----"Fawned through all his life
For patrons first, then for a wife;
Wrote _Dedications_, which must make
The heart of every Christian quake."
_The Duellist._
It is certain that the proud and supercilious Warburton long
crouched and fawned. MALLET, at least, well knew all that
passed between Warburton and Pope. In the "Familiar Epistle"
he asserts that Warburton was introduced to Pope by his
"nauseous flattery." A remarkable instance, besides the
dedications we have noticed, occurred in his correspondence
with Sir Thomas Hanmer. He did not venture to attack "The
Oxford Editor," as he sarcastically distinguishes him, without
first demanding back his letters, which were immediately
returned, from Sir Thomas's high sense of honour. Warburton
might otherwise have been shown strangely to contradict
himself, for in these letters he had been most lavish of his
flatteries and encomiums on the man whom he covered with
ridicule in the preface to his Shakspeare. See "An Answer to
certain Passages in Mr. W.'s Preface to Shakspeare," 1748.
His dedication to the plain unlettered Ralph Allen of Bath,
his greatest of patrons, of his "Commentary on Pope's Essay on
Man," is written in the same spirit as those to Sir Robert
Sutton; but the former unlucky gentleman was more publicly
exposed by it. The subject of this dedication turns on "the
growth and progress of _Fate_, divided into four principal
branches!" There is an episode about _Free-will_ and _Nature_
and _Grace_, and "a _contrivance_ of Leibnitz about
_Fatalism_." Ralph Allen was a good Quaker-like man, but he
must have lost his temper if he ever read the dedication! Let
us not, however, imagine that Warburton was at all insensible
to this violation of literary decorum; he only sacrificed
_propriety_ to what he considered a more urgent principle--his
own personal interest. No one had a juster conception of the
true nature of _dedications_; for he says in the famous one
"to the Free-thinkers:"--"I could never approve the custom of
dedicating books to men whose professions made them strangers
to the subject. A Discourse on the Ten Predicaments to a
Leader of Armies, or a System of Casuistry to a Minister of
State, always appeared to me a high absurdity."
All human characters are mixed--true! yet still we feel
indignant to discover some of the greatest often combining the
most opposite qualities; and then they are not so much mixed
as the parts are naturally joined together. Could one imagine
that so lofty a character as Warburton could have been liable
to have incurred even the random stroke of the satirist?
whether true or false, the events of his life, better known at
this day than in his own, will show. Churchill says that
"He could cringe and creep, be civil,
And hold a stirrup to the devil,
If, _in a journey to his mind_,
He'd let him mount, and ride behind."
The author of the "Canons of Criticism," with all his
sprightly sarcasm, gives a history of Warburton's later
Dedications. "The first edition of 'The Alliance' came out
without a dedication, but was presented to the bishops; and
when nothing came of that, the second was addressed to both
the Universities; and when nothing came of that, the third was
dedicated to a noble Earl, and nothing has yet come of that."
Appendix to "Canons of Criticism," seventh edit. 261.
[153] The palace here alluded to is fully described in a volume of
"Travels through Sicily and Malta," by P. Brydone, F.R.S., in
1770. He describes it as belonging to "the Prince of Palermo,
a man of immense fortune, who has devoted his whole life to
the study of monsters and chimeras, greater and more
ridiculous than ever entered into the imagination of the
wildest writers of romance and knight-errantry." He tells us
this palace was surrounded by an army of statues, "not one
made to represent any object in nature. He has put the heads
of men to the bodies of every sort of animal, and the heads of
every other animal to the bodies of men. Sometimes he makes a
compound of five or six animals that have no sort of
resemblance in nature. He puts the head of a lion on the neck
of a goose, the body of a lizard, the legs of a goat, the tail
of a fox; on the back of this monster he puts another, if
possible still more hideous, with five or six heads, and a
bush of horns. There is no kind of horn in the world he has
not collected, and his pleasure is to see them all flourishing
upon the same head." The interior of the house was decorated
in the same monstrous style, and the description, unique of
its kind, occupies several pages of Mr. Brydone's book.--ED.
[154] This letter was written in 1726, and first found by Dr. Knight
in 1750, in fitting up a house where Concanen had probably
lodged. It was suppressed, till Akenside, in 1766, printed it
in a sixpenny pamphlet, entitled "An Ode to Mr. Edwards." He
preserved the curiosity, with "all its peculiarities of
grammar, spelling, and punctuation." The insulted poet took a
deep revenge for the contemptuous treatment he had received
from the modern Stagirite. The "peculiarities" betray most
evident marks of the self-taught lawyer; the orthography and
the double letters were minted in the office. [Thus he speaks
of Addison as this "exact _Mr._ of propriety," and of his own
studies of the English poets "to trace them to their sources;
and observe what _oar_, as well as what slime and gravel they
brought down with them."] When I looked for the letter in
_Akenside's Works_, I discovered that it had been silently
dropped. Some interest, doubtless, had been made to suppress
it, for Warburton was humbled when reminded of it. Malone,
fortunately, has preserved it in his Shakspeare, where it may
be found, in a place not likely to be looked into for it, at
the close of _Julius Caesar_: this literary curiosity had
otherwise been lost for posterity; its whole history is a
series of wonderful escapes.
By this document we became acquainted with the astonishing
fact, that Warburton, early in life, was himself one of those
very dunces whom he has so unmercifully registered in their
Doomsday-book; one who admired the genius of his brothers, and
spoke of Pope with the utmost contempt! [Thus he says,
"Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for
want of genius!"]
[155] Lee introduces Alexander the Great, saying,
"When Glory, like the dazzling eagle, stood
Perch'd on my beaver in the Granic flood,
When Fortune's self my standard trembling bore,
And the pale Fates stood frighted on the shore;
When the Immortals on the billows rode,
And I myself appear'd the leading god!"
In the province of taste Warburton was always at sea without
chart or compass, and was as unlucky in his panegyric on
Milton as on Lee. He calls the "Paradise Regained" "a charming
poem, _nothing inferior_ in the _poetry_ and the _sentiments_
to the Paradise Lost." Such extravagance could only have
proceeded from a critic too little sensible to the essential
requisites of poetry itself.
[156] Such opposite studies shot themselves into the most fantastical
forms in his rocket-writings, whether they streamed in "The
Divine Legation," or sparkled in "The Origin of Romances," or
played about in giving double senses to Virgil, Pope, and
Shakspeare. CHURCHILL, with a good deal of ill-nature and some
truth, describes them:--
"A curate first, he read and read,
And laid in, while he should have fed
The souls of his neglected flock,
Of rending, such a mighty stock,
That he o'ercharged the weary brain
With more than she could well contain;
More than she was with spirit fraught
To turn and methodise to thought;
And which, _like ill-digested food,
To humours turn'd, and not to blood_."
The opinion of BENTLEY, when he saw "The Divine Legation," was
a sensible one. "This man," said he, "has a monstrous
appetite, with a very bad digestion."
The Warburtonians seemed to consider his great work, as the
Bible by which all literary men were to be sworn. LOWTH
ridicules their credulity. "'The Divine Legation,' it seems,
contains in it all knowledge, divine and human, ancient and
modern: it is a perfect Encyclopaedia, including all history,
criticism, divinity, law, politics, from the law of Moses down
to the Jew bill, and from Egyptian hieroglyphics to modern
Rebus-writing, &c."
"In the 2014 pages of the unfinished 'Divine Legation,'"
observes the sarcastic GIBBON, "four hundred authors are
quoted, from St. Austin down to Scarron and Rabelais!"
Yet, after all that satire and wit have denounced, listen to
an enlightened votary of Warburton. He asserts that "The
'Divine Legation' has taken its place at the head, not to say
of English theology, but almost of English literature. To the
composition of this prodigious performance, HOOKER and
STILLINGFLEET could have contributed the erudition,
CHILLINGWORTH and LOCKE the acuteness, TAYLOR an imagination
even more wild and copious, SWIFT, and perhaps, EACHARD, the
sarcastic vein of wit; but what power of understanding, except
WARBURTON'S, could first have amassed all these materials, and
then compacted them into a bulky and elaborate work, so
consistent and harmonious."--_Quarterly Review._ vol. vii.
[157] "The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated," vol. i. sec. iv.
Observe the remarkable expression, "that last foible of
superior genius." He had evidently running in his mind
Milton's line on Fame--
"That last infirmity of noble minds."
In such an exalted state was Warburton's mind when he was
writing this, his own character.
[158] The author of "The Canons of Criticism" addressed a severe
sonnet to Warburton; and alludes to the "Alliance":--
"Reign he sole king in paradoxal land,
And for Utopia plan his idle schemes
Of _visionary leagues, alliance vain
'Twixt_ Will _and_ Warburton--"
On which he adds this note, humorously stating the grand
position of the work:--"The whole argument by which the
_alliance between Church and State_ is established, Mr.
Warburton founds upon this supposition--'That people,
considering themselves in a religious capacity, may contract
with themselves, considered in a civil capacity.' The conceit
is ingenious, but is not his own. _Scrub_, in the _Beaux
Stratagem_, had found it out long ago: he considers himself as
acting the different parts of all the servants in the family;
and so _Scrub_, the coachman, ploughman, or justice's clerk,
might contract with _Scrub_, the butler, for such a quantity
of ale as the other assumed character demanded."--Appendix, p.
261.
[159] "Monthly Review," vol. xvi. p. 324, the organ of the
dissenters.
[160] See article HOBBES, for his system. The great Selden was an
_Erastian_; a distinction extremely obscure. _Erastus_ was a
Swiss physician of little note, who was for restraining the
ecclesiastical power from all temporal jurisdiction. Selden
did him the honour of adopting his principles. Selden wrote
against the _divine right_ of tithes, but allowed the _legal_
right, which gave at first great offence to the clergy, who
afterwards perceived the propriety of his argument, as Wotton
has fully acknowledged.
[161] It does not always enter into the design of these volumes to
examine those great works which produced _literary quarrels_.
But some may be glad to find here a word on this original
project.
The grand position of the _Divine Legation_ is, that the
knowledge of the immortality of the soul, or a future
state of reward and punishment, is absolutely necessary in
the moral government of the universe. The author shows how it
has been inculcated by all good legislators, so that no
religion could ever exist without it; but the Jewish could,
from its peculiar government, which was theocracy--a
government where the presence of God himself was perpetually
manifested by miracles and new ordinances: and hence
temporal rewards and punishments were sufficient for that
people, to whom the unity and power of the Godhead were
never doubtful. As he proceeded, he would have opened a new
argument, viz., that the Jewish religion was only the
_part_ of a revelation, showing the necessity of a further one
for its _completion_, which produced Christianity.
When Warburton was in good spirits with his great work (for he
was not always so), he wrote thus to a friend:--"You judge
right, that the _next_ volume of the D. L. will not be the
_last_. I thought I had told you that I had divided the work
into three parts: the first gives you a view of Paganism; the
second, of Judaism; and the third, of Christianity. _You will
wonder_ how this last inquiry can come into _so simple an
argument_ as that which I undertake to enforce. I have not
room to tell you more than this--that after I have proved a
future state not to be, _in fact_ in the Mosaic dispensation,
I next show that, if Christianity be true, _it could not
possibly be there_; and this necessitates me to explain the
nature of Christianity, with which the whole ends. But this
_inter nos_. If it be known, I should possibly have somebody
writing against _this part too_ before it appears."--Nichols's
"Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 551.
Thus he exults in the true tone, and with all the levity of a
sophist. It is well that a true feeling of religion does not
depend on the quirks and quibbles of human reasonings, or,
what are as fallible, on masses of fanciful erudition.
[162] Warburton lost himself in the labyrinth he had so ingeniously
constructed. This work harassed his days and exhausted his
intellect. Observe the tortures of a mind, even of so great a
mind as that of Warburton's, when it sacrifices all to the
perishable vanity of sudden celebrity. Often he flew from his
task in utter exhaustion and despair. He had quitted the
smooth and even line of truth, to wind about and split himself
on all the crookedness of paradoxes. He paints his feelings in
a letter to Birch. He says--"I was so disgusted with an old
subject, that I had deferred it from month to month and year
to year." He had recourse to "an expedient;" which was, "to
set the press on work, and so oblige himself to supply copy."
Such is the confession of the author of the "Divine Legation!"
this "encyclopaedia" of all ancient and modern lore--all to
proceed from "a simple argument!" But when he describes his
sufferings, hard is the heart of that literary man who cannot
sympathise with such a giant caught in the toils! I give his
words:--"Distractions of various kinds, inseparable from human
life, joined with a naturally melancholy habit, contribute
greatly to increase my indolence. This makes my reading wild
and desultory; and I seek refuge from _the uneasiness of
thought_, from any book, let it be what it will. _By my manner
of writing upon subjects, you would naturally imagine they
afford me pleasure, and attach me thoroughly. I will assure
you_, No!"--Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 562.
Warburton had not the cares of a family--they were merely
literary ones. The secret cause of his "melancholy," and his
"indolence," and that "want of attachment and pleasure to his
subjects;" which his friends "naturally imagined" afforded him
so much, was the controversies he had kindled, and the
polemical battles he had raised about him. However boldly he
attacked in return, his heart often sickened in privacy; for
how often must he have beheld his noble and his whimsical
edifices built on sands, which the waters were perpetually
eating into!
At the last interview of Warburton with Pope, the dying poet
exhorted him to proceed with "The Divine Legation." "Your
reputation," said he, "as well as your duty, is concerned in
it. People say you can get no farther in your proof. Nay, Lord
Bolingbroke himself bids me expect no such thing." This
anecdote is rather extraordinary; for it appears in "Owen
Ruffhead's Life of Pope," p. 497, a work written under the eye
of Warburton himself; and in which I think I could point out
some strong touches from his own hand on certain important
occasions, when he would not trust to the creeping dulness of
Ruffhead.
[163] His temerity had raised against him not only infidels, but
Christians. If any pious clergyman now wrote in favour of the
opinion that God's people believed in the immortality of the
soul--which can we doubt they did? and which Menasseh Ben
Israel has written his treatise, "De Resurrectione Mortuorum,"
to prove--it was a strange sight to behold a bishop seeming to
deny so rational and religious a creed! Even Dr. Balguy
confessed to Warburton, that "there was one thing in the
argument of the 'Divine Legation' that stuck more with candid
men than all the rest--how a religion without a future state
could be worthy of God!" This Warburton promised to satisfy,
by a fresh appendix. His volatile genius, however, was
condemned to "the pelting of a merciless storm." Lowth told
him--"You give yourself out as _demonstrator_ of the _divine
legation_ of Moses; it has been often demonstrated before; a
young student in theology might undertake to give a
better--that is, a more satisfactory and irrefragable
demonstration of it in five pages than you have done in five
volumes."--Lowth's "Letter to Warburton," p. 12.
[164] Hurd was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and was placed by
him at Rugely, from whence he was removed to Emmanuel College,
Cambridge. At the age of twenty-six he published a pamphlet
entitled "Remarks on a late Book entitled 'An Inquiry into the
Rejection of the Christian Miracles by the Heathens, by
William Weston,'" which met with considerable attention. In
1749, on the occasion of publishing a commentary on Horace's
"Ars Poetica," he complimented Warburton so strongly as to
ensure his favour. Warburton returned it by a puff for Hurd in
his edition of Pope, and the two became fast friends. It was a
profitable connexion to Hurd, for by the intercession of
Warburton he was appointed one of the Whitehall preachers, a
preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and Archdeacon of Gloucester. He
repaid Warburton by constant praises in print, and so far
succeeded with that vain man, that when he read the dedication
he made to him of his "Commentary on the Epistle to Augustus,"
he wrote to him with mock humility--"I will confess to you how
much satisfaction the groundless part of it, that which
relates to myself, gave me." When Dr. Jortin very properly
spoke of Warburton with less of subserviency than the
overbearing bishop desired, Hurd at once came forward to fight
for Warburton in print, in a satirical treatise on "The
Delicacy of Friendship," which highly delighted his patron,
who at once wrote to Dr. Lowth, stating him to be "a man of
very superior talents, of genius, learning, and virtue;
indeed, a principal ornament of the age he lives in." Hurd was
made Bishop of Lichfield in 1775, and of Winchester in 1779.
He died in the year 1808.--ED.
[165] The Attic irony was translated into plain English, in "Remarks
on Dr. Warburton's Account of the Sentiments of the Early
Jews," 1757; and the following rules for all who dissented
from Warburton are deduced:--"You must not write on the same
subject that he does. You must not glance at his arguments,
even without naming him or so much as referring to him. If you
find his reasonings ever so faulty, you must not presume to
furnish him with better of your own, even though you prove,
and are desirous to support his conclusions. When you design
him a compliment, you must express it in full form, and with
all the circumstance of panegyrical approbation, without
impertinently qualifying your civilities by assigning a reason
why you think he deserves them, as this might possibly be
taken for a hint that you know something of the matter he is
writing about as well as himself. You must never call any of
his _discoveries_ by the name of _conjectures_, though you
allow them their full proportion of elegance, learning, &c.;
for you ought to know that this capital genius never proposed
anything to the judgment of the public (though ever so new and
uncommon) with diffidence in his life. Thus stands the decree
prescribing our demeanour towards this sovereign in the
Republic of Letters, as we find it promulged, and bearing date
at the palace of Lincoln's Inn, Nov. 25, 1755."--From whence
Hurd's "Seventh Dissertation" was dated.
[166] Gibbon's "Critical Observations on the Design of the Sixth Book
of the AEneid." Dr. Parr considers this clear, elegant, and
decisive work of criticism, as a complete refutation of
Warburton's discovery.
[167] It is curious enough to observe that Warburton himself,
acknowledging this to be a paradox, exultingly exclaims,
"Which, _like so many others_ I have had the ODD FORTUNE to
advance, will be seen to be only another name for Truth." This
has all the levity of a sophist's language! Hence we must
infer that some of the most important subjects could not be
understood and defended, but by Warburton's "_odd fortune_!"
It was this levity of ideas that raised a suspicion that he
was not always sincere. He writes, in a letter, of "living in
mere spite, to rub another volume of the 'Divine Legation' in
the noses of bigots and zealots." He employs the most
ludicrous images, and the coarsest phrases, on the most solemn
subjects. In one of his most unlucky paradoxes with Lowth, on
the age and style of the writings of Job, he accuses that
elegant scholar of deficient discernment; and, in respect to
style, as not "distinguishing partridge from horseflesh;" and
in quoting some of the poetical passages, of "paying with an
old song," and "giving rhyme for reason." Alluding to some one
of his adversaries, whom he calls "the weakest, as well as the
wickedest of all mankind," he employs a striking image--"I
shall hang him and his fellows, as they do vermin in a warren,
and leave them to posterity, to stink and blacken in the
wind."
[168] Warburton, in this work (the "Doctrine of Grace,") has a curious
passage, too long to quote, where he observes, that "The
Indian and Asiatic eloquence was esteemed hyperbolic and
puerile by the more phlegmatic inhabitants of Rome and Athens:
and the Western eloquence, in its turn, frigid or insipid, to
the hardy and inflamed imaginations of the East. The same
expression, which in one place had the utmost simplicity, had
in another the utmost sublime." The jackal, too, echoes the
roar of the lion; for the polished Hurd, whose taste was far
more decided than Warburton's, was bold enough to add, in his
Letter to Leland, "That which is thought supremely _elegant_
in one country, passes in another for _finical_; while what in
this country is accepted under the idea of _sublimity_, is
derided in that other as no better than _bombast_." So
unsettled were the _no-taste_ of Warburton, and the
_prim-taste_ of Hurd!
[169] The Letter to Leland is characterised in the "Critical Review"
for April, 1765, as the work of "a preferment-hunting
toad-eater, who, while his patron happened to go out of his
depth, tells him that he is treading good ground; but at the
same time offers him the use of a cork-jacket to keep him
above water."
[170] Dr. Thomas Leland was born in Dublin in 1722, and was educated
in Trinity College, in that city. Having obtained a Fellowship
there, he depended on that alone, and devoted a long life to
study, and the production of various historical and
theological works; as well as a "History of Ireland,"
published in 1773. He died in 1785.--ED.
[171] In a rough attack on Warburton, respecting Pope's privately
printing 1500 copies of the "Patriot King" of Bolingbroke,
which I conceive to have been written by Mallet, I find a
particular account of the manner in which the "Essay on Man"
was written, over which Johnson seems to throw great doubts.
The writer of this angry epistle, in addressing Warburton,
says: "If you were as intimate with Mr. Pope as you pretend,
you must know the truth of a fact which several others, as
well as I, who never had the honour of a personal acquaintance
with Lord Bolingbroke or Mr. Pope, have heard. The fact was
related to me by a certain Senior Fellow of one of our
Universities, who was very intimate with Mr. Pope. He started
some objections, one day, at Mr. Pope's house, to the doctrine
contained in the Ethic Epistles: upon which Mr. Pope told him
that he would soon convince him of the truth of it, by laying
the argument at large before him; for which purpose he gave
him _a large prose manuscript_ to peruse, telling him, at the
same time, the author's name. From this perusal, whatever
other conviction the doctor might receive, he collected at
least this: that Mr. Pope had from his friend not only the
_doctrine_, but even the _finest and strongest ornaments of
his Ethics_. Now, if this fact be true (as I question not but
you know it to be so), I believe no man of candour will
attribute such merit to Mr. Pope as you would insinuate, for
acknowledging the wisdom and the friendship of the man who was
his instructor in philosophy; nor consequently that this
acknowledgment, and the _dedication of his own system, put
into a poetical dress by Mr. Pope_, laid his lordship under
the necessity of never resenting any injury done to him by the
poet afterwards. Mr. Pope told no more than literal truth, in
calling Lord Bolingbroke his _guide, philosopher, and
friend_." The existence of this very manuscript volume was
authenticated by Lord Bathurst, in a conversation with Dr.
Blair and others, where he said, "he had read the MS. in Lord
Bolingbroke's handwriting, and was at a loss whether most to
admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty
of Mr. Pope's verse."--See the letter of Dr. Blair in
"Boswell's Life of Johnson."
[172] Of many instances, the following one is the most curious. When
Jarvis published his "Don Quixote," Warburton, who was prompt
on whatever subject was started, presented him with "A
Dissertation on the Origin of the Books of Chivalry." When it
appeared, it threw Pope, their common friend, into raptures.
He writes, "I knew you as certainly as the ancients did the
gods, by the first pace and the very gait." True enough!
Warburton's strong genius stamped itself on all his works. But
neither the translating painter, nor the simple poet, could
imagine the heap of absurdities they were admiring! Whatever
Warburton here asserted was false, and whatever he conjectured
was erroneous; but his blunders were quite original.--The good
sense and knowledge of Tyrwhitt have demolished the whole
edifice, without leaving a single brick standing. The absurd
rhapsody has been worth preserving, for the sake of the
masterly confutation: no uncommon result of Warburton's
literary labours!
It forms the concluding note in Shakspeare's _Love's Labour
Lost_.
[173] Of THEOBALD he was once the companion, and to Sir THOMAS HANMER
he offered his notes for his edition. [Hanmer's Shakspeare was
given in 1742 to the University of Oxford, for its benefit,
and was printed at the University Press, under the management
of Dr. Smith and Dr. Shippon. Sir Thomas paid the expenses of
the engravings by Gravelot prefixed to each play. The edition
was published in 4to. in 1744, it was printed on the "finest
royal paper," and does not warrant the severity of Pope, whose
editing was equally faulty.] Sir Thomas says he found
Warburton's notes "sometimes just, but mostly wild and out of
the way." Warburton paid a visit to Sir Thomas for a week,
which he conceived was to assist him in perfecting his darling
text; but hints were now dropped by Warburton, that _he_ might
publish the work corrected, by which a greater sum of money
might be got than could be by that plaything of Sir Thomas,
which shines in all its splendour in the Dunciad; but this
project did not suit Hanmer, whose life seemed greatly to
depend on the magnificent Oxford edition, which "was not to go
into the hands of booksellers." On this, Warburton, we are
told by Hanmer, "flew into a great rage, and there is an end
of the story." With what haughtiness he treats these two
friends, for once they were such! Had the Dey of Algiers been
the editor of Shakspeare, he could not have issued his orders
more peremptorily for the decapitation of his rivals. Of
Theobald and Hanmer he says, "the one was recommended to me as
a poor man, the other as a poor critic: and to each of them at
different times I communicated a great number of observations,
which they managed, as they saw fit, to the relief of their
several distresses. Mr. Theobald was naturally turned to
industry and labour. What he read he could transcribe; but as
to what he thought, if ever he did think, he could but ill
express, so he read on: and by that means got a character of
learning, without risking to every observer the imputation of
wanting a better talent."--See what it is to enjoy too close
an intimacy with a man of wit! "As for the Oxford Editor, he
wanted nothing (alluding to Theobald's want of money) but what
he might very well be without, the reputation of a critic,"
&c. &c.--_Warburton's Preface to Shakspeare._
His conduct to Dr. GREY, the editor of Hudibras, cannot be
accounted for by any known fact. I have already noticed their
quarrels in the "Calamities of Authors." Warburton cheerfully
supplied Grey with various notes on Hudibras, though he said
he had thought of an edition himself, and they were gratefully
acknowledged in Grey's Preface; but behold! shortly afterwards
they are saluted by Warburton as "an execrable heap of
nonsense;" further, he insulted Dr. Grey for the _number_ of
his publications! Poor Dr. Grey and his "Coadjutors," as
Warburton sneeringly called others of his friends, resented
this by "A Free and Familiar Letter to that Great Preserver of
Pope and Shakspeare, the Rev. Mr. William Warburton." The
doctor insisted that Warburton had had sufficient share in
those very notes to be considered as one of the "Coadjutors."
"I may venture to say, that whoever was the _fool of the
company_ before he entered (or _the fool of the piece_, in his
own diction) he was certainly so after he engaged in that
work; for, as Ben Jonson observes, 'he that _thinks_ himself
the _Master-Wit_ is commonly the _Master-Fool_.'"
[174] Warburton certainly used little intrigues: he trafficked with
the obscure Reviews of the times. He was a correspondent in
"The Works of the Learned," where the account of his first
volume of the Divine Legation, he says, is "a nonsensical
piece of stuff;" and when Dr. Doddridge offered to draw up
an article for his second, the favour was accepted, and it
was sent to the miserable journal, though acknowledged "to be
too good for it." In the same journal were published all
his specimens of Shakspeare, some years after they had
appeared in the "General Dictionary," with a high character of
these wonderful discoveries.--"The Alliance," when first
published, was announced in "The Present State of the
Republic of Letters," to be the work of a gentleman whose
capacity, judgment, and learning deserve some eminent dignity
in the Church of England, of which he is "now an inferior
minister."--One may presume to guess at "the gentleman," a
little impatient for promotion, who so much cared whether
Warburton was only "now an inferior minister."
These are little arts. Another was, that Warburton sometimes
acted Falstaff's part, and ran his sword through the dead! In
more instances than one this occurred. Sir Thomas Hanmer was
dead when Warburton, then a bishop, ventured to assert that
Sir Thomas's letter concerning their intercourse about
Shakspeare was "one continued falsehood from beginning to
end." The honour and veracity of Hanmer must prevail over the
"liveliness" of Warburton, for Hurd lauds his "_lively_
preface to his Shakspeare." But the "Biographia Britannica"
bears marks of Warburton's violence, in a cancelled sheet. See
the _Index_, art. HANMER; [where we are told "the sheet being
castrated at the instance of Mr., now Dr. Warburton, Bishop of
Gloucester, it has been reprinted as an appendix to the work,"
it consisted in the suppression of one of Hanmer's letters.]
He did not choose to attack Dr. Middleton in form, during his
lifetime, but reserved his blow when his antagonist was no
more. I find in Cole's MSS. this curious passage:--"It was
thought, at Cambridge, that Dr. Middleton and Dr. Warburton
did not cordially esteem one another; yet both being keen and
thorough sportsmen, they were mutually afraid to engage to
each other, for fear of a fall. If that was the case, the
bishop judged prudently, however fairly it may be looked upon,
to stay till it was out of the power of his adversary to make
any reply, before he gave his answer." Warburton only replied
to Middleton's "Letter from Rome," in his fourth edition of
the "Divine Legation," 1765.--When Dyson firmly defended his
friend Akenside from the rude attacks of Warburton, it is
observed, that he bore them with "prudent patience:" he never
replied!
[175] These critical _extravaganzas_ are scarcely to be paralleled by
"Bentley's Notes on Milton." How Warburton turned "an
allegorical mermaid" into "the Queen of Scots;"--showed how
Shakspeare, in one word, and with one epithet "the majestic
world," described the _Orbis Romanus_, alluded to the Olympic
Games, &c.; yet, after all this discovery, seems rather to
allude to a story about Alexander, which Warburton happened to
recollect at that moment;--and how he illustrated Octavia's
idea of the fatal consequences of a civil war between Caesar
and Antony, who said it would "cleave the world," by the story
of Curtius leaping into the chasm;--how he rejected
"_allowed_, with absolute power," as not English, and read
"_hallowed_," on the authority of the Roman Tribuneship being
called _Sacro-sancta Potestas_; how his emendations often rose
from puns; as for instance, when, in _Romeo and Juliet_, it is
said of the Friar, that "the city is much obliged to _him_,"
our new critic consents to the sound of the word, but not to
the spelling, and reads _hymn_; that is, to laud, to praise!
These, and more extraordinary instances of perverting
ingenuity and abused erudition, would form an uncommon
specimen of criticism, which may be justly ridiculed, but
which none, except an exuberant genius, could have produced.
The most amusing work possible would be a real Warburton's
Shakspeare, which would contain not a single thought, and
scarcely an expression, of Shakspeare's!
[176] Had Johnson known as much as we do of Warburton's opinion of his
critical powers, it would have gone far to have cured his
amiable prejudice in favour of Warburton, who really was a
critic without taste, and who considered literature as some do
politics, merely as a party business. I shall give a
remarkable instance. When Johnson published his first critical
attempt on _Macbeth_, he commended the critical talents of
Warburton; and Warburton returned the compliment in the
preface to his Shakspeare, and distinguishes Johnson as "a man
of parts and genius." But, unluckily, Johnson afterwards
published his own edition; and, in his editorial capacity, his
public duty prevailed over his personal feelings: all this
went against Warburton; and the opinions he now formed of
Johnson were suddenly those of insolent contempt. In a letter
to Hurd, he writes: "Of _this Johnson_, you and I, I believe,
think alike!" And to another friend: "The remarks he makes, in
every page, on _my Commentaries_, are full of _insolence and
malignant reflections_, which, had they not in them _as much
folly as malignity_, I should have reason to be offended
with." He consoles himself, however, that Johnson's notes,
accompanying his own, will enable even "the trifling part of
the public" not to mistake in the comparison.--NICHOLS'S
"Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 595.
And what became of Johnson's noble Preface to Shakspeare? Not
a word on that!--Warburton, who himself had written so many
spirited ones, perhaps did not like to read one finer than his
own,--so he passed it by! He travelled through Egypt, but held
his hands before his eyes at a pyramid!
[177] Thomas Edwards chiefly led the life of a literary student,
though he studied for the Bar at Lincoln's-Inn, and was
fully admitted a member thereof. He died unmarried at the age
of 58. He descended from a family of lawyers; possessed a
sufficient private property to ensure independence, and
died on his own estate of Turrick, in Buckinghamshire. Dr.
Warton observes, "This attack on Mr. Edwards is not of weight
sufficient to weaken the effects of his excellent 'Canons of
Criticism,' all impartial critics allow these remarks to have
been decisive and judicious, and his book remains unrefuted
and unanswerable."--ED.
[178] Some grave dull men, who did not relish the jests, doubtless the
booksellers, who, to buy the _name of Warburton_, had paid
down 500_l._ for the edition, loudly complained that Edwards
had injured both him and them, by stopping the sale! On this
Edwards expresses his surprise, how "a little twelvepenny
pamphlet could stop the progress of eight large octavo
volumes;" and apologises, by applying a humorous story to
Warburton, for "puffing himself off in the world for what he
is not, and now being discovered."--"I am just in the case of
a friend of mine, who, going to visit an acquaintance, upon
entering his room, met a person going out of it:--'Prythee,
Jack,' says he, 'what do you do with that fellow?' 'Why, 'tis
Don Pedro di Mondongo, my Spanish master.'--'Spanish master!'
replies my friend; 'why, he's an errant Teague; I know the
fellow well enough: 'tis Rory Gehagan. He may possibly have
been in Spain; but, depend on't, he will sell you the
Tipperary brogue for pure Castilian.' Now honest Rory has just
the same reason of complaint against this gentleman as Mr.
Warburton has against me, and I suppose abused him as heartily
for it; but nevertheless the gentleman did both parties
justice."
Some secret history is attached to this publication, so fatal
to Warburton's critical character in English literature. This
satire, like too many which have sprung out of literary
quarrels, arose from _personal motives_! When Edwards, in
early life, after quitting college, entered the army, he was
on a visit at Mr. Allen's, at Bath, whose niece Warburton
afterwards married. Literary subjects formed the usual
conversation. Warburton, not suspecting the red coat of
covering any Greek, showed his accustomed dogmatical
superiority. Once, when the controversy was running high,
Edwards taking down a Greek author, explained a passage in a
manner quite contrary to Warburton. He did unluckily something
more--he showed that Warburton's mistake had arisen from
having used a French translation!--and all this before Ralph
Allen and his niece! The doughty critic was at once silenced,
in sullen indignation and mortal hatred. To this circumstance
is attributed Edwards's "Canons of Criticism," which were
followed up by Warburton with incessant attacks; in every new
edition of Pope, in the "Essay on Criticism," and the Dunciad.
Warburton asserts that Edwards is a very dull writer (witness
the pleasantry that carries one through a volume of no small
size), that he is a libeller (because he ruined the critical
character of Warburton)--and "a libeller (says Warburton, with
poignancy), is nothing but a Grub-street critic run to
seed."--He compares Edwards's wit and learning to his ancestor
Tom Thimble's, in the _Rehearsal_ (because Edwards read Greek
authors in their original), and his air of good-nature and
politeness, to Caliban's in the _Tempest_ (because he had so
keenly written the "Canons of Criticism").--I once saw a great
literary curiosity: some _proof-sheets_ of the Dunciad of
Warburton's edition. I observed that some of the bitterest
notes were _after-thoughts_, written on those proof-sheets
after he had prepared the book for the press--one of these
additions was his note on Edwards. Thus Pope's book afforded
renewed opportunities for all the personal hostilities of this
singular genius!
[179] In the "Richardsoniana," p. 264, the younger Richardson, who was
admitted to the intimacy of Pope, and collated the press for
him, gives some curious information about Warburton's
Commentary, both upon the "Essay on Man" and the "Essay on
Criticism." "Warburton's discovery of the 'regularity' of
Pope's 'Essay on Criticism,' and 'the whole scheme' of his
'Essay on Man,' I happen to _know_ to be mere absurd
refinement in creating conformities; and this from Pope
himself, though he thought fit to adopt them afterwards." The
genius of Warburton might not have found an invincible
difficulty in proving that the "Essay on Criticism" was in
fact an Essay on Man, and the reverse. Pope, before he knew
Warburton, always spoke of his "Essay on Criticism" as "an
irregular collection of thoughts thrown together as Horace's
'Art of Poetry' was." "As for the 'Essay on Man,'" says
Richardson, "I _know_ that he never dreamed of the scheme he
afterwards adopted; but he had taken terror about the clergy,
and Warburton himself, at the general alarm of its fatalism
and deistical tendency, of which my father and I talked with
him frequently at Twickenham, without his appearing to
understand it, or ever thinking to alter those passages which
we suggested."--This extract is to be valued, for the
information is authentic; and it assists us in throwing some
light on the subtilty of Warburton's critical impositions.
[180] The postscript to Warburton's "Dedication to the Freethinkers,"
is entirely devoted to Akenside; with this bitter opening,
"The Poet was too full of the subject and of himself."
[181] "An Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Warburton, occasioned by his
Treatment of the Author of 'The Pleasures of the Imagination,'"
1744. While Dyson repels Warburton's accusations against "the
Poet," he retorts some against the critic himself. Warburton
often perplexed a controversy by a subtile change of a word;
or by breaking up a sentence; or by contriving some absurdity in
the shape of an inference, to get rid of it in a mock
triumph. These little weapons against the laws of war are
insidiously practised in the war of words. Warburton never
replied.
[182] The paradoxical title of his great work was evidently designed
to attract the unwary. "The Divine Legation of Moses
demonstrated--_from the omission of a future state_!" It
was long uncertain whether it was "a covert attack on
Christianity, instead of a defence of it." I have here no
concern with Warburton's character as a polemical theologist;
this has been the business of that polished and elegant
scholar, Bishop Lowth, who has shown what it is to be in
Hebrew literature "a Quack in Commentatorship, and a
Mountebank in Criticism." He has fully entered into all the
absurdity of Warburton's "ill-starred Dissertation on Job."
It is curious to observe that Warburton in the wild chase of
originality, often too boldly took the bull by the horns,
for he often adopted the very reasonings and objections of
infidels!--for instance, in arguing on the truth of the
Hebrew text, because the words had no points when a living
language, he absolutely prefers the Koran for correctness! On
this Lowth observes: "You have been urging the same
argument that _Spinoza_ employed, in order to destroy the
authority of the Hebrew Scriptures, and to introduce
infidelity and atheism." Lowth shows further, that "this was
also done by 'a society of gentlemen,' in their 'Sacerdotism
Displayed,' said to be written by 'a select committee of the
Deists and Freethinkers of Great Britain,' whose author
Warburton himself had represented to be 'the forwardest
devil of the whole legion.'" Lowth, however, concludes that
all the mischief has arisen only from "your lordship's
undertaking to treat of a subject with which you appear to
be very much unacquainted."--LOWTH'S _Letter_, p. 91.
[183] Lowth remonstrated with Warburton on his "supreme
authority:"--"I did not care to protest against the
authoritative manner in which you proceeded, or to question
_your investiture in the high office of Inquisitor General and
Supreme Judge of the Opinions of the Learned_, which you had
long before assumed, and had _exercised with a ferocity and a
despotism without example in the Republic of Letters, and
hardly to be paralleled among the disciples of Dominic_;
exacting their opinions to the standard of your infallibility,
and prosecuting with implacable hatred every one that presumed
to differ from you."--LOWTH'S _Letter to W._, p. 9.
[184] Warburton had the most cutting way of designating his
adversaries, either by the most vehement abuse or the light
petulance that expressed his ineffable contempt. He says to
one, "Though your teeth are short, what you want in teeth you
have in venom, and know, as all other creatures do, where your
strength lies." He thus announces in one of the prefaces to
the "Divine Legation" the name of the author of a work on "A
Future State of Rewards and Punishments," in which were some
objections to Warburton's theory:--"I shall, therefore, but do
what indeed would be justly reckoned the cruellest of all
things, _tell my reader the name of this miserable_; which we
find to be J. TILLARD." "Mr. Tillard was first condemned (says
the author of 'Confusion Worse Confounded,') as a ruffian that
stabs a man in the dark, because he did _not_ put his name to
his book against the 'Divine Legation;' and afterwards
condemned as lost to shame, both as a man and a writer,
because he _did_ put his name to it." Would not one imagine
this person to be one of the lowest of miscreants? He was a
man of fortune and literature. Of this person Warburton says
in a letter, "This is a man of fortune, and it is well he is
so, for I have spoiled his trade as a writer; and as he was
very abusive, free-thinking, and anonymous, I have not spared
to expose his ignorance and ill faith." But afterwards, having
discovered that he was a particular friend to Dr. Oliver, he
makes awkward apologies, and declares he would not have _gone
so far_ had he known this! He was often so vehement in his
abuse that I find he confessed it himself, for, in preparing a
new edition of the "Divine Legation," he tells Dr. Birch that
he has made "several omissions of passages which were thought
_vain_, _insolent_, and _ill-natured_."
It is amusing enough to observe how he designates men as great
as himself. When he mentions the learned Hyde, he places him
"at the head of a rabble of lying orientalists." When he
alludes to Peters, a very learned and ingenious clergyman, he
passes by him as "The Cornish Critic." A friend of Peters
observed that "he had given Warburton 'a Cornish hug,' of
which he might be sore as long as he lived." Dr. Taylor, the
learned editor of Demosthenes, he selects from "his fellows,"
that is, other dunces: a delicacy of expression which offended
scholars. He threatens Dr. Stebbing, who had preserved an
anonymous character, "to catch this Eel of Controversy, since
he hides his head by the tail, the only part that sticks out
of the mud, more dirty indeed than slippery, and still more
weak than dirty, as passing through a trap where he was forced
at every step to leave part of his skin--that is, his system."
Warburton has often true wit. With what provoking contempt he
calls Sir Thomas Hanmer always "The Oxford Editor!" and in his
attack on Akenside, never fails to nickname him, in derision,
"The Poet!" I refer the reader to a postscript of his
"Dedication to the Freethinkers," for a curious specimen of
supercilious causticity in his description of Lord Kaimes as a
critic, and Akenside as "The Poet!" Of this pair he tells us,
in bitter derision, "they are both men of taste." Hurd
imitated his master successfully, by using some qualifying
epithet, or giving an adversary some odd nickname, or
discreetly dispensing a little mortifying praise. The
antagonists he encounters were men sometimes his superiors,
and these he calls "sizeable men." Some are styled "insect
blasphemers!" The learned Lardner is reduced to "the laborious
Dr. Lardner;" and "Hume's History" is treated with the
discreet praise of being "the most readable history we have."
He carefully hints to Leland that "he had never read his
works, nor looked into his translations; but what he has
_heard_ of his writings makes him think favourably of him."
Thus he teases the rhetorical professor by mentioning the
"elegant translation which, _they say_, you have made of
Demosthenes!" And he understands that he is "a scholar, who,
_they say_, employs himself in works of learning and taste."
Lowth seems to have discovered this secret art of Warburton;
for he says, "You have a set of names always at hand, a kind
of infamous list, or black calendar, where every offender is
sure to find a niche ready to receive him; nothing so easy as
the application, and slight provocation is sufficient."
[185] Sometimes Warburton left his battles to be fought by subaltern
genius; a circumstance to which Lowth, with keen pleasantry,
thus alludes:--"Indeed, my lord, I was afterwards much
surprised, when, having been with great civility dismissed
from your presence, I found _your footman at your door, armed
with his master's cane, and falling upon me without mercy_,
yourself looking on and approving, and having probably put the
weapon with proper orders into his hands. You think, it seems,
that I ought to have taken my beating quietly and patiently,
in respect to the livery which he wore. I was not of so tame a
disposition: I wrested the weapon from him, and broke it. Your
lordship, it seems, by an oblique blow, got an unlucky rap on
the knuckles; though you may thank yourself for it, you lay
the blame on me."--LOWTH'S _Letter to W._, p. 11.
Warburton and Hurd frequently concerted together on the manner
of attack and defence. In one of these letters of Hurd's it is
very amusing to read--"Taylor is a more creditable dunce than
Webster. What do you think to do with the Appendix against
Tillard and Sykes? Why might not Taylor rank with them," &c.
The Warburtonians had also a system of _espionage_. When Dr.
Taylor was accused by one of them of having _said_ that
Warburton was no scholar, the learned Grecian replied that he
did not recollect ever _saying_ that Dr. Warburton was no
scholar, but that indeed he had always _thought_ so. Hence a
tremendous quarrel! Hurd, the Mercury of our Jupiter, cast the
first light shaft against the doctor, then Chancellor of
Lincoln, by alluding to the Preface of his work on Civil Law
as "_a certain thing_ prefatory to a learned work, intituled
'The Elements of Civil Law:'" but at length Jove himself
rolled his thunder on the hapless chancellor. The doctor had
said in his work, that "the Roman emperors persecuted the
first Christians, not so much from a dislike of their tenets
as from a jealousy of their nocturnal assemblies." Warburton's
doctrine was, that "they held nocturnal assemblies because of
the persecution of their enemies." One was the fact, and the
other the consequence. But the Chancellor of Lincoln was to be
outrageously degraded among the dunces! that was the real
motive; the "nocturnal assemblies" only the ostensible one. A
pamphleteer, in defence of the chancellor, in reply, thought
that in "this literary persecution" it might be dangerous "if
Dr. Taylor should be provoked to _prove in print_ what he only
_dropped in conversation_." How innocent was this gentleman of
the arts and stratagems of logomachy, or book-wars! The
_proof_ would not have altered the cause: Hurd would have
disputed it tooth and nail; Warburton was running greater
risks, every day of his life, than any he was likely to
receive from this flourish in the air. The great purpose was
to make the Chancellor of Lincoln the butt of his sarcastic
pleasantry; and this object was secured by Warburton's forty
pages of preface, in which the chancellor stands to be
buffeted like an ancient quintain, "a mere lifeless block."
All this came upon him for only _thinking_ that Warburton was
no _scholar_!
[186] See what I have said at the close of the note, pp. 262-3. In a
collection entitled "Verses occasioned by Mr. Warburton's late
Edition of Mr. Pope's Works," 1751, are numerous epigrams,
parodies, and similes on it. I give one:--
"As on the margin of Thames' silver flood
Stand little _necessary_ piles of wood,
So Pope's fair page appears with _notes_ disgraced:
Put down the nuisances, ye men of taste!"
Lowth has noticed the use Warburton made of his patent for
vending Pope. "I thought you might possibly whip me at the
cart's-tail in a note to the 'Divine Legation,' the ordinary
place of your literary executions; or _pillory me in the
Dunciad_, another engine which, as legal proprietor, you have
very ingeniously and judiciously applied to the same purpose;
or, perhaps, have ordered me a kind of Bridewell correction,
by one of your beadles, in a pamphlet."--LOWTH'S _"Letter to
Warburton,"_ p. 4.
Warburton carried the licentiousness of the pen in all these
notes to the _Dunciad_ to a height which can only be
paralleled in the gross logomachies of Schioppius, Gronovius,
and Scaliger, and the rest of that snarling crew. But his wit
exceeded even his grossness. He was accused of not sparing--
"Round-house wit and Wapping choler."
[Verses occasioned by Mr. W.'s late Edition of Pope.]
And one of his most furious assailants thus salutes
him:--"Whether you are a wrangling Wapping attorney, a
pedantic pretender to criticism, an impudent paradoxical
priest, or an animal yet stranger, an heterogeneous medley of
all three, as your farraginous style seems to confess."--An
Epistle to the Author of a Libel entitled "A Letter to the
Editor of Bolingbroke's Works," &c.--See NICHOLS, vol. v. p.
651.
I have ascertained that Mallet was the author of this
furious epistle. He would not acknowledge what he dared
not deny. Warburton treated Mallet, in this instance, as
he often did his superiors--he never replied! The silence
seems to have stung this irascible and evil spirit: he
returned again to the charge, with another poisoned
weapon. His rage produced "A _Familiar_ Epistle to the Most
Impudent Man Living," 1749. The style of this second
letter has been characterised as "bad enough to disgrace
even gaols and garrets." Its virulence could not well
exceed its predecessor. The oddness of its title has made
this worthless thing often inquired after. It is merely
personal. It is curious to observe Mallet, in this pamphlet,
treat Pope as an object of pity, and call him "this poor man."
[David Mallet was the son of an innkeeper, who, by means of
the party he wrote for, obtained lucrative appointments
under Government, and died rich. He was unscrupulous in his
career, and ready as a writer to do the most unworthy
things. The death of Admiral Byng was hastened by the
unscrupulous denunciations of Mallet, who was pensioned in
consequence.] Orator Henley took some pains, on the first
appearance of this catching title, to assure his friends
that it did not refer to _him_. The title proved contagious;
which shows the abuse of Warburton was very agreeable. Dr.
Z. Grey, under the title of "A Country Curate," published
"A Free and _Familiar_ Letter to the Great Refiner of Pope and
Shakspeare," 1750; and in 1753, young Cibber tried also at
"A _Familiar_ Epistle to Mr. William Warburton, from Mr.
Theophilus Cibber," prefixed to the "Life of Barton Booth."
Dr. Z. Grey's "freedom and _familiarity_" are designed to
show Warburton that he has no wit; but unluckily, the doctor
having none himself, his arguments against Warburton's are not
decisive. "The _familiarity_" of Mallet is that of a
scoundrel, and the _younger_ Cibber's that of an idiot: the
genius of Warburton was secure. Mallet overcharged his gun
with the fellest intentions, but found his piece, in
bursting, annihilated himself. The popgun of the _little_
Theophilus could never have been heard!
[Warburton never lost a chance of giving a strong opinion
against Mallet; and Dr. Johnson says, "When Mallet undertook
to write the 'Life of Marlborough,' Warburton remarked that he
might perhaps forget that Marlborough was a general, as he had
forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher."]
But Warburton's rage was only a part of his _secret
principle_; for can anything be more witty than his attack on
poor COOPER, the author of "The Life of Socrates?" Having
called his book "a late worthless and now forgotten thing,
called 'The Life of Socrates,'" he adds, "where the head of
the author has just made a shift to do the office of a _camera
obscura_, and represent things in an inverted order, himself
_above_, and Rollin, Voltaire, and every other author of
reputation, _below_." When Cooper complained of this, and of
some severer language, to Warburton, through a friend,
Warburton replied that Cooper had attacked him, and that he
had only taken his revenge "with a slight joke." Cooper was
weak and vain enough to print a pamphlet, to prove that this
was a serious accusation, and no joke; and if it was a joke,
he shows it was not a correct one. In fact, Cooper could never
comprehend how his head was like a _camera obscura_! Cooper
was of the Shaftesburian school--philosophers who pride
themselves on "the harmony" of their passions, but are too
often in discords at a slight disturbance. He equalled the
virulence of Warburton, but could not attain to the wit. "I
found," says Cooper, "previous to his pretended witticism
about the _camera obscura_, such miserable spawn of wretched
malice, as nothing but the inflamed brain of a rank monk could
conceive, or the oyster-selling maids near London Bridge could
utter." One would not suppose all this came from the school of
Plato, but rather from the tub of Diogenes. Something must be
allowed for poor Cooper, whose "Life of Socrates" had been so
positively asserted to be "a late worthless and forgotten
thing." It is curious enough to observe Cooper declaring,
after this sally, that Warburton "has very unfortunately used
the word _impudent_ (which epithet Warburton had applied to
him), as it naturally reminds every reader that the pamphlet
published about two years ago, addressed 'to the most impudent
man living,' was universally acknowledged to be dedicated to
our commentator." Warburton had always the _Dunciad_ in his
head when a new quarrel was rising, which produced an odd
blunder on the side of Edwards, and provoked that wit to be as
dull as Cooper. Warburton said, in one of his notes on
Edwards, who had entitled himself "a gentleman of Lincoln's
Inn,"--"This gentleman, as he is pleased to call himself, is
in reality a gentleman only of the _Dunciad_, or, to speak him
better, in the plain language of our honest ancestors to such
mushrooms, a _gentleman of the last edition_." Edwards
misunderstood the allusion, and sore at the personal attack
which followed, of his having "eluded the solicitude of his
careful father," considered himself "degraded of his
gentility," that it was "a reflection on his birth," and
threatened to apply to "Mr. Warburton's Masters of the Bench,
for degrading a 'barrister of their house.'" This afforded a
new triumph to Warburton, in a new note, where he explains his
meaning of these "mushrooms," whom he meant merely as literary
ones; and assures "Fungoso and his friends, who are all
gentlemen, that he meant no more than that Edwards had become
a gentleman _of the last edition of the Dunciad_!" Edwards and
his fungous friends had understood the phrase as applied to
new-fangled gentry. One of these wits, in the collection of
verses cited above, says to Warburton:--
"This mushroom has made sauce for you.
He's meat; thou'rt poison--plain enough--
If he's a _mushroom_, thou'rt a _puff_!"
Warburton had the full command over the _Dunciad_, even when
Pope was alive, for it was in consequence of Warburton's being
refused a degree at Oxford, that the poet, though one had been
offered to himself, produced the celebrated lines of "Apollo's
Mayor and Aldermen," in the fourth _Dunciad_. Thus it is that
the personal likes and dislikes of witty men come down to
posterity, and are often mistaken as just satire, when, after
all, they are nothing but LITERARY QUARRELS, seldom founded on
truth, and very often complete falsehoods!
[187] Dr. Thomas Balguy was the son of a learned father, at whose
rectory of Northallerton he was born; he was appointed
Archdeacon of Salisbury in 1759, and afterwards Archdeacon of
Winchester. He died at the prebendal house of the latter city
in 1795, at the age of 74. His writings are few--chiefly on
church government and authority, which brought him into
antagonism with Dr. Priestley and others, who objected to the
high view he took of its position. With Hurd and Warburton he
was always intimate; his sermon on the consecration of the
former was one of the sources of adverse attack; the latter
notes his death as that of "an old and esteemed friend."--ED.
[188] Dr. Brown was patronised and "pitied" by Warburton for years. He
used him, but spoke of him disparagingly, as "a helpless
creature in the ways of the world." Nichols speaks of him as
an "elegant, ingenious, and unhappy author." His father was a
native of Scotland; his son was born at Rothbury, in
Northumberland, educated at Cambridge, made minor canon at
Carlisle, but resigned it in disgust, living in obscurity in
that city several years, till the Rebellion of 1745, when he
acted as a volunteer at the siege of the Castle, and behaved
with great intrepidity. His publication of an "Essay on
Satire," on the death of Pope, led to his acquaintance with
Warburton, who helped him to the rectory of Horksley, near
Colchester; but he quarrelled with his patron, as he
afterwards quarrelled with others. He then settled down to the
vicarage of St. Nicholas, Newcastle, but not for long, as an
educational scheme of the Empress of Russia offered him
inducements to leave England; but his health failed him before
he could carry out his intentions, irritability succeeded, and
his disappointments, real and imaginary, led him to commit
suicide in the fifty-first year of his age. He seems to have
been a continual trouble to Warburton, who often alludes to
his unsettled habits--and schooled him occasionally after his
own fashion. Thus he writes in 1777:--"Brown is here; I think
rather faster than ordinary, but no wiser. You cannot imagine
the tenderness they all have of his tender places, and with
how unfeeling a hand I probe them."--ED.
[189] Towne is so far "unknown to fame" that his career is unrecorded
by our biographers; he was content to work for, and under the
guidance of Warburton, as a literary drudge.--ED.
[190] Warburton, indeed, was always looking about for fresh recruits:
a circumstance which appears in the curious Memoirs of the
late Dr. Heathcote, written by himself. Heathcote, when young,
published anonymously a pamphlet in the Middletonian
controversy. By the desire of Warburton, the bookseller
transmitted his compliments to the anonymous author. "I was
greatly surprised," says Heathcote, "but soon after perceived
that Warburton's state of authorship being a state of war, _it
was his custom to be particularly attentive to all young
authors, in hopes of enlisting them into his service_.
Warburton was more than civil, when necessary, on these
occasions, and would procure such adventurers some slight
patronage."--NICHOLS'S "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 536.
[191] We are astonished at the boldness of the minor critic, when,
even after the fatal edition of Warburton's Shakspeare, he
should still venture, in the life of his great friend, to
assert that "this fine edition must ever be highly valued by
men of sense and taste; a spirit congenial to that of the
author breathing throughout!"
Is it possible that the man who wrote this should ever have
read the "Canons of Criticism?" Yet is it to be supposed that
he who took so lively an interest in the literary fortunes of
his friend should _not_ have read them? The Warburtonians
appear to have adopted one of the principles of the Jesuits in
their controversies, which was to repeat arguments which had
been confuted over and over again; to insinuate that they had
not been so! But this was not too much to risk by him who, in
his dedication of "Horace's Epistle to Augustus," with a
Commentary, had hardily and solemnly declared that "Warburton,
in his _enlarged view of things_, had not only revived the two
models of Aristotle and Longinus, but had rather struck out _a
new original plan of criticism_, which should unite the
virtues of each of them. This experiment was made on the two
greatest of our own poets--Shakspeare and Pope. Still (he
adds, addressing Warburton) _you went farther_, by joining to
those powers a perfect insight into human nature; and so
ennobling the exercise of literary by the justest moral
censure, _you have now, at length, advanced criticism to its
full glory_."
A perpetual intercourse of mutual adulation animated the
sovereign and his viceroy, and, by mutual support, each
obtained the same reward: two mitres crowned the greater and
the minor critic. This intercourse was humorously detected by
the lively author of "Confusion Worse Confounded."--"When the
late Duke of R.," says he, "kept wild beasts, it was a common
diversion to make two of his bears drunk (not metaphorically
with flattery, but literally with strong ale), and then daub
them over with honey. It was excellent sport to see how
lovingly (like a couple of critics) they would lick and claw
one another." It is almost amazing to observe how Hurd, who
naturally was of the most frigid temperament, and the most
subdued feelings, warmed, heated, and blazed in the
progressive stages "of that pageantry of praise spread over
the Rev. Mr. Warburton, when the latter was advancing fast
towards a bishoprick," to use the words of Dr. Parr, a
sagacious observer of man. However, notwithstanding the
despotic mandates of our Pichrocole and his dapper minister,
there were who did not fear to meet the greater bear of the
two so facetiously described above. And the author of
"Confusion Worse Confounded" tells a familiar story, which
will enliven the history of our great critic. "One of the
bears mentioned above happened to get loose, and was running
along the street in which a tinker was gravely walking. The
people all cried, 'Tinker! tinker! beware of the bear!' Upon
this Magnano faced about with great composure; and raising his
staff, knocked down Bruin, then setting his arms a-kimbo,
walked off very sedately; only saying, 'Let the bear beware of
the tinker,' which is now become a proverb in those
parts."--"Confusion Worse Confounded," p. 75.