideas
renders his sincerity suspected--Leland refutes the whimsical
paradox--Hurd attacks Leland--Leland's noble triumph--Warburton's
SECRET PRINCIPLE operating in Modern Literature: on Pope's Essay on
Man--Lord Bolingbroke the author of the Essay--Pope received
Warburton as his tutelary genius--Warburton's systematic treatment
of his friends and rival editors--his literary artifices and little
intrigues--his Shakspeare--the whimsical labours of Warburton on
Shakspeare annihilated by Edwards's "Canons of Criticism"--Warburton
and Johnson--Edwards and Warburton's mutual attacks--the concealed
motive of his edition of Shakspeare avowed in his justification--his
SECRET PRINCIPLE further displayed in Pope's Works--attacks Akenside;
Dyson's generous defence--correct Ridicule is a test of Truth,
illustrated by a well-known case--Warburton a literary
revolutionist; aimed to be a perpetual dictator--the ambiguous
tendency of his speculations--the Warburtonian School supported by
the most licentious principles--specimens of its peculiar style--the
use to which Warburton applied the Dunciad--his party: attentive to
raise recruits--the active and subtle Hurd--his extreme
sycophancy--Warburton, to maintain his usurped authority, adopted
his system of literary quarrels.

The name of WARBURTON is more familiar to us than his works: thus was it early,[141] thus it continues, and thus it will be with posterity! The cause may be worth our inquiry. Nor is there, in the whole compass of our literary history, a character more instructive for its greatness and its failures; none more adapted to excite our curiosity, and which can more completely gratify it.

Of great characters, whose actions are well known, and of those who, whatever claim they may have to distinction, are not so, ARISTOTLE has delivered a precept with his accustomed sagacity. If _Achilles_, says the Stagirite, be the subject of our inquiries, since all know what he has done, we are simply to indicate his actions, without stopping to detail; but this would not serve for _Critias_; for whatever relates to him must be fully told, since he is known to few;[142]--a critical precept, which ought to be frequently applied in the composition of this work.

The history of Warburton is now well known; the facts lie dispersed in the chronological biographer;[143] but the secret connexion which exists between them, if there shall be found to be any, has not yet been brought out; and it is my business to press these together; hence to demonstrate principles, or to deduce inferences.

The literary fame of Warburton was a portentous meteor: it seemed unconnected with the whole planetary system through which it rolled, and it was imagined to be darting amid new creations, as the tail of each hypothesis blazed with idle fancies.[144] Such extraordinary natures cannot be looked on with calm admiration, nor common hostility; all is the tumult of wonder about such a man; and his adversaries, as well as his friends, though differently affected, are often overcome by the same astonishment.

To a Warburtonian, the object of his worship looks indeed of colossal magnitude, in the glare thrown about that hallowed spot; nor is the divinity of common stature; but the light which makes him appear so great, must not be suffered to conceal from us the real standard by which only his greatness can be determined:[145] even literary enthusiasm, delightful to all generous tempers, may be too prodigal of its splendours, wasting itself while it shines; but truth remains behind! Truth, which, like the asbestos, is still unconsumed and unaltered amidst these glowing fires.

The genius of Warburton has called forth two remarkable anonymous criticisms--in one, all that the most splendid eloquence can bring to bear against this chief and his adherents;[146] and in the other, all that taste, warmed by a spark of Warburtonian fire, can discriminate in an impartial decision.[147] Mine is a colder and less grateful task. I am but a historian! I have to creep along in the darkness of human events, to lay my hand cautiously on truths so difficult to touch, and which either the panegyrist or the writer of an invective cover over, and throw aside into corners.

Much of the moral, and something too of the physical dispositions of the man enter into the literary character; and, moreover, there are localities--the place where he resides, the circumstances which arise, and the habits he contracts; to all these the excellences and the defects of some of our great literary characters may often be traced. With this clue we may thread our way through the labyrinth of Genius.

Warburton long resided in an obscure provincial town, the articled clerk of a country attorney,[148] and then an unsuccessful practising one. He seems, too, once to have figured as "a wine-merchant in the Borough," and rose into notice as "the orator of a disputing club;" but, in all his shapes, still keen in literary pursuits, without literary connexions; struggling with all the defects of a desultory and self-taught education, but of a bold aspiring character, he rejected, either in pride or in despair, his little trades, and took Deacon's orders--to exchange a profession, unfavourable to continuity of study, for another more propitious to its indulgence.[149] In a word, he set off as a literary adventurer, who was to win his way by earning it from patronage.

His first mischances were not of a nature to call forth that intrepidity which afterwards hardened into the leading feature of his character. Few great authors have begun their race with less auspicious omens, though an extraordinary event in the life of an author happened to Warburton--he had secured a patron before he was an author.

The first publication of his which we know, was his "Translations in Prose and Verse from Roman Poets, Orators, and Historians." 1724. He was then about twenty-five years of age. The fine forms of classic beauty could never be cast in so rough a mould as his prose; and his turgid unmusical verses betrayed qualities of mind incompatible with the delicacy of poetry. Four years afterwards he repeated another bolder attempt, in his "Critical and Philosophical Inquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles." After this publication, I wonder Warburton was ever suspected of infidelity or even scepticism.[150] So radically deficient in Warburton was that fine internal feeling which we call taste, that through his early writings he acquired not one solitary charm of diction,[151] and scarcely betrayed, amid his impurity of taste, that nerve and spirit which afterwards crushed all rival force. His translations _in imitation of Milton's style_ betray his utter want of ear and imagination. He attempted to suppress both these works during his lifetime.

When these unlucky productions were republished by Dr. Parr, the _Dedications_ were not forgotten; they were both addressed to the same opulent baronet, not omitting "the virtues" of his lady the Countess of Sunderland, whose marriage he calls "so divine a union." Warburton had shown no want of judgment in the choice of his patrons; for they had more than one living in their gift--and perhaps, knowing his patrons, none in the dedications themselves. They had, however, this absurdity, that in freely exposing the servile practices of dedicators, the writer was himself indulging in that luxurious sin, which he so forcibly terms "Public Prostitution." This early management betrays no equivocal symptoms of that traffic in _Dedications_, of which he has been so severely accused,[152] and of that paradoxical turn and hardy effrontery which distinguished his after-life. These dedications led to preferment, and thus hardily was laid the foundation-stone of his aspiring fortunes.

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.