Chapter XII: Part 12

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.