(_Page_ 80.)
As no one reads Warburton now--I bought the five volumes of his
_Divine Legation_ in excellent condition, bound in calf, for ten pence--one
or two extracts from his writing may be of interest. His Dedication
of that work to the Free-Thinkers is as vigorous as it is abusive. It has
such passages as the following:--'Low and mean as your buffoonery is,
it is yet to the level of the people:' p. xi. 'I have now done with
your buffoonery, which, like chewed bullets, is against the law of arms;
and come next to your scurrilities, those stink-pots of your offensive
war.' _Ib. p. xxii_. On page xl. he returns again to their '_cold_
buffoonery.' In the Appendix to vol. v, p. 414, he thus wittily replies
to Lowth, who had maintained that 'idolatry was punished under the
DOMINION of Melchisedec'(p. 409):--'Melchisedec's story is a short
one; he is just brought into the scene to _bless_ Abraham in his return
from conquest. This promises but ill. Had this _King and Priest of
Salem_ been brought in _cursing_, it had had a better appearance: for, I
think, punishment for opinions which generally ends in a _fagot_ always
begins with a _curse_. But we may be misled perhaps by a wrong translation.
The Hebrew word to _bless_ signifies likewise to _curse_, and under
the management of an intolerant priest good things easily run into their
contraries. What follows is his taking _tythes_ from Abraham. Nor will
this serve our purpose, unless we interpret these _tythes_ into _fines for
non-conformity_; and then by the _blessing_ we can easily understand
_absolution_. We have seen much stranger things done with the _Hebrew
verity_. If this be not allowed, I do not see how we can elicit fire and
fagot from this adventure; for I think there is no inseparable connexion
between _tythes_ and _persecution_ but in the ideas of a Quaker.--And
so much for King Melchisedec. But the learned _Professor_, who
has been hardily brought up in the keen atmosphere of WHOLESOME
SEVERITIES and early taught to distinguish between _de facto_ and _de
jure_, thought it 'needless to enquire into _facts_, when he was secure
of the _right_'.
This 'keen atmosphere of wholesome severities' reappears by the
way in Mason's continuation of Gray's Ode to Vicissitude:--
'That breathes the keen yet wholesome air
Of rugged penury.'
And later in the first book of Wordsworth's _Excursion_
(ed. 1857, vi. 29):--
'The keen, the wholesome air of poverty.'
Johnson said of Warburton: 'His abilities gave him an haughty confidence,
which he disdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience
of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemptuous
superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and
excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the cause.
He seems to have adopted the Roman Emperour's determination,
_oderint dum metuant_; he used no allurements of gentle language, but
wished to compel rather than persuade.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 288.
See _ante_, ii. 36, and iv. 46.
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