[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."