Cornell University Library 
 BX5199.W25 W33 
 
 Life of William Warburton P-P,;!,'?.';'!..''! 
 
 3 1924 029 454 893 
 
 olln 
 
p^ 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tile Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029454893 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE or BISHOP WAEBUETOK 
 
LONDON 
 
 POINTED BY SPOTTI8WOODH AND CO. 
 
 WEW-8TBEBT SQUAEE 
 

 A 
 
 ^ 
 
THE LITE 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM WARBUETON, D.D. 
 
 LOED BISHOP OF GLOTJOESTER 
 
 PROM 1760 TO 1779: 
 
 WITH REMARKS ON HIS WORKS. 
 
 EEV. JOHN SELBY WATSON, M.A., M.R.S.L. 
 
 autsob op 
 'the life op richaed pohson,' 'thb life op georgb fox,' etc. 
 
 Ey^ft r'f dopi rcj p.iyd\oiffi re \i.ppLa^iot(n. 
 
 HOM. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, GKEEN, LONGMAN, EOBERTS, & GREEN. 
 
 1863. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In submitting to the public this Life of Bishop Warbur- 
 ton, an attempt to accompHsh a design which I have 
 long had in view, I would beg leave to say that I have 
 neglected, as far as I know, no means by which hght 
 might be thrown on Warburton's career and character, 
 and that I have made due acknowledgments, by refer- 
 ences at the foot of the page, to all sources from which 
 I have derived information or assistance. 
 
 To the Eev. Francis Kilvert's ' Selections from Unpub- 
 lished Papers of Bishop Warburton,' and ' Life of Bishop 
 Hurd,' I ought to express my obhgations for a few letters 
 of Hare, Sherlock, Jortia, Towne, and two or three of their 
 contemporaries. Bishop Warburton's own letters, it is 
 well known, were almost wholly destroyed, except those 
 addressed to Hurd, which were preserved and printed by 
 him, and pubhshed after his death under the title of 
 ' Letters from an Eminent Prelate to one of his Friends.' 
 
 Among the pubhcations to which, in the prosecution 
 of my task, I was obhged frequently to have recourse, 
 were the numerous pamphlets put forth, for or against 
 Warburton, in his own time. The consultation of these 
 was a portion of my labour attended with no great plea- 
 sure or satisfaction ; for they are, with a few exceptions, 
 very poor performances, reiterating, in trite phrase, well- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 worn theological doctrine, with httle argument, much 
 railing, and occasional scraps of flattery. Those who 
 may have the benefit of what they have supphed, will 
 hardly conceive from among how many dry and dreary 
 pages it has been gathered. 
 
 If it be thought that the extracts from letters, and 
 from some of the more obscure publications, are some- 
 what copious, the intention of such liberality has been, 
 that Warburton, and his assailants or supporters, might, 
 by being allowed to speak in their own words, show 
 themselves as they were, and that the reader, being 
 furnished with literal citation, might be haunted with no 
 suspicion of misrepresentation from abridgment. 
 
 Inquiries at Newark, Brant - Broughton, and other 
 places with which Warburton was connected, have eh- 
 cited no information respecting him beyond what was 
 already in print. 
 
 The edition of Warburton's works, to which references 
 are made, is the octavo, in twelve volumes, of 1811. 
 
 J. S. W. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 warburton's early tears. 
 
 Warburton's Family — His Birth and Education — His apparent Dull- 
 ness in Boyhood — Is articled to an Attorney — Begins to manifest 
 a love of Reading — His Aspirations — Determines to enter the Church 
 — Is ordained Deacon at York — His First Publication dedicated 
 to Sir Robert Sutton — Specimens of his English Prose and Verse — 
 Specimens of his Latin Composition — Is ordained Priest, and pre- 
 sented to a Living by Sir Robert Sutton — Becomes acquainted with 
 Concanen, Theobald, and other Literary Characters — Solicited to 
 assist Theobald in his ' Shakspeare' — Letter to Concanen — ■ Corres- 
 ponds with Theobald — His Second Publication, the ' Enquiry into 
 Prodigies and Miracles' — Remarks on it — Warburton's Account 
 of its Appearance, and subsequent Anxiety to suppress it . Page 1 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 literary matters. concanen. THEOBALD. 
 
 Notice of Concanen — His Literary Performances — His Praise of Pope 
 — His Appointment in Jamaica, and Death — Whether Warburton 
 conspired with Pope's Enemies — Listened with complacency to 
 Theobald's exclamations against Pope — His concern in ' The Legal 
 Judicature in Chancery Stated ' — Made one of the King's Masters of 
 Arts at Cambridge — Presented by Sir Robert Sutton to the Living 
 of Brant-Broughton — His application to Study — His Acquirements 
 — Is in no haste to publish — His assistance to Theobald in his 
 ' Shakspeare ' — Theobald's Merits — Unduly depreciated — Speci- 
 mens of his Emendations — Estrangement between him and Warbur- 
 ton, and ReconciUation — Theobald's Death — Warburton's ' Apology 
 for Sir Robert Sutton' — His Letter to Pope on Sir Robert's Character 
 — Pope erases Sir Robert's Name from his Satires . 27 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ' ALLIANCE BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE.' ' VELLEIUS PATERCULUS.' 
 SIR THOMAS HANMEB. 
 
 Warburton's First Work of Importance, ' The Alliance between Churcli 
 and State ' — Summary of its Contents — Bisbops Horsley and Hare 
 pleased with the Book — ItsEeception by the Public — Hare's desire 
 to serve Warburton — "Warburton's desire to edit ' Velleius Pater- 
 culus ' — Dissuaded from the undertaking by Hare and Middleton 
 — Specimens of his proposed Emendations — Visits Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer about Shakspeare — Disagreement between them . Page 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ' THE DIVINE LEGATION.' LOWTH. 
 
 ' The Divine Legation of Moses ' projected — Its Object — ^Warburton's 
 Reasoning — His Proposition that the Doctrine of a future State was 
 not taught by the Jews — Opinions of Grotius, Episcopius, and 
 Bishop BuU — Warburton's Notions of the Book of Job ; supposes 
 that it was written by Ezra — His Arguments in support of this 
 Hypothesis — His interpretation of the Text, ' I know that my 
 Redeemer liveth' — Lowth's opposition to Warburton's assertion, 
 that Ezra was the Author of the Book of Job — Style of Ezra — Job 
 probably an Idumtean — The Author of the Book of Job probably 
 a Jew . . .... ... 68 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ' THE DIVINE LEGATION.' 
 
 Consideration of other Passages in the Old Testament that seem to 
 indicate that the Jews looked forward to a Future State; whether 
 merely as a state of Existence of the Soul apart from the Body, or 
 as a state of Rewards and Punishments — Texts in Books of Moses ; 
 in the Psalms; in the Book of Ecclesiastes — Fanciful Interpretations 
 — Examination of the Texts in the New Testament that seem to 
 favour the belief in a Future State among the Jews — Texts addressed 
 to the Sadducees — Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus — The 
 Answer to the Lawyer . . . . . 82 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BAYLE. MOHAL OBLIGATION. 
 
 Whether a Society of Human Beings can subsist withovit a Belief in a 
 Future State • — Bayle'a Conjectures regarding a Community of 
 Atheists — Warburton's Arguments in opposition to Bayle — His 
 Sophistry — A reasonable Being must act reasonably — Burlamaqui 
 on External and Internal Obligation — Warburton contradicts 
 himself — Objections to Paley's definition of Virtue — Bayle left 
 unrefuted . . .... Page 96 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ANCIENT MYSTERIES. SIXTH BOOK OF THE ^NEID. 
 
 Variety of subjects discussed in ' The Divine Legation ' — Lowth's 
 Remark upon it — ' Fable of the Bees ' — Observations on the Ancient 
 Mysteries— Mysteries had their origin in Egypt — Less and Greater 
 Mysteries — ^Warburton's Hypothesis as to what was taught in them — 
 Concealment of what was suggested to him by Le Clerc — His sup- 
 position that Virgil's Account of ^neas's Descent into Hell was a 
 figurative Description of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries — 
 His Arguments in support of this Hypothesis — Gibbon's Assault 
 upon it — Summary of Gibbon's Arguments against it — Jortin's 
 ' Dissertations ' — Why JEnens and the Sibyl were sent out at the 
 Ivory Gate — Suppositions of Jortin, Gibbon, and Heyne on the 
 point . . 107 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ATTACKS ON WARBURTON. WEBSTER. MIDDLETON. JORTIN. 
 
 ' The Divine Legation ' Uked by Hare and Sherlock — Letters from 
 them — Many others disapproved — Attack on Warburton by Dr. 
 Webster — Notice of Webster — 'Letter from a Country Clergyman ' 
 in the -' Weekly Miscellany ' — Letters from Hare and Sherlock, who 
 advise Warburton to reply — Warburton thought by many to have 
 spoken too favourably of Middleton — Substance of Webster's 
 Letters — Warburton's ' Vindication ' of himself — Quotation from 
 Pope, and Eulogy of him — Hare's approbation of ' The Vindication' 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 — Correspondence between Warburton and Middleton — Letters 
 to Dr. Birch and to Bishop Sherlock — Observations on Jortin's 
 ' Remarks on Spenser ' • Page 126 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DEFENCE OF POPE AGAINST CRODSAZ. 
 
 Warburton determines to defend Pope's ' Essay on Man ' against 
 the Strictures of Crousaz — Crousaz's Works and Qualifications — 
 Johnson's praise of Crousaz — Crousaz's Charges against Pope's 
 ' Essay ' — Warburton's professed reflitation of them — Optimism 
 
 — Warburton's sneers at Crousaz, and Epithets which he bestows 
 upon him — Blunders in the French Translation of Pope's Essay — 
 Kurd's remark on Warburton's Criticism — Pope pleased with the 
 Defence — Letter fi:om Pope to Warburton — Republication of the 
 Defence; submitted to Pope for Revision — Remarks on Pope's 
 ' Essay on Man ' . .151 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 KOMAINE. HARE. 
 
 Warburton's Disagreement with Romaine — Romaine's Sermon — 
 Letter from Romaine to Warburton — Romaine's pretended Ob- 
 jections of Clergymen, in reality a transcript fi-om his Sermon — 
 Warburton writes to the ' Works of the Learned ' — Romaine 
 replies in the ' General Evening Post ' — His Disingenuousness — 
 Warburton's abuse of him . — New Edition of the First Volume 
 of 'The Divine Legation' — Remarks on the 'Demoniacs' in 
 the New Testament — Hare continues to commend — Warburton 
 pursues his Studies — His Illness and Recovery — Death of Bishop 
 Hare — Warburton's Character of him .... . 174 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 POPE. DODDRIDGE. ' DIVINE LEGATION.' 
 
 Warburton introduced to Pope — Pope's expressions of Gratitude 
 to him — Warbui-ton stays a Week with Pope at Twickenham 
 
 — Letter from Pope to Warburton — Pope's desire to have 
 the ' Essay on Man ' translated into Latin — His wish to settle 
 Warburton nearer London — Solicits Lord Chesterfield to procure 
 
COWTJSWTS. xi 
 
 him a Living — Second Volume of ' The Divine Legation ' pre- 
 pared — Correspondence vnth Dr. Doddridge — Warburton's 
 Change of Opinion with regard to the ' Works of the Learned ' — 
 His desultory Mode of Writing — ■ Plagiarism of Coventry, the 
 Author of ' Philemon to Hydaspes ' — His intercourse with War- 
 bm-ton — Second Volume of ' The Divine Legation ' published, 
 and reviewed in the ' Works of the Learned ' by Doddridge — 
 Abstract of the Contents of the Volume . . . . Page 183 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 VISIT TO OXFORD. ALLEN. PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Warburton again visits Pope at Twickenliam — Their Excursion 
 to Oxford — Proposal to confer Doctors' Degrees on them, and 
 disappointment — .Consequent allusions to Oxford in the 'Dunciad' 
 
 — Pope invites Warburton, on Allen's permission, to Prior Park 
 
 — Notice of Ealph Allen — Praises of him by Hurd, Warburton, 
 Fielding — r Slight Illness of Warburton at Prior Park — Suggests 
 to Pope the Fourth Book of the ' Dunciad ' — Writes Notes on 
 Pope's ' Ethic Epistles ' — • Third Edition of the First Volume of 
 'The Divine Legation' — Arrangements with Booksellers — Letter 
 from Hon. Charles Yorke on ' The Divine Legation ' — Dissertation 
 on the ' Origin of Books of Chivalry ' for Jarvis's ' Don Quixote ' 
 
 — Another Visit to Allen with Pope — Letter to Richardson . 200 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 POPE. BENTLEY. DEATH OF POPE. 
 
 ' Brief Examination of Mr. Warburton's Divine Legation ' by the 
 Free-Thinkers — Extracts from the Work — Pagan Theology — 
 Origin of Idolatry — Tillard's 'Future Rewards and Punishments 
 Believed by the Philosophers ' — Warburton's ' Remarks ' on the 
 Book and its Author — Warburton's ' Advertisement ' — Letter to 
 Birch about TiUard^ — Pope continues his endeavours to bring 
 Warburton nearer to London — Effects a Meeting between War- 
 burton and Bolingbroke — .Result of it — Warburton's Relatives — 
 New Edition of the ' Dunciad ' by Warburton — Bentley ; feelings 
 of Pope and Warburton towards him — Warburton's supposition 
 that Bentley had borrowed from Vizzanius — Hare's Opinion — 
 Bentley in the ' Dunciad ' — Cibber's ' Another Occasional Letter 
 to Pope' — Warburton corrects Pope's Essay on Homer — Pope 
 dies, and leaves the Property of his Works to Warburton . , 213 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 HANMEB. BUHTON. AKENSIDE. 
 
 Letter from Mrs. Catherine Cockburn — Warburton's Reply — Brown's 
 'Essay on Satire,' addressed to Warburton — Warburton's Notes 
 in Grey's ' Hudibras ' — Edition of the ' Dunciad,' with a 
 Reflection on Sir Thomas Hanmer, and a Note on Dr. John 
 Burton — Notice of Burton and his Writings, and the Satire on 
 him by Dr. William King — Answers provoked by the 'Divine 
 Legation ' — Warburton attacks Akenside on the Question whether 
 Ridicule be a test of Truth — Akenside's Remarks — Warburton's 
 Retort — Akenside defended by Dyson — Warburton retires from 
 the Contest — Lord Kames's Opinion — Some concluding Remarks 
 on the Question concerning Ridicule . .... Page 233 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MIDDLETON. POCOCKE. MANN. EICHAED GRET. 
 
 ' Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections ' — State of Authorship 
 a State of War — Warburton's Disagreement with Middleton — 
 Cause of it — Letter on the Subject from Warburton to Dod- 
 dridge — Middleton's Enmity to Sherlock — Warburton and Po- 
 cocke on Hieroglyphics — Warburton's Controversy with Mr. 
 Nicholas Mann — Considerations on Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology 
 — Whether Osiris and Sesostris were the same Person — Dr. 
 Richard Grey on the Book of Job — Warburton's Remarks in 
 Reply to him — His Flattery of Bishop Sherlock — His Story of 
 Bertrand the Optician . ... 257 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 EEMAEKS ON ADVERSARIES. 
 
 Warburton declines the Chaplaincy to Lord Chesterfield as Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland — His Dedication of the Third Edition of 
 the 'Alliance' to Lord Chesterfield — Warburton marries Allen's 
 
 Niece — His Notions of the Influence of the Man over the Wife 
 
 Warburton resides chiefly at Prior Park — Elected to the 
 Preachership of Lincoln's Inn — Notice of Three of his Sermons 
 — Provokes the Hostility of Drs. Sykes and Stebbing — Character 
 and Writings of Dr. Sykes ; Objections to his Opinions by the 
 
CONTENTS. xiii 
 
 Bishop of Oxford — Subjects on which he differed from War- 
 bm-ton — Their opposite Notions regarding the Theocracy of the 
 Jews — Spencer, ' De Legibus Hebreeorum ' — Warburton's asser- 
 tions of an equal Providence among the Jews — Dr. Stebbing ; 
 Warburton's Eeply to him — Second Part of Warburton's ' Eemarks 
 on Several Occasional Reflections ' — Rutherforth ; Jackson — 
 ' Answerers by Profession ' — The Fortune of Warburton's Book 
 compared with that of Harvey's Discovery of the Circulation of 
 the Blood — The Rev. Julius Bate — Letter from the Hon. Charles 
 Yorke on Answering — Sarcasm of Edwards in his ' Canons of 
 Criticism ' . Page 274 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 ' SHAKSPEARE.' HANMEE. 
 
 Warburton's attention to Shakspeare — When he began to think 
 of editing Shakspeare — His Acquaintance with Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer — Specimens of Warburton's intended Edition inserted 
 in Birch's ' General Dictionary ' and the ' Works of the Learned ' — 
 Warburton's Criticism on Theobald and Hanmer in his Preface — 
 Considerations on Warburton's Connexion with Theobald — Theo- 
 bald's Merits — History of the Affair between Warburton and 
 Hanmer — Philip Nichols — Letter from Hanmer to Dr. Joseph 
 Smith, inserted in the ' Biographia Britannica,' and afterwards 
 suppressed — Warburton accuses Hanmer of Falsehood — Hanmer's 
 Letter suppressed at Warburton's solicitation — Character of Philip 
 Nichols — Letters from Sherlock and Hare . . .... 297 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ' SHAKSPEARE.' 
 
 Merits of Warburton's Notes on Shakspeare — He affects to think 
 lightly of them — His motives for publishing them — Hurd's 
 Praise — Johnson's, estimate of Warburton's Annotations — Dis- 
 satisfaction of Warburton with Johnson — Malone's just Estimate 
 of Warburton's Edition — Attacks upon Warburton — Edwards, 
 Author of the ' Canons of Criticism ; ' Origin of the Hostility between 
 him and Warburton — Warburton's rmgentlemanly Sarcasms on 
 Edwards in the Notes on the 'Dunciad' — Edwards's Retorts — 
 Specimens of Edwards's Criticisms — Plurd'a injudicious Praise — 
 Heath's ' Revisal of Shakspeare's Text ' — ZacharyGrey — Specimens 
 of Warburton's best Emendations . . 316 
 
xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 KICHABDSON. TOWNE AND JACKSON. DE. NATHANIEL FORSTEE. 
 
 ' Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning Literary Property ' — 
 Preface to Richardson's ' Clarissa' — Archdeacon Towne — The Rev. 
 John Jackson — Dr. Nathaniel Forster — His Praise of Warburton 
 
 — His Remarks on the Passage in Josephus relating to Jesus Christ 
 
 — Opinions of Critics as to the genuineness of the Passage — Third 
 Edition of the ' Alliance ' dedicated to Lord Chesterfield . Page 346 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 HUBD. BOLINGBEOKE. MALLET. 
 
 Commencement of ' Julian ' — Advances of Hurd to Warburton • 
 Intimacy formed between them — Bolingbroke's Charge against Pope 
 concerning the ' Idea of a Patriot King' — Warburton's Defence of 
 
 Pope — ' Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living ; ' Reply to it 
 
 Mallet's Dislike of Warburton — Bishop Newton's Edition of Milton 
 — Warburton's opinion of Lauder's Book on Milton . . 355 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 ' JULIAN.' MIDDLETON. MATHEMATICS. 
 
 Publication of ' Julian ' — Occasion of it — Middleton's Opinion on 
 Miraculous Powers in the Early Days of the Church — Character of 
 the Apostolic Fathers ; of their Successors — Warburton's Replies to 
 Middleton — Character and Objects of Julian — Julian's attempt to 
 rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem ; its Result — A\^arbm-ton's Argu- 
 ments that it was defeated by a Miracle — Authors opposed to that 
 Notion ; Basnage, Gibbon, Lardner — Assertions of Moyle and Jortin 
 
 — Warburton's Opinion on the Effect of Mathematical Studies on 
 the Mind — Opinions of Gibbon and others — Considerations on 
 the Question . ... 3g9 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 MIDDLETON. EDITION OF POPE. EVANs's PEOPHECIES. 
 
 Character of Conyers Middleton's Writings — Warburton's thoughts 
 respecting him — Sir Robert Sutton's Son — Warburton's Edition of 
 Pope ; Hurd's Opinion of it — Akenside's Odp to Edwards John 
 
CONTENTS, XV 
 
 Gilbert Cooper ; Warbm-ton's Note on the Dimciad concerning him 
 — Remarks on Warburton'a Notes on Pope — ' New Book of the 
 
 Dunciad ' — Prophecies of Arise Evans — Jortin and Warburton 
 
 ' Confusion worse Confounded ' — Second Edition of ' Julian ' — Hurd 
 visits Allen — Anecdotes of Quin and Warburton . . Page 391 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 BYEOM. BOLINGBROKE. CLERICAL ADVANCEMENT. 
 
 Sermons at Lincoln's Inn — Six Epistles of Dr. Byrom — Warburton 
 made a Prebendary of Gloucester by Lord Hardwicke — Letter to 
 Hogarth — ' View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy ' — Causes of 
 Warburton's Acrimony against Bolingbroke — Bolingbroke's Abuse 
 of Religion and Divines — Style of Warburton's Animadversions ; 
 Lord Hardwicke's dislike of it — Specimens of Bolingbroke's manner 
 — Letter to Warburton fi-om Montesquieu — Warburton made a 
 King's Chaplain and a Doctor of Divinity — Resigns the Living of 
 Frisby ; His attention to that Parish — Second Volume of Sermons 
 at Lincoln's Inn — Dedication of ' The Divine Legation ' to Lord 
 Hardwicke 413 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ' DELICACY OF FEIENDSHIP.' HUED. JOETIN. 
 
 Hurd's ' Seventh Dissertation ' — Friendship between Warburton and 
 Jortin ; their Characters by Bishop Newton — Disruption of their 
 Intimacy — Hurd's Defence of Warburton ; his satirical Remarks on 
 Jortin; his Flattery — Lowth's opinion of Hiurd's Publication; Brown's 
 and Gibbon's — Warburton's Gratification — Jortin finds Supporters ; 
 Warburton's Abuse of him — Jortin's indirect allusions to War- 
 burton — Sense of the word ' Princeps ; ' Jortin's Remarks on it — 
 Warburton's Letter to Jortin — Jortin's Answer .... 433 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 HURD. PARE. TRACTS BY WAEBDETON AND A WAEBURTONIAN. 
 
 Hurd's Life and Character — His Reserve — Visited by Warburton — His 
 Love of episcopal Display — Ilis Style — His contemptuous Remarks 
 on other Writers, even the most Eminent — Instance of his Pedantry 
 —Dr. PaiT's Pubhcation of ' Tracts by Warburton and a, Warbur- 
 
 a 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 tonian ' — Eeasons which he gave for the Publication ; other alleged 
 Eeasons — Hurd's Remark on Parr's Sennon — Notices of Parr's 
 Preface to the ' Tracts ' — Thomas Warton's Praise of it — Bank- 
 ruptcy of Warburton's Publisher — Honourable Conduct of 
 Warburton Page 457 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 HUME. DR. JOHN TAYLOR. 
 
 Warburton's Son — Warburton made Dean of Bristol — Anecdote of 
 his 'Reading in '-^'Remarks on Hume's Natural History of Eehgion' 
 by Warburton and Hurd — Hume's Character of the ' Remarks ' — 
 Warburton's Grossness of Style — Unfairness of his Reasoning — His 
 visit to Hurd's Mother — Dedication of the Second Part of ' The 
 Divine Legation ' to Lord Mansfield — Correspondence with the 
 Rev. Joseph Jane — Attack on Dr. Taylor — Causes of it — War- 
 burtonian Phraseology — Passages from Warburton's Letters . 475 
 
 CHAPTER XXVH. 
 
 SERMONS. STERNE. LITERARY AFFAIRS. 
 
 Warburton made Bishop of Gloucester; by what Influence — Dean 
 Tucker — Hurd's Observations on Warburton's Promotion — Sermon 
 before the House of Lords on the 30th of January ; its Merits — 
 Report concerning ' Tristram Shandy ' — Letter from Sterne to 
 Garrick — Letters between Sterne and Warburton — Sermon on the 
 Eucharist; Observations on it — Warburton's Rehgious Laxity — 
 New Edition of Pope — Dr. Joseph Warton — .Horace Walpole — 
 Ruffliead's 'Life of Pope' — Epitaph on Pope 495 
 
 CHAPTER XXVm. 
 
 ' DOCTRINE OF GRACE.' WESLEY AND WHITFIELD. 
 
 PubHcation of * The Doctrine of Grace ' — Middleton on the Gift of 
 Tongues — Warburton's Arguments in reply to him — Inspiration of 
 the New Testament — Different notions of Eloquence — ^Warburton's 
 Opinions of Wesley and Whitfield — Modern Fanatics — Wesley's 
 Journals — Characteristics of true Wisdom — Zinzendorf ; Law ; 
 The -Behmenists — Remarks on Wesley's proceedings ; Extravagant 
 Effects of his Preaching and that of his Followers — Wesley's dis- 
 regard of Prudence — Conclusion of Warburton's Book . . . 516 
 
CONTENTS. xvii 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 DE. THOMAS LELAKD. WILKES. 
 
 Wesley's Reply to Warbiirton; its Temperance — The Rey. John 
 Andrews ; Letters from Warburton to him — Mr. John Payne's 
 ' Letter to a Friend on the Doctrine of Grace ; ' his attempted 
 Defence of Law — Dr. Leland's Answer to Warburton ; his Obser- 
 vations on Eloquence — Kurd's uncourteous Reply to Leland — A 
 Broken Arm — Wilkes's ' Essay on Woman ' — Warburton's Speech 
 on it in the House of Lords — Wilkes's Duel — A Second Speech of 
 Warbui'ton's — Displays little Eloquence Page 540 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 CONTROVEEST WITH LOWTH. 
 
 Death of Ralph AUen — His Bequests to Warburton — Waiburton's 
 failing Health — Lowth's Lectures, in wliich Warburton fancies 
 himself attacked — Lowth's Observations — Lowth's Father ; his 
 Commentaries — Toivne's Examination of Sherlock's Sermons ; 
 Occasions a Second Correspondence between Warburton and Lowth 
 — Lowth's long Letter to Warburton ; Extracts from it — Difference in 
 early Education between Warburton and Lowth — Dr.^T.D.Wliitaker 
 — Johnson's Remarks on the Controversy — Hurd's supercihous 
 mention of Lowth and Seeker — Cumberland's Pamplilet against 
 Lowth 561 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 STUKELET. BIECH. BEOWN. SEEMONS AND CHARGES. 
 
 Death of Dr. Stukeley ; his Character — Deaths of Dr. Birch and Dr. 
 John Brown — Brown's Character — Decline of Warbrnton's Powers 
 — Imperfect Conclusion of 'The Divine Legation' — Warburton's 
 Discontent at the reception of the Work — Review of the Ninth 
 Book — Inconsistencies — Third Volume of Sermons — Sermons for 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and for the London 
 Hospital — Warburton's Style of Preaching — Charge to the Clergy 
 of Gloucester — Instances of Unoourtliness — Illness — Toup's 
 ' Epistola Critica ' 584 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 DECLINING TEARS. DEATH. 
 
 Lecture at Lincoln's Inn Founded — Endeavours to serve Thomas 
 Warton — Letter from Isaac Hawkins Browne — Visit to Hurd, and 
 Letters from him — Removal from Prior Park — Dean Tucker — 
 Decline of Warburton's Faculties — Assists Ruffhead — Gibbon's 
 ' Critical Observations ' published — Hurd's extravagant Praise of 
 Warburton — Accident in his Library — ' He mil write no more ' — 
 His Solicitude about his Son — His Son's Death — Hurd's Account 
 of Warburton's Last Years — His Death — Silence of the Pubhc 
 respecting him — Disposal of his Library — Huid's Edition of his 
 Works, and Memoir of the Author — Destruction of his Letters, 
 except those published by Hurd — Specimens of Warburtonian 
 Criticism Page 599 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIH. 
 
 CHAEACTEE OF WAEBUETON. 
 
 Warburton's Personal Appearance — His Temperance — His Literary 
 Courage — His Conversation — Dr. Cuming's Account of him — Inter- 
 view with Johnson — His want of Taste in Literature — Pretended 
 comparison between him and Johnson — Specimens of his coarse- 
 ness of Style — His Vigour of Mind — His imperfect acquaintance 
 with Languages — His love of Paradox — His freedom from Bigotry 
 — His General Reading — His Common-place Book — His Smart 
 Sayings — General Character of his Works — Conclusion . . 617 
 
 ERBATA. 
 
 Page 73 line 20, for explanation read exclamation. 
 „ 224 „ 33, for Eichardus read Eicardus. 
 
THE LIFE 
 
 BISHOP WARBURTON. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 warbueton's early years. 
 
 WARBURTON'S family HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION HIS APPARENT 
 
 DULLNESS IN BOYHOOD IS ARTICLED TO AN ATTORNEY BEGINS 
 
 TO MANIFEST A LOVE OF READINO HIS ASPIRATIONS DETERMINES 
 
 TO ENTER THE CHURCH IS ORDAINED DEACON AT YORK HIS 
 
 FIRST PUBLICATION DEDICATED TO SIB ROBERT SUTTON SPECIMENS 
 
 OF HIS ENGLISH PROSE AND VERSE - — SPECIMENS OF HIS LATIN COM- 
 POSITION IS ORDAINED PRIEST, AND PRESENTED TO A LIVING BY SIR 
 
 ROBERT SUTTON BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH CONCANEN, THEOBALD, 
 
 AND OTHER LITERARY CHARACTERS SOLICITED TO ASSIST THEOBALD 
 
 IN HIS ' SHAKSPEARE ' LETTER TO CONCANEN CORRESPONDS WITH 
 
 THEOBALD HIS SECOND PUBLICATION, THE 'ENQUIRY INTO PRODIGIES 
 
 AND MIRACLES' REMARKS ON IT WARBURTOn'S ACCOUNT OF ITS 
 
 APPEARANCE, AND SUBSEQUENT ANXIETY TO SUPPRESS IT, 
 
 THOUGH the writings of Bisliop Warburton produced 
 no permanent effects, either on hterature or theology, 
 yet the variety of subjects of which he treated, the display 
 of intellectual energy in his pages, the number of eminent 
 persons with whom he was brought into contact, and the 
 scornful defiance with which he answered all that opposed 
 
 B 
 
2 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Oh. I. 
 
 him, render his life a career that cannot be surveyed 
 without interest. An attempt is here made to exhibit 
 him such as he was, neither magnifying his virtues nor 
 extenuating his faults. 
 
 William Warburton was sprung from a family whose 
 name can be traced far back uito antiquity. They were 
 descended, says Mr. Lysons, in his ' History of Cheshire,' 
 from Adam Dutton, a great grandson of Hudard, or 
 Odard, who came' into England with William the Con- 
 queror. Sir Peter Dutton, the great grandson of Adam, 
 setthng at Warbm-ton, a village near Warrington, ui 
 Cheshire, changed his original name for that of his abode. 
 Some of his descendants removed to Arley, or Orley, ia 
 the same county, where Peter Warburton, who died to- 
 wards the end of the fifteenth century, built himself a 
 mansion, called Orley HaU. Peter's son John, who was 
 Sheriff of Cheshke, and one of the knights of the body to 
 King Henry VH., had a son named Peter, appointed a 
 Judge of the Common Pleas in 1601, and another named 
 George, whose son George was created a baronet in 1660. 
 Sir Peter, the last baronet of the family, died early in the 
 present century. 
 
 William Warburton, a member of this family, after 
 distinguishing himself as a royahst in the civil wars o' 
 the seventeenth century, and especially under Sir George 
 Booth at the affair of Chester, married Prances, daughter 
 of Pi-obert Awfield, of Etson, in Nottinghamshire, and set- 
 tled at Shelton, near Newark, where he practised as a 
 lawyer, and became coroner for the county ; an office 
 which he held till his death. He had three sons, the 
 second of whom, George, settled as an attorney at Newark, 
 of which he became town clerk, and is said to have been 
 much esteemed for his integrity. He married, about 1696, 
 Ehzabeth, daughter of William Hobman, an alderman of 
 Newark, by whom he had five children ; George, who 
 died young, William, Mary, Elizabeth, and Frances. 
 
1698.] HIS EDUCATION. 3 
 
 William, tlie subject of this narrative, was born at 
 Newark, December 24, 1698. He was sent to school to 
 a Mr. Twells, whose son, being bred an attorney, married 
 Warburton's sister Ehzabeth. From thence he was sent 
 to the Grammar School of Oakham, in Eutlandshire, 
 then under the mastership of the Eev. Mr. Weston, who, 
 being soon after appointed to the vicarage of Campden, 
 in Gloucestershire, was succeeded by Mr. Wright. What 
 Mr. Wright, who had time to see more of the boy than 
 
 ■ Mr. Weston, thought of his abilities, is nowhere mentioned ; 
 but Mr. Weston, when ' The Divine Legation ' appeared, 
 
 ' is said to have expressed the utmost surprise, as he had 
 
 ■ always considered young Warburton, when at school, as 
 the dullest of all duU scholars. 
 
 He continued at Oakham tiU 1714, when his cousin, 
 ' the Eev. WiUiam Warburton, being elected to the master- 
 ; ship of Newark Grammar School, he was taken home, and 
 placed for a time under his cousin's tuition. This cousin 
 - Dr. Hurd caUs ' a learned and respectable person,' and 
 ' observes that he was the father of the Eev. Thomas 
 1' Warburton, Archdeacon of Norfolk, from whom he re- 
 ceived some communications concerning the Warburton 
 * family. But aU that the Bishop could learn of Warburton 
 5 as a school-boy was, that ' he loyed his book and Ms play 
 4 as other boys do ; ' a very unsatisfactory notification, for 
 Indifferent boys divide their attention between books and 
 yplay in very different degrees. 
 
 j! His father died when he' was httle more than eight 
 t years old ; but his mother took great care of the interests 
 viand education of her children, who acknowledged her 
 e worth by paying her, in after life, all possible respect ; 
 k and WiUiam, in particular, never ceased, amid aU the dis- 
 I' tractions of his busy career, to show her the utmost 
 II attention while she lived, and never spoke of her, after 
 fher death, which took place in his fifty-first year, but 
 with the greatest fondness and affection. 
 
 b2 
 
4 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. CCh. I. 
 
 His grandfatlier had been an active member of the 
 community in the time of Charles I. and Ohver Cromwell; 
 and his grandmother, who hved to a great age, would 
 often detail to him, in his boyhood, such occurrences of 
 those days as had fallen under her .knowledge. Thesg 
 stories, which interested him the more from the con- 
 nexion which his family had with them, made a great 
 impression on his young imagination, and excited in him, 
 as he grew up, a strong curiosity to learn more of that 
 portion of our history ; and he continued, through life, 
 so fond of researches into that period, that he read almost 
 every publication, however insignificant, relating to it, and 
 had even thoughts, at times, of writing upon it himseE* 
 
 The time that he was allowed to study under his cousin 
 could have been but very short, for in the same year that 
 he was removed from Oakham it was resolved by his 
 friends to devote him to the profession of his father and 
 his grandfather. He was accordingly articled, in April; 
 of that year, to an attorney at East Markham, the recordj 
 of which transaction Mr. Nichols's curiosity has extracted 
 irom the Eegistry of the Stamp Office : — ' WiUiam, son of 
 Ehzabeth Warburton, widow, was articled April 23, 1714, 
 for' five years from that date, to John Kirke, of East 
 Markham, in Nottinghamshire, Gent., with a premium of 
 £95, the twelvepenny duty on which, being £4 15s., was 
 received on Satiu'day, June 19. '-f 
 
 He remained with Mr. Kirke tiU the five years were 
 expired ; but with what degree of application he devoted 
 himself to the study of the law we are left in ignorance, 
 Erom what Bishop Hurd had learned, however, it would 
 appear that his desire for legal knowledge was by no 
 means remarkable, for he began to manifest, at this 
 period of his life, an extraordinary love of general read- 
 ing, which v^as rather increased than lessened by the 
 
 * Iliirci's Life of "Warburton, p. 73. 
 f Nioliols's Lit. Aiiecd., vol. v. p. 5oL 
 
1719.J HIS DISLIKE TO THE LAW. 5 
 
 want of favourable opportunities for indulging it. Yet 
 lie found means to enlarge his acquaintance witli the 
 classic authors that he had commenced at school, and to 
 extend his researches into other books of which he thought 
 the knowledge desirable, or of which he found that any- 
 one pretending to learning was expected not to be igno- 
 rant. He seems to have given some attention to mathe- 
 matical and scientific studies, and, on the whole, by the 
 time that his clerkship was ended, had laid a good foun- 
 dation for the vast superstructure which he was afterwards 
 so effectively to rear. He appears to have been regularly 
 admitted into one of the Law Courts ; and it has been 
 confidently stated, in most of the notices of Ms life, that, 
 on returning to his native town of IsTewark, he practised 
 there for some time as an attorney. Bishop Hurd's 
 inquiries, however, ehcited no proof that such had been 
 the case. But if he did employ himself as an attorney, 
 it could have been but for a very short period ; for he 
 soon resumed his classical and general reading, in which 
 he sought the aid and direction of his cousin, the master 
 of Newark School, who was well able, it is said, to counsel 
 and assist him. 
 
 He doubtless felt within himself abihties to do some- 
 thing superior to the mean drudgery of an attorney's 
 office, and a disdain of being merely leguleius quidam 
 cautus et acutus, prceco actionum, cantor formularum, 
 auceps syllaharum. 
 
 In illustration of what was thought of him at this time 
 by his friends, Mr. Mchols says that he received the fol- 
 lowing anecdote ' from a clergyman of good character,' 
 who assured him it was ' an undoubted fact.' ' I think,' 
 he says, 'the scene lay at Newark. Mr. Warburton, 
 when a young man, was sometimes exceedingly absent in 
 company ; he would often sit silent, or doze in the chim- 
 ney-corner. This frequently exposed him to a laugh ; in 
 short, he was, on that account, rather the butt of the 
 
6 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOK. [Ch. I. 
 
 company ; all wliicli he pleasantly enough received, 
 withoLit ever showing any resentment ; and he seemed to 
 his acquaintance to be an easy, good-natured man, who 
 was not overloaded with either learning or sense. One 
 evening, while the company was very Hvely, he seemed 
 more than usually thoughtful ; not a word dropped from 
 his hps ; when one of his acquaintance, with a view to 
 raise another laugh, said, " Well, Mr. Warburton, where 
 have you been ? and what will you take for your 
 thoughts ? " He rephed, with a firmness to which they 
 thought him an entire stranger, " I know very well what 
 you and others think of me ; but I beheve I shall, one 
 day or other, convince the world that I am not so igno- 
 rant, nor so great a fool, as I am taken to be." Bishop 
 Burnet, when his son Thomas said he was planning a 
 greater work than his lordship's celebrated " History of 
 the Eeformation," could not be more surprised than were 
 Mr. Warburton's companions. But when his " Divine 
 Legation " appeared they recollected this circumstance, 
 and concluded that he was then considering of the plan 
 for that very elaborate work.'* His friends seem to 
 have httle considered the discursiveness of thought. As 
 if there were not hundreds of other subjects of which he 
 might have been thinking, or as if his hfe had been a 
 continuous meditation on one work, of which he had not 
 then, perhaps, conceived the idea ! 
 
 His reading at length took a theological direction ; and 
 he signified to his friends that he felt a desire to enter the 
 Church ; a deske which they thought it not advisable to 
 oppose, ' the rather,' says Bishop Hurd, ' as the seriousness 
 of his temper, and purity of his morals, concurred with 
 his unappeasable thirst of knowledge to give the surest 
 presages of future eminence in the profession.' 
 
 In his studies for this purpose, also, his relation was 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Auecd., vol. iii. p. 358. 
 
1723.] ENTEKS THE CHURCH. 7 
 
 very willing and able to assist him. He entered into the 
 young student's views with great ardour, employed all 
 the time that he could spare from his scholastic duties in 
 instructing him, and often sat up reading with him to a 
 very late hour of the night. This Warburton himself 
 afterwards told Hurd, and used to expatiate with grati- 
 tude on his obhgations to his relation, whose learning 
 and abilities he celebrated, after his death, in a long 
 Latin epitaph. As some return for the benefit which he 
 received from him, he appears to have afforded him some 
 help in his school ; a chxumstance that may have given 
 rise to the report, which has been often repeated, that he 
 was for some time master or usher ia a school, and to the 
 statement of Hutchinson, in his ' History of Durham,' cited 
 from Zachary Grey's manuscripts, that he was ' a school- 
 master.' 
 
 A correspondent to the ' Gentleman's Magazine'* asserts 
 that he ' was for some httle time a wine-merchant in the 
 Borough (as I have been informed,' says he, ' by an old 
 friend, Captain Allen, who had been a customer), and 
 rose into notice, whilst at the Temple, by frequenting a 
 disputing club.' But of this account there is no con- 
 firmation. 
 
 His preparations for the ecclesiastical office being made, 
 he obtained ordination as deacon, December 22, 1723, 
 four years after the termination of his term of clerkship. 
 He was ordained by Archbishop Dawes, in the Cathedral 
 of York, but to what parish or cure is nowhere specified. 
 In the same year he sent forth his first pubhcation, enti- 
 tled ' Miscellaneous Translations, in Prose and Verse, from 
 Eoman Poets, Orators, and Historians,' and dedicated to 
 Sir Eobert Sutton, a baronet of some pohtical influence, 
 who had been on a mission to Constantinople, and was 
 then residing in Lincolnshire. Legal business seems to 
 
 * Vol. lii. p. 288. 
 
8 LIFE OF BISHOP -WAEBUETON. [Ch. I. 
 
 have first brought them into contact, and Warburton 
 found in Sir Eobert a valuable patron. The volume con- 
 tained translations of Caesar's Oration on Catihne's accom- 
 phces, from Sallust ; of Cicero's Oration for Ligarius ; of 
 some Letters of Phny ; of the first Book of .Boetius ; of 
 Addison's Battle of the Pygmies and Cranes ; and of some 
 pieces from Claudian. That the reader may see how far 
 his early prose style resembled that of his maturer years, 
 I will extract a passage from the version of Cassar's 
 oration : — 
 
 ' The generality of those who have spoken before me 
 have wailed over the condition of their country, in aU the 
 strains of oratory and flourish. They have summoned up 
 all the evils of a civil war, exaggerated the fury of the 
 victors and the misery of the vanquished ; painted vestals 
 deflowered before the holy fire, matrons violated at the 
 altar, palaces and temples undistinguishably profaned ; 
 and fiUed up the dreadful scene with slaughters, plunders, 
 rapes, and conflagrations. But to what end, in the name 
 of Heaven, is aU this profusion of oratory employed ? Is 
 it to give us a just sense of this horrid conspiracy ? That 
 is, the phlegmatic gentleman, whom the blackness of this 
 villany can't affect, may be taught his duty by an orator- 
 ical exaggeration vain and impertinent ! Few think those 
 injuries that are levelled at themselves insignificant ; many 
 revenge them more severely than equity will warrant. 
 Each station of life, conscript fathers, hath a behaviour 
 pecuhar to itself They whose low condition confines 
 them to obscurity may indulge a vindictive temper with 
 impunity : the world is imknowing of the frailty ; their 
 fame and fortunes are equally bounded. But they who 
 administer the affairs of empire are set up to the gaze of 
 mankind ; their every action passes the scrutiny of a 
 whole people: so that to the greatest power must be 
 joined the greatest circumspection. In them inchnation 
 or aversion is unbecoming; but revenge is monstrous. 
 
1723.J HIS FIEST PUBLICATION. 9 
 
 Eevenge, indeed, it is called among the little people ; but 
 in them 't is pride, 't is savageness and tyranny.' 
 
 The colt shows what he is likely to prove as a horse. 
 ' The phlegmatic gentleman,' ' the httle people,' and 
 some other expressions, are flowers of speech such as 
 Warburton was accustomed to scatter over his pages in 
 subsequent times, but flowers which have no origin in 
 Sallust, nor are at all fitted to represent the studied and 
 elegant conciseness of Sallust's language. The rest of 
 the prose in the volume, it is hardly necessary to add, is 
 of a similar character. 
 
 The reader may next wish to see what kind of verse 
 he produced in his days of incipient authorship. 
 The version of Addison's ' Pygmies and Cranes,' in imi- 
 tation of the blank verse of Milton, is his best effort, a 
 result which may seem surprising when we remember 
 the unhappiness of his attempts, in his maturer days, on 
 many of the verses of Shakspeare : 
 
 I sing the Crane and Pigmy up in arms, 
 And brandish'd tucks oppose to pointed beaks. 
 Eaise, Muse, the fury of the feather'd foe, 
 Lead the low cohorts to the dusty iield, 
 And men and birds in rude encounter join. 
 Long hath a race of vulgar heroes shone 
 In the bright annals of recording bards, 
 Fit theme for song heroic only deem'd. 
 In pomp of numbers live the toils of fight, 
 And endless pteans echo through the lines. 
 The youth of Greece fill the wide mouth of fame ; 
 Theseus and stern Achilles triiunph still. 
 Pious ^neas charms the listening age ; 
 And Boyne preserves immortal William's name. 
 The Theban brothers, and great Pompey's fall, 
 Command a mighty tribute of our fears. 
 I first turn devious, from the beaten track 
 Averse, on higher argument intent ; 
 Standards, not yet unfurl'd in song, display. 
 And tune a shriller trumpet's mimic notes ; 
 Draw little champions vibrating the spear, 
 And long-wing'd warriors rushing fi'om the clouds. 
 
10 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. I. 
 
 These twenty-four lines are an imitation and expan- 
 sion, rather than translation, of the seventeen hnes of the 
 original. The same vigour and spirit are maintained to 
 the end of the poem. One of Warburton's verses may 
 seem to have furnished Seattle with a word, if not 
 with a suggestion, for one of the finest descriptive lines 
 that ever was written. Addison thus represents, in a 
 passage which I am tempted to quote, that Warburton's 
 version may be compared with it, the exertions and fate 
 of the leader of the Pigmies : 
 
 Pygmeaddm ssevit, mediisque in millibus ardet, 
 Ductor, quern late Lino atque Mnc pereuntia cingunt 
 Corpora fasa Gruum, mediaque in niorte vagatur, 
 Nee plausu alarum nee rostri concidit ictu. 
 Hie Gruum terror; ilium densissima circum 
 Miscetur pugna, et bellum omne laborat in imo : 
 Cum subito appulsus (sic Di voluere) tiomidtu 
 Ex inopino ingens et formidabilis Ales 
 Comprendit pedibus pugnantem ; et (triste relatu) 
 Sustulit in coelum ; Bellator ab unguibus hasret 
 Pendulus, agglomerat strepitu globus undique densus 
 Alituum ; frustra Pygma3i lumine msesto 
 Eegem inter nubes lugent, solitoque minorem 
 Heroem aspiciunt Gruibus plaudentibus escam. 
 
 Which Warburton renders, not unworthily : 
 
 Where the thick battle rag'd, the Pigmy king 
 
 Prodigious power hath shoivn ; around him rose 
 
 A rampart of the bodies of the slain. 
 
 Dauntless 'mid deaths he stood, like Fate, unmov'd 
 
 Nor aught avail'd th' united flap of wings 
 
 Or ported beaks ; where'er he turn'd, they fled. 
 
 And now the fortune of the day is lodg'd 
 
 In his right arm alone : when, sad to tell ! 
 
 A formidable fowl, with outstretch'd wing, 
 
 Sudden from all his conquests snatch'd the prince, 
 
 (So wiU'd the gods) and bore amid the clouds. 
 
 Pendant he hung ; glad clamours fill the sky ; 
 
 While his sad people helpless mourn below 
 
 Their wriggling captive monarch, doom'd to feast 
 
 The savage conqueror's insatiate maw. 
 
1723.] HIS ATTEMPTS IN VERSE. 11 
 
 Beattie's translation is : 
 
 Encompass'd round with heaps of slaughter'd foes, 
 All grim in blood the pigmy champion glows, 
 And on th' assailing host impetuous springs, 
 Careless of nibbling bills and flapping wings ; 
 And, midst the tumult, wheresoe'er he turns, 
 The battle with redoubled fury burns ; 
 From every side th' avenging cranes amain 
 Throng, to o'erwhelm this terror of the plain ; 
 When suddenly (for such the will of Jove), 
 A fowl enormous, sousing from above. 
 The gallant chieftain clutch'd, and, soaring high, 
 (Sad chance of battle !) bore him up the sky. 
 The cranes pursue, and, clustering in a ring. 
 Clatter triumphant round the captive king. 
 But ah ! what pangs each pigmy bosom wrung, 
 When, now to cranes a prey, on talons hung. 
 High in the clouds they saw their helpless lord. 
 His wriggling form still lessening as he soar'd. 
 
 This is among the poetical representations which Burke 
 remarked to be beyond the reach of painting. 
 
 When Warburton attempted to confine his matter in 
 couplets, his energy deserted him, as a short extract will 
 show. The commencement of Claudian's ' Panegyric on 
 the Third Consulate of Honorius ' is thus rendered : 
 
 Now in your third Trabea you appear. 
 And your third fasces glad the opening year ; 
 Bless'd shall it be, in luckier periods roll'd. 
 Each smihng month in quiet plenty told. 
 In loosen'd folds the gay Gabinian gown. 
 Heavy with orient gems, flows peaceful down ; 
 Embroider'd purple to rough arms succeed, 
 And curule chaxiots to the warrior steed ; 
 Stern victors triumph o'er the tented field. 
 And furling ensigns to their axes yield. 
 Hail, prince 1 who with your eastern brother hold, 
 With equal sway, a patrimonial world. 
 
 Warburton probably knew httle of Latin prosody at 
 any time ; but he must have known very httle of it 
 indeed, when he wrote these Unes, not to have learned 
 
12 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. I. 
 
 from his original the quantity of ' trabea.' The sounds, 
 that do duty for rhymes in the last couplet are some- 
 what startUng ; but he has several couplets of an equally 
 surprising description : 
 
 Next, balmy "Venus, that benignant breathes, 
 In milder majesty, the god receives. 
 
 O happy parents ! here your earliest beam 
 Around Arcadius' outstretch'd empire flames. 
 
 Already see proud Babylon o'erthrown, 
 In real flights the backward Parthian tui'n. 
 
 Let luxury thy o'ercharg'd nature load. 
 And with fantastic dainties heap thy board. 
 
 Enough of "Warburton's attempts at versification. But 
 we must not dismiss the volume without a glance at the 
 Dedication, which, in an imlucky hour, he took a fancy 
 to write in Latin : 
 
 EXCELLENTISSIMO 
 
 PRiESTANTISSIMO ET HONOEATISSIMO VIRO 
 
 D° EOBERTO SUTTON 
 
 EQUITI ADKATO, AD GALLICUM MONARCAM, DARE MOREM CATHOLICiE PACK, 
 CUM AUTHORITATE MAXIMA PROXIME MISSO : 
 
 IN LEGATIONIBUS, 
 
 GLORIA BRITANNIA ET EUROPE STABILITATIS ^QUILIBRIS, FADTORI TENACI ' 
 
 SENATU, 
 
 COMMODI PEOVINCM ET LIBEETATIS PATRIiE, VINDICI EGREGIO • 
 
 DOMI, 
 
 VIRTUTUM HUMANITATIS, RELIGIONISQUE MODEHATIONUM, 
 EXEMPLARI PERILLUSTKI ; 
 
 HAS NUGAS 
 
 IN SUMMI HONORIS, ANIMIQUE DICATISSIMI TESTIMONIUM, 
 D. D. D.Q. 
 
 W. WARBUETON. 
 CIO lOCC XXIII. 
 
1723.] HIS SCHOLAESIIIP. 13 
 
 This specimen of Latinity provoked much animad- 
 version from the scholars in whose way it feU. It was 
 an unfortunate attempt ; but Warburton seems to have 
 persevered in his eiforts to improve liimself in writing 
 Latm, and to have been not unwilhng to exhibit his 
 proficiency to his friends. Two Latin letters of his to 
 Dr. Stukeley, in 1729 and 1732, preserved by Mr. 
 Mchols, show, thougli not fauhless, a much greater 
 command of the Latin language than he can be supposed 
 to have possessed when he addressed Sir Eobert Sutton 
 in it, as may be seen by the following extract from the 
 later letter, containing some sarcastic remarks on the 
 antiquary Peck : 
 
 ' Paullo ante illustrissimus Pecldus, sidus ^uMirmv ap- 
 ■)(aioypoL^mv, mter itinera sua in domum nostram diver- 
 tebat, ccenabat, discubuit. Vidula ejus de more conferta 
 erant et cruditatibus distenta ; simiUa bulgaa isti infernaU 
 de qu^ poeta lepidus Swiftius suavissime canit : 
 
 His budget with corruption cramm'd, 
 The contributions of the damn'd • 
 
 id est poetarum, oratorum, historicorum, virga criticorum 
 censoria in aBrumnis atque miseriis cloacarum degere 
 Eevum damnatorum ; usquedum, revolventibus fatis, hie 
 Eques erraticus incantamentum rumpat, et iUos innocentes, 
 foede laceratos et spoliatos jacentes, defendat, protegat, ac 
 in lucem revocet. Si fides sit isti primas philosophise, 
 qu4 k nutrice in gynsecio nos omnes imbuti sumus, quas 
 docet homunciones ex Apiato oriri ; jurarem per omnes 
 Deos Deasque clarissimum hunc Antiquarium, qui k 
 Stanfordifi, petit originem, vice Apiati, singulari fortuna, 
 sepulchretum istud monasticum, herbis soporificis, pro 
 portis oppidi situm, natahtium locum habuisse ; hinc amor 
 cucuUi ; hinc protervitas ingenii ; hinc odium in bonas 
 hteras.' 
 
 If we compare this with Swift's Latin, in his well- 
 
14 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOK. [Cb. I. 
 
 known criticism on Aulus Gellius, we shall, perhaps, 
 be inchned to think the advantage on the side of 
 Warburton. 
 
 He is said to have endeavoured, in subsequent years, 
 to suppress this volume as far as possible, by destroying 
 ah the copies that he could by any means secure. It fell, 
 by its own insignificance, into obscurity, till Dr. Parr, when 
 he published ' Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtordan,' 
 made it better known than ever. 
 
 He remamed in deacon's orders for nearly four years, 
 not being ordained priest till March 1, 1727, when Sir 
 Eobert Sutton, not offended by his imperfect Latin or his 
 inelegant English, procured him, by a recommendation 
 to some person of influence, the small living of Greaseley, 
 in Nottinghamshn-e, which is now in the gift of Lord 
 Palmerston, and is worth about 134/. a year. He was 
 ordained in London by Bishop Gibson. 
 
 How he employed his time between his two ordina- 
 tions, neither Hurd nor any other person that has written 
 of him, has given any intimation. Perhaps it was during 
 part of this period that he gave the assistance which 
 has been noticed to his cousin, in Newark school.* 
 Wlierever he was, he doubtless continued his reading and 
 study. One of the authors that engaged most of his 
 attention was Shakspeare. 
 
 It was during the year 1726, perhaps at the time he 
 came to London for priest's orders, that he became ac- 
 quainted, by what means is not known, with several 
 hterary characters of the day, the chief of whom were 
 Concanen and Theobald ; among the others were Derniis, 
 James Moore, Hesiod Cooke, and Eoome. In his con- 
 versation vnth these gentlemen, he let it be known that 
 he had by him some remarks that he had made on Shak- 
 speare ; and Theobald, who was then collecting mate- 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illustrations, vol. ii. p. 195, 
 
1727.] LETTEK TO CONCANEN. 15 
 
 rials, from every available source, for liis notes on that 
 author, was glad to improve his acquaintance with a 
 gentleman from whom he might obtain supplies. But 
 Concanen seems to have been the first of the party with 
 whom Warburton became intimate ; and through him, 
 accordingly, Theobald made application to Warburton 
 for such assistance as he might be Avilhng to afford to the 
 improvement or ornamentation of Shakspeare's pages. 
 Warburton promised, on his return to the country, to 
 look over his observations, of which he spoke very 
 lightly, and to select from them such as might be of any 
 avail for Theobald's purposes. But as Warburton, when 
 he returned to Newark, neglected to perform what he 
 had promised, Concanen was again employed to solicit, 
 and addressed a letter to Warburton, reminding him of 
 the good intentions which he had expressed towards 
 Theobald, but had left unexecuted. Warburton rephed 
 as follows, under the date of January 2, 1727 : 
 
 ' Dear Sir, — Having had no more regard for those 
 papers which I promised to Mr. Theobald than just what 
 they deserved, I in vain sought for them through a 
 number of loose papers that had the same kind of abor- 
 tive birth. I used to make it one part of my amuse- 
 ment in reading the Enghsh poets — those of them, I 
 mean, whose vein flows regularly and constantly, as well 
 as clearly, — to trace them to their sources, and to observe 
 what ore, as well as what sHme and gravel, they brought 
 down with them. Dryden, I observe, borrows for want 
 of leisure, and Pope for want of genius ; Milton out of 
 pride, and Addison out of modesty.' He then makes 
 some observations on the means of judging of imitation, 
 which we may leave unnoticed at present, and concludes 
 thus : ' You may now, sir, justly complain of my ill 
 manners, in deferring till now what should have been 
 first of all acknowledged due to you, which is my thanks 
 for all your favours when in town, particularly for intro- 
 
16 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. I. 
 
 ducing me to the knowledge of those worthy and inge- 
 nious gentlemen that made up our last night's conversa- 
 tion. I am, sir, with all esteem, your most obhged 
 friend and humble servant, 
 
 'W. Warbueton.' 
 
 This letter, which was first given to the pubhc by 
 Akenside, in a note on his ' Ode to Edwards,' ' was found,' 
 as Akenside states, ' by Dr. Gawin Knight, first hbrarian 
 to the British Museum, about the year 1750, in fitting 
 up a house which he had taken in Crane Court, Fleet 
 Street ; a house which had for a long time before been 
 let in lodgings, and where, in all probability, Concanen 
 had lodged.' Malone reprinted it in 1780, in his ' Sup- 
 plement to Shakspeare,'* with the observation that, ' if 
 it contained anything affecting the moral character of 
 the writer, tenderness for the dead would forbid its pub- 
 hcation ; ' but as such was not the case, and ' as the 
 learned prelate was beyond the reach of criticism, there 
 was no reason why it should be longer withheld from the 
 public' Malone had a manuscript copy of it, which 
 had been given by Akenside himself to some friend. 
 
 In after days, when Warburton had written in defence 
 of Pope, and profited by his friendship, Warburton's 
 enemies were ready to make the most of tlois letter. It 
 was very well for Warburton that it was not discovered 
 till six years after Pope's death, or it might have had no 
 good effect on their connexion, by giving Pope just 
 reason to suspect the sincerity of his defender. 
 
 In the meantime, Concanen's apphcation to Warburton 
 led to a long correspondence, of sixty or seventy letters, 
 written chiefly m the two following years, between War- 
 burton and Theobald, respecting various passages in 
 Shakspeare. Theobald's letters, with a few of Warbur- 
 ton's, are preserved in the ' Literary Illustrations,' by lis. 
 
 * Vol. i. 13. 222. 
 
1727.] HIS SECOND PUBLICATION. 17 
 
 Mchols, to whom they were presented by Mr. Edward 
 Eoberts, of Ealing, who had them from Theobald's son, 
 then, by the interest of the "Walpole family, a clerk in the 
 Exchequer. Of these letters we shall have occasion to 
 take notice when we come to speak of Theobald and 
 Warburton's editions of Shakspeare. 
 
 But in 1727, the same year in which Warburton wrote 
 to Concanen, there appeared, from Warburton's pen, as 
 was well understood, though his name was not affixed, a 
 smaU volume entitled, 'A Critical and Philosophical 
 Enquiry mto the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles, as 
 related by Historians ; with an Essay towards restoruig 
 a Method and Purity in History ; in which the charac- 
 ters of the most celebrated writers of every age, and of 
 the several stages and species of history, are occasionally 
 criticised and explained. In two Parts. Disce, sed ira 
 cadat naso, rugosaque sanna, Dum veteres avias tibi de 
 pulmone revello.' This little work, hke the ' Trans- 
 lations,' was dedicated, but not in Latin, to Sir Eobert 
 Sutton, ' one of His Majesty's most Honourable Privy 
 Council,' in an address containing a justification of dedi- 
 cations, on the ground that they are but natural tributes 
 ' to exalted merit, and that whoever, by eminent virtues, 
 '- attains high place, must expect to find inferiors sue to 
 them for patronage. The virtues of Sir Eobert and the 
 '■ Countess of Smiderland, whom he had married, are por- 
 1 trayed by Warburton in somewhat glaring colours. 
 
 The object of the book, which, however, is hardly 
 apparent through its ramblmg and incoherent style, is to 
 i assign the causes why prodigies and miracles are more 
 * numerous in the earher than in the later pages of history. 
 \i One cause, he observes, is that the human mind, in its 
 If weakness, has a longing to hear of what is marvellous ; 
 iiii; and that historians, hi primitive times, took advantage of 
 ,j! tills desire to narrate tales of wonder, deluding their 
 readers as jugglers delude the crowd. Another cause, 
 
 c 
 
J 8 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOIf. tCu. I. 
 
 he says, is national pride, under the influence of whicli 
 men have been eager that their histories should ^ exhibit 
 as many prodigies as possible, such prodigies being con- 
 sidered by them as Divine interpositions ui their favour, 
 indicating the country which is the scene of them to be 
 under the special protection of Heaven ; and this national 
 pride, he adds, was flattered by both the Greek and 
 Eoman historians, and by none more than by Livy, who 
 wrote to a people in whom national pride was strong, and 
 who would not be satisfied unless everything was recorded 
 that tended to prove them the favourites of the gods. 
 Another cause is ignorance in the writer ; ignorance of 
 human nature, or of his subject, or of both; so that 
 when he wanted sagacity or knowledge to ascertain 
 causes of events, or motives of actions, and to discern the 
 clue that ought to guide him through his labyrmth, he 
 had recourse to prodigies and divine influences, by which 
 good or evil was supernaturally promoted or retarded, 
 introducing, hke the tragic poets, a god to explain that 
 which to himself was inexphcable. 
 
 These are the chief causes, he states, why prodigies 
 Irave been so prevalent hi History, and he proceeds to 
 censure our own old Enghsh historians for having been 
 so ready to scatter them over their pages. Ealeigh and 
 Clarendon, he says, were the only two Englishmen at the 
 time that had produced writings worthy of the name of his- 
 tory. ' Almost all the rest of our histories,' he elegantly 
 remarks, ' want Ufe, soul, shape, and body ; a mere hodge- 
 podge of abortive embryos and rotten carcasses, kept in 
 an unnatural ferment (which the vulgar mistake for real 
 life), by the rank leaven of prodigies and portents, which 
 can't but afford good diversion to the critic, while he 
 observes how naturally one of their own fables is here 
 mythologised and explained, " Of a church and carcass 
 raised to set a strutting by the inflation of some helhsh 
 succubus within." ' 
 
1727.] REMARKS ON PRODIGIES. 19 
 
 But, as time runs on, and knowledge increases, he con- 
 tinues, both writers and readers become less liable to be 
 influenced by such causes, or, as it may be expressed, less 
 superstitious. The first historian among the Eomans that 
 appeared uninfected by superstition, he says, was Sallust, 
 on whose works, in contrast with the Eoman writers that 
 preceded him, he then makes some laudatory remarks, 
 and adds that he had ' a set of discourses ' on Sallust's 
 writings lying by him. He next inquires whether all 
 prodigies and miracles, which are met with in profane 
 history, are to be rejected as fabulous and chimerical, and 
 rephes in the negative : first, because there is universal 
 consent in attestation of them ; secondly, because, though 
 sceptics say that any arrest or disturbance of the laws of 
 nature would interfere with the course and harmony of 
 the whole system of things, yet He, assm-edly, who or- 
 dered and presides over all, can give new laws, for a time, 
 to any particular portion of matter, without altering the 
 order and constitution of the whole ; thirdly, because the 
 miracles related in sacred story coimtenance the belief 
 that other deviations from the usual order of nature may 
 have occurred. 
 
 I have been thus minute in examining the contents of 
 , this early specimen of Warburton's composition, because 
 :: it shows on what kind of subjects he had at that youthful 
 i; period of his life employed his thoughts ; subjects which 
 :; were to occupy them to a far greater extent in the chief 
 I. work of his maturer years. 
 
 I La regard to Sallust, he makes one very acute remark 
 ,;: as to the question how far imaginary miracles may be ad- 
 { mitted into history. SaUust, he says, has omitted one 
 ,;,; which he might very properly have inserted, and which 
 ji is judiciously related by Plutarch and Dion Cassius. Wlien 
 ,■ Cicero was undecided what to do with Lentulus and his 
 1 accomplices, being drawn one way by timidity and cle- 
 mency, and another by justice and concern for his country, 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Cu. I. 
 
 he received from his wife Terentia, who had constantly in- 
 cited him against the conspirators, a message acquainting 
 him, that while she and her women were sacrificing to the 
 Bona Dea, there issued from the ashes on the altar a large 
 bright flame, which the Vestal Virgins assured her por- 
 tended glory and security to the Consul. This communi- 
 cation determined Cicero in favour of severity ; and, such 
 being the case, Sallust should not have excluded so in- 
 fluential an occurrence from his narrative ; an occurrence 
 which actuated Cicero's conduct, and which illustrates 
 his character ; for the historian may thus be accused of 
 having neglected a principal law of history, by suppressing 
 a portion of truth, and may be said to have run into one 
 fault while he was soHcitous to avoid another. 
 
 But we must not omit to notice the conclusion of the 
 ' Enquiry,' which has subjected its author to much ridi- 
 cule for copying Milton without aclaiowledgment. Ob- 
 serving that ' the late Eoyal Institution for the study of 
 Modern History,' meaning the Eegius Professorship of 
 Modern History estabHshed at Cambridge by George I., 
 liad given the historical Muse hopes of regaining her old 
 honours under ' our invincible monarch,' ' another Augus- 
 tus,' who, seeing ' the abject condition of British history,' 
 took 'this effectual method to raise and ennoble it,' 
 ' it must,' he proceeds, ' be the office of everyone, that 
 bears a relation to letters, to second the gracious intention of 
 the " father of his country ;" and it is my utmost ambition 
 to have it beheved that this engaged me in my present 
 labour ; for I imagined a better foundation could not be 
 laid for the advancement of modern history than in a right 
 intelligence of the ancient ; and it is honour enough for 
 me to be employed as an under labourer, in clearing the 
 ground, and removing the rubbish ; tins noble Institution 
 must produce the master-builders to give us that finished 
 body of Enghsh history so long wanted, and tiU now 
 despaired of At least,' he adds, 'I have reason to 
 
1727.] CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM. 21 
 
 expect that as the successes of the British arms, if we be 
 provoked to employ them, will, without doubt, raise up 
 amongst us a plentiful harvest of journahsts and histo- 
 rians, the foregoing remarks may, perhaps, be of season- 
 able use to direct them in the most nice detours of the 
 story ; the true causes of things. . . . Such a work alone 
 would be worth a royal foundation ; but this has already 
 procured far more important advantages ; the University., 
 conquered by repeated acts of sovereign favour, is become 
 ambitious of receiving, and vsdth unfeigned love and 
 gratitude repeats her numerous obhgations.' 
 Then foUow the last words : 
 
 ' 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, which some pretend to say had been dazzled and 
 abused by an inglorious pestilential metbob ; while the 
 iU-affected birds of night would, with their envious hoot- 
 ings, prognosticate a length of darkness and decay.' 
 
 This is copied from a passage towards the conclusion 
 of Milton's ' Areopagitica.' . Lowth caught at it, when 
 Warburton and he became enemies, and told him that 
 his ' musa pedestris, in a spirit of prophetic enthusiasm, 
 had here got on horseback in high prancing style,' and 
 printed the passage, without changing a word, as blank 
 verse : 
 
 Mettinks I see her, like the mighty eagle, 
 
 Eenewing her immortal youth, aad purging 
 
 Her opening sight at th' unobstructed beams 
 
 Of our benign meridian sun ; which some 
 
 Pretend to say had been dazzled and abus'd 
 
 By an inglorious pestilential meteor ; 
 
 While th' ill-affected birds of night would with 
 
 Their envious hootings 
 
 Prognosticate a length of darkness and decay.* 
 
 * Lowth's First Letter to "Warburton, p. 56. 
 
22 
 
 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. I. 
 
 ' Warburton was conversant with onr great vernacular 
 writers,' observes Disraeli, ' 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. 
 The passage from Milton's ' Areopagitica ' in full is this : 
 Milton, speaking of a people having spirit and energy, not 
 only to maintain and defend their safety and freedom, but 
 to engage in ' the sohdest and subUmest points of contro- 
 versy and new invention,' observes that such a condition 
 of things denotes the greatest glory to come. Then he 
 adds : ' Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant 
 nation rousing herself hke a strong man after sleep, and 
 shaking her invincible locks ; methinks I see her as an 
 eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindhng her un- 
 dazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam ; purging and 
 unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of 
 heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise of timorous 
 and flocking bu'ds, with those, also, that love the twihght, 
 flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their 
 envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and 
 schisms.' 
 
 As Warburton, long afterwards, said that the manuscript 
 did not pass directly from his own hands to the press, it 
 might be supposed that some meddler had mischievously 
 tacked this quotation from Milton to the end of it, to 
 make a sublime or ridiculous conclusion. But Warburton 
 himself never alleged that any such trick had been 
 played him. Erom a statement which he made to Hurd, 
 indeed, many readers might conclude that he hardly 
 knew what was in the book, and that the existence in it 
 of the passage from Milton might never have come under 
 his cognizance. But such could hardly have been the 
 case. Let us consider the matter, and what he says 
 about it. 
 
 Hurd, writing to Warburton about thirty years after 
 the pubhcation of the volume, states that, after readiag 
 
1727.] CONCANEN. 23 
 
 the Bishop's other works, he ' met with the " Essay on 
 Portents and Prodigies," which,' says he, 'I liked the 
 better, and still like it, because I understood it was most 
 abused by those who owed you no good wiU.' To this 
 Warburton rejoined that Kurd's commendation was ' very 
 dear ' to him, ' though it calls,' said he, ' the sins of my 
 youth to my remembrance. I was very much a boy 
 when I wrote that thing about " Prodigies," and I had never 
 the courage to look into it since ; so I have quite forgot all 
 the nonsense that it contains. But, since you mention it, 
 I will teU you how it came to see the light. I met, many 
 years ago, with an ingenious Irishman, at a coffee- 
 house, near Gray's Inn, where I lodged. He studied the 
 law, and was very poor. I had given him money for 
 many a dinner ; and at last I gave him those papers, 
 which he sold to the booksellers for more money than you 
 would think ; much more than they were worth.' But 
 are we to believe that Warburton left a book which he 
 had elaborately dedicated, in several pages, to his patron, 
 wholly uninspected after its publication ? Are we to 
 credit that he did not care to see that the passages in 
 which he had flattered the University of Cambridge and 
 King George I. were correctly printed ? If we think 
 that he never looked into the volume, we must surely be 
 very easy of belief If we think that he did look into 
 it, we must feel assured that he was aware of the passage 
 from Milton, which he knew to be a plagiarism, being 
 attached to it. 
 
 The truth is, that the ' Enquiry ' did Warburton very 
 Httle honour, either as to matter or style ; and, had it not 
 been thoroughly eclipsed by his subsequent performances, 
 the world would have heard very little of his name. 
 Warburton himself was quite sensible of its demerits, and 
 desirous that it should, Hke the ' Miscellaneous Transla- 
 tions,' be suppressed ; and when he heard that Curll 
 meditated a reprint of it, he was frightened at the 
 
24 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cfl. I. 
 
 thought. ' A few years before Curll's death,' he said to 
 Hurd, ' he wrote me a letter to acquaint me that he had 
 bought the property of my excellent discourse, and that, 
 as it had been long out of print, he was going to reprint 
 it ; only he desired to know if I had any additions or 
 alterations to make ; — he should be glad of the honour 
 of receiving them. The writer and the contents of his 
 letter very much alarmed me ; so I wrote to Mr. Knap- 
 ton to go to the fellow, and buy my own book of him 
 again, which he did ; and so ended this ridiculous affair, 
 which may be a warning to young scribblers.' 
 
 But Hurd, resolute to commend, persisted in speaking 
 of it to Warburton in such terms as these, and calling 
 Mr. Balguy to his support : ' You have a right to under- 
 value your first attempt in hterature as much as you 
 please. The so much greater things you have done since 
 are your warrant for so doing. But I should not be 
 very patient of this language from any other. The truth 
 is — and I am not afraid to say it roundly to any man — 
 not one of aU the wretches that have written or rail 
 against you was ever able, in the acme of his parts and 
 judgment, to produce anything half so good. Mr. Balguy 
 and I read it together some years ago, and we agreed 
 that there was the same ingenuity of sentiment and 
 vigour of expression as in your other works ; in a word, 
 that it was a fine effort of genius, — not yet formed, 
 indeed, and matured, but, even in this juvenility, por- 
 tending plainly enough what you were one day to be 
 capable of I have read it again very lately, and I think 
 of it just the same ; so that I almost blame your anxiety 
 about Curll's edition. It was not worth, perhaps, your 
 owning in form ; but your reputation was not concerned 
 to suppress it. One sees in it your early warmth in the 
 cause of virtue and public liberty, and your original way 
 of striking out new hints on common subjects. There 
 are many fine observations up and down ; amongst which 
 
1727.] IIUKD'S flattery. 25 
 
 that in tlie Dedication, on tlie characters of the three 
 great Eomans [Caesar, Cato, and Cicero], which you have 
 since adopted on the notes on Pope, is admirable. In 
 running it over this last time, I find I have stolen a hint 
 from you which I was not aware of. It is what I say of 
 the "Apes" of Plato and Aristotle, in page 79 of the 
 Commentary on the Epistle to Augustus, taken from what 
 you say in page 9 on that subject. I should not have 
 said so much on this matter (for I am as much above the 
 thought of flattering you as you are above the want of 
 it), but that I think this shyness in acknowledging this 
 httle prolusion of your genius gives a handle to your low 
 malignant cavillers, which you need not have afforded 
 them. I must further request it of you, as a favour, that, 
 if Kjiapton has not destroyed the copies, you would 
 bbhge me with half a dozen or so, which you may trust 
 me to dispose of in a proper manner. I ask it the rather 
 because I could never get one into my own possession. 
 I have tried several times, and now very lately this 
 winter, out of Baker's sale ; but it was bought up before 
 I could order it. Such a curiosity have both your friends 
 and enemies to treasure up this proscribed volume.' To 
 the same purpose Hurd expresses liimself in his ' Dis- 
 course on Poetical Imitation.' * 
 
 The remark about the three great Eomans, to which 
 Hurd alludes, is, that ' the Eoman that had called Catihne's 
 factious popularity pubhc spirit, or Antony's beastly 
 luxury munificence, had sinned against his country's vir- 
 tues, while the candid and humane Atticus had been 
 excused, [if,] when speaking of Csesar, who had ambition 
 without pride or vanity ; of Cato, who had pride without 
 vanity or ambition ; of Cicero, who had vanity without 
 ambition or pride ; he had called the first's ambition the 
 love of glory, because joined with clemency ; the second's 
 
 * Comm. on Ep. ad Pis., &c., vol. iii. p. 107. 
 
26 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. I. 
 
 pride an honest scorn, because arising from the enmity of 
 vice ; and the third's vanity a conscious merit, because 
 never sparing in another's praise.' 
 
 But in these observations on these eminent personages 
 there is, in reahty, very httle deserving of commendation. 
 When such numerous elements enter into the composition 
 of human characters, how can any single term serve to 
 designate that of any particular individual? How can 
 it be said that in the character of Cassar there was nothing 
 but ambition, without any mixture of pride or vanity ? 
 or in that of Cato nothing but pride, without any portion 
 of vanity or ambition ? or in that of Cicero nothing but 
 vanity, without either ambition or pride ? What injustice 
 would it be to Cicero to caU him merely vain.? or to 
 Cato, to pronounce him remarkable for nothing but 
 pride ? or to Caesar, to say that every other feeling in 
 him was nullified by ambition ? 
 
 The observation about the ' Apes,' from which Hurd 
 took his hint, is, ' that of the later Sophists who affected 
 to be thought followers of Plato and Aristotle, some could 
 arrive at no higher a conformity than the imitation of the 
 stammering of the one, and the round shoulders of the 
 other.' 
 
1727.] CONCANEjST. 27 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 LITERARY MATTERS — CONCANEN — THEOBALD. 
 
 NOTICE OF CONCANEN HIS LITERAEY PERFORMANCES HIS PRAISE 
 
 OF POPE — HIS APPOINTMENT IN JAMAICA, AND DEATH WHETHER 
 
 WARBUETON CONSPIRED WITH POPE's ENEMIES LISTENED WITH 
 
 COMPLACENCY TO THEOBALD'S EXCLAMATIONS AGAINST POPE HIS 
 
 CONCERN IN 'THE LEGAL JUDICATURE IN CHANCERY STATED* 
 
 MADE ONE OF THE KING's MASTERS OF ARTS AT CAMBRIDGE ' 
 
 PRESENTED BY SIR ROBERT SUTTON TO THE LIVING OF BRANT- 
 
 BROUGHTON HIS APPLICATION TO STUDY HIS ACQUIREMENTS IS 
 
 IN NO HASTE TO PUBLISH — HIS ASSISTANCE TO THEOBALD IN HIS 
 ' SHAKSPEAHE ' THEOBALD'S MERITS UNDULY DEPRECIATED SPE- 
 CIMENS OF HIS EMENDATIONS ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN HIM AND 
 
 WARBURTON, AND RECONCILIATION THEOBALD's DEATH WAE- 
 
 BURTOn'S ' APOLOGY FOR SIR ROBERT SUTTON ' HIS LETTER TO POPE 
 
 ON SIR Robert's character — pope erases sir Robert's name from 
 HIS satires. 
 
 MATTHEW CONCANEN, to whom Warburton says 
 he gave money for dimiers, and the manuscript of his 
 'Enquiry into Prodigies,' seems to have been a man of 
 more Uterary abihty, and of better moral character, than 
 Warburton and Pope would lead us to beheve. He was 
 an Irish barrister, but, having deserted the law for a time, 
 he brought on the stage at Du.blin, in 1721, when he was 
 only twenty years old, a comedy called ' Wexford WeUs ;' 
 and dedicated, in the same year, to Swift's 'Lawyer 
 Bettesworth,' a poem entitled ' A Match at EootbaU, in 
 three Cantos.' In the following year he inscribed a 
 volume of ' Poems on Several Occasions ' to the Duchess 
 of Grafton, and came over to London to seek his fortune, 
 where, in 1724, he published 'Miscellaneous Poems,' and 
 
28 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. II. 
 
 became connected with ' The London Journal,' in which 
 he prefaced some criticisms of Theobald on Shakspeare 
 with a very judicious introduction. He insists, in that 
 article, on the duty of a nation to preserve the works of 
 its authors in good condition, and to render them, by the 
 aid of comments, intelhgible to posterity. ' Every writer,' 
 he observes, ' is obHged to make himself understood of 
 the age in which he hves ; but, as he cannot answer for 
 the changes of manners and language which may happen 
 after his death, those who receive pleasure and instruction 
 from him are obhged, as well ta gratitude to him as in 
 duty to posterity, to endeavour to perpetuate his memory 
 by preserving his meaning. Much pains,' he adds, ' have 
 been taken to preserve to us the picture of Chaucer, 
 while nobody has thought proper to render that better 
 picture of him, his writings, inteUigible to future ages. 
 Butler has had a monument erected to his memory in 
 Westminster Abbey : how much more emphatically might 
 it be said to be erected to his memory if it were a com- 
 ment upon his excellent " Hudibras," which, for want of 
 such illustration, grows every day less pleasing to his 
 readers, who lose half his wit and pleasantry, while they 
 are ignorant of the facts he alludes to ! I own it grows 
 daily more difficult to perform this duty to old authors ; 
 and, therefore, the Itahans say that a comment ought to 
 be made when the work does not need it, for that it will 
 be impossible to make one when it does.' Such sugges- 
 tions regarding Chaucer and Hudibras were extremely 
 pertinent at the time that they were made. After some 
 commendation of Theobald, he observes that ' such a 
 critic might bring the name of commentator into the 
 repute which it has lost by the dull and useless pe- 
 dantry of some pretenders to it.' In 1728, he wrote 
 the preface to the ' Collection of all the Verses, Essays, 
 Letters, and Advertisements occasioned by Mr. Pope and 
 Swift's Miscellanies,' and in the same year a pamphlet, 
 
1727.] POPE AND CONCANEN. 29 
 
 entitled ' A Supplement to tlie Profimcl,' in which, says 
 Dr. Warton, there are 'more shrewd remarks, and 
 more pertinent examples, than might be expected from 
 such a writer, and enough to make us think he had some 
 more able assistant. Concanen was at that time an inti- 
 mate friend of Warburton, and, it has been suggested, 
 was assisted by him in writing these remarks ; but of this 
 there is no positive proof.' Concanen was well able to 
 produce it without any aid from Warburton. In this 
 tract on ' the Profund,' which is a satire on Pope, he is 
 accused by Warburton of having ' dealt unfairly by Pope, 
 in not only frequently imputing to him Broome's verses 
 (for which he might seem m some degree account£|,ble, 
 having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of 
 the Duke of Buckingham and others.' Pope took his 
 revenge in the well-known hues. 
 
 True to the bottom see Concanen creep, 
 
 A cold, long-winded native of the deep ; 
 
 If perseverance gain the diver's prize, 
 
 Not everlasting Blackmore this denies ; 
 
 No noise, no stir, no motion canst thou make ; 
 
 Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake. 
 
 This satire was the more mahgnant, as Concanen, in his 
 ' Miscellanies,' had, in some very fair couplets, praised 
 Pope : 
 
 With pleasing notes the woods and valleys ring, 
 
 If Pope's harmonious hand but touch the string ; 
 
 His gentle numbers charm the ravish'd plains. 
 
 While still attention holds the wond'ring swains. 
 
 To him the classics all their art have shown, 
 
 Yet all his wit and spirit are his own ; 
 
 He knows their methods to pursue their race, 
 
 Yet scorns their footsteps servilely to trace. 
 
 In 1732 he had so recommended himself, by his literary 
 abihties, to the Duke of Newcastle, that he was appointed 
 to the Attorney-Generalship of the island of Jamaica, a 
 post which he ' filled with the utmost integrity and honour, 
 
30 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAUBURTON. [Cu. 11. 
 
 and to the perfect satisfaction of the inhabitants, for near 
 seventeen years.'* According to Warburton, he married 
 an opulent widow in Jamaica, but certain it is that he 
 acquired a considerable fortune, on which he purposed 
 to hve in his native country, but, on landing in London 
 in 1748, he suffered so much from the change of chmate, 
 that he died of consumption early in the following year. 
 Warburton says, ' he was of so scoundrel a temper,' that 
 on returning to England, ' he avoided ever coming into 
 my sight ; ' but he seems, even if his temper had ever so 
 much inchned him, to have had httle time for visiting 
 Warburton. Altogether, he appears to have been a much 
 more respectable member of society than the incautious 
 might infer from Warburton's revihngs ; and, had he con- 
 tinued his apphcation to hterature, he might have made 
 a far better figure in it than Pope's lines on him would 
 seem to indicate. 
 
 I have paid this attention to Concanen's character, be- 
 cause he was the only one, except Theobald, among the 
 Uterary persons that Warburton met at this time in Lon- 
 don, with whom he appears to have formed any intimacy. 
 Warburton must have liked him at first, and no sufficient 
 reason is apparent, unless it was a desire to take Pope's 
 part, why he should have railed at him afterwards. 
 
 It is confidently asserted by Mr. Nichols that Warburton 
 was a conspirator with Theobald's party in their attempts 
 to annoy or humble Pope. ' That Mr. Warburton was an 
 associate with Theobald and Concanen,' says he, ' in the 
 attack made on Pope's fame and talents, is indisputable.' 
 Johnson speaks less positively on the point, but seems to 
 be of the same opinion. ' Warburton,' he remarks, ' had 
 pleased himself with the notice of inferior wits, and cor- 
 responded with the enemies of Pope ; ' and adds that, when 
 Theobald published Shakspeare, in opposition to Pope, 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 192. 
 
17-27.] WARBUETON AND THEOBALD. 31 
 
 Warburton was ready to assist him with notes. But, that 
 Warburton ever leagued with the heroes of the ' Dunciad ' 
 against Pope, there seems to be no positive proof. Being, 
 in reahty, no great judge of poetry, he may have formed 
 a lower opinion of Pope's genius than he afterwards found 
 it merited, and may have hstened with complacency to 
 undue depreciation of it ; but that he combined with 
 cavillers and calumniators to degrade Pope, is not to be 
 believed without testimony ; nor is there anything in 
 Warburton's own writings, or in the writings of any of his 
 contemporaries, to indicate that he ever was a member of 
 such combination. With Concanen, there is no evidence 
 that he maintained any correspondence after his retire- 
 ment to his clerical duties in the country ; and it is not 
 apparent that he ever formed intimate connexions with 
 any other of Pope's censors except Theobald. 
 
 Theobald he certainly allowed to speak very freely 
 of Pope, without manifestation of displeasure, in the letters 
 that passed between them concerning Shakspeare. ' What 
 a dab at collating is our editor ! ' * cries Theobald in one 
 place. In another, ' So far from being an Aristarchus, he 
 is a stark ass.' f ' Unpardonable stupidity ! ' J ' Mr. Pope 
 has made stark nonsense.' § Pope, in ' The Taming of 
 the Shrew,' had printed ' Socrates' Zantippe : ' ' Mr. Pope,' 
 says Theobald, ' in the next edition, perhaps, will vouch- 
 safe to restore Xantippe.'|| And when Theobald had 
 thoughts of pubhshing a satirical 'Essay on Mr. Pope's 
 Judgments, extracted from his own Works,' and sent 
 Warburton a specimen of it, Warbm-ton certainly made 
 no opposition to the design ; for Theobald, in a following 
 letter, says, ' It is no small satisfaction to me that you 
 approve my design with regard to my antagonist's Judg- 
 ments.'^ In another letter he thanks Warburton for 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 279. t I^- P- 284. 
 
 t lb. p. 317. § lb. p. 819. 11 lb. p. 334. 
 
 1[ lb. pp. 551, 565. 
 
32 
 
 LIFE OF BISIIOl' WAKBUETOJSr. [Cn. II. 
 
 jvistifying him against Pope's charge of applauding fus- 
 tian.* But all this will not prove Warburton to have 
 entered into a conspiracy, or to have been a well-wisher 
 to Theobald against Pope any further than as he was 
 editor of Shakspeare. Warburton assuredly was not 
 desirous to have his name connected pubhcly with Pope's 
 adversaries ; for Theobald remarks, in acknowledging 
 some communication that he had received, 'As to the 
 three printed criticisms with which you obhged me and 
 the pubhc, it is a very reasonable caution^ that what is 
 gleaned from them should come out anonymous ; for I 
 should be loth to have a valued friend subjected, on my 
 account, to the outrages of Pope, virulent though impo- 
 tent. 'f He had, doubtless, also begun to form higher 
 views for himself than would have been forwarded by 
 any schemes for lowering Pope. 
 
 Another publication, in which Warburton had a share, 
 and which appeared, anonymously, in the same year as 
 the ' Enquiry mto Prodigies and Miracles,' must not be 
 left unnoticed. It was entitled ' The Legal Judicature in 
 Chancery Stated,' and was the joint composition of War- 
 burton and Mr. Samuel Burroughs, an eminent barrister. 
 In the preceding year,^ome dispute having arisen among 
 the lawyers respecting the hmits of the judicial powers 
 of the Court of Chancery and the Polls' Court, Mr. 
 Burroughs took the side of the Court of Chancery, in a 
 small pubhcation called ' The History of the Chancery,' 
 which was printed without his name, but was well known 
 to be his, and which was so acceptable to Lord Chancellor 
 King, that he at once rewarded the author of it with a 
 Mastership in Chancery. But a treatise quickly came 
 forth in reply to it, entitled ' A Discourse of the Judicial 
 Authority of the Master of the EoUs,' a composition so 
 much superior to the ' History,' that the advocates of the 
 Court of Chancery saw their cause was likely to suiTer, 
 unless they secured some additional aid. 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 39-1. | lb. p. 621. 
 
1728.] ' LEGAL JUDICATURE IN CHANCBET.' 33 
 
 'In this exigency,' says Hurd, 'Mr. Burroughs was 
 advised by one of his friends (I foi-get, or never heard, 
 his name) to have recourse to Mr. Warburton, as a person 
 very capable of supplying his defects. Accordingly, when 
 he had prepared the proper materials for a reply, he ob- 
 tained leave to put them into Mr. Warburton's hands, and 
 afterwards spent some time with him in the country, 
 where, by their joint labours, the whole was drawn out, 
 and digested into a sizable volume, which came out in 
 1727. This book was so manifestly superior to the 
 " History," that such of the profession as were not in 
 the secret, wondered at Mr. £urroughs's proficiency in 
 the art of writing ; and the Lord Chancellor King as 
 much as anybody. The author of the " Discoiu-se " saw it 
 concerned him to take notice of such an adversary, and 
 in 1728 reprinted his work " with large additions, to- 
 '' gether with a Preface occasioned by a book entitled 
 ' The Legal Judicature in Chancery Stated.' " And with 
 this reply, I believe, the dispute closed.' 
 
 Warburton, some years after, having become acquainted 
 with Mr. Charles Yorke, the son of Lord Chancellor 
 ; Hardwicke, happened to mention to him, as the secret 
 : was no longer necessary to be kept, the share which he 
 ' had in that dispute ; when Mr. Yorke asked him if he 
 '. knew who had been his antagonist. Warburton replying 
 : in the negative, Mr. Yorke told him it was his father, 
 c who, though then Attorney-General, had thought proper 
 [- to support his relative. Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of 
 ii: the Eolls. 
 
 i In 1728, in the month of April, the King made a visit 
 i to the University of Cambridge, and Warburton, by the 
 i; interest of Sir Eobert Sutton, was mcluded in the list of 
 ,, Masters of Arts created on that occasion. Whether any 
 (i notice was taken by the people of Cambridge of the in- 
 ;■ cense which he had offered to the University in hi» 
 ' Enquiry into Prodigies and Miracles,' we are not told. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. II. 
 
 In June in the same year he received a more sub- 
 stantial mark of Sir Eobert Sutton's favour, for he was 
 presented by him to one of the livings in his gift, that of 
 Brant-Broughton, near Newark, of the value of 560/. a- 
 year, with a population under a thousand. Here he fixed 
 himself, with his mother and sisters, and continued to 
 reside during eighteen years of the most vigorous portion 
 of his hfe, from 1728 to 1746. Greaseley he resigned, 
 and indeed seems never to have fiixed himself there at aU. 
 But it appears that in 1730 he was presented by the 
 Duke of Newcastle, probably through Sir Eobert Sutton's 
 influence, to the hving of Frisby, in Lincolnshire, with 
 about 250/. a-year, which he continued to hold, though 
 never residing on it, till 1756.* 
 
 In the retirement of Brant-Broughton he had ample 
 leisure for that application to reading and study to which 
 he was always so strongly inclined. The population of 
 his parish being so small, he was at hberty to devote his 
 week days, with little interruption, to his books, of which 
 his income aUowed him to procure a comfortable supply; 
 and his labour, not satisfied with the hours of the day, 
 would often be protracted far into the night. But hav- 
 ing a strong constitution, and observing strict temperance, 
 he needed, Hke Bentley, little exercise ; and occasional 
 walks, of a few miles, kept him in excellent health. 
 
 Yet his mother and sisters were at times fearful that 
 such continuance of study must at length bring on 
 disease ; and one of his sisters, Mrs. Frances Warburton, 
 told Hiurd that they would sometimes invite themselves to 
 take cofiee with liim in his library after diimer, and con- 
 trive to make their stay with him as long as possible; 
 but that, when they retired, they always found that he 
 returned again to his books, and continued at them till the 
 demands of sleep obliged him to retire. 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Ill, vol. ii. pp. 59, 845. 
 
17-28.'] WARBUETON's STUDIES. 35 
 
 His reading was at all times sufSciently miscellaneous. 
 Such protracted application of a mind so discursive, and 
 eager for omnifarious knowledge, could not but be divided 
 among many subjects. He passed from grave to light, 
 and from Ught to grave ; and when he was weary with 
 Eusebius or Schultens, sought relief in Cervantes or 
 Butler. He was fond of works of wit and humour, and 
 liad read, doubtless, many of the poets ; but that he had 
 a passionate fondness for sublime poetry, as Hurd repre- 
 sents, is not to be credited. 
 
 Such incessant industry, aided by strong retentiveness 
 
 of memory, could not but produce much fruit. ' Condo 
 
 et compono,' he might say to himself, ' quod mox depro- 
 
 mere possim.' His acquaintance with hterature in general 
 
 became great, though his knowledge of particular subjects, 
 
 ' even such as he might be expected fully to understand, 
 
 - was in many cases but partial and superficial, and'his 
 
 judgment in them erroneous. He never became a scholar 
 
 in the sense in which a Toup or a Tyrwhitt understood 
 
 ■. the word, but he had penetrated into numbers of books 
 
 , which many professed scholars had scarcely opened. He 
 
 ■| made extensive incursions into the regions of letters, 
 
 :- though he did not always stay long enough in the same 
 
 impart to secure conquests. But he brought away spoils 
 
 r enough to show the compass of his expeditions, and to 
 
 ,; adorn and enhven his pages with allusions to all kinds of 
 
 1;: authors and subjects. He had doubtless felt the want 
 
 f,; of more Imowledge when he was writing his treatise on 
 
 j(,' Prodigies and Miracles ;' for its pages are pages of po- 
 
 ji^verty compared with those of ' The Divine Legation ;' and 
 
 iie would thus be the more stimulated to enlarge his ac- 
 
 >,quirements to the utmost. 
 
 y^ How intensely his thoughts were often engaged about 
 his subjects of study, is shown by an anecdote commu- 
 aicated by a correspondent to the ' Gentleman's Magazine.'* 
 
 * Vol. Ixxix. p. 519. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. II. 
 
 The correspondent's father was invited to meet Warbur- 
 ton at dinner, at Lord Tyrconnel's, at Bilton Hall, and, 
 arriving before Warburton, found the company talking of 
 a fire that was said to have happened at the house of a 
 neighbour, Mr. Fane, of Fulbeck, but of which no one 
 had heard the particulars. Somebody observed that as 
 Mr. Warburton must pass the place on his road from 
 Brant-Broughton, he would doubtless bring a full account 
 of the matter. Mr. Warburton came, but, on being 
 questioned, had nothing to tell ; he had ridden close by 
 the house, but had noticed neither fire nor anything ex- 
 traordinary. The company began to hope that the report 
 was not true ; but it was soon confirmed by a resident at 
 Fulbeck, who, coming in with full particulars, said that 
 he had noticed Mr. Warburton ride by without asking a 
 question or turning his head, and apparently absorbed ui 
 some subject of meditation. Yet Warburton did not 
 deserve,- adds the narrator, to be called an absent man, 
 but was ready, in general, to attend to anything that came 
 before him. 
 
 With all his ardour for literary distinction, it is much 
 to his praise that he was in no hurry to thrust himseK 
 prominently before the pubhc with any important work. 
 He was resolved to be well prepared for the hsts before 
 he entered them. It was not tiU 1736, after eight years' 
 study at Brant-Broughton, that he presented to the world 
 his first pubhcation of any weight. 
 
 In the meantime, however, and during the earlier 
 years of his residence at his country Hving, was produced 
 Theobald's edition of Shakspeare, about which we have 
 observed that Warburton and Theobald corresponded 
 during the years 1729 and 1730. Theobald received 
 from Warburton considerable assistance, for which he 
 was profuse in his acknowledgments. ' When Theobald 
 published Shakspeare,' says Johnson, ' the best notes 
 were supphed by Warburton ;' but this is an assertion 
 
1729.] THEOBALDS NOTES ON SHAKSPEAEE. 37 
 
 which an inspection of the edition will be very far from 
 justifying. When Johnson was asked by Dr. Bur- 
 ney whether he thought Warburton a superior critic 
 to Theobald, he replied, ' Sir, he would make two and 
 fifty Theobalds, cut him into slices.' But this judg- 
 ment, in regard to Warburton and Theobald as critics and 
 commentators, is by no means just. Whatever superiority 
 may be allowed to Warburton in general mental power, 
 he is assuredly not to be preferred to Theobald, either as 
 a corrector or an illustrator. Even Dr. Burney, at the 
 time that he asked Johnson the question, must have been 
 somewhat surprised at the answer, for he was then in- 
 specting a volume of Johnson's edition, and aptly re- 
 marked that Johnson appeared to have found more 
 occasion to be severe on Warburton than on Theobald. 
 But, since the publication of the ' Dunciad,' it had become 
 universally the fashion to decry Theobald, and Johnson 
 joined his voice to that of the pubhc, pronouncing Theo- 
 bald ' a man of heavy dihgence, bu^t slender powers, who 
 escaped vdth reputation from his undertaking only by the 
 ; good luck of having Pope for his enemy.' This was 
 most unfair depreciation ; for the best notes in Theobald's 
 ■\ edition, of every kind, were unquestionably Theobald's 
 , own. Theobald, as a commentator, has suffered great 
 ; injustice from Pope's days almost to the present time. 
 One of the few tributes to his merits is a slight remark 
 of Dr. Warton's. ' This edition of Tibbald,' as Pope 
 ; calls him, ' was justly esteemed the best till those of 
 , Malone and Steevens appeared.' It may, indeed, be justly 
 ■;, esteemed the basis of all the editions that have since 
 J, appeared. A recent writer in the ' Notes and Queries ' * 
 J has said of Theobald, with no less justice than boldness, 
 I 'Every commentator is indebted to him, and everyone 
 J has abused him, from Warburton and Pope to Coleridge ; 
 
 i 
 
 * First Series, vol. iv. p. 28. 
 
38 
 
 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. II. 
 
 and without Theobald's notes and most sagacious amend- 
 ments, ordinary readers would be puzzled to read Shak- 
 speare.' Theobald, in acknowledgiag his obligations to 
 those who had assisted hun, Styan Thirlby, Hawley 
 Bishop, Martin Folkes, Dr. Mead, Dr. Freind, Coxeter, 
 and others, is very justly content, in speaking of War- 
 burton, to say that he owed him no small part of his best 
 criticisms, not that he owed him the greater part, adding, 
 ' Nor, indeed, would I any further be thought to commend 
 a friend than, in so doing, to give a testimony of my own 
 gratitude ; ' and he conckides, in very modest and gentle- 
 manly terms, ' How great a share soever of praise I must 
 lose from myself in confessing these assistances, and how- 
 ever my own poor conjectures may be weakened by the . 
 comparison with theirs, I am very well content to sacrifice 
 my vanity to the pride of being so assisted, and the plea- 
 sure of being just to their merits.' 
 
 The character of Warburton's notes and emendations 
 shall be considered when we come to speak of his own 
 edition of Shakspeare ; at present, we shall examine the 
 quahty of some of Theobald's. I shall take a few speci- 
 mens as they stand in his Letters to Warburton. 
 
 In Mark Antony, Act v. so. 2, where Cleopatra is prais- 
 ing Antony after his death, he found three lines standing 
 
 thus : 
 
 For his bounty 
 There was no winter in't. An Antony it was, 
 That grew the more by reaping. 
 
 And, not seeing how reaping could make Antony grow, 
 or why Antony and winter should be contrasted, he sus- 
 pected that Shakspeare wrote, 
 
 An Autumn 't was 
 That grew the more by reaping ; 
 
 an emendation the more satisfactory when the old way of 
 spelling the words Automne and Antonie is taken into 
 account. 
 
1729.] THEOBALD'S EMENDATIONS. 39 
 
 In Twelfth Mght, Act i. sc. 3, Sir Andrew and Sir Toby 
 discourse thus : 
 
 Sir And. had I but follow'd the arts ! 
 
 Sir Tob. Then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair. 
 
 Sir And. Why, would that have mended my hair ? 
 
 Sir Tob. Past question, for thou seest it does not cool my nature. 
 
 Theobald, after expressing his wonder that Pope should 
 let this pass for sense, happily alters the last hne to 
 
 Past question, for thou seest it does not curl by nature. 
 
 Pope allowed a well-known passage in Measure for 
 Measure, Act iii., sc. 4, to be read, 
 
 Say to thyself. 
 Prom their abominable and beastly touches, 
 I drink, I eat away myself, and live ; 
 
 Theobald, inquiring how it were possible that a man 
 should eat away himself and hve, however much he might 
 drink, quietly substituted, 
 
 I drink, I eat, array myself, and live. 
 
 Before Theobald's time, a Hne in Love's Labour Lost, 
 Act iii. sc. 3, stood, 
 
 This Signior Junio, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid ; 
 
 but Theobald very properly thought that he who had 
 been five thousand years a hoy, might well be called 
 Senior- Junior, in conformity with the term giant-dwarf. 
 
 To Theobald also, we may observe, is due an admira- 
 ble emendation of another passage in the same play, Act 
 iv. sc. 3, which was read, 
 
 And why indeed Naso, but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers 
 of fancy? The jerks of invention imitary is nothing; so doth the 
 hound his master, &c. 
 
 Theobald gave it thus : 
 
 And why indeed Naao, but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers 
 of fancy ? The jerks of invention ? imitari is nothing ; so doth the 
 hound, &c. 
 
40 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IL 
 
 In tlie million-times quoted passage in Othello about 
 jealousy, the 'green-ey'd monster,' 
 
 that doth make 
 The meat it feeds on, 
 
 was, before Theobald applied his hand to it, a green-ey'd 
 monster 
 
 that doth mock 
 The meat it feeds on. 
 
 In the same play, the Hues 
 
 She was in love, and he she lov'd prov'd mad 
 And did forsake her, 
 
 are very happily altered by Theobald into 
 
 She was in love, and he she lov'd prov'd had, 
 And did forsake her. 
 
 A passage in All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. sc. 3, 
 presents one of his most admirable emendations. Pope 
 gave 
 
 Fortune, she said, was no goddess, — Love, no god, — complained 
 against the Queen of Virgins, 
 
 the words in italics having been thrust in by Eowe, ac- 
 cording to Theobald's opinion, who saw from the context 
 that the passage should run. 
 
 Fortune, she said, was no goddess, — Love, no god, — Diana, no 
 Queen of Virgins. 
 
 A few verses farther on, he aptly alters loveliness into 
 loneliness. 
 
 A similar emendation to that about Diana is made in 
 
 Twelfth Night, Act iv. sc. 2. All the previous editions 
 
 gave, 
 
 Master, there are three carters, three shepherds, three neatherds, 
 and three swineherds; 
 
 but, in the space of a few hues afterwards, these are called 
 ' four threes of herdsmen,' and Theobald therefore aptly 
 conjectured that we should read goatherds instead of 
 carters. 
 
1729.] THEOBALD'S EMENDATIONS. 41 
 
 I have now, perhaps, given specimens enough ; but I 
 cannot forbear giving two more. In the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, Mr. and Mrs. Page discourse thus : 
 
 Mrs. P. My Nan shall be the Queen of all the Fairies, 
 
 Finely attired in a robe of white. 
 Mr. P. That silk will I go buy, and in that time 
 
 Shall Mr. Slender steal my Nan away. 
 
 Surely, said Theobald, Shakspeare did not intend Mr. 
 Page to say that Slender should steal his daughter while 
 he went to buy silk ; we must read ' in that tire,' dress, 
 habit. 
 
 In the Midsummer Night's Dream the Fairies were thus 
 addressed : 
 
 Then for the third part of a minute hence, 
 Some to kill cankers, &c. 
 
 ' The Fairies,' said Theobald, ' are here appointed their 
 respective tasks ; but are these tasks to continue only for 
 the third part of a minute? I have Httle doubt but 
 Shakspeare wrote, 
 
 Then, Yore the third part of a minute, hence, 
 
 that is, as soon as your roundel and fairy-song are dis- 
 patched, then, in a trice, before the third part of a minute, 
 get you gone, and do so and so.' 
 
 Such are some of the excellent corrections of Theobald, 
 which succeeding editors have been extremely happy to 
 adopt, but for which ordinary readers, and many assum- 
 ing critics, know not to whom acknowledgments are due. 
 He should have great praise, too, for having improved the 
 sense of many passages by changes in pimctuation. 
 
 AU Theobald's other literary efforts are forgotten, with 
 the exception of a few emendations of corrupt passages in 
 Greek, in which he seems to have been a very fair scholar ; 
 and Dr. Blomfield, in editing jEschylus, paid willing 
 attention to ' L. T.'s ' suggestions. His attempts at origi- 
 nal composition have been doomed, by the sentence ahke 
 
42 
 
 LIFK OF BISHOP WARBURTOST. [Ch. II. 
 
 of his contemporaries and of posterity, to oblivion ; nor does 
 it appear that the doom is at all unjust. But as a com- 
 mentator on Shakspeare he deserves to live, and to have 
 his name held in honour among those of his brethren. 
 
 In 1731, some estrangement took place between War- 
 burton and Theobald, of vrhich the origin is not known ; 
 but towards the end of the year they were reconciled, 
 and their correspondence went on as before. ^As he has 
 given me full satisfaction for his late conduct,' writes War- 
 burton to Dr. Stukeley, in November, ' and appears to be 
 willing to perform the part of a man of honour, I absolve 
 him from all hard thoughts, and am disposed to serve him 
 all I can. This I thought proper, for good reasons, to let 
 you know, whom I had acquainted with my (groundless 
 as I am glad to find it) suspicions and complaints.' Per- 
 haps Warburton had feared that some of his comments 
 would be appropriated by Theobald without due acknow- 
 ledgment ; and he afterwards laid it to his charge, when 
 he was dead, that he ' had sequestered part of his notes 
 for the benefit, as he supposed, of some future edition.'* 
 
 Some years afterwards, in a company where Pope and 
 Warburton were present, some one, ready to flatter them 
 both, remarked that he wondered Warburton should ever 
 have assisted ' such a fellow as Theobald.' Pope, as 
 Warburton reports, repUed that ' there was no wonder at 
 all,' for Warburton ' had taken him for an honest man, as 
 he himself had done, and on that footing had visited him.' 
 It does not appear what cause could be alleged why 
 Warburton should not have continued to consider him as 
 honest a man as either himself or Pope. 
 
 He died in 1744, three years before the pubhcation of 
 Warburton's Shakspeare, in no very affluent condition. 
 ' He was of a generous spirit,' said Steele, an actor, who 
 recorded his death, ' too generous for his circumstances, 
 
 * Pref. to Shakspeare. 
 
1732. J SIR ROBERT SUTTON. 43 
 
 and none knew how to do a handsome thing, or confer a 
 benefit, when in his power, with a better grace than him- 
 self. He was my ancient friend, of nearly thirty years' 
 acquaintance ; ' and, he adds, when he was interred at St. 
 Pancras, ' I only attended him.' 
 
 Such was the end of him who first taught how Shak- 
 speare's text was to be amended and illustrated, and whom 
 succeeding commentators have followed, if not exactly, to 
 borrow the illustration of Holofernes, as a hound his 
 master., yet assuredly, at least the best of them, with close 
 imitation. 
 
 In the year 1732, Warburton is supposed to have writ- 
 ten, or to have assisted in writing, a pamphlet entitled 
 'An Apology for Sir Eobert Sutton.' Sir Eobert, who 
 still continued to patronise Warburton, had been a mem- 
 ber and director of Tlie Charitable Corporation, a society 
 which was instituted, some years- before, ' for the rehef of 
 the industrious poor, by assisting them with small sums 
 on pledges, at legal interest,' and for which, as it laboured, 
 says the 'Apology,' ' under a lag wind ' in 1725, it was 
 thought necessary to look out for fresh subscribers, ' per- 
 sons of figure and substance,' who might give countenance 
 to the undertaking. Sir Eobert Sutton, then hving at 
 Hammersmith, was induced to become a shareholder, 
 and afterwards sold his shares at a higher price than 
 he had bought them ; but this he did, as his apologist 
 states, not from love of lucre, but from necessity. Sir 
 Eobert was a man of business, and, looking into the 
 books with some httle attention, he found something 
 wrong in the conduct of one of the members of the com- 
 mittee, and caused him to be expelled. Soon afterwards, 
 Thomson, the secretary, and Eobinson, the assistant-secre- 
 tary, both proprietors, absconded with large sums of 
 money ; and some other persons, of good standing in 
 society, were suspected of being accomplices in their dis- 
 honesty. A committee was in consequence appointed to 
 
44 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. II. 
 
 inquire into the affair, who pubhshed an ample Eeport, 
 in which it was intimated that Sir Eobert Sutton was not 
 free from blame. He accordingly fell under the censure 
 of the House of Commons, was deprived of his seat, and 
 in danger, for some time, of having the whole of his for- 
 tune confiscated. That Warburton should have stood 
 forward, at such a time, in defence of his patron, was but 
 reasonable to expect ; and the style of the pamphlet, with 
 several scriptural allusions in it, pretty plainly indicates 
 that it was Warburton's production. The writer says of 
 the Eeport, ' Here is a story well cooked up ; but we 
 shall see by-and-by whether the cook had licked his 
 fingers to taste his sauce.' He then intimates that the 
 charges were invented by enemies of Sir Eobert, whose 
 ' great good character in the eye of the world "was his 
 main blemish ' in their estimation (' unless they took into 
 their aid his excellent sense ') ; for he ' questions much 
 whether aU their characters joined together would have 
 had any hke influence.' The sum of his argument is, that 
 Sir Eobert was a man of such nice honour as to be utterly 
 incapable of anything disgraceful. 
 
 A letter written by Warburton to Pope, some years 
 after, for the purpose of inducing the poet to erase Sir 
 Eobert's name from his Satires, shows the character of 
 Warburton's patron in a similar light, and may very pro- 
 perly be introduced here : 
 
 ' I have known this gentleman,' writes Warburton to 
 Pope, ' about twenty years. I have been greatly, and in 
 the most generous manner, obhged to him. So I am very 
 capable, and, you will readily beheve, very much disposed, 
 to apologise for him. Yet, for aU that, if I did not really 
 believe him to be an honest man, I would not venture to 
 excuse him to you. Nothing, is more notorious than the - 
 great character he had acquired in the faithful and able 
 discharge of a long embassy at Constantinople, both in the 
 pubhc part and in the private one of the merchants' 
 
1732.] ArOLOGY FOE SIR ROBERT SUTTON. 45 
 
 affairs. The first reflection on his character was that 
 unhappy affair of the Charitable Corporation. I read 
 carefully all the Eeports of the Committee concerning it ; 
 and, as I knew Sir Eobert Sutton's temper and character 
 so well, I was better able than most to judge of the nature 
 of his conduct in it. And I, in my conscience, believe that 
 he had no more suspicion of any fraud carrying on by 
 some in the direction than I had. That he was guilty of 
 neglect and negligence as a director is certain ; but it is 
 only the natural effect of his temper (when he has no 
 suspicion), which is exceedingly indolent ; and he suffered 
 sufficiently for it, not only in his censure, but by the loss 
 of near £20,000. And at this very juncture he lost a 
 considerable sum of money (through his neghgence) by 
 the villany of a land-steward, who broke and ran away. 
 Dr. Arbuthnot knew him well ; and I am fully persuaded, 
 though I never heard so, that he had the same opinion of 
 him in this affair that I have. But parties ran high, and 
 this became a party matter ; and the violence of parties 
 no one knows more of than yourself. And his virtue and 
 integrity have been since fully manifested. 
 
 ' Another prejudice against him, with those who did 
 not know him personally, was the character of his brother, 
 the general, as worthless a man, without question, as 
 ever was created. But, you will ask, why should a man 
 in his station be engaged in any affair with such dirty 
 people ? 'T is a reasonable question ; but you, who know 
 human nature so well, will think this a sufficient answer : 
 he was born to no fortune, but advanced to that station 
 in the Levant, by the interest of his cousin. Lord Lexing- 
 ton ; besides the straitness of his circumstances, the usual 
 and constant business of that embassy gave him, of course, 
 a mercantile turn. He had seen, in almost every country 
 where he had been, societies of this kind, subsisting pro- 
 fitably to themselves and beneficially to the pubhc ; for 
 not to think he came amongst them with a view to his 
 
46 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. H. 
 
 own profit principally would, indeed, be absurd ; yet I 
 am sure with a view of an honest profit, for he is very far 
 from an avaricious man. He lives up to his fortune, 
 without being guUty of any vice or luxury. He is an 
 extreme good and faithful husband, and with reason, 
 indeed, for it is to one of the finest women in England. 
 He is a tender and indulgent father to very hopeful chil- 
 dren ; a kind master, and one of the best landlords to his 
 tenants. I speak all this of my ovra knowledge. He has 
 a good estate in this place. My parishioners are good 
 people. The times (till very lately), for this last fifteen 
 years, have been extreme bad for the graziers ; I got of 
 him, for them, two abatements in their rents, at two 
 several times. 
 
 ' I vnll only beg to give you one more instance, that 
 relates to myself, and is not equivocal in its character. I 
 chanced to know him, when I was very young, by means 
 of my neighboiffhood to Lord Lexington (whom I never 
 knew), where he oft came ; and, without any considera- 
 tion to party or election interest, he seemed to have 
 entertained an early esteem for me. He had two good 
 hvings, on estates he had lately bought ; and, without the 
 least intimation or sohcitation, he told me I should have 
 the first that fell. He was as good as his word. But 
 this was not all. As soon as I became possessed of the 
 hving, he told me that (from what he had been informed 
 by my predecessor, who at his death was going to com- 
 mence a suit for his just dues) the hving was much injured 
 by a low and illegal composition ; that he thought I ought 
 to right myself, and he would join with me against the 
 other freeholders ; for his estate is something more than 
 one-half of the parish. I rephed that, as he had paid all 
 the tithes for his tenants, the greatest loss, in my breaking 
 the composition, would fall upon himself, who must pay 
 one-half as much more as he then did. He said he did 
 not regard that ; I was his friend, and it was my due. I 
 
1732,] SIR ROBEET SUTTON. 47 
 
 answered that, however, I could not do it yet, for that 
 the world would never conceive it to be done with his 
 consent, but would say that I had no sooner got his 
 hving than I had quarrelled with him. But when I 
 came to the parish I found them so good a sort of people 
 that I had as httle an incUnation to fall out with them. 
 So (though to my great injury) I have deferred the matter 
 to this day. Though the thing, in the opinion of Sir E. 
 Eaymond, who gave it on the case as drawn up by the 
 parishioners themselves, is clear and indisputable, yet 
 they won't give it up without a lawsuit. Li a word, 
 there is notliing I am more convinced of than the inno- 
 cence of Sir E. S. in the case of the Charitable Corpora- 
 tion, as to any fraud, or connivance at fraud. You, who 
 always follow your judgment, free from prejudice, will 
 do so here. I have discharged my duty of friendship, 
 both to you and him.' 
 
 Sir Eobert Sutton's name had been used by Pope twice ; 
 in the third epistle* of his ' Moral Essays' and in the first 
 Dialogue of 1738; but, on the subsequent representations 
 of Warburton, he was induced to erase it in both places. 
 In the first, the name of Bond, one of the iniquitous 
 Directors, is still left standing : 
 
 Bond damns the poor, and hates them from his heart. 
 
 And a subsequent hne, 
 
 That any man in want is knave or fool, 
 
 expresses, says Pope, the very words of some of those 
 concerned in the Charitable Corporation. To this passage 
 Warburton, when he edited Pope's works, appended the 
 following note : — ' The poet had named a very worthy 
 person of condition, who for a course of many years had 
 shined in public stations much to the advantage and 
 honour of his country. But being at once oppressed by 
 
 * Ver. 105. 
 
48 
 
 LIFK OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. H. 
 
 popular prejudice and a public censure, it was no wonder 
 the poet, to wliom he was personally a stranger, should 
 think hardly of him. I had the honour to be well known 
 to this truly illustrious person, and to be greatly obhged 
 by him. From my intimate knowledge of his character, 
 I was fully persuaded of his innocence, and that he was 
 unwarily drawn in by a pack of infamous cheats, to his 
 great loss of fortune as well as reputation. At my re- 
 quest, therefore, the poet, with much satisfaction, retracted 
 and struck out, in both places, Iris iU-grounded censure. 
 I have since had the pleasure to understand, from the 
 best authority, that my favourable sentiments of him have 
 lately been fully justified in the course of some proceed- 
 ings in the High Court of Chancery, the most unerring 
 investigator of truth and falsehood.' 
 
1736.] 'ALLIANCE BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE.' 49 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 'ALLIANCE BETWEEN CHUKCH AND STATE' — ' VELLEIUS 
 PATERCULUS ' — SIR THOMAS HANMER. 
 
 ■WAEBDETON's first work of importance, ' THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE ' SUMMARY OF ITS CONTENTS BISHOPS HOESLET 
 
 AND HARE PLEASED WITH THE BOOK ITS RECEPTION BT THE PUBLIC 
 
 hare's DESIRE TO SERVE WABBURTON WARBUKTOn'S DESIRE TO 
 
 EDIT 'VELLEIUS PATERCULUS ' DISSUADED /ROM THE UNDERTAKINa 
 
 BT HARE AND MIDDLETON SPECIMENS OF HIS PROPOSED EMENDA- 
 TIONS VISITS SIR THOMAS HANMER ABOUT SHAKSPEARE DIS- 
 AGREEMENT BETWEEN THEM. 
 
 IN 1736, as has been already observed, eight years after 
 his presentation to Brant-Broughton, Warburton of- 
 fered to the world his first important work, ' The Alhance 
 between Church and State.' The doctrines advocated in 
 this work it will be oiu" business to examine. 
 
 The Puritans had maintained that the Church and the 
 State were two distinct independent societies, and had 
 argued that, in consequence of this independence, the 
 magistrate had no concern with rehgion. Hooker, in 
 opposition to these notions, had asserted that the Church 
 and the State were but portions of the same society, and 
 had alleged that in every society the State had a natural 
 supremacy over the Church, or a right of control in reli- 
 gious affairs. Hobbes had advanced, in the main, the 
 same opinions on the subject with Hooker, advocating 
 rigorous conformity in the Church to the requirements of 
 the State.* Warburton, agreeing with neither of these 
 persuasions, supposed that the Church and the State, 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. vii. pp. 64, 84, 218, 221, 8vo. 
 E 
 
50 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBURTON. [Cn. III. 
 
 though, indeed, originally distinct, had voluntarily formed 
 an alliance, on just and reasonable terms, for the sake of 
 mutual advantage ; a hypothesis suggested, perhaps, by 
 the French notion of a social contract between governors 
 and those governed. 
 
 The dependence of one society on another, argues 
 Warburton, must arise either from the law of nature or 
 the law of nations. Dependency by the law of nature is 
 from essence, or generation ; but the Church could not, 
 from essence, or generation, be dependent on the State; 
 for the Church, or association for rehgious purposes, 
 existed, as is clear from external evidence, before the 
 State had any being.* Whatever attachment or con- 
 nexion, therefore, exists between the two, must exist 
 under the law of nations, or by civil compact. 
 
 But as man, when he submitted to become a member 
 of civil society, necessarily relinquished some of his indi- 
 vidual rights, so the Church, when she entered into aUiance 
 with the State, acted in a similar manner, by giving up 
 her right of independence, which she transferred to the 
 civil power. But as man received an equivalent for the 
 natural rights which he rehnquished in entering into 
 society, so should the Church receive an equivalent for 
 that which she rehnquished in entering into alhance with 
 the State.f The equivalent, then, which the Church re- 
 ceived, for acknowledging the civil power to be her 
 superior,^ was, protection in her acts, and support to her 
 authority. 
 
 The State, at the same time, was glad to have the 
 assistance of the Church, which, when they formed a 
 union, it expected to exert her influence for the promo- 
 tion of virtue and good order in the community, and as a 
 support to the civil jurisdiction. 
 
 One of the modes in which the State, as the protector 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. vii. p. 63. 
 t lb. p. 248. :f lb. p. 93. 
 
lV36.] DOCTRINES OJ? THE 'ALLIANCE.' 51 
 
 and guardian of the Church, would enable her to exercise 
 her authority in its behalf, would be by conferring on her 
 a portion of coercive power to enjoin the observation of 
 such duties of imperfect obhgation — the duties, for in- 
 stance, of charity, gratitude, hospitality, and others of a 
 similar nature — as civil laws cannot enforce ; and such 
 others, also, of perfect obligation, as are violated by the 
 intemperance of the several appetites. Such coercive 
 power a Church does not possess of herself, for though 
 she has the power of excommunication — the only power 
 that a rehgious society, considered independently, needs — 
 yet this power is not of general influence in regard to the 
 community, but of efficiency only to preserve the purity 
 of her own particular worship. 
 
 A great means of bestowing this coercive power on the 
 Church is by conferring a pubhc endowment on its minis- 
 ters, assigning a fixed share of the national property for 
 their maintenance ; thus rendering that rehgious society, 
 of whose aid the State has so much need, more firm and 
 stable, and destroying that dependency of the clergy on 
 the people which arises from their maintenance by volun- 
 tary contribution ; a dependency which, in certain con- 
 ditions of affairs, may be of great injury to the community, 
 by inducing ecclesiastics, in the hope of seciu-ing the peo- 
 ple's favour, to excite or encourage a spuit of resistance 
 to the civil power, and which must at aU times unhappily 
 lessen the dignity and influence of the clergy in the eyes 
 of the whole nation. 
 
 Such public maintenance for the clergy may be provided 
 by means of tithes. Tithes, indeed, are not to be consi- 
 dered as prescribed to Christians because they were paid 
 by the Jews ; yet the mode of supporting a clergy by 
 tithes may very properly be adopted by Christians, being 
 just as eligible for modern as it was for ancient times. 
 
 The dignity of the clergy in the estimation of the people, 
 as well as the interest and convenience of the Church 
 
 E 2 
 
52 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. III. 
 
 itself, will be promoted by a concession from the State of 
 a place for her superior members in the court of legisla- 
 ture, such as, with us, the bishops' seat in ParHament. 
 This place in the legislature is only what the Church may 
 justly expect; for having, when she formed an alliance 
 with the State, rehnquished to the State her independence 
 and iadivichial authority, she may well think it necessary 
 for her superior members to have a voice in the legislature, 
 to prevent that power, which the State now possesses over 
 her, from being perverted to her injury. Had she not 
 such voice, she would be in the position, not of a subject, 
 but of a slave, to the State ; and no laws could justly be 
 made in the legislature concerning her, because no free 
 man, or free body of men, can be bound by laws to which 
 they have not given their consent. Nor is it improper 
 that the ecclesiastical members of the legislature, when 
 they are present in it, should give their opmions, like the 
 other members, in regard to civil matters, as they will 
 thus give additional sanction to the laws in the eyes of 
 the people, when they see that the Church has concurred 
 with the State in enacting them.* 
 
 But at the time when a State forms its union with a 
 Church, or rehgious society, of the country, there may 
 exist, in that country, more churches, or rehgious socie- 
 ties, than one. With which of them, then, vsdll the State 
 form its junction ? Assuredly with the strongest, or most 
 numerous, of them, acting thus from motives of pohcy ; 
 for the larger a religious society is, the better able will it 
 be to be serviceable in an alliance, as having the greater 
 number under its influence.f But how will the State act 
 towards the less numerous rehgious societies? It will 
 allow them toleration, or the free enjoyment of their 
 opinions and forms of worship, yet under such restrictions 
 as will keep them from iujuring the religion alhed with 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. vii. pp. Ill, 112. f lb. p. 242. 
 
1736.] DOCTRINES OF THE 'ALLIANCE.' 53 
 
 the State ; for if there were no such restrictions laid upon 
 them, the State could not be considered as fully, discharg- 
 ing its contract with the Chiu-ch to which it allies itself 
 
 This alliance between the State and the more numerous 
 religious society will not be indissoluble ; for it will natu- 
 raUy subsist only so long as the religious society, thus 
 placed in alliance with the State, maintains its superiority 
 in number over other rehgious societies. If this supe- 
 riority is diminished to any perceptible extent, the alliance 
 naturally becomes void ; for the allied rehgious society 
 being no longer able to perform its part in the compact, 
 by influencing the majority of the nation to the observance 
 of morahty and good order, the State is at once disengaged 
 from the alhance ; and a new alhance may now be formed 
 with such other rehgious society as has become the most 
 numerous. Thus, formerly, the alhance between the 
 Pagan Church and the empire of Eome was dissolved, 
 and the Christian established in its place ; and, of late, 
 the alhance between the Popish Church and the khigdom 
 of England was broken, and another made with the 
 Protestant in its stead.* 
 
 One reasonable method of restricting the rehgious 
 societies, or sects, not in alliance with the State, from in- 
 juring that which is alhed with it, is the establishment of 
 a test-law, by which the dissenting bodies are excluded 
 from those offices of honour and power in which they 
 might exert influence to the hurt of the allied society. 
 Such a test-law was very judiciously introduced in Eng- 
 land, in the reign of Charles 11., as a security to the 
 Estabhshed Church against the Puritans ; a law of which 
 Wflham in., both when he was Prince of Orange, and 
 when he was King of England, acknowledged the neces- 
 sity. When the Papist James inquired of his son-in-law, 
 with whom he was then on good terms, his opinion as to 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. vii. p. 244. 
 
54 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. III. 
 
 entire toleration and tlie abolition of the test, the stadt- 
 holder readily admitted the propriety of toleration, but 
 wholly disapproved of abolishing the test. When the 
 Protestant dissenters, after he became king, desired to 
 know his sentiments on the same pomts, he manifested 
 the same determination, expressing his Avillingness to 
 allow full toleration, but concurring with his councillors 
 in refusing to abohsh the test.* 
 
 As to the maintenance of the clergy in the religious 
 society allied with the State, or, as we call it, the Estab- 
 hshed Church, the dissenters cannot justly refuse to con- 
 tribute to it, because the clergy are maintained for the 
 benefit of the State in general, not for the support of any 
 particular rehgious opinions, whether at variance with 
 those of the dissenters or not. 
 
 Nor ought dissenters to complain that they are excluded 
 from places of honour and profit, or to assert that such 
 exclusion, for matters of opinion, is any violation of their 
 civil rights ; for, if they wUl rightly consider the subject, 
 they will see the places of honour and profit, which are 
 in the hands of the civil power, are not lodged there as a 
 trust, which may be claimed by all subjects, and equally 
 shared among them, but are of the nature of prerogative, 
 of which the civil power may dispose at pleasure, without 
 being further accountable to the public than that the 
 offices be filled by efficient persons, among whose quali- 
 fications will necessarily be numbered a favourable dis- 
 position to the established religion ; and also that, how- 
 ever objectionable dissenters may think it to exclude per- 
 sons from- office for opinions, it is, in this case, enthely 
 justifiable, for when opinions affect the peace of society 
 they necessarily come within the jmisdiction of the civil 
 power, and the peace of society is directly and necessarily 
 affected by those opinions which a test-law makes matter 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. vii. pp. 251, 296. 
 
1736.] DOCTEINBS OF THE 'ALLIANCE.' 55 
 
 of disqualification.* Thus the Enghsh Papist, who owns a 
 foreign ecclesiastical power superior to all temporal domi- 
 nion, the German Anabaptist, who holds capital punish- 
 ment to be sinful, and the Quaker, who beheves defensive 
 war to be unchristian, are justly debarred from civil 
 offices, as they propagate opinions inimical to the peace of 
 the community and the stabihty of the government. 
 
 Such are the doctrines which Warburton advanced ui 
 his ' Alhance between Church and State,' and which, 
 though many of them bear but httle on the state of tilings 
 with us in the present day, are yet worthy of attention 
 with regard to the connexion of rehgion and government 
 in general. 
 
 Before we dismiss the book, let us notice a few observ- 
 ations which he throws out in the course of discussing 
 his subject. 
 
 An estabUshed church, or religious society in alliance 
 with the government, is necessary in a state, not only on 
 other accounts, but also for reducing men's belief into one 
 common formulary, and making the profession of that for- 
 mulary the condition of community or entire citizenship, 
 that so there may be a summary of behef in aid of the 
 ignorant, and a common repository that men may consult 
 for information ; and in setthng this summary of behef it 
 is to be remembered that the wider the basis of it is made, 
 and the more general are the conditions of communion, 
 consistently with the well-being of the society, the more 
 wise and just wlQ the rehgious institution be. As to the 
 necessity of some religious connexion, even the Quakers 
 themselves^ who profess aversion to everything resembhng 
 a church or church-policy, have, by the act of uniting, 
 under Penn and Barclay's arguments, into a community or 
 corporation, borne the strongest testimony to it.f 
 
 Courts ecclesiastical can be erected only by permission 
 
 * Warbm-ton's Works, vol. vii. pp. 253, 254. f lb- PP- 59, 61. 
 
56 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. UI. 
 
 of the State, and are to take cognizance only of such 
 matters and causes as do not properly fall under civil 
 jtirisdiction ; such, for instance, as concern merely the 
 promotion of religion and good morals. But care must 
 be taken that the ecclesiastical courts, in those matters 
 which are permitted to their determination, do not usurp 
 more power than is freely granted them. A proof of the 
 necessity of such care is shown in the mode in which the 
 clergy acted with regard to marriage. Marriage is but a 
 civil compact, but, in order to render it more respected, 
 the solemnisation of it was assigned to the clergy, a regu- 
 lation in which there was nothing objectionable ; but, by 
 degrees, the clergy proceeded to censurable usurpations, 
 for they not only took occasion to draw into the juris- 
 diction of the Church all civil matters arising from the 
 matrimonial compact, but, though the voice of nature and 
 of Scripture declared that divorce was in some cases allow- 
 able, yet, on the pretence that marriage was a sacrament, 
 they pronounced the marriage contract, when not void ab 
 initio, to be indissoluble.* 
 
 The superior courts must always be the civil, and 
 appeals must be allowable to them from the ecclesiastical, 
 otherwise the ecclesiastical courts would form an imperium 
 in im])erio, and might erect themselves into tyrannies. 
 And, though the magistrate does not confer the eccle- 
 siastical character (for, if he were to confer it, the Church 
 would be, not alhed, but incorporated with the State), yet 
 no ecclesiastic is to be allowed to exercise his functions 
 without the magistrate's approbation and hcence.f Nor 
 can the Church, as a body, enter into any business, even 
 in the convocations which they may hold, without express 
 permission from the civil power. 
 
 The proper aUiance between Church and State is shown 
 in the greatest perfection, says Warburton, in England, 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. vii. p. 149. f lb. pp. 152, 154. 
 
1736.] MERITS OF THE 'ALLIANCE.' 57 
 
 which possesses the most perfect of all religious estab- 
 hshments ; * and, with regard to what he has said in his 
 book concerning such an alliance, he thus proudly 
 expresses himself: — ' magna vis veritatis, quce contra 
 hominwn ingenia, calliditatem, solertiam, contraque fictas 
 omnium insidias, facile se, per seipsam, defendai ! Thus 
 breaks out the illustrious Eoman, transported by a fit of 
 phUosophical enthusiasm. This force of truth never 
 shone with greater lustre than on the present occasion ; 
 where, by the assistance of a few plain and simple prin- 
 ciples, taken from the natm-e of man and the ends of 
 pohtical society, we have cleared up a chaos of contro- 
 versy, proved the justice and necessity of an alliance 
 between Church and State, deduced the mutual conditions 
 on which it was formed, and shown them to have an 
 amazing agreement with our own happy estabhshment.'j' 
 In writing to his friend Stukeley, in 1735, when he 
 was preparing the book for the press, he calls the subject 
 of it 'a tickhsh subject,' adding, 
 
 res antiquaj laudis et artis 
 
 Ingredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.J 
 
 He, doubtless, rejoiced greatly that his daiing had pro- 
 duced so goodly a volume. Stukeley had a copy of it 
 with some manuscript additions, but of no particular 
 importance. § 
 
 Bishop Horsley was dehghted with the book, and said 
 that Warburton ' had shown the general good pohcy of 
 an estabUshment, and the necessity of a test for its 
 security, upon principles which Eepubhcans themselves 
 cannot easily deny,' observing that the work, as to argu- 
 ment, was ' one of the finest specimens that are to be 
 found, perhaps, in any language of scientific reasoning 
 apphed to a political subject.' || By scientific reasoning, 
 
 * "Warburton's Works, vol. yii. p. 165. f lb. p. 240. 
 
 X Nichols's Lit. lUustr., vol. ii. p. 33. § lb. pp. 35—37. 
 
 II Review of the Case of the Protestant Dissenters, Pref. 
 
58 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. III. 
 
 Horsley meant close and cogent reasoning, such as 
 ought to be used on any subject to which, reasoning is 
 apphed, whether of a scientific character or of any 
 other. 
 
 Hare, to whom Warburton sent a copy, rephed thus : — 
 'I had formerly been very agreeably entertained with some 
 emendations of yours on Shakspeare, and was extremely 
 pleased to find this work was by the same hand. Good 
 learning, great acuteness, an ingenious working head, and 
 depth of thought, will always please in an author, though 
 we are not entirely in the same ways of thinking. . . 
 You have not, sir, only my thanks for what you have 
 done, but my sincere wishes that what was intended for 
 the use of the pubhc may prove also to be for yoiu: own, 
 to which my endeavours, in any proper way, shall not he 
 wanting.' 
 
 ' This,' says Hurd, with great justice, ' was candid and 
 generous, considering that that eminent person was not 
 altogether in the author's sentiments on the subject of his 
 book. But he was struck with his great abihties, and 
 became from that moment his sincere friend.' 
 
 ' The truth is,' adds the same writer, ' that no sort of 
 men, either within or without the Church, was prepared, 
 at that time, for an indifierent reception of this new 
 theory, which respected none of their prejudices. It was 
 neither calculated to please the High Church divines, nor 
 the Low ; and the Laity had taken their side with the 
 one or other of those parties. 
 
 ' However, though few at that time were convinced, 
 all were struck by this essay of an original writer, and 
 could not dissemble their admu-ation of the ability which 
 appeared in the construction of it. There was, indeed, a 
 reach of thought in this system of church-policy, which 
 would prevent its making its way all at once. It required 
 time and attention, even in the most capable of its readers, 
 to apprehend the force of the argumentation.' 
 
1736.] CEITICAL OPIKIONS ON THE ' ALLIANCE.' 59 
 
 In subsequent editions Warburton continued to enlarge 
 and improve the work, and, profiting by some attempts of 
 his adversaries to overturn its positions and deductions, 
 endeavoured to leave it in such a condition as to be 
 impregnable to critical assaults. 
 
 Whitaker, reviewing Kurd's edition of Warburton in 
 1812, when, as he said, ' in the demand for equal and 
 universal power, all remains of decency were lost on the 
 one hand, and all prudential regards for the great secu- 
 rities of the constitution were in danger of being swal- 
 lowed up in a timid and helpless acquiescence on the 
 other,' thought that ' a repubhcation and industrious 
 circulation of " The Alliance " might even yet have a 
 powerful effect on the minds of all who had not ceased 
 either to reason for themselves or to feel for their 
 country.'* 
 
 Bishop Hare, to his praise, did not forget his intimation 
 that he should be ready to serve Warburton, but, when 
 ' The Alhance' came to be talked of at court, sought to 
 avail himself of an opportunity to introduce him to the 
 Queen. Her Majesty chanced one day, in the autumn of 
 the year 1737, to ask the Bishop if he could recommend 
 her a person of learning and abihty, to be about her, and 
 to entertain her, at times, with reading and conversation ; 
 when the Bishop named the author of ' The* Alhance 
 between Church and State.' The recommendation was 
 graciously received, and the Bishop was expecting every 
 day to hear the favourable result of it, when the Queen 
 was suddenly seized with an illness, which carried her off 
 in the month of November. 
 
 Warburton was meditating, at this time, an edition of 
 ' VeUeius Paterculus,' and sent Des Maizeaux, with whom 
 he had become intimate, a plan and specimen of the work 
 to be inserted in the ' Bibhotheque Britannique, ou His- 
 
 * Quart. Kev., voL vii. p. 402. 
 
60 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. III. 
 
 toire des Ovivrages des Savans de la Grande Bretagne,' 
 printed at the Hague, where the communication appeared 
 in the months of July, August, and September 1736, 
 occupying about forty pages. It -was addressed to Bishop 
 Hare, imder the designation F.E.C, Francisco Episcopo 
 Cicestrensi, to whom, as soon as it came forth, he sent a 
 copy. Hare returned a courteous answer, but convey- 
 ing admonitory hints, at which Warburton must have 
 winced : 
 
 'Dear Sir, — I have this day received the favour of 
 yours of the 13th, with the kind present that attended it, 
 for wMch I give you many thanks. 
 
 ' You do me a great deal too much honour in inscribing 
 your remarks on Paterculus to me in the manner you have 
 done. As I have not the book by me, I am not so capa- 
 ble of judging of the truth of the emendations, but, upon 
 a slight view, see they are, many of them, very ingenious, 
 as all yoiu' things are, and seem to arise out of the context, 
 which is the best evidence there can be of the truth of 
 them. I wish your printers had done you more justice. 
 There are a great many typographical faults, and I think 
 some that must be imputed to the haste of the editor, 
 who seems to have attended more to the matter than to 
 his expression. Some of your emendations put me in 
 mind of what I remember to have heard a very ill-natm"ed, 
 but a very able critic, observe of Tanaquil Faber — that 
 he could see a fault very well, but did not always know 
 how to mend. It wdll, I presume, by nobody be thought 
 strange if that should be the case in some of your con- 
 jectures, when it is but an essay, or specimen, not an 
 edition, you give to the world. But as that is what you 
 have done, I think so ingenious a man, who knows how 
 easy it is to be mistaken in these matters, should generally 
 express himself with a seeming diffidence. 
 
1736.] LETTERS FROM BISHOP HARE. 61 
 
 ' You will forgive this liberty in one who is, with great 
 esteem, Dear Sir, 
 
 ' Your most faithful friend and humble servant, 
 
 ' Fr. Cicest.* 
 
 ' The Vache, near Garrard's Cross, Bucks, 
 ' Nov. 18, 1736.' 
 
 Under these strictures, Warburton could not rest in 
 silence, but addressed to the Bishop, in a letter which has 
 not been preserved, something in justification of his 
 critical attempts, mingled with many flattering compli- 
 ments to his lordship. Hare rephed with much good 
 sense, but with less of cordiality than he had shown in 
 his former epistle : 
 
 ' Vaohe, Dec. 4, 1736. 
 
 ' Sir, — I have the favour of yours of the 26th, which I 
 scarce know how to thank you for. You are by much 
 an overmatch for a plain man ; and, if I did not think 
 you a very good-natured man, and of a disposition 
 extremely obhging, I should suspect you thought me 
 a very weak one, to think myself entitled in any degree 
 to all the fine things you are pleased to say. In earnest, 
 I must desire you would drop all ceremony in your cor- 
 respondence with me. A man that can write so well 
 should not employ his pen in things so minecessary as 
 comphments. 
 
 ' You extend my hint about Tan. Eaber much farther 
 than I intended it ; nothing was farther from my thoughts 
 than to make the apphcation general. I know you can 
 and have made very fine emendations ; but sometimes the 
 ablest critic, who is sure he sees a fault, may, for want of 
 proper help, not be able to mend it with any degree of 
 certainty. He may restore the sense when he cannot 
 restore the words ; and, for that reason, all emendations, 
 though by the same hand, are not to be put upon a level, 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from "Warburton's Papers, p. 95. 
 
62 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. IH. 
 
 and consequently should not, in my opinion, be given 
 with the same- air of assurance. As I could not think 
 all your emendations upon Paterculus equally true, I 
 thmk the speaking of them in the same manner, instead 
 of giving weight or credit to bad or doubtful ones, does 
 really detract from good ones ; because many a reader, 
 who cannot make an emendation for himself, may yet be 
 so far a tolerable judge as to find sufficient reason to dis- 
 like where he should dishke in one or two instances ; 
 and if he finds them proposed with a show of certainty, 
 he wiU suspect the truth of others where he is not so 
 able to judge ; and, in truth, I have always found in fact, 
 that nothing hurts critics, and the art of criticism, so 
 much in the esteem of the generality of readers, next to 
 the ill treatment of one another, as the au-s of assurance 
 they are so apt to assume to themselves. The ground of 
 criticism is, indeed, in my opinion, nothing else but dis- 
 tinct attention, which every reader should endeavour to 
 be master of. Where there is in nature this ground-work, 
 every man will be a critic in proportion to the compass of 
 his learning in general, and upon each author in propor- 
 tion to the particular apphcation with which he has made 
 the book famihar to him. But I am talking to one who 
 has joined to a naturally clear attention, and just applica- 
 tion, a happy genius and a fine imagination, which I wish, 
 for the good of learning, you may very long enjoy ; and am, 
 ' Sir, your very faithful friend and servant, 
 
 ' Fe. Cicest.'* 
 
 Wliether Warburton made any reply to this letter is 
 unknown ; but the good feeling of the Bishop towards 
 him still continued. 
 
 To Conyers Middleton, also, he sent a copy of the notes 
 on Paterculus. Middleton repHed as follows : 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Wcarburton's Papers, p. 97. 
 
1736.] VELLEIUS PATEECULUS. G3 
 
 ' I had before seen the force of your critical genius very 
 successfully employed on Shakspeare, but did not know 
 you had ever tried it on the Latin authors. I am pleased 
 with several of your emendations, and transcribed them 
 into the margin of my edition, though not equally with 
 them all. It is a laudable and liberal amusement to try 
 now and then in our reading the success of a conjecture ; 
 but, in the present state of the generahty of the old 
 writers, it can hardly be thought a study fit to employ a 
 life upon ; at least not worthy, I am sure, of your talents 
 and industry, which, instead of trifling on words, seem 
 calculated rather to correct the opinions and manners of 
 the world.' 
 
 The truth doubtless was, that both Hare and Middleton 
 saw very well that Warburton was not hkely to do him- 
 self much credit by emendatory criticism. His alterations 
 in the text of Paterculus are of a similar character with 
 those which he made in the text of Shakspeare, and of 
 which both Conyers and the Bishop, perhaps from civihty, 
 and unwOhngness to be too severe, spoke with more 
 favour than most other readers have thought they de- 
 served. Two specimens of his corrections he sent, seven 
 years before, in a letter to Dr. Stukeley.* In the fourth 
 chapter of the first book, Paterculus says, Ciimas in Italid 
 condiderunt [Chalcidenses]. Pars horum civium magno 
 post intervallo Neapolim condidit. Utriusque urbis semper 
 eximia in Romanos fides. Sed aliis diligentior ritus patrii 
 mansit custodia. Cumanos Osca mutavit vicinia. ' Now, 
 I dare say,' said Warburton to Stukeley, ' the word aliis 
 sticks at first' sight pretty much with you, for you observe 
 this is ah the way a conjoint account of the two cities, 
 but in this part of the sentence it is dropped, and very 
 impertinently said others preserved their country rites 
 more dihgently ; which, certainly, so fine a writer could 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 7. 
 
64 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETON'. [Ch. III. 
 
 not be guilty of. I read, therefore, Sed Neapolis diligen- 
 tior ritus patrii mansit; which makes it a pertinent observ- 
 ation, and worthy the notice of an exact historian. And 
 it is not difficult to conceive Neapohs being corrupted to 
 aliis by a stupid copier.' It may, perhaps, be doubted 
 whether he meant Neapolis for Neapolitanis, or for the 
 genitive case of Neapolis. The first seems rather to have 
 been his meaning ; both are equally absurd. Euhnken, 
 more wisely than Warburton, thought of reading illis ; 
 but Jani and Krause, the editors of the best edition, who, 
 by-the-bye, seem never to have heard of Warburton's 
 attempts, for they make no mention of them in their 
 Prolegomena, very properly consider aliis to be for alteris, 
 an interchange easily supportable by example. 
 
 The other alteration is that of consors into consocer, 
 which is needless. 
 
 The emendations sent to the ' Bibhotheque Britannique ' 
 are thus entitled : ' Gidielmi Warburton, A.M., in C. 
 Velleii Patercuh Historias Emendationes. Ad amphssi- 
 mum vu'um,Theologorum hteratissimum, Criticorum scien- 
 tissimum, F.E.C. ; ' and are prefaced with some Warbur- 
 tonian remarks on the Philosophers, bearing very little 
 relation to Paterculus : — 
 
 ' Communis humanitatis scientia, quas unica sapienti 
 convenit, ex historicis, quemadmodum communis tantdm 
 dementia3, philosophis discitur ab antiquis. Hie enim 
 nihil nisi materiam in rerum naturii, ille ne vel hilum 
 hujus esse contendit. Hie materias portiones quasdam 
 facultate cogitationis dotatas esse opinatur ; ille etiam 
 incorporales, mente carentes, excogitat actores. Unus 
 propria de existentia dubitat ; alter vel sensuum denun- 
 ciationes omni erroris admistione liberatas, puras et inte- 
 gras semper manere, confidit. Hie insanus supra Deos 
 sapientem suum coUocat ; ille impurus infra bestias/e/zce/??- 
 deturbat. Fatuus quidam fabas serere reformidat ; im- 
 pudens alius homines, quacunque ingreditur vi^, serere 
 
1736.] NOTES ON PATERCULUS. 65 
 
 licitum esse clamat. Usque tamen, ut ingenue fateamur, 
 Historia ipsa cognatam sibi semper servat virilem digni- 
 tatem. Veruntamen si forte in hac pagelld secans cotem 
 novacula mentem hebetet, proximd vis virtutis, dum 
 imprimit se, et quasi signat gentis barbaraa ac ferocis in 
 animis vel suam speciem, mirifice nos afficit voluptate. 
 Si in hoc loco sanguinis infernus imber perfundat nos 
 horrore, coelesti priscas eloquenti^ rore derepente recrea- 
 mur. Hie, si bos obscoene vociferet, illic Eomas Athe- 
 narumque Genii Oracula divino afflatu fundentes audi- 
 untur. Fragmenta veterum historicorum quantivis igitur 
 pretii sunt gestimanda. Sane etiam inter hasc seculi felici- 
 oris ornamenta baud infimum locum tenet Caius Velleiiis 
 Paterculus. Cujus historici vis ingenii, quse quidem 
 summa fuit, non fugit quenquam in literis antiquis me- 
 diocriter versatum. Ob banc, quse in describendis, certis 
 signis, honiinum natrnds, elucet maxime, illorum Scripto- 
 rum, per quos Imperii res Eomani in compendia sunt 
 redactse, merit6 Principis nomine dignatus est.' 
 
 He then laments, that of all tbe manuscripts of Pater- 
 culus, one only remains ; and, in proof of the faultiness 
 of the printed text, quotes . Bentley ' In Tractatu eximio 
 contra neotericos quosdam pseudo-parrhesiastas : ' ' The 
 faults of the scribes are found so numerous, and the 
 defects beyond all redress, that, notwithstanding the pains 
 of the learnedest and acutest critics, for two whole cen- 
 turies, the work is stiU, and Hke to continue, a mere heap 
 of errors.' His first alteration is that of malo suo * to 
 in aula sua, and the second that of turn regem (or rex) 
 Syricef to iterum rediens e Syrid, both daring enough ; 
 for if Warburton had gained scholarship enough in his 
 early years to become fairly a critic on the classics, he 
 would have outdone the most audacious in audacity. 
 The next attempt is better : neque imitanda (or imitan- 
 dam)'^ into neque emendandam, which was approved by 
 
 *I. 6. t I. 10. t I- 17. 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. III. 
 
 the able Euhnken. But the reason for the change is 
 given in most unhappy Latin. Paterculus is speak- 
 ing of the old and new comedy : ' Prisca comoedia adum- 
 bratio tantum erat, sive primum comici operis hnea- 
 mentum, quod Nova perficere contendit atque absolvere. 
 Quum igitur de quodam comoedite genere, ut prioris 
 reformatione et emendatione, commemorare author insti- 
 tuisset, suum erat docere lectorem an Novas Comicse 
 artifices ad summum adduxerant eam, an opus erat pro- 
 fectu ulteriori.' Suum, and the indicatives adduxerant 
 and erat, are sad solecisms. The next attempt seems to 
 show that he did not see the construction, for he alters 
 et init alia, a manifest corruption, into et enitentes alias, 
 sc. urhes, where the sense requires the nominative ; the 
 later editors read, item ut alia;. The two following, 
 quippe — hue* into quce poenam — hunc, and sensibus 
 celehrem ^ into sensibus celerem, are two of his best. But 
 another, the change oipecunice expellebatur cup)idine% into 
 pecuniae pelhcebatur cupidine, is very unfortunate ; it 
 might be thought a misprint, if he did not add, in ex- 
 planation, ' Quern — regis artes ad pellicendum non vale- 
 bant, pecunias cupido pellicebat ;' for though pelliceo, as 
 the grammarians tell us, was used for pellicio, it was 
 assuredly found only in writers much older than Velleius 
 Paterculus. The other attempts at emendation are 
 but of httle importance ; but let us extract one more : 
 Paterculus speaks of Cassar, preparing to invade Britain, 
 as alterum pame imperio nostra ac suo qua^rens orbem; 
 Warburton turns ac suo into accisum, which, he says, is 
 very apphcable to an island, for ad in composition has 
 the same force as the Greek a^cj)/; so that accisi 
 (Britanni) means undique ccesi, or aixtpmoTroi. 
 
 Hurd says that Warburton was prompted to undertake 
 a commentary on Paterculus by being charmed with the 
 
 * n, 1. t 11. 9. X n. 33. 
 
1737.] VISITS SIE THOMAS HANMER. 67 
 
 elegance of his style ; but, to say the truth, Paterculus's 
 style has little elegance, though it has some resem- 
 blance to Warburton's own style in a certain portion of 
 dashing animation, with no lack of parentheses. The 
 Bishop is more fortunate in another remark, that the high 
 estimation in which emendatory criticism was held, at the 
 time when Warburton began to look about him in the 
 hterary world, naturally tempted a young man of enter- 
 prise to make some effort for distinction in that depart- 
 ment of scholarship. He was prepared to adopt the usual 
 critical pretext of condemning whatever he wished to 
 alter as having been corrupted by ' a stupid copier.' 
 
 In May, this year, he visited Sir Thomas Hanmer, at 
 his seat at Mildenhall, in Suffolk, on an invitation in 
 reference to Sir Thomas's projected edition of Shakspeare. 
 The acquaintance between them had been sought, as 
 Hanmer affirmed, by Warburton, but, as Warburton 
 asserted after Hanmer's death, by Sir Thomas, who had 
 made advances to him through Sherlock, then Bishop of 
 Salisbury. Their intercourse, however, which was very 
 friendly at first, soon became disturbed with the suspicions 
 of rivahy, and ended in estrangement and a violent 
 quarrel. Which of the two was the more to blame in 
 the disruption, we may defer examining till a subsequent 
 part of our narrative, when we shaU have to speak of 
 Warburton's edition of Shakspeare. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTOX. CCh. IV. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 ' THE DIVINE LEGATION.' — LOWTH. 
 
 ' THE DIVINE LEGATION OF MOSES ' PROJECTED ITS OBJECT WAE- 
 
 BUETOn'S REASONING HIS PROPOSITION THAT THE DOCTRINE OF A 
 
 FUTURE STATE WAS NOT TAUGHT BY THE JEWS OPINIONS OF GROTIUS, 
 
 EPISCOPIUS, AND BISHOP BULL WARBURTON's NOTIONS OF THE BOOK 
 
 OF JOB ; SUPPOSES THAT IT WAS WRITTEN BY EZRA HIS ARGUMENTS 
 
 IN SUPPORT OF THIS HYPOTHESIS HIS INTERPRETATION OF THE TEXT, 
 
 'l KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH ' LOWTh's OPPOSITION TO 
 
 WARBURTON's ASSERTION, THAT EZRA WAS THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK 
 
 OF JOB STYLE OF EZRA JOB PROBABLY AN IDUMiEAN THE AUTHOR 
 
 OF THE BOOK OF JOB PROBABLY A JEW. 
 
 ' rPHE Alliance between Cliurcli and State ' was a con- 
 X siderable effort, but it was notlaing to wliat Warburton 
 designed to accomplish, and had, indeed, already begun. 
 At the end of ' The Alliance ' he announced his intention 
 to publish a work, to be entitled ' The Divine Legation of 
 Moses demonstrated, on the Principles of a Eehgious 
 Theist, from the Omission of the Doctrme of a Future 
 State in the Jewish Dispensation.' 
 
 It had been argued by those whom Warburton de- 
 lighted to call Freethinkers, that the absence of the 
 doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments from 
 the religious system of Moses was a decisive proof that he 
 was an impostor, since it was incredible that any institu- 
 tion of reUgion coming from the Father of Lights, should 
 fail to support the belief in an existence after death, such 
 behef bemg absolutely necessary, as well to any scheme of 
 efficient government, as to the maintenance of any influ- 
 ential religious system. 
 
1738.] ARGUMENT OF 'THE DIVINE LEGATION.' 69 
 
 What the Freethinkers asserted as an argument against 
 the Divine original of the Jewish rehgion, and, conse- 
 quently, against that of the Christian rehgion, which is 
 founded on it, Warburton accepted as an evidence of the 
 Divine original of the one as well as of the other, and 
 undertook to show, first of all, that, since the Jewish 
 rehgion and pohty had no sanctions of a future state to 
 support them, they must have been under the immediate 
 protection of Heaven, or have been upheld by means of a 
 special and extraordinary providence. 
 
 His demonstration of this position he promised to 
 leave very little short of mathematical certainty, requiring 
 only the following postulatum to be granted him, which 
 he considered that all would aUow to be reasonable : 
 
 ' That a skilful lawgiver, estabhshing a rehgion and 
 civil pohcy, acts with certain views and for certain ends, 
 and not capriciously, or without purpose or design.' 
 
 This being granted, his proof was to be erected on 
 three very clear and simple propositions : 
 
 1. ' That to mculcate the doctrine of a future state of 
 rewards and punishments is necessary to the well-being of 
 civil society : 
 
 2. ' That all mankind, especially the most wise and 
 learned nations of antiquity, have concurred in beheving 
 and teaching that this doctrine was of such use to civil 
 society : 
 
 3. ' That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and 
 punishments is not to be found in, nor did make part of, 
 the Mosaic dispensation.' 
 
 ' Propositions so clear and evident,' he says, ' that, one 
 ■ would think, we might directly proceed to our con- 
 clusion : 
 
 'That therefore the law of Moses is of Divine original.' 
 
 The first two of these propositions might very well, it 
 
 may be thought, have been condensed into one. But the 
 
 conclusion that the law of Moses was of Divine origin, was 
 
70 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Ch. IV. 
 
 to be evinced by one or both of the two following 
 syllogisms : 
 
 ' Whatsoever rehgion and society have no future state 
 for their support must be supported by an extraordinary 
 providence : 
 
 ' The Jewish rehgion and society had no future state for 
 their support : 
 
 ' Therefore the Jewish rehgion and society were sup- 
 ported by an extraordinary providence.' 
 
 And again: 
 
 ' The ancient lawgivers universaUy beheved that such a 
 religion could be supported only by an extraordinary 
 providence : 
 
 ' Moses, an ancient lawgiver, versed in all the wisdom 
 of Egypt, purposely instituted such a religion : 
 
 ' Therefore, Moses beheved his rehgion was supported 
 by an extraordinary providence.' 
 
 One great point in this demonstration was to prove that 
 the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments 
 was certainly not to be found in anything, whether of a 
 civil or religious nature, that Moses taught the Jews ; and, 
 though Warburton does not enter formally on the proof 
 of this point till he reaches his sixth book, yet, in taking 
 a review of his work, it may, perhaps, be most satisfactory 
 to look to this particular first, and to examine how he 
 treats those texts of Scripture which were, and by many 
 still are, thought to show that Moses believed and taught 
 the doctrine of an existence after death. If Warburton 
 be right on this head, let him be acknowledged to be 
 right ; if he be in the wrong, let it be shown in what 
 respects his argumentation is unsound. But, whether he ' 
 be in the right, or whether he be in error, let us see how 
 he orders his cause ; for even those who think but little 
 of the question as a matter of theology, may like to see 
 how the author discusses it. 
 
 Kot only Freethinkers, or unbehevers in the divinity of 
 
1738.] OPINIONS IN SUPPORT OF WAKBUETON. 71 
 
 the mission of Moses, but some, also, among the assertors 
 and demonstrators of its Divine authority, had affirmed or 
 admitted that the doctrine of a future state was not to be 
 found in his legal or religious teaching. Among these 
 were Grotius, Episcopius or Bisschop, the Dutch theolo- 
 gian, and our own Bishop Bull. 
 
 ' Moses,' says Grotius, ' in his institu.tion of the Jewish 
 rehgion, promised, if we look to the express provisions of 
 his law, nothing beyond the blessings of the present life, 
 a fertile land, abundance of food, victory over enemies, a 
 long and vigorous old age, and a surviving offspring of 
 good character and promise. Certainly, if there be any- 
 thing beyond these specifications, it is enveloped in 
 obscurity, and can be discovered only by searching and 
 laborious inquiry.' 
 
 ' In the whole of the Mosaic law,' observes Episcopius, 
 ' there is no reward of eternal life proixdsed, nor is there 
 even any mention or intimation of an everlasting reward, 
 whatever the Jews may now say of a world to come, of 
 the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal hfe ; and 
 however they may strive to wrest, rather than to demon- 
 strate those doctrines, from the words of the law of 
 Moses, lest they should be obliged to acknowledge that 
 law to be imperfect, as did the Sadducees, who, though 
 they were Jews, yet certainly affirmed in old times, and, 
 as I learn from the writings of the Eabbis, continue to 
 affirm at present, that hfe in a future state is neither pro- 
 mised nor signified in the law of Moses, declaring that 
 the notion or behef of an existence after death had been 
 disseminated only through the cabala, or tradition, which 
 they altogether rejected. Indeed, the discrepancy of 
 opinions among the Jews regarding life in a world to 
 come proves whatever promises were made in the law to 
 have been of such a nature that nothing certain con- 
 cerning a future state can be deduced from them. This 
 even our Saviour plainly intimates, when he signifies the 
 
72 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTOX. [Ch. IV. 
 
 resurrection of the dead, in the twenty-second chapter of 
 St. Matthew, not from any promise attached to the Law, but 
 only from that general promise of God by which he had 
 engaged to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; 
 which inference rests, however, rather on the knowledge 
 of the Divine intention, concealed or comprehended under 
 that general expression (of which intention Christ was 
 fuUy aware), rather than on any necessary consequence, 
 or on any evident force or meaning of the words, such as 
 now appears in the words of the New Testament, when 
 eternal life and the resurrection of the dead constitute 
 the Alpha and Omega of the Christian rehgion, and are 
 promised so clearly and expressly that no one can raise a 
 question about it.'* 
 
 Bishop Bull's words are as follow : — ' It is inquired 
 whether no promise at ah of eternal hfe is to be found in 
 the Old Testament ; for some entertain doubts on the sub- 
 ject. To this question Augustine seems to me to reply 
 very well, distinguishing the senses in which the temi Old 
 Testament is to be understood ; for he observes that we 
 may understand by it, either that covenant which was 
 made on Mount Sinai, or everything that is contained in 
 the books of Moses, the Hagiographa, and the Prophets. 
 If the word Old Testament is taken in the latter sense, it 
 may perhaps be admitted that there are in it some intima- 
 tions, not altogether obscure, of a future state of existence, 
 especially in the Books of Psalms, Daniel, and Ezekiel ; 
 although even in these we shall find it very difficult to 
 discover a clear and express promise of eternal life. But 
 these intimations, such as they are, were only preludes 
 and anticipations of the grace of the Gospel, and had no 
 bearing on the Law ; for the promises of the Law had 
 regard to things on the earth, and on the earth only. If 
 any one declares himself of a contrary opinion, it will be 
 
 * Instit. Theol. iii. 1, 2. 
 
1738.] EXAMINATION OF TEXTS. 73 
 
 his business to point out a passage in which a promise of 
 eternal hfe is given ; and to do this is certainly impos- 
 sible. — Yet that under these words [of the law] was 
 comprehended eternal hfe by the purpose of God, is 
 manifest from the interpretation of Christ himself and his 
 Apostles. But this will not enable us to say that eternal 
 hfe was promised in the Mosaic covenant ; for promises, 
 in connexion with a covenant, ought to be clear and 
 express, so that they may be distinctly understood by 
 each of the contracting parties. But these typical and 
 general promises, unattended with any extrinsic inter- 
 pretation, it is almost impossible for any one to understand 
 in that sense.' * 
 
 What behevers or unbelievers had asserted or con- 
 jectured on this subject, Warbm'ton undertook to prove 
 to the conviction of all men. All the texts in the Old 
 Testament that seemed to indicate a knowledge of a future 
 state as a popular article of belief among the Jews, were 
 to be demonstrated incapable of bearing that sense. The 
 explanation in the Book of Job, 'I know that my Eedeemer 
 liveth, and that he shall stand in the latter day upon the 
 earth,' a text which has been constantly quoted as evidence 
 not only that the Jews looked forward to a future state, 
 but had an anticipation of the resurrection of the 
 body and of the redemption of mankind, was to be the 
 first brought under examination ; partly because of the 
 supposed strength of the text itself, and partly because of 
 the supposed antiquity of the book that contains it ; a book 
 which some have thought to be the work of Moses himself, 
 and some that of a writer who hved before Moses' time. 
 
 As to the age of the book, Warbm-ton, in opposition to 
 aU those who pronounce it as early as the days of Moses, 
 or earlier, boldly asserted that it was written some time 
 
 * Bull's Harmon. Apostol. Dissert, ii. c. x. § 8. Op. Om. p. 474, 
 ed. 1721. 
 
74 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cu. IV. 
 
 between the return of the Jews from captivity, and their 
 thorough settlement in their own country, at the time 
 when the extraordinary providence, which, as he says, 
 had supported and protected the Jews, during the 
 legal dispensation, was beginning to fail, as is seen in 
 the circumstances of Ezra, who, when returning with 
 Artaxerxes' commission, was ashamed to ask the king for 
 a guard against enemies, because he had told him that 
 special protection would be afforded him by the Almighty ; 
 but in this expectation he was deceived ; and the long 
 persecutions which he and his followers experienced from 
 their idolatrous neighbours taught them how different 
 was their condition from that of their forefathers. The 
 assertions that there are no allusions in this book to the 
 Jews, at least to the state of the Jews under the Mosaic 
 dispensation, Warburton sets utterly at nought ; affirming 
 that the cliaracter of Job himself is but a representation 
 of the Jewish people, and that many things which are 
 said of Job are but descriptive of the condition of the 
 Jewish people at the time of Moses, and in subsequent 
 days. Thus, when Satan says, ^ Hast thou not made a 
 hedge about him?' this is an allusion to the state of the 
 Israelites as a selected nation. When Job says, ^ I shall 
 sleep in the dust, and thou shalt seek me in the morning, 
 but I shall not be,' the ill fortunes of the Jews on their 
 return from captivity are signified, and they are to be 
 understood as complaining that God seemed to have left 
 them to destruction. Job, in his prosperity, signifies the 
 IsraeHtes under the care of an extraordinary providence ; 
 in his affliction, the IsraeHtes, when the extraordinaryprovi- 
 dence was withdrawing from them. When Job speaks of 
 troops coming against him, and of his brethren being put 
 from liim, the Jews are to be conceived as exclaiming against 
 the Ammonites and Ashdodites, and against their richer 
 brethren, who had pusillanimously remained in Babylon. 
 When the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, and 
 
1738.] WAEBURTON ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 75 
 
 says, ' Who is he that darheneth counsel by words without 
 knowledge V the prophets are to be imagmedas rebuking 
 the people of Israel, and accusing them of loearying the 
 Lord with ivords without manifesting obedience. Job's 
 wife, who speaks as a fool and a Pagan, is the representa- 
 tive of the idolatrous women with whom Ezra rebuked 
 his followers for having formed connexions. Job's three 
 friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who come professedly 
 to comfort, but in reality exasperate him, are Sanballat 
 the Horonite, Tobiah the servant of the Ammonite, and 
 Geshem the Arabian, who offered to join in building the 
 temple with Ezra and his party, but, finding their advances 
 ill received, became the greatest opponents of the building. 
 Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, whose spirit con- 
 strained him to speak, was the writer of the Book of Job 
 himself, appearing in the character of a true prophet, 
 refusing to accept any man's person, or to give flattering 
 titles to men ; and Job's forbearance to answer EUhu 
 represents the repentance of the Jews on the preaching of 
 the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Satan's 
 attempts, too, on Job, it should be observed, signify the 
 attacks which Satan, according to the prophet Zechariah, 
 made about this time on the Jewish people. Job's silent 
 acquiescence, under the aclmonitions of the Divinity, is an 
 admonition to the nation of obedience and submission 
 under the ordinary dispensations of Providence ; and God's 
 giving Job twice as much as he had before is the fulfil- 
 ment of the prophecy to the Jews in the Book of Zechariah, 
 -I will render double unto thee.' 
 
 It seemed proper to notice this interpretation of the 
 Book of Job thus at length, because it is an illustration of 
 the mode in which Warburton could find or make re- 
 semblances to suit his purposes. The Book of Job he 
 concludes to be a work of imagination, written to illus- 
 trate the Jewish history, though, doubtless. Job himself 
 had a real existence. In inquiring into the authorship 
 
76 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOK. [Ch. IV. 
 
 of it, he considers, with Locke,* that it is sufficiently 
 proved that the writer was a Jew, by Job's saying that 
 idolatry was an iniquity to he punished by the judge; 
 a sentiment that could have proceeded from none 
 but a Jew, and must have been expressed after the giving 
 of the law. He conceives, also, contrary to the common 
 opinion, that there are many allusions in the Book to the 
 state of the Jews, and occurrences among them, under the 
 rule of Moses and the times that succeeded it ; for example, 
 the passage, God divideth the sea with His might, and by 
 His understandmg he smiteth through the proud, refers to 
 the destruction of Pharaoh and lois host ; the words. He 
 commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the 
 stars, alludes to the Egyptian darkness and the arrest of 
 the sun's course under Joshua ; and his flesh shall he 
 fresher than a child's, has regard to the recovery of 
 Hezekiah by the laying of a lump of figs on the hail. 
 And having thus settled that it was written by a Jew, and 
 with aUusions to the Jewish history, he supposes the reader 
 will concur with him in judging that the writer could hardly 
 have been other than Ezra, who was a ready scribe in the 
 Law of Moses, who settled the canon, and made a correct 
 edition of the Scriptures, and who ' is reasonably supposed 
 to be the author of the Books of Chronicles and Esther.' 
 
 The inquuy about the Book and its writer is but pre- 
 paratory to the decision on the true interpretation of the 
 words, I knoiv that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall 
 stand at the latter day upon the earth ; and though, after 
 my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall T 
 see God ; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
 behold, and not another. That they are to be understood, 
 not of a resurrection from the dead, bu.t of a temporal deli- 
 verance from afflictions, Warburton of course asserts without 
 scruple : first, because to interpret them of a resmTCction 
 
 * Third Letter for Toleration. 
 
1738,] JOB SILENT CONCERNING A EESUERECTION. 77 
 
 from the dead would be repugnant to the whole tenor of 
 the argument runnmg through the speeches of Job and 
 his friends, and to interpret them of a temporal deh- 
 verance is perfectly agreeable to it ; secondly, because the 
 design of the Book, on Warburton's explanation, abso- 
 lutely requires a reference to a temporal deliverance ; and 
 tliirdly, because a spiritual sense of the words is contrary 
 to Job's express declarations in other places, when he says 
 that there is hope of a tree, if it be cast doivn, that it may 
 sprout again, but that there is no hope of a revivification of 
 man, and that he that goeth down to the grave shall come 
 up no more. Had the doctrine of a resurrection from 
 death to a state of bhss been urged by Job, the question 
 in dispute, respecting the unhappiness of good men upon 
 the earth, would, if Job's friends deemed the doctrine 
 true, have been decided at once ; or, if they deemed it 
 false, it would have been their business to confute it ; but 
 they do neither ; they neither argue against it, nor allow 
 it to be decisive. Zophar, who speaks after Job, takes 
 no notice of any new matter having been introduced into 
 the discussion, but answers, if we suppose a resurrection 
 from the dead to be meant, wide of the purpose ; nor 
 does Ehhvi, as moderator in the dispute, nor the Divinity, 
 as the great Decider of it, make the least allusion to the 
 doctrine of a resurrection, though an enforcement of the 
 doctrine would have dispelled all difficulties. 
 
 The true sense of the passage, therefore, according to 
 Warburton, is such as is given in a recent Enghsh 
 paraphrase of Job's speech : ' I believe that God Hves to 
 vindicate me, and that He will hereafter justify me to my 
 fellow-men. And, though my flesh be wasted, yet, ere I 
 am utterly consumed, I shall find Him become my 
 Supporter. I shall exjierience His protection myself, and 
 not merely hear of it as felt by others ; and my body, 
 though weak, shall from Him receive strength.' 
 
 Those who affirm that the text is to be understood of a 
 
78 
 
 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBURTON. LCh. IV. 
 
 resurrection from tlie dead, and who, at the same time, 
 attribute the authorship of the Book to Moses, must, it has 
 been pertinently observed,* satisfactorily answer the 
 question why Moses, 'who here speaks so plainly and 
 literally of a resurrection, spoke so obscurely of it in the 
 Pentateuch, where, if it is indicated at all, it is indicated 
 only under the cloud of types and figures. 
 
 In addition, it is remarked by Warburton, that resur- 
 rection from the dead, or hfe after death, is noticed by 
 the prophets and other writers in the Scriptures, only to 
 signify what is most unhkely to come to pass. Thus, in 
 the Psalms, it is said, ' Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? 
 Shall the dead arise and praise thee f And when Ezekiel 
 was shown, in a vision, the vaUey of dry bones, and was 
 asked. Can these dry hones live ? he does not answer as 
 one who had been brought up in the belief or knowledge 
 of a resurrection, but speaks as one surprised at the 
 question, and to whom the thought of a return to life was 
 strange, uttering only the words, Lord God, thou knowest. 
 
 But let it be observed, that Warburton's hypothesis 
 concerning the time at which the Book of Job was written, 
 and his ascription of it to Ezra, have found favour in the 
 estimation of few. His pretended allusions in it to the 
 condition and history of the Jews are universally regarded 
 as forced and fanciful ; and nobody has concurred in the 
 opinion that any one of Job's friends represented Tobiah 
 or Sanballat. In attributing the work to Ezra, he forgot 
 to consider one particular, which, however, as he was far 
 from being quahfied to judge of it, may be thought to 
 have escaped him not unnaturally. He forgot to attend to 
 the style, which is quite sufficient to exclude Ezra from 
 having had any share in the composition of it. This omis- 
 sion gave Lowth, when he and Warburton came to strife, 
 opportunity for some very sarcastic remarks, indicating 
 
 * Towne'a ' Argument of the Div. Legat. fairly stated,' p. 134. 
 
1738.] LOWTHS REFUTATION OF WAEBURTON. 79 
 
 that, though Warburton called himself the only commen- 
 tator that had rendered the Book of Job intelligible, he 
 had never qualified himself for comment on it by reading the 
 work in the original. Wlien Warburton, at length, found 
 himself obliged to say something about the style, he 
 brought himself into a worse condition than that in which 
 he had placed himself by his silence. He made assertions 
 utterly inconsistent one with another ; he affirmed that 
 there was no possibility of forming a judgment concerning 
 the age of any one of the writers of the Old Testament 
 from his style and manner, and treated all pretences to 
 such judgment as silly and pedantic ; yet he declared, 
 at the same time, that the style of Ezra proved him to 
 have written when the Hebrew language was in the same 
 state of cultivation as that of Eome in the time of Virgil, 
 and that the Hebrew of Job might be set in comparison 
 with the Latin of Ennius, whom he commended for ' the 
 beauty and weight of his elegance.' 
 
 To this Lowth retorted, that Warburton could never 
 have read either Job or Ezra in the original ; that the 
 author of the Book of Job was a poet, and that Ezra was 
 not even a semi-barbarous poet hke Ennius, being, indeed, 
 no poet at all ; and that Le Clerc, who, hke Warburton, 
 had thought of makmg the Book of Job subsequent to 
 the captivity, had too much knowledge of the original to 
 pronounce Ezra the writer of it, being well aware that 
 Ezra was as unsuitable an author for it as he could have 
 chosen, his style being dry and unadorned, and savouring, 
 as Michaelis had observed, not of the golden, but of the 
 iron age, of Hebrew. Job, he observed, was rather the 
 Homer than the Ennius of the Hebrew classics. ' Let any- 
 one,' said he, 'properly quahfiecl to judge in this matter, read 
 the plain historical narrative in the two first chapters of 
 Job ; it is neat, concise, clear in its order and method, 
 pure and elegant in its expression ; let him turn to Ezra, 
 and find, if he can, a single Hebrew chapter on which he 
 
80 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cii. IV. 
 
 can, with a safe conscience, bestow any part of this com- 
 mendation. Let him, moreover, take into account this 
 last autlior's barbarous terms ; and then let him tell me 
 fairly whether he does not find as much difference between 
 these two writers as between Sallust and William of 
 Malmsbury. Let him next look into the poetical parts of 
 Job, and let him compare them with any part of Ezra's 
 undoubted writings ; and I would ask him whether he 
 would not as soon pitch upon Geofliy of Monmouth for 
 the author of the iEneid, if that were a doubtful point, as 
 Ezra for the author of the poem of Job ; and I should 
 not much doiibt of his answering in the affirmative.' 
 That he could have been the author of the Books of 
 Chronicles and the Book of Esther, Lowth utterly denies ; 
 for the Books of Chronicles are a mere collection from 
 previous writers, which Ezra may have compiled, but 
 certainly did not write ; and, though the narrative of 
 Esther is much in Ezra's style, yet the matter of it is of a 
 better description than that of the Book of Ezra. 
 
 On the whole, most critics, since Lowth, have agreed 
 with him in supposing that the age of Job was as early, if 
 not earher, than that of Moses, and that the country of 
 Job was the land of Edom, part of Arabia Petrasa. ' The 
 country of Job,' says he, ' was upon the borders of Egypt ; 
 and the age of Job was when the empu-e of Egypt was 
 arrived at a high degree of improvement in all the arts of 
 civil society. The country of Job must have had a con- 
 siderable communication with Egypt, by means of the 
 great commerce which was cai-ried on between aU the 
 Eastern countries and Egypt, great part of which must 
 pass through Edom ; and it was a country of great repu- 
 tation for TOsdom, for "authors of fables, and searchers 
 out of understanding ;" a reputation probably derived 
 from ancient times.'* 
 
 * Lowth's Letter to Warburton, p. 74, seqq. De Sacril Poesi Hebr. 
 Prrel. xxxii. not. 1. 
 
1738.] AUTirOESHIP OF ' JOB.' 81 
 
 Locke's opinion, that the mention of idolatry as punish- 
 able by the judge, is sufficient to prove the author of the 
 book a Jew, Lowth strenuously opposes, arguing that 
 idolatry may have been punishable by the magistrate in 
 other countries besides Judfea, and under the patriarchs 
 before the time of the Mosaic dispensation. Locke, 
 indeed, may have laid somewhat too much stress upon 
 this expression ; it may have been intended only as one of 
 strong reprobation ; and the worship of more gods than 
 one may have been regarded as foohsh or vicious in other 
 countries besides Judasa, at least among the more intelh- 
 gent and reasoning class of the community. Job uses the 
 same form of words, in the same chapter, in condemnation 
 of adultery. 
 
 Yet the mode in which the author of the Book of Job 
 speaks of God, and many expressions, though fewer than 
 Warburton represents, apphcable to the Jewish rehgion 
 and history throughout the book, will always leave the 
 question, whether the writer was a Jew or not, liable to 
 discussion. 
 
LIFE OF BISHOP WABBUKTON. [Ch. V. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 'THE DIVINE LEGATION.' 
 
 CONSIDEKATION OF OTHER PASSAGES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT THAT 
 SEEM TO INDICATE THAT THE JEWS LOOKED FORWARD TO A FUTURE 
 STATE ; WHETHER MERELY AS A STATE OF EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL 
 APART FROM THE BODT, OR AS A STATE OF REWARDS AND PUNISH- 
 
 SrENTS TEXTS IN BOOKS OF MOSES ; IN THE PSALMS ; IN THE BOOK 
 
 OF ECCLESIASTES FANCIFUL INTERPRETATIONS EXAMINATION OF 
 
 THE TEXTS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT THAT SEEM TO FAVOUR THE BE- 
 LIEF IN A FUTURE STATE AMONG THE JEWS TEXTS ADDRESSED TO 
 
 THE SADDUCEES PARABLE OF THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS THE 
 
 ANSWER TO THE LAWYER. 
 
 HAVING settled the meaning of the great passage in 
 the Book of Job, Warburton proceeds to consider 
 tlie other passages in the Old Testament which have been 
 supposed to indicate that the Jews looked for a world 
 to come. These passages are of two kinds: such as are 
 thought to testify merely to the immortahty of the soul, or 
 its existence apart from the body ; and such as are thought 
 to demonstrate a resurrection of the body, and a futiu'e 
 state of reward and punishment. 
 
 Of the first kind is the text at the beginning of Genesis, 
 And God .^iiid, Let us make mail in our image, after oivt 
 likeness, and let them have dominion over the beasts, &c., 
 And God created man in his own image, in the image of 
 God created he him. These words are understood by many 
 to signify that man was made like God, by being endned 
 Avith an immaterial and immortal soul ; but Warburton 
 supposes that man's hkeness to God consisted in being 
 gifted with reason, which was the only qualification that 
 
1738.] EXAMINATION OF TEXTS., 83 
 
 could maintain him in that dominion over the brute 
 creation, which is at the same time conferred upon him. 
 To support this interpretation he adduces the opinion of 
 Philo-Juda3US, who, alluding to this text, says, Aoyog la-riv 
 Bixwv ©SOU, 'Eeason is the image of God.' Certainly it 
 would be hard to deduce the unmortahty of the soul from 
 the text. 
 
 The next passage of this sort is, And the Lord God 
 formed wan of the dust of the ground, and breatlied into 
 his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a hving 
 soul. This is imderstood to mean that man received 
 a soul, which, as it hved then, would hve for ever. 
 ' But this,' says Warburton, ' is only buildmg on the 
 strength of an English expression.' Everyone knows 
 that what the translation calls a living soul, signifies in 
 the original a living animal : hence the same writer 
 speaks of a dead soul, as well as a living soid. Thus in 
 the Book of Numbers (vi. 6) it is said of the Nazarite, lie 
 shall come at no dead body; where the same word, nephesh, 
 which is spoken of Adam as a living animal, is used, with 
 its proper accompaniment, to denote a body that is dead ; 
 and the same word is used in the same Avay in the Book 
 of Leviticus, xxi. 1 and 11. 'And indeed,' continues 
 Warbm-ton, ' not only the propriety of the terms, but the 
 very sense of the context, requires us to confine the mean- 
 ing of living soul to living animal. God, the great 
 plastic Artist, is here represented as making and shaping 
 out a figure of earth or clay, which He afterwards animates 
 or inspires Avith life. He breathed, says the sacred historian, 
 into this statue the breath of life, and the lump became a 
 Hving creature. But St. Paul, I hope, may be believed, 
 whatever becomes of my explanation, who thus comments 
 on the very text in question : — And so it was writt.en, the 
 first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was 
 made a quickening spirit. Here we find the apostle is so 
 far from understanding any immortality in this account of 
 
 G 2 
 
84 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [C«. V. 
 
 man's creation, that Jie opposes the mortal animal Adam 
 to the immortal-making spirit of Christ.' 
 
 The next text is the address to the serpent : I will put 
 enviity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed 
 and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt 
 bruise his heel; a promise from which the Jews would 
 doubtless form a notion of some mysterious means by which 
 the evil spirit, that actuated the serpent, would, though he 
 continued his enmity to man, be at length defeated by 
 man through Divine assistance ; but they would scarcely 
 draw from it a belief in hfe and immortahty after death. 
 
 The last text of this nature is one on which more stress 
 may justly appear to be laid. Jacob says, I shall go down 
 into the grave to my son mourning, and ye will bring down 
 my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, where the word for 
 the grave is scheol, denoting, as it is generally interpreted, 
 the Hebrew Orcus or Hades, the place in which souls, 
 after they are separated from their bodies, dwell. The 
 evidence to be drawn from this passage, and from others 
 where the same word occurs, for the behef of the Jews, as 
 early as the days of the patriarchs, in an existence after 
 death, Warburton does not attempt to overthrow, ad- 
 mitting that there must have been a notion among them, 
 in the earhest times, of some common receptacle of souls, 
 from wliich the saying of a man being gathered to his 
 fathers, and gathered to his people, doubtless had its rise ; 
 though, that as httle weight as possible may be attributed 
 to those expressions, he suggests that they may have been 
 derived by the Hebrews from some other people, and that 
 they are used by Moses for no other purpose than to 
 signify the termination of existence on earth. 
 
 But none of all these passages, certainly, will prove that 
 the doctrine of a future Ufe formed any part of the teach- 
 ing of Moses. 
 
 There remain to be considered those other texts which 
 
1738. J TEXTS IN OLD TESTAMENT. 85 
 
 are supposed to denote that a future state of reward and 
 punishment, together with a resurrection of the body, was 
 taught in the Mosaic law. Some, indeed, have brought an 
 argument for this notion from the sense and purport of 
 the whole Jewish law, which being, they say, entirely 
 typical or spiritual, aU its promises and denunciations of 
 temporal good and evil foreshadowed a future state of 
 reward and punishment. But this is mere visionary and 
 groundless conceit, as it would intimate that there was 
 nothing in reality bearing on the land of Caiiaan, or on 
 the temporal condition of the Jews, in all the Mosaic law, 
 but that everything in it had reference to a hfe beyond 
 the grave. 
 
 The particular texts, thought to favour the opinion of a 
 resurrection and a future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments, Warburtqn discusses in the following order. God 
 says to Abraham, ' I will give unto thee, and to thy seed 
 after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the 
 land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession ; ' but, say 
 those of the opposite opinion to Warburton, God gave 
 Abraham no inheritance in the land of Canaan, and 
 therefore must have given him some blessing in another 
 hfe to fulfil the promise. Warburton considers the pro- 
 mise to have been sufficiently fulfilled by the bestowal of 
 the land on Abraham's posterity as his representafive ; 
 and adds that the gift of a heavenly Canaan to Abraham 
 could not have been a fiUfilment of the promise, because 
 an earthly Canaan was the immediate and express subject 
 of it. 
 
 Balaam says, in his interview with Balak, Let me die 
 the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his ; 
 an exclamation by which he is understood to wish that he 
 might be partaker of happiness with the righteous in 
 another life. ' Had the apostate prophet said,' remarks 
 Warburton, ' Let me live the life of the righteous, it would 
 have had a much fairer claim for such a meaning ; as it 
 
86 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTOX. [Ch. V. 
 
 is, both tlie force of the words, and their relation to the 
 context, restrain us to this Uteral meaning, " Let me die in 
 a mature old age, after a life of health and peace, with all 
 my posterity flourishing about me ; as was the lot of the 
 righteous observers of the law." This vain wish Moses, 
 I suppose, recorded, that the subsequent account of his 
 immature death in battle might make the stronger im- 
 pression on the serious reader, to warn him against the 
 impiety and foUy of expecting the last reward of virtue 
 for a life spent in the gratification of every corrupt appe- 
 tite. But if any one wiU say the words have, besides, a 
 sublimer meaning, I have no reason to contend with him.' 
 
 It is said in the Book of Leviticus,* Ye shall therefore 
 keep my statutes and judgments, which if a man do, hS 
 shall live in them. Some have said that the life promised 
 in this text is eternal fife ; but the foUy of such a perver- 
 sion is patent to aU who know anything of the use of 
 similar expressions in other parts of the Scripture. 
 
 Li noticing another passage of Leviticus,-]' Warburton, 
 in a later' edition, made sport of Dr. Eutherforth, author 
 of the ' Essay on Virtue,' who became one of his assailants; 
 and though to quote Warburton's strictures on him here 
 may seem too much of anticipation, yet I wiU ventm^e to 
 give them. A law in the third book of Moses is stated 
 thus*: 'Whoever he be of the children of Israel, or of 
 the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of 
 his seed imto Molech, he shall surely be put to death.' 
 ' Let me,' says Warburton, ' first explain the text, before 
 I show how it is perverted ' by Dr. Eutherforth. ' There 
 were two cases in which the offender here described 
 might escape punishment ; either the crime could not be 
 legally proved, or the magistrate might be remiss in 
 punishing. The Divine lawgiver obviates both ; and 
 declares that the infanticide, in such case, shall suffer 
 
 * xviii. 5. + XX. 2. 
 
1738.] TEXTS IN THE PSALMS. 87 
 
 death by God's own hand in an extraordinary manner. 
 ..." And if the people of the land do any ways hide 
 their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto 
 Molech, and kill him not, then I wiU set my face against 
 that man, and against his family, and wiU cut him off." 
 So much for the sense of the text. And now for the 
 nonsense of our interpreter, a professor of law and 
 divinity, the egregious Dr. Eutherforth. This provision 
 for the execution of the law our professor being totally 
 unconscious of, he insists that " cuttiiig off from among his 
 people can only mean eternal damnation, the being con- 
 signed to a state of punishment in another life." He is, as 
 I say, a dealer both in law and divinity ; but not having 
 yet learned the use of his tools, he confomads law by 
 theology, and depraves theology by law ... To regulate 
 a httle his law ideas, let him turn to Exodus xii. 15, and 
 Leviticus vii. 25, and he will find that the cutting off from 
 Israel, and the cutting off' from the people, are phrases 
 which signify only capital punishment of a civil kind ; 
 unless he will suppose that what is there threatened for 
 eating leavened bread and prohibited fat is eternal life in 
 torments.' 
 
 Coming to the Psalms, we find, in the sixteenth, this 
 passage : ' Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither 
 wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Thou 
 wilt show me the path of hfe ; in thy presence is fuh:iess 
 of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for ever- 
 more.' The words, Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, 
 though they afterwards received a spiritual meaning, were 
 used by David only with a temporal view, in the sense of 
 ' Thou wilt not suffer me to faU immaturely,' as was the 
 lot of the transgressors of the law ; and so to find joy in 
 the presence of God signified the same as to appear before 
 the Ark (Ps. xvii. 15), and to enjoy pleasures there for 
 evermore the same as to dwell in the house of the Lord for 
 ever, that is, all his days (Ps. xxiii. 6). Similar passages 
 
83 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBUETON. CCh. V. 
 
 occur in the forty-ninth and seventy-third Psalms. ' But 
 the texts of texts,' adds Warbnrton, ' the precious ones 
 indeed, are those where a hell is mentioned ; as here, 
 Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell ; and of this orthodox 
 consolation there is no scarcity in the Old Testament. 
 Mr. Whiston assures us " it is almost five times as often 
 mentioned there as in the New." It may be so. How- 
 ever, instead of examining mto the justness of this nice 
 calculation, I shall choose rather to consider what is 
 to be understood by the word, than how often it is 
 repeated. Now, !• suppose,' no one ' can have any reason- 
 able objection to St. John's authority in this matter, who, 
 speaking in the Book of Eevelation, of the useless old 
 furniture of the law, says, " And death and hell were cast 
 into the lake of fire ; this is the second death." From 
 hence it appears, that the hell of the Old Testament was 
 a very different thing from the hell of the New, called the 
 lake of fire ; since the one is made the punishment, or at 
 least the extinction of the other. And, to remove all 
 doubt, the' Apostle, we see, calls this casting into the lake 
 a second death. Must not, then, the lake itself be a second 
 hell f And if so, coidd the first, or the Old Testameut 
 hell, be any other than the groove 1 ' On this exphcation 
 Warburton's reader may set what estimation he pleases. 
 
 In another passage the Psalmist says, ' Deliver my soul 
 from the wicked, from the men of the world, which have 
 their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fiUest with 
 thy hid treasure. As for me, I wiU behold thy face in 
 righteousness. I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy 
 likeness.' But as to the term this life, the original is a 
 phu-al word, in vitis, having no singular, referring only tO 
 hfe in this world, and not being opposed, as our translators 
 would seem to intimate, to hfe in another world. The 
 Septuagint translators render it, in their life ; the sense of 
 the whole being ' they have their portion, or full share, of 
 hfe ;' that is, they are perfectly prosperous. The other 
 
1738.] TEXTS IN ECCLESIASTES. 89 
 
 words, / shall be satisfied, when I awalce, with thy likeness, 
 are susceptible, according to the commentators and trans- 
 lators, of so many renderings, and so many explanations, 
 tliat it is difficult to know to what sense of them to attach 
 the most weight ; the Seventy render them at the appear- 
 ing of thy glory; the Syriac version, w/ien thy fidelity shall 
 awake ; and Castalio, when thy likeness shall be awaked. 
 But many interpreters, of the highest estimation, who refer 
 the awaking to David, suppose it to allude to ' his morning 
 adorations before the Ark, the symbohc residence of the 
 Divine presence.' 
 
 Again, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all 
 the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the 
 Lord for ever* But here the house of the Lord signifies 
 merely the tabernacle or the temple ; and for ever, or to 
 length of days, as it is in the original, means only that 
 mature old age which was to be expected by the righteous; 
 Other passages in the Psalms of a similar nature may be 
 explained in a similar manner. 
 
 Looking to the Book of Ecclesiastes, we find the 
 Preacher saying, Wisdom giveth life to them that have it, 
 but this wisdom, like the law of Moses, offers only the 
 things of this hfe. But he also says. Rejoice, young 
 man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days 
 of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in 
 the sight of thine eyes ; but know thou that for all these 
 things God will bring thee to judgment. Is not this a 
 stronger passage, it may be asked, iti favour of a future 
 state ? Does it not intimate retribution to be expected 
 in anotlier world ? No, says "Warburton, the sense is 
 simply, ' In giving an innocent and lawful indulgence to 
 thy youth, take heed lest thou transgress the bounds of 
 virtue and piety. Eor know that God vsdU certainly 
 punish thy offences, either in thy own person or in thy 
 posterity.' 
 
 * Ps. xxiii. 6. 
 
90 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. V. 
 
 Tliese are all the most prominent texts of the Old 
 Testament which are urged, whether by Jews or Chris- 
 tians, in support of a future state and of the resurrection 
 of the dead. ' But, besides these,' says Warburton, ' the 
 Jews have a set of texts peculiar to themselves, which the 
 Christians have never yet ventiu-ed to put upon duty. As 
 they are most of them of the nature of riddles, riddles, 
 for me, they shall remain ; only, for the curious reader's 
 satisfaction, I shall mark out what the Eabbins bring from, 
 the Pentateuch to prove the immortahty of the soul and 
 the resurrection of the body, as they are collected by the 
 learned Manasseh Ben-Israel, in his tract, De Resurrectione 
 Mortuorum.' Warburton then enumerates seventeen texts 
 of this enigmatical kind, though not all from the Penta- 
 teuch, of. which it will be sufficient to quote one or two 
 specimens, to show of what material a learned Eabbi may 
 avail himself for arguments. One is, ' Then Bathsheba 
 bowed with her face to the earth, and did reverence to 
 the king, and said, Let my lord King David hve for ever.'* 
 Another is, ' Thou shalt not take the dam with the young, 
 but thou shalt in any wise let the dam go, that it may be 
 well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.'f 
 ' But,' contmues the author of The Divine Legation, 
 ' though the reader will find many diverting things on 
 this head in Manasseh Ben-Israel, yet they must all give 
 place to the curious comment of Eabbi Tanchum on the 
 following words of 1 Sam. xxv. 29 : — ' The soul of my 
 lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy 
 God ; and the souls of thine enemies, them shall he shng 
 out, as out of the middle of a sUng.' ' It is the opurion of all 
 the interpreters on this text,' says this profound Eabbi, 'that 
 it is given by way of admonition, to show what will be the 
 state of the soul, and to what it will at length come, after 
 it is separated from the body ; teaching us that there are 
 
 * 1 Kings i. 3. j Deut. xxii. G. 
 
1738.] TEXTS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 91 
 
 two conditions of souls — • some having a high place and 
 secure position with their Lord, and enjoying eternal hfe, 
 subject neither to death nor to perdition, while others are 
 exposed to all the fluctuations of nature, so that they find 
 no rest or fixed abode, but suffer perpetual pains and 
 incessant tortures, through all eternity, Uke a stone pro- 
 jected from a sling, which is whirled in the air in 
 proportion to the strength of the slinger, and then falls to 
 the earth by its own weight. But in a soul there is neither 
 weight to sink it down, nor lightness to carry it up ; and 
 it is therefore constantly agitated and unsettled, harassed 
 with pain and grief for ever and ever. Such is unques- 
 tionably the opinion of wise men and philosophees. 
 How profound a doctrine ! and how noble an original ! 
 But this is not the first, by a thousand, that has been 
 raised from a metaphor out of the hot-bed of theologic 
 
 ■\nSDOM AND PHILOSOPHY.' 
 
 The principal texts in the Old Testament, which appa- 
 rently advocate the behef that the doctrine of a future 
 state was taught in the law of Moses, having been consi- 
 dered, it remains to notice the chief of those in the New 
 Testament that seem to support this notion. One of the 
 first that calls for attention is the admonition of Christ : 
 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not 
 read that which loas sjpohen unto you by God, saying, I 
 am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the 
 God of Jacob f God is not the God of the dead, but of the 
 living. But this was addressed to the Sadducees, who 
 denied the separate existence of the soul, affirming that it 
 perished at the death of the body, and seems to have 
 been intended to impress on them that, as God is not the 
 God of the dead but of the hving, the souls of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob were still surviving ; so that it would be 
 in vain for them to build a disbehef in the resurrection 
 of the body on their notion that the soul dies with the 
 
92 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. V. 
 
 body, a notion confuted by the words of God to Moses. 
 That the body might be raised again, the Sadducees are 
 left merely to infer from the intimation that the soul stiU 
 hves. But even if it were a direct affirmation of the 
 resurrection of the body, it would not prove that Moses 
 taught or indicated the doctrine, or that of a future state, 
 either in the passage in which those words are given, or 
 in any other part of his writings. To determine whether 
 he did so in that particular passage, we have only to 
 consider in what sense the words would be taken by the 
 Jews to whom he repeated them. They would simply be 
 received as an assurance, that as God had protected 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he woiild also protect their 
 posterity, ' whose affliction in Egypt he had sm-ely seen.' 
 No spiritual sense, or reference to a future state, would be 
 attached to them. 
 
 The next text of importance is that in the parable of 
 the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man, being in 
 hell, instructs Abraham, whom he saw afar off in Paradise, 
 to send Lazarus to warn his brethren to repent, lest they 
 also should fall into a like condition with himself ; when 
 Abraham rephes. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
 neither loill they he persuaded though one rose from the 
 dead. But as the precedurg text was addressed to the 
 Sadducees, who denied a future state, so this is addressed 
 to the Pharisees, who admitted it, and is, in truth, nothing 
 more than an admonition that luxury, selfishness, and 
 want of humanity must expect punishment. The whole 
 force of the argument, says Warburton, is, 'If they. 
 will not hear Moses and the prophets, whose authority 
 they acknowledge, and whose missions they beheve to 
 have been confirmed by so many well-attested -miracles, 
 neither will they regard a new miracle, that of the resiu:- 
 rection of a dead man ;' ' nor, in fact, were the Pharisees 
 at all softened into repentance by the return of that 
 Lazarus, the namesake of this in the parable, whom Jesus 
 
1738.] TEXTS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 93 
 
 raised from the dead.' The question of a future state is 
 not at all concerned in the parable, except only in the 
 intimation that God will punish here or hereafter. ' Moses 
 and the prophets threatened the punishment here, and 
 while it was executed here, the Jews looked no farther ; 
 but when the extraordinary providence, by which the 
 punishment was administered, had ceased, the Jews began, 
 from those very promises and denunciations, to entertain 
 some hopes of a hereafter, where all inequahties should be 
 set even, and God's threats and promises executed to the 
 full.' The Pharisees, therefore, had already begun to 
 beheve in the probabihty, or at least in the possibility, of 
 a future state ; but that Moses taught a future state, 
 nothing can be drawn fi^om this parable to indicate ; 
 though, from the study of the prophets and Moses in con- 
 junction, a future state might doubtless be inferred. 
 
 The answer given to the inquiring lawyer concerning 
 the Commandments, This do, and thou shalt live, and the 
 admonition to the Jews, Search the Scriptures, for in 
 them ye think ye have eternal life, have been in vain 
 sohcited, to prove that Moses taught a Hfe beyond the 
 grave. But the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews might seem to contain stronger intimations of 
 such a doctrine having been taught by Moses, where it is 
 said that Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, 
 Joseph, Moses, and others, performed acceptable works by 
 faith, looking for a heavenly city, seeing the proviises afar 
 ofi, and being persuaded of them, and embracing them, and 
 desiring a heavenly country, all dying in the faith ; Moses 
 esteeming the reproach of Christ greater than all the trea- 
 sures of Egypt ; and the very women despising death in 
 hopes to obtain a part in the resurrection of the just. But, 
 to understand the chapter properly, we must, as Warburton 
 observes, look to the whole scope and argument of it. 
 ' Without faith,' says the author of the Epistle, ' it is 
 impossible to please God ; for he that cometh to God 
 
94 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. V. 
 
 must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarcler of them 
 that dihgently seek him;' which faith he immediately 
 proceeds to illustrate by the conduct of Noah, Abraham, 
 Sarah, and other eminent persons, among whom is men- 
 tioned Eahab the harlot '; adding the instances of the faith 
 of the Jews in passing the Ked Sea, and in surrounding 
 the walls of Jericho ; ' but was such faith,' asks War- 
 biurton, ' a faith in Jesus the Messiah, or a behef of a 
 future state of rewards and punishments ? ' It was faith 
 merely in the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob. As to what is said of Abraham, that 
 ' he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God,' or of the desire of these 
 believers for ' a better country, that is, an heavenly,' 
 WarburtOn admits that the patriarchs and leaders of the 
 Jewish people had a prospect of something beyond the 
 present state of things : thus ' Abraham rejoiced to see 
 Christ's day, and he saw it, and was glad,' beholding the 
 resurrection of Jesus typified in the restoration of his son 
 Isaac* On what is said of Moses ' esteeming the re- 
 proach of Christ greater than all the treasures of Egy^jt,' 
 Warburton says nothing positive, but must be regarded as 
 understanding that Moses was willing to submit to such 
 reproach as the Apostles had incurred, in their day, for 
 the sake of Christ, since neither Moses, in his day, nor 
 others, could ' have faith in that which was never yet 
 proposed to them for the object of faith ; for how should 
 they believe in him of whom they had not heard?' ■\ As to 
 the women and others that were tortured, ' not accepting 
 dehverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection,' 
 Warburton refers their sufferings, as is done in the margin 
 of our Englisli Bibles, to the time of tlie Maccabees, Avhen 
 
 * ' Remarks on >Several Occasional Reflections ; ' Works, vol. xi. 
 p. 298, seqq. 
 
 I Div. Leg., book vi. § 4 ; Works, vol. v. p. 431, 8vo. 
 
1738. J TESTIMONY OF AENAULD. 95 
 
 it is acknowledged that ' the doctrine of a future state 
 was become national.' 
 
 This portion of his work Warburton concludes by 
 quoting the opinions of three capital supports of the 
 Protestant Church, Grotius, Episcopius, and Bishop Bull, 
 the passages from whom have been given at the com- 
 mencement of these remarks, and. who, he says, though 
 only three, are worth a miUion. ' But,' he adds, ' let the 
 man be of what church he will, so he have a superiority 
 of understanding, and be not defective in integrity, you 
 shall always hear him speak the same language. The 
 great Arnauld, that shining ornament of the Galhcan 
 Church, urges this important truth with stiU more frank- 
 ness. ' C'est le comble de l'igxokance, ' says this 
 accomphshed divine, ' de mettre en doute cette verite, 
 qui est une des plus commimes de la rehgion Chretienne, 
 et qui est attestee par tous les peres, que les promesses de 
 I'ancien Testament n'etoient que temporelles et terrestres, 
 et que les Juifs n'adoroient Dieu que pour les biens 
 charnels.' 'And what more,' asks Warburton, ' hath been 
 said or done by the Author of " The Divine Legation ?" ' 
 
96 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. VI. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 EATLE. — MORAL OBLIGATION. 
 
 WHETHER A SOCIETY OF HUMAN BEINGS CAN SUBSIST WITHOUT A 
 
 BELIEF IN A FUTURE STATE BATLE's CONJECTURES REGARDING A 
 
 COMMUNITT OF ATHEISTS WARBURTON's ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION 
 
 TO BAYLE HIS SOPHISTRY A REASONABLE BEING MUST ACT REA- 
 SONABLY BURLAJIAQUI ON EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL OBLIGATION 
 
 WARBURTON CONTRADICTS HIMSELF OBJECTIONS TO PALEY'S DEFINI- 
 TION OF VIRTUE BATLE LEFT UNEEFUTED. 
 
 IT is thus made apparent that Moses did not teach the 
 doctrine of a future state of reward and punishment 
 in his system of laws. But there was another point which 
 also required consideration : whether any form of govern- 
 ment could be maintained without reference to the 
 expectation of a future state as a support to it. Bayle* 
 had argued, at great length, that a society, or form of go- 
 vernment, might be supported and held together, not only 
 without any acknowledgment of a future state in it, but 
 even without any recognition of the being of a God. An 
 Atheist, said he, may have the same reason and moral 
 sense, the same notions of right and wrong, as any other 
 man. A body of Atheists, living together in society, would 
 act in the same manner as members of other societies act. 
 They would not be deprived, by their refusal to acknow- 
 ledge a Maker and Preserver of the world, of feehngs of 
 honour and shame, of the deske of glory and praise, and 
 of the fear of censure and contempt. We should find 
 among them men of integrity in their dealings, men 
 
 * Thoughts on the Comet, sect. 161, seqq. 
 
1738.J BAYLE ON A SOCIETY OP ATHEISTS. 97 
 
 willing to relieve the poor, to oppose injustice, and to 
 observe moderation in their pleasures, being induced to 
 such conduct either by a view to commendation, or by 
 the hope of gaining friends and supporters, in case they 
 should need assistance. Women would be anxious to be 
 distinguished for virtue, as the means of securing men's 
 love and esteem. Crimes, doubtless, of all kinds, would 
 happen in such a society, but not more frequently than in 
 a society of behevers in a higher Power, because all the 
 principles that prompt to good or evil in one community, 
 reward and punishment, honour and disgrace, opinion and 
 custom, act with equal force in the other. Anything like 
 the sanctifying grace, indeed, adds Bayle, which enables 
 Christians to vanquish evil habits and propensities, would 
 not be found among them ; but they would be in no 
 worse a condition, in this respect, than Pagans or idolaters 
 who have maintained societies. 
 
 Even Chi-istian societies, continues Bayte, must soon 
 be dissolved by their vices, were they not strictly held 
 together by human laws. Men are kept in order by men. 
 Such a -city as Paris, if deprived of all other restraints on 
 the passions, except the exhortations of preachers and 
 confessors, would, unless miraculously preserved, be in a 
 most deplorable state in a fortnight. An airy notion of the 
 existence of a God, or of a worldto come, does not render 
 a Christian or Pagan society more stabile than that of a 
 society of Atheists would be.* Soldiers, among Christians, 
 are not restrained from disorder by belief in the existence 
 of a God or a future state, but by disciphne and fear of 
 punishment. They accept the notion of the being of a 
 God without question, for they have no thought of meta- 
 physical subtleties; and they are easUy excited to religious 
 zeal and fury against any that profess different rehgious 
 tenets from themselves. The Christians who engaged in 
 
 * Sect, cxxxi. 
 H 
 
98 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Cn. VI. 
 
 the Crusades had abundance of religion ; they quitted 
 their country to make war with infidels ; they saw, as they 
 beheved, angels and saints fighting at the head of their 
 armies, and putting their enemies to flight ; and they 
 beheld infinite numbers of prodigies and miracles. He 
 who suspects such men of Atheism must give up all 
 pretensions to common sense ; yet they were guilty of 
 the most outrageous excesses, so that the Christians, whom 
 they came to defend, dreaded them not less than the 
 Saracens. The most of the Crusaders were men incited to 
 join in the expedition by preaching and indulgences ; but 
 were not restrained from excesses by regard for religion.* 
 Thus speculative opinions are not the ruling motives 
 of our actions. A rehgious persuasion is no further the 
 director of our conduct, than as it opposes us to those of 
 a different opinion, and leads us, especially in circumstances 
 of afEiction and apprehension, to strong professions of our 
 faith, in the trust that they may one day avail to our 
 benefit. In the ordinary parts of their conduct, the 
 Atheist and the believer are swayed by the same prin- 
 ciples ; that is to say, by inclination and constitution, or 
 the force of the habits which they have each contracted. 
 If a believer's constitution inclines him to luxury or licen- 
 tiousness, to anger or to violence, he will indulge in those 
 propensities m.ore than an Atheist of a colder and calmer 
 temper.f There are men who go to mass daily, yet are 
 neither rehgious, nor even decent in their conversation ; 
 and, as to their actions, they are ready to overreach and 
 deceive their fellow-creatures on all sides. Are they at 
 war ? they rob the wretched peasant and cheat the starving 
 soldier ; are they commanding officers ? they have a 
 thousand sinister ways of enriching themselves ; are they 
 in civil employment? they have a thousand tricks to 
 delude and take advantage of those connected with them. 
 
 -"tD^ 
 
 * Sects, oxxxix. cxl. -f Sects, cxliii. cxliv. 
 
1738. J ATTEMPTED REFUTATIOlSr OP BAYLE. 99 
 
 Examine all the notions of civil life among Christians, and 
 you will scarcely find two derived from rehgion. The 
 Jews had a sect among them, the Sadducees, who openly 
 denied the immortaUty of the soul, yet it does not appear 
 that, with this opinion, they led worse fives than the 
 other Jews ; on the contrary, it is fikely that they were in 
 reafity even more righteous than the Pharisees, who 
 boasted so much of their ceremonial observances. The 
 few among the ancients who made open profession of 
 Atheism, as Diagoras, Theodorus, Euhemerus, are not 
 said to have been, remarkable for vicious lives. An Atheist 
 may even have as strong a desire to seciire an honourable 
 fame after death as the believer in a Divinity. Thus, from 
 every consideration, it is apparent that a man may have 
 the most exact notions of moral virtue, and be extremely 
 correct in his conduct, without befieving either in a 
 future state of reward and punishment, or even in the 
 existence of a Superior Power. 
 
 All this array of argument or assertion Warburton 
 undertook to put utterly to the rout. But we shall find 
 Warburton's reasonings much more liable to objection 
 than Bayle's. Bayle's arguments in favour of a society of 
 Atheists are, indeed, something lil?:e those against Quin- 
 tifian's position, that a great orator must be a good man ; 
 a society of Atheists may be men of upright lives, but 
 their fives might be stiU better if they befieved in a higher 
 Power, as a bad man, may be an effective orator in support 
 of virtue and goodness, but a good man will be a still 
 more effective orator, as speaking from a sincere and 
 heartfelt attachment to virtue and goodness. But Bayle's 
 argumentation is straightforward and clear, and of such a 
 nature that we at once admit its justice or plausibfiity ; 
 whUe Warburton's is such that we cannot but stop from 
 time to time to wonder at the deficiency or unsoundness 
 of his positions. His self-confidence is great, but his 
 success far from equal to it. He begins by affirming that 
 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VI. 
 
 though an Atheist may have ' a moral sense,' and may 
 ' arrive at a knowledge of the real essential differences in 
 the quahties of human actions,' he would yet be unin- 
 fluenced by them to the practice of virtue, because his 
 moral sense, and his knowledge of the difference in the 
 morahty of actions, will not properly obhge him to act 
 virtuously ; for obhgation necessarily implies an obhger ; 
 and the obhger must be, not one and the same with the 
 obliged, but separate and distinct from him ; since ' to 
 make a man at once the obliger and obhged is the same 
 thing as to make him enter into compact with himself, 
 which is the highest of absurdities ; for it is an unques- 
 tionable rule in law and reason, that whoever acquires a 
 right to anything from the obhgation of another towards 
 him, may relinquish that right ; if, therefore, the obliged 
 and obliger be one and the same person, in that case all 
 obligation must be void of course, or rather no obligation 
 could have commenced. Yet of this absurdity,' he pro- 
 ceeds, ' the Atheist is guilty, when he talks of actions 
 being moral or obligatory ; for what being can be found 
 whereon to place this obhgation ? Will he say right 
 reason 1 But that is the very absurdity we complain of; 
 because reason is only an attribute of the person obliged, 
 his assistant to judge of his obligations, if he hath any, 
 from another being ; to make this, then, the obhger, is to 
 make a man obhge himself. If he say he means by 
 reason not every man's particular reason, but reason in 
 general, I reply that this reason is a mere abstract notion, 
 which hath no real subsistence ; and how that which hath 
 no real subsistence should oblige, is still more difiicult to 
 apprehend.' He then adds that moral obhgation imphes 
 a law, which enjoins and forbids ; but a law is the impo- 
 sition of an intelligent superior, who has power to exact 
 conformity to it ; that such a law is necessary to obhge a 
 reasonable being endued with will, who, though he may 
 judge by his understanding of the propriety or impro- 
 
1738.] MORAL MIGEATIOK. 101 
 
 priety of an act or course of action, is under no necessity 
 to pursue or avoid it. He, therefore, that does not 
 believe in the existence of an intelligent or rational 
 Superior, a Predominant Eeason distinct from his own, will 
 not feel himself obliged to act according to reason. 
 
 But all this is no refutation of Bayle's arguments, and 
 will be found, if examined, to be Httle better than 
 sophistry. An Atheist, living in a society whether of 
 Atheists or of Theists, and desirous to act, in his inter- 
 course with those around him, like a reasonable being, (for 
 his want of behef in a divinity, or in a future state, how- 
 ever unreasonable it may appear to those who think 
 differently from him on those subjects, will not prevent 
 him from acting reasonably in the ordinary affairs of life,) 
 wlU find himself as much obliged, by his regard to his 
 own interest and welfare, and by his judgment in respect 
 to what is likely to do him good or harm, honour or 
 dishonour, in the estimation of his fellows, to act rea- 
 sonably, and therefore morally, in matters in which 
 morality is concerned, as he is, in reference to his health, 
 to eat wholesome and avoid noxious food. He is at 
 liberty, doubtless, to act in a contrary manner ; he may 
 conduct himself so as to destroy his reputation, or may 
 ruin his health by noxious diet, but, by acting thus, he 
 wiU be considered to exclude himself from the number of 
 reasonable beings, and to make himself unfit for any 
 society whatever ; and, therefore, as long as he would 
 wish to continue a reasonable being, in his own estimation 
 or that of others, he cannot be considered to be at liberty 
 to act thus. Every reasonable being, and every moral 
 being, properly so called, must act reasonably and 
 morally. Every rational agent acts with a view to a 
 rational object, or an object which he himself thinks 
 rational ; and if, in comparing five with three, he finds 
 that five will be more for his object than three, he is 
 obliged or necessitated, as a rational agent keeping his 
 
102 
 
 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUKTOIsr. [Ch. VT. 
 
 object in view, to choose five. Warburton, indeed, in a 
 subsequent passage, makes a distinction between moral 
 and natural, and says that a man who has no conception 
 that he received his being from the will of another, 
 would only, in preferring the fit to the unfit, act naturally, 
 and not morally, for he can never feel under any obliga- 
 tion to prefer good to evil, or even hfe to death, untU he 
 is sensible that he is dependent on a superior. Being, and 
 accountable to him for his actions. ' Did the good or 
 evil produced,' he argues, ' make the action moral or im- 
 moral, brutes would have morality.' But to substantiate 
 this position, proof might be required that brutes are 
 destitute of a sense of morality ; for it may be argued 
 that many brutes, both in their conduct towards man and 
 towards one another, appear to give indications of a sense 
 of morahty. However, iiot to dispute on this point, 
 Warburton himself admits, at the commencement of his 
 argumentation, that an Atheist 'is capable of being 
 affected with the moral sense,' and it is, therefore, vain to 
 allege afterwards that he would not act morally, or in 
 conformity to the moral sense with which he is affected, but 
 would require a knowledge of dependence on a superior 
 Power to obhge him to act in conformity witli it. If no 
 being acts morally or wisely, as Warburton's arguments 
 go to prove, but one who is obhged so to act by the wUl 
 of another, we are necessarily led to ask who it is that 
 obliges the Great Director of all to act morally or wisely. 
 Warburton notices this difficulty himself, and says that 
 having no superior will to influence Him, He is obliged 
 only by His own wisdom ; yet such obligation, in the case 
 of man, he before asserts to be no obhgation at all ; and 
 if it be no obligation in one case, it can be no obhgation, 
 with reverence be it spoken, in another. Bishop Hare, at 
 first sight of this passage, said to Warburton, ' I doubt the 
 adversaries will think you have yourself helped them to an 
 answer to what you urye from the words " obhge " and 
 
1738.] FREE-WILL AND NECESSITY. 103 
 
 " obligation," that it infers an " obliger," since you admit 
 tliat God is obliged by His own wisdom.'* The truth is 
 that man, being created with a will free, must, as far as he 
 is a reasonable being, and whether he be Atheist, or 
 Christian, or Mahometan, exercise his free will reasonably, 
 and, of consequence, morally, or with a view to his own 
 welfare, and so as to secm-e the good opinion of his 
 feUow-creatures. To say that man's will is not free, and 
 that he acts under absolute obhgation from a superior 
 Power, who compels him to a particular course of action 
 for his own good, is to deny at once that he is a reasonable 
 being, and to leave him only the semblance of being one, 
 for though he may appear to himself, or to others, to 
 exercise his reason, he, in fact, exercises it not at all, but 
 is a mere passive machine, influenced intellectually and 
 corporeally by the will of another. 
 
 Burlamaqui, the French writer on the Principles of 
 Natm-al Law, endeavoured to reconcile the difficulties 
 about free-will and necessity, by calhng the essential dif- 
 ference of things good and evil, right and wrong, which is 
 discoverable by nature, and by a regard to which man 
 regulates his conduct, the internal obligation, and the will 
 or influence of God, which has ordered that he shall act 
 under regard to such difference of things, choosing the 
 good and avoiding the evil, from the hope of advantage 
 or fear of inconvenience, the external obligation. But 
 this is only to say that the power of God, the external 
 obhgation, makes and orders man, a being endued with a 
 certain portion of reason ; which portion of reason, the in- 
 ternal obligation, he is made to use for his own benefit and 
 preservation ; or, in other words, that man being formed, 
 by an external power, a reasonable being, must act, from 
 internal persuasions, reasonably. Though man's hberty, 
 as Lavater has said, is only that of the bird in the cage, 
 
 * Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 106. 
 
104 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUKTOX. [Ch. VI. 
 
 yet it assuredly is liberty, and may be exercised alike by 
 him who beheves in a superior Power, and by him who be- 
 heves in none. Dr. Clarke, therefore, rightly maintains that 
 human obligation to act thus or .thus, hes in the nature of 
 things, from which man must choose what is fitting. War- 
 burton, indeed, accuses him of confounding natural with 
 moral choice ; but by man, as a member of society, reason 
 must be applied to the one as well as the other. 
 
 Eemarking on Bayle's observation about custom, by 
 which most men's lives are regulated, Warburton flatly con- 
 tradicts himself. He first says that ' custom is a power 
 which opposes the moral sense, not partially, or at certain 
 times and places, but universally,' andi refers to the custom 
 among the ancients of exposing children, and a great 
 number of other customs that are carefully enumerated 
 by Sextus Empiricus and Montaigne. But, four pages 
 farther on, observing that ' men accommodate themselves 
 to the opinions and rules of those with whom they con- 
 verse,' he says that ' those op)inions and rules, in a good 
 measure, correspond, in most civilized countries, with the 
 unchangeable rule of right, whatever Sextus Empiricus 
 and Montaigne have been pleased to say to the contrary.' 
 But accommodation to opinions and rules of conduct con- 
 stitutes custom. He, therefore, first says, that ^custom 
 universally opposes the sense of right, and then that it 
 in most countries corresponds, ' in a good measure,' with 
 the sense of right. 
 
 He concludes by observing that the great question is, 
 ' whether a clear conviction of right and wrong, abstracted 
 from all will and command, and, consequently, from the 
 expectation of reward and punishment, be sufficient to 
 influence the generality of men in any tolerable degree ? ' 
 To this he answers that it is not ; that the majority of 
 mankind are not moved to the practice of virtue by being 
 told that virtue is the greatest good, but are led, by the 
 desire of gratifying their passions, to conduct inconsistent 
 
1738.] PALEY's definition OP VIRTUE. 105 
 
 with virtue ; and that to sway men in favour of virtue, 
 something more than virtue's own attractions is necessary, 
 which something can be only such rewards and punish- 
 ments as religion proposes. But this is true, absolutely, 
 with regard only to the less educated and baser portion 
 of mankind. With the better instructed classes, and even 
 with the superior part of the uninstructed, respect for 
 what they see to be right, and the honour to be obtained 
 by the practice of it, are sufficient to induce them to be 
 its adherents, without being influenced by any enjoyment 
 to be expected from it in another state of existence. 
 What justly -reasoning man has concurred with Paley in 
 his definition of virtue, that it is ' the doing of good to 
 mankind, in obedience to the wiU of God, and for the 
 sake of everlasting happiness ? ' Who, that thinks with 
 any degree of justness, will assert (what Paley's definition 
 requires), that no action can be virtuous unless it be done 
 for the sake of everlasting happiness ? Would Paley 
 himself have denied that any man can be virtuous unless 
 he performs every act of his Life for the sake of everlasting 
 happiness .'' Would he have denied that a disbeliever in 
 a future state of happiness can perform a virtuous act ? 
 Surely not ; and surely, then, it is a ' wonderful wonder 
 of wonders ' that such a reasoner as Paley should have 
 produced such a definition. But if a disbeliever in future 
 happiness can perform one virtuous act, he may perform 
 thousands of virtuous acts, and may hve in a course of 
 ' doing good to mankind ' for years and years, and die 
 with the gratitude and applause of nations. 
 
 Paley, indeed, might as well have put misery as happi- 
 ness into his definition, and have said that virtue is the 
 doing good to mankind from the fear of everlasting- 
 punishment. One would have been as reasonable as the 
 other. Each would have aOected only a portion of man- 
 kind ; the fear of hell 's a hangman's ivhip, to hold in 
 order the wretch ; but the wise and weU-disposed make the 
 
106 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. VI. 
 
 restraints of honour their border. What would Paley or 
 Warburton have said, if either had been asked whether, 
 through the whole course of his hfe, he had been in- 
 duced to act rightly only through hope of eternal happi- 
 ness or fear of eternal punishment ? 
 
 Warburton's allegations, assuredly, are no answer to 
 Bayle ; and, for anything that the author of ' The Divine 
 Legation' has said, a community of unbelievers in a future 
 state, though it is by no means desii'able that such com- 
 munities should be multiphed, might live in great harmony, 
 and for a long period of time. 
 
1738.] ANCIENT MYSTERIES. 107 
 
 CHAPTEE VI T. 
 ANCIENT MYSTERIES. SIXTH BOOK OF THE ^NEID. 
 
 VAEIETY OF SUBJECTS DISCUSSED IN ' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' 
 
 LOWTH'S remark upon IT ' FABLE OF THE BEES ' OBSER- 
 VATIONS ON THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES MYSTERIES HAD THEIR ORIGIN 
 
 IN EGYPT LESS AND GREATER MYSTERIES "WARBURTON's HYPOTHESIS 
 
 AS TO WHAT WAS TAUGHT IN THEM CONCEALMENT OF WHAT WAS 
 
 SUGGESTED TO HIM BY LE CLERC HIS SUPPOSITION THAT VIRGIL's 
 
 ACCOUNT OF ^NEAS'S DESCENT INTO HELL WAS A FIGURATIVE DE- 
 SCRIPTION OF INITIATION INTO THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES HIS 
 
 ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF THIS HYPOTHESIS GIBBOn'S ASSAULT 
 
 UPON IT SUMMARY OF GIBBOn'S ARGUMENTS AGAINST IT JORTIN'S 
 
 ' DISSERTATIONS ' WHY ^NEAS AND THE SIBYL WERE SENT OUT 
 
 AT THE IVORY GATE SUPPOSITIONS OF JORTIN, GIBBON, AND HEYNE 
 
 ON THE POINT. 
 
 BUT Bayle's disquisitions were not the only subjects, 
 little or not all connected with the argument of ' The 
 Divine Legation,' on which Warburton was to bestow his 
 attention. He had announced, at the beginning of his work, 
 his purpose ' to stretch the inquiry,' in the course of it, 
 'high and wide,' and he does not forget what he intended. 
 He touches, indeed, on so many matters, that his book may 
 very well be thought to merit the sarcasm of Lowth : 
 ' The Divine Legation of Moses,' it seems, ' contains in it all 
 knowledge divine and human, ancient and modern ; it 
 treats, as of its proper subject, de omni scihili et cle quoli- 
 bet ente ; it is a perfect encyclopaedia ; it includes in itself 
 all history, chronology, criticism, divinity, law, politics. 
 
108 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. VII. 
 
 from the Law of Moses down to the late Jew-bill, and 
 from Egyptian hieroglyphics to modern rebus-writing; 
 and to it we are to have recourse, as to an infallible oracle, 
 for the resolution of every question in Literature. It is 
 like Lord Peter's brown loaf ; it is mutton and it is beef ; 
 it is fish and it is flesh ; it is meat and it is drink ; in it 
 are contained inclusive all the necessaries of life.'* 
 
 Having refuted Bayle, though, it must be confessed, 
 with little more success than the village curate refuted 
 Bellarmine and the great Popish doctors, sounding the 
 note of triumph, but leaving the enemy unwounded, he 
 bestows a slight regard on Mandeville, the author of ' The 
 Fable of the Bees,' whose system of morals represents all 
 men as hypocrites, apparently reverencing virtue, but in 
 reality caring only for its semblance, and which says, 
 universally, what, if said at all, can only be said with 
 great limitation, that private vices are public benefits. 
 He then proceeds to devote a large portion of attention to 
 the Eleusinian Mysteries, which he asserts to have been 
 the invention of some ancient legislator, caught up and 
 enlarged by succeeding legislators, till it became the im- 
 portant institution which was so much admired and 
 supported in Attica. 
 
 Maintaining his position, that all lawgivers and rulers 
 saw the necessity of inculcating the beUef in a future state 
 of reward and punishment as a support to their systems 
 of government, he affirms that the institution of the 
 Mysteries was intended as a means of estabUshing and 
 extending that behef, being artfully so formed and con- 
 ducted as to strike forcibly on the minds and imaginations 
 of the multitude. La support of this theory, he gives 
 what he calls a full and distinct account of the nature of 
 the Mysteries, observing that as the ancient authors, who 
 wrote expressly on the subject, such as Melanthius, 
 
 * Lowth's Letter to Warburton, p. 13. 
 
1738.] MYSTERIES. 109 
 
 Menander, and Sotades, have not come down to us, the 
 moderns are entirely in the dark as well about their 
 object as their origin, not excepting even Meursius, who 
 has given the matter so much consideration. 
 
 He has been accused of conceahng his obligations to 
 Mem'sius ; but it should not be forgotten that, at the com- 
 mencement of his remarks, he acknowledges himself 'much 
 indebted to Meursius, though only,' he says,. ' for abridging 
 his labour in the search of those passages of antiquity 
 which make mention of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and for 
 bringing the greater part of them together under one 
 view.' For such abridgment of his labour he is doubtless 
 greatly indebted to Meursius, without whom the array of 
 quotations in the margin of ' The Divine Legation' would 
 have been much smaller than it is. ' He fortunately faUs 
 in,' observes the author of ' Confusion worse Confounded,' 
 one of the sprightliest attacks on Warburton's writings, 
 ' vsritli the very same quotations that had been used by 
 Meursius in his Eleusinia, and mentions the name of 
 Meursius just as the preacher did the name of Archbishop 
 Tillotson in the beginning of his sermon, and then very 
 unsuspectedly continued the quotation to the end of it, 
 and gained great credit.' War burton certainly laid him- 
 self open, by his mode of alluding to Meursius, to such 
 sarcasms. 
 
 Mysteries had their origin, he observes, in Egypt, the 
 first being those of Isis aiid Osiris. From thence they 
 spread, with gradual variations, into different countries, 
 and especially into Greece and its islands, where they 
 were assigned to various deities ; but those most frequently 
 mentioned were the Mysteries of Bacchus, celebrated in 
 Boeotia, and those of Ceres, celebrated at Eleusis. As the 
 origin of all the Mysteries was common, so was the end ; 
 and an investigation of what was done and taught in the 
 Eleusinian Mysteries will inform us, as far as we can now 
 ascertain, what was done and taught in the rest. 
 
110 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTOIf. [Ch. VII. 
 
 In each kind there were two divisions, the lesser 
 Mysteries, which were communicated to all the initiated 
 alike, and the greater Mysteries, which were shown only 
 to those who underwent a second initiation four years 
 after the first. 
 
 Of what was taught the initiated in these rites, Httle or 
 nothing, from the secrecy with which they were attended, 
 has become known. Many have formed conjectures, and 
 Warburton has given his. He says that, to support the 
 doctrine of a providence, which, they thought, governed 
 the world, they enforced, by every kind of contrivance, a 
 behef in a future state of reward and punishment ; adding, 
 to strengthen it further, the doctrine of the transmigration 
 of souls, which would indicate the soul to be immortal, pass- 
 ing from state to state, but never perishing. As to the 
 future hfe,, it was said that the souls of the initiated would 
 be happier than those of others, as, on leaving the body, 
 they would soar to the regions of bhss, while those of the 
 uninitiated would sink in mire and darkness. Yet, to 
 secure this happiness, it was necessary for the initiated to 
 pursue virtuous hves, for it was the object of the Mysteries 
 to restore the soul to its original purity. 
 
 Strict secrecy was inculcated, partly to excite curiosity," 
 and thus increase, for the benefit of the priests, the num- 
 ber of candidates, and partly because, as Varro said, in a 
 fragment of his book on rehgion, preserved by St. Augus- 
 tine,* ' there were many truths, of which a general 
 knowledge would be unprofitable to the state, and many 
 things which, though false, it was expedient for the people 
 to think true.' The initiation into the lesser Mysteries, 
 which consisted chiefly in ceremonies and shoivs, would 
 gratify the curious to a certain extent ; and, if the initiated 
 chose to proceed to the greater Mysteries, they would 
 have the more secret doctrines confided to them. 
 
 * De Civ. Dei, iv. 31. 
 
1738.] WARBUETON'S NOTION OF 'MYSTERIES.' Ill 
 
 The chief of these more secret doctrines was, that men 
 must imitate the gods ; but, as the Mysteries required 
 nothing of a person initiated which they would not enable 
 him to perform, they taught hun that the gods who were 
 to be their examples, but in whose lives they saw so many 
 vices and irregularities, were in reahty only dead and 
 deified mortals, and still subject to hke passions and 
 weaknesses with themselves. Yet over these deities made 
 from men they were taught to consider that there pre- 
 sided one supreme and true Deity, the Being who made 
 all things, and who had assigned to these inferior divinities, 
 as to all other creatures, their proper place and station, ap- 
 pointing over what parts of the world they were to rule. 
 When the initiated had received this portion of instruction, 
 they were called epoptce, overseers or inspectors, having 
 previously been called mystce, or simply the initiated. 
 
 For support to these notions concerning the Mysteries, 
 Warburton refers to passages in Augustine,* Cicero, f 
 Julius Firmicus,J and Clemens Alexandrinus ;§ and these 
 authors, indeed, afford some confirmation to the hypothesis 
 of the initiated being taught that the gods were originally 
 but men. For the supposition that the truth of the divine 
 nature was taught in the Mysteries, he finds his chief sup- 
 port in this passage of Galen : || ' The study of the use of 
 the parts of the human body is not only of service to the 
 mere physician, but of much greater to him who joins 
 philosophy to the art of healing ; and, in order to perfect 
 himself in this mystery, labours to investigate the universal 
 nature. They who initiate themselves here, whether 
 private men or bodies, will find, in my opinion, nobler 
 instruction than in the rites either of Eleusis or Samo- 
 thrace.' A passage in Josephus against Apion,^ which he 
 
 * De Civ. Dei, iv. 27 ; viii. 5. 
 
 t Tusc. Disp. i. 12, 13 ; De Nat. Deor. i. 42. 
 
 i De Err. Prof. Eelig. c. vi. § Strom, lib. v. p. 431, ed. Sylb. 
 
 II De Usu Part. xvii. 1. H lb. ii. 23. 
 
112 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. VII. 
 
 forces into his service, profits him httle. His suggestion 
 that the fragment of Sanchoniatho was used in the 
 Mysteries, is deservedly ridiculed by Gibbon as mere 
 fancy, since, as it attributes the formation of the world 
 to the bhnd powers of matter, it could not be used to 
 inculcate the doctrine of an intelligent Cause ; and his 
 supposition that an Orphic poem, of which a frag- 
 ment is quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, used to be 
 sung by the hierophant, is still more unhappy, for it is 
 condemned^ by the more judicious among the critics, as 
 a forgery. 
 
 Though Warburton acknowledged his obhgation to 
 Meursius, he very disingenuously concealed what he owed 
 to Le Clerc, for he gave no indication that his whole 
 hjrpothesis, that the gods were declared in the Mysteries 
 to have been but mortals, had been given to the world by 
 Le Clerc several years before ; so that Gibbon took 
 occasion sarcastically to observe that the hypothesis had 
 been adopted by Le Clerc in 1687, and invented by 
 Warburton in 1738. 
 
 What religious doctrines were really taught in the 
 Mysteries, or whether any were taught in them that could 
 fairly be called religious, is a question that has been much 
 discussed, but with scarcely any approach to certainty. 
 The French writer, St. Croix, in his ' Eecherches sur les 
 Mysteres du Paganisme,' has expressed himself of opinion 
 that the Mysteries were instituted by early legislators to 
 commemorate the blessings of civilization, and to influence 
 men to repent of any crimes that they had committed, 
 and to resolve on leading better hves in future ; while 
 the editor of the second impression of that work, Silvestre 
 de Sacy, has maintained that such notions are altogether 
 groundless, and that we know nothing of the Mysteries 
 but that certain secret rites and symbols were communi- 
 cated in them, which may have been utterly unmeaning, 
 but which it was sacrilegious to reveal. Some of the 
 
i:38.] SIXTH BOOK Olf THE iENEID. IKi 
 
 German writers, as Sclielling, Creuzer, and F. C Baur, 
 have supposed that what was taught in them was pure 
 monotheism, with moral doctrines something similar to 
 those of Christianity ; but all such hypotheses are entirely 
 fanciful, and almost the only probable notion regarding 
 the Mysteries is that of Miiller,* that they had their 
 origin in the endeavours of some conquered race to 
 preserve their ancient worship. 
 
 The demonstration of the true character of Jupiter 
 and the other deities, the assurance that men, by doing 
 services to their feUow-creatures, might attain such 
 honour as to be ranked among divinities, were, according 
 to ' The Divine Legation,' the great reasons why it was 
 thought proper that princes, statesmen, lawgivers, ' and 
 all persons that aspired to rule and command, should be 
 instructed in the-secrets of the greater Mysteries. But to 
 the multitude, as Varro said, the knowledge of such truths 
 would have been useless or pernicious ; for the behef in 
 the vulgar polytheism was so rooted in their minds, that 
 it could not have been expelled without disturbance to 
 society. 
 
 Warburton was then led into a disquisition, which, 
 though it was for a while regarded with favour by some 
 of the more imaginative, has since drawn upon him as 
 much ridicule as any portion of his work. As ^neas, 
 the hero of Virgil, was to be a lawgiver, Warburton con- 
 sidered that he must have been initiated, like other 
 lawgivers, in the Mysteries, and proceeded to make it 
 appear that the account of his descent into the infernal 
 regions, related in the sixth book of the ^Uneid, was in 
 reahty a figurative description of his initiation into the 
 rites of Ceres ; and that what he is represented as seeing 
 was an exact picture of the Eleusinian spectacles, ' where 
 
 * Prolegomena to a Scientific Mythology. See Encycl. Brit., Art. 
 'Mysteries.' ThirlwaU, Hist, of Greece, vol. ii. p. 140. 
 
 I 
 
114 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cu. VII. 
 
 everything was done in show and machinery, and where 
 a representation of the history of Ceres afforded oppor- 
 timity of bringing in the scenes of heaven, hell, elysium, 
 purgatory, and whatever related to the future state of 
 men and heroes.' 
 
 Virgil, according to the author of 'The Divine Legation,' 
 was not satisfied that the epic poem should be merely 
 what it was in the hands of Homer ; he aspired to com- 
 prise in it a system of pohtics. With this view he wrote 
 the iEneid, ' which is, indeed,' says Warburton, ' as com- 
 plete an institute in verse, by example, as the EepubKcs of 
 Plato and TuUy were in prose, by precept' Numerous 
 are the instructions, in various forms, scattered throughout 
 it. Why are j35neas's ships changed into nymphs ? To 
 admonish the Eomans of the necessity of cultivating a 
 naval power, such as should extend their commerce, and 
 secure their dominion over the ocean. Wliy is the episode 
 of Nisus and Euryalus introduced ? To show how pro- 
 perly a legislator may cherish such an institution as that 
 of the association of youths in Crete, or that of the sacred 
 band, consisting of pairs of attached friends, at Thebes. 
 Why was ^neas chosen by Virgil for his hero, and formed 
 into the character in which Virgil represents him ? Because 
 a system of pohtics, designed for the instruction of mankind, 
 and for the gratification of Augustus in particular, and 
 delivered in the example of a great prince, ' must show him 
 in every pubhc adventure of life ;' and hence ^neas was, 
 of necessity, to be found ' voyaging with Ulysses, and 
 fighting with Achilles.' ' Such a key to the ^neid,' that 
 it is a system of pohtics, ' not only clears up many passages 
 obnoxious to the critics, but adds infinite beauty to a great 
 number of incidents throughout the whole poem.' 
 " As ^neas was to represent a perfect hero and lawgiver, 
 as far as anything human can be perfect, he was to be 
 initiated in the Mysteries of Ceres, for in these Mysteries, 
 as Warburton behoves, all the ancient heroes and lawgivers 
 
1738.] GIBBON'S ATTACK ON .WARBUETON. 115 
 
 were initiated. Tliey were an instrument in the hands of 
 lawgivers, and no lawgiver would fail to recommend a 
 knowledge of them by his example. Jason, Orpheus, 
 Hercules, Castor, and even, as Macrobius thinks, Tarquinius 
 Priscus, had been initiated in the Mysteries. Hercules, 
 when he is supposed, in the 'Hercules Fur ens ' of Euripides, 
 to come from Hades, is, in fact, only come from the cele- 
 bration of the Mysteries, where he has learned the true 
 doctrine about the gods, — a doctrine which Theseus, to 
 whom he makes some allusions on the subject, had not yet 
 learned, because, though he also had descended into hell, 
 or had got some insight into the Mysteries, his entrance had 
 been clandestine, and had gained him no just instruction. 
 
 ' Had an old poem,' says Warburton, ' under the name 
 of Orpheus, entitled A Descent into Hell, been now extant, 
 it would probably have shown us that no more was meant 
 than Orpheus's initiation, and that the idea of the sixth 
 book ' of the ^neid ' was taken from thence.' No poem of 
 the kind has come down to us ; but Warburton was resolved 
 that Virgil's descent of Mneas should not fail of exactly 
 designating an initiation into the Eleusinian secrets. The 
 Sibyl represents the hierophant, who conducted the ini- 
 tiated through the whole ceremony. The golden bough, 
 which JSneas was ordered to seek, answers to the wreath 
 of mjrrtle, which the initiated were required to wear. The 
 words of the Sibyl, proeul 6 procul este, profani, are 
 the very words used by the hierophant at the opening of 
 the Mysteries. iEneas is startled at the sight of the ghosts, 
 and the initiated used to be startled at the horrid s^Dectacles 
 exhibited to their view. The metempsychosis was taught 
 in the Mysteries, and the metempsychosis is also taught 
 in the -lEneid. 
 
 It was not till 1770, thirty-two years after the first 
 edition of ' The Divine Legation ' was published, that 
 Gibbon put forth his well-known examination of this part 
 of ' The Divine Legation ;' but, for the sake of observing 
 
 I 2 
 
116 LIFE OF" BISHOP WAEBUETOK [Ch. VII. 
 
 what the historian had to say against the divine, it may 
 as well be noticed here. Gibbon was then thirty-three 
 years of age, and had, as yet, pubhshed nothing in English. 
 He dishked the dictatorial tone of Warburton, and the 
 violence with which he wrested Virgil's poetry to suit his 
 own views, and grew ambitious, in emulation of Lowth, 
 who had attacked Warburton a short time before, ' of 
 breaking a lance against the giant's shield. My pamphlet,' 
 says he, ' was an accidental sally of love and resentment ; 
 of my reverence for modest genius, and my aversion for 
 insolent pedantry.' Warburton's ' hypothesis, a singular 
 chapter in " The Divine Legation of Moses," had been 
 admitted by many,' he states, ' as true ; it was praised by 
 all as ingenious ; nor had it been exposed, in a space of 
 thirty years, to a fair and critical discussion.' 
 
 Gibbon begins by denying that the Mysteries were the 
 invention of the magistrate or lawgiver. Surely, if the 
 magistrate wanted an instrument of rehgion, he would 
 rather have availed liimself of the Oracles, which were not 
 less ancient nor less venerable than the Mysteries. Kothing 
 of importance was undertaken -without a consultation of 
 the Delphic oracle, the most frequented among several 
 hundred others. ' Here, then, we might expect to perceive 
 the directing hand of the magistrate. Yet when we study 
 their history with attention, instead of the alliance between 
 Church and State, we can discover only the ancient 
 aUiance between the avarice of the priest and the 
 creduhty of the people.' 
 
 Had Virgil intended to compose a political institute, 
 argues Gibbon, he would probably have adopted some- 
 thing else for the main support of it than a description of 
 the Mysteries ; he would possibly have produced some- 
 thing more akin to what Fenelon has given in his History 
 of Telemachus. But if we admit 'that the Mysteries 
 exhibited a theatrical representation of all that was 
 beheved or imagined of the lower Avorld ; that the 
 
1738.] VIRGIL. 117 
 
 aspirant was conducted through the mimic scenes of 
 Erebus, Tartarus, and Elysium ; and that a warm 
 enthusiast, in describing these awful spectacles, might 
 express himself as if he had actually visited the infernal 
 regions,' how, by this admission, would Warburton's 
 hypothesis be advantaged ? If the Mysteries professed 
 to give a copy of what was supposed to exist in the 
 infernal regions, the professed copy would resemble the 
 supposed original ; but who shall say that Virgil may not 
 have intended to describe the original rather than the 
 copy? 
 
 But had Virgil been himself initiated in the Mysteries, 
 so as to be able to describe the matters of which they 
 consisted ? Warburton, it is evident, assumed that he had 
 been initiated; but for such assumption there is no ground. 
 Initiation might very well form part of the education of a 
 young Athenian, or it might be gone through by others, 
 Greeks or foreigners, as by Augustus, and Pomponius, and 
 Atticus, for the sake of pleasing the Athenian people, 
 but no such motive was likely to have induced Virgil to 
 submit to the ceremony ; his philosophy was of the 
 Epicurean kind, and between the Epicureans and the 
 conductors of the Mysteries a strong antipathy subsisted, 
 the philosophers regarding the hierophants as mere 
 deceivers of the multitude. Virgil, too, as is probable, 
 was never out of Italy till the last year of his hfe, when, 
 after visiting Athens with Augustus, in the summer, he 
 fell ill at Megara, and, hastening homewards, expired at 
 Brundusium in September ; and though, as the Mysteries 
 were celebra,ted while he was at Athens, it is not 
 impossible that he might have undergone initiation, yet 
 there was not time for him to introduce into his poem the 
 descent of jiEneas into hell as a representation of the 
 Eleusinian shows ; so that that part of the ^neid must 
 have been written previously to his visit to Greece. The 
 passage relating to MarceUus, indeed, and probably the 
 
118 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETOISr. [Cu. VIL 
 
 whole of the sixth book, he had read to Augustus and 
 Octavia about four years before. 
 
 But even if Virgil was fully acquainted with ah that 
 passed in the Mysteries, is it likely that he would have 
 revealed it ? He tells it, indeed, as Warburton supposes, 
 under the veil of an allegory, but the allegory is such as 
 would be well understood by all the initiated, who would 
 have expressed, in some way, a unanimous feeling against 
 his treachery. Every one would have directed towards 
 him words similar to those of his contemporary Horace: 
 
 Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum 
 Vulgarit arcanae, sub Isdem 
 
 Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum 
 Solvat phaselon. 
 
 Such reprobation would have been cast on Virgil by all 
 who had heard of what the ^neid consisted ; and Horace, 
 who weU knew its contents, would have been considered 
 to have written those words with the express intention 
 of reflecting on his friend. 
 
 Nor should it be forgotten, that if ^neas's descent into 
 Hades be an exact revelation of what was taught in the 
 Mysteries, the doctrine which Warburton, following Le 
 Clerc, declares to have been the great Eleusinian secret, 
 that 'the whole rabble of hcentious deities,' as 'The 
 Divine Legation ' expresses it, ' were only dead mortals,' 
 might have been expected to be in some way set forth in 
 it. But there is no indication of this doctrine throughout 
 the whole book ; and Warburton carefully abstains from 
 making any allusion to its absence. 
 
 Thus we see how httle support there is for Warburton's 
 notion, that the account of j35neas's descent is a re- 
 presentation of the Eleusinian Mysteries. We find it to 
 be a pure offspring of fancy, which we may allow to be 
 ingenious, but must acknowledge to be groundless. 
 
 Gibbon's ' Critical Observations ' nobody attempted 
 to answer. Warburton's party, as he remarks, maintained 
 
1738.] JOKTIN'S DISSEKTATIOJSr. 119 
 
 a discreet silence. But the author of the ' Decline and 
 Fall ' could not forbear expressing his delight at the 
 approbation bestowed on his remarks by Heyne, who 
 calls him ' doctus et elegantissimus Britannus,' though he 
 allows that he animadverted on Warburton '■ paullo 
 acrius quam velis.' Nor could he ' resist the temptation 
 of transcribing the favourable judgment of Mr. Hayley, 
 himself a poet and a scholar : ' An intricate hypothesis, 
 twisted into a long and laboured chain of quotation and 
 argument, the Dissertation on the Sixth Book of Virgil 
 remained some time unrefuted. At length a superior, 
 but anonymous, critic arose, who, in one of the most judi- 
 cious and spirited essays that has ever been produced on 
 a point of classical literature, completely overturned this 
 ill-founded edifice, and exposed the arrogance and futility 
 of its assuming architect.' 
 
 Before Gibbon's ' Observations ' appeared, as early, 
 indeed, as 1755, Jortin had published a volume containing 
 ' Six Dissertations on Different Subjects,' the sixth of 
 which was employed on ' The State of the Dead, as de- 
 scribed by Homer and Virgil,' in which the author 
 bestowed some notice on the Sixth Book of Virgil, and, 
 alluding to Warburton's hypothesis resjDecting the descent 
 of ^neas, made the following remark : ' AU of us who 
 attempt to explain and illustrate Virgil, have reason to 
 hope that we may make some discoveries, and to fear that 
 we may fall into some mistakes ; and this should induce 
 us to conjecture with freedom, to propose with diffidence, 
 and to dissent with civihty.' This observation, with some 
 intimations of dissent from Warburton, drew down upon 
 Jortin the vengeance of one of Warburton's followers, of 
 whom we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. 
 
 I am unwilhng to quit this consideration of the Sixth 
 Book of Virgil without adverting to the difSculty which 
 all readers and commentators have experienced respecting 
 the ivory gate at which Anchises lets out his son and the 
 
120 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. VII. 
 
 Sibyl from Hades, and the manner in which. Warburton 
 endeavours to turn that circumstance to the purpose of 
 his own hypothesis. Homer, Yirgil's great master, said 
 that there were two gates to the House of Sleep ; one of 
 horn, from which true dreams or visions issued; the 
 other of ivory, from which went forth illusive and 
 deceitftd phantoms : 
 
 Immur'd within the silent bower of Sleep, 
 Two portals firm the Tarious phantoms keep ; 
 Of ivory one ; whence flit, to mock the brain, 
 Of winged lies a light fantastic train ; 
 The gate oppos'd pellucid valves adorn, 
 And columns fair incas'd with polish'd horn ; 
 Where images of truth for passage wait, 
 With visions manifest of future fate.* 
 
 Virgil's words are, 
 
 Sunt geminas Somni portse ; quarum altera fertur 
 Cornea, qu& veris facilis datur exitus umbris : 
 Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto ; 
 Sed falsa ad coslum mittunt insomnia manes. 
 His ubi tum natum Anchises unaque Sibyllam 
 Prosequitur dictis, portaque emittit eburn^. 
 
 Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn ; 
 Of polish'd ivory this, that of transparent horn ; 
 True visions through transparent horn arise ; 
 Through polish'd ivory pass deluding lies. 
 Of various things discoursing as he pass'd, 
 Anchises hither bends his steps at last. 
 Then, through the gate of ivory, he dismiss'd 
 His valiant offspring, and divining guest. 
 
 Detden. 
 
 The reason why .Jjlneas and the Sibyl are sent out at 
 the ivory gate- by Virgil, says Warburton, can never be 
 satisfactorily determined, but by supposing the descent to 
 heU to signify an initiation into the Mysteries. ' This,' 
 he says, ' will unriddle the enigma, and restore the poet 
 
 * Odyss, xix. 656, Pope's version. 
 
1738.] * JOKTIN'S OPINION. 121 
 
 to himself.' If Virgil intended ^neas's journey as a 
 description of the shows of the Mysteries, he would, he 
 thinks, give some private mark to indicate his meaning. 
 He has, therefore, at the conclusion, by taking advantage 
 of Homer's gate of horn for true visions, and that of 
 ivory for false, insinuated, ' by the first, the reality of an- 
 other state, and, by the second, the shadowy representa- 
 tions of it in the shows of the Mysteries ; so that not the 
 things themselves, but only the pictiu:es of them objected 
 to ^neas, were false ; as the scene did not he in hell, but 
 in the temple of Ceres.' Such is Warburton's solution, 
 to suit his own hypothesis. 
 
 Let us next see what view Jortin takes of the question. 
 He is worth attention, even if he fails to give us satisfaction. 
 ' Virgil,' says he, ' after having shone out with full splen- 
 dour through the sixth book, sets in a cloud. He first 
 represents the state of departed souls in Hades as a 
 reahty, and this he was obliged to do by the very nature 
 of his subject ; then he intimates that the whole is a 
 lying fable ; ' at least, it seems scarcely possible to clear 
 him from the charge of giving this intimation. 
 
 His friends try to acquit him of it, by observing how 
 unreasonable it is to suppose ' that the serious and judi- 
 cious poet would act so strangely as to qverset an elegant 
 system which he had put together and embellished with 
 no small pains, and which was partly calculated to pro- 
 mote rehgion and morahty, and the hopes and fears of a 
 future state of retribution.' 
 
 This observation, Jortin admits, is one of much weight, 
 and one by which all admirers of Virgil would doubtless 
 wilhngly be convinced, but expresses his fears that no 
 such attempts in Virgil's favour will avail to set aside the 
 natural and obvious way of interpreting him. Servius 
 has not the least doubt that Virgil meant to intimate that 
 all he had described was unreal : ' Vult autem intelligi 
 falsa esse omnia quce dixit;' and most other commen- 
 
122 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. ' [Ch. \U. 
 
 tators liave adopted Servius's view of the matter. Virgil 
 himself was of the Epicurean school, as he had already- 
 indicated in his previous writings, the Eclogues and 
 the Georgics. He makes Silenus, in his sixth Eclogue, 
 inscribed to Varus, who was also an Epicurean, describe 
 the system of the world according to Epicurus's system : 
 
 Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta 
 Semina terrarumque, animajque, ma,risqiie, fiiissent, 
 Et liqiiidi simul ignis ; ut his exordia primis 
 Omnia, et ipse tener mimdi concreverit orbis. 
 
 For first he sung of Nature's wondrous birth, 
 How seeds of water, air, and flame, and earth, 
 Down the vast void with casual impulse hurl'd, 
 Cluijg into shapes, and form'd this fabric of the world. 
 
 Beattie. 
 
 In his Georgics he gives us the sentiments of an Epi- 
 curean philosophy : 
 
 Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
 Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum, 
 Subjeoit pedibus, strepi turn que Aoherontis avari. 
 
 Happy ! who could learn 
 The causes of creation ; and each fear. 
 And destiny inexorable, hath bow'd 
 Beneath his feet, and greedy Acheron's roar. 
 
 Sewell. 
 
 But these intimations of his philosophical opinions, 
 says Jortin, he takes care to make ' decently and obhquely, 
 and so as not openly to attack and insult the pubHc reli- 
 gion.' However, even if we suppose, with Warburton, 
 that Virgil, by the descent of jEneas, really intended to 
 represent his initiation, ' still the troublesome conclusion 
 remains as it was, and, from the manner in which the 
 hero is dismissed after the ceremonies, we learn that, in 
 those initiations, the machinery and the whole show was, 
 in the poet's opinion, a representation of things which had 
 no truth and reality. 
 
 ' Virgil lets j3^;neas out at the gate of Sleep. The 
 
1738.] JORTINS REMARES ON VIRGIL. 123 
 
 consequence of this seems to be, that the. hero had been 
 asleep, and had seen all these marvellous things in a 
 dream or vision. If the poet had said no more, I should 
 have suspected that he alluded to the ancient and com- 
 mon custom of consulting the gods by sleeping in sacred 
 places, and receiving information by dreams.' 
 
 Howsoever we consider the matter, we must feel im- 
 pressed with the notion that Virgil, ' by letting ^Eneas 
 out at the gate of Sleep, intimates that his descent was 
 not real, and, by letting him out at the gate of False 
 Dreams, intimates that all which had been related con- 
 cerning the state of the dead, and the infernal regions, 
 was fiction and falsehood. 
 
 ' Yirgil had studied and embraced the Epicurean philo- 
 sophy, and whatever use he may have made, as a poet, 
 of the doctrmes of other sects, yet this was his favourite 
 system, and he was willing to let the learned reader know 
 it, and not to pass for a deserter of his own principles, 
 Avhich in the philosophical world was held a dishonour- 
 able thing.' He conveys to his reader the same assurance 
 as is given in the words of Seneca : 
 
 Post mortem nihil est ; ipsaqiie mors nihil. 
 
 Tfenara, et aspero 
 Eegnum sub domino, hmen et obsidens 
 Gustos non facili Cerberus ostio, 
 Rumores vacui, verbaque inania, 
 Et par sollicito fabula somnio. 
 
 ' It would mahe one smile,' concludes Jortin, ' to see 
 poetical divines wonderfully tender and candid in their 
 judgments of Virgil's philosophical and theological prin- 
 ciples, looking upon him as upon a devout and rehgious 
 creature, one who was honoured with glimpses of the 
 glad tidings of salvation, and a kind of minor prophet. 
 Yet I would not willingly censure them ; for, after all, a 
 man can have no more judgment than falls to his share; 
 and, besides, it seems to be an error on the right side — ■ 
 
124 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON'. [Ch. VIL 
 
 a good-natured mistake — an innocent simplicity, which 
 thinketh no e\il.' 
 
 Such is Dr. Jortin's notion of the meaning of the ivory 
 gate. Gibbon's is less satisfactory. He supposes that 
 Virgil, after representing the regions of Hades as Homer 
 had represented them, and setting them before his readers 
 as reahties, ' unwarily sHd into an Epicurean idea,' and 
 turned that into falsehood which he had before given as 
 truth ; a defect which the author, if the work had not 
 been deprived of his last revision, might have removed ; 
 but, whatever be the case, he adds, ' I had much rather 
 reproach my favourite poet with want of care in one line, 
 than with want of taste throughout a whole book;' — a 
 charge which he would have deserved, if he had devoted 
 the whole of his sixth book to the description of an 
 initiation into the Mysteries under the guise of a descent 
 into hell. 
 
 With tills apology for a solution, the historian takes 
 leave of the question in the body of his pamphlet. But 
 in a postscript he adds another suggestion : 
 
 'Whilst I am writing,' he says, 'a sudden thought 
 occurs to me, which, rude and imperfect as" it is, I shall 
 venture to throw out to the public. It is this : After 
 Virgil, in imitation of Homer, had described the two 
 gates of sleep, the horn and the ivory, he again takes up 
 the first in a different sense : 
 
 Qu& veris facilis datur exitus umbris. 
 
 The term shades, verce umbroB, were those airy forms which 
 were continually sent to animate new bodies ; such hght 
 and immaterial natures as would without difficulty pass 
 through a thin transparent substance. In this new sense, 
 ^neas and the Sibyl, who were still encmnbered with a 
 load of fiesh, could not pretend to the prerogative of 
 true shades. In their passage over the Styx they had 
 almost sunlt Charon's boat : 
 
1738.] A REMARK OF HEYNE. 125 
 
 Gemuit sub pondere cymba 
 Sutilis, et multam accepit rimosa paludem. 
 
 Some other expedient was requisite for their return ; and, 
 since the horn gate would not afford them an easy dis- 
 mission, the other passage, which was adorned with 
 pohshed ivory, was the only one that remained either for 
 them or for the poet. 
 
 'By this explanation we save Virgil's judgment and 
 rehgion, though, I must own, at the expense of an un- 
 common harshness and ambiguity of expression. Let it 
 only be remembered that those who, in desperate cases, 
 conjecture with modesty, have a right to be heard with 
 indulgence.' 
 
 Such are the suggestions offered on this point by two 
 able writers. The one that taxes VirgU with haste and 
 thoughtlessness seems the less eligible of them. Of the 
 rest, the reader may either choose which he pleases, or 
 leave the question as an exphcable crux, hke the 
 
 Die quibus in terris 
 
 Tres pateat cosli spatium non amplius ulnas. 
 
 Heyne, indeed, supposes that Virgil may have had no 
 particular intention in fixing on the ivory gate. He took 
 the gates as he found them in Homer, and desiring, when 
 he had brought ^neas and the Sibyl towards them, to give 
 them an exit at one of the two, he chose the ivory gate 
 rather by chance than from design, having no motive for 
 preferring one to the other. 
 
12G LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. VIII; 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 ATTACKS ON WAEBURTOIS'. WEBSTER, MIDDLETON", JOETIN. 
 
 ' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' LIKED BY HARE AND SHERLOCK — LETTERS 
 
 FROM THEM MANY OTHERS DISAPPROVED ATTACK ON WAEBUETON 
 
 BY DR. WEBSTER NOTICE OF WEBSTER ' LETTER FROM A COUNTRY 
 
 CLERGYMAN ' IN THE ' WEEKLY MISCELLANY ' LETTERS FROM HARE 
 
 AND SHERLOCK, WHO ADVISE WARBURTON TO REPLY WARBURTON 
 
 THOUGHT BY MANY TO HAVE SPOKEN TOO FAVOURABLY OF MIDDLETON 
 
 SUBSTANCE OF WEBSTEr's LETTERS WARBURTON'S 'VINDICATION' 
 
 OF HIMSELF QUOTATION FROM POPE, AND EULOGY OF HIM HAEE's 
 
 APPROBATION OF 'THE VINDICATION' CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN 
 
 WARBURTON AND MIDDLETON LETTERS TO DR. BIRCH AND TO 
 
 BISHOP SHERLOCK OBSERVATIONS ON JORTIN's ' REMARKS ON SPENSER.' 
 
 WHILE ' The Divine Legation' was passing througli 
 the press, Warburton sent some sheets of it to 
 Bishops Slieiiock and Hare, asldng their judgment of 
 the work. Both expressed approbation, but Sherlock at 
 greater length ; and ' it may be thought,' says Mr. Kil- 
 vert,* ' no trifling attestation to tlie ortliodoxy of Bishop 
 Warburton's leading arguments in " The Divine Legation," 
 that that work should have received the countenance and 
 approval of so sound a divine as Bishop Sherlock.' Sher- 
 lock's first acknowledgment was as follows : 
 
 ' Wallington, Herts, Oct. 18, 1737. 
 ' Eeverend Sir, — Last night I received some sheets of 
 your book, and ran them over with great pleasure, but 
 
 * Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 54. 
 
1738.] SHERLOCK AND HARE. 127 
 
 not with the attention whicli the subject and your way of 
 treating it demand. I can, therefore, at present only 
 thank you for the favour you have done me, and give you 
 my opinion upon a very small matter, which yet I appre- 
 hend will greatly prejudice many readers against jou. 
 
 ' In page 55, speaking of Wollaston, you take occasion 
 to quote a passage from " Don Quixote." As Wollaston 
 was a sober, serious writer, and a scholar, and of an ex- 
 ceeding good character in private hfe, the treating his 
 performance with an air of ridicule wiU be' thought very 
 injurious to him, and very improper to come from you, 
 and wiU raise a good deal of unnecessary resentment. I 
 am so much of this opinion, that, if I was to judge for 
 you, that leaf should be reprinted, and the passage left 
 out. I shall be m town very soon, and shaU have the 
 pleasure of seeing the sheets as they come out. 
 ' Your very aifectionate brother and servant, 
 
 'Tho. Sarum.' 
 
 Bishop Hare, in sending his thanks for the sheets, made 
 a similar animadversion on the passage referring to the 
 ' Eeligion of Nature,' urging him by all means to strike 
 out the sarcasm, ' as it would give great oflfence to the 
 admirers of that book. I have besides,' he added, ' a par- 
 ticular reason for advising you to alter that passage, which 
 you shall know at a proper time ; ' and he begged him, in 
 the same letter, to alter it immediately, ' that it might not 
 get into many hands.' The cause of Hare's solicitude was 
 that he was then endeavouring to introduce Warbm'ton to 
 the Queen ; * an endeavour frustrated by the Queen's 
 death, as has been already observed. In another letter 
 Hare wrote : ' I can say, without any comphment, that 
 your papers have given me high delight. So many 
 beautiful thoughts, such ingenious illustrations of them, 
 
 * Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 22, 8vo. ed. 
 
128 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. VHI. 
 
 sucli a clear connexion, such a deduction of notions, and 
 so much good learning upon so useful a subject, aU ex- 
 pressed in proper and fine language, cannot but give an 
 inteUigent reader the greatest satisfaction.' * 
 
 About a month afterwards Sherlock wrote again: 
 
 ' Wallington, near Baldock, Herts, Not. 29, 1737. 
 
 ' Sir, — I am very much obhged to you for the pleasure 
 you have given me in perusing the sheets of your book as 
 they came from the press. There are many things quite 
 new to me, and very entertaining. Your proofs of the 
 magistrate's influence in matters of rehgion are very 
 copious and strong ; stronger, perhaps, than ever were 
 produced by the gentlemen who are wUling to think all 
 religion to be the contrivance of the civil magistrate. 
 
 ' I received most of the sheets in town, at the time 
 when the Queen's illness and death left me hardly room 
 to think sedately of anything else. I hope to see you in 
 town before the next summer ; by that time, I shall have 
 considered the books together, and, if anything sticks with 
 me, I shaU be glad of your assistance to clear it up. 
 
 '■ Mr. WoUaston was, I believe, a serious Christian. He 
 pursued his point to open the principles of natural rehgion 
 by natural reason only ; but towards the conclusion of his 
 book there is a plain indication, in so many words, that 
 he wanted other help ; and I am weU informed that he had 
 begun the proof and expUcation of the Christian rehgion 
 in the same method. The unfinished work was found 
 among his papers after liis death.' 
 
 When ' The Divine Legation' came forth, Hare said, in 
 a letter to Warburton : ' I hear nobody speak of your 
 book who do not express themselves highly entertained 
 with it, though they think the principal point, which re- 
 mains to be proved, a paradox.' And Bishop Sherlock 
 
 * Hiird's Life ofWarbnrton, p. 17, 8vo. ed. 
 
1738.] DE. WEBSTEK. 129 
 
 told him ttat the first part of the work ' had raised a 
 great desire and expectation of the second.' 
 
 But there were many others who looked on Warburton's 
 book with much less favour than these two Bishops. Some 
 disliked the author's haughtiness ; some, whose view was 
 not very comprehensive, could hardly discern his object ; 
 some, under the influence of prejudice, thought the book 
 would do more harm than good ; and some were ready to 
 attack the writer to gain a httle notoriety for themselves. 
 The first assault was made on him by one Dr. Wilham 
 Webster, a writer now little known, even to the searchers 
 into theological controversy ; a writer who, hke many 
 others of Ms class, spent much of a long hfe in producing 
 matter for the press, but left not a page behind Irim that 
 deserves to be reprinted. 
 
 As he made some impression on Warburton, however, 
 who found it necessary to answer him, we may bestow a 
 httle attention on his character and career. He was of 
 Cambridge, and in 1715, when he was twenty-six years of 
 age, and was curate of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, pubhshed 
 ' The Life of General Monk, from a manuscript of Thomas 
 Skinner, M.D.,' dedicated to Lord Gower, who was de- 
 scended from Monk's family. In 1729 he printed ' Two 
 Discourses, one showing that Belief in even speculative 
 Doctrines may he necessary to Salvation ; and the other, 
 that the Doctrine of the Trinity is not merely Sjyeculative ; ' 
 treatises directed against the liberal notions of Dr. Sykes, 
 who had pubhshed a discourse ' On the Innocency of 
 Error.' In 1731 he was deprived, for no reason that is 
 recorded, of his curacy at St. Dunstan's, but was pre- 
 sented by a relative to the rectory of Deepden, in 
 Suffolk, worth about a hundred a-year. About the 
 same time, apparently to please Sherlock, he published 
 ' The Fitness" of the Witnesses of the Eesurrection consi- 
 dered;' and, to propitiate Hare, two pamphlets on his 
 behalf against Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, who had 
 
 K 
 
130 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBURTOX. [Ch. VIII. 
 
 attacked him for some passages in a sermon. But these 
 effusions brought him only barren thanks, and, -to in- 
 crease his income, he started the pubhcation by wMch 
 he became most notorious, the ' Weekly Miscellany,' pro- 
 fessedly edited by 'Eichard Hooker, Esq., of the Inner 
 Temple,' an undertaking which, he said, ' was more 
 approved than supported, procured him nothing but 
 great trouble, much ill will, and abuse of all sorts, great 
 expense, and much difficulties ; ' and which, from being 
 overcrowded with rehgious essays, obtained the nickname 
 of ' Mother Hooker's Journal.' He was author, too, of 
 a strong pamphlet in favour of the woollen trade, and, 
 when the sale of it declined, of another, equally strong, 
 in depreciation of the trade. He also pubhshed a 
 humorous ' Defence of Eustace Budgell,' inquiring how it 
 was possible for a man, who spoke so confidently of his 
 own honour and honesty, to league with an infamous 
 woman to forge Tindal's pretended will. Having then, 
 by some means, gained the notice of Archbishop Potter, 
 he was recommended by him to the vicarage of Ware, but 
 found the revenues of the parish in a very unsatisfactory 
 state ; so that, having gone tliither in debt, he became 
 still more and more involved dm-ing seventeen years that 
 he held the hving, and at last, in a narrative which he 
 published a few months before his death, petitioning the 
 Archbishops and Bishops for charity,he represented himself 
 as in the greatest distress, incapable either of doing Ms 
 duty or of hiring assistance, among parishioners who were 
 eager to defraud him of his rights, and to render his hfe as 
 uneasy as possible. Pie stated that he had been forty-three 
 years emj)loyed parochially in the diocese of London, and 
 thirty-five years a public writer. One of those who had 
 assisted him in his distresses was the author of ' Pamela,' to 
 whom he owed ninety pounds when he went to Ware, and 
 who afterwards generously forgave him the whole debt. 
 It was in the 'Weekly ]\liscellany ' that this unfortunate 
 
1738.] LETTER FEOM BISHOP HAKE. 131 
 
 theologaster directed liis assault u]3on Warburton, in the 
 form of a ' Letter from a Country Clergyman.' 
 
 Bishop Hare, noticing Webster's onslaught in that 
 publication, sent a copy of the paper to Warburton, 
 with the following letter : 
 
 ' February 28, 1738. 
 
 'Dear Sir, — I thank you for yours of the 25th, and 
 should have given you no further trouble, till you should 
 give me the pleasure of seeing you in town, had it not 
 been to communicate to you the enclosed paper, the 
 contents of which I did not hear of till yesterday ; and, as 
 I thought fit you should see it, I take the first opportunity 
 to send it to you, upon a supposition that you might not 
 otherwise come soon to the knowledge of it. You will 
 consider, first, whether you should take any notice of it or 
 not ; and next, if you should, in what manner, whether 
 by a short pamphlet, or by a letter in some newspaper, 
 and whether in your own name or in the person of 
 another. I cannot at all guess who the writer is, but I 
 should suspect it to be Dr. Waterland sooner than anybody 
 else I know, or Dr. Webster himself ; pei'haps in a little 
 time it may be known, or guessed at at least, with more 
 certainty. I do not wonder to find you attacked, but I 
 hoped it would not have been so soon, nor with so much 
 warmth. I do not know what to advise in a matter I have 
 had no time to consider of, but think some defence is 
 pretty necessary ; but I desire you would not be too hasty 
 in it, and that it may be with more temper than one is 
 apt to write with under so much provocation. I am, dear 
 sir, your most faithful friend and servant, 
 
 ' Fe. Cicest.' * 
 
 Bishop Sherlock wrote, a few days afterwards : 
 
 ' March 2, 1738. 
 
 ' Eeverend Sir, — The Bishop of Chichester tells me that 
 
 * Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 100. 
 K 2 
 
132 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VIII. 
 
 he sent you the " Misfiellany " of last week, so there is 
 no occasion to give you any account of it. The very 
 abstird use that paper has made of the passage relating 
 to Hickringall, &c., requires no answer. Everybody cries 
 shame on the author for it. The other charge is equally 
 absurd, though not so surprising. I was aware that some 
 parts of your book would raise jealousies, though I little 
 imagined to see them raised so high, where there are so 
 many passages in the book to speak the author's sense 
 plainly. 
 
 ' But one passage there is, which, I find, has, above aU 
 others, given ground to those suspicions ; it is Dedication, 
 p. 18, where you say of the author * of " A Letter to 
 Dr. Waterland," that he is one of the most formidable 
 adversaries to the Freethinkers. This author is reckoned 
 to have given up the divine authority of Moses, and to 
 consider him as a mere poHtician, and to defend even the 
 Christian religion as useful only for the present circum- 
 stances of life. I do not vouch for these conclusions, but 
 those who are assured they are just, take your declaration 
 to be approving the method, and to be a key to your own 
 sentiments. 
 
 ' I thought it right to give you this account, which will 
 let you into the reason of the anger expressed against you, 
 and enable you, if it should be considerable enough ever 
 to deserve yovir notice, to see it in the true light ; at present, 
 I think it is not. 
 
 ' I expect to see you in town, and shall be very glad to 
 see you and talk over these matters. The learning and 
 abihty of the author of " The Divine Legation " are not 
 called in question, and the first part has raised a great 
 desire and expectation of the second. I am, sir, your 
 affectionate brother and humble servant, 
 
 'Tho. SARUM.'t 
 * Dr. Conyers Middleton. 
 I Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 62. 
 
173S.] SHEELOCK — MIDDLBTOK. 133 
 
 In another letter, written a week afterwards, Sherlock 
 says that Bishop, Hare and himself were unanimous in 
 thinking that it would be proper for Warburton to say 
 something in answer to the reproaches cast upon him ; 
 ' not so much in regard to the author of the " Miscellany " 
 as in regard to others, who may possibly be desirous to 
 see all ground of suspicion removed. In drawing the 
 answer,' he remarks, ' you should consider such persons 
 much more than your angry adversary. If you- treat him 
 as he may deserve, you enter into ttoT^s^ov aarz-ovdov, and 
 may be engaged in the most disagreeable work to a 
 scholar and a serious man. I do not mean that you have 
 not right, or that you should not complain of the immoral 
 conduct of your adversary ; but I wish to see it done 
 seriously, rather than angrily. I write this, not as suspect- 
 ing your want either of temper or judgment, but from my 
 own experience, who know how hard it is to return a soft 
 answer to a pubhc abuse. 
 
 ' . . . . The case of Dr. M., which is the hinc illce 
 lacrymce of the whole complaint, wiU require your best 
 consideration, whether to mention it at aU, or how to 
 mention it. If you had not, in the 18th page, said any- 
 thing of him, I should have thought the 38th page 
 intended for him. I remember very well that, conversing 
 with Dr. M. at Bath, about four years ago, I said to him 
 much the same thing which I read in the 38th page.'* 
 
 The first of these passages to which Sherlock alludes is 
 this : — ' A very candid and respectable author, speaking 
 of the ancient restraints upon free-thinking, says : " These 
 were the maxims, these the principles, which the Hght of 
 nature suggested, which reason dictated. Nor has this 
 fine writer any cause to be ashamed of his acknowledg- 
 ment." ' What the other passage was I do not know. 
 
 ' The Country Clergyman's Letter ' I have sought, but 
 
 * Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 64. 
 
134 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cii. VIII. 
 
 not found, for, wlien tlie best papers of the ' Weekly Mis- 
 cellany ' were collected for republication in volumes, of 
 -which, I beheve, only two were pubhshed, that epistle, 
 Avith some others that followed it from the same hand, 
 was not included among them. 
 
 The grounds of its attack, therefore, are now to be 
 known only from Warburton's reply, from which we gather 
 that the author of ' The Divine Legation,' in the Country 
 Clergyman's opinion, ' had been very severe upon all 
 clergymen who take the liberty of censuring the conduct 
 of any of their hretliren ; ' and indeed, he adds, ' if I am 
 capable of understanding the meaning and drift of his 
 book, he had reason to apprehend it might draw upon 
 him the censures of all the clergy who are sincere friends 
 to Christianity; therefore it might be pohtic to obviate 
 the force of such animadversions beforehand.' 'If,' he 
 proceeds, ' he really means to defend Christianity, he hath 
 pubhshed the weakest defence of it that I have ever read. 
 .... He is a warmer advocate for Dr. [Middleton], who 
 denies the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures, than for 
 
 the Scriptures themselves He must excuse me 
 
 if I suspect his faith and condemn his book. This I am 
 sure of, the author must be a subtile enemy to Eevelation, 
 or an indiscreet friend. I must own he has left me in no 
 
 doubt Mr. Warburton modestly says, they [the 
 
 Enghsh Church] have undertaken to prove Christianity 
 without understanding it.' Mr. Warburton 'has under- 
 valued the evidence arising from miracles ; ' he is one of 
 those who ' deny the divinity of Christ, the merits of his 
 death, the obhgation and effects of the sacraments, and the 
 doctrine of grace ; ' and the Country Clergyman insinuates 
 that Mr. Warbmton ' should be hindered from any further 
 advancement in the Church,' and prays ' for the forgive- 
 ness and conversion of all bad men.' 
 
 In his ' Vindication,' Warburton commences by saying 
 that, ' after having twice offered his thoughts to the pubhc 
 
1738.] ' VINDICATION ' AGAINST WEBSTER. 135 
 
 on two very important subjects, and liad tire honour to be 
 favourably heard, it must needs be a sufficient mortifica- 
 tion to him to be obliged to descend to so low a subject as 
 himself.'' But, since an attempt had been made to render 
 his projected defence of religion suspected, he ' thought it 
 his duty to vindicate himself publicly from the horrid 
 accusations of a letter-writer in the " Weekly Miscellany " 
 of the 24th of February last.' As to the charge that he 
 had been severe on all clergymen who censured their 
 brethren, he answers that his severity had been directed, 
 not against clergymen who censure their brethren, but 
 against others ' who abuse the whole body of the clergy, 
 considered as an order instituted by Christ, and established 
 by the State ; ' and in reference to the insinuation that 
 such severity had been intended to propitiate the clergy 
 as a body, with the view, possibly, of gainhig himself 
 promotion, he says, 'When I presumed to pubhsh, in 
 defence of the established clergy, a vindication of the 
 Church of England, under the title of "The Alhance 
 between Church and State," which surely might deserve 
 their pardon, lest the world should imagine I expected 
 more, I put it out without my name, and now, writing in 
 the common cause of Christianity, I have publicly owned it.' 
 
 With regard to the charge, that the volume was ' a 
 weak defence of Christianity,' he observes that if he had 
 put it forth as a defence of Christianity, it might indeed 
 have been called a weak one, but that he had expressly 
 stated it was ' only preparatory to the defence of Eevela- 
 tion,' and that, if he had not made this statement, ' the 
 book itself would shew that it is no more a defence of 
 Christianity than the first proposition of the three terms,' 
 in which his argument is declared, ' is a syllogism.' 
 
 Middleton he does not desert, but continues to speak of 
 him as before. How true an accuser the letter- writer is 
 of Middleton, he says, we may easily see. ' Dr. [Middleton] 
 says it is necessary to believe of the Scrip)tures in general 
 
136 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. VIII. 
 
 that they are divinely inspired; and that all whicli he 
 denies is, that the Scriptures are of absolute and universal 
 ins]Diration. He shows that Tillotson and Grotius were of 
 the same opinion, who, he charitably presumes, were 
 Christians. And as he [Middleton] tells his friends and 
 acquaintances the same he tells the public, the letter- 
 writer must excuse me if I believe a man whose candour, 
 sincerity, benevolence, and charity I have experienced, 
 before him who has not given me the pleasure of remark- 
 ing in him any of those Christian quahties.' 
 
 But however warm an advocate of Dr. Middleton the 
 letter- writer would make hun, he observes that he is not 
 to be made responsible for aU Dr. Middleton's opinions, 
 from whom he dissents widely, in regard not only to the 
 partial inspiration of the Scriptures, but to some other 
 matters. ' But we can differ from each other,' he proceeds, 
 ' and avow and maintain our difference of opinion without 
 violation of common humanity, friendship, or Christian 
 charity. I will give the letter-writer an instance of 
 difference in opinion between us, from this very book he 
 so much condemns. The writer of the " Defence of the 
 Letter to Dr. Waterland " says, Is the notion of the divine 
 origin of the law and, inspiration of Moses to he resolved 
 into fiction, or fable, or political lying f No, far be it from 
 me to think or say so. But this perhaps one may venture 
 to say, that the sujyposition of some degree of such fiction 
 may jyossibly be found necessary to the solving the difficulties 
 of the Mosaic writings, without any hurt to their authority, 
 or advantage to infidelity. I am, as I say, of a different 
 opinion. The writer endeavours to support his by several 
 arguments, amongst wliich one is, the professions and 
 examples of the ancient sages and legislators. Now, in 
 the second section of my third book I have inquired into 
 the principles that induced the ancient sages and legislators 
 to deem it lawful to deceive for the public good, in the 
 discovery of which, I think, I have made it evident that 
 
1738.J APOLOGIES FOE MIDDLETON. 137 
 
 those reasons or pri7iciples could have no place among the 
 founders and propagators of the Jewish and Christian 
 religions. 
 
 ' But I am a warm advocate for Dr. Middleton. In 
 what ? I have called him a very formidable adversary 
 to the Freethinkers. And I think I had reason ; for tne 
 arguments he hath used for the truth of Christianity 
 against Tindal have never yet been answered by them, 
 nor, I think, ever can. I say for the truth of Christianity ; 
 for his reasonings* relate only to its truth, and can be 
 understood in no other sense. After this, to think he 
 would have Christianity supported only because it is useful, 
 is such a way of interpreting a writer as my charity will 
 never suiFer me to follow. 
 
 ' The opinion I have of Dr. Middleton 's abiUties, and of 
 the sincerity of his profession, were the true reasons of 
 that esteem I express for him ; being desirous of allaying 
 all disgust, if any hath arisen in him, from the treatment 
 of his less candid adversaries, and of engaging him to a 
 more complete vindication of our most holy faith, at a 
 time when the good disposition of the meanest advocate 
 for Eevelation should not, I think, in prudence, be dis- 
 couraged : nay, was I so unhappy to think of Dr. Middle- 
 ton as the letter-writer is disposed to do, I should yet be 
 inchned to behave myself very differently towards him. 
 I should be so far from estranging him further from the 
 faith by uncharitable anathemas, that I should do aU I 
 could to court and allure him to Christianity, by thinking 
 well of its professors. Thus much, I conceive. Christian 
 charity would require ; and how far Christian policy 
 would persuade, let the learned say, who know what 
 ornament his pen would be to the Christian faith, and his 
 acquaintance of what example his morals to Christian 
 practice.' 
 
 * Letter to Dr. Waterland, pp. 59-64. 
 
138 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTOX. [Ch. VIII. 
 
 Warburton then observes that he supposes the accusa- 
 tion, that he is no warm advocate for the Scriptures, to 
 be founded on the following passage in ' The Divine Lega- 
 tion :' ' The 'New Testament does not contain any regular 
 or complete system or digest of moral lavrs ; the occasional 
 precepts there delivered, how excellent and divine soever, 
 arising only from conjunctures and circumstances that 
 were the subjects of those preacliings or writings in which 
 such precepts are found. For the rest, for a general 
 - knowledge of the whole body of moral duty, the great 
 pandect of the law of nature is held open by it to be 
 searched and studied. Finally, says the Apostle Paul, 
 whatsoever things are true,' &c. I suppose, if the letter- 
 "WTiter had any particular meaning, this was the place that 
 was to justify him in saying that I was no warm advocate 
 for the Scriptures. But does the New Testament contain 
 ani/ such comjylete or regidar system ? Will the letter- 
 writer say so ? Will any one besides say so ? How weak 
 and indiscreet a friend soever he may please to think me 
 of rehgion, I will assure the reader that, as I make it 
 one point of my rehgion to say nothing but what I think 
 the truth, so I do not use to throw about those truths at 
 random.' 
 
 To the charge of having said that the English clergy 
 had undertaken to prove Christianity without understand- 
 ing it, he replies that the letter- writer had strangely per- 
 verted what he had said, for he had merely asked whether, 
 in the controversy with the Deists, that tnightnot be applied 
 to certain advocates of revelation which was formerly said 
 of Arnobius and Lactantius, that they undertook the defence 
 of Christianity before they understood it. ' Have none but 
 Englishmen,' he adds, ' wrote of late in defence of Chris- 
 tianity? Have no Enghshmen but the Enghsh clergy 
 wrote in defence of it ? I solemnly declare that in the 
 passage above quoted I meant no Enghsh clergyman 
 ■whatsoever. Sit far from that, I expressly say in the Dedi- 
 
1738.] COXCLUSION OP ' VINDICATION.' l.iD 
 
 cation, that the clergy of the Established Church are they 
 loho have been jjrincipally watchful in the common cause 
 of Christianity, and most successful in repelling the insidts 
 of its enemies.' 
 
 In reference to the accusation that he had undervalued 
 the existence of miracles, he observes that he had said 
 that men have proved our religion actually divine thereby ,• 
 and, as to the imputation of other false opinions, he ' had 
 afErmed,' he states, ' more than once or twice, that the 
 doctrine of redemption is the foundation, and of the very 
 essence of Christianity,' and that the letter-vpriter ' should 
 have known that all or most of those true Christian doc- 
 trines,' wliich he accuses the author of ' The Divine 
 Legation ' of neglecting, ' are contained in the doctrine of 
 redemption.' 
 
 A passage towards the end of the ' Vindication,' in 
 which he takes an opportunity of quoting Pope, must be 
 given at length : 
 
 ' There are, and those esteemed sincere Christians too, 
 who would have taken the names of Infidel and Heretic 
 for favours at the hand of the letter- writer. But I am of 
 a dififerent humour. These titles have no charms for me. 
 I have hved some time in the world, and, blessed be God, 
 ivithont giving or taking offence. This time has been spent 
 in my parish church (for I am a country clergyman, and 
 reside constantly on my cure),' in the service of my 
 neighbour, in my study, and in the offices of filial piety : 
 
 With lenient arts t' extend a mother's breath, 
 Malie languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, 
 Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, 
 And keep a while one parent fi'om the sky. 
 
 Excess of zeal, in such as the letter-vsTiter, and defect of 
 rehgion, in others of better breeding, so efface these feel- 
 ings of nature, that I could hardly have known how to 
 have told them, had I not both the example and the fine 
 words too of one of the pohtest men of the age to keep 
 
140 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTOK. [Cii. VIII. 
 
 me in countenance. The time spent in my study has 
 been employed in confirming my own faith against the 
 erroneous opinions the letter-writer has raked together, 
 and then in planning a work to confirm my brethren. 
 AU the reward I ever had, or ever expect to have here, 
 is the testimony of a good conscience within doors, and a 
 good name without. The first no man can take from me ; 
 the other this letter-writer, in the most unchristian 
 manner, has attempted to invade. 
 
 ' But I heartily forgive him ; and, instead of putting 
 uncharitable constructions on his secret intentions, will 
 believe, though I know no more of him than by his letter, 
 that he is sincere, and only unhappily agitated by a 
 furious zeal for the cause of God and rehgion, instead of 
 thinking he ought to he hindered from any further advance- 
 ment in the Church. Instead of using any warm endea- 
 vours to lessen his credit, which he professes ua so many 
 words to be liis purpose against me, I wish him aU increase 
 of reputation and honour ; and, instead of insulting him 
 with the words he seems to apply to me, / pray for the 
 forgiveness and conversion of alt had men, I will assure 
 him that I pray for him as a brother.' 
 
 He then concludes by saying that, though he has pre- 
 sumed to appeal to the pubhc on this occasion against a 
 false charge, the pubUc need not apprehend that he 
 shall trouble them a second time in the same way, for 
 it must be ' a strange provocation indeed ' that would 
 induce him to a repetition of such a task ; and that, 
 whether he is a weak defender of Christianity or not, 
 must be submitted to the opinion of the world, but that, 
 he is persuaded, his readers will suspend their decision 
 till they see the whole of his performance ; assuring them 
 that what he has offered to the pubhc concerning ' The 
 Divine Legation of Moses,' was not a hasty, sudden 
 thought, such as may please at first, yet give no ultimate 
 satisfaction, but the result of long reflection on a subject 
 
1738.] LETTEK FEOM BISHOP IIAEE. 141 
 
 'often laid by, and then again, at proper intervals, re- 
 sumed, reviewed, and turned on all sides.' 
 
 As soon as the ' Vindication ' was published, a copy of 
 it was sent to Bishop Hare, who rephed as follows : 
 
 ' March 23, 1738. 
 ' Dear Sir, — I received yesterday your " Vmdication," 
 which I read twice over -with great satisfaction. You 
 have more than kept your word in promising to write 
 with temper. I wish you had shown a httle more resent- 
 ment upon the first point, the misrepresentation is so very 
 gross ; not but that you have in reality chosen the better 
 part ; too much temper is a thing few writers are guilty 
 of, imder much less provocation, and, with equitable 
 judges, will turn greatly to your credit. But I do truly 
 wish you had quoted the passage in your own book, 
 instead of referring to it, which would, without saying 
 more, have made the misrepresentation appear more 
 flagrant ; and I was pleased to find the Bishops of Sarum 
 and Bristol, who are just gone from me, of the same 
 opinion. But they thought, as I do, that the reason of 
 your not doing it was, that it was quite unnecessary in 
 so gross an iastance of abuse. 
 
 ' The part that relates to Dr. Middleton the bishops 
 think extremely weU done. It was the only difficult part, 
 and it cannot but please every candid writer to see you do 
 justice to yourself, and yet not do it at his expense, nor 
 say a word that either he or his friends can be offended 
 at, or that is in the least giving up a man with whom 
 you have a friendship. Here is integrity and courage 
 very agreeably joined. . . . 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, most faithfully yours, 
 
 ' F. CiCESTE.' 
 
 Much correspondence took place between Warburton 
 and Middleton about this time in reference to this affair 
 and matters connected with it ; and Hurd, who had their 
 
142 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cn. VIII. 
 
 letters in his hands, says that Warburton employed every 
 kind of art to soften or remove Middleton's prejudices 
 against revealed rehgion, ' by joining with him some- 
 times in his graver complaints of bigoted divines, and 
 sometimes in his ridicule of their pretended orthodoxy ; 
 but in taking for granted everyv^here his respect for revela- 
 tion, and his real behef of it, and in seeming to think that, 
 if other opinions were entertained of him, they had pro- 
 ceeded from ignorance of his true character.' 
 
 He had informed Middleton of his intention to write 
 the ' Dedication to the Freethinkers,' and had let him 
 know that he purposed to mention him in it with respect. 
 Dr. Middleton rephed: * ' I am pleased with the manner of 
 your address to the Freethinkers, and obhged to you for 
 your friendly intentions with regard to myself; and though 
 I should be as proud to have the testimony of yom' judg- 
 ment and good opinion as of any man, yet I would have 
 you consider how far such a declaration of it may expose 
 you to a share of that envy which has lain, and still Hes, 
 very heavy upon me.' 
 
 This solicitude was very honourable to Middleton, but 
 did not make Wai-burton alter his resolution. He 
 wrote to him, a short time after, -f- saying that his book 
 would soon be published, and tliat a copy of it should be 
 sent to him ; and added, in allusion to Middleton's letter : 
 ' I have your pardon to ask for the liberty which I have 
 taken of designing you, by your character, in one place 
 of the body of the book, as well as in the " Dedication to 
 the Freethinkers ; " for I would fain contribute to abate an 
 in I jmt prejudice, that might lie in the way of those honoiu-s 
 which wait for you, and are so much your due. And I 
 shall reckon it for nothing, in so honest an attempt, to run 
 the risk of sharing that prejudice with you.' 
 
 When he rephed to the letter in the ' Weekly Mscel- 
 
 * Sept. 22, 1737. t Doc. 2.3, 1737. 
 
1738.] LETTERS TO BIECII ON" WEBSTER. 143 
 
 lany,' lie wrote again to Middleton, * observing, in refer- 
 ence to Webster : ' I am to thank him for the agreeable 
 necessity of vindicating you (by a quotation in one of the 
 defences that pass for yours) from his false accusation of 
 denying the inspu^ation of Scripture; and from his imagi- 
 nation (which is the ground of this clamour), that you 
 defend Eevelation, not as true, but only useful ; and that, 
 as to other points, you and I can differ without breach of 
 common humanity, friendship, and Christian charity.' 
 
 Of Middleton we need say no more at present. Of 
 Webster, Warburton professes to take leave altogether, 
 determining to honour liim with no more animadversion. 
 Writing to Birch, and alluding to a sermon which he was 
 about to pubHsh, he says : ' You might perceive I was in 
 a passion agamst Webster when I wrote, but his last letter 
 against me has cured me of it, and / design to take no 
 manner of tiotice of him in the preface of my sermon.' 
 But in a few weeks he changed his mind, and, ac- 
 quainting Birch that his sermon was in the press, he 
 observes : ' I think it will be the best answer to Webster ; 
 the title of it is, " Faith worldng by Charity to Christian 
 Edification." There is a long preface to it, in which I work 
 Venn and Webster in a manner (though not equal to the 
 highest provocation that ever was given, yet) that they will 
 have no reason to say that I sneak to them in an unorthodox 
 manner. This was to be positively the last time in which 
 Webster would be noticed. ' It is a great pleasure,' he 
 says to Birch, on sending him a copy of his sermon, ' that 
 such judges as you approve, and that my enemies are such 
 as Webster. As / am resolved for the futwre not only not 
 to answer, but even not to read, what that wretch writes 
 against me, his putting his name to what he does will be 
 of use to me. I wish you could contrive that this should 
 come to his ear.' Yet, alas for the frailty of human reso- 
 lution, he tells Birch, in the very same epistle, that he ' has 
 
 * March 18, 1738. Kurd's Life of Warburton, pp. 20, 21, 8vo. ed. 
 
144 LIFE OJ? BISHOP WAEBUKrON. [Ch. VIII. 
 
 not yet seen Webster's " Circular Letter" ' a pamphlet 
 addressed to the Bishops, and adds : '■Pray, when you go 
 by Mr. Gyles's shop, desire him to send it to me.' And in 
 another letter he says : 'Mr. Gyles has sent me word that 
 Webster has pubhshed aU his letters together, and he 
 thinks it proper to do the same by those newspapers wrote 
 in defence of me. I have returned answer, that it was a 
 matter of the utmost indifference ; but that, if he thought 
 it worth his while, I gave my consent ; so I have left it to 
 him to do what he thinks proper. To think I will ever 
 enter into a controversy with the weakest as well as 
 wickedest of aU mankind, is a thing impossible. This I 
 shall do indeed, in a short preface to the second volume — 
 / 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 ; and this will I do, was the Pope himself their 
 protector. Other business with them, in the way of argu- 
 ment, I shall never have any.' * 
 
 The Venn here mentioned was the Eev. Henry Venn, 
 a person of Httle note but as the colleague of Webster, 
 and as having prevented Dr. Eundle, afterwards Bishop 
 of Derry, from being made Bishop of Gloucester, by 
 informing against him as a Deist, for expressions, in a 
 private conversation. 
 
 Warburton accordingly ' hung ' Venn and Webster in his 
 preface to the second volume of ' The Divine Legation,' a 
 work with which, in spite of all clamour and opposition 
 from ignorance or timidity, he determined vigorously to 
 proceed. 'As to my mcluaation,' he tells Bishop Sherlock, 
 ' it is not a bit abated for all the scurvy usage that I have 
 met with ; for I will teU your Lordship what it is that 
 supports me — it is a love of truth, and a thorough con- 
 viction of the reahty of the Jewish and Christian revela- 
 tions. I think I am not uncharitable in suspecting that it 
 may be a want of the latter that makes some very zealous 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Anec, vol. v. p. 54-8 ; Lit. lUustr., vol. ii. p. 87. 
 
1738.] JOKTIN'S * remarks ON SPENSER.' 145 
 
 people cooler and more suspicious of the former than is 
 fitting. Hence we see them almost frighted to death at 
 every foolish book writ against religion, and betake them- 
 selves ill all haste to their old posture of defence to prop 
 and buttress up, with any materials that come to hand, 
 what they think a sinking fabric, because they do not see 
 the eternal foundations- on which it stands. In the mean 
 time, if any one offers to remove the rubbish that hides 
 its beauty, or kick down an awkward prop that discredits 
 its strength, or lays it open to its very foundations, which 
 is all that is wanting to make it impregnable, he is sure to 
 be called, perhaps to be thought, a secret adversary, or 
 an indiscreet friend.' * 
 
 In the early part of this year he was made chaplain 
 to the Prince of Wales ; and his new dignity appears in 
 the title-page of the sermon mentioned above, which, 
 with the projected preface turned into a postscript, he 
 published in Ju.ne. It was reprinted in 1745, under the 
 title of ' A faithful Portrait of Popery,' and is the four- 
 teenth among the discourses inserted m his collected works 
 by' Hurd. 
 
 He did not occupy himself, however, so constantly with 
 his great work, as not to aUow himself time for noticing 
 lighter matters. Jortin had recently published a thin 
 octavo of ' Eemarks on Spenser,' pointing out many of his 
 imitations of the Greek and Eoman writers, and modestly 
 proposing a few emendations. Warburton, hghting on 
 the volume, wrote some observations on it, which he sent, 
 to be printed anonymously, to the ' Works of the Learned' 
 for October 1738. The editor of that work introduced 
 the communication thus : 
 
 ' I am indebted for the favom- of the following lines to 
 a gentleman who has distinguished himself very eminently 
 in the commonwealth of letters, but who wiU not allow 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 65. 
 L 
 
14G LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOIf. [Ch. VIII. 
 
 me the honour of naming my correspondent. There are 
 some people of so nice a decorum, that they will not be 
 seen in dishabille, though the graces of their person are 
 not to be concealed by any dress they can appear in.' 
 
 Warburton commences as follows : 
 
 ' A late book, intituled " Eemarks on Spenser's Poems," 
 seems not to be so well known as so learned and judicious 
 a performance deserves. The modest, worthy, and very 
 learned author has here given the justest plan for a good 
 edition of Spenser (who had the ancients always in view) 
 in the method he has observed of marking out, as he goes 
 along, the imitations of the classic writers, which affords 
 him an opportunity of making many useful and well- 
 grounded remarks. The continence he has observed, with 
 regard to the author's text, appears to have been partly 
 owing to the modesty of his nature, in part to a reasonable 
 conviction that Spenser's text is very pure, and principally 
 to his disgust at some strange liberties taken of late years 
 with Enghsh poets, on pretence of amending and restoring 
 them. So masterly a piece of criticism, then, wiU well 
 deserve anyone's notice. And I dare say nothing can 
 be more agreeable to the author than our endeavour to 
 satisfy a few doubts and queries which here and there 
 occurred to him.' 
 
 Of these criticisms, which are in better style than many 
 of his Shakspearian attempts, some specimens, it is hoped, 
 may not unreasonably be extracted. 
 
 ' Book I. Canto VI. St. 1 : 
 
 As when a ship that flies fair under sail, 
 A hidden rock escap'd hath tinawares, 
 That lay in wait her wreck for to heivail, &c. 
 
 On which the author remarks, "To bewail her wreck 
 seems unintelligible." We must remember that Spenser 
 was always full of the poetical mythology, which tells of 
 Scylla and the Sirens sitting on rocks, and alluring navi- 
 gators to their destruction. 
 
1738.] WAEBURTON'S CRITICISMS ON SPENSER. 147 
 
 ' Of the first, Virgil says : 
 
 At Scyllam cajcis cohibet spehmca latebris 
 Ora exertantem et naves in saxa trahentem. 
 
 And of the latter : 
 
 Jamque adeo scopuloa Sirenum advecta subibat, 
 Difficiles quondam, multorumque ossibus albos. 
 
 These traitoresses, after they had wrecked the vessels, 
 pretended to wail over them. To these Spenser alludes, 
 but appHes to the rock what was said of them, and not 
 inelegantly or unlearnedly. For the original of these 
 fables was only the perpetual howluig heard about those 
 rocks, by the waters running to and fro ua the hollows of 
 them. The allusion, too, is very just and beautiful, for 
 the sinuHtude is applied to one of his heroes just broke 
 loose from the enchantments of a vicious woman.' 
 
 This is ingenious ; but Upton quashes it all by suggest- 
 ing that bewail is the same as wale, that is, choose, 
 equivalent to the German walen. Wale is still in use 
 among the Scotch ; as in Burns, speaking of the Cotter 
 preparing to read the Scriptures, 
 
 He wales a portion witli judicious care. 
 
 Thus the rock, according to Upton, lay in wait to choose 
 or mark out the ship for a wreck. 
 
 Warburton's next criticism is more daring : 
 
 ' Book I. Canto XI. St. 46 : 
 
 There grew a goodly tree Hm fair beside, — 
 Great God it planted in that blessed sted 
 With bis Almighty hand, and did it call 
 The tree of life, the crime of our first father's fall. 
 
 The learned author asks, " Wlay does he call the tree of 
 hfe the crime of our first father's fall ?" I answer, that 
 I apprehend Spenser did not call it by any such senseless 
 designation, but that it is a mere blunder of the printer, 
 and that the poet wrote 
 
 and did it call 
 
 The tree of life, the time of our first father's fall, 
 
 L 2 
 
148 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBUKTOlSr. [Cu. VIII. 
 
 i.e., he gave it that name at the tmie of our fixst father's 
 fall ; he then named it. The particle at denoting time is 
 frequently omitted by writers of that age.' 
 
 This is tasteless enough. Jortiu himself saw, when he 
 afterwards reprinted his observations, that crime was 
 equivalent to cause, or fatal cause ; the meaning of 
 Spenser being that Adam, having eaten of the forbidden 
 tree of knowledge, was made to faU, or be expeUed, from 
 Eden, lest he should also eat of the tree of hfe, and live 
 for ever ; the tree of hfe being thus, in reahty, the cause 
 of his expulsion. 
 
 ' Book II. Canto XII. St. 50 : 
 
 More sweet and wholesome than the pleasant hill 
 Of Rhodope. 
 
 " Methinks," says the author, " he should not have singled 
 out Ehodope, a mountain of Thrace, as an agreeable 
 place. The ancients are against him." But this was 
 done in comphment to the power of poetry, and a very 
 fine one it is ; for this was the mountain on which 
 Orpheus sung, who not only soothed the savage beasts 
 and bent the oaks, but hkewise meliorated the soil and 
 climate by the force of harmony. This was Spenser's 
 thought, always profound and subhme in his ideas, as his 
 great admh-er Shakspeare confesses, who, in his poem 
 called "The Friendly Concord," seems to apologise for 
 this very passage against the critics, in these words : 
 
 Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch 
 Upon the lute doth ravish human sense ; 
 
 Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such 
 As, passing aU conceit, needs no defence. 
 
 Nay, he seems even to have paraphrased this very thought 
 in a song. Act III. Sc. 1 of "Henry VIII." : 
 
 Orpheus, with his lute, made trees, 
 And the mountain tops that freeze, 
 
 Bow themselves when he did sing ; 
 To his music plants and flowers 
 Ever rose, as sun and showers 
 
 That had made a lasting spring.' 
 
1738.] SPENSEEIAN CRITICISM. 149 
 
 Upton concurs in this explanation, saying that not the 
 real but the poetical Ehodope is meant. 
 'Book in. Introd. St. 2: 
 
 But living art may not least part express, 
 
 Nor life-resembling pencil it can paint ; 
 All were it Zeuxis or Praxiteles, 
 
 His daedal hand would greatly fail and faint. 
 
 The learned author says, " Praxiteles was no painter." No, 
 nor did Spenser understand him such ; he supposed him, 
 as he was, a statuary, as appears by the first hue, which is 
 differenced from the second by the discretive nor ; and, 
 by living art, he had the spirantia ?noUius aira in view.' 
 
 Upton very properly refers ' Uving art' to Praxiteles, 
 and ' hfe-resembling pencil ' to Zeuxis. 
 
 ' Book III. Canto XI. St. 21 : 
 
 Great Ganges and immortal Euphrates. 
 
 " He makes," says our author, " the second syllable of 
 Euphrates short, and gives him the pompous epithet 
 immortal, which after all is but a botch." I imagine the 
 reason of our poet's giving Euphrates the epithet of im- 
 mortal was because it Avas one of the rivers of Paradise.' 
 
 This seems a mere Warburtonian fancy. Spenser pro- 
 bably used the word 'immortal' only for famous or 
 renowned. Todd, and the critics to whom he has recoiirse, 
 are silent. 
 
 ' Book YI. Canto X. St. 24. Spenser, speaking of the 
 Graces : 
 
 And eke themselves so in their dance they bore, 
 
 That two of them still forward seem'd to be, 
 
 But one still toivards showed herself afore, 
 
 That good should from us go than come, in greater store. 
 
 The learned author says, " A friend of mine conjectures 
 that for forioarcl it should be froward; froward is 
 opposed to toward." But the common reading is right, 
 and ou.r Spenser has painted here with great exactness 
 
150 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. VIII. 
 
 after tlie antique. For he had doubtless in his eye those 
 ancient gems in which we find the Graces in this attitude, 
 namely, two of them standing facing the spectator, and 
 extending their hands ; these are forward ; and the third, 
 with her face towards the other two, with her hands on 
 each of their shoulders, and her back to the spectator : 
 thus she showed herself towards the other two, and was 
 afore them; that is, on the first ground of the picture. 
 This exactly points out Spenser's moral, that good should 
 go from us in greater store than come to us.' 
 
 Church supports Jortin by advocating fro ward, whicli, 
 he says, is fromward, in opposition to toward. 
 
 This is all that is of any importance in Warburton's 
 remarks. 
 
1738.] CKOUSAZ'S STRICTURES ON POPE. 151 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 DEFENCE OP POPE AGAINST CROUSAZ. 
 
 WAEBUETON DETERMINES TO DEFEND POPe's ' ESSAY ON MAN ' AGAINST 
 
 the strictures of crousaz crousaz's works and qualifications 
 
 — Johnson's praise of chous^z — crousaz's charges against 
 
 pope's 'essay' — waeburton's professed refutation of them 
 
 optimism — wabburton's sneers at CROUSAZ, and epithets which 
 
 HE bestows upon HIM BLUNDERS IN THE FRENCH TRANSLATION OF 
 
 pope's essay HURD's remark on WARBURTON's CRITICISM POPE 
 
 PLEASED WITH THE DEFENCE LETTER FROM POPE TO WARBURTON 
 
 REPUBLICATION OF THE DEFENCE ; SUBMITTED TO POPE FOR RE- 
 VISION REMARKS ON POPE'S ' ESSAY ON MAN.' 
 
 WE have seen liow lightly Warburton, m the early- 
 part of his career, had spoken of Pope in his letter 
 to Concanen, and how patiently he had hstened to sneers 
 at him in his correspondence with Theobald. But he had 
 now formed a different notion of Pope's abihties, or, from 
 a view to his own interest in literature, had conceived 
 that it would be much better to propitiate so eminent a 
 wi'iter than to depreciate or be at variance with him. In 
 his ' Vindication ' against Webster he expressed his 
 pleasure, when quoting Pope, at being able to borrow 
 ' the fine words of one of the politest men of the age ' to 
 keep him in countenance. He now availed himself of a 
 greater opportunity of securing Pope's favour by pub- 
 hshing a defence of the ' Essay on Man ' against Crousaz, 
 who had accused the author of being a disciple of Spinoza, 
 and of having inculcated throughout his work the doctrine 
 of fatalism. 
 
152 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Cii. IX. 
 
 Warbiirton, in his younger days, is said to have 
 expressed very unfavourable opinions of the Essay, and 
 to have maintained, in dissertations, wliich he read weekly 
 at a hterary club at Newark, that it was ' collected from 
 the worst passages of the worst authors.'* But he was 
 now to tell a very different story to Monsieur Crousaz. 
 
 Crousaz was at this time professor of philosophy at 
 Lausanne, and had written several mathematical and 
 philosophical works, among which were an Essay on 
 Logic, treatises on the Beautiful and on the Education of 
 Children, an Examination of Pyrrhonism Ancient and 
 Modern, and Observations on the Human Mind against 
 Antony CoUins's Liberty of Thought and Leibnitz's Pre- 
 established Harmony ; and, having met with Pope's Essay 
 in Erench, and fancying that he saw much impiety in it, 
 he resolved on exposing what he conceived to be its 
 noxious tendency. He accordingly pubhshed, hi 1737, an 
 Exainen de VEssai de Mr. Pope; and, ia the following 
 year, a more formal critique, entitled Commentaire sur la 
 Traduction en vers de M. VAbbe Du Resnel de VEssai de 
 Mr. Pope sur VHomme. As Du Eesnel's translation was 
 by no means faithful, and as there was a more exact 
 version in prose by M. de Silhouette, an attach^ of the 
 Erench Ambassador in England, Crousaz was justly 
 blamed for making it the basis of his animadversions, 
 for, though he knew no English himself, he might easily 
 have ascertained which was the more accurate of the 
 two. Both these works were soon pubhshed in Enghsh ; 
 the first by Cave in 1738, without the name of the trans- 
 lator, but under the auspices of Johnson, with the title, 
 ' An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man ; contaming 
 a succinct View of the System of the Fatahsts, and Con- 
 futation of then- Opinions ; with an Illustration of the 
 
 * Warton's Life of Pope, p. xlv. ; Prior's Life of Malone, p. 430 ; 
 Disraeli's Quarrels of Authors, Art. ' Warburton.' 
 
1738.] JOHNSONS CHARACTER OF CROUSAZ. 153 
 
 Doctrine of Free-will, and an Enquiry what View Mr. 
 
 Pope might have in touching upon the Leibnitzian Philo- 
 sophy and Fatahsm ;' the other was sent forth by the same 
 pubhsher in 1741, translated by Mrs. Carter (who with- 
 held, however, her name), and entitled ' A Commentary 
 
 ^pn Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man ; 
 with the Abbe du Eesnel's Translation of the Essay into 
 French Verse, and the Enghsh interhned.' The titles of 
 the versions indicate that the authors of them had no 
 leaning in favour of Pope. 
 
 Johnson, indeed, who was- concerned with both of them, 
 seems to have had a higher opinion of the French 
 professor's abilities, and of the justice of his animadver- 
 sions on Pope, than they fairly deserved. He spoke of 
 Crousaz, first in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' and after- 
 wards in the Life of Pope, as of a man who merited the 
 highest regard as well for his powers as his virtues. In 
 offering a ' View of the Controversy between Crousaz and 
 Warburton' to Mr. Urban, he^ extracts some specimens of 
 Crousaz's moral sentiments, by which, he says, ' it will 
 probably be shown that he is far from deserving either 
 indignation or contempt ; that his notions are just, though 
 they are sometimes introduced without necessity, and 
 defended when they are not opposed ; and that his abihties 
 and parts are such as may entitle him to reverence from 
 those who think his criticisms superfluous.' 
 
 In his Life of Pope he commends him still more 
 strongly. ' Crousaz,' he says, ' was a professor of Switzer- 
 land, eminent for his Treatise of Logic and his " Examen 
 de Pyrrhonisme,' and, however little known or regarded 
 here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those 
 in which philosophy and piety are happily united. He 
 was accustomed to argument and disquisition, and perhaps 
 was grown too desirous of detecting faults ; but his inten- 
 tions were always right, his opinions were solid, and his 
 religion pure. 
 
154 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Cn. IX. 
 
 ' His incessant vigilance for tlie promotion of piety 
 disposed him to look with distrust upon all metaphysical 
 systems of theology, and all schemes of virtue and hap- 
 piness purely rational ; and therefore it was not long 
 before he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as 
 they terminated for the most part ua natural rehgion, 
 were intended to draw mankind away from revelation, 
 and to represent the whole course of things as a necessary 
 concatenation of indissoluble fatality ; and it is undeniable 
 that in many passages a reUgious eye may easily discover 
 expressions not very favourable to morals or to hberty.' 
 
 Warburton's observations appeared in the form of 
 Letters m the ' Works of the Learned,' the first being 
 printed in December 1738, and four others in the first 
 four months of the following year. They were not pub- 
 hshed in a volume till 1742. 
 
 The great charge that Crousaz makes against the Essay 
 on Man is that a noxious system of fatahsm pervades the 
 whole of it. ' He cries out, Fate, fate,' observes Wfir- 
 burton, wherever he turns his eyes, ' as men in distraction 
 cry out, fire, fire.' Even the Eternal Being, says Crousaz, 
 was, according to Pope, obliged by fate to create the 
 world, or universe, as it is, because the idea of it was 
 the most perfect of all the ideas of worlds that presented 
 themselves to his contemplation. The poet, therefore, 
 exhorts us to consider that part of it which we inhabit, 
 and of which alone we can be said to have any know- 
 ledge, as ordered in the best possible manner ; for aU 
 nature, with its apparent irregularities, is but consummate 
 art ; what we think fortuitous is guided by invisible 
 direction, and what we think discordant is harmony not 
 understood. Yet, when we look around us, and meditate 
 on the state of things in which we are placed, we cannot 
 but think that it is very far from perfect ; that it abounds, 
 indeed, with imperfections and disorders, such as we 
 must admit to be not imaginary but real ; and, if we ask 
 
1738.] CROUSAZ'S CENSURES. 155 
 
 of Pope why it is no better, we are told that of its 
 disorders and imperfections, God himself, influenced by- 
 fate, is the author, since he formed it, and it was not in 
 his power to form it otherwise. But, in order that we 
 may content ourselves in this condition, beheving that we 
 are secure to be as blest as we can bear, we are exhorted 
 to compare the condition of things in the moral world 
 with that of things in the natural world : 
 
 If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design, 
 Wky then a Borgia or a Catiline ? 
 
 Yes, says Crousaz, the mixture and agitation, often 
 strong and vehement, of the particles of matter, is neces- 
 sary to a sound and healthy state of material existence, 
 and to the fermentation required for the nurture and 
 growth of organic bodies ; but monsters of wickedness, 
 surely, are not essential to the well-being of moral exist- 
 ence. ' A continual sprmg, and a heaven without clouds, 
 would be fatal to the earth and its inhabitants, but can 
 we regard it as a misfortune that men should be always 
 sage, calm, and temperate ? ' However, to make the 
 best of what is before us, he continues, I turn to what 
 the poet says of happiness, to inquire how it is to be 
 obtained, and I am answered thus : 
 
 Where grows, where grows it not ? If vain our toil, 
 We ought to blame the culture, not the soil : 
 Fix'd to no spot is happiness sincere ; 
 'Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere : 
 'Tis never to be boiight, but always free. 
 
 Happiness must then be somewhere very near me, and 
 easily to be found ; but, when I request the author to lead 
 me to it, he simply says, ' Take nature's path.' I am wilhng 
 to do so ; but what am I to understand by nature ? Is it 
 rational nature that I am to follow ? No ; for I am told 
 that if I ask the learned the way, I shall find the learned 
 
156 
 
 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. IX. 
 
 blind. Shall I then resign myself to the guidance of 
 animal natm-e ? No ; for that would soon lead me into 
 great distresses. To end my perplexities, therefore, I 
 must just suffer myself to be borne along by the course of 
 events, and find that to take nature's path is to follow in 
 the track of destiny, which, as I understand from the 
 beginning, is the director of everything. 
 
 As to rehgion, if I consult the poet on the subject, I 
 gain very httle instruction from him. I do indeed find, 
 in the fourth epistle, that for the simple-minded man, 
 who has learned 
 
 To look through Nature up to Nature's God, 
 
 and who is slave to no sect, but always wishing for an 
 increase of virtue. 
 
 For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, 
 And opens still, and opens on his soul ; ; 
 
 Till, lengthen'd on to faith, and unoonfin'd, 
 It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind ; 
 
 but I discover that this bliss is merely the result of 
 universal benevolence, of which every good man wiU wish 
 to have as great a share as possible, and that nature 
 
 — ' connects in this 
 
 His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss ; 
 At once his ovm bright prospect to be blest, 
 And strongest motive to assist the rest ; 
 
 so that ' height of bhss ' is ' but height of charity.' 
 This exhortation to universal charity has no foundation 
 but in the hypothesis that we are all parts of a whole, of 
 which every portion is necessary to the subsistence of the 
 rest, and, consequently, I am required to love everything 
 in a universe in which ' whatever is, is right,' and which, 
 as I must infer from the poet's statements, would not have 
 been a work sufliciently worthy of God, unless there had 
 
1738. J WAEBURTON'S REPLY TO CKOUSAZ. 157 
 
 been in it atheists, superstitious persons, persecutors, 
 tyrants, idolaters, assassins, and poisoners. 
 
 SucIl is a summary of the criticism of Crousaz. Let us 
 take a view of Warburton's elaborate and sophistical reply. 
 
 To the assertion that God was obliged to create the 
 Avorld such as it is, he opposes no argument, contenting 
 himself with declaring it ' false and calumnious,' and ob- 
 serving that of all possible systems, as Pope says, infinite 
 wisdom certainly did .form the best. That He who made 
 this system rules it ; that the evils and disorders which 
 arise in the moral world come, not from God, but from 
 man's abuse of his own free-will ; and that God, counter- 
 acting man's foUies and vices, brings good out of ill, as 
 health and life are extracted from the agitations of mate- 
 rial elements. It is the passions and desires that prevent 
 human life from stagnation, and are the causes of action. 
 As to Crousaz's remark about the difficulty of finding 
 happiness by Pope's direction ' to follow nature,' he says 
 that Pope must mean rational nature, or reason, for 
 though ' the learned are blind,' that is, the philosophers 
 fall into errors in their disquisitions and actions, as 
 M. Crousaz has fallen into errors in his criticisms on 
 Pope, we must, nevertheless, not think the worse of 
 reason on that account. As to the ' height of bhss ' 
 being but ' height of charity,' or but the satisfaction 
 arising from universal benevolence, he takes occasion to 
 preach a short sermon on the text, If a man say, I love 
 God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar ; for he that loveth 
 not his brother whom he hath seen, hoio can he love God 
 whom he hath not seen ? This, as it is incomparably the 
 best passage in Warburton's commentary, and is intended 
 as a comprehensive and triumphant refutation of all that 
 Crousaz has alleged, I shall extract at length. A Free- 
 thinker, he observes, may laugh at the simphcity of the 
 argument, but would doubtless affect to admire it, could 
 any one find it for him in Plato. 
 
158 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IX. 
 
 ' You say you love God, says the Apostle, though you 
 hate your brother. Impossible ! The love of any object 
 begins originally, hke all the other passions, from self-love. 
 Thus we love ourselves, by representation, in our offspring ; 
 which love extends by degrees to our remoter relations, 
 and so on, through our neighbourhood, to all the fellow- 
 members of our community. And now self-love, refined 
 by reason and religion, begins to lose its nature, and 
 deservedly assumes another name. Our country next 
 claims our love ; we then extend it to all mankind, and 
 never rest till we have at length fixed it on that most 
 amiable of all objects, the great Author and Original of 
 being. This is the course and progress of human love : 
 
 God loves from whole to parts ; but human soul 
 Must rise from individual to the whole. 
 
 ' Now, pursues the Apostle, I reason thus : Can you, 
 who are not yet arrived at that inferior stage of benevo- 
 lence, the love of your brother, whom you have seen, 
 that is, whom the necessities of civil life, and a sense of 
 you.r mutual relation might teach you to love, pretend to 
 liave reached the very height and perfection of this 
 passion, the love of God, ivhom you have not seen? that 
 is, whose wonderful economy in His system of creation, 
 which makes Him so amiable, you cannot have the least 
 conception of; you, who have not yet learned that your 
 own private system is supported on the great principle of 
 benevolence ? Fear Him, flatter Him, flght for Him, as 
 you chead His power, you may ; but to love Him, as you 
 know not His nature, is impossible. 
 
 'This,' he adds, 'is the Apostle's grand and subhme 
 reasoning ; and it is with the same thought on which the 
 Apostle founds his argument, that our moral poet ends 
 his essay, as the just and necessary conclusion of his 
 work : 
 
1738.] REPLY TO CROUSAZ. 159 
 
 Self-love but serves the virtuoiis mind to ivahe, 
 As tlie small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; 
 The centre mov'd, a circle straight succeeds, 
 Another still, and still another spreads ; 
 Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace, 
 His country next, and next all human race : 
 AVide, and more wide, th' o'erflowings of the mind 
 Take every creature in, of every kind ; 
 Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, 
 And Heav'n beholds its image in his breast.' 
 
 With, regard to the notion that the doctrme of opti- 
 naism, or of partial evil being universal good, sets aside 
 the belief, and renders unnecessary tlie expectations of a 
 future state, ' because, if the evils which good men suffer 
 here promote the benefit of the wliole, everything in the 
 present system is in order, and nothing requires compen- 
 sation elsewhere, so that the good man has no reason to 
 expect reparation, when the ills which he suffered had a 
 beneficial tendency,' Warburton rephes that the 'good 
 man's hopes of retribution still remain the same, whether 
 he believes in optimism or not, for though optimism sup- 
 poses that the evils themselves will be fully compensated 
 by the good they produce to the ivhole, yet this is so far 
 from supposing that individuals will suffer for a general 
 good, that it is essential to the system to conclude that, at 
 the completion of things, f articular and universal good 
 shall coincide ; which coincidence can never be without 
 a retribution to good men for the evils suffered here 
 below.' 
 
 Such are the general nature and tendency of Warbur- 
 ton's remarks, in opposition to Crousaz, on Pope's Essay. 
 Whoever would know more of them must go to the 
 Commentary itself, for it would be vain to attempt 
 abridging observations on particular passages. 
 
 Of his adversary he speaks in very different terms 
 from those of Johnson. He calls him one of ' the chief 
 of bigots,' a ' bully-critic,' and the author of ' reflections 
 
160 
 
 LIFE OP BISHOP WABBUETON. [Cu. IX. 
 
 senseless and scandalous,' and says that he maliciously 
 followed the worse French version, ' because it gave him 
 more opportunity to calumniate.' Crousaz unluckily 
 stated that he had been fond of logic from his infancy ; 
 that he had run through every treatise on logic that had 
 fallen mto his hands ; and that he had extracted in- 
 struction in logic even from books not designed to give 
 it ; and Warburton, in consequence, omits no opportunity 
 of charging such ' a veteran controversiahst,' a student of 
 seventy-five years, with false reasoning, with blindness to 
 the connexions in Pope's system, and with imputing to 
 Pope's doctrines what a rational inquirer could never have 
 discerned in them. In addition, he dwells on the critic's 
 want of charity, though doubtless, he says, such critics as 
 Crousaz, when ' they insult the fame, the fortune, or the 
 person of their brother,' think they show ' the very height 
 of charity, a charity for his soul ;' but this, though it may 
 be ' the height of the hangman's charity, who waits for 
 your clothes, could never be Saint Paul's,' which was ' a 
 charity that began in candour, and inspired good opinion.' 
 In the French translation in verse, which Crousaz chose 
 to follow, there were a few ridiculous blunders, for which 
 Warburton does not fail to reproach ahke the translator 
 and the critic who trusted in him. Pope, in the illus- 
 tration which he borrowed from Palingenius, represents 
 superior beings as admiring the genius of JSTewton, and 
 doubting whether he should not rather be deemed of 
 angelic than of human nature ; as men, when they see 
 striking marks of intelligence in an ape, are almost tempted 
 to think him one of their own species : 
 
 Superior beings, when of late they saw 
 A mortal man rmfold great Nature's law, 
 Admir'd such wisdom in a human shape, 
 And show'd a Newton as we show an ape : 
 
 But the translator, utterly mistaking the scope of his 
 
1738.] FRENCH VEESIONS OF POPE'S 'ESSAY.' 161 
 
 author, imagined that he designed to depreciate Newton, 
 and accordingly represented the angels as regarding 
 Newton with pity : 
 
 Des celestes esprits la vive intelligence 
 
 Eegarde avec pitie notre foible science : 
 
 Newton, le Grand Newton, que nous admirons tous. 
 
 Est peut-etre pour eux ce qu'un singe est pour nous. 
 
 He made a similar blunder in the sense of the passage 
 in which Pope speaks of Natm-e as directing man to learn 
 the arts of hfe from the inferior animals : 
 
 Thus, then, to man the voice of Nature spake, 
 Go, from the creatures thy instructions take : 
 
 which he renders, 
 
 La Nature indignee alors se fit entendre, 
 
 Va, malheureux mortel, va, lui dit-elle, apprendre 
 
 Des plus vils animaux. 
 
 ' One would wonder,' says Warburton, ' what should make 
 him represent Natm^e in such a passion at Man, and calling 
 him names, when Mr. Pope supposes her in her best of 
 good humour.' 
 When Pope says. 
 
 Nor God alone in the stiU calm we find, 
 He mounts the storm, 
 
 the translator gives, 
 
 Dieu lui-meme, Dieu sort de son profond repos, 
 
 making God one of the deities of Epicurus. But Crousaz, 
 though Silhouette might have taught him better, accepts 
 the version as faithful, and censures the passage as ' pre- 
 senting us with ideas which we ought not to dwell upon.' 
 These strictures on Crousaz doubtless attracted attention. 
 ' The letters,' says Hurd, ' were much read, and gave a 
 
 51 
 
162 LIFK OF BISHOP WAEBUETOW. [Ch. IX. 
 
 new lustre to Mr. Warburton's reputation. They showed 
 the elegance of his taste in polite literature, as well as 
 his penetration into moral subjects.' That they showed 
 the author's acquaintance with literature, may be readily 
 allowed, but that they manifested ' the elegance of his 
 taste ' wiU not so readily pass unquestioned. As for his 
 penetration into morality, it was shown in forcing into 
 Pope's lines senses of his own. ' You have evinced the 
 orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles,' said Middleton to him, 
 ' but, like the old commentators on his Homer, wiU be 
 thought perhaps in some places to have provided a mean- 
 ing for Mm that he himself never dreamed of. However, 
 if you did not find him a philosopher, you will make him 
 one, for he wiU be wise enough to take the benefit of your 
 reading, and make his future essays more clear and con- 
 sistent. It was certainly a generous part in you, and 
 worthy a man of capacity and leisure, to viadicate a writer 
 of his genius, to whom the pubhc is so highly indebted, 
 from the groundless cavils of a dull critic, which Mr. 
 Pope's name, and not his own, had spread into everybody's 
 hands.'* 
 
 Pope himself was so delighted with such vigorous 
 efforts to argue fatalism out of his 'Essay,' that he addressed, 
 in earnest gratitude, the following letter to Warburton, 
 with whom he Avas not yet personally acquainted : 
 
 ' April 11, 1739. 
 'Sir, — I have just received from Mr. E. [Eobinson] two 
 more of your letters. It is in the greatest hurry imagin- 
 able that I write this, but I cannot help thanking you in 
 particular for your third letter, which is so extremely 
 clear, short, and full, that I think Mr. Crousaz ought never 
 to have another answerer, and deserved not so good a one. 
 I can only say, you do him too much honour, and me too 
 much right, so odd as the expression seems, for you have 
 
 * Letter from Middleton, Jan. 7, 1740 ; Middleton's Works, vol. i. p. 402. 
 
1739.] pope's gratitude TO WARBURTON. 163 
 
 made my system as clear as I ought to have done, and 
 could not. It is indeed the same system as mine, but 
 illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural 
 body is the same still when it is glorified. I am sure I 
 like it better than I did before, and so will every man 
 else. I know I meant just what you explain, but I did 
 not explain my own meaning so well as you. You under- 
 stand me as well as I do myself, but you express me 
 better than I could express myself. Pray accept the 
 sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot but wish these 
 letters were put together in one book, and intend (with 
 your leave) to procure a translation of part, at least, or of 
 all of them, into French ; but I shall not proceed a step 
 without your consent and opinion.' 
 
 They were afterwards translated into French by Mons. 
 Silhouette, the same gentleman who had so accurately 
 translated the ' Essay on Man ' into French prose.* 
 
 On collecting the letters, with some slight alterations, 
 into a volume, Warburton submitted the proofs to Pope 
 for revision. ' As to any correction of your letters,' says 
 Pope, in reply, ' I could make none, but what resulted from 
 inverting the order of them, and those expressions relating 
 to myself which I thought exaggerated. I could not find 
 a word to alter in the last letter, which I returned im- 
 mediately to the bookseller. I must particularly thank 
 you for the mention you have made of me in your post- 
 script to the last edition of " The Legation of Moses." ' This 
 alludes to the quotation from Pope in the ' Vindication ' 
 against Webster, which Warburton had attached to the 
 second edition of the first three books of 'The Divme 
 Legation.' ' I am much more pleased,' continues Pope, 
 ' with a compliment that hnks me to a virtuous man, and, 
 by the best similitude, that of a good mind, even a 
 better and stronger tie than the similitude of studies, than 
 
 * Warburton's ' Pope,' vol. ix. pp. 329, 331. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. IX. 
 
 I could be proud of any other whatsoever. May that 
 independence, charity, and competency attend you, which 
 sets a good priest above a bishop, and truly makes his 
 fortune ; that is, his happiness in this life as well as in the 
 other !' 
 
 When Pope afterwards met Warburton, he told Spence 
 that he was the greatest general critic he had ever known, 
 the most capable of seeing through all the possibihties of 
 things.* Many others held Warburton's commentaries ia 
 much lower estimation than Pope. Among these was 
 Lord Marchmont, who, ' soon after Pope's acquaintance 
 with Warburton commenced, told Pope he was convinced 
 that he was one of the vainest men hving. How so ? said 
 Pope. Because, rephed Lord Marchmont, it is manifest, 
 from your close connexion with your new commentator, 
 you want to show positively what an exquisite poet you 
 are, and what a quantity of duhiess you can carry down 
 on your back without sinking under the load.f . 
 
 Of Pope's 'Essay,' as has been well observed by 
 Johnson, the great claim to admiration consists, not in the 
 moral instruction which it conveys, but in the splendour 
 of ornament in which its poverty of matter is enveloped. 
 It has furnished us with lines which we quote for their 
 happy vigour, and point, and elegance, and which will 
 continue to be quoted as long as the language shall last ; 
 but we feel no reason to be gi'ateful to Pope for anything 
 that we have learned from him. The doctrine that 
 ' whatever is, is right,' the doctrine that runs through 
 Pope's poem, we are wilhng, in humble submission to the 
 vdsdom of a higher Power, to believe, but we are not 
 more convinced of it after reading Pope than we were 
 before ; nor do we find it more forcibly illustrated in the 
 ' Essay on Man ' than we may find it elsewhere. Indeed, 
 the most striking illustration of it is to be seen, I behcve, 
 
 * Spence's Anecdotes by Singer, p. 337. 
 I Prior's Life of Malone, p. 386. 
 
1739.] 'WHATEVER IS, IS EIGHT.' 165 
 
 in the eighty-nintli number of the 'Idler,' where it is shown 
 that the sufferings of man from physical evil are the great 
 producers of moral good. The truth is, that good has no 
 exercise but in opposition to evil ; the influences of the 
 two are 
 
 Those lights and shades whose ■well-accorded strife 
 Gives aU the strength and colour of our Mfe ; 
 
 the effect of either is seen but as in contrast with the 
 other. The exercise of man's free wiU, and the indulgence 
 of his passions, though, as human nature is not perfect, 
 often exercised and indulged to excess, are stUl the 
 elements of action in hfe. The mind, says Bacon, would 
 be stagnant, if the passions, as vsdnds, did not set it in 
 motion. 
 
 They say test men 
 
 become much more the better 
 
 For being a little bad.* 
 
 To eradicate the passions, as the Stoics professed to 
 attempt, would produce but httle improvement in the 
 state of things. What sort of a world this would be 
 without evil, may be seen in Goldsmith's ' Tale of Asem 
 the Hermit.' But the question why the state of things is 
 such as it is, we must leave as Pope has left it : 
 
 He who through vast immensity can pierce, 
 See worlds on worlds compose one universe, 
 What varied being peoples every star, 
 May teU why heaven has made us as we are. 
 
 As to the charge of Crousaz, that Pope had adopted 
 Leibnitz's pre-estabhshed harmony, Pope himself declared 
 that he had never read a hue of Leibnitz, nor had heard 
 of the term pre-established harmony rmtil he found it in 
 Crousaz's book.f 
 
 * Shaksp. Meas. for Meas. act v. sc. 1 . 
 t Euffhead's Life of Pope, 8vo. ed. p. 244. 
 
166 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IX. 
 
 The question whetlier Pope, in writing his ' Essay on 
 Man,' was supphed with matter for it by Bohngbroke, 
 and was unable to see the full tendency of what was given 
 him, is one which has excited much attention among 
 critics and biographers. 
 
 Warburton generally denied that Bolingbroke instructed 
 or influenced Pope, but was not always consistent with 
 himself on the point. Li a letter to Hurd, in 1753, 
 he declares ' the insidious report,' that Pope had his 
 philosophy from Bohngbroke, sufficiently confuted by one 
 of Bolingbroke's letters to Pope ;* yet in his 'View of 
 Lord Bohngbroke's Philosophy,' pubhshed in 1755, he 
 calls Pope Bohngbroke's ' pupil,' and says that he was 
 reasoned out of his master's hands by the Commentary in 
 reply to Crousaz.'l' 
 
 The common behef has been that Pope had much of 
 the tenets of the 'Essay,' and the plan of its execution, 
 from Bohngbroke ; and in support of that behef we find 
 much testimony. When Johnson was writing his Life of 
 Pope, Boswell made inquiries of Dr. Hugh Blair in relation 
 to something that he had heard on the subject from Lord 
 Bathurst. Dr. Blair replied to Boswell, by letter, that 
 he had once dined at Lord Bathurst's, in 1763, with 
 Mallet, Sir James Porter, Dr. Macaulay, and some other 
 gentlemen ; and that Lord Bathurst told the company, in 
 the course of conversation, that the ' Essay on Man ' was 
 originally composed by Lord Bohngbroke in prose, and 
 that Pope did no more than put it into verse ; that he had 
 himself read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own 
 hand- writing, and remembered weU that he was at ' a loss 
 whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bohngbroke's 
 prose, or the beauty of Pope's verse.' Mallet remarked 
 to Blair that he might well keep this statement in mind, 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 135. 
 ■j- Warbiirton's "Works, vol. xii. p. 336. 
 
1739.] 'ESSAY ON MAN.' 167 
 
 as he would probably survive Lord Bathurst, and might 
 be a witness of what he had said. Blair accordingly- 
 registered it in a journal which he kept, whence he 
 copied it for his letter to Boswell. * 
 
 Dr. Joseph Warton was also told by Lord Bathurst that 
 ' he had read the whole scheme of the " Essay on Man" in 
 the hand-writing of Bohngbroke, drawn up in a series of 
 propositions which Pope was to versify and illustrate. 'f 
 Bishop Law, too, in his Preface to Archbishop King's 
 ' Origin of Evil,' says that Lord Bathurst had seen the 
 system of the ' Essay' in Bohngbroke's hand lying before 
 Pope when he was writing. 
 
 The author of an anonymous letter to Warburton, 
 written subsequently to the ' Epistle to the most Im- 
 pudent Man Uving,' and supposed to have proceeded 
 from Mallet, offers similar evidence : ' If you were as 
 intimate with Mr. Pope as you pretend,' says the "writer, 
 ' you must know the truth of a fact which several others, 
 as well as I, . . . 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 doctrines 
 contained in the Ethic Epistles ; upon which Mr. Pope 
 told him that he would soon convince hun 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. Erom 
 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. J This is less trust- 
 worthy testimony than that of Lord Bathurst, but it helps 
 to show that belief in Bohngbroke's furnishing matter 
 
 * Croker's ' Boswell,' sub 1779, p. 284. 
 
 I lb. note. Warton's ' Essay on Pope,' vol. ii. p. 62. 
 
 i Cited in Rosooe's ' Pope,' vol. i. p. 395. 
 
168 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. IX. 
 
 to Pope was prevalent ; whether Pope meant a kind of 
 admission of Bohngbroke's assistance in the hne, 
 
 Together let iis beat this ample field, 
 
 may be matter for consideration. But the strongest testi- 
 mony of all is that wliich Spence records as having been 
 given by Pope himself in their conversations. Speaking one 
 day in praise of Bohngbroke, Pope, says Spence, ' men- 
 tioned then, and at several other times, how much (or 
 rather how wholly) he himself was obliged to him for 
 the thoughts and reasonings in his moral work ; and 
 once in particular, said, that beside their frequent talking 
 over the subject together, he had received, I think, seven 
 or eight sheets from Lord Bohngbroke in relation to it, 
 as I apprehended by way of letters, both to direct the 
 plan in general, and to supply the matter for the par- 
 ticular epistles.'* 
 
 All supports to the opinion, however, that Bohngbroke 
 contributed the groundwork of the ' Essay,' Pioscoe, in 
 his Life of Pope, endeavours to prove whoUy baseless, 
 chiefly on the authority of two or three passages in 
 Bohngbroke and Pope's letters. 
 
 The first epistle of the ' Essay on Man,' we may 
 observe, was pubhshed in 1732. But Pope and Bohng- 
 broke had been in the habit, for many years previous, of 
 discussing together moral and metaphysical subjects, and 
 Bohngbroke, in a letter to Swift in 1729, speaks of the 
 work which Pope is about ; which ' is a fine_ one, and 
 will be in his hands an original ;' and which Pope finds 
 so easy to execute, that Bohngbroke is happy to see his 
 judgment, in pronouncing it eminently and peculiarly 
 adapted to Pope's genius, fully confirmed ; ah which 
 expressions are supposed to refer to the ' Essay on Man.' 
 In another letter to Swift, in August 1731, Bohngbroke 
 
 * Spence's Anecdotes by Singer, p. 144. 
 
1739.] HOW FAR POPE WAS AIDED BY BOLINGBROKE. IG9 
 
 says, ' Does Pope talk to you of tlie whole work which, at 
 my instigation, he has begun, in such a manner that he 
 must be convinced, by this time, I judged better of his 
 talents than he did ?' In the same letter he remarks 
 that three of the epistles are finished, and that Pope is 
 intent on the fourth ; all of which were then meant to 
 be preliminary to several more. Prom another letter of 
 Bohngbroke's to Pope, without date, but evidently written 
 after the first three epistles of the ' Essay on Man' were 
 concluded, it appears that Pope had requested Boling- 
 broke to write something on metaphysics himself, and 
 Bohngbroke, expressing assent, replies, ' Since you have 
 begun at my request the work which I have long wished 
 that you would undertake, it is but reasonable that I 
 submit to the task you impose upon me ; and Pope, in a 
 subsequent letter to Swift, but also without date, congra- 
 tulates himself that he has ' contributed to turn Lord 
 Bohngbroke to subjects moral, useful, and worthy of his 
 pen.' Several other remarks in Bolingbroke's letters, in 
 1733 and 1734, intimate that his lordship was pursuing 
 his metaphysical studies during those years. 
 
 From these passages Eoscoe argues that Bohngbroke 
 did not begin to write on moral and metaphysical subjects 
 till after Pope had completed, or nearly completed, his 
 ' Essay on Man,' and that consequently he could not have 
 supphed Pope with any moral or metaphysical matter for 
 the 'Essay.' But this is to deduce from the passages 
 what they are far from fairly indicating. All that can be 
 justly concluded from them is, that Bohngbroke had not 
 begun, when Pope was writing the earher part of his 'Essay,' 
 to compose metaphysical treatises for the pubhc ; not that 
 he had never made on such subjects any memoranda or 
 hints which might have served Pope as the groundwork of 
 his great poem. In Bolingbroke's philosophical 'Frag- 
 ments,' which form part of his published works, we find 
 several thoughts that might have given hints to Pope. Thus 
 
170 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. IX. 
 
 in Fragment forty-third : ' We ouglit to consider the world 
 we inhabit no otherwise than as a httle wheel in our solar 
 system. ; nor onr solar system any otherwise than as a httle 
 but larger wheel in the immense machine of the universe ; 
 and both the one and the other necessary, perhaps, to the 
 motion of the whole, and to the pre-ordained revolutions in 
 it.' And again, in Fragment sixty-third : ' In the works of 
 men, the most comphcated schemes produce, very hardly 
 and very uncertainly, one single effect ; ia the works of 
 God, one single scheme produces a multitude of different 
 effects, and answers an immense variety of purposes.' 
 How similar in thought to these passages are the following 
 lines of Pope ! 
 
 In human works, tbougli labour'd on witli pain, 
 A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain ; 
 Li God's, one single can its end produce, 
 Yet serves to second, too, some other use : 
 So man, who here seems principal alone, 
 Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, 
 Touches some wheel, or urges to some goal ; 
 'Tis but a part we see, and not the whole.* 
 
 Many such resemblances have been noticed by Wake- 
 field and others. It may be observed, too, that the 
 matter of Bolingbroke's disquisitions is mostly of a dif- 
 ferent character from that of Pope's ' Essay,' treating 
 more of rehgion and metaphysics, while that of the 
 ' Essay on Man ' is restricted chiefly to human life and 
 conduct ; and hence it might be imagined that Boling- 
 broke, after giving his earher thoughts, and those on 
 more practical subjects, to Pope, had then burst away 
 into wider and more airy fields of contemplation. 
 
 On the whole, the fair conclusion seems to be, that the 
 subject of the ' Essay ' was suggested to Pope as a fit 
 exercise for his powers, by Bohngbroke ; that Bohngbroke 
 probably gave Pope, in manuscript, some hints which he 
 
 * Essay on Man, i. 53. 
 
1739.] POPE SOMEWHAT DECEIVED. 171 
 
 had made for a composition on that subject, and perhaps 
 the whole plan of such a composition, by which Pope 
 may have profited ; but that much less aid was furnished 
 to the poet than Lord Bathurst or Dr. Blair supposed, or 
 than Mallet was willing to have believed ; for Pope, 
 doubtless, far from having been merely a versifier of Lord 
 Bolingbroke's prose, supphed from the stores and powers 
 of his own mind ah the imagery and ornament, all the 
 force and beauty of language, which make the ' Essay on 
 Man ' one of the finest efforts of poetry. 
 
 The notion that Pope was in some measure deceived 
 by Bolingbroke, and was not fully aware of the con- 
 clusions that might be drawn from the ' Essay on Man,' 
 appears to be not without foundation. The object of 
 Bolingbroke was to show that good balances evil in the 
 present distribution of things, and that the idea of a 
 future state of being is therefore unnecessary to vindi- 
 cate God's justice ; a doctrine which he plainly declares 
 in one of the letters to Swift, already noticed.* ' You 
 divines admit,' says he, ' the unequal distributions of 
 Providence in this life, and you build on this admission 
 the necessity of a future state of rewards and punish- 
 ments. But what if you should find that this future state 
 will not vindicate the unequal distribution of Providence 
 in this hfe ? Would it not have been better to defend, by 
 arguments drawn from what we see around us, the justice 
 of God's proceedings in this world, and have left the 
 proof of a future world to revelation ? ' But this view of 
 things he did not communicate to Pope ; for he observes 
 to Swift, in continuation, ' You ivill not understand, by 
 what I have said, that Pope ivill go so deep into the argu- 
 ment, or carry it so far as T have hinted.' Bolingbroke's 
 revelation of his sentiments to Pope was therefore not 
 complete. 
 
 A man with such opinions regarding the uncompen- 
 
 * Aiig. 2, 1731. 
 
172 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. IX. 
 
 satory nature of a future state, might very well refuse to 
 acknowledge the moral attributes of the Divinity. War- 
 burton relates that when a common acquaintance of Pope 
 and Bohngbroke, probably Warburton himself, told Pope, 
 in his last illness, that Bolingbroke, in the course of a 
 recent conversation, had taken occasion to deny GocVs moral 
 attributes as they are commonly understood. Pope was so 
 shocked that he could not rest till he had asked Bohng- 
 broke whether Ms informant was not mistaken ; and that 
 Bohngbroke assured him he was. Pope repeated Bohng- 
 broke's reply to the ' common acquaintance,' who appears 
 to have said no more on the subject ; and Pope died in 
 the delusion that Bohngbroke was a behever in God's 
 moral attributes.* 
 
 Whether it was through the influence of Bolingbroke 
 or not. Pope, in writing his 'Essay,' seems to have had no 
 intention to direct man to expect in a future state com- 
 pensation for the evils of the present, but to have 
 confined his thoughts merely to the condition of things 
 in this hfe. Pope himself said that, in the ' Epistle on 
 Happiness,' his intention was only to treat of the state of 
 man here.f Of an existence after death, there is no pas- 
 sage in the whole poem that, fairly understood, gives any 
 intimation. Young notices the absence of all allusion to 
 this point in the ' Essay,' at the commencement of his 
 ' Night Thoughts : ' 
 
 Oh had he press'd his theme, pursued the track 
 That opens out of darkness into day; 
 Oh had he mounted on his wing of fire, 
 Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man, 
 How had he bless'd mankind and rescued me ! 
 
 It was its deficiency in this particular, and its apparent 
 advocacy of fatahsm, that raised an outcry against the 
 
 * View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy; Warburton's Works, 
 vol. xii. p. 91. t Spence's Anecdotes by Singer, p. 142. 
 
 / 
 
1739.] WAEBUETON'S EXPLANATIONS. 173 
 
 poem as likely to produce evil effects. As the clamour 
 increased, Pope became uneasy, and, as Eichardson says, 
 ' took terror about the clergy, and about Warburton 
 himself, at the general alarm of its fatahsm and deistical 
 tendency.' The passages that appeared to have most of 
 this tendency had been frequently talked over by Pope and 
 the two Eichardsons in conversation ; but Pope, at the time 
 of their publication, shovped no disposition to alter them. 
 When objections vfere raised, hov^ever, Pope vpas very 
 glad to accept Warburton as a defender ; but previously, 
 says Jonathan Eichardson, / know that he never dreamed 
 of the scheme he afterwards adopted, that is, of the sense 
 and tendency vphich Warburton's commentaries forced 
 upon the ' Essay.' 
 
174 LIFE OP BISHOP WABBURTON. [Ch. X. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 KOMAINE. IIAEE. 
 wareueton's disageeemekt with noMAiNE — komaine's sermon — 
 
 LETTER FROM EOMAINE TO WARBURTON EOMAINE's PRETENDED OB- 
 JECTIONS OF CLERGYMEN, IN REALITY A TRANSCRIPT FROSI HIS SERMON 
 
 WARBURTON WRITES TO THE ' WORKS OF THE LEARNED ' EOMAINE 
 
 REPLIES IN THE ' GENERAL EVENING POST ' HIS DISINGENUOUSNESS 
 
 WARBDETON's abuse of him NEW EDITION OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
 OF ' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' REMARKS ON THE ' DEMONIACS ' IN 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT — HARE CONTINUES TO COMMEND WAEBURTON 
 
 PURSUES HIS STUDIES HIS ILLNESS AND RECOVERY DEATH OF 
 
 BISHOP HARE WAEBUETOn'S CHARACTER OF HIM. 
 
 DUEING this year Warburton was engaged in an un- 
 pleasant affair with Eomaine. Eomaine, then about 
 twenty-five years of age, and just ordained, preached a 
 sermon at Oxford against Warburton's assertions in ' The 
 Divine Legation' as to the silence of the Old Testament 
 regarding a future state, which sermon was soon after 
 published for him by a bookseller named Bettenham. 
 About the same time that the sermon was preached, he 
 wrote a letter to Warburton on tlae subject, commencing 
 in a very flattering style, and representing himself as a 
 young student in divinity, sincerely desirous of instruc- 
 tion. The letter began thus : 
 
 Eeverend Sir, — I happened lately to meet, in company, 
 with some clergymen, when your last excellent book, 
 ' The Divine Legation of Moses,' was the subject of their 
 discourse. As I had read it more than once, with a 
 great deal of pleasure, and had ever admired your elegant 
 style, great learning, and strength of argument, and had 
 
1739.] LETTER FROM ROMAINE. 175 
 
 been used to hear the same praises from others, I was 
 very much surprised to hear those, whom, I imagined 
 from their character, to be men of good sense, and that 
 ought to commend and encourage whatever tended to 
 promote true rehgion, speak with great disrespect of- 
 your performance. I thought myself concerned to 
 defend the truth ; and, to my great satisfaction, I found, 
 upon a short inquiry, that what they advanced affected 
 nothing which you had afready writ, but what you had 
 promised. Here was large room for mirth ; and one 
 could not but laugh at the oddness of some men's tempers, 
 who are so ridiculous as to censure what they have never 
 seen, and to condemn what it is impossible they should 
 yet judge of. When they saw how unjust their reflec- 
 tions were, that they might not (hke true disputants) seem 
 to give up the point, they attacked even the proposition 
 which you have promised to demonstrate, and I must 
 ingenuously confess that they put some queries to me, 
 which I, being no great proficient in divmity, was unable 
 to answer. This, and the opportunity of returning my 
 grateful acknowledgments for what you have wrote, was 
 the occasion of the trouble I now give you ; and as you 
 are the only person I have heard of who has thoroughly 
 considered this subject ; as your character is concerned 
 in the affau-, and as I would (if it was in my power) 
 hinder the least fault from entering your finished per- 
 formances, and could wish that envy itself might be 
 dumb, I hope you wfil favourably interpret my sending 
 you these (which are to me, but not to you) difiiculties, 
 and obhge me with an answer to them, if ever an idle 
 half-hour should he heavy on your hands.' He then 
 enumerates, as fr-om the conversation of the clergymen, 
 various texts, which Warburton afterwards fuUy consi- 
 dered in his book, tending to show that a future state was 
 made known to the Jews under the Mosaic dispensation. 
 The letter was signed ' W. Eomaine.' 
 
176 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOlSr. [Cn. X. 
 
 Warburton, on receipt of the letter, endeavoured to 
 ascertain who ' W. Eomaine' was, but, not succeeding, 
 returned him a short, but civil, answer, in which he gave 
 him to understand that ' it was a necessary part of the 
 argument of " The Divine Legation " to show that the 
 Jewish fathers, patriarchs, and prophets, had a know- 
 ledge of a future state, and an expectation of a redemp- 
 tion.' 
 
 But soon afterwards, when the sermon fell into War- 
 burton's hands, he was chagrined to find that the passages 
 in the letter, which affected to state the clergymen's ob- 
 jections to his notions, were, in reality, transcribed from 
 the sermon ; and he was persuaded that Eomaine's object 
 in writing the letter was ' to avoid the imputation of 
 being so ridiculous as to censure what he had never 
 seen, and to condemn what it was impossible he should 
 yet judge of;' for, by communicating these objections to 
 Warbru'ton, before the pubhcation of the sermon, as 
 having been heard in conversation, he could put them 
 forward in the sermon, not as from himself, but as 
 common objections to "Warburton's notions, or even to 
 his own. 
 
 Warburton, in his indignation, sent Eomame's letter, 
 with his own comments upon it, to the ' Works of the 
 Learned.' He remarked on Eomaine's disingenuousness 
 in representing his letter, not as a transcript from what 
 he was going to print, but as the offspring of common 
 conversation, and concluded by saying, ' Mr. Warburton, 
 in justice to his reverend brethren, thinks fit to declare 
 that he does not beheve one word of what the said Mr. 
 Eomaine writes of a conversation with them on the sub- 
 ject of his book. He is too well acquainted with their 
 candour and learning to think they could ever afford an 
 opportumty to this benevolent gentleman to laugh at the 
 oddness of their tempers, &c., but takes it for granted that 
 this worthy man had no other meaning than to conceal 
 
1?39.] KOMAINES TERGIVERSATION. 177 
 
 Lis own kind intentions under a false accusation of his 
 brethren.' 
 
 Such animadversions Eomaine could hardly be expected 
 to take quietly; and he accordingly signified his dis- 
 pleasure in a letter to the editor of the ' General Evening 
 Post ; ' a letter which the editor of the ' Works of the 
 Learned,' who copied it into his journal, designated as 
 ' hardly to be paralleled among the productions of any 
 other clergyman : ' 
 
 'Sir, — As Mr. Warburton hath violated the rules of 
 decency by publishing in your paper a private letter of 
 mine without my leave, I thmk it necessary to say that 
 the notes upon the letter cannot be allowed to be an 
 answer to anything advanced either in the letter or the 
 sermon, but were designed to take off people's attention 
 from the points in dispute to a personal quarrel. I have 
 no bad opinion either of Mr. Warburton's capacity or 
 learning ; but he might have made a better use of them 
 than to tMnk he deserved, or that I meant in earnest, 
 those comphments in the letter, as he did, or at least says 
 he did. . . Unless necessity forces me, I shaU not 
 answer him any more in that loio way which he and his 
 bookseller have chosen to dispute in. . . He supposes 
 the conversation was false ; if he pleases to answer the 
 sermon, or to advance anything new upon the subject, he 
 will find that it was not false, but that there are numbers 
 of clergymen who understand the subject, and are ready 
 to defend it against him. Query, Hath not Mr. "War- 
 burton recanted his whole scheme, where he says, " It was 
 a necessary part of the argument of ' The Divine Lega- 
 tion' to prove that the fathers, patriarchs, and prophets 
 of the Jewish line had a knowledge of a future state, and 
 the redemption of mankind by the Messiah ? " 
 
 'W. Eomaine.' 
 
 This letter, says the editor of the 'Works of the 
 
 N 
 
]78 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. X. 
 
 Learned,' in words probably furnished him by Warburton, 
 would bear ' a very curious and entertaining comment.' 
 An edition of it, he observes, with notes, might do an 
 editor a great deal of credit ; for ' he will find in it a 
 noble scope for the exercise of his genius. He may leave 
 to others grammatical niceties, and employ himself in 
 descanting on the logic of the first period ; the probity 
 and candour that shine so conspicuously in the second ; 
 the bravery and generosity that appear so eminently in 
 the third ; the sagacity and subtlety of the rest ; and the 
 uncommon modesty, notwithstanding the elegance and 
 graces, of the whole.' 
 
 The matter certainly did Eomaine little honour. If he 
 did not mean Warburton to take his praises as sincere, 
 he was wrong in praising him at ah ; and, whatever was 
 the case, he should have had sense and grace enough not 
 to retract the commendation which he had bestowed. If 
 he designed, from the first, to attack "Warburton, he 
 should have attacked him openly and boldly. Warburton 
 does not fail to heap contemptuous remarks on him in 
 his letters to his friends. Writmg to Stukeley, he says 
 that his ' reputation is worried by the vilest of Theolo- 
 gasters,' Mr. Wilham Eomaine, who, as he hears from 
 Oxford, is calling aloud on the secular arm to make an 
 example of him. Whether this was said in jest or 
 earnest, I do not know. Mr. Eomaine, he adds, ' is the 
 scoundrel I wrote to from yoiu- house. But the poor 
 devil has done his own business. His talents show him 
 by nature designed for a blunderbuss in church contro- 
 versy ; but his attack upon me being a proof-charge, and 
 heavy-loaded, he burst in the going off; and what wiU 
 become of him, let those who made use of him consider.' 
 In a letter to Birch, he exclaims, ' Never was there a 
 more execrable scoundrel. Do you think I can outHve 
 such a dead-doing fellow who calls down the secular arm 
 upon me? If I do, it will be in mere spite, to rub 
 
1739.] EEMAEKS ON ROMAINE. 179 
 
 anotlier volume of " The Divine Legation " in the noses 
 of bigots and zealots.' Shall we transcribe one more pas- 
 sage, of true "Warburtonian vehemence, from a letter to 
 the same correspondent ? ' Eomaine has most amazingly 
 betrayed the scoundrel in his remarks on my publication 
 of his letter. The owning himself a rogue so plainly as 
 to confess he was not in earnest in the letter he wrote, is 
 such a hardened confession of villany as one seldom 
 meets with out of Newgate. But his complaining of my 
 want of decency in pubUshing his letter, without his leave, 
 is incomparable. We may expect to hear the same com- 
 plaint, in a little time, from our incendiaries, when their 
 letters are pubhshed without their leave. And I do him 
 honour m the comparison ; for they are honester men 
 than this church incendiary ; they generously declare 
 their enmity, are true to their companions, and commonly 
 better than their word ; but tliis fellow wears the mask 
 of friendship, betrays his brethren, and is kindling a faggot 
 for you while he pretends to offer incense.' 
 
 Bettenham, who pubhshed the sermon, so much dis- 
 hked Eomaine's retort on Warburton, that, when he took 
 it to be printed, he rephed that ' it was a knavish busi- 
 ness, and he would have nothing to do with it,' or words 
 to that effect ; a refusal at which Warburton, who heard 
 of it, was highly deUghted. 
 
 Sherlock and Hare, to whom he communicated the 
 whole affair, both expressed their hopes that he would, in 
 future, be cautious of writing to persons whom he did not 
 know either personally or by general reputation, ' For 
 my own part,' said Hare, ' I hate giving a single line 
 under my hand to anybody I do not very well hke, 
 because I do not know what use may be made of it. 
 Litera scripta manet.'* 
 
 Towards the end of this year Warburton pubhshed a 
 
 * Kilvert, Selections, pp. 85, 122. 
 
180 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. X. 
 
 new edition of the first volume of the ' Divine Legation.' 
 ' There are,' he says, ia spealiing of it to Birch, ' several 
 additions, in support of my scheme, and reasonings on it, 
 which I hope will not displease you ; as, likewise, several 
 omissions of passages which were thought vain, insolent, 
 and ill-natured, particularly that against the author of the 
 "Enquiry into the Demoniacs," which, I hope, will less 
 displease you.' The author of the ' Enquiry ' was Dr. 
 1 Arthur Ashley Sykes, afterwards one of Warburton's 
 \great opponents, who had intimated that the Demoniacs 
 were persons afflicted only with natural diseases, attri- 
 buted to diabolical possession by the vulgar. Warburton, 
 pn the other hand, was in favour of real possession, and 
 in the subsequent editions of ' The Divine Legation ' 
 /'attacks Dr. Mead for his hostihty to that doctrine. 
 
 Bishop Hare, to whom he presented a copy of the 
 second edition, still continued to commend. ' I was ex- 
 tremely pleased,' he wrote to Warburton, ' to see a second 
 edition of your book so soon, notwithstandhrg all the 
 pains to damn and stifle it in its bu-th. ... I beheve, 
 smce the first clamours of the " MisceUany " were over, 
 all is now very quiet, at least I heard nothing to the 
 contrary ; and people will now calmly read and judge for 
 themselves; and they that do so with any degree of 
 temper and candour will find a great deal of pleasure and 
 instruction. I hope not only posterity, but the present 
 age, will do justice to so much merit, and do assure you 
 it shall not be my fault if it does not. I only wish my 
 power were equal to my inchnation to. serve you.' 
 
 The winter of 1739—40 he spent at his hving in the 
 country, where Hurd speaks of him as being intently 
 occupied with his books. 
 
 ' He was so taken up with his studies,' he says, ' and 
 found so much dehght in them, that he rarely sthred 
 from home, which he would often say there was no good 
 reason for doing, except necessary business, and the satis- 
 
1739.] DEATH OF BISHOP HARE. 181 
 
 faction of seeing a friend. Wliat the world calls amuse- 
 ment, from the change of the scene, passed for nothing 
 with him, who was too well employed to be tired of his 
 situation, or to have a thought of running away from 
 himself ; which, after all, they who are incessantly making 
 the experiment, find impossible to be done.' 
 
 In March 1740, he fell iU of an intermittent fever, by 
 which his hfe was endangered, but the powers of bark at 
 length restored him to health. 
 
 In April he had the misfortune to lose his friend 
 Bishop Hare, a man to whom similarity of thinking in 
 matters of rehgion had strongly attached him. The bishop 
 was what is called a latitudinarian in theology, and a strong 
 advocate for the right of private judgment, as he showed 
 in his ' Letter to a young Clergyman,' the design of which 
 is to prove that aU Christian societies are interested in 
 encouraging the study of the Scriptures, and allowing 
 liberty of private judgment concerning them as much as 
 is possible ; and so far were the arguments of this work 
 carried, that it was censured by Convocation, as tending 
 to promote scepticism. How far Warburton thought 
 himself entitled to use the right of private judgment is 
 apparent to every one. 
 
 Writing to Middleton, shortly afterwards, he says, 
 ' Bishop Hare has not left his fellow behind him for the 
 love and encom^agement of learning. I have had a great 
 loss in his death. He honoured me with his esteem and 
 fiiendship. This I esteemed a great obhgation. I never 
 sought to increase it l>y any other dependence upon him ; 
 and, by the terms on which we kept up a correspondence, 
 he did me the justice to believe I expected no other.' 
 
 When he published the second volume of ' The Divme 
 Legation,' he took the opportunity of giving his opinion 
 of the Bishop's character to the world : ' In him the 
 pubhc has lost one of the best patrons and supporters of 
 letters and rehgion. How steadily and successfully he 
 
182 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. X. 
 
 employed his great talents of reason and literature, in 
 opposing the violence of each religious party in their 
 turns, when Court favour was betraying them into hurtful 
 extremes, the imjust reproaches of libertines and bigots 
 Avill never suffer us to forget. How generously he en- 
 coiu'aged and rewarded letters, let them teU who have 
 largely shared in his beneficence ; for his character may 
 be trusted with his enemies, or even with his most obhged 
 friends. In him one author ' — meaning himself — ' has 
 lost what he could but ill spare, one of the most candid 
 of his readers and ablest of his critics. What he can 
 never lose is the honour of his esteem and friendship.' 
 
 What is said of his ' opposition to the violence of , each 
 religious party ' alludes to the efforts, now forgotten, which 
 he made to aUay the bitterness of the Bangorian contro- 
 versy. 
 
 Mr. William Greene, a young student in divinity, 
 afterwards FeUow of Clare HaU, Cambridge, and author 
 of ' translations of the Psalms and other portions of 
 Scripture from the Hebrew,' having inquired of War- 
 burton, about this time, what theological books he should 
 read, Warburton sent him a long Hst of various aiithors, 
 light and heavy, but recommended ' above all Dr. 
 Bentley and Bishop Hare, who are the greatest men in 
 this way that ever were ; ' praising Greene, at the same 
 time, for not being ashamed to acknowledge his defi- 
 ciencies, ' which,' said he, ' some have not the sense to 
 see, and others are too proud to own, which makes them 
 blockheads for their whole hfe.' * 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. An. vol. viii. p. 564; ix. p. 716; Lit. 111. vol. iv. 
 p. 849. 
 
1740.] POPE AND WAKBDRTON MEET. 183 
 
 CHAPTEE XL 
 POPE. DODDEIDGE. 'DIVINE LEGATION.' 
 
 WARBURTON INTRODUCED TO POPE POPe's EXPRESSIONS OF GRATI- 
 TUDE TO HIM -WARBURTON STAYS A "WEEK WITH POPE AT TWICK- 
 ENHAM LETTER FROM POPE TO WARBURTON POPE'S DESIRE TO 
 
 HAVE THE ' ESSAY ON MAN ' TRANSLATED INTO LATIN HIS WISH 
 
 TO SETTLE WARBURTON NEARER LONDON SOLICITS LORD CHESTER- 
 FIELD TO PROCURE HIM A LIVING SECOND VOLUME OF ' THE 
 
 DIVINE LEGATION ' PREPARED CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. DOD- 
 DRIDGE WAEBURTON's CHANGE OF OPINION WITH REGARD TO THE_ 
 
 ' WORKS OF THE LEARNED ' HIS DESULTORY MODE OF WRITING 
 
 PLAGIARISM OF COVENTRY, THE AUTHOR OF ' PHILEMON TO HYDASPES ' 
 
 HIS INTERCOURSE WITH WARBURTON SECOND VOLUME OF ' THE 
 
 DIVINE LEGATION ' PUBLISHED, AND REVIEWED IN THE ' WORKS OF 
 THE LEARNED ' BY DODDRIDGE — ABSTRACT OF THE CONTENTS OF 
 THE VOLUME. 
 
 THE great event of Warburton's life, in tlie year 1740, 
 was his meeting with Pope, which took place on 
 May 6. Pope had expressed his wish for a visit from 
 Warburton, ' to whom,' he said, ' he really had more obh- 
 gation than to any man ; ' and Warburton had signified 
 the gratification which he should feel at calling on him as 
 soon as he should be in the metropolis. Pope, writing 
 again to him, from Twickenliam, says, ' I received with 
 great pleasure . . . the prospect you give me of a nearer 
 acquaintance with you when you come to tovra. I shall 
 hope what part of your time you can afford me will be 
 passed rather in this place than in London, since it is here 
 only I hve as I ought, mihi et amicis. I therefore depend 
 
184 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XL 
 
 on your promise ; and so much as my constitution suffers 
 by the winter, I yet assure you such an acquisition will 
 make the spring much the more welcome to me, when it 
 is to bring you liither cum zephyris et hirundine primd. 
 ... In earnest,' he adds, in reference to the Vindication 
 against Crousaz, ' I am extremely obhged to you for thus 
 espousing the cause of a stranger whom you judged to be 
 injured ; but my part in this sentiment is the least : the 
 generosity of your conduct deserves esteem ; yom* zeal 
 for truth deserves affection from every candid man ; and 
 as such, were I wholly out of the case, I should esteem 
 and love you for it. I will not, therefore, use you so ill 
 as to write in the general style of comphment : it is below 
 the dignity of the occasion ; and I can only say (which I 
 say with sincerity and warmth) that you have made 
 me,' &c. 
 
 It is pleasant to read these civilities between authors ; 
 and Pope was certainly very much in earnest. ' Praj' let my 
 house,' he says, in a subsequent letter, ' have its share of 
 you ; or, if I can any way be instrumental in accommoda- 
 ting you in town during your stay, I have lodgLags and a 
 library or two at my disposal, which, I beheve, I need 
 not offer to a man to whom all hbraries ought to be open, 
 or to one who wants them so httle, but that 'tis possible 
 you may be as much a stranger to this town as I wish 
 vrith all my heart I was. I see by certain squibs in the 
 " Miscellanies" that you have as much of the uncharitable 
 spirit poured out upon you as the author you defended 
 from Crousaz. I only wish you gave them no other 
 answer than that of the sun to the frogs, shining out in 
 your second book, and the completion of your argument.' 
 
 ' Let us meet,' says another communication, ' hke men 
 who have been many years acquainted with each other, 
 and whose friendship is not to begin, but continue. All 
 forms should be past when people know each other's mind 
 so well. I flatter myself you are a man after my own 
 
1740.] POPE'S EESPECT FOE WAEBURTON. 185 
 
 heart, who seeks content only from withki, and says to 
 greatness, " Tuas habeto tibi res ; egomet haheho meas." 
 But as it is but just your other friends should have some 
 part of you, I insist on my making you the first visit in 
 London, and thence, after a few days, to carry you to 
 Twickenham for as many as you can afford me. If the 
 press be to take up any part of your time, the sheets may 
 be brought you hourly thither by my waterman ; and you 
 will have more leisure to attend to anything of that sort 
 than in town. I believe, also, I have most of the books 
 you can want, or can easily borrow them. I earnestly 
 desire a line may be left at Mr. Eobinson's, where and 
 when I shall call upon you, which I will daily inquire 
 for, whether I chance to be here or in the country.' 
 
 Their first meeting, however, whatever was the reason, 
 did not take place in London. The spot in which it 
 occurred was Lord Radnor's garden, adjacent to Pope's 
 residence at Twickenham ; and Dodsley, who was present 
 on the occasion, told Dr. Warton that he was astonished 
 at the high compliments paid by Pope to Warburton as 
 they approached, the poet declaring that he looked upon 
 Warburton as his greatest benefactor. Warburton stayed 
 several days at Pope's house. ' I passed about a week at 
 Twickenham,' he wrote to Middleton, ' in a most agreeable 
 manner. Mr. Pope is as good a companion as a poet, and, 
 what is more, appears to be as good a man.'* The inter- 
 course seems to have been extremely agreeable to both 
 parties. Pope continued to address Warburton with re- 
 spect, and Warburton was careful not to contradict Pope. 
 One evening, when they were walking in the garden, Pope 
 began to converse with Warburton, very famiharly and 
 confidentially, on his performances and feelings as an 
 author. He observed that he considered himself to have 
 been surpassed in every kind of writing, and particularly 
 
 * Quoted by Hurd, Life of Warburton, p. 28. 
 
186 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUBTON. [Ch. XI. 
 
 in the faculty of invention. Warburton rejoined that he 
 would not offend his dehcacy by enlarging on his merits 
 before his face, but that he would take the liberty of 
 mentioning one quality in which he felt certain that he 
 was unrivalled — the power of uniting wit vsdth subhmity. 
 ' Tour wit,' said he, ' gives a splendour and delicacy to 
 your subhmity, and your sublimity gives a grace and dig- 
 nity to your wit.'* To this comphment, which, if cor- 
 rectly reported, the poet must have thought rather extra- 
 vagant and obscure — ' wit giving splendour to sublimity, 
 and subhmity giving grace to wit' — no reply of Pope's is 
 recorded. But he still continued to speak of Warburton 
 with reverence, both in his conversation and in his letters. 
 In his talk with Spence he was never tired of expatiating 
 on Warburton's extent of mental view, and critical pers- 
 picacity, which had excited his admiration. Writing to 
 Warburton about a month after their separation, having 
 received two letters from Warburton in the interval, he 
 says : 
 
 ' CivHity and comphment generally are the goods that 
 letter-writers exchange, which, with honest men, seems a 
 Idnd of iUicit trade, by having been, for the most part, 
 carried on, and carried farthest, by designing men. I am 
 therefore reduced to plain inquuies, how my friend does, 
 and what he does, and to repetitions, which I am afraid 
 to tire him with, how much I love him. Your two kind 
 letters gave me real satisfaction, in hearing you were safe 
 and well, and in showing me you took kindly my unaf- 
 fected endeavours to prove my esteem for you, and dehght 
 in your conversation. Indeed, my languid state of health, 
 and frequent deficiency of spirits, together with a number 
 of dissipations, et aliena negotia centum, all conspire to 
 throw a faintness and cool appearance over my conduct 
 to those I best love, which I perpetually feel, and grieve 
 
 * Letter from Hon. C. Yorke to Lord Hardwicke, in Warton's ' Pope,' 
 and in Harris's ' Life of Lord Hardwicke.' 
 
1740.] INTENDED VERSIONS OF THE ' ESSAY.' 187 
 
 at ; but, in earnest, no man is more deeply touched with 
 merit in general, or with particular merit towards me, in 
 any one. You ought, therefore, in both views, to hold 
 yourself Avhat you are to me in my opinion and affection 
 — so high in each, that I may, perhaps, seldom attempt 
 to teU it you. The greatest justice, and favour too, that 
 you can do me is to take it for granted. 
 
 ' Do not, therefore, commend my talents, but instruct 
 me by your own. I am not really learned enough to be 
 a judge in works of the nature and depth of yours ; but 
 I travel through your book as through an amazing scene 
 of ancient Egypt or Greece, struck with veneration and 
 wonder, but at every step wanting an instructor to tell 
 me all I wish to know. Such you prove to me in the 
 walks of antiquity, and such you will prove to aU man- 
 kind ; but with this additional character, more than any 
 other searcher into antiquities, that of a genius equal to 
 your pains, and of a taste equal to your learning.' 
 
 Pope had longed to have his ' Essay on Man ' translated 
 into Latin verse, and had engaged Dobson, the translator 
 of Prior's ' Solomon,' to make a version of it ; but Dob- 
 son grew tired of the work, and left it incomplete. Pope 
 then thought of a translation into Latin prose, and re- 
 quested Warburton to find him a scholar equal to that 
 undertaking. Warburton accordingly made inquiries at 
 Cambridge, and Pope expresses great obligation to him 
 for the pains which he took. He hunted out somebody 
 ready to make a commencement, said to have been 
 Christopher Smart, then a very young man, and sent 
 Pope a specimen, done in close imitation of the style of 
 Cicero. ' The translation,' wrote Pope in answer, ' you 
 are a much better judge of than I, not only because you 
 understand my work better than I do myself, but as your 
 continued famiharity with the learned languages makes 
 you infinitely more a master of them. I would only 
 recommend that the translator's attention to TuUy's 
 
188 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cu. XI. 
 
 Latinity may not preclude his usage of some terms wliich 
 may be more precise in modern philosophy than such as 
 he could serve himself of, especially in matters meta- 
 physical. I think this specimen close enough, and clear 
 also, as far as the classical phrases allow ; from which yet 
 I would rather he sometimes deviated than suffered the 
 sense to be either dubious, or clouded too much. You 
 know my mind perfectly as to the intent of such a 
 version, and I would have it accompanied with your own 
 remarks translated, such only I mean as are general, or 
 explanatory of those passages which are concise to any 
 degree of obscurity, or which demand, perhaps, too 
 minute an attention in the reader.' 
 
 In this letter Pope expresses a wish that Warburton 
 was nearer to him, and, in a subsequent communication, 
 says, ' I am not content with those glimpses of you which 
 a short spring visit affords, and from which you carry 
 nothing away with you but my sighs and my wishes.' In 
 accordance with this feehng, he looked about for the means 
 of procuring Warburton a living in the neighbourhood of 
 London. He tells him that he longs to ' be so fortunate, 
 and a rare fortune,' he says, ' it would be, to be able to 
 procure, and acquaint you of, some real benefit done you 
 by my means. But fortune,' he adds, ' seldom suffers 
 one disinterested man to serve another. 'Tis too much 
 an insult upon her to let two of those who most despise 
 her favours be happy in them at the same time, and in 
 the same instance. I wish for nothing so much at her 
 hands, as that she would permit some great person or 
 other to remove you nearer the banks of the Thames; 
 though very lately a nobleman, whom you esteem much 
 more than you know, had destined,' &c. Thus the pas- 
 sage in the letter, as published by Warburton, breaks off; 
 but from a note of Warburton's on a subsequent letter, 
 we find that the nobleman was Lord Chesterfield, who, as 
 he gave Pope to understand, would have served his friend 
 
1740.] WAEBURTON'S STUDIES. 189 
 
 if he had been able. ' It is not my friendship,' writes Pope 
 to Warburton, ' but the discernment of that nobleman I 
 mentioned, which you are to thank for his intention to 
 serve you. And his judgment is so uncontroverted, that 
 it would really be a pleasure to you to owe him anything, 
 instead of a shame, which often is the case in the favours 
 of men of that rank. I am sorry I can only wish you 
 well, and not do myself honour in doing you any good. 
 But I comfort myself when I reflect few men could make 
 you happier, none more deserving, than you have made 
 yourself.' 
 
 Such were the terms in which Pope corresponded with 
 Warburton ; and this friendly intercourse between them 
 continued uninterrupted tdl the day of the poet's death. 
 It is to be regretted that none of Warburton's letters to 
 Pope have been preserved. 
 
 At the commencement of the year 1741, Warburton 
 was preparing to send forth the second volume of ' The 
 Divme Legation,' about which he had been engaged, 
 more or less, during the whole of the preceding year. He 
 had even sent a portion of it to the press before December 
 1739, in which month he -^vrote to Dr. Birch, 'I have 
 received two sheets. Two more are coming, and they 
 cry out for more copy.' Inter nos, I only write from 
 hand to mouth, as we say here ; so that an east wind, a 
 fit of the spleen, want of books, and a thousand other 
 accidents, will frequently make the press stand stiU. This 
 will be an inconvenience to Gyles, but I told him what he 
 was to expect ; and his hands are so full of great works, 
 that I may weU be spared, among the first-rate of the 
 fleet, and cruise at leisure in a lee-shore, safe from Web- 
 ster and the rest of the guarda-cle-costas ; and, when good 
 weather and fair trafiic invite, put in or out of any little 
 creek or habour ; not but that I propose to finish this 
 volume sooner than you imagine, if it please God to grant 
 me health and life.' 
 
190 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XL 
 
 In July 1740, he tells Dr. Doddridge, who had been 
 much dehghted with the iirst volume of 'The Divine 
 Legation,' and had entered into correspondence with its 
 author, ' the second volume goes slowly on, but I hope 
 to have it out next winter.' In the following January, 
 when it was about to appear, Doddridge, who seems then 
 to have had no personal acquaintance with Warburton, 
 addressed to him a letter, offering to make an abstract of 
 the volume for insertion in the ' Works of the Learned.' 
 ' I am far from being pleased,' said he, ' with the manner 
 in which the extracts from books are generally made in 
 the " Works of the Learned," and other monthly papers 
 of that kind. I think it would be more for the credit of 
 our nation abroad, and the improvement of it at home, 
 that these accounts should be a kind of abridgment of 
 the most material things contained in books of import- 
 ance ; which might give those who have never read them 
 some idea of their contents, and revive in those who have 
 read them an impression of their most material passages. 
 This is what I could especially wish, where so valuable 
 a book as yours is in question. And though, where 
 everytloing is so charming as, this second volume will be, 
 if it be like the first, it is difficult to know what to omit, 
 and consequently how to abridge it ; yet, if you please to 
 trust me, I will do my best, and, busy as I am, will, in 
 two or three successive articles, give such an abstract of 
 it as may do it the least wrong ; and, tUl some translation 
 of it can be made, give the learned world abroad the 
 justest notion of its design which so narrow limits will 
 permit. Now, if you think this httle piece of friendship 
 worth your acceptance, I beg you would let me know, and 
 that you would order the second volume, in sheets, to be 
 sent me as soon as it is printed off; at the same time 
 letting the author of this paper [the editor of the " Works 
 of the Learned "] know that the affair is lodged in my 
 hands, and, consequently, that he is to wait for the first 
 
1740.] WAEBUKTON AND DODDRIDGE. 191 
 
 article from me, wliich I will despatcli as soon as pos- 
 sible.' 
 
 To this application Warburton returned a very gracious 
 answer. Some time before he seems to have been well 
 disposed towards the ' Works of the Learned,' having sent 
 to it his ' Eemarks on Jortin's " Notes on Spenser," ' and, 
 it is supposed, some other smaller communications ; but 
 now he begins to rail against it in his strongest style. ' I 
 am to thank you, dear sir, for your friendly and obliging 
 concern for my reputation. What you observe of that 
 absurd account of my first volume in the " Works of the 
 Learned " is exactly true. I believe there never was so 
 nonsensical a piece of stuff put together. But the journal 
 in general is a most miserable one ; and, to the opprobrium 
 of our country, we have neither any better, nor, I believe, 
 any other. And that this will never grow better I dare 
 be confident, but by such an accidental favour as this you 
 design it. I altogether approve of the method you pro- 
 pose to take in abstracting it ; and Eobinson, I dare say, 
 will not presume to alter a word. I am sure I would not, 
 and therefore my seeing it before he prints it will be 
 needless. I will take care you shall have a copy sent you 
 before pubhcation. I propose to have it out about 
 Easter ; and yet (to my shame I must tell you), though it 
 consists of three books, the first is not yet entirely printed, 
 and the far greater part of the other two I have not yet 
 composed.' If this was literally true, both the author and 
 the printers must have made extraordinary haste ; for the 
 volume was ready for the public, according to Hurd, in 
 May 1741. As the rest of the letter shows how Warbur- 
 ton wrote much of his great work, and tells something of 
 his modes of reading and study, it will be well to subjoin 
 it: 
 
 ' To let you,' he says, ' into this mystery,' the mystery 
 of dilatoriness in writing, 'I must acquaint you with 
 my faults and imperfections, the common occasion of all 
 
192 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XL 
 
 profane mysteries. I ara naturally very indolent, and apt to 
 be disgusted with what has been any time in my hands or 
 thoughts. When I pubhshed my first volume, I intended 
 to set about the remainder immediately ; but found such 
 a disgust to an old subject, that I deferred it from month 
 to month, and year to year, till at length, not being able 
 to conquer my hstlessness, I was forced to have recourse 
 to an old expedient — that is, begin to set the press on 
 work, and so obhge myself unavoidably to keep it a-going. 
 I began this project last year, but grew weary again before 
 I had half got through the first book ; and there it stuck, 
 till just now, when I set it a-going again, and have actually 
 promised the bookseller to supply him constantly with 
 copy tiU the whole volume is printed, and to get it ready 
 by Lady-day. So that now I hiurry through it in a strange 
 manner ; and you may expect to find it as incorrect as the 
 former, and for the same reason. Yet I had resolved 
 against serving this volume so, and still my evil nature 
 prevailed ; and I find at length it is in vain to strive with 
 it. I take no pride, I assure you, in telling you my 
 infirmities. I confess myself as to a friend, without any 
 manner of afiectation. And, that you may see it is so, I 
 would not have you think that natural indolence alone 
 makes me thus play the fool. Distractions of various 
 kinds, inseparable from human hfe, jomed with a naturally 
 melancholy habit, contribute greatly to increase my indo- 
 lence, and force me often to seek in letters nothing but 
 mere amusement. 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, that can 
 engage my attention. There is no one whose good 
 opinion I more value than yours ; and the marks you 
 give me of it make me so vain, that I was resolved to 
 humble myself in making you this confession. By my 
 manner of writing upon subjects, you would naturally 
 imagine they afibrd me pleasure, and attach me thoroughly. 
 
1741.] COVENTEY'S ' PHILEMON TO HYDASPES.' 193 
 
 I will assure jou, no. I have amused myself much in human 
 learning, to wear away the tedious hours inseparable from 
 a melancholy habit. But no earthly thing gives me plea- 
 sure but the ties of natural relation and the friendship of 
 good men. And for all views of happiness, I have no 
 notion of such a thing bvit in the prospects which revealed 
 rehgion affords us. You see how I treat you, as if you 
 were my confessor. Tou are in a more sacred relation to 
 me ; I regard you as my friend.' 
 
 In a letter to the same correspondent in the following 
 April, he tells him that the volume is nearly ready, and 
 that he has written to Eobinson concerning the abstract. 
 ' When you see the book,' he adds, ■• you will find what a 
 trick I have been played, in the most impudent piece of 
 plagiarism that, perhaps, ever was known at any time. 
 The story is so ungrateful to me, that I cannot think of 
 telling it twice ; you will see it in an advertisement pre- 
 fixed. Pray give it in some place one stroke of your pen. 
 The man has foohshly ruined his character; but what 
 then? The proving him a scoundrel is putting him in 
 the way to thrive. It is a gentleman, too, and of condi- 
 tion — one Coventry, author of " Philemon to Hydaspes " 
 — to whom I showed some sheets ; and he has stolen my 
 general plan of the hieroglyphics, (^c, in a fourth con- 
 versation just published. You wiU wonder I should let 
 such a sort of writer see anything of mine. But suspend 
 your censure till I teU you the whole history when I see 
 you.' 
 
 - Philemon to Hydaspes ' was a small book, in five dia- 
 logues, on the subject of false religion, or the rise and 
 progress of superstitious worship. It was written by 
 Henry Coventry, a man of good family, fellow of Mag- 
 dalen College, Cambridge, who Avas engaged in composiag 
 a sixth dialogue when death put a stop to his labour. 
 For what we know of his ' impudent piece of plagiarism,' 
 we are indebted to a manuscript left by the Eev. John 
 
 
 
194 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [On. XI. 
 
 Jones, curate, for many years, to the author of the ' Mght 
 Thoughts ' at Welwyn ; which manuscript Mr. Nichols 
 has printed at large in his ' Literary Anecdotes.' From 
 the statement of Mr. Jones, it appears that Warburton had 
 several times met Coventry at Cambridge, at the rooms of 
 Dr. Middleton and elsewhere, and had fallen into conver- 
 sation with him on subjects of hterature and rehgion. At 
 length Coventry took occasion to mention what he was 
 writuig, and told Warburton, that though he had at first 
 intended to speak only of false rehgion among Christians, 
 he was now thinking of extending his inquiries to the 
 false theories of rehgion amongst the heathen, in the 
 course of which he should discuss the origin of hero- 
 worship and symbohc writing. Warburton perceiving 
 that Coventry's notions on the subject were wrong, or at 
 least did not agree with his own, put him, as he con- 
 sidered, right ; and Coventry then asked for more parti- 
 cular information about the Egyptian hieroglyphics. War- 
 burton, who was preparing to pubhsh his opinions on that 
 subject, desired to be excused from saying more ; and the 
 matter was then dropped. But soon after he had returned 
 to Newark, Coventry again apphed to him by letter for 
 information, and Warburton answered that he had no 
 time to spare for entering fully on the subject in writing, 
 but that he would endeavour to gratify his curiosity on 
 the first opportunity, as far as he conveniently could. 
 Coventry, dissatisfied at being thus put ofi" agam, went to 
 Gyles, the publisher, and asked to see Warburton's manu- 
 script ; a request which Gyles very properly refused. 
 Happening, however, to meet Warburton in London not 
 long after, he reminded him of his promise, and Warbrn'ton 
 sent him some of the printed sheets relating to the hiero- 
 glyphics. Some weeks afterwards Coventry's fourth dia- 
 logue came out, when Warburton, to whom a presentation 
 copy was sent, found that he had pubhshed what had 
 been communicated to him confidentially. Warburton 
 
1741.] SECOND VOLUME OP ' DIVINE LEGATION.' 195 
 
 immediately wrote to Mm through a friend, requiring an 
 acknowledgment of his priority in the matter ; but 
 Coventry returned an unsatisfactory answer. Warburton 
 then threatened to expose him as a plagiary ; and Co- 
 ventry found himself forced to write the letter to which 
 Warburton alludes in his letter to Doddridge, and which 
 was prefixed to the fourth book of ' The Divine Legation,' 
 stating that he had ' formed his general way of thinking,' 
 as to ' the deduction of animal-worship from the hiero- 
 glyphics,' on hints received from Warburton, and that 
 Warburton's whole discourse on the hieroglyphics was 
 finished before Coventry had begun to write about them. 
 
 The volume, having been published in May, a copious 
 notice of it, written by Doddridge, and sent to Warbur- 
 ton before pubhcation,* appeared in the ' Works of the 
 Learned ' in the following October, commencing thus : 
 
 ' The first volume of this work made its way into the 
 world without anything to patronise or recommend it, 
 but the general character of the writer, and its own 
 proper merit. The latter was acknowledged by the 
 applauses of a great number of the best judges, and by 
 the slanders of those whose envy could not brook the 
 author's superior genius ; the lustre of that was not in the 
 power of these mahgnants to obscure ; they aimed, there- 
 fore, at obstructing its influence, by representing it em- 
 ployed in the subversion of what all good men among 
 us esteem sacred, thereby hoping to render it obnoxious 
 to those very people whose friendship only our author 
 desires, and in whose interests he professedly engages. 
 The learned, the wise, and the candid, were no otherwise 
 influenced by this outrage than to be incited to the closest 
 examination of a performance so bitterly opposed by men 
 pretending religion and orthodoxy ; the result of which 
 is no other than what might be expected from persons of 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Aneod. vol. v. p. 573. 
 o 2 
 
196 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XI. 
 
 their disposition ; that is, an approbation of a scheme cal- 
 culated to evince the divinity of the Jewish and Christian 
 institutions, supported by just reasoning, and adorned 
 with the charms of polite Hterature. This second part of 
 so laudable an undertaking has been impatiently expected 
 by men of the best taste and discernment. And may we 
 not hope their satisfaction rises as Mr. Warburton pro- 
 ceeds ; their admiration of his system increases in propor- 
 tion to the discovery of it ; and that they are the more 
 thoroughly persuaded of its strength as they see how 
 easily the antagonists of it are foiled ? ' 
 
 In these three books, which constitute the second part 
 of the work, he assumes that the universal pretences to 
 revelation prove the high antiquity of some revelation, 
 and particularly of the Jewish ; an assumption which he 
 endeavours to establish, not very satisfactorily, from the 
 generally acknowledged need of a revelation, and from 
 the exclusive nature of the Jewish revelation, which, pur- 
 porting to come from the Creator himself, declared aU 
 other revelations, as they were called, to be mere fictions. 
 He rephes to Voltaire, whom, like Akenside, he con- 
 temptuously calls a poet, and who had objected to the 
 exclusive polity of the Jews as rendering them necessarily 
 hateful or contemptible, that they were miraculously 
 separated from the nations to preserve the true worship 
 of the Deity. He maintains, in opposition to Sh Isaac 
 Newton, the high antiquity of Egypt, from the skUl of the 
 Egyptians in hieroglyphics and other modes of writing, 
 and from their great knowledge of medicine ; and endea- 
 vours to show that this great antiquity, as it supports the 
 Scripture liistory, supports also the divinity of the mission 
 of Moses, which was intended to set a peculiar people free 
 from the old Egyptian false worship. He argues that, the 
 Jewish government being a theocracy, laws against ido- 
 latry were necessary to the support of rehgion under it, 
 but, he says, if his reader would wish to know what use 
 
1741.] CAUSES OF DISSATISFACTION. 197 
 
 he intends to make of his remarks on the Jewish idolatry, 
 he must crave his patience till he comes to the last 
 volume.* He then shows that the theocracy continued 
 to the coming of Christ, and must have been administered 
 by an extraordinary providence ; he dwells on the omis- 
 sion of a future state from the Mosaic legislation, though, 
 not to contradict the Seventh Article of the Church, he 
 admits that it was occasionally intimated to the leading 
 men of the Jewish nation. He then inquires into the 
 nature of typical rites and secondary senses in prophecy, 
 and, animadverting on CoUins, who affirmed that all 
 secondary senses in prophecy must be chimerical and 
 absurd, and on Dr. Sykes, who asserted that of no passage 
 of Scripture could there be more than one true sense, he 
 brings this second part to a conclusion with a recapitula- 
 tion of the steps of his argument. 
 
 In allusion to the reception of the first part, which had 
 met such strong opposition from many, he says : ' A man 
 less fond of truth, and equally attached to eeligion, 
 would have stopped short,' at the end of the third book, 
 ' and have ventured no farther in a road where he must 
 so frequently suffer the displeasure of forsaking those he 
 most agrees with, and the much greater mortification of 
 appearing to go along with those he most differs from. I 
 have often asked myself, what had I to do to invent new 
 arguments for rehgion, when the old ones had outlived so 
 many generations of this mortal race of infidels and free- 
 thinkers ? Why did I not rather choose the high road of 
 hterary honours, and pick out some poor critic or small 
 philosopher of this school, to offer up at the shrine of vio- 
 lated sense and virtue ; things that might be exposed to 
 their deserved contempt on any principles, or, indeed, 
 without any ? I might then have flourished in the favour 
 of my superiors, and the goodwill of aU my brethren. 
 
 * Book V. sect. 2 ; Works, vol. v. p. 61. 
 
198 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XI. 
 
 But the love of truth breaks all my measures ; imperiosa 
 trahit Veritas ; and I am once more borne away into the 
 deep and troubled torrent of Antiquity.'* The capitals 
 in this extract are Warburton's own. Possibly, in speak- 
 ing of ' picking out some poor critic or small philosopher,' 
 he had his thoughts on Bentley's exposure of Collins. 
 
 Bentley, as Monk observed, he is, while acknowledging 
 his abihties, at times inchned to disparage ; and in War- 
 burton's remarks on CoUins's ' Grounds of the Christian 
 Eehgion,' in the sixth book of ' The Divine Legation,' the 
 Bishop thinks he discovers a desire to outshine the answer 
 of Phileleutherus to the ' Discourse on Freethinking.' 
 But for this notion there seems to be but little foundation. 
 
 I might have noticed, in my remarks on the first part 
 of ' The Divine Legation,' in specifying the authors whom 
 Warburton quotes in proof of the absence of a future state 
 from the legislation of Moses, that a passage which he 
 afterwards f adduces, with some quahfication of his own, 
 from Maimonides, J pointing out the difference between 
 divine and human laws, might seem, to those who do not 
 consult the original, to indicate that Warburton took the 
 idea of his work from the Jewish expositor. Ea tibi 
 explicdbo, says Maimonides to his disciple, ut plane non 
 amplias dubitnre queas, et diferentiam habeas quA discer- 
 nere possis inter ordinationes legum conditarum ab liomi- 
 nibus et inter ordinationes legis divina?. ' Maimonides,' 
 adds Warburton, ' saw nothing in the law but temporal 
 sanctions, and was struck with the splendour of divinity 
 which this light reflected back upon the law.' But the 
 truth is, that Maimonides makes no allusion to ' temporal 
 sanctions ; ' the difference which he specifies between 
 divine and human laws is, that human laws concern 
 
 * Book iv. sect. 2 ; Works, vol. iv. p. 79. 
 
 f lb. sect. 6 ; Works, vol. iv. p. 362. 
 
 i More Nevoch. Part II. c. 40, Bnxtorf s Transl. 
 
1741.] MAIMONIDES. — DR. JOHNSON. 199 
 
 themselves only with civil affairs, whUe divine laws, 
 affording instruction about God and celestial concerns, seek 
 to render men better and more heavenly-minded. 
 
 It may be observed, too, that Dr. Johnson, in his tenth 
 sermon, expresses his concurrence in the opinion that the 
 knowledge of a future state was but partially granted to 
 the Jews. ' The Jews,' says he, ' enjoyed a very ample 
 communication of the Divine will, and had a rehgion 
 which an inspired legislator had prescribed. But even to 
 this nation, the only nation free from idolatry, and ac- 
 quainted with the perfections of the true God, was the 
 doctrine of a future state so obscurely revealed, that it 
 was not necessarily consequential to the reception, or 
 observation, of their practical religion. . . . That any 
 man could be a Jew, and yet deny a future state, [as was 
 the case with the Sadducees,] is a sufficient proof that it 
 had not yet been clearly revealed, and that it was reserved 
 for the preachers of Christianity to bring hfe and immor- 
 tahty to hght.' 
 
200 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XII. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 VISIT TO OXFOBD. ALLEN. PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 WAEBUETON AGAIN VISITS POPE AT TWICKENHAM THEIR EXCURSION 
 
 TO OXFORD PROPOSAL TO CONFER DOCTORS' DEGREES ON THEM, 
 
 AND DISAPPOINTMENT CONSEQUENT ALLUSIONS TO OXFORD IN THE 
 
 ' DUNCIAD ' POPE INVITES WARBURTON, ON ALLEN's PERMISSION, TO 
 
 PRIOR PARK NOTICE OF RALPH ALLEN PRAISES OF HIM BY HURD, 
 
 WARBURTON, FIELDING SLIGHT ILLNESS OF WARBURTON AT PRIOR 
 
 PARK SUGGESTS TO POPE THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE ' DUNCIAD ' 
 
 WRITES NOTES ON POPE's ' ETHIC EPISTLES ' THIRD EDITION OF THE 
 
 FIRST VOLUME OF ' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' ARRANGEMENTS WITH 
 
 BOOKSELLERS LETTER FROM HON. CHARLES YORKE ON ' THE DIVINE 
 
 legation' DISSERTATION ON THE 'ORIGIN OF BOOKS OF CHIVALRY' 
 
 FOR JARVIS'S ' DON QUIXOTE' ANOTHER VISIT TO ALLEN WITH POPE 
 
 LETTER TO RICHARDSON. 
 
 WHEN the second volume of ' The Divine Legation ' 
 had received its last touch, Warburton proceeded 
 to visit Pope at Twickenham, where he stayed some time, 
 and then joined the poet in a summer ramble into the 
 country. They terminated their excursion at Oxford, 
 when Pope, after staying there a day, went westward, and 
 Warburton, who remained a day after him, to caU on Dr. 
 Conybeare, the Dean of Christchurch, returned to London. 
 On the latter day a message was sent to Warburton by 
 Dr. Leigh, the Vice-chancellor, to know if a Doctor's 
 degree in Divinity would be acceptable to him ; and 
 Warburton returned a courteous answer, not dechning the 
 honour. About the same time a simdar communication 
 was made to Pope, offering him a Doctor's degree in Law ; 
 and Pope gave a similar reply. Both, therefore, expected 
 
1741.] REFUSED A DOCTOR'S DEGREE AT OXFORD. 201 
 
 to receive their degrees ; but the intrigues of two or 
 three individuals, ill affected to Warburton, contrived to 
 throw some impediment in the way ; the party favourable 
 to Warburton was outvoted ; and, as Warburton was 
 refused his degree, Pope would not accept his. ' I have 
 received some chagrin,' he writes to Warburton on 
 August 12, 'at the delay of your degree at Oxford. As 
 for mine, I will die before I receive one, in an art I am 
 ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of 
 bestowing one on you, in a science of which you are so 
 great a master. In short, I will be doctored with you, or 
 not at all. I am sure, where honour is not conferred on 
 the deserving, there can be none given to the undeserving, 
 no more from the hands of priests than of princes.' 
 Warbm'ton, however, begged him not to shght, on his 
 account, the honour offered by the University. But Pope 
 obstinately adhered to his determination. ' We shall take 
 our degree together in fame,' said he, ' whatever we do 
 at the University ; and, I tell you once more, I wiU not 
 have it there without you.'* 
 
 It was from resentment at this affair, as some suppose, 
 that the sneer at the Oxford Dons, as ' ApoUo's Mayor 
 and Aldermen,' was introduced into the Fourth Book of 
 the 'Dunciad,' and that the poet said of the sons of 
 Dulness, receiving their titles, 
 
 ' The last, not least, in honours or applause, 
 Isis and Cam made Doctors of her Laws.' f 
 
 Concludmg a letter to Warburton the following year, he 
 says, ' Call me any title you please but a Doctor of Oxford.' 
 In the following November, Pope paid a visit to Allen 
 at Prior Park, and obtained Allen's permission to invite 
 Warburton to join them. In a letter to him from Prior 
 Park, he says, ' I am here in more leisure than I can 
 
 * Pope's "Works by Warburton, vol. ix. pp. 341, 343. 
 t Dunciad, iv. 116, 577. 
 
202 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTON. [Ch. XII. 
 
 possibly enjoy, even in my own house, wacare feYms. . . . 
 If it were practicable for you to pass a month or six weeks 
 from home, it is here I could wish to be with you ; and 
 if you would attend to the continuation of your own noble 
 work, or unbend to the idle amusement of commenting 
 upon a poet who has no other merit than that of aiming, 
 by his moral strokes, to merit some regard from such men 
 as advance truth and virtue in a more effectual way ; in 
 either case, this place and this house would be an in- 
 violable asylum to you from all you would desire to avoid 
 in so public a scene as Bath. The worthy man, who is 
 the master of it, invites you in the strongest terms ; and 
 is one who would treat you with love and veneration, 
 rather than what the world calls civihty and regard. He 
 is sincerer and plainer than almost any man now in this 
 
 world ; antiqids morihis You will want no servant 
 
 here ; your room will be next to mine, and one man 
 wiU serve us. Here is a library and a gallery ninety feet 
 long to walk in, and a coach whenever you would take 
 the air with me. Mr. Allen tells me you might, on horse- 
 back, be here in three days ; it is less than a hundred 
 miles from Newark, the road through Leicester, Stow-in- 
 the-Wold, Gloucestershire, and Cirencester, by Lord 
 Bathurst's. I could engage to carry you to London from 
 hence, and I would accommodate my time and journey 
 to your conveniency. 
 
 ' Is aU this a dream ? Or can you make it a reaUty ? 
 Can you give ear to me ? 
 
 Audistin ' ? an me ludit amabilis 
 Insania ?'' 
 
 Ealph Allen, whom Pope, in the epilogue to his Satires, 
 first called 'low-born,' and afterwards 'humble,' in the 
 couplet, 
 
 ' Let liumble Allen, witla an awkward shame, 
 Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame,' 
 
1741.J CHAEACTEE OF EALPH ALLEN. 203 
 
 and who was the original of Fielding's Squire AUworthy, 
 was a sensible, unpretending, kind-hearted man, who, 
 having been very much the architect of his own fortune, 
 greatly assisted Warburton in making his. His character 
 we may very well take from Hurd, who gives it as fol- 
 lows : — ' Mr. Allen was a man of plain good sense, and 
 the most benevolent temper. He rose to greaji considera- 
 tion by farming the cross-posts, which he put into the 
 admirable order in which we now find them, very much 
 to the pubHc advantage as well as his own. He was of 
 that generous composition, that his mind enlarged with 
 his fortune ; and the wealth he so honourably acquired, 
 he spent in a splendid hospitahty and the most extensive 
 charities. His house, in so public a scene as that of 
 Bath, was open to all men of rank and worth, and 
 especially to men of distinguished parts and learning, 
 whom he honoured and encouraged, and whose respec- 
 tive merits he was enabled to appreciate by a natural 
 discernment and superior good sense, rather than any 
 acquired use and knowledge of letters. His domestic 
 virtues were above all praise. With these qualities he 
 drew to himself a universal respect, and jDossessed in a 
 high degree the esteem of Mr. Pope.' Hurd, who was 
 introduced at his house by Warbm-ton, grew very intimate 
 with him, and said, when he first saw him, ' He comes up 
 to the notion of my favourites in Queen Elizabeth's reign ; 
 good sense in conjunction with the plainest manners ; 
 simplex et nuda Veritas.'' On publishing a new edition, 
 too, of his ' Moral and Pohtical Dialogues,' he prefixed 
 to it a portrait of Allen, with the following words from 
 Seneca beneath it : ' Si nobis animum boni viri liceret 
 inspicere, quam pulchram facieni, quavi sanctam., quam 
 ex magnijico placidoque fulgentem videremus ! Nemo 
 ilium amabilem, qui non simid venerabilera, dicer et.* 
 
 * Kilvert's Life of Hurd, pp. 45, 355. 
 
204 LIFE OF BISHOP "WARBUETON. [Ch. XII. 
 
 Warburton's character of him was this, given in a letter 
 to Doddridge : ' He is, I verily beheve, the greatest pri- 
 vate character in. any age of the world. You see his 
 munificence to the Bath Hospital. This is but a small 
 part of his charities, and charity but a small part of his 
 virtues. I have studied his character even maliciously, to 
 find where his weakness hes, but have studied in vain. 
 When I know it, the world shall know it too, for the 
 consolation of the envious. . . . In a word, I firmly 
 beheve him to have been sent by Providence into the 
 world to teach men what blessings they might expect 
 from heaven, would they study to deserve them.'* 
 
 Fielding describes Allworthy as walking forth on his 
 terrace in the morning, when the sun was rising in the 
 full blaze of his majesty, ' than which,' he says, ' one 
 object alone in this lower creation could be more glo- 
 rious, and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented ; a human 
 being replete with benevolence, meditating in what 
 manner he might render himself most acceptable to his 
 Creator by doing most good to liis creatures.' Fielding 
 had indeed great reason to speak well of Allen, for he 
 experienced from him, merely on account of his merits 
 and necessities, great pecuniary assistance. He is said to 
 have received, on one occasion, two hundred pounds, even 
 before Allen was personally acquainted with him. Allen 
 also aided Fielding's brother. Sir John, in making provi- 
 sion for his family after his death, f 
 
 He is reported to have hked Pope chiefly for the sen- 
 timents contained in his letters, and to have been at times 
 almost ahenated from him by the severity of his satires, 
 so much at variance with his own kindness of disposition. J 
 
 He continued stiU to manage the posts at the time that 
 Warburton became known to him, and was contemplating 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 833. 
 ■f Sir W. Scott's Biography of Fielding. 
 J KuffTiead's Life of Pope, p. 406, ed. 8vo. 
 
1741.] CONFEEENCES WITH POPE. 205 
 
 a direct conveyance of letters between Newark and 
 Northampton, instead of the circuit round by London.* 
 
 During Warburton's stay at Allen's, his health was not 
 good, and the doctors at Bath desired him to drink the 
 Bath waters, which were brought to him hot every morning 
 to take in bed. His complaint was called ' bihous indi- 
 gestion,' of which, he observed to Doddridge, the writers 
 against me declare that I have given pubhc proofs ; ' but,' 
 he added, ' it is well for them that I can digest their usage 
 of me.' He derived so much benefit from the springs 
 that AUen made him promise to return for a further trial 
 of them.f 
 
 He had, at this time, much conversation with Pope 
 about his poems, and, to advance the ends of virtue and 
 rehgion, ' prevailed on him to alter everything in his 
 moral writings that might be suspected of having the 
 least glance towards fate or naturalism, and to add what 
 was proper to convince the world that he was warmly on 
 the side of moral government and a revealed will.'' Pope 
 complied with his wishes in this respect without difficulty. J 
 
 He also conferred with Pope about the fourth book of 
 the ' Dunciad,' which he had previously persuaded him to 
 add to the other three. ' I often told him,' says Wai'- 
 burton, ' that it was a pity so fine a poem should remain 
 disgraced by the meanness of its subject, the most insigni- 
 ficant of aU dunces, bad rhymers, and malevolent cavillers ; 
 that he ought to raise and ennoble it by pointing his 
 satire against the most pernicious of all, minute philo- 
 sophers and free-thinkers. I imagined, too, it was for the 
 interests of rehgion to have it known that so great a 
 genius had a due abhorrence of these pests of virtue and 
 society. . . . The plan of this admirable satire was 
 artfuUy contrived to show that the foUies and defects of a 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. lUustr. vol. ii. p. 831. f I^- P- 830. 
 
 \ "Warburton's Pope, Pref. p. viii. 
 
206 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Ch. XH. 
 
 fashionable education naturally led to, and necessarily 
 ended in, free-thinking ; with design to point out the only 
 remedy adequate to so fatal an evil.'* Whatever War- 
 burton might fancy, the reader -will probably think that 
 the fourth book of the ' Dunciad ' bears much more 
 forcibly upon the minute philosophers than upon the 
 free-thinkers, who, though ridiculed, wiU be sensible of 
 httle refutation either in the text or in the notes. 
 
 During the winter he wrote some notes on Pope's 
 ' Ethic Epistles,' of which Pope was meditating a new 
 edition. The notes, whether written at Pope's request or 
 of Warburton's free will, were gladly received by the 
 poet, and destined to be attached to his verses. 
 
 Early in 1742 a third edition of the first volume of ' The 
 Divine Legation ' was published, and, soon afterwards, a 
 second edition of the second volume, in which it was 
 announced that the whole would be concluded in nine 
 books. 
 
 There was some difficulty in making arrangements 
 about the work with the executors of Gyles, the book- 
 seller, who died in November of the preceding year, 
 leaving his accounts with Warburton unsettled. War- 
 burton had not parted with the copyright, nor made any 
 agreement with Gyles, except to pay him the ' bookseUer's 
 allowance.' But, out of regard for him, he says, ' I asked 
 only half the clear profits of the editions sold, and two- 
 thirds of a third edition of the first, volume, and a second 
 edition of the second volume.' He saw no reason, he 
 observed, why ' liis favours should be entailed on a rich 
 family that wanted nothing.' With the demand of two- 
 thirds, however, the executors were unvsdlhng to comply, 
 pressing Warburton to be content with half, and, rather 
 than go to law, he at last yielded, though Murray, after- 
 wards Lord Mansfield, would have pleaded liis cause 
 
 * Warburton's Pope, Pref. p. vii. ; and vol. ix. pp. 343, 348. 
 
1742.] LETTER FROM CHARLES YORKE. 207 
 
 without a fee. He retained the entire copyright in his 
 own hands.* Pope recommended him Knapton, a man 
 of credit in the trade, as a successor to Gyles, and with 
 Knapton he continued to pubUsh till he ceased to write. 
 
 In the second edition of the second volume he made 
 some reflections on the leaders of the rising sect of 
 Methodists, which we may defer to notice till we come to 
 another publication of Warburton's, the ' Doctrine of 
 Grace.' 
 
 The tone in which he spoke of the attacks made upon 
 ' The Divine Legation ' caused the following letter to be 
 addressed to him by the Honorable Charles Yorke :f — 
 
 ' July 1, 1742. 
 'Dear Sir, — I was pleased, on returning home the 
 other day, after an excursion of a few weeks, to find your 
 first volume waiting for me, with a most agreeable letter 
 from yourself, full of kindness and vivacity. To speak 
 the truth, I had been meditating, before I received yours, 
 to say something to you on the very piece you aUude 
 to ; but you have prevented me in it. I thought also of 
 congratulating you, but you seem to require condolence. 
 And surely without reason. What signifies it that your 
 adversaries are not worth contending with ? It is a proof 
 that men of sense are all on your side. Like the spectres 
 whom ^neas encountered, you cannot hm"t them by any 
 weapons ; but it should be remembered, on the other 
 hand, they do not injure, but tease, and will follow you 
 the less, the more you endure and despise them. You 
 should forgive them too, for you began hostilities. The 
 only provision in the constitution of things for the dull is 
 the indolence of the ingeniovis. Therefore, when a man 
 unites great apphcation to great parts, throws down the 
 fences of prejudice, and strikes out new paths in know- 
 
 * Letter to Doddridge, March 3, 1742. 
 I Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 495. 
 
2C8 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTOW. [Ch. XII. 
 
 ledge, they confederate against him, as a destroyer of their 
 merit, and a dangerous invader of their property. 
 
 ' After all, it is a serious and melancholy truth, that 
 when speculative errors are to be reformed, and received 
 opinions either rationally opposed or defended, the matter 
 cannot be attempted without much censure. The discreet 
 upbraid you with imprudence ; the prejudiced, with ab- 
 surdity ; and the dull, with affectation. It is a censure, 
 however, which generally arises from interest ; for the 
 works of such as you contribute to bury many useless 
 volumes in oblivion. 
 
 ' I rejoice that you approve of the further remarks I sent 
 you on a few passages of Tunstall's " Epistle ; " not only 
 on account of your candour in doing it, but because your 
 sagacity has confirmed what I had thrown out, by two or 
 three very elegant turns of argument. Whenever you 
 treat a subject, you leave nothing to be said after you, 
 and, for that reason, can always improve upon others. 
 But this is a trifle. The new edition of your book shows 
 that you can even improve upon yourself. TuUy, I think, 
 says of his behaviour in the offices of friendship, cceteris 
 satisfacio quam maxime, mihi ipsi nunquavi satisfacio. 
 And in writmg it is one mark of a superior understanding 
 not to be contented with its own produce. 
 
 ' Your correspondence is exceedingly acceptable to me. 
 When I am conversing with you on subjects of literature 
 or ingenuity, I forget that I have any remote interest in 
 what is going forward in the world, nor desire in any time 
 of life to be an actor in parties, or, as it is called some- 
 where, subire tempestates reipuhlicce. 
 
 ' I am, dear Sir, with the greatest affection and esteem, 
 ' Your most obhged and faithful humble servant, 
 
 ' Charles Yoeke.' 
 
 The ' Epistle ' of Dr. Tunstall, mentioned in this letter, 
 was addressed to Dr. Middleton, and denied, with Markland 
 
1742.] 'ORIGIN OF BOOKS OP CHIVALEY.' 209 
 
 and Euhnken, the genuineness of the letters between 
 Cicero and Brutus, but, to make Cicero ■ amends, gene- 
 rously attributed to him the books Ad Herennium. 
 
 In the summer of this year Pope published the new 
 edition of his ' Ethic Epistles,' accompanied by War- 
 burton's comments. The nature of these annotations is 
 well known ; they are mostly superfluous and obtrusive ; 
 but Pope seems to have been much better pleased with 
 them than his readers have been. Some verses, which 
 Pope had previously rejected, he allowed Warburton to 
 insert as ' Variations ' at the foot of the page, giving him 
 the inspection of his manuscripts for that purpose. 
 
 About the same time Warburton recast, and collected 
 into a volume, his letters against Crousaz, which he pub- 
 lished under the title of ' A Critical and Philosophical 
 Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man.' The book 
 received the revisal of Pope before it was pubhshed. 
 
 Warburton's intimacy with Pope brought him ac- 
 quainted with Jarvis. When Jarvis's ' Don Quixote ' was 
 ready for the press, Warburton, bold to write on any 
 subject, sent him a prefatory ' Dissertation on the Origin 
 of Books of Chivalry,' which Jarvis cheerfully prefixed to 
 his version, but without the name of the writer. When 
 the book came forth, Pope, who had not been made aware 
 of Warburton's contribution to it, and who knew as httle 
 of the origin of romance as Warburton himself, expressed 
 himself dehghted with the contents of the Dissertation, 
 and declared that he could not be mistaken as to the 
 author of it. ' Before I got over two paragraphs,' he 
 wrote to Warburton, ' I cried out, Aut Erasmus aut Dia- 
 bolus ! I knew you as certainly as the ancients did the 
 gods, by the first pace and the very gait.' Warburton's 
 style, indeed, was easily distinguished ; his manner was 
 animated and striking, but his matter, unhappily, was 
 quite erroneous and absurd. His assertions and his 
 conjectures were alike groundless and vain. He was, 
 
 p 
 
210 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUBTOlSr. [Ch. XH. 
 
 however, so well pleased with his work, that, when he 
 published Shakspeare, he reprinted it, almost without 
 abbreviation, as a note at the end of ' Love's Labour 
 Lost ; ' a play with which, as Malone observes, it has no 
 more to do than with any other of Shakspeare's. The 
 reproduction of the rhapsody afforded the good sense of 
 Tyrwhitt an opportunity for confuting it. He appended 
 to Warburton's note a contradictory note. Warburton 
 had asserted that romances of chivalry were all of Spanish 
 origin ; that the heroes of them were mostly Spaniards, 
 and the scene generally in Spain ; and that the subjects 
 of them were chiefly crusades of European Christians 
 against the Mahometans of Asia and Africa. Tyrwhitt 
 showed that Spain, so far from being the birthplace of 
 chivalric romances, had produced none older than the 
 invention of printing ; that the scene of them was rarely 
 in Spain, except in the few which treat of the affair at 
 Eoncesvalles ; and that Warburton had evidently taken 
 his notions about wars with the Mahometans from the 
 pseudo-Turpin's ' History of Charlemagne,' and from 
 Geoffry of Monmouth, without a due knowledge of what 
 was in those writers, for Geoffry of Monmouth's history 
 ends before Mahomet was born. Of his positions, as 
 Tyrwhitt said, he offered no proofs, expecting them, appa- 
 rently, to be received as indisputable truths. 
 
 Li the autumn Warburton again joined Pope at Allen's. 
 On the twenty-fourth of October we find him preaching 
 at the Abbey Church, at Bath, for the benefit of the Bath 
 Infii'uiary. He printed his sermon, with an account of 
 the Infirmary appended, but Hurd cUd not thinli proper 
 to include it in his works. 
 
 He had much communication, about the 'Dunciad,' 
 notes to the ' Essay on Criticism,' and other matters, with 
 Pope, whom he left behind him at Allen's, and who, soon 
 after Warburton's departure, wrote to him saying, 'A 
 project has arisen in my head to make you, in some mea- 
 
1742.] LETTEE TO EICHAEDSON. 211 
 
 sure, the editor of this new edition of the " Dunciad," if 
 you have no scruple of owning some of the graver notes, 
 which are now added to those of Dr. Arbuthnot. I mean 
 it as a kind of prelude, or advertisement to the pubhc, of 
 your commentaries on the " Essay on Man," and on " Cri- 
 ticism," which I propose to print next in another voIiuiLe 
 proportioned to this. I only doubt whether an avowal of 
 those notes to so ludicrous a poem be suitable to a cha- 
 racter so estabhshed as yours for more serious stuches. It 
 was a sudden thought since we parted ; and I would have 
 you treat it as no more ; and tell me if it is not better to 
 be suppressed, freely and friendlily. I have a particular 
 reason to make you interest yourself in me and my 
 writings : it will cause both them and me to make the 
 better figure to posterity. A very mediocre poet, one 
 Drayton, is yet taken some notice of, because Seldon wrote 
 a few notes on one of his poems.' It was accordingly 
 settled that Warburton should appear as editor of the 
 ' Dunciad.' 
 
 Towards the end of the year he received from Eichard- 
 son a copy of a new edition of ' Pamela,' and, in acknow- 
 ledging the gift, gave him his opinion, as weh as that of 
 
 Pope, on the work : 
 
 ' Dec. 28, 1742. 
 
 ' Good Sir, — This very day, on receiving my things from 
 London, I had the pleasure to find in the box an obliging 
 letter from you, of the 17th past, with a very kind and 
 valuable present of a fine edition of your excellent work, 
 which no one can set a higher rate upon. I find they 
 have both lain aU this time at Mr. Bowyer's. I have so 
 true an esteem for you, that you may depend on anything 
 in my power that you think may be of any service to you. 
 Mr. Pope and I, talking over your work, when the two 
 last volumes came out, agreed that one excellent subject 
 of Pamela's letters in high life would have been, to have 
 passed her judgment, on first stepping into it, on every- 
 
 p 2 
 
212 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XII. 
 
 tiling she saw there, just as simple nature (and no one 
 ever touched nature to the quick, as it were, more cer- 
 tainly and surely than you) dictated. The effect would 
 have been this — that it would have produced, by good 
 management, a most excellent and useful satire on all the 
 foUies and extravagances of high hfe ; which, to one of 
 Pamela's low station and good sense, would have appeared 
 as absLu-d and unaccountable as European pohte vices and 
 customs to an Indian. You easily conceive the effect this 
 must have added to the entertainment of the book ; and 
 for the use, that is incontestable. And what could be 
 more natural than this in Pamela, going into a new world, 
 where everytliing sensibly strikes a stranger ? But, when 
 I have the pleasure of seeing you in town, we will talk 
 over this matter at large ; and, I fancy, you will make 
 something extremely good of our hints. I have a great 
 deal to say upon this subject, that, when we are together, 
 you will not only understand more perfectly, but I shall 
 be able to conceive more clearly by the use of your true 
 judgment. At least I shall be always zealous of showing 
 how much I am, good sir, 
 
 ' Your very obhged 
 ' and most affectionate humble servant, 
 ' W. Waeburton.' 
 
1742.] 'BKIEP EXAMINATION OF THE DIVINE LEGATION.' 213 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 POPE. BENTLEY. DEATH OP POPE. 
 
 ' BRIEF EXAMINATION OF ME. WAEBUETON'S DIVINE LEGATION ' BY 
 THE FEEE-THINKEES EXTRACTS FROM THE WORK PAGAN THEO- 
 LOGY ORIGIN OF IDOLATRY TILLAED's ' FUTUEE EEWARDS AND 
 
 PUNISHMENTS BELIEVED BY THE PHILOSOPHERS ' — "WARBUETON'S 
 ' REMARKS ' ON THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR "WARBUETON's ' ADVER- 
 TISEMENT ' LETTEE TO BIRCH ABOUT TILLAED POPE CONTINUES , 
 
 HIS ENDEAVOURS TO BEING WARBUETON NEAEEE TO LONDON" 
 
 EFFECTS A MEETING BETWEEN -WAEBURTON AND BOLINGBROKE 
 
 RESULT OF IT WAEBUETOn'S EELATIVES NEW EDITION OF THE 
 
 ' DUNCIAD ' BY WAEBUETON BENTLEY ; FEELINGS OF POPE AND 
 
 WARBUBTON TOWARDS HIM WARBURTOn's SUPPOSITION THAT BENT- 
 LEY HAD BORROWED FROM VIZZANIUS HARe's OPINION BENTLEY 
 
 IN THE ' DUNCIAD ' CIBBEe's ' ANOTHEE OCCASIONAL LETTER TO POPE ' 
 
 WARBURTON CORRECTS POPE's ESSAY ON HOMEE POPE DIES, AND 
 
 LEAVES THE PEOPEETY OF HIS WORKS TO WARBURTON. 
 
 'E must not take leave of the year 1742 without 
 noticmg two pubhcations directed against Warbur- 
 ton about this time. One of them was a book entitled 
 'A Brief Examination of the Eev. Mr. Warburton's Divme 
 Legation of Moses, by a Society of Gentlemen ; ' one of 
 the strongest attacks ever made on the author of ' The 
 Divine Legation.' As Warburton never made any direct 
 reply to this volume, we may just notice a few of 
 the more prominent passages in it, and dismiss it with 
 out farther concern. He attributed it, in private, to 
 Morgan, the author of ' The Moral Philosopher,' and called 
 him the forwardest devil of all his assailants. But it was 
 
214 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XIH. 
 
 professedly written by some of the Free-thinkers to whom 
 Warburton had so boldly dedicated his work three years 
 before, and of whom many were qualified to repay his 
 sarcasms with others equally strong, and even more keen. 
 They begin by addressing Warburton thus : 
 
 ' We, the Free-thinkers of Great Britain, beg leave to 
 approach your learned Person, and, with the profoundest 
 humility, to return you our most grateful acknowledg- 
 ments, and sincerest thanks, for your mvincible Demon- 
 stration of " The Divine Legation of Moses," and particu- 
 larly for the signal honour, and unmerited favour, of 
 addressing it to us. We could never have discharged 
 ourselves, in honour or decency, of the obligations you 
 have laid us under, without deputing a Select Committee 
 of our order to draw up and present to you this our 
 address of thanks. 
 
 ' You have. Sir, with irresistible evidence, proved that 
 Moses and the prophets knew nothing, or would own 
 nothing, of a future state of rewards and punishments for 
 good and bad men, and that this, whether out of ignorance 
 or design, was kept as a deep secret under, the Mosaic 
 Dispensation, and was never intended to make any part of 
 it ; and, at the same time, you have unanswerably demon- 
 strated that this is a principle absolutely necessary to civil 
 government. ..." 
 
 ' If we should have mistaken your argument, we shall 
 be always ready, with the profoimdest submission, to stand 
 corrected by your deeper judgment and abler hand. And 
 herein we only beg the favour that you would chastise us 
 in short, and let us know the worst of it in some reason- 
 able time ; and not keep us under discipHne for three years 
 together, or force us to read more Latin and Greek than 
 we can either understand or beheve. It is our humble 
 opinion, that religion, true rehgion, virtue, and godliness, 
 caimot depend upon dark antiquity, verbal criticisms, 
 and the painful laborious study of dead languages. Were 
 
1742.] SARCASMS OF THE FEEE-TPIINKERS. 215 
 
 tlois SO, we cannot conceive what must become of the 
 bulk of mankind, or how they should be able to judge 
 between you. Sir, and aU the learned Jews and Christians 
 hitherto, whom you have ventured to cast off and recede 
 from, for the sake of a new hypothesis of your own, in 
 this grand point of a future state, and the Divine Legation 
 of Moses. We hope you would indulge us a httle in this 
 case, as you need so much indulgence yourself. We are 
 very sensible, Sir, of your superiority in language and 
 criticism, and pretend to no competition with you in this 
 respect. But though in such a cloud we may perhaps 
 have lost your religion, we hope we have not yet lost our 
 own virtue and honour, and we are so vain as to persuade 
 ourselves that we are yet in our right senses. And there- 
 fore, from your known wisdom and goodness, we expect 
 the favour of not sending us to Bedlam till you have heard 
 us out. 
 
 ' We sincerely wish, Sir, that all .your brethren of the 
 holy order may as much congratulate you upon it [the 
 Demonstration of Moses' Legation], and return you as 
 hearty thanks for it, as we do. But perhaps they may 
 be of another mind, and imagine that you cry out against 
 the Deists only to guard and colour over a worse principle 
 of your own. But we should be sorry. Sir, if you should 
 incur any proemunire in your own Church for doing us so 
 much service. The bigots and enthusiasts among you 
 may perhaps unjustly condemn you as a man of no religion 
 at all. They may think that you regard one mode or 
 form of worship, or one order and distinction of spiritual 
 rulers or clergy, no more than another ; and that you only 
 think it your duty, because it is your mterest, to be of the 
 estabhshed rehgion, and keep up the alliance with the 
 State everywhere, and whatever it be. For no doubt but 
 the necessity of an alliance between Church and State, for 
 the support of society and civil government, must make 
 it the duty of every wise and good man to be of the State 
 
216 LIFK OF BISHOP "WAEBUKTON. [Ch. XIII. 
 
 religion everywhere, so far as lie is a friend and well- 
 wisher to his country.'* 
 
 Farther on, they speak their mind as follows : 
 ' You will give us leave, Sir, to observe, that the great 
 use you have made of the Pagan theology and cburchism, 
 in your demonstration of revealed religion, has left it 
 doubtful to us, and to your readers in general, for what 
 we can find, what rehgion you are of yourself, or whether 
 you think there is any difference between one State reh- 
 gion and another, more than political utility. If one might 
 judge by the rule of pubhc utility,' one must conclude, 
 from all that you have said, that the ancient Pagan systems 
 and schemes of rehgion were much better calculated and 
 contrived for the good of civH society than any of our 
 Christian estabUshments have ever been. The Pagan 
 churchism, polytheism, and temple-worship of the Egyp- 
 tians, Greeks, and Eomans, never inflamed the world, 
 armed one church and nation against another, or occa- 
 sioned so much effusion of blood on the score of rehgion, 
 as the Christian dogmatism has done.f 
 
 ' But we would not have . you conclude that we are 
 against an institution and order of holy learned morahsts, 
 who, by a thorough acquaintance with human nature, the 
 original springs and movements of the appetites and pas- 
 sions, the true natural grounds and reasons of wrong choice 
 and moral error, and who, by exemphfying their own 
 doctrines in hfe, should make it appear that virtue is its 
 own reward, as well as the only foundation for any future 
 happiness, and that secular wealth and power is not their 
 aim, but that they feel, and can impress upon others, a 
 pleasure superior to all animal sensual enjoyments, or any 
 of the gratifications of ambition or avarice, sense or appe- 
 tite. Such an order of men as this must needs be of 
 infinite advantage to mankind, as they w^ould convince 
 
 * Pp. 1-5. t P. 84. 
 
1742.] THE FEEE-THINKERS 05 IDOLATRY. 217 
 
 them by their own example, as well as by the rational 
 power and irresistible evidence of their doctrine, where 
 the point of true happiness hes.'* 
 
 Warburton having affirmed, in speaking of the origin 
 and progress of idolatry, that local tutelar deities were 
 miknown in the earlier ages of superstition, when the sun, 
 moon, and stars began to be worshipped, and that they 
 were not introduced till the worship of heroes arose, who, 
 having been benefactors of their countries during their 
 hves, were adored by their countrymen after their deaths 
 as watching over them from heaven, the authors of the 
 ' Brief Examination ' reply to his assertions thus : — ' The 
 reason you have assigned for deifjdng and worshippmg 
 those heroes, when that sort of worship had been received, 
 is probable enough ; but it wiU not follow from hence 
 that men had no notion of tutelar local deities till this 
 hero-worship came in, since the contrary is as evident as 
 history can make it. The notion of tutelar gods, or 
 governing guardian-angels, presiding over particular king- 
 doms, provinces, families, and even individual persons, has 
 been, so far as we can find, as ancient as the world, or as 
 early as any accounts of states, kingdoms, or communities 
 of men, settled upon earth. This demonism, or angel- 
 worship, to which no era can be fixed, must necessarily 
 have been connected with the idea of local tutelar deities 
 for a long succession of ages, or generations of men, 
 before anything of hero-worship, or immortal mortals, had 
 ever been known or thought of 
 
 ' The first idolatry of the world, if it be proper to call 
 it so, consisted in worshipping the sun, or rather the god 
 of the sun, in such or such constellations or configurations 
 of stars. They considered the sun as the principal seat, 
 throne, or habitation, of the supreme Deity. In like 
 manner they thought the moon and stars to be the seats 
 
 * P. 142. 
 
218 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XIII. 
 
 or abodes of the subordinate celestial and immortal gods 
 or angels, to whom the Supreme Being, or God of Gods, 
 had committed the government of mortals, and affairs of 
 this lower world. 
 
 ' But — men came at last to worship not only the true 
 God, as residing in, and manifesting himself chiefly by, 
 that glorious luminary, but they invoked and worshipped 
 the false imaginary gods, or rulers of the moon and the 
 erratic or fixed stars. And this was the demonism, or 
 angel- worship, of the earher ages, before hero-worship 
 had been brought in. ; and this seems plainly to have been 
 the idolatry of Egypt and the other heathen nations in 
 the days of Moses. The idolatry, which the Israehtes 
 relapsed into in the wilderness, conformable to what they 
 had seen practised in Egypt, was of this sidereal, emble- 
 matical, or symbolical kind. They had borne the taber- 
 nacle of Moloch and Chiun, their images, the star of the 
 god, or the star-god, which they had made to themselves.* 
 From hence it is evident that besides the Supreme Deity, 
 as residing and manifesting his glory chiefly m the sun, 
 they worshipped the imaginary gods of the several con- 
 stellations or configurations of stars.' f 
 
 Tliis is a sufiicient specimen of a book, which, if War- 
 burton paid it but httle attention in print, must have 
 touched him not a httle in secret. 
 
 The other publication was of a weaker nature, 
 the work of one individual, a person of such slender 
 powers and attainments as to offer Warburton a tempting 
 object of attack, and an easy conquest. He was named 
 John TiUard, and was a la-wyer in good circumstances, 
 who, being offended with certain positions in ' The Divine 
 Legation,' amused his leisure with attempting assaults 
 upon them. His effort would be hardly worth notice but 
 for the fifty pages of retort with which Warburton rephed 
 
 * Amos, V. 26. , ■]■ p. 88, 90. 
 
1742.] TILLAED. 219 
 
 to it. It was entitled ' Future Eewards and Punishments 
 believed by the Ancients, particularly the Philosophers, 
 wherein some objections of the Eev. Mr. Warburton in 
 his " Divine Legation of Moses" are considered.' War- 
 burton, in his third book, had maintained that none of 
 the ancient philosophers believed the doctrine of a future 
 state of rewards and punishments, though, on account of 
 its acknowledged necessity to the support of religion and 
 civU society, they continued to teach it. Tillard sought 
 to prove that the philosophers did beHeve this doctrine 
 which they taught ; but he showed such a lamentable 
 ignorance of exoteric and esoteric doctrines, confessing at 
 the same time, with much simplicity, that he ' had, hke 
 Lord Chief Justice Hale, lost his Greek by long advo- 
 cation to studies of quite another nature,' that Warburton 
 had only to make sport of him, and tell him that he had 
 forgot his logic, too, if he ever had any, and that Judge 
 Hale, though he lost his Greek, got a good deal of good 
 sense, but that the author of this pamphlet had lost his 
 without getting anything but the knack of writing with- 
 out sense. 
 
 He blunders out of a question, said Warburton, and 
 makes himself amends by blundering into it again. He 
 says that he passes over Warburton's ' nice distinctions, 
 divisions, and subdivisions, as needless curiosities ;' and 
 Warburton asks liim how, when he acts thus, he can pre- 
 sume to offer himself as a disputant. He says, in one 
 place, ' if I may be allowed to argue in the same way 
 as Mr. Warburton,' and Warburton tells him he beheves 
 ' the pubHc will pardon him, let him begin to do so when 
 he wiU.' Warburton then calls on the reader to admire 
 how the pamphleteer, though ' grievously bemired,' still 
 ' flounders on.' Tillard blunders about a passage of 
 Plato, and then attributes the words of Timasus to Plato, 
 and Warburton exclaims, ' How admirable a progress 
 hast thou made, from Plato nothing to the purpose, to no 
 
220 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTOlSr. [Ch. XIII. 
 
 Plato at all ! ' ' The schools of philosophy,' proceeds 
 Warburton, ' like the courts of law, make no provision 
 for fools, but, upon my word, I am not satisfied whether 
 Mr. Tihard's extravagances be not very honest blunders ; 
 however, he has now his choice to call them what he will, 
 so he no longer pretends to call them arguments.' And 
 he concludes by observing that Webster and THlard, the 
 doctor and the student, ' have managed things so well 
 that the one has lost his reason in the study of the law, 
 and the other his charity in defence of the Gospel.' 
 
 TiUard pubHshed his book at first anonymously, and 
 afterwards reprinted it with his name. Warburton, when 
 he repubhshed his ' Eemarks,' prefixed to them this War- 
 burtonian ' Advertisement ' : ' The author of the pamphlet 
 here examined hath lately made a pubhc confession of his 
 authorship, signed with his own name, and thereby saved 
 himself from all further correction of this kind. For he 
 who IS so lost to shame as a writer, to 02^ri what he before 
 wrote, and so lost to shame as a man, to own what he 
 hath now written, must needs be past all amendment, the 
 only reasonable view in correction. I shall therefore but 
 do, what indeed (were it any more than repeating what 
 he himself hfith discovered to the public) would be justly 
 reckoned the cruellest of all things, tell my reader the name 
 of this Miserable ; which we now find to be J. Tillard.' 
 
 TiUard was a friend of Dr. Birch, to whom Warburton, 
 writing about the time that the pamphlet appeared anony- 
 mously, says, ' I wiU not tell you my sentiments of your 
 friend's book, because he is your friend. And as to his 
 name and quahty, I do not desii-e to know it, nor would 
 I. He has given us his book, and by that alone I must 
 measure him, if ever I do take notice of him. It was an 
 aggravation to Job's misfortunes, that his adversaries 
 would not write a hook. If 1 should esteem it a misfor- 
 tune to have such adve]^saries as have hitherto appeared 
 against me, I have at least this pleasure, that they will 
 
•1743.] , POPE'S EXERTIONS FOE WAEBURTON. 221 
 
 write — no great pleasure indeed if I were obliged to 
 answer. When a man like Webster shows neither 
 common sense nor common honesty, he must expect no 
 notice to his arguments. But this writer, for one single 
 instance of honesty, methinks, should not go without his 
 reward. It is where he owns I only extended the dis- 
 belief of a future state to the philosophers. However, 
 this writer's espousing the cause of heathen philosophy so 
 warmly will perhaps have this good effect, that the bigots 
 on the other side of the question (for there are bigots on 
 both) may be induced to think less favourably of it. For 
 my part, nothing can induce me to think more or less 
 favom'ably of things or persons but the appearance of 
 truth ; a rule, I hope, I shall never depart from, though 
 this writer has probably taken it for granted it was not at 
 all in my view in writing " The Divine Legation." ' 
 
 In a letter to Doddridge, written shortly after the 
 pubhcation of the ' Eemarks' on TUlard, Warburton says, 
 ' 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 both 
 very abusive, free-thinking, and anonymous, I have not 
 spared to expose his ignorance and iU-faith.' 
 
 The author of 'Confusion worse Confounded' made 
 merry with Warbm^ton's inconsistent condemnations of 
 TiLLard ; first, because he pubhshed anonymously, as being 
 a stabber in the dark ; and secondly, when he put his name 
 to the book, as being lost to aU shame for owning such trash. 
 
 Pope continued his efforts to serve Warburton, and 
 gratify himself, by bringing him nearer to London. In 
 January 1743, he writes to Warburton : ' Be assured, 
 once for aU, the more I read of you, as the more I hear 
 from you, the better I am instructed and pleased. And 
 this misfortune of my own dulness,' the consequence of iU 
 health, 'and my own absence, only quicken my ardent 
 wish that some good fortune would draw you nearer, and 
 enable me to enjoy both, for a greater part of our hves in 
 
222 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. Xm. 
 
 this neighbourliood, and in such a situation as might 
 make more beneficial friends than I esteem and enjoy you 
 equally. I have again heard from Lord . . . . , and 
 another hand, that the Lord I wrote to you of declares 
 an intention to serve you. My answer (which they related 
 to him) was, that he would be sure of your acquaintance 
 for life, if once he served or obhged you ; but that, I was 
 certain, you would never trouble him with your expecta- 
 tion, though he would never get rid of your gratitude.' 
 The nobleman whose name is omitted is said to have been 
 Lord Granville ;* but the apphcation was ineffectual. 
 
 It was probably to this affair that Pope alluded, in a 
 conversation with Warburton, a short time before his 
 death. He was complaining of the professions, which 
 many great people would make, of their readiness to 
 serve their friends, and of the artfulness with which, 
 when they were soUcited for proofs of their good-wiU, 
 they would succeed in evading performance. ' It was 
 but the other day,' said he, ' that a Noble Lord in my 
 neighbourhood, whom tiU then I had much mistaken, told 
 me in conversation that he had a large benefice fallen, 
 which he did not know what to do with. ' Give it to 
 me,' said I, ' and I will promise to bestow it on one who 
 will do honour to your patronage.' He said I should 
 have it. I beheved him, and, after waiting some time, 
 without hearing further of it, I reminded Mm of what 
 had passed, when he said, with some confusion, that his 
 steward had disposed of it, unknown to him or his lady.'f 
 
 Pope also exerted himself, about the same time, to 
 bring Warburton and Bohngbroke, who had never met, 
 together. Writing to Allen, he observes, ' Lord Bohng- 
 broke stays a month yet [at Battersea], and I hope Mr. 
 Warburton will come to town before he goes. They will 
 both be pleased to meet each other ; and nothing, in all 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Aneod. vol. v. p. 584. 
 
 t Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 488, 8vo. ed. 
 
1743.] QUAKEEL WITH BOLINGBKOKE. 223 
 
 • 
 
 my life, has been so great a pleasure to my nature as to 
 bring deserving and knowing men together. It is the 
 greatest favour that can be done, either to great geniuses 
 or useful men. I vrish, too, he were a while in town, if 
 it were only to lie a little in the way of some proud and 
 powerful persons, to see if they have any of the best sort 
 of pride left — namely, to serve learning and merit — and 
 bjithat means distinguish themselves from their prede- 
 cessors.' Shortly after, also, inviting Allen to visit him, 
 he says that he may possibly, before he comes, take a 
 flight to Battersea with Mr. Warburton, ' whom,' he adds, 
 ' I have promised to make known to the only great man 
 in Europe who knows as much as he.'* The meeting in 
 consequence took place, but not till the following year, 
 and was productive of no such good effects as Pope had 
 contemplated. Bohngbroke hated Warburton for his 
 expulsion of fatalism from the ' Essay on Man,' and for 
 the ascendancy which he had acquired over Pope's mind. 
 The three dined together, at Lord Mansfield's, a short time 
 before Pope's death ; when Bolingbroke made a remark 
 about the moral attributes of the Deity, to which War- 
 burton, disliking it, repHed with some asperity ; and a 
 debate ensued, which ended in making each thoroughly 
 detestable to the other, f 
 
 In the early part of this year Warburton had some 
 trouble on account of the ill success of the husband of 
 one of Ms sisters in trade ; an affair which he mentions 
 at some length in a letter to Doddridge : J ' I should not 
 have been so long in making my best acknowledgments 
 for your last kind letter, had not your absence from home, 
 and a late unhappy domestic affair, prevented me, and 
 engrossed ah my thoughts — the misfortunes of an excellent 
 sister and her children, by her husband's iU success in 
 trade, yet attended to with the utmost honesty and 
 
 * Warburton's Pope, vol. rx. pp. 321, 323. 
 
 t Paiffhcad's Life of Pope, p. 220. | Jan. 22, 1743. 
 
224 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XUI. 
 
 sobriety ; so that, to his own ruin, he has been a consi- 
 derable benefactor to the pubhc while in trade, and his 
 creditors at last no losers, but himself undone. I do not 
 know whether this be an alleviation or aggravation of the 
 misfortune. But I can tell you, with the utmost truth, 
 that I share with this distressed sister and her children 
 (who all live with me) the small revenue it has pleased 
 God to bless me with, with much greater satisfaction than 
 others spend theirs on their pleasures. I do not know 
 how it is, but though I am far from being a hero, yet I 
 find Brutus expresses my exact sentiments, when he says 
 to Cicero, Aliter alii cum suis vivunt. Nihil ego possum in 
 sororis mece Uteris facere, quo possit expleri voluntas mea 
 aut officium. But you will reprove me, I know, for this 
 false modesty in apologising for this compassion, and say, 
 where is the wonder that a man who pretends to be a 
 Christian should not come behind a Pagan, how great 
 soever, in the performance of moral duties ? However 
 this may be, I can assure you my only concern on this 
 occasion was for an incomparable mother, whom I feared 
 the misfortunes of a favourite daughter would have too 
 much affected. But, I thank God, religion, that religion 
 which you make such amiable drawings of in all yoiu- 
 writings, was more than a support to her. But I ask 
 pardon for talking so long of myself This is a subject I 
 never choose to talk of, yet I could not forbear mentioning 
 it to a man I so much esteem, and whose heart I know to 
 be so right.' 
 
 But Warburton was not long diverted from his literary 
 occupations. Early in the year came forth, in accordance 
 with Pope's proposal, the new edition of the ' Dunciad,' 
 under the editorship of "Warburton, who is said to have 
 furnished 'Eichardus Aristarchus on the Hero of the 
 Poem,' an essay to show that for the hero of the lesser 
 epic the requisite qualities are vanity, licentiousness, and 
 unashamed dulness, such as were to be found in Gibber, 
 
1743.] COMPLETE EDITION OF THE ' DUNCIAD.' 225 
 
 now elevated to the throne of Theobald. But as this 
 piece, before it was published, was doubtless left to Pope 
 to alter as he pleased, it is impossible to tell how much 
 of it was Pope's and how much Warburton's ; and the 
 same may be said of the ludicrous notes to which Bentley's 
 name is attached. But that Warburton was suspected of 
 having much to do with the notes, is evident from one 
 of his letters to Bowyer, the printer, in which he says, 
 ' Don't mention to any, I beg of you, your suspicion about 
 the notes. Is it not a noble poem? I am glad the 
 " Dunciad " has had such a run. The Greek, I know, will 
 be well printed in your edition, notwithstanding the absence 
 of Scriblerus,'* meaning himself. 
 
 Warburton, even before he joined Pope, appears to 
 have been willing, at times, to lower or oppose Bentley as 
 far as possible. In speaking, in ' The Divine Legation,'^ 
 of the ancient legislators making religion and a providence 
 the great supports of their institutes, he mentions the Pre- 
 faces to the laws of Zaleucus and Charondas, as they are 
 given in Diodorus and Stobseus, as examples of this fact, 
 and steps rather out of his way to maintain their genuine- 
 ness, especially that of the fragments attributed to Zaleucus, 
 against Bentley, who, from the use of certain words in 
 them, more modern than the time at which they professed 
 to have been written, showed that they must necessarily 
 be regarded either as altogether spurious, or as greatly 
 altered from their original condition. Warburton endea- 
 vours to evade the force of the argument from the recent 
 form of the words, by suggesting that the alterations may 
 have been made, hke alterations in many other writings, 
 for the sake of rendering the language clearer and more 
 intelligible ; and then, after remarking on the ' deal of 
 good learning ' which ' the great critic has employed ' on 
 the subject, he concludes, to his own satisfaction, though 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. 111. vol. ii. p. 766. t Book ii. sect. 3. 
 
 Q 
 
226 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XIII. 
 
 not to that of any one else (for the words are of a kind 
 to which liis remarks are inapphcable), ' that the credit of 
 these remains stands unshaken by anything the learned 
 critic has advanced to the contrary, and that we may 
 safely produce them as of the antiquity they lay claim to.' 
 He was also desirous to lend whatever support was in 
 his power to the charge made by Boyle and liis party 
 against Bentley of having ' pillaged Vizzanius,' an obscure 
 editor of Ocellus Lucanus. Bentley, seeking to prove 
 that Ocellus Lucanus, who was a Pythagorean, and of 
 Doric origin, must have written in Doric, though his book 
 now appears in the Attic dialect, quoted a passage of 
 Jamblichus's ' Life of Pythagoras,' cited also by Vizzanius, 
 in which it is said that all the Pythagoreans, whose head- 
 quarters were at Crotona, were required (pwvfj ^prio-dai rfi 
 TrarpMo., which Bentley interpreted, that each individual 
 was required ' to use his own mother-tongue.' This is 
 the sense in which any one might take the words, who 
 should read them for the first time as they stand in 
 Vizzanius, without knowing anything of their context in 
 Jamblichus. But this is not their true meaning; they 
 signify that the Pythagoreans ordered all who joined them 
 at Crotona, from Avhencesoever they came, to use the 
 mother-tongue of Crotona, which was the Doric. Either 
 way of taking the words will serve to prove that Ocellus 
 Lucanus used the Doric dialect, but either way will not 
 prove that he who argued from them must have taken 
 them from the original of Jamblichus. It was therefore 
 maintained by Bentley's adversaries that he could have 
 seen the words only in Vizzanius, or, as they expressed it, 
 that he 'stole the observation' about Ocellus Lucanus 
 from Vizzanius. This Bentley stoutly denied, observing, 
 as the strongest argument to the contrary, that Vizzanius 
 does not understand the words in the sense which he 
 himself had given them ; a true observation ; but it was 
 apparent that neither would Bentley himself have differed 
 
1743.] BENTLEY AND VIZZANIUS. 227 
 
 from Vizzanius, if he had taken the words from Jam- 
 bUchiis's own text. It was, therefore, generally considered 
 that Boyle and his party were in this instance in the right ; 
 and Bentley himself, at the conclusion of his remarks on 
 that point, 'says, with something less than his usual bold- 
 ness : ' Whether Vizzanius or I have hit upon the ti-ue 
 meaning, perhaps all competent readers will not be of a 
 mind.' Warburton argued, from this diffidence of ex- 
 pression, that Bentley was conscious of being in the wrong ; 
 and supposed that the great critic, when he put forth the 
 first edition of the ' Dissertation on Phalaris,' had seen the 
 words of Jamblichus only in Vizzanius, where, having but 
 hastUy glanced at them, he had misunderstood their ten- 
 dency, but that, when he was put on his defence, he 
 consulted JambHchus's own text, and became aware of 
 their right meaning.* 
 
 So far Warburton had the learned world with him. 
 ' There is more curious learning,' said Hare in a letter to 
 him, ' in Bentley's answer to the Oxford Critics than I 
 ever saw in any book of that compass ; but I did not 
 therefore believe that he did not steal from Vizzanius. 'f 
 Most other learned men were of the same opinion as 
 Hare. But Warburton was not content with opposing 
 Bentley on this point only. The author of ' The Disser- 
 tation on Phalaris' having remarked that Timaeus, who 
 questioned whether Zaleucus had ever existed, was, though 
 ' of a vu'ulent style, an inquisitive and accurate writer,' 
 Warbm'ton, to whose argument the existence of Zaleucus 
 was of consequence, attacked the character of Timasus, as 
 a writer of no authority, ' the Oldmixon of the Greeks,' 
 mahgnant and calumnious, and wrests passages from dif- 
 ferent writers to support his charges. But upon this 
 matter the learned world differed from him. Warburton, 
 
 * Div. Legation, book ii. sect. 3, note b. ; Letters from an Eminent 
 Prelate, let. v. 
 
 ■j" Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 114. 
 
 a 2 
 
228 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIII. 
 
 said Dr. Salter, is ' quite wrong in all he says about 
 Timasus, . . very unfairly adding, in his pretended trans- 
 lations, to the railing accusations against Timseus, which 
 he cites ; no one of which calls him a calumniator, or im- 
 peaches his veracity, in any respect, much less taxes him 
 with inventing, aggravating, &c., the faults of others, from 
 an innate mahgnity of heart.'* What Bentley thought of 
 Warburton's opposition to him we are nowhere told ; but 
 when the first volume of 'The Divine Legation' was 
 shown him, about three years before his death, he said, 
 ' This man has a monstrous appetite, but very bad diges- 
 tion.' We do not know that this sarcasm came to War- 
 burton's ears, but, if it did, it would not lessen any feeling 
 of antagonism that Warburton might entertain towards 
 Bentley. When the fourth book of the ' Dunciad' appeared, 
 the mighty critic was dead. 
 
 Warburton, assuredly, was very well disposed to take 
 the part of Pope against Bentley ; to whom Pope had 
 been fuU of hostility ever since he had said that the trans- 
 lation of the Ihad was ' a pretty poem, but not Homer,' 
 a remark which ' the portentous cub,' said the critic, 
 ' never forgave.' Pope was dehghted to present Bentley 
 to Dulness as 
 
 Her mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains . 
 Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains ; 
 
 and Warburton was quite prepared to add his comments 
 to the poet's verses. 
 
 The whole conduct of Warburton towards Bentley, 
 observes Bishop Monk,f was very pecuhar. He had no 
 cause of offence against him, unless it were the sarcasm 
 on his Hterary digestion ; he did not, like Pope, regard 
 the race of critics with aversion or contempt ; on the 
 contrary, he would have been wilhng, had his scholarship 
 
 * Note on Diss, on Phalaris, p. 242, ed. 1817. 
 f Life of Bentley, pp. 655, 657. 
 
1744.] ANOTHER LETTER FROM GIBBER. 229 
 
 allowed, to be numbered among them ; yet he seems to 
 have felt an micontroUable desire, at times, to detract 
 from Bentley's fame, and to degrade him in pubhc esti- 
 mation, in a manner far from creditable ; while, at other 
 times, he manifests great anxiety to do justice to Bent- 
 ley's abihties ; * he appUes to him, in a note on Pope, a 
 laudatory quotation from Cicero ; and he declares him- 
 self, in a letter to Hurd, charmed with Kurd's ' gene- 
 rous concern for the character of a truly great and much 
 injured man. Dr. Bentley.'-f" He had evidently great 
 respect for Bentley's powers, but was jealous of seeing 
 him placed too high ; and Monk thinks that, had they 
 been more nearly of an age, or had their learning been 
 more similar in character, the world would have seen 
 Warburton try his strength with Bentley in controversy. 
 
 For his share in this edition of Pope's Satire, Warbur- 
 ton was vigorously, and not ineffectively, attacked by 
 Gibber, in a pamphlet entitled ' Another Occasional Letter 
 from Mr. Gibber to Mr. Pope, with an Expostulatory 
 Address to the Eev. Mr. W. Warburton, Author of the 
 new Preface, and Adviser in the Gurious Improvements 
 of the Dunciad.' 
 
 ' Being at first in some doubt,' says Gibber, ' whether Mr. 
 W. W. really existed, or might be some phantom of Mr. 
 Pope's own framing, I was told by a person of distinction 
 that you were a clergyman of parts and great learning. 
 No one, sure, that knows how a clergyman ought to employ 
 his time wiU wonder I should be a little surprised, though 
 not totally displeased, to hear that the very person who 
 had so judiciously assisted Mr. Tibbald in his edition of 
 Shakspeare (wherein the idle guesses and errors of Mr. 
 Pope, in the same undertaking, are so justly exposed and 
 refuted), should now, almost in the same breath, blow 
 
 * Note on Pope's Imitation of Hor. Ep. to Aug. ver. 104. 
 t Letters from an Em. Prelate, p. 9. 
 
230 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUKTON. [Ch. XIII. 
 
 hot and cold, and enter into so unexpected an alliance 
 with Mr. Pope, whose labours he had so unluckily dis- 
 graced. But great wits, I find, hke other troublers of 
 the world's repose, are friends or enemies just as their 
 varjdng interests or passions incline them. Now, though 
 I cannot determine which motive might more induce you 
 to a peace with him, your wilhngness to redeem your 
 old ally, Mr. Tibbald, from his dishonour in the 'Dunciad,' 
 or the regret you felt for the shame you had inadvertently 
 brought Mr. Pope to as an editor, yet this I find to be 
 certain, that your happy recommendation of the laureat 
 to be hanged up in Tibbald's place has completed the 
 work, and brought every man out of his difficulty. No 
 comedy ever concluded with so entire satisfaction on all 
 sides. Pope pardons you. You forgive Pope. Tibbald 
 is released.' 
 
 One of the severest reflections ever thrown on ' The 
 Divine Legation ' is here made by Gibber : 
 
 ' To my sorrow I own it, I never heard you preach in 
 my hfe ; but, depend upon it, whenever I know you 
 design to mend the world or yourself from any pulpit in 
 London, I will most penitently pay you a religious 
 attendance. And if afterwards I should pubhsh. some 
 occasional notes upon your discourse, why may it not be 
 judged as proper an employment of my time as the com- 
 mentaries you promise us on so carnal a writer as Mr. 
 Pope may be of yours 1 Indeed, Doctor, I should rather 
 advise you to stick to your " Divine Legation of Moses." 
 There you are in your element ; for there you may show 
 us — what ? Not any necessary part of our behef that 
 is not enjoined in the Scriptures, I hope. Por if the 
 Scripture, which is the Word of God, does not declare 
 his Legation to be divine, why are we to take a mortal 
 word for it ? and of all mortals, why more immediately 
 yours ? But then again, if the Scripture does allow your 
 assertion to be true, why, what have you been doing all 
 
1744.] 'ESSAY ON HOMER.' 231 
 
 tliis while ? Wisely holding up the lamp of your lucu- 
 brations, to show us the sun. Prodigious ! to prove that at 
 midday it is noon ! What you will say to my talking of 
 things so much above me I know not ; but think it as 
 absiu'd as you please, provided you will aUow me to have 
 the same thoughts of your meddling with my squabbles.' * 
 
 Pope, who said that Gibber's pamphlet was more to 
 him than a dose of hartshorn, and that its railing would 
 cure him of a course of flatteries, advised Warburton 
 not to answer, and the commentator accordingly affected 
 a dignified silence. 
 
 It was about the same time that Warburton made 
 some alterations, or corrections as they are termed, in 
 Pope's ' Essay on Homer.' ' It is very unreasonable,' 
 wrote Pope to him, ' after all the labour bestowed on the 
 " Dunciad," to give you a second trouble in revising the 
 " Essay on Homer." But I look upon you as one sworn 
 to suffer no errors in me ; and though the common way 
 with a commentator be to erect them into beauties, the 
 best office of a critic is to correct and amend them. 
 There being a new edition coming out of Homer, I 
 would willingly render it a little less defective, and the 
 bookseller wiH not allow me time to do so myself f 
 Warburton, vdth ready pen, assented to the proposal, and 
 made some alterations, at the same time, in the preface, 
 for which Pope returns his thanks in the usual terms : 
 ' Your alterations to the Preface and Essay are just ; and 
 none more obliging to me than where you prove your 
 concern that my notions, in my first writings, should not 
 be repugnant to those in my last. And you will have 
 the charity to think, when I was then in an error, it was 
 not so much that I thought wrong or perversely, as that 
 I had not thought sufficiently. 'J 
 
 * Pp. 21, 27. 
 
 f Pope to Warburton, June 5, 1743. 
 
 ;j: Same to same, July 18, 1743. 
 
232 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIII. 
 
 What alterations in these compositions are due to 
 Warburton, it would be vain to attempt to discover ; for 
 though we might note the variations from the first 
 edition, we should be unable to tell which of the changes 
 were Warburton's, and which of them Pope's. 
 
 This was the last service that he performed for Pope, 
 during his hfe, for the poet was now sinking into his last 
 illness, and growing too weak to attend to any hterary 
 affairs. On May 30, 1744, he died, and left Warburton, 
 by a will made in December of the preceding year, the 
 property of all such of his works already printed as he 
 has written, or shall write, commentaries or notes upon, 
 and all the profits which shall arise from such editions as 
 he should pubhsh without future alterations. He also 
 left his library to Warburton and AUen, to be shared 
 between them. The property of Pope's works was 
 valued by Johnson at about 4,000/. 
 
1744.] LETTER FROM MRS. COCKBURN. 233 
 
 CHAPTEK XIV. 
 HANMER. BURTON. AKENSIDE. 
 
 LETTER FROM MRS. CATHERINE COCKBURN WARBURTON'S REPLT — ■ 
 
 brown's ' ESSAY ON SATIRE,' ADDRESSED TO WARBURTON WARBUR- 
 
 ton's notes in grey's ' HDDIBRAS ' EDITION OF THE ' DONCIAD,' 
 
 WITH A REFLECTION ON SIR THOMAS HANMER, AND A NOTE ON DR. 
 
 JOHN BURTON NOTICE OF BURTON AND HIS WRITINGS, AND THE 
 
 SATIRE ON HIM BY DR. WILLIAM KING ANSWERS PROVOKED BY 
 
 ' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' WARBURTON ATTACKS AKENSIDE ON THE 
 
 QUESTION WHETHER RIDICULE BE A TEST OF TRUTH AKENSIDE's 
 
 REMARKS WARBURTON's RETORT AKENSIDE DEFENDED BY DYSON 
 
 WARBURTON RETIRES FROM THE CONTEST LORD KAIMES's OPINION 
 
 SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE QUESTION CONCERNING RIDI- 
 CULE. 
 
 SOON after Pope's death, Warburton received a letter 
 from the learned Mrs. Catherine Cockburn, the defender 
 of Locke, ostensibly to condole with him on the loss of his 
 friend, and to inqiiire what works of Pope he had pub- 
 Ushed, but in reahty to ascertain Warburton's exact 
 notions of moral obHgation, as touched upon in the first 
 volume of ' The Divine Legation ; ' notions differing from 
 her own, which were the same as those of Clarke, that 
 man's obligation to act in certain way lies in the nature 
 of the things that surround him. 
 
 Warburton replied with great courtesy. After answer- 
 ing her inquiries regarding Pope's works, he says, 'Towards 
 the conclusion of your letter you have sent me one of the 
 politest cartels imaginable. I think his answer was generally 
 commended, who told the Emperor, when he pressed him, 
 that he never would dispute with a man Avho had twenty 
 
234 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XIV. 
 
 legions at his back. And do you think I will enter the 
 lists with a lady whose writings have twenty thousand 
 charms in them ? . . . We differ in what is the true foundation 
 of morahty. I have said all I have to say on the subject. 
 And though it be hard -to guess when a writer so much 
 the mistress of her subject has said all, yet if I believed 
 what you have said was all, I might perhaps be in some 
 measure excusable, as I see you say so much more than any 
 writer of your side of the question had done before you. 
 
 ' One thing, and one only, you will give me leave, 
 Madam, to observe : that I am a little surj)rised at the 
 consequence drawn from my position that, as without a 
 God there would be no obligation, therefore the atheist 
 who believes there is none (and might deduce that truth 
 concerning obhgation from the principles of right reason) 
 would have no tie upon him. 
 
 ' Hence I concluded, and I thought rightly, that atheism 
 was highly injurious to society. But how airy one could 
 conclude from this (for this is the amount of what I said 
 on the subject) that, on my principles (for as to my opinion, 
 I beheve no one w^ould question that), an atheist is. not ac- 
 countable in a future state for any enormities he may com- 
 mit here, I do not see. And my reason for sayhig so is 
 this : — It is a principle, I suppose, agreed on, " That crimes 
 committed upon wrong principles are equally punishable 
 with those committed agahist right ; for that the faUing 
 into this wrong principle was occasioned by some punish- 
 able fault in the conduct." Now, I have not said one 
 single word, throughout the discourse, that leads to inva- 
 lidate this principle ; consequently, all I have said cannot 
 affect the truth. That an atheist is accountable. I ask your 
 pardon, Madam, for this trouble. It is what I have not 
 given to any other ; though several have made the same 
 objection. They deserved nothing at my hands, and you 
 deserve everything.' * 
 
 * Hm-d's Life of Warbm-ton, pp. 35, 125. 
 
1744.] DE. JOHN BKOWN. 235 
 
 In 1747, when Mrs. Cockburn, disliking the principles 
 advocated by Eutherforth in his ' Essay on Virtue,' deter- 
 mined to write a reply to it, she sent her manuscript to 
 Warburton, who, though he did not altogether approve 
 of her arguments, yet thinking her moraUty preferable to 
 Eutherforth's, whose love of singularity, he said, had made 
 him a bad moralist, recommended the book in a short 
 preface, saying that it exhibited ' all the strength of reason, 
 and attachment to truth, which make books of this nature 
 really useful.' Eutherforth's great principle was, that if 
 man is virtuous, it is only from the selfish persuasion that 
 adherence to virtue will promote his welfare. Mrs. Cock- 
 burn, in opposition, advocates the doctrine of Clarke, that 
 man is led to virtue by his regard to the relations and 
 fitnesses of things. Warburton differed from both, in 
 making virtue to be moral obligation under the will of 
 God as the obhger. 
 
 Among the pubhcations, great and small, to which 
 Pope's death gave rise, was an ' Essay on Satire,' addressed 
 to Warburton, by Dr. John Brown, author of the ' Esti- 
 mate of the Manners and Principles of the Times,' of 
 whom we shall have occasion to say more hereafter. This 
 Essay, a poem of about five hundred lines, is one of the 
 best things that its author wrote, and Warburton was well 
 pleased to attach it to his complete edition of Pope's 
 works. It commences thus : 
 
 Fate gave the word ; the cruel arrow sped, 
 And Pope lies number'd with the mighty dead ! 
 Resign' d, he fell ; superior to the dart 
 That quench'd its rage in your and Britain's heart. 
 You mourn ; but Britain, luU'd in rest profound 
 (Unconscious Britain \) slumbers o'er her wound. 
 Exulting Dulness ey'd the setting light. 
 And flapp'd her wing, impatient for the night ; 
 Eous'd at the signal. Guilt collects her train, 
 And counts the triumphs of her growing reign ; 
 With Tinextinguishable rage they burn, 
 And snake-hung Envy hisses o'er his urn ; 
 
236 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cu. XIV. 
 
 Th' envenom'd monsters spit their deadly foam, 
 To blast the laurel that surromids his tomb. 
 But you, O Warburton, whose eye refin'd 
 Can see the greatness of an honest mind. 
 Can see each virtue and each grace unite, 
 And taste the raptures of a pure dehght ; 
 You visit oft his awful page with care. 
 And view the bright assemblage treasur'd there ; 
 You trace the chain that Hnks his deep design, 
 And pour new lustre on the glowing line. 
 
 It was published anonymously, but it might have been 
 expected that a copy would be sent to Warburton ; into 
 whose hands, however, it was suffered to come by chance. 
 ' I saw by accident on the road,' he says, writing to Dods- 
 ley, ' a poem called an Essay on Satire, occasioned by the 
 death of Mr. Pope ; and was surprised to see so excellent 
 a piece of poetry, and, what was more uncommon, so 
 much good reasoning. I find it has been pubhshed some 
 time. If it be not a secret, I should be glad to know the 
 author. If I have leisure, I shall give some account of 
 it for the literary news of your Museum.' This intention, 
 I beheve, was not executed. 
 
 The name of the author was readily communicated to 
 Warbm-ton, who, by introducing him to the master of 
 Prior Park, added another to the objects of Allworthy's 
 beneficence. 
 
 About the same time Warburton communicated to the 
 very learned Dr. Zachary Grey a few notes for his edition 
 of ' Hudibras.' The assistance was thankfully acknowledged 
 by Dr. Grey, in his Preface, who expresses himself ' highly 
 indebted to the Eev. and Learned Mr. William Warburton 
 for his curious and critical observations, which were pro- 
 cured for me by my learned and worthy friend, the Eev. 
 Mr. James Tunstall, B.D., Pubhc Orator of the University 
 of Cambridge, and Fellow of St. John's College.' * It 
 might be thought, from the way in which Dr. Grey speaks 
 
 * Dr. Grey's Preface to Hudibras, p. 35 ; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vol. ii. 
 p. 1G9. 
 
J744.] GKEY'S ' IIUDIBRAS.' 237 
 
 of the notes, that they are very numerous and important ; 
 but the reader who searches for them will find them but 
 few. It may be well to give a specimen or two. Those 
 who understand the stars, says Ealpho, can tell 
 
 What makes men great, what fools or knaves ; 
 But not what wise, for only of those 
 The stars (they say) cannot dispose, 
 No more than can the astrologians.* 
 
 These lines are somewhat obscure. Warburton gives 
 this explanation : ' The astrologers themselves can no 
 more dispose of (i. e. deceive) a wise man than can the 
 stars. What makes the obscurity is the using the word 
 dispose in two senses ; to signify influence when it relates 
 to the stars, and deceive when it relates to the astrologers.' 
 The true sense seems to be, the influence of the stars can 
 no more make a wise man, than the astrologers can deceive 
 him when he is made. 
 
 On the verses. 
 
 For when a shin in fight is cropp'd, 
 The knee with one of timbers propp'd 
 Is deem'd more honourable than th' other, 
 And takes place, though the younger brother,! 
 
 Warburton's remark seems to be very just : ' Alluding 
 to the awkward steps a man with a wooden leg makes in 
 walking, who always sets it first.' 
 What is said of the shoemaker, 
 
 Cerdon the Great, renown'd in song. 
 Like Herc'les, for repair of wrong ; 
 111 has he read, that never hit 
 On him, in muse's deathless writ, 
 
 has brought many a reader to a stand. How is Cerdon 
 so famous, that we, who have never hit on him, have read 
 ih ? Warburton understands it of shoemakers in general : 
 
 * Part i. canto i. ver. 616. f Part i, canto ii. ver. 146. 
 
238 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XIV. 
 
 ' Because,' he says, ' the cobbler is a very common subject 
 in old ballads.' 
 
 We need not seek for more specimens. 
 
 The first publication that Warburton gave to the world 
 after Pope's death was a small edition of the ' Dunciad.' 
 In this edition appeared the lines to which we have alluded 
 in speaking of Pope and Warburton's visit to Oxford; 
 lines in ridicule of Sir Thomas Hanmer and his fine edition 
 of Shakspeare : an object of Warburton's strong detes- 
 tation. Sir Thomas had intended to publish his Shak- 
 speare at his own expense, but -the University of Oxford 
 kindly took the burden on themselves : 
 
 But (happy for him as the times went then) 
 Appear'd Apollo's may'r and aldermen, 
 On whom three hundred gold-capt youths await, 
 To lug the ponderous volume off in state.* 
 
 These verses, according to Warburton, had been left in 
 print by Pope, with directions that they should be inserted 
 where they now stand as soon as Sir Thomas Hanmer's 
 Shakspeare should be pubhshed. The whole of the sar- 
 casm on Hanmer may be supposed to have been written 
 at Warburton's instigation. The three hundred gold- 
 capt youths are three hundred gentlemen commoners, 
 said to have been influenced by the authorities to subscribe 
 to Hanmer's book. 
 
 In this edition, also, Dr. John Burton, best known by 
 his ' Pentalogia,' was assigned a place in a note for offence 
 given to Warburton, by a sarcasm on AUen, in his ' Iter 
 Bathoniense,' a playful satire on Bath, pubhshed in the 
 preceding year. The lines to which the note is attached 
 stand thus : they are part of a speech of Dulness : 
 
 The common soul, of heaven's more frugal make, 
 Serves but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake ; 
 A drowsy watchman that just gives a knock, 
 And breaks our rest to tell us what's o'clock. 
 
 * Book iv. V. 115. 
 
1744.] DK. JOHN BURTON. 239 
 
 Previously they had stood thus : 
 
 Of souls the greater part, heaven's common make, 
 Serve but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake ; 
 And most but find that sentinel of God 
 A drowsy watchman in the land of Nod. 
 
 ' But to this,' said Warburton's annotation, ' there were 
 two objections ; the pleasantry was too low for the poet, 
 and a deal too good for the goddess. For though (as he 
 told us before, ii. 34), Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke, 
 and (as this species of mirth arises from a mal-entendu) 
 we may well suppose it to be much to her taste, yet this 
 above is not genuine, but a mere counterfeit of wit, as we 
 shall see by placing by the side of it one of her own jokes, 
 which we find in the Eev. Mr. Burton's late Satire 
 upon Bath, in the following words: — Virum, quern non 
 ego sane doctissimum, at certe omnium, quotquot fere 
 uspiam, literatissimum appellare ausim. And look, the 
 more respectable the subject, the more gratefid to our 
 goddess is the offermg.' 
 
 Burton's offence is more fully stated in a letter from 
 Warbm-ton to Hurd : ' This man, two or three years ago, 
 came with his wife and family to Bath. They brought with 
 them a letter of recommendation to Mr. Allen's notice, 
 who received them here several times with distinguished 
 civilities. And the first thing the puppy did afterwards 
 was to abuse the man who received him so hospitably 
 with a saucy stupid joke. Hayter, you know whom I 
 mean (I owe him the ceremony of no other title), got a 
 friend to excuse him to me, as meaning no ill, but the 
 mere effect of dulness, which mistook it for a comphment. 
 I thought this did not excuse him being laughed at. And 
 I did no more. His intercessor had been a witness of the 
 civihties he had received.' * 
 
 Hayter, to whom Warburton refuses titles, was the 
 Bishop of Norwich of that day, and afterwards Bishop 
 
 * Letters from an Em. Prelate, let. xix. 
 
240 LIFE OF BISHOP "WARBUETON. [Ch. XIV, 
 
 of London. How he had incurred Warburton's displea- 
 sure I do not know. At his intercession, the note was 
 suppressed in the subsequent editions. 
 
 Dr. John Burton, ' the puppy,' was a learned and 
 amiable man, about two years older than Warburton 
 himself, bred at Oxford, and elected fellow of Eton 
 College in 1733. He was fond of amusing himself with 
 little compositions in Greek and Latin, prose and verse, 
 which he printed from time to time, and at last col- 
 lected into a volume, wishing, he said, to improve the 
 students by offering them specimens of better composition, 
 absit verbo invidia, than some of those that had been lately 
 put before them. His harmless conceitedness often ex- 
 posed him to ridicule. One sort of writing in which he 
 delighted was the relation of a 'journey ; he had published 
 an Iter Surriense and Sussexiense in Greek, and, about 
 1743, produced in Latin an Iter Bathonierise, or ' Journey 
 to Bath,' in which he bestowed some satire, very innocent, 
 though such as exposed him to the charge of unfeehng 
 pedantry, on the frivolous amusements, and extravagant 
 devotion to gambhng, of the company that frequented the 
 pump-room. He supposes that his friend, to whom he 
 addresses his account, will wish to know what he, urbis 
 urbanissiiiue hospes inurbanus, thought of the fine assem- 
 blies that he saw. ' Accedo,' he says, ' e multis unus. 
 Verum ipso in limine, pede pauUulum represso, suspensus 
 hsesi ; ita mihi animum repente percussit hoc multiforme 
 spectaculum. Interea forte in parietem adversum oculos 
 conjicio. En ver6 ibi, in pomparum opprobrium, speculum 
 ingens obversabatur ; juvabat ibi, non sine tacito risu 
 microcosmum hunc lepidissimum contemplari, rerumque 
 circum undique miris modis gestarum quasi compendium 
 prajhbare. Videbar mihi videre machinas quasdam gesti- 
 culantes, frequentem popeUum, mire officiosum, circumcur- 
 sitare, otiari, ridere, varioque demum lusu temere lascivire. 
 Ibi continu6 htec mecum, " quot capita, tot ineptias !" ' 
 
1744.] burton's 'iter BATIIONIENSE.' 241 
 
 After noticing the appearance of the gamesters, at a 
 subsequent period of the evening, with the rixatio impor- 
 tuna, et male dissimulata indignatio, iinu forsan et impice 
 preces, remarkable among them, he exclaims : ' lise tibi 
 sunt artes, hte dehcise, hasc oblectamenta, eleganter 
 inepta, et damnose ingeniosa Thermopohs ! . . . O miram 
 et plane singularem, neque ver6 invidendam hujusce loci 
 felicitatem! ubi omnes quasi ex pacto et dedita opera, 
 (valetudinis scilicet gratis), nee sine aliqua ingenii laude, 
 sedulo desipiunt ; adeo ut homini homo non ita multum 
 preestet, stulto intelligens! ubi plurimus sine gaudio plausus, 
 sine facetiis risus, sine tranquillitate otium, sine fructu 
 negotium.' 
 
 But what gavie special offence to many was the way in 
 which he spoke of Nash, the Master of the Ceremonies, 
 as magister ineptiarum, effoetus et edentulus senex, crowned 
 with a white hat, and in whose countenance wasferrugineus 
 ardor, et sin6 verecundid rubor immutabilis. At the last, 
 however, he cries, ' I have found a man : ' 
 
 ' Heus eSf>rj}<al tandem inveni virum; instar mille unum. 
 Facile scias eum mihi placuisse quem acceperam testi- 
 monio commendatum tuo ; virum inter Bathonienses suos 
 facile principem ; quem undequaque prassentem parietes 
 ipsi medius fidius loquuntur ; quem illustrat gloriosa 
 natahum obscuritas, fortune eundem et virtutis filium, 
 rov auTo^itr], rov auro<it8a.}crov, xa) aijTOTsXrj, virum quem 
 non ego sane doctissimum, at certe omnium quotquot fere 
 uspiam reperiuntur literatissimum appeUare ausim, et ex 
 commercio suo hterario fructus pro merito suo uberrimos 
 sine invidia consecutum.' 
 
 Wliich the author of the ' Canons of Criticism ' thus 
 translates : 
 
 ' But stay — I have at last found a man, one worth a 
 thousand. You will beheve that it was natural for me to 
 be pleased with a person whose character you recom- 
 mended to me ; a man, by far the chief among all his 
 
 R 
 
242 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cir. XIV. 
 
 fellow-citizens ; whose presence among them tlie walls every- 
 where proclaim ; whom the want of high birth renders the 
 more illustrious, and shows him to be at once the child of 
 virtue and the favourite of fortune ; self-formed, self-taught, 
 and self-complete. A man whom one may call, if not the 
 most learned, yet certainly, upon comparison with most, 
 a man of letters ; and one who, by his literary commerce, 
 has deservedly acquired an ample and unenvied fortune.' 
 For this little satirical pun upon Allen, Warburton 
 thought the author worthy of being thrust into a note in 
 the 'Dunciad.' But Burton's conceit afterwards brought 
 upon him another castigation of a different kind. At the 
 dedication of the Eadcliffe Library, in 1749, Dr. Wilham 
 King, Principal of St. Mary Hall, delivered- a Latin oration, 
 which was received with great applause, and was praised 
 by Warton in his ' Triumphs of Isis.' But Burton, not 
 hking it, published a pamphlet of ' Eemarks ' on it, under 
 the name of Phileleutherus Londinensis, pointing out inac- 
 curacies in the language ; among which was qitamvis, in 
 one passage, for quuni. King, who, like his namesake, 
 the author of the ' Account of the Heathen Gods,' was 
 ever ready for a sportive sally, retorted with ' Elogium 
 Fama3 inserviens Jacci Etonensis sive Gigantis, or the 
 Praises of Jack of Eton, commonly called the Giant; 
 collected into Latin and EngUsh Metre after the manner 
 of Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, John Bm'ton, and 
 others. To which is added a Dissertation on the Burtonic 
 style. By a Master of Arts ;' with the motto, from Swift, 
 ' What shall I say to a pamphlet when the malice and false- 
 hood of every line would require an answer, and when 
 the dulness and absurdities will not deserve one ?' Burton 
 was a very tall man, and on that account was called the 
 Giant ; but King professes to call him so ' in consideration 
 of his great talents and the extraordinary endowments 
 of his mind.' ' Burton,' says he, ' has been constituted by 
 himself sole judge of all Latin compositions, and, if any 
 
1744.] DR. WILLIAM KING. 243 
 
 person shall presume, without his license and consent, to 
 pronounce and publish a Latin oration, our Giant must 
 necessarily deem it an invasion of his rights, and an oj)en 
 contempt of his supremacy. This was the unfortunate 
 case of Dr. King. The Doctor, at the request of the 
 KadclifTe Trustees, and with the approbation of the pre- 
 sent Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, made a speech in the 
 Sheldonian Theatre without consulting the Giant (of 
 whom, it seems, he had never heard), or paying a proper 
 regard to his censoi-ial dignity. This excited our hero's 
 indignation. . . . He wrote an Epistle to the Eev. Dr. 
 Bentham, which has lately appeared in print. In this Epistle 
 he hath vented the whole stock of matter which he had 
 been six months collecting with much labour and many 
 watchings. It is therefore reckoned a finished piece, and 
 acknowledged by all judges to be the finest panegyric on 
 himself, and the severest censure on the Man whom he 
 hath, unprovoked and Giant-like, thought proper to defy, 
 that hath ever yet been pubhshed in any age or language. 
 To do honour to this great author, I have endeavoured to 
 give a faithful abstract of this admirable production in the 
 following poem. I have chosen the Sternholdian metre, 
 not only as it is best adapted to an English taste, but 
 hkewise as it is that kind of verse which the Giant chiefly 
 delights in, and which he generally makes use of when he 
 condescends to write in English, and attempts the sublime 
 in his mother-tongue.' Where Burton had given speci- 
 mens of this kind of metre, I do not know ; I have found 
 none in any of his writings that I have inspected. 
 
 Spirit of Sternliold, me inspire, Tu, Sternholde, mt aspira ! 
 
 And hither deign to bring, [lyre, Sonet, non Davidis, sed O 
 
 Not David's, but thine own sweet Dulce sonet tna lyra. 
 
 While Giant Jack I sing. Nunc, dum Jacco laudes reddo. 
 
 To beaux he showeth, and to belles Jactat opus ; jactat sane 
 
 His work in Latin lore, Bellos inter hos et hasce : 
 
 Who all confess it far excels Hi et hse fatentur planfe 
 
 All he had wrote before. Jaccum semet superasse. 
 
 k2 
 
244 
 
 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOX. 
 
 [Ch. XIV. 
 
 Then unto Oxenford he came, 
 And walked round the town, 
 
 And told all folk that his great 
 fame 
 Should pull the Doctor's down. 
 
 But here, alack, and well-a-day ! 
 
 He met a strange rebuff; 
 Some friends advis'd him to delay. 
 
 Some said lie wrote poor stuff. 
 
 Turn Oxonium petit, ibi 
 Docet doctos omnes, quo si 
 
 Famam magnam paret sibi, 
 Senem istum vincat, O si ! 
 
 Eheu ! audit nunc, Quo tendis ? 
 
 Ne festina; nova cur§, 
 Opus est ; nunc, ut emendes 
 
 Cuncta, una sit litura. 
 
 The Giant is in doubt for a while what to do, but at 
 last consults the landlord of the house, an apothecary, at 
 which he lodged : 
 
 Mendum nullum qui notabat, 
 Jacci hospes Humus, 'Heume !' 
 
 Ter quaterque oonclamabat, 
 Talia, Jacce, ne consume. 
 
 When thrice our learned landlord 
 Hume, 
 
 And four times eke, did cr)', 
 O do not such fine things consume, 
 
 For I no faults can spy. 
 
 However, he did consume his 'fine things,' but had no 
 sooner done so than he was seized with his old cacoethes 
 scribendi, and resolved on writing again : 
 
 So up he goes to London city. 
 
 Increased in his gall. 
 And now he mindeth, without pity. 
 
 Unhappy King to maul. 
 
 At length a book he doth compile, 
 
 A Latin book indeed ; 
 And so well-fashion'd is the style, 
 
 'Tis pleasant for to read. 
 
 Ad Londinum nunc advenit, 
 Plenus fellis, bene potus, 
 
 Et personam earn tenet, 
 Ut tu, senex, pereas totus. 
 
 Gaudet quid Latinum (nsB est 
 Liber cultus) emisisse ; 
 
 Omnibusque volu-pe est 
 Librum himcce peUegisse. 
 
 And it is printed more correctly than Pote of Eton 
 would have printed it : 
 
 ' En venustas quas typorum !' 
 Dicet qui non est asotus ; 
 
 ' Quam dissimilis eorum 
 
 Utitur quels pravus Potus ! ' 
 
 Who that hath cunning doth not 
 note 
 
 The print is most correct ? 
 Unlike the print of Master Pote, 
 
 Who doth his press neglect. 
 
 King then turns the Epistle to Dr. Bentham into ridicule 
 by a kind of doggrel parody, which begins thus : 
 
1744.] 
 
 DR. KING ON DR. BURTON. 
 
 ■245 
 
 Proper eulogiums how to pen, 
 O Ned, to thee I'll show ; 
 
 For I alone of learned men 
 This curious art do know. 
 
 Qui elogium componatur, 
 Cupio, Neddy, te docere, 
 
 Quum doctorum mihi datur 
 SoU artem hano callere. 
 
 He next alludes to some disappointment of Bentham's, 
 or attack on him, and declares that he will be his de- 
 fender : 
 
 And aU shall see, though now 
 you've fallen, 
 By my bon mots I '11 raise you ; 
 And that fine thing I spake of 
 Allen 
 I 'U borrow here to praise you. 
 
 Thus : Neddy, you deserve a mitre 
 Much better than your betters. 
 
 For, since you are a letter writer, 
 Yon are a man of letters. 
 
 There publish' d was, in London 
 town, 
 A wretched pamphlet thing, 
 AVhich, though the author be well 
 known. 
 Some say was wrote by King. 
 
 And I affirm it was his book. 
 Or at him I can't come ; 
 
 And in that book he hath mistook. 
 And quamvis wrote for quum. 
 
 Jaces ; sed sermone meo 
 
 Jam nunc te in astra feram ; 
 
 Ad laudandum Allen eo 
 Quo sermone usus eram. 
 
 Prsestans casteris incedis : 
 
 Cur non quoque tu mitratus ? 
 
 Nam, cum literas tot edis. 
 Sane vir es literatus. 
 
 Editum est in Londino 
 
 Audax quid. Sic haesit quis te? 
 Qui sit, nescio pol omnino. 
 
 Nisi esset senex iste. 
 
 Ipsus est, et causa patet; 
 
 Ipsus est et verax sum ; 
 Liber cujus mendis scatet : 
 
 Quamvis ponitur pro quum. 
 
 He is then made to praise himself, in allusion to his 
 Satire on Bath : 
 
 And while with pleasure I report 
 That I'm so nicely bred, 
 
 I could give lessons to the court. 
 And serve in Coteril's stead ; 
 
 That Latin writers make me smile. 
 For rival me can no man. 
 
 Who am the only judge of style. 
 And mine is truly Koman. 
 
 Quum sim elegantiarum 
 Omnium elegans spectator, 
 
 Uti essem rerum harum, 
 
 Coteril, curas qiias, curator ; 
 
 Ut Latine si quis — hili 
 Ne putetur, neque sanus. 
 
 Ipse quum sim censor styli 
 Solus vere ac Eomanus. 
 
246 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cb. XIV. 
 
 He is then made to call King senex, calumniator, co- 
 moedus, scurra, and, addressing his Alma Mater, says : 
 
 O mother, tell him you do hate, Homines sexagenarios 
 
 And eke I hate them more, Tu odisti, ipse odi ; 
 
 All writers who appear so late, Et scriptores, vel primaries 
 
 All men who 're past threescore. Viros, omnes ejus-modi. 
 
 As whilom, when I was at Bath, Sic, cum me recipiebam 
 
 One Nash I there did sting, Ad Bathoniam, Nash perstringo ; 
 
 For with him I had cause of wrath, Simultatem tum gerebam 
 The same as with this King. Quocum, qualem nimc cum 
 
 Kingo. 
 
 For Nash did give me no offence, Nullam mi injuriam fecit 
 But with a right to scold Hie Nash : atat senescit ! 
 
 We always have a just pretence, Male me dixisse decet 
 If he be waxen old. Ei, quisquis senex esset. 
 
 Besides, that very Nash (and that At, quod bilem ml commovit. 
 My choler did excite), Senem dum hunc nigriim quKro, 
 
 Though he be black, did wear a Vah ! quis albo eum novit 
 hat Ornatissimum galero ? 
 
 Which was all over white. 
 
 On this passage is the following note : 
 
 ' Jack in his Iter Bathoniense is very severe on Mi'. 
 Nash, a generous, charitable, good-natured man, and well 
 esteemed by all people. The corporation of Bath have 
 lately decreed him a statue as a testimony of their respect. 
 A proper reward for the many great services he has done 
 them, and the advantages which have arisen from his 
 prudent regulations, for forty years past, in that place ! 
 But can it be expected that our Giant should govern his 
 judgment by the opmion of others? Mr. Nash is old, 
 and sometimes wears a white hat. Two unpardonable 
 crimes ! And such as a censor could not possibly pass 
 by without a pubhc mark of his resentment.' 
 
 The pun upon Allen is said to have been borrowed 
 from the ballad of a journeyman tailor, celebrating the 
 Heads of the Oxford Colleges, in which was this stanza : 
 
1744.] WARBUETON'S UNCEREMONIOUS ATTACKS. 247 
 
 I'are Merton College, 
 
 O rare Dr. Holland ! 
 Thou art a man of letters, 
 
 And so is William Poland. 
 
 William Poland was letter-carrier to the University. 
 
 But Warburton was soon to give offence to a writer of 
 far greater eminence than Dr. Burton. The variety of 
 opinions which he advanced in ' The Divine Legation,' 
 and the haughtiness of assertion with which he had sup- 
 ported them, had raised against him swarms of opponents, 
 dishking either his matter or his manner, some of whom 
 attacked him in the periodicals of the day, others in 
 pamphlets, and others, directly or indirectly, in larger 
 works. To some of these he felt an uncontrollable 
 desire to reply, and was not long in carrying his desire 
 into execution. Hurd, in his ' Life of Warburton,' has 
 some remarks on the position in which he had placed 
 hiinself, and the feelings by which he was actuated to 
 retort, so very much to the purpose, that they well 
 deserve to be cited. ' The extensive argument, and mis- 
 cellaneous natm-e of that work, " The Divine Legation," 
 had led him to declare his sentiments on a multitude of 
 questions, on which he thought differently from other 
 writers, and, of course, to censure or confute their 
 opinions. Whole bodies of men, as well as individuals 
 of the highest reputation, were attacked by him ; and his 
 manner was to speak his sense of all with freedom and 
 force. So that most writers, and even readers, had some 
 ground of complaint against him. Not only the Free- 
 thinkers and unbehevers, against whom the tenor of his 
 book was directed, but the heterodox of every denomi- 
 nation were treated without much ceremony ; and of 
 those reputed orthodox, some tenet or other, which till 
 then they had held sacred, was discussed and reprobated 
 by him. Straggling heresies, or embodied systems, made 
 no difference with him ; as they came in his way, no 
 quarter was given to either. . . .' 
 
248 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIV. 
 
 ' Such a writer (independently of the envy which ever 
 attends superior genius) must needs have innumerable 
 enemies. And as all could not receive, nor the greater 
 part deserve, his notice, he determined to select a few of 
 the more respectable, out of the great body of assailants, 
 and to quit his hands of them at once in a general com- 
 prehensive answer. This was done by "Eemarks on 
 Several Occasional Eeflections," in two parts ; the former 
 pubhshed in 1744, and the second hi 1745 ; and both 
 executed in such a manner as was not hkely to invite any 
 fresh attacks upon him.' 
 
 What adversaries he assaOed, and in what manner, in 
 the body of these 'Eemarks,' we shall see shortly; but, 
 making a stand at the threshold, we find, in his preface, 
 that he directed, very unnecessarily, and in a very offen- 
 sive manner, an attack on the author of the ' Pleasures of 
 Imagination,' who had not then set his name to his 
 recently pubhshed work. Had Warburton known what 
 opinion Pope entertained of the poem, he would doubt- 
 less have thought the poet worthy of being treated with 
 greater respect. When the manuscript of it was offered 
 to Dodsley, as Johnson relates, he carried it to Pope for 
 his judgment, who advised the bookseller not to make a 
 niggardly offer, for ' this was no everyday writer.' But 
 Warburton was ignorant of Pope's estimate, and adverted 
 to the poet as one of the most ordinary of ordinary 
 scribblers. 
 
 Shaftesbury had asserted, in his ' Essays on Enthusiasm 
 and on Wit and Humour,' that ridicule is a test of truth ; 
 there being, indeed, no mode of ascertaining what is 
 really serious, and what ridiculous, but by 'applying 
 ridicule to see whether it will bear ;' since ' nothing is ridi- 
 culous but what is deformed, and nothing proof against 
 ridicule but what is handsome and just.' This position, 
 that ridicule is a test of truth, Warburton, in his 'Dedica- 
 tion to the Freethinkers,' published in 1738, had denied, 
 
1744.] RIDICULE A TEST OF TRUTH? 249 
 
 assuring the sceptics that all their efforts to prove any- 
 thing false by ridicule were futile and contemptible. 
 
 Akenside, in his poem audits notes, pubHshedin 1744, 
 took the side of Shaftesbury, but expressed himself with 
 somewhat less positiveness of the efficacy of the test. 
 He represented the propensity to ridicule as implanted 
 in us 
 
 to aid 
 The tardy steps of reason, and at once 
 By this prompt impulse urge us to depress 
 The giddy aims of folly. 
 
 But in his notes he made some remarks which Warburton 
 probably considered, and perhaps not without reason, to 
 be directed against his ' Dedication.' ' JSTotwithstanding 
 the general influence of ridicule on private and civil hfe,' 
 says he, ' as well as on learning and the sciences, it has 
 been almost constantly neglected or misrepresented, by 
 divines especially.' * That ridicule had been neglected, 
 it seems strange that Akenside should have asserted : 
 that it had been misrepresented or decried by divines, as 
 Warburton and others, he might think a matter of cer- 
 tainty. But he adds further observations on the subject: 
 ' Since it is, beyond all contradiction, evident that we 
 have a natural sense or feeling of the ridiculous, and 
 since so good a reason may be assigned to justify the 
 Supreme Being for bestovnng it, one cannot, without 
 astonishment, reflect on the conduct of those men who 
 imagine it is for the service of rehgion to vHify and 
 blacken it without distinction, and endeavour to persuade 
 us that it is never apphed but in a bad cause. Eidicule is 
 not concerned with mere speculative truth or falsehood. 
 It is not in abstract propositions or ' theorems, but in 
 actions and passions, good and evil, beauty and deformity, 
 that we find materials for it ; and all these terms are 
 relative, implying approbation or blame. To ask, then, 
 
 * Note on book iii. ver. 75. 
 
250 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XIV. 
 
 whether ridicule be a test of truth, is, in other words, to 
 ask whether that which is ridiculous can be morally- 
 true, can be just and becoming ; or whether that which 
 is just and becoming can be ridiculous ; a question that 
 does not deserve a serious answer ; for it is evident that, 
 as in a metaphysical proposition offered to the under- 
 standing for its assent, the faculty of reason examines the 
 terms of the proposition, and, finding some idea wliich 
 was supposed equal to another to be in fact unequal, of 
 consequence rejects the proposition as a falsehood ; so in 
 objects offered to the mind for its esteem or applause, the 
 faculty of ridicule, finding any incongruity in the claim, 
 urges the mind to reject it with laughter and contempt.'* 
 These observations Warburton chose to consider as a 
 personal attack on himself But, as he was not addressed 
 by name, and as he might have seen that the author, 
 though anonymous, was a man of learning and ability, 
 he might have offered such remarks as he thought fit to 
 make in reply, in a courteous and gentlemanly tone. But 
 he chose to use the same haughty and contemptuous 
 style to the author of a noble poem as to the meanest of 
 those whom he called ' answerers by profession ; ' to the 
 sensitive as to the unfeehng ; to Akenside as to Webster. 
 He complains of ' having been called to account, without 
 any ceremony, by the nameless author of a poem entitled 
 the " Pleasures of Imagination," one of those,' he says, 
 ' to whom I applied the words of TuUy, " non decet, 
 7ion datum, est, non potestis" who affect wit and raillery on 
 subjects not meet, and with talents unequal.' He sneer- 
 ingly calls him a ' poet,' and ' a man of taste,' as if he 
 must therefore be void of understanding. He asks, in 
 one passage, ' What is the man dreaming of ? ' and, after 
 some attempts at exposing his argumentation, adds, ' Here 
 we see, Avhere he aims to make an absurd proposition for 
 
 * Note on book iii. ver. 259. 
 
1744.] ATTACK ON AKENSIDE. 251 
 
 the use of others, it proves a reasonable one : 't is odds 
 but we find him, before we have done, trying to make a 
 reasonable one, for his own use, that turns out at least 
 an absurdity.' To Akenside's notion that ridicule was 
 given us by the Supreme Being to aid the tardy steins of 
 reason, he retorts, 'just as the efficacy of poison was 
 given us by the Supreme Being to aid our tardy steps in 
 pursuit of vermin.' He tells him that his ' common sense 
 is all turned to taste ;' and reminds him of ' a plain Eng- 
 lish proverb worth all his modish ideas of beauty and 
 virtue, and that is, to be merry and wise, which concerns 
 him nearer than one may think.' He carps and quibbles 
 at small matters, and produces a string of trifling objec- 
 tions, instead of an array of solid refutation. 
 
 Akenside did not long want a champion to defend 
 him. Jeremiah Dyson, his munificent friend and bene- 
 factor, came forward, in a few days, with a pamphlet 
 entitled ' An Epistle to the Eev. Mr. Warburton, occa- 
 sioned by his treatment of the Author of the " Pleasures 
 of Imagination," ' with the motto, ' Neque solum quid 
 istum audire, verum etiam quid me deceat dicere, consi- 
 derabo ; ' a production- so temperately and agreeably 
 written, and filled with argument so closely and efficiently 
 directed, as to form a pleasing contrast to the vague 
 remarks and graceless style of Warburton's attack. It 
 commences thus : 
 
 ' Sir, — Notwithstanding the pains you have taken to 
 discourage all men from entering into any controversy 
 with you, and notwithstanding the severe example you 
 have just been making of one who, as you fancied, had 
 presumed to call you to account, you must still be content 
 to be accountable for your writings, and must once more 
 bear the mortification of being actually called to account 
 for them. 
 
 ' 'Tis the Preface to your late " Eemarks " that you are 
 now called upon to justify ;. in which you have thought 
 
252 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON'. [Cu. XIV. 
 
 fit to treat upon a mightj free footing (as you style it, 
 but, in the apprehension of most people, a very inju- 
 rious one), the ingenious and worthy author of the 
 poem entitled " The Pleasures of Imagination." The 
 favourable reception and applause the performance has 
 met with, render it unnecessary, and indeed impertinent, 
 for me to enlarge in its praise ; especially as you, sir, 
 have not condescended to enter into a particular censure 
 of the poem. However, by some general hints scattered 
 up and down, as well as by the affectation of perpetuaUy 
 styling the author " our poet," you have let us see how 
 you stand affected towards it. Whether it be indeed 
 that dull, trivial, useless thing you seem to represent 
 it, I shall not dispute with you, but am content to leave, 
 as to this point, Mr. Warburton's judgment staked agamst 
 the general reputation of the poem. The point I am 
 immediately concerned with is your unbecoming treat- 
 ment of the author, which, as it is so interwoven through 
 the whole course of your Preface, as to be sufficiently 
 evident without the allegation of particular passages, so 
 we shall find there are not wanting repeated instances of 
 direct and notorious ill-usage ; such usage as, though the 
 provocation had been ever so just, and the imagined 
 attack upon you ever so real, Avould yet have been un- 
 warrantable, and which, therefore, cannot admit of the 
 least shadow of an excuse, when it shall appear that you 
 had in reality no provocation at all.' 
 
 Mr. Dyson then proceeds to assure Warburton that his 
 notion of the note being intended as personal was an 
 entire mistake, but tells him that, ' whether it was per- 
 sonal or not would have been a matter of little moment, 
 had his preface been written with a becoming temper.' 
 He then adverts to his complaint that ' it is his fortune 
 to be concerned with nameless adversaries,' and reminds 
 him that while he is so ready to misrepresent and calum- 
 niate, his opponents will be but the more inclined to 
 
1744.] DTSON'S DEFENCE OF AKENSIDE. 253 
 
 attack him anonymously. ' Write,' he adds, ' with 
 decency ; treat your antagonists with civility and can- 
 dour ; and then, depend upon it, you will have the same 
 fortune in this respect with the rest of the world.' 
 
 In Akenside's poem, in allusion to ridiculous assump- 
 tion, are these Unes : 
 
 Others, of graver mien, behold ; adorn'd 
 With holy ensigns, how sublime they move, 
 And, bending oft their sanctimonious eyes, 
 Take homage of the simple-minded throng. 
 Ambassadors of Heav'n. 
 
 This passage Warburton called ' an insult on the whole 
 body of the clergy.' Dyson replies that the representa- 
 tion was never intended for them. ' That it must be so 
 intended, you argue, because you know of none of them 
 to whom one part of the character,' that of being ambas- 
 sadors of Heaven, ' does not belong. What you may 
 know about it, I shall not pretend to dispute. But, for 
 my own part, I know of many of the clergy to whom 
 no part of it belongs, and who think they have no suffi- 
 cient warrant for styling themselves ambassadors of 
 Heaven. Thus much, at least, is certain and notorious, 
 that among those who do use this style and title, it is 
 used in very different senses. If, therefore, there are any 
 who, by this appellation, mean nothing more than simple 
 ministers or teachers of the Gospel, and who do not, in 
 consequence of this character, take upon themselves and 
 affect a superiority over the rest of their brethren, these 
 men do, indeed, speak improperly, but are by no means 
 the persons here ridiculed. But if there are any who 
 apply to themselves this title in a more exalted and dig- 
 nified sense, who would have it taken in that sense by 
 the vulgar, and who, in consequence of this fancied dig- 
 nity, behave with an affected haughtiness, and expect 
 as much homage and submission as could be due to one 
 truly and properly an ambassador from heaven, these are 
 
234 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUBTON. [Ch. XIV. 
 
 the men here exposed ; these are the men who are truly- 
 ridiculous, and who, wherever they are not screened by- 
 superstition or tyranny, will always be ridiculed.' 
 
 Warburton had affected to sneer at the lines as dull. 
 Dyson tells him that, from the resentment he expresses 
 at them, people would have been apt to imagine he found 
 them extremely sharp, or that his feelings were extremely 
 sensitive. He then concludes as follows : ' If differing in 
 opinion from Mr. Warburton proves a man to be not wise, 
 and his ridiculing what Mr. Warburton holds sacred, to 
 be not honest, you have then a sufficient warrant for the 
 insinuations you have advanced. But if these founda- 
 tions fail, you must assign better ; and you have yet to 
 reconcile such treatment with good manners, candour, 
 and truth. How far you may care to undertake this, or 
 what part you may choose to act on the occasion, is a 
 point that chiefly concerns yourself That you cannot 
 justify your insinuations and your ill-usage of the author, 
 I am sufficiently secure. Should you, therefore, think fit 
 to retract them, I shall rejoice to see justice done to a 
 man of merit, and to find that you are not less ready to 
 wipe off aspersions than you were to bestow them. But 
 if, without attempting to justify them, you should, by 
 refusing to retract them, in effect continue to assert them, 
 I shall at least have the satisfaction of having saved every 
 honest man, who may hereafter offend you, the trouble 
 of answering, or at all regarding your censures and re- 
 proaches.' 
 
 To this pamphlet Warburton never replied, nor is 
 known to liave taken the least notice of it. He left 
 Akenside without further molestation for at least twenty- 
 eight years, when, in 1776, having been annoyed, in the 
 meantime, by the Ode to Edwards, he reprinted the preface 
 to the ' Eemarks on Occasional Eeflections,' with some 
 abbreviation, but with the admixture of a few strictures 
 on Lord Kames, as a ' Postscript to the Dedication to the 
 Freethinkers.' 
 
1744.] CONSIDERATIONS ON EIDICULE. 255 
 
 Lord Karnes had touched, in his ' Elements of Criti- 
 cism,'* on tlie question ' whether ridicule be a test of 
 truth,' which, he said, was only ' whether the sense of 
 ridicule be the proper test for distinguishing ridiculous 
 objects from those that are not so,' and then, after making 
 some few remarks on the subject, came to the extra- 
 ordinary conclusion that ' ridicule is not only the test, 
 but the only test of truth.' 
 
 The fact is that Warburton, on this point, was mainly 
 in the right ; though the justness of his notions hardly 
 appears from among the words which he uses in his 
 ' Dedication to the Freethinkers. ' It is only in a note 
 that we find anything definite and really to the purpose. 
 ' When reason, the only test of truth I know of, has 
 performed its office, and unmasked hypocrisy and formal 
 error, then ridicule, I think, may be fairly called in to 
 quicken the operation.' But this dictum ends in ab- 
 surdity ; for, after the operation of unmasking has been 
 despatched by reason, how can ridicule assist to quicken 
 the operation ? 
 
 Akenside was in much the same error, when he said 
 that ridicule was given to aid the tardy steps of reason. 
 Eeason, we may see, if we rightly consider the matter, acts 
 quite independently of ridicule. Eeason decides on every 
 question that comes before her ; and ridicule, if reason 
 disapproves, may follow if she pleases, consenting with 
 her, but without affording her positive aid. Let us seek 
 for a few exemplifications of the subject. 
 
 Suppose that a body of soldiers are waiting for the 
 arrival of a leader, to conduct them in a difficult and 
 dangerous expedition, a person whom none of them have 
 ever yet seen, but who, they are well assured, is a man of 
 sohd sense, and of grave and authoritative demeanour ; 
 and suppose that, while they are in expectation, there 
 appears before them a person of entirely opposite character, 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 55. 
 
256 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIV. 
 
 a vain pretender, a fop, a buffoon, of affected airs and 
 graces, betraying, by the absurdity of his gestures, weak- 
 ness and emptiness within, but declaring, at the same 
 time, that he is the general who will show them the way 
 to victory ; every one present would receive his declara- 
 tion with ridicule. But it would not be ridicule that 
 would judge of his pretensions, and decide on their vanity ; 
 it would be reason. Eeason would decide that he could 
 not be the leader expected ; and ridicule would assail 
 him for affecting to be what he was not. 
 
 If a person, offering to demonstrate a mathematical 
 proposition which he pretends thoroughly to understand, 
 makes only a vain attempt at a demonstration, proving 
 nothing but his own ignorance, his attempt may be wit- 
 nessed Avith ridicule, or with pity, or with any other feeling. 
 But it is neither ridicule, nor pity, nor any other feehng, 
 that decides against his effort. Eeason or judgment 
 discerns his failure, and ridicule or pity, or any other 
 feeling, may then follow. 
 
 If a critic make an excellent alteration in the text of 
 an author, as that of ' smelling gourd ' into ' swelling 
 gourd,' it is received with admiration. If he make an 
 evidently bad alteration, as that of ' much bound to him ' 
 into ' much bound to hymn,' it is received with ridicule. 
 But it is no more ridicule that pronounces upon the 
 absurd, than it is admiration that pronounces upon the 
 judicious alteration. It is reason or judgment that 
 decides in either case, and admiration or ridicule waits 
 on the decision. 
 
 Akenside, however, in remodelling his poem, thought 
 proper to omit, as Johnson observes, the hnes that had 
 provoked Warburton's animadversions. 
 
1744.] ' REMAKES ON SEV. OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS. 257 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 MIDDLETON. POCOCKE. MANN. RICHARD GREY. 
 
 ' REMARKS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS' STATE OF 
 
 AUTHORSHIP A STATE OF WAR WARBURTON'S DISAGREEMENT WITH 
 
 MIDDLETON CAUSE OF IT LETTER ON THE SUBJECT FROM WAR- 
 BURTON TO DODDRIDGE MIDDLETOn's ENMITY TO SHERLOCK — WAR- 
 BURTON AND POCOCKE ON HIEROGLYPHICS WARBURTON'S CONTRO- 
 VERSY WITH MR. NICHOLAS MANN CONSIDERATIONS ON SIR ISAAC 
 
 NEWTON's CHRONOLOGY • WHETHER OSIRIS AND SESOSTRIS WERE THE 
 
 SAME PERSON DR. RICHARD GREY ON THE BOOK OF JOB WAR- 
 
 BUKTON's REMARKS IN REPLY TO HIM HIS FLATTERY OF BISHOP 
 
 SHERLOCK HIS STORY OF BERTRAM THE OPTICIAN. 
 
 THE chief writers to whom the 'Eemarks on Several 
 Occasional Eeflections ' were a reply, were Dr. Mid- 
 dleton ; Dr. Pococke, the traveller in the East ; Nicholas 
 Mann, Master of the Charterhouse ; and Dr. Eichard 
 Grey. Some others received chance strokes from the 
 warrior, as he ran his career against his principal adver- 
 saries. 
 
 ' The state of authorship,' said he, ' whatever that of 
 nature is, is certainly a state of war ; in which, especially 
 if it be a holy war, every man's hand is set, not against 
 his enemy, but his brother.'' But as to himself person- 
 ally, he observes, he can hardly say that he has been 
 attacked ; ' for my answerers,' he proceeds, ' write not 
 so properly against me, as for something that they like 
 better than me ; this, for his dear orthodoxy ; that, for 
 his dearer philosophers ; a third for his lawyers ; a fourth 
 for his cabalists ; a fifth for himself ; and a sixth for I 
 
 s 
 
25S LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XV. 
 
 don't know what besides the pure love of scribbling.' 
 The first two of these, the champions of orthodoxy and 
 philosophy, are Webster and Tillard, with whom we 
 have already made acquaintance ; who the others are 
 we shall see hereafter. ' I have given them full liberty,' 
 he adds, ' to try what they can make of it, or it of 
 them, and wish them better luck with their readers' 
 intellects than I have had with theirs. For, from the 
 first to the last of them, their constant cry has been. 
 They do not understand me. Now, though I can allow 
 this to be a better reason for their writing at me than 
 any they have hitherto assigned, yet it would be a very 
 bad one for my answering them ; because it would keep 
 me engaged till they did understand me ; which I pre- 
 sume no gentle reader would think a reasonable task for 
 one born when human fife is at the shortest.' 
 
 As to Dr. Middleton, who stands first upon the hst, 
 we have seen how Warburton had incurred censure for 
 the commendation that he had bestowed on him in 1738. 
 They had still continued friends ; Dr. Middleton had 
 since pubhshed his ' Life of Cicero,' and Warburton had 
 complimented him upon it ; but, as Middleton had de- 
 clared himself in favour of Cicero's behef in a future 
 state, in opposition to Warburton, Warburton, at the end 
 of his third book of ' The Divine Legation,' took occasion 
 to add a note in support of the contrary opinion. Mid- 
 dleton had said that the passages in Cicero's writings, 
 especially those in his letters, (where he may be thought 
 to express himself sincerely,) in which the probability of 
 a future state is questioned, may be supposed to have 
 been written under dejection, when the aspect of things 
 around him was gloomy. Warburton rephed that, as 
 ' everything has two academical handles,' we might argue, 
 on the other side, that the more unpromising Cicero's 
 present condition appeared, and the greater were his 
 fears of evil from it, the more he would be inclined to 
 
1744.] DE. CONYEES MIDDLETON'. 259 
 
 indulge hopes of future good. But he adhered to the 
 opinion which he had advanced, that Cicero, hke all the 
 ancient philosophers, was destitute of any behef in a future 
 state ;* and quoted a long passage from Towne's ' Critical 
 Inquiry into the Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers ' 
 to that effect. Writing, however, 'to Mddleton, April 
 29, 1741, he says, ' We perhaps shall neither of us be 
 esteemed orthodox writers ; but this we shall do ; we 
 shall give an example to the world, which orthodox 
 writers rarely do, and perhaps of more use to manldnd, 
 than most of the refined subjects they engage in, that we 
 can differ in many important points, and publicly avow 
 our difference, without the least interruption of the 
 declared friendship and esteem we bear to each other. 
 And the " Life of TuUy," and " The Divine Legation," 
 will be a rule, which few have set us, and perhaps few 
 will follow, how men, who esteem and love each other, 
 should comport themselves when they differ in opinion. 
 So that whichever is right or wrong in opinion, the honest 
 part of the world will judge both of us to be right in 
 sentiment'-^ 
 
 Dr. Middleton's answer was of a sunilar character : 
 ' As to the circumstance from which you draw so just 
 and useful a lesson, of our differing from each other in 
 some particular opinions, as I was always persuaded that 
 it could not have any other effect upon you, so I have 
 the comfort to assure you that I never felt the least im- 
 pression from it disadvantageous" to our friendship. It is 
 the necessary consequence of that privilege of our nature 
 on which all men of sense set the highest value, the 
 liberty of judging for ourselves ; yet since it would be a 
 great satisfaction to me in all cases to find my judgment 
 confirmed by yours, so, when you are at full leisure, I 
 
 * Div. Leg. book iii. sect. 3, and note v. ; Works, vol. iii. p. 120, 376. 
 \ Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 31. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XV. 
 
 should be glad to know the particular reasons which force 
 you to differ from me on the subject of Cicero's opinions, 
 to which alone our difference in the present case is to be 
 referred, that, as far as. possible, we may come still nearer 
 to each other.' 
 
 But when Middlettin, a few months afterwards, pub- 
 hshed his ' Letter from Eome,' in which he dwelt on the 
 similarity of the Papal rehgious ceremonies to those of 
 the ancient heathens, estrangement ensued between him 
 and Warburton. Warburton, at the end of the fourth 
 book of ' The Divine Legation,' had observed that many 
 learned writers had noticed an exact and surprising like- 
 ness, in many instances, between the superstitions of 
 Christian and Pagan Eome, and that some had concluded 
 from thence, erroneously, though plausibly, that the Ca- 
 tholic must have borrowed from the heathen ; and he 
 added, as an illustration, that mvich of the Jewish ritual 
 must be acknowledged to have been composed with 
 reference to the superstitions of Egypt, as the long abode 
 of the Israelites in that country had made them extremely 
 fond of Egyptian customs ; but to argue, therefore, as 
 some deists have done, that they borrowed from thence 
 their common principles of morality, is ' such an absurd- 
 ity as betrays the grossest ignorance of human nature 
 and the history of mankind.'* This passage, though it 
 speaks of ' many writers,' Middleton chose to consider 
 as intended entirely against himself, laying hold, espe- 
 cially, on the last words ; and, in reprinting his ' Letter 
 from Eome,' added, in a postscript to it, that the question 
 whether the Catholics borrowed from the Pagans, it 
 appeared, was to be decided, according to the notion of 
 the author of ' The Divine Legation,' ' not by facts, but 
 by a principle of a different kind, a superior knowledge of 
 human nature.' This was sufficient to provoke Warbur- 
 
 * Div. Leg. .book iv. sect. 6 sub fin., and note hhuhh. 
 
1744.] DISAGREEMENT WITH MIDDLETON. 261 
 
 ton to a reply ; and, in liis ' Eemarks on Several Occa- 
 sional Eeflections,' lie complained of his ' very learned 
 friend, the author of the elegant and useful ' Letter 
 from Eome,' having taken to himself what was meant 
 of writers on that subject in general ; but, in order to 
 say something to his learned friend's disparagement, he 
 intimated that, in pursuit of his argument, Middleton had 
 extended his charge from the modern to the ancient 
 Church of Eome, as being infected Avith the same super- 
 stitions as that of later times ; so that what his ' Letter ' 
 meant to prove would henceforth stand thus : ' The reli - 
 gion of the present Eomans w^as derived from their early 
 Christian ancestors ; and theirs, from the neighbouring 
 Pagans.' Though this was but a just character of the 'Letter 
 from Eome,' yet Warburton's strong mode of expressing 
 himself could not but give further offence to Middleton, 
 who, in consequence, seems to have been entirely alien- 
 ated from Warburton. ' Neither side giving way,' says 
 Hurd, ' our two candid friends cooled insensibly towards 
 each other, and seem, thenceforward, to have' discon- 
 tinued their correspondence ; for I find no letters that 
 passed between them of a later date than those of this 
 year,' 1741, ' which touch upon the difference. A memo- 
 rable instance of our common weakness ! which shows 
 how little stress is to be laid on those professions of 
 candour with which om- letters and conversations over- 
 flow ; and how impossible it is for any lasting friendship 
 to subsist between men of opposite principles and per- 
 suasions, however their feehngs may for a time be dis- 
 sembled or disguised, even to themselves, by a show of 
 good breeding.' 
 
 Some further account of this matter may be found in 
 a letter from Warburton to Dr. Doddridge, Aug. 5, 
 1741 : ' I understand, by a common friend,' says he, 
 'that I have much disgusted Dr. Middleton in what I 
 have said of Moses' fraud, the serpent, and the Papists 
 
262 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XV. 
 
 borrowing of the Pagans.' What Warburton had said 
 of Moses, in regard to the serpent, was that he had used 
 a pious fraud in his account of the fall, by mentioning, 
 not the agent of the fall himself, the devil, but only his 
 instrument, the serpent, in order to keep a future state 
 out of sight ; as there was a natural connexion between 
 the spiritual effects of the fall, the promised redemption 
 from its effects in the prediction that the serpent's head 
 should be bruised, and the doctrine of a life to come.* 
 This had not met with Dr. Middleton's approbation. 
 What opinion Warburton had expressed about the super- 
 stitions of Papal being borrowed from Pagan Eome, we 
 have already seen. The observation on the latter subject, 
 continues Warburton, ' affects him most because he is 
 about publishing a new edition of his " Letter from Eome." 
 I find he cannot bear contradiction, though I did it with 
 the utmost candour. Nay, he told our common friend. 
 Dr. Taylor, that there were some things in the " Vindica- 
 tion " (the httle pamphlet wrote soon after the pubhcation 
 of the first volume) which displeased him ; but he 
 
 attributed them to the instigation of Bishop , his 
 
 mortal enemy. Is not this amusing, where he had taken 
 the same kind of hberty with me in his " Tully," when he 
 speaks of the genius of the Academic philosophers, and 
 the sentiments of Tully about a future state ? I sent 
 such an answer as was proper. Whether he wiU come 
 to a better mind I cannot tell, but you shall know when 
 I do. You see to what disasters we authors mihtant are 
 exposed.' The ' kind of liberty ' which Middleton had 
 taken with Warburton in his ' Tully ' was nothing more 
 than that of differing in opinion from him. ' Bishop 
 
 ' is Bishop Sherlock, whom Middleton hated for 
 
 having prevented him from becoming Master of the 
 Charterhouse ; for when that office was vacant, on the 
 
 * Div. Leg. book v. sect. 5. 
 
1744.] DK. POCOCKE. 263 
 
 death of Dr. King, Middleton, being a candidate for it, 
 applied to Sir Eobert Walpole for liis support ; but Sir 
 Eobert told him fairly that he could not give it, as, on 
 talldng with Bishop Sherlocli about the matter, he had 
 learned that the majority of the bishops would be against 
 his appointment. IMiddleton, therefore, attributed his 
 want of success entirely to Sherlock, and took every 
 opportunity of showing hostihty towards liim ; one of 
 his manifestations of enmity being an attack on his ' Dis- 
 courses on Prophecy,' which he pretended, soon after, to 
 have inspected for the first time, though they had been 
 published some years, and had gone through several 
 editions. Sherlock had argued that the prophecies were 
 links in a chain ; Middleton rephed that the Evangelists 
 had taken them separately, and sneered at the Bishop for 
 expecting his dressed up nonsense to go down with the 
 20ublic.* 
 
 Waiting on Archbishop Potter, shortly after Mann's 
 appointment, he observed to him, very abruptly, ' I sup- 
 pose your Gi-ace knows you have chosen an Arian.' The 
 Archbishop was startled, but soon recollecting himself 
 rephed, 'An Arian, perhaps, may be better than a Deist.' 
 
 Warburton's next object of attack was Dr. Pococke. 
 Warburton, in ' The Divine Legation,'f had said, in speak- 
 ing of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, that they ' stood for 
 things, and not for words.' Pococke, in his ' Book of 
 Travels,' devoting a chapter to that subject, declared that 
 they stood, 'not for things, but for sounds.' But the 
 truth is, that both writers meant much the same ; for if 
 the figure of a crocodile, as Pococke admits, might stand 
 for the sound that signified malice, it makes httle differ- 
 ence whether we say that the figure of a crocodile indi- 
 cated the thing malice or the sound malice. Pococke 
 
 * Bisliop Newton's Life by Himself, p. 23. Middleton's Works, 
 vol. V. p. 188, 190, 8vo. t Book iv. sect. 4. 
 
•264 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XV. 
 
 expressed himself somewhat obscurely, and Warburton 
 diverts himself, saltans Cyclopa, with his language. He 
 then declares his resolution to stick to his first assertion, 
 and lets off a sneer at the reputed inaccuracy of some of 
 Pococke's plates : ' As for those significative figures pro- 
 perly called hieroglyphics, they never denoted other than 
 things. If there ever were an exception, it was in a late 
 traveller, whose significative Egyptian figures, I am told, 
 are not so properly the representatives of the things 
 themselves, as of the writer's ivords, or of his verbal 
 descriptions to the engraver.' But this sarcasm was quite 
 harmless ; Pococke's accuracy has been fully acknowledged. 
 
 Nicholas Mann, though, as he wrote httle, he is now 
 almost forgotten, was a person of great learning and 
 ability, well worthy of distinction in his day. Having 
 been tutor to the Marquis of Blandford, he was, through 
 the interest of the Marlborough family, elected Master 
 of the Charterhouse in 1737, at the time that Dr. Middle- 
 ton was disappointed of the ofiice. He was author of 
 ' Critical Notes on some Passages of Scripture,' and of 
 two chronological dissertations, ' De Veris Annis D. N. 
 Jesu Christi Natali et Emortuali ; ' and left some manu- 
 script notes on Antoninus's ' Itinerary.' In his ' Chrono- 
 logical Dissertations ' he declared himself in favour of 
 Sir Isaac Newton's hypothesis, in regard to the chro- 
 nology of Egypt, that Osiris and Sesostris were the 
 same person, a notion which Warburton, in his ' Divine 
 Legation,'* had opposed with great force of reasoning. 
 ' The course of my argument,' said he, ' now brings me 
 to examine a new hypothesis against the high antiquity 
 of Egypt, which hath the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton 
 for its patron ; a man for whose fame science and virtue 
 seem to be at strife. The prodigious discoveries he had made 
 in the natural world, and especially that superiority of 
 
 * Book iv. sect. 5. 
 
1744,] MR. NICHOLAS MANN. 265 
 
 genius which opened the way to those discoveries, hath 
 induced some of his countrymen to thinic him as intimate 
 with the moral, and even to believe, with a late ingenious 
 commentator on his " Optics," that, as everything which 
 Midas touched turned to gold, so all that JSTewton handled 
 turned to demonstration. 
 
 ' But the subHmest understanding has its bounds ; and, 
 what is more to be lamented, the strongest mind has 
 its foible. And this miracle of science, who disclosed aU 
 nature to our view, when he came to correct old time, in 
 the chronology of Eg5qDt, suffered himself to be seduced, 
 by Httle lying Greek mythologists and story-tellers, from 
 the Goshen of Moses into the thickest of the Egyptian 
 darkness. So pestilent a mischief in the road of trutli 
 is a favourite hypothesis ; an evil we have frequent occa- 
 sion to lament, as it retards the progress of our inquuy 
 at almost every step. For it is to be observed that Sir 
 Isaac's Egyptian chronology was fashioned only to support 
 his Grecian ; which he erected on one of those sublime 
 conceptions pecuhar to his amazing genius. 
 
 ' But it is not for the sake of any private system that I 
 take upon me to consider the arguments of this illustrious 
 man. The truth is, his discourse of the emjnre of Egypt 
 contradicts everything which Moses and the Prophets 
 have delivered concerning these ancient people. Though 
 some, therefore, of his admirers may seem to think that no 
 more harm can derive to religion by his contradicting the 
 History than by his overturning the Astronomy of the 
 Bible, yet I am of a different opinion ; because, though 
 the end of the sacred history was certainly not to instruct 
 us in Astronomy, yet it was without question written to 
 inform us of the various fortunesof the people of God, with 
 whom the history of Egypt was closely connected. . . . 
 
 ' His whole argument for the low antiquity of Egypt 
 may be summed up in this syllogism : Osiris advanced 
 Egypt from a state of barbarity to civil policy ; Osiris and 
 
266 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XV. 
 
 Sesostris were the same ; therefore Egypt was advanced 
 from a state of barbarity to civil pohcy in the time of 
 Sesostris. . . . Now the minor in this syllogism being the 
 questionable term, he has employed his whole discourse 
 in its support. All, then, I have to do, is to show that 
 Osiris and Sesostris were not one, but two persons, living 
 in very distant ages.' 
 
 Warburton then proceeds to blame Newton for placing 
 too much dependence on fanciful and fabulous ■writers, 
 such as poets and mythologists, and maintaining a system 
 that contradicts and overthrows all that is considered 
 certain in the more trustworthy historians and other 
 authors of antiquity. He notices the thirteen points of 
 resemblance which Newton finds between Sesostris and 
 Osiris, and observes that a writer living as long after 
 William the Conqueror as Sir Isaac Hved after Sesostris, 
 might discover as many marks of similarity between the 
 Conqueror and King Arthur, and assert the identity of the 
 two Enghsh monarchs as plausibly as Newton had main- 
 tained that of the two Egyptians. 
 
 As the excogitation of these marks of parallehsm between 
 William and Arthur is a striking instance of Warburton's 
 acuteness, they may not unreasonably be given here : 
 
 ' 1. Arthur and William were both great warriors. 2. 
 Both were of spurious or uncertain birth. 3. Both were in 
 the management of public affairs in their early youth. 4. 
 Both came from France to recover Britain from the Saxons. 
 5. Both proved victorious in their expedition. 6. Both 
 got the Crown of Britain by election, and not by descent. 
 7. Both had other dominions besides Britain to which 
 they succeeded by right hereditary. 8. Both' went fre- 
 quently on military expeditions into France. 9. Both 
 warred there with various success. 10. Both had half- 
 brothers by the mother, who, being made very powerful, 
 and proving guilty of manifold extortions and acts of 
 injustice, were punished by them in an exemplary manner. 
 
1744.] Newton's chronology. 267 
 
 11. Both had rebellious sons or nephews, whom they met 
 in the field, fought with in person, and subdued. 12. 
 Both reigned [Hved] upwards of fifty years. 13. And 
 both died in war.'* 
 
 On this argumentation, Mann made the following remarks 
 in the Dedication to his ' Chronological Dissertations.' The 
 translation from Mann's Latin is Warburton's own : 
 
 ' We are not ignorant of what has lately happened, that 
 the author of ' The Divine Legation,' supposing it some 
 how or other to concern Moses' divine mission to prove 
 that Osiris was not the same with Sesostris, hath turned 
 all that is here said into ridicule, by a comparison made 
 between the fabulous Arthur and WilHam the Norman, 
 who, he says, may be made one by as good reasons 
 (though they have scarce anything alike or in common 
 with one another) as those which we have brought to 
 confound Osiris with Sesostris ; and on this point he draws 
 out a disputation through seventy pages and upwards ; 
 wherein, notwithstanding, he neither denies nor confutes, 
 but only laughs at, what we have here said of Sesostris. 
 It is true, indeed, that some other of Newton's assertions 
 he does oppose, as those concerning the late invention of 
 arts, arms, and instruments, by some certain king ; and of 
 this part of the argument he has the better ; for that these 
 things were found out by the Egjrptians long before the 
 age of Sesostris, Holy Scripture commands us to beheve ; 
 but whether found out by any of their kings is not so 
 certain. However, these were matters we never touched 
 upouj as relating nothing to our purpose ; nor do they yet 
 induce us to recede from that conclusion of the famous 
 Newton, That Sesac was Sesostris, Osiris, and Bacchus. 
 But the cause being now brought before the pubhc, let 
 the learned determine of it.' 
 
 In reply to these animadversions, Warburton, while 
 
 * Div. Leg. book iv. sect. 5. 
 
268 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XV. 
 
 allowing his opponent to be a ' learned and ingenuous 
 writer,' very justly stated that he had done much more 
 than laugh at the hypothesis, and that, far from leaving 
 it undenied or unconfuted, he had denied it by observing 
 that Osiris and Sesostris, though having, like Arthur and 
 William, many points of resemblance, might yet be two 
 different persons ; and had confuted it by showing, from 
 the unvarying testimony of the best writers of antiquity, 
 that Osiris and Sesostris were in reaUty different persons, 
 and hved at two very distant periods. If the invention 
 of legislation and the arts, which is admitted to have been 
 the work of Osiris, had been as late as the days of Sesos- 
 tris, then Osiris and Sesostris might have been the same 
 person ; but as the general voice of antiquity declares the 
 inventions of Osiris to have been long antecedent to the 
 time of Sesostris, it is quite incredible that they could 
 have been the same. If, however, there has been any 
 confusion between them, it may have arisen, as Warburton 
 argues, from the custom which the Egyptians had of caUing 
 their eminent persons by the names of their gods, as Cleo- 
 patra in later times was called the New Isis, and her brother 
 the New Bacchus ; and thus Sesostris may have been styled 
 Osiris, or A71 Osiris. 
 
 The next assailant upon whom Warburton directed his 
 ' Eemarks ' was Dr. Eichard Grey, author of the weU- 
 known ' Memoria Technica,' of 'A New Method of Learning 
 Hebrew without Points,' and of 'A Commentary on the Book 
 of Job,' in which he dissented from Warburton's opinion 
 respecting the time at which the BookjDf Job was written. 
 Warburton had argued, as we have already seen, that the 
 Book of Job, a dramatical and allegorical composition, 
 but foimded on true history, was written by Ezra for the 
 comfort of the Jews after their return from Babylon, 
 where they were about to experience, what they had not 
 hitherto known, an ordinary and unequal providence. 
 
1744.] DE. EICHAED GREY. 269 
 
 To this notion Dr. Grey declared himself adverse, but 
 admitted that Warburton had supported his allegations 
 ' with great sharpness of wit and many sufficiently specious 
 arguments.' What Dr. Grey advances on his side, consi- 
 derably abridged, stands thus : ' In a matter which is in 
 itself very uncertain, and which has been rendered still 
 more uncertain by the different opinions of learned men, 
 hardly any hypothesis can be excogitated which will give 
 satisfaction m every respect. But for myself, as I agree 
 with those who think the Book of Job the oldest in the 
 canon, so I have no doubt it was written by Moses him- 
 self, who took the subject from authentic records, and 
 clothed it in the dress of poetry. In conformity with this 
 opinion, I consider that a no less satisfactory explanation 
 maybe given of all such texts, if indeed there be any, as con- 
 tain allusions to the Jewish law or history previous to the 
 production of the Book, than if we should allow it to have 
 been written by Ezra, of whom there are among the 
 learned various opinions. As to those passages Avhich, in the 
 judgment of the learned author of " The Divine Legation," 
 refer to events of later times, as the sickness and recovery 
 of Hezekiah,* and the destruction of the Assyrian army,*!* 
 it will be sufficiently manifest from my comment, to which 
 I refer the reader, that they need not to be taken in this 
 sense, but may be more conveniently understood otherwise. 
 As to the assertion that the main question considered in 
 the Book of Job is whether good happens to the good and 
 evil to the evil, or whether good and evil happen not 
 indiscriminately to both, and that this question could 
 never have been the subject of dispute anywhere but in 
 the land of Judasa, nor there at any other time than that 
 of Ezra, the truth of it depends entirely upon the truth of 
 Mr. Warburton's hypothesis, and is in my opinion far 
 otherwise ; for I consider that the personal integrity of 
 
 * Ch. xxxiii. ver. 25. f Ch. xxxiv. ver. 20. 
 
270 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTOJST. [Ch. XV. 
 
 Job, and not the question concerning the equal or unequal 
 distribution of good or evil, is the subject of the Book ; 
 since it was of Job's personal integrity that his friends 
 doubted, partly on account of the sufferings inflicted on 
 him, and partly on account of the impatience with which 
 he bore them, and his appeals to the justice of God. But 
 as God did not interpose to attest his innocence, and as 
 his friends continued to urge their unjust accusations, 
 he then appeals, we may naturally consider, to that last 
 judgment, in which he declares that he knew his Eedeemer 
 would be present with. him, and that God would decide in 
 his favour ; aud thus nothing hinders us from applying 
 that celebrated text,* not to a temporal restitution to his 
 former condition, but to a resurrection to eternal life. 
 And if we add,' he concludes, ' to the arguments which I 
 have adduced in my note on the passage, those which a 
 writer above all praise, the present Bishop of Salisbury, 
 has beautifully interwoven in his " Opinion of the Ancients 
 concerning the Circumstances and Consequences of the 
 Fall," I think we shall want nothing to confirm our belief 
 in the antiquity of the Book, and in my interpretation of 
 this most perplexed passage.' 
 
 In replying to this argumentation, Warburton has 
 recourse to some quibbling and petty objections; a 
 mode in which he was very fond of dealing with his 
 adversaries. Dr. Grey says that in an uncertain matter- 
 scarcely any hypothesis can be conceived that Avill give 
 satisfaction in every respect. ' Now,' retorts Warburton, 
 ' though this be a common-place thought, it is neverthe- 
 less a very false one ; for it is only in uncertain matters 
 that hypotheses are invented, to be applied to account for 
 the appearances of things ; and is it not of the nature of 
 an hypothesis to be unsatisfactory ?' This is mere obj ection 
 for objection's sake. A hypothesis may be satisfactory 
 in its principal points, in the judgment of the majority of 
 
 * Ch. xix. 
 
1744.] BISHOP SHEELOCK FLATTERED. 271 
 
 those who contemplate it, or unsatisfactory ; it may be 
 evidently plausible, or evidently unreasonable. If, out of 
 many hypotheses on a subject, one has a far greater 
 appearance of truth than the rest, it will not be unsatis- 
 factory in its nature, but will give more satisfaction than 
 any of the others. 
 
 ' It is equally false,' he continues, ' that an uncertain 
 matter is, otherwise than by accident, rendered more 
 uncertain by diversity of opinions ; for the greater the 
 diversity is, the greater is the chance of coming to the 
 truth ; as the more roads men take in an uncertain way, 
 the greater the likehhood of finding out the right.' This 
 again is fallacious. The comparison is not exact. A 
 number of persons seeking for a certain road, seek for it 
 in the belief that a certain road is to be found, and the 
 more numerous the seekers, the greater is the chance 
 of discovering it ; but a number of persons conjecturing 
 about an uncertain matter, such as the authorship of the 
 Book of Job, know, that they are conjecturing about that 
 on which no certamty is attainable, and may but perplex 
 themselves by the variety of their hypotheses, and end in 
 greater uncertainty than they felt when they began. 
 
 The rest of Warburton's ' Eemarks ' amount to Httle 
 more than a reiteration of his previously declared opinions. 
 But Dr. Grey's mention of Dr. Sherlock afforded him an 
 opportunity of offering the Bishop a little .of the incense 
 of flattery. He first observes that Sherlock's view of the 
 Book of Job was quite different from that of Dr. Grey, 
 and that for Dr. Grey to appeal to him as a supporter 
 was somewhat strange. ' To seek refuge in that excellent 
 Prelate, whose notions of the nature and design of the 
 Book of Job overthrow all he has been saying, and 
 confirm all he has been opposing, looks very much hke 
 distress. However, if he will submit to the Bishop's 
 authority for the scope of the Book in general, I shall be 
 very willing to allow his interpretation of the nineteenth 
 
'272 LIFE OF BISHOP ■WAEBUETON. [Ch. XV. 
 
 chapter.' He then starts off on another matter. 'The 
 name of that great man is auspicious to sacred truth. One 
 can no sooner mention him, on any occasion of hterature, 
 than one sees him pointing out some truth or other, 
 capable, if attended to, of clearing up whatever may be 
 in question. His fine Discourse on the Book of Job 
 abounds with instances of this kind ; one of which here 
 falls naturally in my way. And as it seems to be the best 
 supported of his interpretations, and, at the same time, 
 greatly confirms what I have advanced concerning the 
 age of the Book, I shall endeavour to set it in a just light. 
 The truth I mean is his interpretation of these words of. 
 Job, By his spirit the heavens are garnished, his hand 
 formed the crooked serpent ; * by which he supposes is 
 meant the devil, the apostate dragon, ^f.ax(uv a-Troa-roLTrjg, 
 as the Septuagint, by thus translating it, seems to have 
 understood the place.' It cannot be imagined, says the 
 Bishop, that the formation of the crooked serpent meant 
 nothing more, in a passage descriptive of God's mightiest 
 works, than that God created snakes and adders. It 
 cannot be supposed, pursues Warburton, that the crooked 
 serpent means the great northern constellation, for the 
 ancient Hebrews did not represent the stars under the 
 figure of animals, untU they learned the constellations, 
 in the later ages, from the Greeks, and even then they 
 admitted them with some resei've ; so that neither Moses 
 nor Ezra could speak of the constellation of the crooked 
 serpent, and the consequence is, therefore, that ' his Lord- 
 ship's interpretation is to be received, there being nothing 
 else of moment to be opposed to its truth.' Few readers, 
 however, it may be thought, wiU be likely to rest satisfied 
 with Sherlock and Warburton's interpretation ; for it is 
 utterly at variance with the whole scope of the passage, 
 wliich is to describe the manifestations of God's power in 
 
 * Ch. xxvi. ver. 13. 
 
1745.] STORY OF AN OPTICIAN. 273 
 
 the visible world. The voice of most expositors, as the 
 verses relate to the heavens, has been in favour of the 
 constellation. 
 
 The author ot ' The Divine Legation ' then takes leave 
 of those whom he calls his more learned and candid 
 adversaries, Middleton, Pococke, Mann, and Grey, with a 
 summary of the whole argument of his book in a new 
 light, which, he hopes, may not only be serviceable to 
 readers of their class, but also to those of a different 
 character, who, however hmited in their conceptions, are 
 not to be neglected, though it is hkely, he thinks, that 
 they will part from him with as httle satisfaction as a 
 certain customer parted from Bertram the optician, of 
 whom he proceeds to tell a story : ' A grave well-dressed 
 man,' says he, ' coming to the shop of that ingenious 
 inventor and rehever of the distress of all those who are 
 too dull to know what they want, and too rich to be at 
 ease with what they have, demanded one of his best 
 reading glasses, which, when he had examined upon all 
 sorts of print, he returned back with solemn assurance 
 that he could not read at all in it. Bertrand, when he 
 had recovered from the surprise of so strange a phenome- 
 non, fairly asked him, " Sfr, could you ever read at all ? " 
 To which the other as fairly replied, "Had I been so 
 happy, I had not come hither for your assistance." Should 
 I not, therefore,' he adds, ' with the same forecast, have 
 asked these people, " Gentlemen, before I put my argu- 
 ment for you in a new light, pray tell me, do you under- 
 stand an argument in anyjight at all?" But would they 
 have answered with the same ingenuity ? They are silent. 
 They modestly let their works speak for them.' 
 
274 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 EEMAEKS ON ADVEESAEIES. 
 
 WARBUETON DECLINES THE CHAPLAINCY TO LORD CHESTERFIELD A3 
 
 LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND HIS DEDICATION OF THE THIRD 
 
 EDITION OF THE ' ALLIANCE ' TO LORD CHESTERFIELD WARBURTON 
 
 MARRIES Allen's niece — his notions of the influence of the 
 
 MAN OVER the WIFE WARBUETON RESIDES CHIEFLT AT PRIOR 
 
 PARK ELECTED TO THE PEEACHEESHIP OF LINCOLN'S INN NOTICE 
 
 OF THREE OF HIS SERMONS PROVOKES THE HOSTILITY OF DBS. 
 
 SYKES AND STEBBING CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF DR. SYKES ; 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO HIS OPINIONS BY THE BISHOP OF OXFORD SUB- 
 JECTS ON WHICH HE DIFFERED FROM WARBURTON THEIR OPPO- 
 SITE NOTIONS REGARDING THE THEOCRACY OF THE JEWS SPENCER, 
 
 ' DE LEGIBUS HEBR^ORUM ' WARBURTON'S ASSERTIONS OF AN EQUAL 
 
 PROVIDENCE AMONG THE JEWS DR. STEBBING ; WAEBUBTON'S REPLY 
 
 TO HIM SECOND PART OF WARBUETON'S ' EEMAEKS ON SEVERAL 
 
 OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS ' EUTHERFORTH ; JACKSON ' ANSWERERS 
 
 BY PROFESSION ' THE FORTUNE OF WARBURTOn's BOOK COMPARED 
 
 WITH THAT OP HAEVEY'S DISCOVEEY OF THE CIRCULATION OF THE 
 
 BLOOD THE REV. JULIUS BATE LETTER FROM THE HON. CHARLES 
 
 YORKE ON ANSWERING SARCASM OF EDWARDS IN HIS ' CANONS OF 
 
 CRITICISM.' 
 
 WAEBUETON had been introduced by Pope to Lord 
 Chesterfield, who, in 1745, accepting the office of 
 Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, proposed to take Warburton 
 with him as his chaplain. But Warburton had no dispo- 
 sition to transport himself to Ireland, and dechned the 
 ofier with due acknowledgments. The civihty shown 
 him on this occasion was the cause of a new edition of 
 the 'Alliance between Church and State ' being dedicated 
 to Lord Chesterfield, three years afterwards. 'Being 
 willing to leave behind me a monument of my love to 
 
1745.] DEDICATION TO LORD CHESTERFIELD. 275 
 
 my country,' says Warburton, addressing his Lordship in 
 his Dedication, ' I have taken tlie privilege to appeal from 
 the ecclesiastical to a lay tribmial, under the protection of 
 a character which is going down to posterity in the full 
 lustre of those amiable qualities of humanity which nature 
 deUghts to throw round the names of her distinguished 
 favourites.' He designates his Lordship as a true patriot, 
 and, as he was just then become Secretary of State, says : 
 ' It is an uncommon happiness when an honest man 
 can congratulate a patriot on his becoming Minister.' 
 But, he adds, ' Your Lordship has now a nice part to 
 manage ; the people are much more reasonable in their 
 demands on their patriots than on their ministers. Of 
 their patriots they readily accept the will for the deed ; 
 but of their ministers they unjustly interpret the deed for 
 the will. Our great Enghsh poet, who honoured your 
 virtues, as much as he loved your person, was more candid. 
 He understood the dehcate situation of a minister ; and 
 in this fine apology, as I have it under his hand, does 
 justice to their good intentions : 
 
 Our ministers like gladiators live ; 
 'T is half their business blows to ward or give ; 
 The good their virtue would eiFeot, or sense, 
 Dies betwixt exigents and self-defence. 
 
 Of ah the strange connexions which the revolutions of 
 Time bring about, the rarest and most accidental is that 
 between merit and reward. . . . 
 
 ' Nor are the mistakes of expectants,' he continues, in 
 allusion to himself and other dedicators, ' far short of the 
 difficulties of men in power. 
 
 ' Scholars (to speak the court sense of them) who know 
 but little of practicable [practical] hfe, are apt to fancy 
 that superior distinction in letters, or superior services in 
 their profession, may entitle them to the honours of it. 
 But things are not so carried. High stations, even of the 
 
 T 2 
 
276 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTOIf. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 more spiritual kind, require a 'knowledge of affairs. The 
 pursuit of letters keeps men from the sight of business ; 
 and learned impressions make them unapt and awkward 
 in the discharge of it. The mind must be unburthened 
 before it will be able to move there, either with ease or 
 grace. Nothing is more unquestioned, nor, consequently, 
 truer than these court-maxims. And the most that can 
 be said for so helpless a tribe is, That letters never made a 
 blockhead. But I go no farther ; for indeed it must be 
 owned that, as they find him, so they always leave him.' 
 
 ' The style of compliment,' observes Hurd, ' in wliich 
 Warburton addresses Lord Chesterfield, will perhaps be 
 censured as too high. But the truth is, that specious 
 nobleman had the fortune to be better thought of in his 
 lifetime than he has been since. The general opinion, 
 therefore, which came confirmed to him by Mr. Pope, 
 very naturally inflamed the expression of his gratitude in 
 that panegyrical epistle.' * 
 
 But an event of great importance to Warbm-ton's for- 
 tunes was now about to happen. AUen had a favourite 
 niece. Miss Gertrude Tucker, who lived with him at Prior 
 Park, and to whom, according to Hurd, he had been for 
 some time desirous to see Warburton united. Warburton, 
 whether ardent for the marriage bonds or not, showed at 
 least a willingness to assume them ; he speaks of the lady, 
 in a letter to Bowyer the printer, as ' one of the finest 
 women in England,' to whom 'to ofier up his freedom 
 was to be more than free.' His notions of the connexion 
 between man and wife, and its influence on the wife, had 
 been expressed about fifteen years before m a letter to 
 Dr. Stukeley. 'You have an agreeable companion at 
 home, capable of enhancing all the pleasures, and soothing 
 all the cares, of human life. And from the accomphsh- 
 ments of such a companion the man receives pecuhar 
 
 * Hurd's Life of "Warburton, p. 41 . 
 
1745.] MARRIAGE. 277 
 
 honour, as the younger Pliny says of his friend, magnd 
 glorm dignus qui uxorem, quam virginem accepit, tain 
 peritam politamque reddiderit. For you must know, my 
 good doctor, that I regard woman in her natural state as 
 one of those odd pictures that I have formerly seen at 
 Oxford, which they use for a very pretty experiment in 
 optics. They produce you a board, on the plane of which 
 is thrown together a great number of colours, as it appears^ 
 with the utmost confusion and disorder, the most visible 
 work of chance. But by applying to it a cylindrical steel 
 mirror, there immediately rises on its b.osom a beautiful 
 reflected form in all the justness and artifice of design. 
 A woman is this coloured table ; in whose capricious and 
 variable fancy discordant and monstrous ideas are, by 
 the force of the passions, whimsically daubed on at 
 random, which present no mark of the workmanship of 
 the great plastic nature. But if, happily, a prudent hus- 
 band be apphed, he does the business of the cyhnder. 
 The scattered lines are now reduced in order, an elegance 
 of design arises, and the reflected union of colours, and 
 harmony of hght and shadow, speak the workmanship 
 divine.' * What effect the Warburtonian cylinder had 
 on Mrs. Warburton's ' variable fancy ' we do not know. 
 She is characterised, by Mr. Cradock and others, as an 
 accomphshed and agreeable woman, both before her 
 marriage and after it. Dr. Cuming, of Dorchester, in a 
 letter to Dr. Lettsom, describes her, when she had been 
 ten years wedded, thus : ' She was elegant in her person, 
 possessed of an excellent understanding, great politeness, 
 and a most -engaging naivete in conversation. '*{• They 
 were married on September 5, 1745. What was said of 
 her in connexion vsdth Mr. Thomas Potter, son of the 
 Archbishop, will be afterwards noticed. 
 
 * Letter to Stukeley, Aug. 18, 1731 ; Nichols's Lit. lUustr. vol. ii. 
 p. 10. t lb- P- 838- 
 
278 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTON. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 They are generally supposed to have lived comfortably 
 together, though Warburton's hasty temper, during his 
 episcopal life, when he had many causes of annoyance, 
 appears to have sometimes interfered with his domestic 
 quiet ; for Mrs. Warburton is said to have felt the 
 comfort, occasionally, of a visitor's arrival, to pour oil on 
 the bishop's vinegar. ' Your gentleness wins,' he said to 
 Hurd, ' where my roughness, I beUeve, revolts.' * 
 
 ' From the time of his marriage,' says Hurd, ' Mr. 
 Warburton resided chiefly at Prior Park. In so agree- 
 able, or- rather splendid a retreat, he enjoyed health, afflu- 
 ence, and leisure ; the best company, when he chose to 
 partake of it ; and every other accommodation which 
 could be acceptable to a man of letters. His ambition 
 was also gratified with the highest personal reputation ; 
 and, in due time, he succeeded to the chief honours of 
 his profession. All this he could not but be sensible of; 
 yet I have heard him say that the most delicious season 
 of his life was that which he had spent at Newark and 
 Brant-Broughton. So delightful are the springing hopes 
 of youth, and so enchanting the scenes which open to a 
 great genius when he comes first to know himself, and to 
 make trial of his powers.' 
 
 Early in 1746 the preachership at Lincoln's Inn 
 became vacant ; and Murray, who was then Sohcitor- 
 General, induced the Bench to offer the appointment to 
 Warburton. Warburton accepted the honour, which, 
 indeed, without offending Murray, he could hardly re- 
 fuse, but told his friends privately that the calls of the 
 office would hardly be agreeable to him. Writing to 
 Dr. Robert Taylor, an eminent physician, first at Newark 
 and afterwards in London, and a friend to him from his 
 youth, he says : ' I think I told you in my last that the 
 Society of Lincoln's Inn had made me a unanimous offer 
 
 * Letters from an Em. Prelate, p. 383. 
 
1746.] PEEACHEESIIIP AT LINCOLN'S INN. 279 
 
 of the preachership, which, therefore, I could not refuse, 
 though I would gladly have done it ; for it will require 
 five or six months' attendance ; and the advantage of the 
 thing you may judge of by this : Mr. Allen would have me 
 take a house, for which I pay as much rent as the whole 
 preachership is worth — this only to you. And don't 
 think I speak with any affectation when I tell you in your 
 ear that nothing can be more disagreeable to me than 
 this way of life. But I hope and determine that it shall 
 not continue long. Don't you pity me ? I shall be 
 forced to write sermons ; and God knows what wiH 
 become of the " D. L." But if I can do any good in this 
 new station, I shall know how to bear the disagreements 
 of it, and that's all. How capricious is the fate of 
 mortals ! Any other clergyman would think himself 
 happy in such an honour as the Society has done me. 
 I beheve it is the first that has been done to their 
 preacher. Yet I have no joy in it.'* 
 
 By the first honour that has been done to their preacher 
 he means that he was the first to whom the appointment 
 had been unanimously offered. He disliked the office, 
 because it diminished his leisure for objects which he 
 had at heart ; and the demand for sermons, with which, 
 as Hurd tells us, he was but slenderly provided, was 
 particularly distasteful to him. 
 
 A short time before his appointment to the preacher- 
 ship, he had dehvered three sermons on. the EebeUion, 
 one of which, especially, drew upon him an attack from 
 Dr. Stebbing, on whom, as well as on Dr. Sykes, another 
 of his assailants, he had already made retaliation for 
 previous hostUities, in . an appendix to his ' Eemarks on 
 Several Occasional Eeflections.' The three sermons were : 
 first, 'A Faithful Portrait of Popery,' in which he 
 
 * Kurd's Life of Warburton, p. 43 ; Nichols's Lit. Anecd., vol. ix. 
 p. 622. 
 
280 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 argued that Popery, whicli tlie Pretender's army, then in 
 England, was intended to establish, was not, in truth, a 
 form of religion, but of mere antichristian policy. The 
 second, preached also while the Pretender was in Eng- 
 land, was on the happily chosen text, ' I wiU remove far 
 off from you the northern army, and will drive him into 
 a land barren and desolate.' The third was dehvered 
 on the thanksgiving day for the suppression of the rebel- 
 lion, and professed to state the true nature of national 
 offences, such as luxury and irrehgion, and the great 
 blessings of civil hberty. It was the second of these 
 sermons, in which he touched upon his great doctrine of 
 an equal providence among the Jews, that called forth 
 the animadversions of Dr. Stebbing, to whom Warburton 
 afterwards addressed an ' Apologetical Defence ' of his 
 discourse, in which he told Stebbing that, as he seemed 
 to mean well, but to be much embarrassed, he would 
 help him out. 
 
 I have purposely delayed to notice his controversies 
 with these two doctors, Stebbing and Sykes, tOl now, in 
 order that all that is to be said about them may be said 
 at once, and no further thought be bestowed upon them. 
 Their writings, though numerous, are nearly forgotten ; 
 and neither of them would deserve much attention but 
 for the frequent recurrence of their names in many of 
 Warburton's pages. 
 
 Dr. Sykes, as the more prominent of the two, should 
 be noticed first. He was a divine of the liberal school of 
 Clarke and Hoadly ; he held for many years the hving 
 of Eayleigh in Essex ; obtained, by Hoadly's influence, a 
 prebend at Winchester, in 1740; and died in 1756, at 
 the age of seventy-three. He was author of sixty-tliree 
 publications, chiefly controversial pamphlets, and on 
 transient topics, one of which was a ' Vmdication of Dr. 
 Bentley,' into whose quarrel with Boyle he rashly thrust 
 himself, thus provoking the wrath of Conyers Middleton ; 
 
ni6.] DR. SYKES. 281 
 
 a wrath, however, only temporary, for Middleton, after 
 having terribly mauled him in the controversy, was sub- 
 sequently on good terms with him, and called him, in the 
 ' Vindication of his Free Inquiry,' ' a learned and judi- 
 cious writer.' His other most noticeable performance 
 was a tract ' On the Innocency of Error,' showing ' how 
 innocent a thing it is to be mistaken in any matter where 
 industry and honesty, dihgence and sincerity, have been 
 applied to find out truth.' In this little treatise he used 
 some expressions of so very strong a nature as to raise 
 an outcry among many of the clergy against them. Some 
 were offended because he asserted that Socinianism is 
 preferable to irreligion, ' for it is better,' said he, ' to worship 
 one person of the Godhead than to offer no worship at 
 all.' But there were passages that gave much stronger 
 provocation. ' Is every man,' said he, ' obhged to have a 
 distinct knowledge of every passage of the Scripture, or 
 be subject to condemnation ? Let him that thinks so, 
 set about explaining the Apocalypse, or the old prophets, 
 and try whether he can do himself what he declares to 
 be required of others. Let it be granted that it is 
 criminal not to believe what God has thought fit to 
 reveal, supposing we Imow that God has revealed it ; but 
 we may do so without having a clear and distinct know- 
 ledge of every particular revealed. Supposing a man 
 should not know who is meant by the white horse in 
 the Eevelations, or what is the meaning of being baptised 
 for the dead, yet, whilst he owns that God is the author 
 of these passages, and is ready to beheve them as far as 
 he can get an understanding of them, how is he to blame? 
 If it is criminal to err in the meaning of a passage of 
 Scripture, the crime will not rest where we are apt to 
 fix it, but will ascend to a place where we dare not think 
 of guilt, even to God himself, who has dehvered his will 
 in terms that are ambiguous. 
 
 ' If simple and invokmtary error be punished by God, 
 
282 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 then it would be injustice and cruelty in God to make 
 such creatures as cannot but err. If involuntary error 
 be punishable, it is not a few dissenters in a nation, nor 
 ten thousand times ten thousand, that must perish ; but 
 Tartarean flames must envelope almost, if not quite, the 
 whole of the Christian world. How many of our happy 
 church are quite in the right f Heaven must assuredly be 
 made only for a part of England, and a much less part, 
 too, than is, perhaps, imagined.' 
 
 Such language induced the Bishop of Oxford to notice 
 the work in a charge, as one that ' undermined the great 
 truths of Christianity,' and that ' all good men would 
 wish to have buried in perpetual oblivion. ' Sykes de- 
 fended himself in another pamphlet, in which he main- 
 tained aU that he had stated before, and said he thought, 
 with the Bishop of Bangor, that unbehevers might expe- 
 rience favour with heaven for sincerity, as well as believers, 
 though his remarks had been intended entirely concerning 
 Christians in a Christian country. 
 
 His great object, in all his writings, was to advocate 
 the propriety of laying open the Church to persons of the 
 most hberal sentiments ; and he argues, in one of his tracts, 
 that a latitude of opinion was intended to be allowed by 
 the framers of the articles of the Church of England to 
 all such as should subscribe to them. 
 
 Differing, however, from Warburton in his notions 
 regarding the state of things among the ancient Jews, he 
 attacked ' The Divine Legation ' in ' An Examination of 
 Mr. Warburton's Account of the Conduct of the Ancient 
 Legislators, of the Double Doctrine of the Old Philoso- 
 phers, of the Theocracy of the Jews, and of Sir Isaac 
 Newton's Chronology.' When this book appeared, War- 
 burton sent the author, he says, a civU message, to the 
 effect that ' he supposed he would think himself neglected 
 if no notice were taken of his work ; that he was not at 
 leisure to go through the whole, but that, if he would 
 
174G.] STKESS ATTACK ON WAEBUKTON. 283 
 
 signify on which of the four parts he placed most de- 
 pendence, he would endeavour to give him the satisfaction 
 about it which he seemed to require.' To this Sykes 
 rephed that ' he should not be at all concerned if War- 
 burton were to forbear all notice of him ; but that if he 
 took any, he might choose a part for himself; he ex- 
 pected, however, that he would keep to the merits of liis 
 book ; that the attention paid him would be paid in such 
 a manner as every good man wishes, in the love of truth, 
 and the spirit of one that seeks it ; and that he would 
 then find in the author a mind open to conviction.' 
 ' AU this,' observed Warburton, ' was very well ; and, 
 from the reasonableness of the demand, who would not 
 have supposed that his book was a standard of candour, 
 pohteness, and ingenuity ? at least, who would have 
 suspected the contrary ? ' But ' his civil prehminary, 
 when interpreted on the principles of the Double Doc- 
 trine, is in plain Enghsh this : that the liberties which 
 he and old honest Mr. P. (a clergyman to whom he affects 
 to address his Eemarks) have so freely taken with my 
 book and character, should be entirely overlooked, or 
 received as compliments ; and that I should addi'ess 
 myself to their conviction as to the service of my two 
 best friends, who wrote only to recommend the truths I 
 had advanced, by putting me in a way to remove all 
 doubts and difficulties concerning them. And, therefore, 
 that I should " keep to the merits of his book ; " that is, 
 be tender of his bad logic, and worse criticism ; over- 
 look his ill expression, and find out his meaning if I 
 can. And, indeed, who would not engage in any labour 
 for the sake of finding so rare a curiosity as " a mind 
 open to conviction " in an answerer by profession ?' ' But,' 
 proceeds Warburton, ' if I receive him with good 
 humour, it is a mere act of good will, to which neither 
 the Doctor's manner nor matter has the least claim, as 
 may be seen from the preliminary conversation between 
 
284 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ca. XVI. 
 
 him and his old friend Mr. P., who is made to " call Mr. 
 Warburton's book a learned romance," and to say, " with 
 some humour, that the digressions in it about the Mys- 
 teries, the Hieroglyphics, and the Book of Job, are, or 
 may be deemed, so many ingenious novels, which serve 
 to relieve or divert the reader." Mr. P. is then made to 
 express a doubt whether Mr. Warburton writes for utihty 
 or truth ; " for he has told so much," he observes, " about 
 the practices of those old pliHosophers, and how much 
 they were wont to lie for the public good (and he declares 
 himself to have come from the schools of those heathen 
 philosophers), that / cannot but think he may reasonably 
 he suspected to have received an infection from them, and 
 to have learned to lie for the public good, as his masters 
 did before him. It is true," he continues, " that Mr. 
 Warburton does not think those men to be altogether free 
 from blame ; and it may be said in his favour, that what he 
 blames a little in them, he would not do himself ; but yet 
 his censure of them is so very soft, and he is so tender 
 of their moral character, while he is so ready to flame out 
 against, and to show no mercy to, others who do not 
 think as he does, that one cannot help imagining that, in 
 liis opinion, the good end they had in view did sanctify 
 the means they used, and that it was no great fault in 
 them to have external and internal doctrines," ' &c. ' Now,' 
 adds Warburton, ' a man so apt to flame out, would have 
 been as apt to caU this a piece of scurrilous buffoonery 
 in another writer ; but in so candid a disputant as Dr. 
 Sykes, who writes, we see by his own words, " in the 
 love of truth, and in the spirit of one who seeks it," I 
 can consider it only as the effect of a pious zeal for the 
 interests of Eevelation, which is apt to warm itself in a 
 conversation between two such friends ; and a charitable 
 fear that the author of " The Divine Legation " was, 
 indeed, artfully undermining the foundation, while he 
 pretended to new fortify the structure, of religion ; and 
 
1746.] EEPLT TO SYKES. 285 
 
 they, good men, as faithful sentmels, thought it their duty 
 to give the alarm.' 
 
 Warburton then proceeds to consider which portion or 
 the book he may choose, as the choice is left to him, for 
 the object of his remarks. The Doctor 'has handled,' he 
 says, ' all his subjects in so unusual a manner, that aU we 
 can collect from the first of them, On the Conduct of the 
 Ancient Legislators, is that, in his opinion, Moses was but 
 of the same species with the Pagan law-givers ; for he 
 makes Moses, in giving laws for the Jews, consider, like 
 Zaleucus, only what was good for the State, beyond which, 
 he says, neither Moses nor Zaleucus concerned themselves ; 
 as to the Double Doctrine of the Old Philosophers, he has 
 fairly shown that he knew no more of it than of the double 
 sense of prophecies, which he had denied in his " Principles 
 and Connexion of Natural and Eevealed Eehgion ;" and, 
 with regard to Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology, he mistakes 
 the very question, imagining that I disputed the truth of 
 his Greek, instead of his Egyptian, chronology ; so that, 
 indeed, there was nothing left that I could in conscience 
 seize upon but his Discourse of the Theocracy of the Jews. 
 
 ' I have reason, too,' continues Warburton, ' to believe 
 that he may esteem this the forte of his new excursions. 
 An extraordinary providence to particulars, though ex- 
 pressly promised by, and, as I have shown, a necessary 
 consequence of, the Law of Moses, yet, partly from the 
 nature of the thing, and partly from mistaken passages of 
 misunderstood books of Scripture, is not entirely free from 
 objections. Here, then, he thought he could do something, 
 thouigh it were but retailing the objections of others. And 
 truly, as iU as he has managed these advantages, he was 
 not mistaken ia his choice. Por the rest, it is all over 
 such argument and such criticism ! as one might weU 
 conceive should be reserved to close the scene of letters 
 in an age Hke this, when -every science was retiring from 
 its professors to dictionary-makers and booksellers.' 
 
286 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTOK. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 Into the dispute between Warburton and Sykes con- 
 cerning the Jewish theocracy it is not necessary to enter 
 very far. Sykes's chief charge was that Warburton had 
 unfairly accused Spencer of absurdity in his treatise De 
 Legihus Hebrceorum. Spencer had said that the theocracy 
 was estabhshed by degrees and abrogated by degrees ; 
 "Warburton observed that this was ' an absurd conceit,' for 
 theocracy, being a form of government, must be estabhshed 
 at once, and, when it ceased, must cease at once ; but that 
 Spencer, as well as Dr. Sykes his defender, had confounded 
 the theocracy with the extraordinary providence that 
 existed under the theocracy, and both would have been 
 right, had they said that the extraordinary providence 
 was abrogated or withdrawn by degrees. Yet Sykes, he 
 says, runs along, pushing this blunder before him from 
 page to page. ' Spencer,' he reiterates, ' is much misre- 
 presented ; he did not mean by abrogation a ceasing, but 
 an alteration and abatement' Still the same confusion of 
 theocracy with extraordinary providence. '■Abrogation, 
 regimen abrogatum, does not signify ceasing! Where did 
 he get his Latin ? Cicero, Livy, and all the Eoman writers, 
 lawyers as well as philosophers, use it only in the sense of 
 dissolution, abohtion, and the entire ceasing of an office or 
 command. What then does it signify ? Why, it signifies 
 an alteration or abatement. But now where did he get 
 his Enghsh ? What ! is an alteration of government only 
 an abatement of it? The alteration of a theocracy we 
 imderstand ; but what is the abatement of it .? That indeed 
 I cannot teU.' Warburton then repeats some of his 
 arguments for the doctrine of an extraordinary or equal 
 providence among the Jews, in answer to a taunt of Sykes, 
 who reminded him of having admitted, in ' The Divine 
 Legation,' * that the administration of an equal providence 
 must needs be attended with such circumstajices as sometimes 
 
 * Book V. sect. 4. 
 
1746,] DE. STEBBING. 287 
 
 to occasion men's observations of inequality ; ' that is,' said 
 Sykes, ' in plain terms, " an equal providence must needs 
 be unequal." Is not this a plain acknowledgment that an 
 equal providence cannot be administered at all ? ' 'No,' says 
 Warburton ; ' you take my words to signify that men ob- 
 served an unequal providence, whereas . they mean that 
 men observed some inequalities in an equal providence, 
 which, whether Dr. Sykes understands it or not, is a very 
 different thing.' 
 
 ' In taking a formal leave ' of the Doctor, ' it may per- 
 haps be expected,' he adds, ' that I say something why 
 I ever answered at all, and why I answered in this manner. 
 To the first of these questions, I must needs confess that I 
 have never yet seen anything which, in my own opinion, 
 deserved any notice. But I was willing to submit to 
 better judgments. The Public, says a friend, by what I 
 can perceive, thinks there is something in this pamphlet — 
 thinks there may be something in that. Well, I subscribe 
 to the public judgment. I examine, I write, I confute. 
 And what do I get by it ? The mortification of being told 
 that now, forsooth, the public wonders why I should spend 
 my time upon such writers. And in this manner I have 
 been served more than once. The Public says this, the 
 Public says that ; in short, the Pubhc is a wag, and loves 
 to divert itself at the expense of us poor authors.' 
 
 So much for Dr. Sykes. Dr. Stebbing receives a nearly 
 equal portion of attention. He had opposed Warbiurton's 
 notion that Abraham obtained a foresight of Christ's death 
 from the iojunction laid upon him to offer up Isaac. He 
 had also pubhshed ' An Examination of Mr. Warburton's 
 Second Proposition, in an Epistolary Dissertation ad- 
 dressed to the Author,' intended to prove that a future 
 state was beheved in among the Jews, although Moses 
 had no commission to teach it. The series of arguments 
 advanced on these points, by each party, we need not take 
 the trouble to pursue ; it will be sufiicient to notice the 
 
288 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 nature of the remarks which Warburton throws out upon 
 his adversary. 
 
 Dr. Stebbing ' will needs know,' he observes, ' why God 
 acted thus mysteriously with His people ' in withholding 
 from them the knowledge of a future state. ' I wiU teU 
 him,' rejoins Warburton, 'when he informs me (and per- 
 haps before) why America was for so many ages debarred 
 the hght of the Gospel. Were not these his offspring as 
 well as the sons of Abraham ? But this is the advantage 
 that he and his followers take with the ignorant. They 
 cry out, What ! a religion from God without a. future state ? 
 No ; rather than this, anything. They wiU go a text- 
 hunting, he at catch for an ambiguity, divorce the sentence 
 from its context, strip it naked ; and if, after aU this 
 violence, it does but squint their way : See here, say they, 
 as clear a proof of it as from the preaching of Jesus.' * 
 
 'That you have given,' says Stebbing to Warburton, 
 ' great proofs of your learning and ingenuity, I shall not 
 dispute ; and you have had a fair time allowed you to 
 receive the compliments of the public on that score. It 
 may now be seasonable to call you to something which, 
 though perhaps less agreeable to you, may yet be more 
 profitable ; and that is, to consider how much truth you 
 have advanced, and what real service you have done, or 
 are likely to do, to rehgion by this undertaking.' f ' And 
 why,' inquires Warburton, ' wiU he not dispute the great 
 proofs of my learning and ingenuity ? He has disputed a 
 more incontestable thing ; the truth which that learning 
 and ingenuity were employed to illustrate ; and, if these 
 appeared with any distinction, it was solely owing to the 
 advantage of the subject. 
 
 ' But / have had a fair time allowed me to receive the 
 compliments of the public. How allowed me, and by 
 whom ? Certainly not by such writers as these. For if 
 
 * Warburton's "Works, vol. ix. p. 307. 
 
 f Examination of Mr. W.'s Second Proposition, p. 34. 
 
.1746.] CLAMOURS INSTEAD OF COMPLIMENTS. 289 
 
 their clamours could have prevailed, I had received the 
 public odium rather than its compliments. And the reader 
 may see, that those clamours began the very moment the 
 first volume of "The Divine Legation " appeared, and have 
 continued ever since, without interrujDtion to the pubh- 
 cation of our author's "Epistolary Dissertation." 
 
 ' But, after all, what were these compliments ? And 
 where have they lain hid ] Nothing from the public ever 
 came to my knowledge but the clamours of my adversaries. 
 In some sense, indeed, these may be called compliments, 
 and substantial ones too ; for, next to the old way of 
 comphmenting, laudari a laudato viro, I prize the new, 
 now all in fashion, vituperari a putidissimo quoque. . . . 
 
 ' I know of nothing for which I had more reason to 
 expect the compliments of the public than for the " AUiance 
 between Church and State," as it was a defence (and, I 
 will presume, from its being yet unanswered, an effectual 
 one) of the justice and equity of our present happy 
 estabhshment ; at a time when the enemies of all Church 
 estabhshments were commonly supposed to have demon- 
 strated it to be indefensible. Yet what p)ublic compliment 
 did I ever receive for this service? unless it may be 
 reckoned a comphment that those, in whose behalf it was 
 particularly written, have never yet publicly disavowed 
 the free and moderate principles on which it goes.' * 
 
 Warburton does not yet, hoAvever, leave Sykes and 
 Stebbing at peace. He devotes to some additional matter 
 of theirs a second part of his ' Eemarks,' and throws out 
 an observation or two, at the commencement of it, on 
 Eutherforth, the author of the ' Essay on Virtue,' who had 
 maintained that ' natural religion has not, which the law 
 of Moses has, the sanctions of future rewards and punish- 
 ments,' and on the Rev. John Jackson, who had published 
 a treatise to prove that ' a future state was a fundamental 
 
 * Warburton's Work.s, vol. xi. pp. 322 — 324. 
 U 
 
290 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON, [Cu. XVI. 
 
 article of belief in the religion of tlie Hebrews.' But lie 
 is not so fond of controversy, lie says, as to enter into a 
 dispute with him who would advocate the first of these 
 propositions, or with him who would support the second, 
 whose 'objections, even to the very blunders, he had 
 obviated or answered long ago.' * 
 
 The great charge which these answerers brought against 
 the author of ' The Divine Legation' was, that ' instead of 
 placing Christianity upon a surer bottom, he had only 
 fm-nished out more handles to unbehevers.' 'In this 
 manner,' says Warburton, ' has every honest man been 
 treated before me, whenever he did, or did but endeavour, 
 to save mankind. Harvey himself, who had more and 
 much abler examiners of the absurdity of his co7iceit than 
 I have had of mine, scarce got better off with one ^milius 
 Parisanus, a man of great name in Italy, who wrote a 
 complete refutation (as he called it) of the Doctor's argu- 
 ments for the circulation of the blood ; a discovery which 
 appears to have given this Italian no less disturbance than 
 "The Divine Legation" has given our Examiner [Dr. 
 Stebbing]. Quamobrem nos aliter philosophati et ratio- 
 cinati, de Harveii fidentia, says he, admirati; de clarissimm 
 Londinensis Acndemice consensu et conspirations obstupe- 
 facti. Veriim enimvero collecto spiritii, missel tandem 
 maximce novitatis admiratione, melius nobis considti, ad 
 vivum Hai^eii allata resecantes, ut comrnenticia et Jicta 
 excogitata colligentes, propria nostrtl, sententia permansi- 
 mus. Semper m ore atque in animo habere debemus, ut 
 homines nos esse meminerimus, ed lege natos, ut exposita 
 fortunm telis omnibus et nostra sit vita, et nostrce actiones 
 cunctce sub censoribus semper extent. Proindeque perpetuo 
 pugnandum sit, et nunc quam maxime, quum j}ro aris et 
 focis atque etiam Larariis (quippe de Corde, ^c.) fortiter 
 decertandum. Seriously, this was a sad story. The poor 
 
 * Warburton' s Works, vol. xi. pp. 351, 352. 
 
1746.] WAEBUKTON AND HAKVEY. 29i 
 
 gentleman was plainly frighted. But still he laments hke 
 a gentleman. Here are no insinuations that Harvey had 
 suffered himself to be diverted by matters less suitable to 
 his medical function, while he was exploring the use of 
 the venial valves. Nor does he take the hberty to tell 
 him that he ought to make amends for the wrong he has 
 do7ie to physic, though he thought he had done a great 
 deal ; or that he had furnished out more handles for 
 empirics, though he thought they had already too many ; 
 but he pohtely lays the fault upon the restless temper of 
 human nature itself, which will never suffer us to enjoy 
 our old opinions in quiet. But our Examiner is of another 
 cast ; and nothing can save you harmless, when once you 
 have incurred the danger of offence, but the absurdity of 
 your conceits, though offence, that fatal enemy to truth, be, 
 of all conceits, the most absurd, whenever it is taken before 
 it is given. It is true the good ^milius comes a little to 
 himself, and nearer to our Examiner, m the language of 
 his conclusion. He had recovered heart ; his victories 
 had elated liim ; and Harvey's numerous experiments 
 upon aU animal nature afforded him as happy an occasion 
 of raillery as the Dissertations in " The Divine Legation " 
 have given those who took them for digressions. Jam 
 diu, says he, per dumeta, vepres, syrtes, et scopulos, duxit 
 nos Harveius ; diuque in ejus vivariis et piscinis inter testu- 
 dines, anguillas, cochleas, ranas, bufones, et serpentes, vagati 
 sumus ; omnia tamen evertimus, ejusque perversa vestigia 
 cuncta deteximus ; omnia cum pulvisculo everi-entes quam 
 longissiwx ablegaviynus. Quoe in celebrium antiquorum 
 recentiorumque omnium, ab Harveio immerito notatorum, 
 defensionem dicta sunto. Hue — recleamus, ut quce, jam 
 reprobata et ablegata sunt, ratione, sensu, aiitop)sia, experi- 
 mentis, in veritatis gratiam, fortius obstringantur — prcedictce 
 opinionis omnia destruendo, et inter sese pugnantia ulterius 
 ostendendo, ^c. And in the same strain our Examiner.' * 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. xi. pp. 357, 358. 
 u 2 
 
9 2 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 This comparison of his case with that of Harvey is very- 
 happy ; though it might have been tm-ned against him by 
 his adversaries as a proof of self-conceit. 
 
 ' But though,' he adds, ' I had the caduceus of peace in 
 my hands, yet it was only in cases of necessity that I made 
 use of it. And therefore I chose to let pass, without any 
 chastisement, such impotent railers as Dr. Eichard Grey, 
 and one Bate, a zany to a mountebank.' Warburton has 
 now altered his tone, we see, with regard to Dr. Grey, 
 whom, in the first part of his 'Eemarks,' he called 'a 
 candid and learned writer,' and ' the truly learned and 
 worthy editor of the Book of Job.'* But Grey, in the 
 meantime, had pubhshed a pamphlet in reply to War- 
 burton, Avritten ' with a good deal of resentment.' ' The 
 pamphlet,' said Hurd, in a letter to the Eev. John Devej,-\f 
 ' is thought to be weU wrote, and with so much smartness 
 as to be much admired by the enemies of Mr. Warburton.' 
 Julius Bate was a good Hebrew scholar, author of a He- 
 brew Dictionary without points, to which he was a decided 
 enemy ; and, disliking Warburton's treatment of the third 
 chapter of Genesis, he had published a pamphlet in reply 
 to it, and another denying that the Jews were ignorant of 
 a future state, or under an equal providence ; provocations 
 sufficient to call forth Warburton's hostility. But the 
 accusation made in the Preface to ' The Divine Legation,';]; 
 that ' one Juhus Bate, in conjunction with one Eomaine, 
 had betrayed conversation, and written fictitious letters,' 
 had probably, though partially applicable to Eomaine, 
 little or no foundation with regard to Bate, who seems to 
 have been a man of good principles. He wrote several 
 other works, though none worthy of being disinterred, yet 
 of such a character that their author is far above deserving 
 to be called ' a zany.' ' On the other hand,' proceeds 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. xi. p. 347. 
 
 + Aug. 23, 1744. Kilvert's Plurd, p. 22. | Edit. 1741. 
 
1746.] MOWING DOWN ADVERSARIES. 293 
 
 Warburton, ' when I happened to be engaged with such 
 very learned and candid writers as Dr. Middleton and the 
 Master of the Charterhouse, I gave sufficient proof how 
 much I preferred a different manner of carrying on a 
 controversy, would m.j answerers but afford me the occasion. 
 But alas ! as I never should have such learned men long my 
 adversaries, and never would have these other my friends, 
 I found that, if I wrote at all, I must be condemned to a 
 manner which all, who know me, know to be most ab- 
 horrent to my natural temper.' The ardour of Warburton's 
 temper is too apparent through all his writings to leave it 
 credible that the mode in which he answered his adver- 
 saries was abhorrent to it. ' So, on the whole,' he con- 
 cludes, ' I resolved to quit my hands of them at once, and 
 turn again to nobler game, more suitable, as Dr. Stebbing 
 tells me, to my clerical function, that pestilent herd of hber- 
 tine scribblers, with which the island is overrun ; whom I 
 would hunt down, as good King Edgar did his wolves, 
 from the mighty author of " Christianity as Old as the 
 Creation," to the drunken blaspheming cobbler who wrote 
 against Jesus and the Resurrection.' 
 
 The pamphlet against 'Jesus and the Eesurrection,' 
 pubhshed about the time when Warburton was writing, 
 was professedly the production of a cobbler, but was 
 generally attributed to Morgan, the author of the ' Moral 
 Philosopher.' 
 
 Hurd, writing to Devey, at the time when these rephes 
 of Warburton appeared, says : ' The attention of the 
 learned world at present turns entirely almost on the 
 author of " The Divine Legation of Moses," who is mowing 
 down his adversaries with as great zeal and success as 
 ever old Bentley did before him. Indeed, the superior 
 genius and abilities of that writer give him a very great 
 advantage over all the gentlemen that have appeared 
 against him, whatever may be determined finally of his 
 cause. A piece he has just now published in answer to 
 
294 LIFE OS? BISHOP WARBURTOK. [Ch. XVI. 
 
 Drs. Stebbing and Sykes is very ingenious, but wrote witli 
 a severe satiric spirit peculiar to himself and his friend 
 Mr. Pope.' * 
 
 When he was sitting one day with Allen at Prior Park, 
 Allen said to him, in reference to ' The Divme Legation :' 
 ' Doctor, your adversaries appear to me to advance only 
 weak and futile arguments against you.' ' Sir,' replied 
 Warburton, 'you have spoken more to the purpose in 
 those few words than all the rascals, in all their volumes, 
 have written.' f 
 
 The Honourable Charles Yorke, writing about the same 
 time J to Warburton, reminds him of a kind of promise 
 that he had made him not to write more against his op- 
 ponents, and adds some remarks on answering, in general, 
 as well as on Warburton's in particular, so excellent as 
 fully to deserve quotation : ' It is to be expected, where 
 any writer has the marks of an original, and thmks for 
 himself, producing de suo penu things wholly new to most 
 understandings, that some will have their difficulties to 
 propose ; others their tenets to maintain ; and few will 
 give a ready assent to truths which contradict prevailing 
 notions, till time and posterity have wTought a gradual 
 change in the general state of learning and opinions. 
 Wliat wonder, then, that many should write against you ? 
 How natural that you should defend ! It was expected 
 from you. The zeal for knowledge is commendable ; the 
 deference to mankind becomes you. But here lies the 
 mischief You and your adversaries stand upon unequal 
 ground. They engage with that best friend and second 
 on their side, vulgar prejudice. Let their insinuations be 
 ever so malignant, provided they write dully, they gain 
 the character of writing coolly. How natural that you 
 should expostulate! If your expostulations have been 
 
 * Kilvert's ' Life of Hurd,' p. 23. 
 
 f Warner's ' New Guide tliroiigh Bath.' + Sept. 80, 1746. 
 
1746.] CHARLES YOEKE ON ANSWERING, 295 
 
 sometimes too warm, they were not the bitter overflowings 
 of an ill-natured mind, but the unguarded sallies of a 
 generous one. Yet even such sallies are scarce forgiven 
 you ; not because those you answer have deserved better, 
 but because sensible and candid men are disposed to think 
 too well and too highly of you to forgive that in you which 
 they Avould overlook in others. And, therefore, could 
 modesty permit you to reverence yourself as much as I 
 do, you would wait with patience that period when answer's 
 will be forgotten, unless, according to the epigram in 
 Martial, you choose to give flies a value and an immor- 
 tality, by entombing them in amber. It is to flatter me 
 exceedingly to intimate that I have contributed to lead 
 you into these sentiments, in which the very tasdium of 
 controversy and the pursuit of nobler designs must neces- 
 sarily confirm you.' * 
 
 Let us not omit to notice that in the titlepages of both 
 parts of these ' Eemarks,' Warburton had placed a very 
 coarse quotation from the Epodes of Horace, on which his 
 enemy Edwards, when he afterwards pubhshed the ' Canons 
 of Criticism,' did not fail to animadvert. ' As there is luck 
 in odd numbers,' says he, ' I would recommend this quota- 
 tion to his use a third time before his next edition of the 
 "Dunciad ;" and here subjoin a translation of it, that he 
 •may have the reputation, and the world may see the whole 
 force of that fine compliment he has paid to Dr. Middleton, 
 Dr. Pococke, Dr. Eichard Grey, Dr. Akenside, Dr. Sykes, 
 Dr. Stebbing, and other gentlemen, in the application of 
 these hnes to them : 
 
 Quid inmerentes hospites vexas, Canis, 
 Ignavus adversum lujjos ? 
 
 Nam, qualis aut Molossus, aut fulvus Laoon, 
 Amiga vis pastoribus, 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. .503. 
 
296 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON, [Ch. XVI. 
 
 Agam per altas aure sublata nives, 
 
 Quajcunque prajcedet fera. 
 Tu, quum timenda voce compllsti nemus, 
 
 Projechim odoraris ciBDii. 
 
 Hor. Epod. 6. 
 
 Here are the characters of two puppies ; one Mr. War- 
 burton gives to the gentlemen mentioned above ; the other 
 he apphes to himself; but to divide and choose is not 
 quite fair. Let the reader judge vs'hich fits each. I pro- 
 ceed to the translation : 
 
 To kennel, Looby , yelping cur, 
 Teasing the harmless passenger, 
 
 While your great Master's sheep. 
 Those two fair flocks, unguarded stray, 
 To foxes and to wolves a prey, 
 
 Those flocks you 're fed to keep. 
 
 See faithful Trueman, honest hound. 
 Far from the sheep-cotes all around 
 
 Chase every rav'nous beast ; 
 You, when the hills and vales have rung 
 With echo of your tattling tongue, 
 
 Turn tail, and scent the feast. 
 
 ' Note, the two flocks in this [allegory seem to mean 
 preferments ; perhaps a chapel in town and a hving in 
 the country ; and the feast, profit in general.' * 
 
 * Edwards's Canons of Criticism, Appendix, p. 257. 
 
1747.] HIS ATTENTION TO SIIAKSPEAEE. 297 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 SHAKSPEAKE. HANMEK. 
 
 waeburton's attention to shakspeare — when he began to 
 think of editing shakspeare his acquaintance with sir thomas 
 
 HANMER SPECIMENS OF WAEBURTON's INTENDED EDITION INSERTED 
 
 IN birch's ' GENERAL DICTIONARY ' AND ' THE WORKS OF THE 
 
 learned' WARBUETON'S CRITICISM ON THEOBALD AND HANMER IN 
 
 HIS PREFACE CONSIDERATIONS ON WARBURTON's CONNEXION WITH 
 
 THEOBALD THEOBALD's MERITS HISTORY OF' THE AFFAIR BE- 
 TWEEN WARBDRTON AND HANMER PHILIP NICHOLS LETTER FROM 
 
 HANMER TO DR. JOSEPH SMITH, INSERTED IN THE ' BIOGRAPHIA 
 
 BRITANNICA,' AND AFTERWARDS SUPPRESSED WARBURTON ACCUSES 
 
 HANMER OF FALSEHOOD HANMEr's LETTER SUPPRESSED AT WAR- 
 
 BURTOn's SOLICITATION CHARACTER OF PHILIP NICHOLS LETTERS 
 
 FROM SHERLOCK AND HARE. 
 
 IT has been observed that one of Warburton's assailants, 
 Dr. Stabbing, had reproached liim with ' suffering 
 himself to be diverted from his purpose,' the completion 
 of ' The Divine Legation,' ' by matters of another kind, less 
 suitable to his clerical function.' ' But vdll the good man,' 
 asks Warburton, in reply, ' be so kind to tell us what this 
 diversion is ? As things are now carried, and left in the 
 dark, who knows but the reader, in excess of charity, may 
 take it to be a — horse-race, or a good job of simony, a 
 party pamphlet, or levee-hunting, or Exchange Alley, or, 
 in short, twenty things besides, each of them sufficient to 
 discredit the mere unorthodox man? With this good 
 luck, I have no doubt that he would wipe his mouth, and 
 applaud his innocent address. Well, then, since the mean- 
 ness and malignity of his heart will not suffer him to tell, 
 
298 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XVII. 
 
 I will. The diversion he hints at, and yet dare not name, 
 is a critical defence and illustration of the writings of one 
 of the greatest geniuses of this, or indeed of any age, to 
 convince the prejudiced and ignorant that the incom- 
 parable writer hath been always on the side of truth, 
 virtue, and rehgion. And now the secret is out.' * 
 
 Warburtonhad begun to think of editing Shakspeare 
 as early as 1737. In a letter to Dr. Birch, written in 
 October of that year, he says : ' You are pleased to inquire 
 about Shakspeare. I believe (to tell it as a secret) I shall, 
 after I have got the whole of this work out of my hands 
 which I am now engaged in,' meaning ' The Divine Lega- 
 tion,' ^ give an edition of it to the wo7-ld.f Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer,' he adds, ' has a true critical genius, and has done 
 great things in this author ; so you naay expect to see a 
 very extraordinary edition of its kind. I intend to draw 
 up and prefix to it a just and complete critique on Shaks- 
 peare and his Works.' At the time when he communi- 
 cated notes to Theobald, in 1729 and 1730, he does not 
 seem to have contemplated an edition of his own. 
 
 Nor does he appear to have resolved on becoming an. 
 editor even so late as the May before he wrote to Birch, 
 1737, when, as we have related, he paid a visit to Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer, at his seat at Mildenhall, near New- 
 market. The acquaintance between him and Hanmer was 
 brought about by Bishop Sherlock. J The visit had refer- 
 ence to Sir Thomas's contemplated edition of Shakspeare ; 
 and Warburton put his notes on Shakspeare into Sir 
 Thomas's hands. Warburton stayed a week with the 
 Baronet, but they seem to have parted in anger. § 
 
 In six months afterwards, Warburton, with altered 
 feehngs, had determined, as we see, on giving an edition 
 
 * Warburton's 'Works, vol. xi. pp. 320, 356. 
 
 f Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 72. 
 
 \ Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 84, 85. 
 
 § Sec ante, p. G7. 
 
1747.] EDITION OF SHAKSPKARE. 299 
 
 of his own, which should, if possible, throw Sir Thomas's 
 into the shade. He accordingly sent to Birch, for inser- 
 tion in the Life of Shakspeare m Ms ' General Dictionary,' 
 a specimen of his intended annotations, which appeared in 
 that work in the following year, introduced thus : After 
 observing that Shakspeare's plays had recently been edited 
 by Eowe, Pope, and Theobald, the article proceeds to say, 
 ' But we may expect a much more correct edition of them 
 from the Eeverend and Learned Mr. WiUiam Warburton, 
 author of " The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated," 
 who, in his edition, besides a general character of Shaks- 
 peare and his writings prefixed, will give the rules which 
 he observed in correcting his author, and a large Glossary. 
 "We shall give the reader a specimen of this intended 
 edition in several curious remarks, which this excellent 
 critic has communicated to us.' Then follows the speci- 
 men, occupying several pages. In 1740, also, another 
 notice of the intended edition was inserted in the ' History 
 of the Works of the Learned,' with these observations : 
 ' After all that the incompai-able Mr. Pope, the ingenious 
 Mr. Eowe, and the plodding Mr. Theobald, have done to 
 cleanse and restore Shakspeare to his native lustre, there 
 stiU remain in him many faults to be amended, and a 
 thousand graces which have never yet been chsplayed. 
 In truth, both of these were so multifarious, that it 
 required the joint endeavours of many (and those of the 
 ablest) hands, to rectify the one, and to explicate the other ; 
 therefore we are not to wonder if men of consummate 
 abihty stiU think their talents very worthily employed in 
 so laudable a task. Accordingly, the Eev. Mr. Warburton 
 has bestowed thereon some of those leisure hours which 
 he could spare from the duties of his sacred function. He 
 is determined to add his labours to those of that Illustrious 
 critic and the others above-named, in removing the blem- 
 ishes and exempHfying the beauties of this inestimable 
 author, which did not fall under their consideration ; so 
 
300 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XVII. 
 
 that we are like to be shortly furnished with a more 
 complete and accurate edition of his writings than has 
 hitherto been pubhshed.' The specimen, as given in the 
 ' General Dictionary,' is then appended. 
 
 In January, 1743, Warburton writes to Birch from 
 Newark, ' For my amusement, from time to time, I go on 
 in preparing Shakspeare for the press. I am in hopes 
 that, in a little time. Sir Thomas Hanmer's plates will be 
 of so httle use, to any other pu.rpose, that I may get 
 them for my edition, as Mr. Pope did those of OgilbyV. 
 Homer for his. I hear the University [of Oxford] intend 
 to open a subscription [for Sir Thomas's edition] ; but 
 sure they will not do that which has been adjudged below 
 my character to do.'* 
 
 When Warburton's edition appeared, in 1747, the pre- 
 face contained the following passage concerning Hanmer 
 and Theobald. Having extolled Pope's edition, as ' the 
 best foundation for all further improvements,' Warbmton 
 says : ' Nothing will give the common reader a better idea 
 of the value of Mr. Pope's edition, than the two attempts 
 which have been since made by Mr. Theobald and Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer in opposition to it ; who, although they 
 concerned themselves only in — restoring the text, yet 
 succeeded so very ill in it, that they left their author in 
 ten times a worse condition than they found him. But, 
 as it was my iU fortune to have some accidental con- 
 nexion with these two gentlemen, it will be incumbent on 
 me to be a httle more particular concerning them. 
 
 ' 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 rehef of their 
 several distresses. As to Mr. Theobald, who wanted 
 money, I allowed him to print what I gave him for his 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illiistr. vol. ii. p. 129. 
 
1^47.] HANMER AND THEOBALD. 301 
 
 own advantage ; and he allowed himself the hberty of 
 taking one part for his own, and sequestering another for 
 the benefit, as I supposed, of some future edition. But 
 as to the Oxford editor, who wanted nothing but what he 
 might very well be without, the reputation of a critic, I 
 could not so easily forgive him for trafficking with my 
 papers without my knowledge ; and, when that project 
 failed, for employing a number of my conjectures in his 
 edition against my express desire not to have that honour 
 done unto me.' 
 
 Warburton also adds that Hanmer, though ' absolutely 
 ignorant of the art of criticism,' Avas yet ' not absolutely 
 destitute of all art. For,' he says, ' having a number of 
 my conjectures before him, he took as many of them as 
 he saw fit, to work upon ; and, by changing them to 
 something he thought synonymous, or similar, he made 
 them his own, and so became a critic at a cheap expense.' 
 
 These passages contain much, we fear, that is disin- 
 genuous, not to say false. Let us first consider what is 
 said of Theobald. Warburton, from what we have seen 
 of the commencement of his intercourse with Theobald, 
 appears rather to have been recommended to him than 
 he to Warburton. Warburton seems to have been quite 
 as eager to offer him notes on Shakspeare as he was to 
 receive them. But he was now to be depreciated ; not 
 only because Pope, Warburton's patron, had set him at 
 nought, but in order that Warburton's own edition, or 
 rather Warburton and Pope's joint edition, might be 
 elevated at the expense of his. To the charges, accord- 
 ingly, of ' being a poor man,' and of having ' sequestered 
 part of what he was allowed to print,' Warburton adds 
 the allegation that he was a weak and pernicious critic : 
 ' Mr. Theobald was naturally turned to industry and 
 labour — what he read he could transcribe ; but, as what 
 he thought, if he ever did think, he could but ill express, 
 so he read on ; and by that means got a character of 
 
S02 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOX. [Cu. XVII. 
 
 learning, without risking, to every observer, the imputa- 
 tion of wanting a better talent. By a punctilious colla- 
 tion of the old books, he corrected what was manifestly 
 wrong in the latter editions by what was manifestly right 
 in the earher. And this is his real merit, and the whole 
 of it. For, when the phrase was very obsolete or 
 hcentious ia the common books, or only sHghtly cor- 
 rupted in the other, he wanted sufficient knowledge of 
 the progress and various stages of the English tongue, as 
 well as acquaintance with the peculiarities of Shakspeare's 
 language, to understand what was right ; nor had he 
 either common judgment to see, or critical sagacity to 
 amend, what was manifestly faulty. Hence he generally 
 exerts his conjectural talent in the wrong place ; he 
 tampers with what is found in the common books ; and, 
 in the old ones, omits all notice of variations, the sense 
 of which he did not understand.' 
 
 What appears to have been the real merit of Theobald 
 has been already specified. But we may here add what 
 is said in his praise by Thomas Warton, who, in his 
 'Remarks on Spencer's Fairy Queen,' observes, 'Expe- 
 rience has fatally proved that the commentator on 
 Spencer, Jonson, and the rest of our elder poets, wiU 
 in vain give specimens of his classical erudition, unless, 
 at the same time, he brings to liis work a mind inti- 
 mately acquainted with those books which, though now 
 forgotten, were yet in common use and high repute about 
 the time in which his authors respectively wrote, and 
 which they, consequently, must have read. While these 
 are unknown, many allusions and many imitations will 
 either remain obscure, or lose half their beauty and 
 propriety, " as the figures vanish when the canvass is 
 decayed." 
 
 ' Pope laughs at Theobald for giving us, in his edition 
 of Shakspeare, a sample of 
 
 — all such reading as was never read ; 
 
1747.] MERITS Oi*' THEOBALD. 303 
 
 but these strange and ridiculous books which Theobald 
 quoted, were unluckily the very books which Shakspeare 
 himself had studied ; the knowledge of which enabled 
 that iiseful editor to explain so many different allusions 
 and obsolete customs in his poet, which otherwise could 
 never have been understood. For want of this sort of 
 literature. Pope tells us that the dreadful sagittary in 
 " Troilus and Cressida" signifies Teucer, so celebrated for 
 his skill in archery. Had he deigned to consult an old 
 history, called the " Destruction of Troy," a book which 
 was the delight of Shakspeare and of his age, he would 
 have found that this formidable archer was no other than 
 an imaginary beast which the Grecian army brought 
 against Troy. If Shakspeare is worth reading, he is 
 worth explaining, and the researches used for so valuable 
 and elegant a purpose merit the thanks of genius and 
 candour, not the satire of prejudice and ignorance. That 
 laboiu", which so essentially contributes to the service of 
 pure taste, deserves a more honourable repository than 
 the Temple of Dulness.' 
 
 The kind of reading for which Warburton, following 
 Pope, affected to contemn Theobald, was exactly the kind 
 which an editor of Shakspeare required, and which 
 Steevens and Malone pursued farther, and with greater 
 success. Alexander Chalmers calls Zachary Grey the 
 founder of that species of criticism which has been em- 
 ployed to illustrate Shakspeare, by collecting information 
 from books contemporary with the author ; but the 
 honour of this title seems rather to be due to Theobald. 
 And assuredly for ' want of knowledge of the Enghsh 
 tongue, or of common judgment or critical sagacity,' or 
 for ' conjecturing in wrong places,' such a critic as War- 
 burton had no right to heap condemnation on Theobald's 
 head. As to his amendments, even Johnson, in 1745, 
 relying on his own judgment, previously to" Warburton's 
 disparaging criticism, pronounced ' some of them so 
 
304 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XVIf. 
 
 excellent that, even where he has failed, he ought to be 
 treated with indulgence and respect.'* 
 
 But Warburton's transactions with Hanmer require fur- 
 ther examination.. As to Hanmer's merits as a critic, indeed, 
 though Johnson praises him, in his preface to Shakspeare, 
 as ' eminently quahfied by nature for critical studies,' and 
 as ' often learned without show,' his edition, though it 
 manifests less ignorance in the editor than "Warburton 
 alleges, may very well be set at the value at which War- 
 burton rates it, and at which it is estimated by Malone, 
 who thinks it necessary to say nothing more of the Oxford 
 editor than that ' he adopted almost all the innovations of 
 Pope, addmg to them whatever caprice dictated.' But as 
 for trafficking with Warburton's papers without Warbur- 
 ton's knowledge, Sir Thomas, who had borne a high 
 character as Speaker of the House of Commons, and 
 throughout aU his pubhc and private life, must surely be 
 thought too honourable for such clandestine proceeding ; 
 and we may find some light thrown on the affair between 
 him and Warburton by a letter of Sir Thomas's, which 
 was sent for pubhcation to the ' Biographia Britannjca,' 
 but which, after being actuaUy printed in the work, was, 
 to gratify Warburton, excluded from it. 
 
 There was one Philip Nichols, who was for a time a 
 writer in the ' Biographia,' and afterwards bought a small 
 share in the publication, and who, though not, as we shaU 
 find, a man much to be trusted, gave a narrative of the 
 matter which has never been contradicted. His account 
 is that, when the ' Biographia Britannica ' was drawing to- 
 wards the close, about New Year's Day, 1761, the copies 
 of three original letters from Sir Thomas Hanmer to Dr. 
 Joseph Smith, Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, were 
 sent to him to be inserted in the article ' Joseph Smith.' 
 Nichols hastened with them to the press, but found the 
 
 * Observations on Macbeth, note ili. 
 
1747.] LETTEE OF IIANMER TO DE. SMITH. 303 
 
 article completed, and had some difficulty in persuading 
 the printer to insert them at the end of it. But, in a post 
 or two after, the gentleman who sent them wrote to 
 Nichols, saying that, having shown the third of these 
 letters, relating to Sir Thomas Hanmer's quarrel with 
 Warburton (now Bishop of Gloucester), to some friends, 
 they had advised him to withdraw it, as Warburton would 
 be greatly offended at its insertion, and he himself would 
 prefer his quiet to a brod with Warburton. Nichols 
 rephed that it was too late, as the article was now en- 
 tirely printed off. The letter was, therefore, left standing ; 
 but, on reflection, Nichols thought it better to send War- 
 burton a copy of it, and accordingly did so, with a note 
 assuring him that it should not have passed through his 
 hands to the press, ' had he seen anything in it deroga- 
 tory to his real merit, which he revered ;' adding, that he 
 would call next day for an answer. Sh- Thomas Hanmer's 
 letter was as follows : 
 
 ' To the Eev. Dr. Smith, President of All Souls' * College. 
 
 ' Mildenliall, near Newmarket, Suffolk : Oct. 28, 1742. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, — I have much doubted with myself whether 
 it were proper for me to return an answer to the favour 
 of your letter, till after hearing again from you or Dr. 
 Shippen. There seem to arise some difficulties with respect 
 to the design of printing a new edition of " Shakspeare," 
 and I beg it may be laid aside, if you are not fully satisfied 
 that some advantage may arise from it to the University ; 
 for I have no end in view to myself to make me desire it. 
 I am satisfied there is no edition coming, or likely to 
 come, from Warburton ; but it is a report raised to serve 
 some little purpose or other, of which I see there are many 
 on foot. I have reason to know that gentleman is very 
 angry with me, for a cause of which, I think, I have no 
 
 * A mistake for ' Queen's.' 
 X 
 
306 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Ch. XVII. 
 
 reason to be ashamed, or he to be proud. My acquaintance 
 with him began upon an application from himself ; and at 
 his request the present Bishop of Salisbury introduced him 
 to me for this purpose only, as was then declared, that, as 
 he had many observations upon Shakspeare then lying by 
 him, over and above those printed in Theobald's book, he 
 much desired to communicate them to me, that I might 
 judge whether any of them were worthy to be added to 
 those emendations which he understood I had long been 
 making upon that author. I received his offer with all 
 the civiUty I could ; upon which a long correspondence 
 began by letters, in which he explained his sense upon 
 many passages, which sometimes I thought just, but mostly 
 wild and out of the way. Afterwards he made a journey 
 liither on purpose to see my books. He stayed about a 
 week with me, and had the inspection of them ; and all 
 this while I had no suspicion of any other design, in all 
 the pains he took, but to perfect a correct taste in ' Shaks- 
 peare,' of which he seemed very fond. But, not long 
 after, the views of interest began to show themselves ; 
 several hints were dropped of the advantage he might 
 receive from publishing the work thus corrected ; but, as 
 I had no thoughts at all of making it public, so I was 
 more averse to yield to it in such a maimer as was Hkely 
 to produce a paltry edition, by making it the means only 
 of making a greater sum of money by it. Upon this he 
 flew into a great rage, and there is an end of the story: 
 with which I have thought it best to make you ac- 
 quainted, that, as you mention the working of his friends, 
 you may judge the better of what you see and hear from 
 them, and may make what use you please of the truth of 
 facts which I have now laid before you. 
 
 ' As to my own particular, I have no aim to pursue in 
 this affair. I propose neither honour, reward, or thanks ; 
 and should be very well pleased to have the books con- 
 tinue upon their shelf in my own private closet. If it is 
 
1747.] NICHOLS AND THE ' BIOGEAPHIA BEITANNICA.' 307 
 
 thought they may be of use or pleasure to the pubhc, I 
 am wining to part with them out of my hands, and to 
 add, for the honour of Shakspeare, some decorations and 
 embelhshments at my own expense. It will be an unex- 
 pected pleasure to me, if they can be made, in any 
 degree, profitable to the University, to which I shall 
 always retain a gratitude, a regard, and reverence ; 
 but, that I may end as I began, I beg the favour of you, 
 if, upon more mature consideration among yourselves, 
 you see reason to discom'age you from proceeding 
 in this afiair, that you will give it over, and not look 
 upon yourselves to be the more obhged to prosecute it 
 from any steps already taken with, Sir, 
 
 ' Your most humble and obedient servant, 
 
 ' Tho. Hanmer.' 
 
 When Phihp Nichols called, the next day, according to 
 notice, for a reply, he was civilly received by Warburton, 
 who expressed himself very indignant at the ' imperti- 
 nence ' of Nichols's friend, in sending the letter to the 
 press, but acknowledged his obligation for the sight of it 
 before it was made pubhc. Nichols offered to insert any 
 reply to it in a subsequent part of the same volume of 
 the ' Biographia Britannica ; ' and Warburton accord- 
 ingly wrote a reply, which was ' put into the hands of one 
 of his booksellers,' Mr. David Browne, one of the pro- 
 pidetors of the ' Biographia,' and a member of the com- 
 mittee for conducting it. A meeting of the committee 
 was called, at Browne's request, at which Nichols was 
 summoned to attend, and was blamed by the members 
 present for his ' needless comphment in discovering the 
 letter to the Bishop ;' but when they came to deliberate 
 on the Bishop's answer, which Browne submitted to 
 them, they all concurred in expressing dislike of it. The 
 answer was this, as copied from the ' St. James's Chro- 
 nicle,' to which Warburton afterwards sent it : 
 
 X 2 
 
308 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON". [Ch. XVII. 
 
 ' Sir Thomas Hanmer's letter from Mildenhall to Oxford, 
 Oct. 28, 1742, is one continued falsehood from beginning 
 to end. It is' false that my acquaintance with him began 
 vipon an application from me to him. It began on an 
 apphcation from the present Bishop of London to me, in 
 behalf of Sir Thomas Hanmer, and, as I understood, at 
 Sir Thomas Hanmer's desire. The thing speaks for 
 itself. It was pubhcly known that I had written notes 
 on Shakspeare, because part of them were printed. Few 
 people knew that Sir Thomas Hanmer had ; I certainly 
 did not know : nor, indeed, whether he was hving or 
 dead. 
 
 ' The falsehood is still viler (because it skulks under an 
 insinuation) that I made a journey to him to Mildenhall, 
 without invitation, whereas it was at his earnest and 
 repeated request, as appears by his letters, which I have 
 still by me. 
 
 ' It is false that the views of interest began to show 
 themselves in me to this disinterested gentleman. My 
 resentment at Sir Thomas Hanmer's behaviour began on 
 the following occasion : A bookseller in London, of the 
 best reputation, had wrote me word that Six Thomas 
 Hanmer had been vdth him, to propose his printing an 
 edition of Shakspeare on the following conditions — of 
 its being pompously printed vdth cuts (as it afterwards 
 was at Oxford), at the expense of the said bookseller, 
 who, besides, should pay one hundred guineas, or some 
 such sum, to a friend of his (Sir Thomas Hanmer's), who 
 had transcribed the Glossary for him. But the book- 
 seller, understanding that he made use of my notes, and 
 that I knew nothing of the project, thought fit to send 
 me this account ; on which I wrote to Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer, upbraiding him for his behaviour, and demand- 
 ing out of his hands all the letters I had written to him 
 on the subject, which he unwilKngly comphed with, after 
 cavilling about the right of property in those letters, for 
 which he had, he said, paid the postage. 
 
1?47.] WAEBURTON CONTRADICTS HANMEE. 309 
 
 ' When the bookseller would not deal with him on 
 these terms, he apphed to the University of Oxford, and 
 was at the expense of his purse in procuring cuts for his 
 edition ; and at the expense of his reputation in employing 
 a number of my emendations on the text, without my 
 knowledge or consent ; and this behavioru- was what 
 occasioned ]\ir. Pope's perpetuating the memory of the 
 Oxford edition of Shakspeare in the " Dunciad." 
 
 ' This is a true and exact account of the whole affair, 
 which I never thought worth while afterwards to com- 
 plain of, but to the Bishop of London, at whose desire I 
 lent Sir Thomas Hanmer my assistance ; nor should ever 
 have revived it, but for the pubHcation of this scandalous 
 letter, sent from Oxford to this Philip Nichols, to be 
 inserted in the " Biographia Britannica." 
 
 'W. Gloucester.' 
 
 Nichols observed to the committee, he says, that ' the 
 futihty of the matter ' in Warburton's reply, and ' the in- 
 temperance of the style,' were ' plain indications that War- 
 burton was not able to give any good or sufficient answer.' 
 It would, indeed, have been better for Warburton if he 
 had substantiated his case by quotations from Hanmer's 
 letters which he had by him, or by some other testimony 
 in addition to his own word. The resolution to which 
 the committee came was to take no notice of Warburton's 
 reply in the ' Biographia Britannica ;' and Browne carried 
 off the reply in his pocket. 
 
 Some of the members, however, expressed dissent 
 from Nichols, as to the notion that Sir Thomas Hanmer's 
 letter contained ' nothing derogatory to the Bishop's real 
 merit ; ' and Nichols began to suspect, soon after, that 
 some application had been privately made to the com- 
 mittee to have the letter expunged. In this suspicion he 
 was confirmed when Warburton's edition of Shakspeare 
 came out, in the preface to which Warburton's/r^i occasion 
 
310 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Cn. XVII. 
 
 of his quarrel with Hanmer is kept completely out of 
 sight. Nevertheless, as no steps were taken for the ejec- 
 tion of the letter, he mserted, in the article ' Spelman,' 
 which was then being printed off, some allusion to War- 
 burton and Hanmer, in the supposition that Hanmer's 
 letter would keep its place ; but, after some months, he 
 heard that it was seriously proposed to suppress it, at 
 Warburton's instance. Eepairing to Browne, to inquire 
 about the matter, he was told by Browne that he could 
 not say the suppression was contemplated at Warburton's 
 instance, but admitted that, when the notion of suppres- 
 sion was communicated to him, he ' expressed a particular 
 satisfaction.' Nichols had then no doubt that Warburton 
 was making interest -with the committee, who, however, 
 were slow to determine on expunging ; and one party 
 proposed, while they retained the letter, to reprint the 
 whole sheet so closely as to make room for Warburton's 
 answer ; but Browne, on hearing this, declared, in some 
 confusion, that he had lost the answer. Nichols, how- 
 ever, observed that he had kept a memorandum of the 
 chief points of it, which memorandum, at the direction 
 of the committee, he enclosed to Warburton for his 
 inspection ; but Warburton took no notice of the receipt 
 of it. At another conference with Browne about the 
 matter, Browne showed him, what he had not seen 
 before, the following passage in an advertisement pre- 
 fixed by the booksellers to the London reprint of Sir 
 Thomas Hanmer's Shakspeare in 1745, to which some 
 
 notes were attached : 'As to the emendations and 
 
 notes of Mr. Warburton we are only commissioned 
 
 to say thus much, that he desires the pubHc would 
 suspend their opinion of his conjectures tiU they see how 
 they can be supported. For he holds it as ridiculous to 
 alter the text of an author without reason assigned, as it 
 was dishonourable to publish those alterations without leave 
 obtained.' And at the next meeting of the committee, a 
 
1747.] SUPPEESSION OP HANMER's LETTER. 311 
 
 resolution was passed to cancel the letter, a majority of 
 the members having been persuaded or overawed to 
 concur in reprinting the sheet for that purpose. 
 
 Thus Hanmer's letter would have been wholly un- 
 known to the public, but for its insertion in the pamphlet 
 which Nichols afterwards pubUshed, in a fit of resent- 
 ment at "Warburton about the matter. The pamphlet is 
 entitled ' The Castrated Letter of Sir Thomas Hanmer, 
 in the Sixth Volume of the " Biographia Britannica," 
 wherein is discovered the first Else of the present Bishop 
 of Gloucester's Quarrel with that Baronet, about his 
 edition of Shakspeare's Plays. To which is prefixed an 
 Account of the Extraordinary Means used to suppress 
 this remarkable Letter. By a Proprietor of that Work. 
 London, 1763. Price Is.' It has no name of its author 
 on the title-page, but the name of Philip Nichols is 
 given at length within. If we inquire what this Philip 
 Nichols had been, or what he had done, before he became 
 a writer in the ' Biographia Britannica,' we may gain 
 some information from a manuscript note in the copy of 
 the pamphlet in the British Museum, which is called 'The 
 Second Edition, corrected and augmented,' and in wliich 
 is written ' William Cole, 1763,' showing that it belonged 
 to the well-known Eeverend WUham Cole, the friend of 
 Horace Walpole.* The note is in the same hand as the 
 name and date : ' Phihp Nichols, LL.D., and PeUow of 
 Trinity Hall in Cambridge, where he was brought by Sir 
 Nathaniel Lloyd, the master, by a lapse from Oxford. 
 He was in priest's orders, and expelled the University for 
 steahng books out of his own and other libraries in the 
 University.' Such had been Phihp Nichols's character ; 
 but, as has been said, no charge was ever brought, either 
 by Warburton or any one else, against the truth of his 
 narrative respecting Hanmer's Shakspeare, 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. viii. p. 578. 
 
312 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XVII. 
 
 When the sixth volume of the ' Biographia Britannica' 
 came out, Nichols went to Warburton, to ask his per- 
 mission to replace the letter. Warburton received him 
 roughly : ' Whoever,' said he, ' shaU print that letter, if 
 I can take any advantage against him, I wiU.' 'Your 
 lordship,' retorted Nichols, ' is in a passion,' and came 
 away. On January 11, 1763, he wrote a letter to War- 
 burton, an incoherent kind of thing, of which it is diffi- 
 cult to tell the object, except it were a feint of begging 
 Warburton's pardon. ' I became,' he says in it, ' a pro- 
 prietor in the " Biographia Britannica," with a design to 
 make the best restitution I could for the great injuries 
 done to the University of Cambridge, and some colleges 
 there, besides other private persons. The story is too 
 black in itself, and too grievous for ine to relate. My 
 lord of Bristol, to whom I am not unknown, and who 
 was then a Eellow of one of the injured societies, can 
 inform you of the particulars ; and I am not anxious to 
 have anything concealed. The shame attending it may 
 be a means of bettering my repentance, which is the 
 greatest work I have to do.' He signs himself 'Your 
 Lordship's most obedient humble servant, Phihp Nichols, 
 a poor penitent thief.' To this letter Warburton made no 
 reply. 
 
 About the same time, the gentleman who had communi- 
 cated Sir Thomas Hanmer's letter complained, in the shop 
 of one of the proprietors, in Nichols's hearing, ' of the 
 aflFront put upon his kindness, and the injury done by the 
 castration, to the memory of Dr. Joseph Smith, in sup- 
 pressing a testimony of confidence shown to him by a 
 gentleman of such distinguished worth and honom: as 
 Sir Thomas Hanmer.' Nichols observed to the gentle- 
 man that he had protested against the suppression, and 
 had not laid aside all thoughts of pubhshing the letter. 
 The gentleman expressed himself well pleased, and, 
 ' assuring Nichols of such assistance as he could give,' 
 
1747.] LETTER FKOM SHEELOCK. 313 
 
 made him promise that it should be pubhshed. War- 
 burton's answer to Sir Thomas Hanmer, which is given 
 in the second edition of Nichols's pamphlet, seems to 
 have been sent to the ' St. James's Chronicle ' after the 
 appearance of the first edition of the pamphlet, of which 
 I know not whether a copy is extant. 
 
 In this pamphlet it is stated that, at one of the meet- 
 ings of the committee, a report was mentioned that 
 Hanmer, before consigning his Shakspeare to the Univer- 
 sity of Oxford, had offered to sell it for 100/. to Tonson, 
 who had dechned the purchase. Nichols spoke on the 
 subject to Tonson, who said that the fact was ' imper- 
 fectly related,' as Sir Thomas had asked the money, not 
 for his own use, but for that of ' a necessitous friend,' 
 and that he had refused only because Sir Thomas insisted 
 on ' a pompous expensive edition, in quarto.' 
 
 This offer to Tonson had been made as early as 1739, 
 in which year Warburton sent a letter to Hanmer, but 
 took the precaution to submit it previously to the in- 
 spection of Bishop Sherlock. From Sherlock's answer to 
 Warburton we find that rumour had magnified the one 
 hundred pounds into two hundred : 
 
 ' May 10, 1739. 
 
 ' Eeveebnd Sie, — I am very sorry, and surprised too, 
 at the account you give me 'relating to a new edition of 
 " Shakspeare ;" and the more sorry as I have in some 
 measure been the occasion of it. 
 
 'I have no objection to your sending the letter to Sir 
 Thomas. You do not mention to him that he was to have 
 for a friend £200 ; and perhaps you may as well keep 
 that tg yourself, unless it shall be necessary in the course 
 of the correspondence to own your knowledge of it. I 
 can't tell what friend has deserved better in this respect 
 than yourself, and therefore can say nothing to it ; but I 
 should have expected that your interest should have been 
 remembered in a treaty of this kind 
 
314 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUKTOX. [Ch. XVII. 
 
 'I inclose the copy of the letter you intend for Sir 
 Thomas, Avhich may save you the trouble of transcribing 
 another. 
 
 'I am, Sir, 
 
 ' Your very humble servant, 
 
 ' Tho. Saeum.' * 
 
 Warburton also consulted his great episcopal friend, 
 Dr. Hare, on the subject. Hare replies : 
 
 ' Sir Thomas Hanmer's proceeding with respect to 
 Shakspeare is very extraordinary. I doubt the friend for 
 whom he wanted the £200 was his own dear self. I 
 think you do very well to get your own papers out of his 
 hands. It is a pity they have been so long in them, since 
 it is probable he has squeezed what he could out of them, 
 which is most ungenerous treatment. I hope you will 
 find leisure to give the world a " Shakspeare " yourself, 
 which the sooner it is made known the better. That will 
 mortify Sir Thomas, and perhaps drive him at last into 
 some agreement with you ; since, otherwise, if you come 
 after him, his edition will either not come out, or not sell, 
 which he could very iU bear, especially as he has so good 
 an opinion of his work.' f 
 
 Such were the observations of Sherlock and Hare, but 
 we must understand that they took their notions of the 
 matter, in all probabUity, wholly on Warburton's repre- 
 sentation. The general opinion has always been in favour 
 of Hanmer. ' The honour and veracity of Hanmer,' says 
 Disraeh, ' must prevail over the " hvehness " of Warbur- 
 ton, for Hurd lauds his " lively preface " to his " Shaks- 
 peare." ' Sir Henry Bunbury, Hanmer's biographer, 
 expresses his conviction that Warburton's posthumous 
 charges, pubhshed fifteen years after Hanmer's death, 
 were ' false and calumnious.' ' Sir Thomas Hanmer,' says 
 Whitaker,$ one of those most wiUing to advocate War- 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 84. 
 
 t Kilvert, ib. p. 121. if Quart. Rev. vol. vii. p. 391. 
 
1747.] CHARACTER OF HAJiJMER. 315 
 
 burton, ' was a man of probity and honour, had long been 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, and died with unim- 
 peached integrity in a dignified retirement,' and is not to 
 be 'traduced to posterity as a wretched pilferer from 
 Warburton's critical portfoho,' though such might have 
 been his fortune, had not his letter to Dr. Smith been brought 
 to light. 
 
 'B' 
 
 Strict on the right he kept his steadfast eye, 
 With temperate zeal and wise anxiety ; 
 Nor e'er from Virtue's path Vas lured aside, 
 To pltick the flowers of pleasure or of pride. 
 
 Hanmer, hke Theobald, was unable to answer when 
 Warburton accused the one of having ' sequestered 
 notes,' and the other of having ' trafficked with his papers 
 without his knowledge ;' and he had taken care to get out 
 of Hanmer's hands aU the letters that he had addressed to 
 him on the subject, so that there might be no written 
 testimony producible against him. ' Dead men,' as the 
 Greek proverb says, ' do not bite,' and "Warburton might 
 calumniate Hanmer with equal exultation and security. 
 
316 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XVIU. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIIT. 
 SHAKSPEAEE. 
 
 MERITS OF WARBCETOn'S NOTES ON SHAKSPEAEE HE AFFECTS TO 
 
 THINK LIGHTLY OF THEM HIS MOTIVES FOE PUBLISHING THEM 
 
 HDED'S praise JOHNSON'S ESTIMATE OF WAEBUETON'S ANNOTA- 
 TIONS DISSATISFACTION OF WARBUBTON WITH JOHNSON MALONe's 
 
 JUST ESTIMATE OF WAEBURTOn's EDITION ATTACKS UPON WAE- 
 
 BURTON EDWARDS, AUTHOR OF THE ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ; ' OEI- 
 
 GIN OF THE HOSTILITY BETWEEN HIM AND WAEBURTON WAEBUE- 
 
 TOn's UNGENTLEMANLT SAECASMS ON EDWAEDS IN THE NOTES ON 
 
 THE ' DUNCIAD ' EDWAEDs's RETORTS SPECIMENS OF EDWAEDS'S 
 
 CRITICISMS HUED's INJUDICIOUS PRAISE HEATh's ' REVISAL OF 
 
 SHAKSPEAEE's text' ZACHARY GEEY SPECIMENS OF WARBURTON'S 
 
 BEST EMENDATIONS. 
 
 T 
 
 iHE merits and defects of Warburton's notes on Shaks- 
 X peare were understood from the first glances cast 
 on them by men of learning and judgment, on the day 
 of their publication. Warburton himself affected to 
 make light of them, and to declare that he would never 
 have given them to the world but for the ill desert of 
 Theobald and Hanmer, and the earnest wishes of Pope. 
 ' Such as they are,' he says, ' they were among my younger 
 amusements, when, many years ago, I used to turn over 
 these sort of writers to unbend myself from more serious 
 applications ; and what certainly the pubHc at this time 
 of day had never been troubled with but for the conduct 
 of the two last editors, and the persuasions of dear Mr. 
 Pope, whose memory and name 
 
 Semper acerbum, 
 Semper honoratum (sic Di voluistis) habebo. 
 
1747.] REASONS FOR EDITING SHAKSPBAEE. 317 
 
 He was desirous I should give a new edition of this poet, 
 as he thought it might contribute to put a stop to the 
 prevailing folly of altering the text of celebrated authors 
 without talents or judgment. And he was willing that 
 his edition should be melted down into mine, as it would, 
 he said, afford him (so great is the modesty of an ingenuous 
 temper) a fit opportunity of confessing his mistakes.* In 
 memory of our friendship, I have, therefore, made it our 
 joint edition.' 
 
 But though Warburton refers to Pope's Letters for this 
 persuasion to publish his notes, and this permission to 
 couple them Avith Pope's own notes, we search in vain for 
 any passage of such purport, in those letters of Pope to 
 Warburton which Warburton afterwards pubhshed. If 
 we give him credit, therefore, for veracity on the point, 
 we must give it him, as in the affair with Hanmer, on his 
 own assurance. But the truth seems to be, that a desire 
 of uniting his name more closely with that of Pope, which 
 was sure to keep its place in English literature ; a mah- 
 cious longing, from whatever cause, to vihfy the memory 
 of Theobald and Hanmer ; and an inchnation, which he 
 had always felt, to exhibit his own powers in conjectural 
 criticism, were his great motives to the production of this 
 edition. He sold the copyright to Tonson for five hundred 
 poimds. 
 
 Hurd, as might be expected, says all that he can in 
 praise of Warburton. ' Such is the fehcity of his genius,' 
 he observes, 'in restormg numberless passages to their 
 integrity, and in explaining others which the author's 
 sublime conceptions, or his Hcentious expression, had kept 
 out of sight, that this fine edition of " Shakspeare " must 
 ever be highly valued by men of sense and taste ; a spirit 
 congenial to that of the author breathing throughout, and 
 easily atoning, with such, for the httle mistakes and 
 
 * ' See his Letters to me.' 
 
318 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUBTON. [Ch. XVIII. 
 
 inadvertencies discoverable in it.' * A character of the edi- 
 tion more exactly opposed to its true desert could hardly 
 have been given ; and the greater is the ' sense and taste ' 
 of its readers, the less acceptable will it be to them. 
 
 But the noble and judicious criticism on it by Johnson, 
 who was anxious to praise it as highly as it would bear, 
 yet to condemn in it aU that was evidently censurable, 
 has done more to support it in the eyes of the world, and 
 to induce ' men of sense ' to regard it with all the favour 
 of which it can be thought deserving, than anything that has 
 been said concerning it. Johnson, in his ' Eemarks on 
 Macbeth,' pubhshed in 1745, complimented Warburton 
 with the title of ' learned,' and Warburton, in return, spoke 
 of the ' Eemarks,' in his Preface to ' Shakspeare,' as the 
 production of ' a man of parts and genius,' and honourably 
 distinguished from anything of the kind that had recently 
 appeared ; praise for which Johnson, who was then but 
 emerging mto notice, was ready to express his acknow- 
 ledgments. ' He praised me, Sir,' said he to Boswell, 'when 
 praise was of value to me.' The character given of War- 
 burton's edition in Johnson's Preface it would be unjust to 
 Warburton to omit. 
 
 ' Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak [than of 
 Hanmer]. Eespect is due to high place, tenderness to 
 living reputation, and veneration to genius and learning ; 
 but he cannot be justly offended at that hberty of which 
 he has himself so frequently given an example, nor very 
 solicitous what is thought of notes which he ought never 
 to have considered as part of his serious employments, 
 and which, I suppose, since the ardour of composition is 
 remitted, he no longer numbers among his happy effusions. 
 
 ' The original and predominant error of his commentary 
 is acquiescence in his first thoughts ; that precipitation 
 which is produced by consciousness of quick discernment ; 
 
 * Kurd's Life of Warburton, p. 46. 
 
1747.] JOHNSON ON WARBUETON'S NOTES. 319 
 
 and that confidence which presumes to do, by surveying the 
 surface, what labour only can perform by penetrating the 
 bottom. His notes exhibit sometimes perverse interpre- 
 tations, and sometimes improbable conjectures ; he at 
 one time gives the author more profundity of meaning 
 than the sentence admits, and at another discovers ab- 
 surdities when the sense is clear to every other reader. 
 But his emendations are likewise often happy and just ; 
 and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and 
 sagacious. 
 
 ' Of his notes, I have commonly rejected those, against 
 which the general voice of the public has exclaimed, or 
 which their own incongruity immediately condemns, and 
 which, I suppose, the author himself would desire to be 
 forgotten. Of the rest, to part I have given the highest 
 approbation, by inserting the offered reading in the text ; 
 part I have left to the judgment of the reader, as doubt- 
 ful, though specious ; and part I have censured without 
 reserve, but I am sure without bitterness of malice, and I 
 hope without wantonness of insult.' 
 
 But this balancing of eulogy and censure, joined with 
 the praise of a note on Hamlet as ' having ahnost set the 
 critic on a level with his author,' by no means satisfied 
 Warburton, who felt the blame more than the commen- 
 dation, and who, though he said nothing publicly, growled 
 for the afiected contempt in his letters to Hurd and to at 
 least one other of his friends. ' Of this Johnson,' he 
 says to Hurd, ' you and I, I believe, think much alike ;' 
 and in the letter in which he made this remark, he in- 
 closed a copy of another, in which he indulges in insult- 
 ing animadversions on Johnson and his Shakspeare, and 
 from which Hurd, very unwisely, thought fit to print a 
 large extract : ' The remarks he makes in every page on 
 my commentaries are full of insolence and malignant re- 
 flections, which, had they not in them as much folly as 
 mahgnity, I should have had reason to be ofiended with. 
 
320 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XVIII. 
 
 As it is, I think myself obliged to him, in thus setting 
 before the public so many of my notes with his remarks 
 upon them ; for though I have no great opinion of that 
 trifling part of the public which pretends to judge of this 
 part of hterature in which boys and girls decide, yet I 
 think nobody can be mistaken in this comparison ; though 
 I think their thoughts have never yet extended thus far 
 as to reflect, that to discover the corruption in an author's 
 text, and by a happy sagacity to restore it to sense, is no 
 easy task ; but when the discovery is made, then to cavil 
 at the conjecture, to propose an equivalent, and defend 
 nonsense, by producing out of the thick darkness it occa- 
 sions a weak and faint glimmering of sense (which has 
 been the business of this editor throughout), is the easiest, 
 as well as dullest, of all Hterary efforts.'* This is as 
 unjust a character of Johnson's annotation as could well 
 be given, and the hints for it seem to have been taken 
 from Johnson's own remarks on the vainglorious practices 
 of editors in his Preface, of which noble performance 
 Warburton has not offered, or Hurd has not preserved, 
 one word of commendation. 
 
 But the happiest illustration of the merits of Warbur- 
 ton 's edition is that which is given by Malone. Dr. 
 Warburton was ' a critic, who (as has been said of 
 Salmasius) seems to have erected his throne on a heap of 
 stones, that he might have them at hand to throw at the 
 heads of all those who passed by. His unbounded hcense 
 in substituting his own chimerical conceits in the place of 
 the author's genuine text, has been so fully shown by his 
 revisers, that I suppose no critical reader will again open 
 his volumes. An hundred strappadoes, according to an 
 Itahan comic writer, would not have induced Petrarch, 
 were he hving, to subscribe to the meaning which cer- 
 tam commentators after his death had by their glosses 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 367. 
 
1747.] CHARACTER OF WARBURTON'S SHAKSPEARE. 321 
 
 extorted from his works. It is a curious speculation to 
 consider how many thousand would have been requisite 
 for this editor to have inflicted on our great dramatic 
 poet for the same purpose. The defence which has been 
 made for Dr. Warburton, on this subject, by some of his 
 friends, is singular. ' He well knew,' it has been said, 
 ' that much the greater part of his notes do not throw any 
 Hght on the poet of whose works he undertook the revi- 
 sion, and that he frequently imputed to Shakspeare a 
 meaning of which he never thought ; but the editor's 
 great object was to display his own learning, not to 
 illustrate his author ; and this end he obtained ; for in 
 spite of all the clamour against him, his work added to 
 his reputation as a scholar.' Be it so, then ; but let none 
 of his admirers ever dare to unite his name wth that of 
 Shakspeare ; and let us at least be allowed to wonder, 
 that the learned editor should have had so little respect 
 for the greatest poet that has appeared since the days of 
 Homer, as to use a commentary on his works merely as 
 ' a stalking-horse, under presentation of which he might 
 shoot his wit.' * 
 
 The publication, as was to be expected, excited against 
 him attacks and sarcasms of every kind. ' As the pubhc 
 envy was now at its height,' says Hurd, ' from the rising 
 fortune, as well as fame, of the author, this edition 
 awakened a spirit of criticism which haunted him in 
 every shape of dull ridicule and solemn confutation. 
 Happening to speak of this in a letter written to him in 
 1749, he replies to me in the following hvely manner : 
 " I have, as you say, raised a spirit without designing it ; 
 and, while I thought I was only conjecturing, it seems I 
 was conjuring. So that I had no sooner evoked the name 
 of Shakspeare from the rotten monument of his former 
 editions, than a crew of strange devils, and more grotesque 
 
 * Malone's Preface to Shakspeare. 
 T 
 
322 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XVIH. 
 
 than any lie laughs at in the old farces, came chattering, 
 mewing, and grinning round about me." The outcry 
 against him was, indeed, pretty much what is here 
 pleasantly described.' * 
 
 His three great assailants were Edwards, author of the 
 ' Canons of Criticism ;' Heath, the eminent Greek scholar, 
 and reviser of Shakspeare's text ; and Zachary Grey, 
 the editor of ' Hudibras.' To whom may be added Upton, 
 in his ' Critical Observations on Shakspeare.' 
 
 The attack of Edwards is said to have had its origin 
 not wholly in regard for the text of Shakspeare, but 
 partly in personal animosity or dislike towards War- 
 burton. Thomas Edwards, the son of a country gentle- 
 man, who left him a smaU estate at Pitshanger, in 
 Middlesex, from Avhence he afterwards removed to Tur- 
 rick, in Buckinghamshire, was for a while in the army, 
 but afterwards studied the law, as his father and grand- 
 father had done, at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the 
 bar. An account of him in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,'f 
 copied by Disraeli, J says that he was educated at Eton, 
 and became a fellow of King's CoUege, Cambridge, and 
 was allowed to retain his fellowship after he entered the 
 army ; a permission which had also been granted to Sir 
 William Draper and Mr. Hare. But the truth is, that he 
 was educated at a private school, and was never a member 
 of either of the Universities. i§ It happened, however, 
 that, whde he was in the army, he visited Bath, soon after 
 Warburton's mariiage to Allen's niece, and was introduced 
 at P];ior Park, where he became a frequent guest. The 
 conversation often turned on hterary subjects, and War- 
 burton was fond of seizing opportunities of showing his 
 knowledge of Greek, not supposing th&.t the young officer 
 
 * Hurd's Life of Warbm-ton, p. 44 ; Letters from an Eminent Pre- 
 late, p. 13. 
 
 ■j- Vol. lii. p. 288. I Quarrels of Authors, Art. Warburton. 
 
 ^ Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vol. ii. p. 199; vol. ix. p. 623. 
 
1747.] THOMAS EDWAEDS. 323 
 
 had any acquaintance with the language ; till one day, 
 when a dispute arose in the library about some passage in 
 a Greek author, Edwards took down the book, and ex- 
 plained the passage in a sense quite contrary to that which 
 Warburton had given it. Warburton, however, was not 
 wiUing to own himself refuted, for 
 
 Ev'n though vanquish'd, he could argue still, 
 
 and endeavoured to support his own rendering. But 
 Edwards, knowing himself in the right, showed no incli- 
 nation to yield, and added to the offence of opposition 
 that of endeavouring to convince Warburton that his 
 misconception of the author arose from having trusted to 
 a French translation. This was unpardonable ; Warbur- 
 ton was irritated ; and, whatever may have been after- 
 wards said on either side, the two were thenceforward 
 mortal enemies. Disraeli says, but I know not on what 
 authority, that the argument took place in the presence 
 of Allen and his niece. Some doubt, it may be observed, 
 is thrown upon the story by an expression in Edwards's 
 dedication of the later echtions of the ' Canons of 
 Criticism ' to Warburton. For being called into public 
 notice, he says, ' I am more obliged to you, whom I do 
 not know, than to any other person whom I do.' If 
 Warburton and he had met several times at Allen's, why 
 should he have said that he did not know Warburton ? 
 Nor, it may be added, is there any allusion in the book 
 to Warburton's imperfect acquaintance with Greek, on 
 which it may be thought that Edwards, if he had had 
 personal conviction of it, would, as an enemy, be disposed 
 to cast some reflection ? 
 
 But certain it is, that, when Warburton's Shakspeare 
 appeared, Edwards sent to the press, in the same year, a 
 keen satire upon it, under the title of ' A Supplement to 
 Mr. Warburton's Edition of Shakspeare,' of which, before 
 the close of the year, a second edition was pubhshed, 
 
 T 2 
 
H24 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Oh. XVIII 
 
 and which, under the title of ' Canons of Criticism,' 
 reached at least a seventh edition. He had some assist- 
 ance in the work from Mr. Eichard Eoderick, a fellow of 
 Magdalen College, Cambridge, and a friend of Bishop 
 Newton, the editor of Milton.* 
 
 Edwards continued to make additions, for the further 
 exposure of Warburton, in the successive editions ; for 
 which, indeed, Warburton gave him sufficient provocation ; 
 for though he made no direct reply to Edwards, he took 
 occasion to express bitter contempt of him, and certainly 
 in the most ungentlemauly and outrageous terms, ia his 
 notes on Pope's works, published in 1751. In a note on 
 the ' Essay on Criticism,' f where it is said that envy will 
 pursue merit, and that the great must expect to be an- 
 noyed by the inferior, he says, ' Sir Walter Ealeigh had 
 Alexander Eoss, Chilhngworth had his Cheynel, and 
 Locke his Edwards ; not fungoso of Lincoln's Inn. Mr. 
 Locke's Edwards was a divine of parts and learning ; 
 this Edwards is a critic vidth neither. Yet (as Mr. Pope says 
 of Luke Milbourne) the fairest of all critics ; for, having 
 written against the editor's remarks on Shakspeare, he 
 did him justice by printing at the same time his own.' 
 And in the ' Dunciad,' on the hues 
 
 Her children, first, of more distinguished sort, 
 Who study Shakspeare at the Inns of Court,| 
 
 he inserts this note, with the signature Scriblerus : ' lU 
 would that schohast discharge his duty, who should 
 neglect to honour those whom Dulness has distinguished, 
 or suffer them to lie forgotten, when their rare modesty 
 would have left them nameless. Let us not, therefore, 
 overlook the services which have been done her cause by 
 one Mr. Thomas Edwards, a gentleman, as he is pleased to 
 
 * Pref to Canons of Criticism, seventh ed. ; Nichols's Lit. lUustr. 
 vol. ii. p. 838. 
 
 I Ver. 463. % iv. 567. 
 
1747.] 'CANONS OF CEITICISM.' 323 
 
 call himself, of Lincoln's Inn, but, in reality, a gentleman 
 only of the " Dunciad ;" or, to speak him better, in the 
 plain language of our honest ancestors to such mush- 
 rooms, a gentleman of the last edition ; who, nobly eluding 
 the sohcitude of his careful father, very early retained 
 himself in the cause of Dulness against Shakspeare, and 
 with the wit and wisdom of his ancestor Tom Thimble, 
 in the " Eehearsal," and with the air of good nature and 
 pohteness of Cahban, in the " Tempest," hath now hap- 
 pily finished the dunce's progress in personal abuse. For 
 a libeller is nothing but a Grub Street critic run to seed. 
 Lamentable is the dulness of these gentlemen of the 
 " Dunciad." This fungoso and his friends, who are all 
 gentlemen, have exclaimed much against us for reflecting 
 on his birth, in the words a gentleman of the last edition, 
 which we hereby declare concerns, not his hirth, but his 
 adoption only, and mean no more than that he is become 
 a gentleman of the last edition of the " Dunciad.'" Since 
 gentlemen, then, are so captious, we thmk it proper to 
 declare that Mr. Thomas Thimble, who is here said to be 
 Mr. Thomas Edwards's ancestor, is only related to him by 
 the Muse's side.' 
 
 Edwards, in a subsequent edition of his book, noticed 
 this annotation as follows, as an illustration to the seven- 
 teenth of his canons, "■ It wiU be necessary for the 
 professed critic to have by him a good number of pe- 
 dantic and abusive expressions, to throw about upon 
 proper occasions.' ' The hcense of abuse mentioned 
 under this canon,' says he, ' being the professed critic's 
 imdoubted privilege, he may call any person whom he 
 dislikes, 
 
 A Gentleman of the " Dunciad," 
 
 A Mushroom, 
 
 A Gentleman of the last edition, 
 
 A Grub Street critic run to seed, and 
 
 A Libeller ; 
 
326 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON-. [Ch. XVIII. 
 
 but I would advise him to be cautious how he uses the 
 last appellation, because he may chance to meet with 
 some people who, not knowing, or not allowing, his 
 privilege, may very uncritically move for an information- 
 against him in the Court of King's Bench. 
 
 ' And if the terms he chooses to employ are so gross 
 that he is ashamed to use them in English, he may call 
 
 his betters son of a b , or any other hard name, in 
 
 Latin, with some success ; though his reputation for wit 
 and good manners will not extend quite so far as if the 
 compliment had been made in the vulgar tongue.' 
 
 The last paragraph refers to the word Caj^jis in the 
 lines of Horace, prefixed to Warburton's ' Eemarks on 
 Several Occasional Eeflections,' of which Edwards's trans- 
 lation is given above. 
 
 Edwards also dedicated an edition of his book to 
 Warburton, concluding thus : ' I take this opportunity 
 of thanking you for that civH treatment, so becoming a 
 gentleman and a clergyman, which I have received at 
 your hands, and to offer to yom^ protection a work, from 
 ivhieh, if Shakspeare, or good letters, have received any 
 advantaije, and the public any benefit or entertainment, the 
 thanks are due to Mr. Warburt07i ;' turning Warburton's 
 own words, in his Preface, against himself. 
 
 In his Preface, also, to the same edition, he addresses 
 Warburton thus : ' I have read Shakspeare at Lincoln's 
 Inn, and have published my " Canons of Criticism ;" and 
 for this I am to be degraded of my gentihty. A severe 
 sentence this ; I find that reading Shakspeare is a greater 
 crime than high treason. Had I been guilty of the latter, 
 I must have been indicted by my addition, tried by my 
 peers, and should not have lost my blood tiU I had been 
 attainted ; whereas, here the punishment is incurred ipso 
 facto without jury or trial. 
 
 ' I might complain of Mr. Warburton to his Masters of 
 the Bench, for degrading a barrister of their house by his 
 
1747.] RETOETS ON WARBURTON. 327 
 
 sole authority ; but I will only reason coolly with him 
 upon the equity of this new proceeding. 
 
 'A gentleman (if I do not mean myself, with Mr. 
 Warburton's leave I may use that word), I say, a gentle- 
 man, designed for the severe study of the law, must not 
 presume to read, much less to make any observations on 
 Shakspeare, while a Minister of Christ, a divine of the 
 Church of England, and one who, if either of the Univer- 
 sities would have given him that honour, woidd have 
 been a Doctor in Divinity, or, as in his Preface he 
 decently expresses it, of the occult sciences ; he, I say, may 
 leave the care of his hving in the country, and his 
 chapel in town, to curates, and spend his heaven- 
 devoted hours in writing obscene and immoral notes on 
 that author, and imputing to him sentiments which he 
 would have been ashamed of. 
 
 'Who is Mr. Warburton ? Wliat is his biith, or whence 
 his privilege, that the reputations of men both Hving and 
 dead, of men in birth, character, station, in every instance 
 of true worthiness, much his superiors, must he at the 
 mercy of his petulant satire, to be hacked and mangled as 
 his ill-mannered spleen shall prompt him, while it shaU be 
 unlawful for anybody, under penalty of degradation, to 
 laugh at the unscholar-like blunders, the crude and far- 
 fetched conceits, the illiberal and indecent reflections, 
 which he has endeavoured, with so much self-sufficiency 
 and arrogance, to put off upon the world as a standard of 
 true criticism ? ' 
 
 It is impossible to open Edwards's book anywhere 
 without lighting on the most ludicrous exposures of War- 
 burton's vagaries. As the volume is not in everyone's 
 hands, a few specimens shall be given. Warburton him- 
 self suggested the notion and title of the work, for he 
 ' had intended,' he said in his Preface, ' to have given the 
 reader a body of canons for literal criticism, drawn out in 
 form ; as well such as concern the art in general, as those 
 
328 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XVIII. 
 
 that arise from the nature and circumstances of our 
 author's works in particular ; but these uses,' he adds, 
 ' may be well supplied by what is occasionally said upon 
 the subject in the course of the following remarks : ' 'He 
 had designed also,' he observes, ' to give " a general alpha- 
 betic glossary" of peculiar terms, but as each of these is 
 explained in its proper place, there seemed the less occa- 
 sion for such an index.' On these hints Edwards spake. 
 He gave a series of canons, deduced from Warburton's 
 practice, and exemplified from his annotations ; and sub- 
 joined a glossary filled with definitions and explanations 
 of Warburton's own produce. 
 
 Of the canons, twenty-five in all, some are very happy 
 pieces of satire : 
 
 ' A professed critic has a right to declare that his author 
 -wrote whatever he thinks he ought to have written, with 
 as much positiveness as if he had been at his elbow. 
 
 ' When he does not hke an expression, and yet cannot 
 mend it, he may abuse his author for it. 
 
 ' Or he may condemn it as a foohsh interpolation. 
 
 'As every author is to be corrected into all possible 
 perfection, and of that perfection the professed critic is the 
 sole judge, he may alter any word or phrase, which does 
 not want amendment, or which will do, provided he can 
 think of anything which he imagines will do better. 
 
 ' He may interpret his author so as to make him mean 
 directly contrary to what he says. 
 
 ' He needs not attend to the low accuracy of ortho- 
 graphy or pointing, but may ridicule such trivial criticisms 
 in others. 
 
 ' Yet, when he pleases to condescend to such work, he 
 may value himself upon it. 
 
 ' He may explain a difficult passage by words absolutely 
 uninteUigible. 
 
 ' He may contradict himself for the sake of shovdng his 
 critical skill on both sides of the question. 
 
1747.] WARBUKTON'S EMENDATIONS. 329 
 
 ' He may use the very same reasons for confirming his 
 own observations whicli he has disallowed in his adversary. 
 
 ' He may alter any passage of his author without reason 
 and against the copies, and then quote the passage so 
 altered as authority for altering any other.' 
 
 The examples of Warburton's audacity, given under 
 each canon, are selected with no less felicity. 
 
 In King Lear, Act iii. sc. 3, the fool says : 
 
 I'll speak a prophecy or e'er I go ; 
 
 a line which would surely be thought, by most critics, 
 sound enough to remain undisturbed; but Warburton, 
 denying that ' or e'er I go ' is Enghsh, though scores of 
 examples of it may be found, declares that the verse 
 should stand thus : 
 
 I'll speak a proph'cy or two, e'er I go; 
 
 a fine specimen of metrical harmony. 
 
 In 1 Hemy VI., Act in. sc. 4, editors were content with 
 
 — wlioso draws a sword, 't is present death ; 
 
 but Warburton pronounces that Shakspeare must have 
 written : 
 
 — whoso draws a sword i' th' presence, 't 's death, 
 
 'A phrase,' says Edwards, 'which seems to have been 
 penned for Cadmus when in the state of a serpent.' 
 Othello, Act iii. sc. 7, exclaims : 
 
 Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, 
 The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife ; 
 
 But Warburton is not satisfied with ' ear-piercing,' alleging 
 that it is not expressive of effect on the hearers, which the 
 epithet attached to ' fife ' ought to denote, and therefore 
 reads, or rather writes, 
 
 — th' fear-'spersing fife, 
 
 which Edwards declares to be such a piece of verse as ' no 
 
330 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON'. [Ch. XVIII. 
 
 poet, nor indeed any man who had half an ear, would have 
 thought of; ' and on which Heath remarks : ' Shakspeare 
 certainly wrote his tragedies with a view to their being 
 acted, and, if acted, consequently to their being pro- 
 nounced. Now I will defy any organs of speech to 
 pronounce Mr. Warburton's emendation.' 
 In 2 Hemy IV., Act. i. sc. 1, we have 
 
 — and doth enlarge his rising, 
 
 that is, ' increase his army,' but Warburton thinks it pro- 
 bable that Shakspeare wrote 
 
 — doth enlard his rising ; 
 
 that is, ' fatten and encourage ' his rising. 
 In Timon of Athens, Act iv. sc. 3, we find 
 
 The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves 
 The moon into salt tears. 
 
 But ' the sea melting the moon into tears,' says Warburton, 
 ' is, I believe, a secret in philosophy which nobody but 
 Shakspeare's deep editors ever dream'd of,' and ' 't is more 
 reasonable to beheve that Shakspeare may allude to the 
 opinion that the saltness of the sea is caused by several 
 ranges or mounds of rock salt under water,' and ' this I 
 think a sufficient authority for changing moon into mounds:'' 
 
 The sea 's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves 
 The mounds into salt tears. 
 
 We read in Julius Cassar, Act i. sc. 3 : 
 
 — the complexion of th' element 
 Is fev'rous ; 
 
 ' But,' says Warburton, * we find from the preceding rela- 
 tion that it was not one element only which was disturbed, 
 but all ; being told that aU the sway of the earth shook 
 hke a thing infirm ; that the winds rived the knotty oaks ; 
 
1747.] WARBURTON'S NOTES. ' 331 
 
 that the ocean rag'd and foam'd, and that there was a 
 tempest dropping Jire. So that all the four elements appear 
 to be disordered. We should read, therefore : 
 
 — the complexion of the elements, 
 
 which is confirmed by the following line : 
 
 Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible ; 
 
 bloody referring to the water, fiery to the air and fire ; 
 and terrible to the earthquakes' ' This reading, with its 
 explanation, is given,' retorts Edwards, • as far as I can 
 conjectm-e, for these reasons : Bloody is referred to the 
 ivater, because no mention is made of water in the passage ; 
 fiery to the air and fire, because the air was on fire, and 
 't is hard if a thing may not refer to itself ; and, lastly, as 
 for terrible to the earthquakes, when Mr. Warburton gives 
 us any reason why terrible must refer to earthquakes rather 
 than to any other objects of terror (except because terra 
 is Latin for the earth), I wiU promise to take this off his 
 hands again.' ' The passage in the speech of Casca,' he 
 adds, ' to which Warburton refers, has nothing in it that 
 can lead us to imagine anything is there meant except 
 disorders and commotions in the air. " Shakes the earth " 
 evidently relates, not to an earthquake, but to the thunder; 
 a " tempest dropping fire " is a proof that the air is in 
 disorder, but the element of fire is no more disturbed in 
 this than in any other of its common operations. As for 
 the "rising winds" and the "foaming ocean," they are 
 not spoken of by Casca as circumstances then present, but 
 as things which he had formerly seen. 
 
 ' It may be thought, perhaps, that the difference between 
 the two readings, " element " and " elements," is not of con- 
 sequence enough to spend so much time about ; but, how- 
 ever trifling may be the difference, Mr. Warburton's 
 reasoning about it is absurd and ridiculous : 
 
332 • LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Cii. XVIII. 
 
 — we must not give advantage 
 To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme. 
 For depravation.'* 
 
 Warburton's comments are, indeed, often equally ludi- 
 crous with his alterations of the text. ' Mary Queen of 
 Scots,' he says, 'is called a Mermaid,f to denote her 
 beauty and intemperate lust :' 
 
 Ut turpiter atrum 
 Desinat in pisoem mulier formosa superne, 
 
 ' Which,' remarks Edwards, ' those who do not understand 
 Latin wiU perhaps think is a proof of what our critic 
 asserts, or at least something to his pwyose.' On the words, 
 ' Friends of my soul,' in King Lear, Warburton remarks, 
 'A Spanish phrase: Amigo de mi Alma: -Just with the 
 same acuteness,' rephes his antagonist, ' a Spanish critic, 
 meeting with the expression, Amigo de mi Alma, might 
 say, An EngHsh phrase, Friends of my soul' On Sir John 
 Palstaff's exclamation,^ ' Here 's Ume in this sack too ; 
 there is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous 
 man ! ' he observes that Ume was generaUy considered to 
 be a cause of the stone, but that the efficacy of Mrs. 
 Stephens's medicme had refuted that opmion.' Li ' Much 
 Ado about Nothing,' § we have ' past the infinite of 
 thought.' ' Human thought,' exclaims Warburton, ' can- 
 not sure be called infinite, with any kind of propriety. I 
 suppose the true reading was definite.' On Palstaff's 
 saying, ' If I travel but four foot by the square farther 
 on foot,' II Warburton has this absurd note : 
 
 ' The thought is humorous, and alludes to his bulk ; 
 insinuating that, his legs being four foot asunder, when he 
 advanced four foot, this put together made four foot 
 square,' which gives occasion to the following animad- 
 version from Edwards : 
 
 * Troilus and Cressida, act v. sc. 2. f Mids. N. D. act ii. sc. 2. 
 if 1 Hen. IV. act ii. so. 4. § Act ii. sc. 3. 
 
 II 1 Hen. IV. act ii. sc 2. 
 
1747.] 'SQUARE OF SENSE.' 333 
 
 ' According to this known rule, let us measure the leap 
 of the dancer in the " Winter's Tale," who jumped twelve 
 foot and a-lialf by the square, i.e., twelve foot and a-half 
 forwards, and as much sideways. But whether he did 
 this by jumping in the diagonal, or whether he carried 
 his legs twelve foot and a-half asunder, is not very easily 
 determined. 
 
 ' For want of attending to this mensuration, a very fine 
 piece of humour also will be lost to the reader in 2 Henry 
 rV., where FalstaiF says to Prince John of Lancaster : " I 
 speeded hither with the extremest inch of possibility ;" insinu- 
 ating, without question, that on this occasion of the battle 
 he travelled by the inch square (for, though square be not 
 expressed here, I am persuaded it is understood), and 
 carried his legs not above an inch asunder. An extremely 
 natural posture for a coward in a battle. 
 
 ' By the square in both places it is evident that Shaks- 
 peare means nothing more than a common measure, or 
 footrule.' 
 
 A not less ridiculous note on the word square is given 
 by Warburton on this line in King Lear : 
 
 Whicli tlie most precious square of sense possesses. 
 
 ' By the square of sense,' he says, ' we are to understand 
 the four nobler senses, viz., the sight, hearing, taste, and 
 smell. , For a young lady could not with decency insinuate 
 that she knew of any pleasure which the fifth afforded. 
 This is imagined with great propriety and dehcacy.' 
 
 ' I beheve,' rejoins Edwards, ' that Shakspeare uses 
 square for the fuU complement of all the senses ; and that 
 this imagined propriety and dehcacy Mr. Warburton ought 
 to have the praise of : who seems to have been thinking of 
 the sixth sense, instead of the fifth, when he wrote the note.' 
 
 In the Winter's Tale three swine-herds are mentioned 
 ' that have made themselves all men of hair ; they call 
 themselves saltiers,' ' that is,' says Warburton, ' they are 
 
334 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XVIH. 
 
 " nimble " men, " that leap as if they rebomided." The 
 phrase is taken from tennis-balls, which were stufF'd with 
 hair.' Warburton, observes Edwards, should have fixed 
 liis attention, not upon ' men of hair,' but upon ' saltiers,' 
 and changed it to satyrs, the men being doubtless made 
 all over hairy, perhaps clad in goats' skins. 
 
 In ' Measure for Measure,' Act. ii. sc. 2, we have ' prayers 
 from preserved souls.' Warburton adds, in perfect con- 
 fidence, this note : ' The metaphor is taken from fruits, 
 preserved in sugar.' 
 
 The only passage of Edwards's book of which Warburton 
 took any notice, was one in which he made merry with a 
 blunder ; whether Warburton's own, or the printer's, may 
 be doubtful. Pope, in a note on ' Measure for Measure,' 
 observed that the story of it was taken from Cinthio's 
 Novels, 'Dec. 8, Nov. 5,' which, in Warburton's edition, 
 appeared thus : ' December 8, November 5.' ' Whether 
 Warburton,' says Edwards, ' thought the story was so long, 
 that it held for two days, and, not being finished the first, 
 Avas resvimed again at almost a twelve month's distance ; 
 or whether he designed to hint that Cinthio wrote his Tale 
 on the eighth .of December, and Shakspeare his Play on the 
 fifth of November, we can only conjectm-e.' Warburton 
 makes this retort : ' There is a set of still lower creatures 
 than these [the small critics], at the tail of which is one 
 Edwards, who can make shift even on a printer's blunder. 
 The late Editor of " Shakspeare " gave order to the cor- 
 rector of the press that all Mr. Pope's notes should be 
 printed in their places. In one of these there was mention 
 made, as they say, of some Italian novels (I forget whose) 
 in which Dec. and Nov. were printed thus contractedly. 
 But the printers of the late edition lengthened them into 
 December and November, and in this condition they are 
 charged upon the Editor by this Edwards. Now, was the 
 man such a dunce as to make his criticism with good faith, 
 he is much to be pitied ; was he such a knave as to make 
 
1747.] AKENSIDE'S ODE TO EDWARDS. 335 
 
 it without, he is much more to be pitied.' * Edwards 
 made a rejoinder in his next edition, when, remarking 
 on anotlier blunder in a note on the ' Taming of the 
 Shrew,' where a line oY Spenser is quoted as from the 
 'Fairy Queen, Book xi. chap. 9,' he observes that, 
 unless Mr. Warburton has found Spenser's last six books, 
 supposed to be lost in the Irish Sea, the misquotation 
 must be considered as a n)ere printer's blunder, for 
 'though, in an outlandish Itahan book, he might take 
 Decade and Novel for December and November,' yet in a 
 poet of his own country, whom he has so much studied, 
 he could hardly take ' B. ii. c. 9 ' for ' Book the eleventh, 
 chapter the ninth.' But ' as to the Duncery or Knavery^ 
 he adds, ' of imputing to Mr. Warburton himself this pre- 
 tended blunder of his printer, we would observe, in the 
 first place, that the very great number of cancelled leaves 
 in his edition of " Shakspeare " led us to think that it was 
 revised with extraordinary care and exactness, and, conse- 
 quently, that the many blunders in speUing, pointing, and 
 the hke, were as certainly his as those in reasoning and 
 emending.' f 
 
 Akenside, when he addressed, a few years afterwards, 
 an ' Ode to Edwards on "Warburton's edition of Pope,' did 
 not forget to notice that of ' Shakspeare,' and to intimate 
 what the great poet must have thought of the Commen- 
 tary attached to his Works, supposing that, in the Elysian 
 fields, it was brought to his knowledge : 
 
 Then Shakspeare, debonnair and mild, 
 
 Brought that strange comment forth to view, 
 
 ' Conceits more deep,' he said, and smil'd, 
 ' Than his own fools or madmen knew ;' 
 
 But thank'd a generous friend above, 
 
 Who did, with free adventurous love, 
 
 Such pageants from his tomb remove. 
 
 * Warbiu-ton's Pope ; note on Imit. of Hor. B. ii. ep. 2 ; vol. iv. 
 p. 226. 
 
 I Canons of Criticism, canons viii. and xviii. pp. 129, 192. 
 
336 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUBTON. [Ch. XVIE. 
 
 Hurd makes a very unhappy attempt in defence of 
 Warburton as a critic. He quotes from the ' Nouvelles 
 de la Eepublique des Lettres,' June 1684, the following 
 apology of ' an eminent French wnter ' for Joseph Scahger : 
 ' Je ne s9ais si on ne pourroit pas dire que Scahger avoit 
 trop d'esprit, et trop de science, pour faire un bon com- 
 mentaire ; car k force d'avoir de I'esprit, il trouvoit dans 
 les auteurs qu'il commentoit, plus de finesse, et plus de 
 genie, qu'ils n'en avoient efFectivement ; et sa profonde 
 htterature etoit cause qu'il voyoit mille rapports entre 
 les pensees d'un auteur et quelque point rare d'antiquite. 
 De sorte qu'il s'imaginoit que son auteur avoit fait quelque 
 allusion k ce point d'antiquite, et sur ce pied-lk il corri- 
 geoit un passage. Si on n'aime mieux s'imaginer que 
 I'envie d'eclaircir un mistere d' erudition, inconnu aux 
 autres critiques, I'engageoit k supposer qu'il se trouvoit 
 dans un tel ou tel passage. Quoiqu'il en soit, les commen- 
 taires qui viennent de lui sontpleins de conjectures hardies, 
 ing&iieuses, et fort S9avantes, mais il n'est gueres appa- 
 rent que les auteurs ayent songe k tout ce qu'il leur fait 
 dire. On s'eloigne de leur sens aussi bien quand on a 
 beaucoup d'esprit, que quand on n'en a pas.' 
 
 Supported by these sentiments, Hurd boldly makes the 
 assertion that ' as to what concerns the emendation of the 
 text, the abler the critic, the more hable he is to some 
 extravagance of conjecture, as we see in the case of Bentley 
 himself; it being dulness, and not judgment, that best 
 secures him from this sort of imputation.' A more extra- 
 ordinary doctrhie, in respect to criticism, was never pro- 
 pounded. It argues that the abler the critic, the more 
 numerous will be his offences against just criticism ; that 
 Bentley 's errors in criticism were proportioned to his 
 eininence as a critic ; and that stupidity is of far more use 
 than judgment in quahfying a critic to excel in his art. 
 The general belief has been the very reverse. It has been 
 commonly thought that the ablest critics have possessed 
 
1747.] HEATH'S ' EEVISAL OP SHAKSPEARE S TEXT. 337 
 
 the most judgment ; that the proof of Bentley's, eminence 
 as a critic lies in something different from his proneness 
 to extravagant conjecture; and that stupidity will secure 
 nobody from guessing fooHshly. The most excellent verbal 
 critic, probably, that has ever appeared in the world, was 
 Eichard Porson ; and the next, perhaps, Gottlob Heyne ; 
 but neither of them was raised to critical distinction by 
 want of judgment ; nor secured from error by dulness ; 
 nor is their abihty established by propensity to outrageous 
 conjecture. How Uttle dulness, or want of judgment, 
 has to do with the duty of an editor, Hurd might have 
 learned from Johnson's Preface to ' Shakspeare.' 
 
 Heath, whom we have next to mention among War- 
 burton's antagonists, was a far different assailant from 
 Edwards. Edwards was desirous to criticise in sport ; 
 Heath was disposed to censure with more of gravity. He 
 was a good scholar, and had employed a portion of the 
 leisure which his occupation as a barrister allowed him, 
 in writing notes on the Greek tragic poets, many of which 
 are extremely judicious, though his remarks on the 
 metres were so far from satisfying Hermann, that he 
 called him, to the great indignation of Dr. Parr, ineptus 
 metrorum omnium jjercUtor. * He then, irritated at 
 Warburton's audacity as a commentator, took to writiirg 
 notes on Shakspeare, which, after keeping them six years 
 in his desk, he pubhshed, with a dedication to Lord 
 Kames, ' the truest judge and most intelligent admirer of 
 Shakspeare ;' caUing them ' an imperfect attempt towards 
 rescuing Shakspeare's remains from the hcentious inno- 
 vations of injudicious criticism.' But he came to his 
 task furnished with scarcely sufficient critical aids ; for he 
 possessed neither of the folio editions, nor any of the old 
 quartos ; nor had he seen Sir Thomas Hanmer's edition ; 
 
 * Herm. ad Hec. ver. 1002. 
 Z 
 
338 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON". [Ch. XVIU. 
 
 yet, by gathering sucli readings of the older copies as 
 were noticed by Theobald and others, and weighing the 
 remarks of his critical predecessors, he produced a number 
 of very sensible annotations, which seem to have de- 
 served, from succeeding critics, more notice than they 
 have received. 
 
 In estimating the performances of some of those who 
 went before him, he allows much praise to Theobald, 
 whose careful collation of original editions enabled him to 
 restore many passages on indisputable authority ; a merit 
 in which Pope had some, but not an equal, share. Of 
 Theobald's efforts in conjecture, he says that, though 
 often feeble, they were sometimes not unsuccessful. But 
 of Warbm-ton's ' pompous and solemn pretensions, calcu- 
 lated to raise the highest expectations in the reader, 
 expectations surely never before so miserably defeated by 
 the execution,' he cannot speak with patience. He has 
 ' found occasion,' he says, ' in the course of his reading, 
 to have recourse to critical writers in more than one lan- 
 guage, but he has never yet had the fortune to meet with 
 one so pecuharly unhappy. The licentiousness of his 
 criticism overleaps all bounds or restraint, while the 
 shshtest glitter of a heated imagination is sufficient to 
 lead him into the most improbable conjectures, which 
 are at the same time constantly enforced by the authori- 
 tative and frequently almost oracular manner m which 
 they are deUvered.' 
 
 By these extracts from the Preface to the 'Eevisal,' 
 the reader may judge of the spirit of the work itself, of 
 which, having been so hberal of quotations from Edwards, 
 we shall forbear to encumber our pages with specimens. 
 
 Of the hostihty between Warburton and Zachary Grey 
 it seems impossible to discover the origin. When Grey 
 was collecting materials for his ' Hudibras,' Warburton, 
 as we have seen, readily supplied him, at the solicitation 
 
1747.] ZACHAKY GREY. 339 
 
 of Tunstall, with such annotations as he had at hand ; 
 though he expressed, at the same time, in a letter to 
 Birch, some want of good feehng towards Grey. Grey 
 ' spoke to Mr. TunstaU,' he says, ' to desire him to get 
 what I had on that author for him ; and, purely to obhge 
 the latter, I had transcribed the margin of my book for 
 him, excepting what relates to the history of those times, 
 which Grey, I supposed, was perfectly versed m. You 
 know the man ; but I could not deny a friend.'* Wliy 
 Warburton showed this distrust is nowhere manifested. 
 Grey appears to have been generally regarded as a man 
 of honour and good faith. His proposals for pubhshing 
 ' Hudibras ' are said to have been so well received that 
 he cleared, by the subscription, fifteen hundred pounds. 
 His book was, indeed, ridiculed by the wits, as carrying 
 too much of commentators' lumber. Fielding, in his 
 - Journey to Lisbon,' alludes to ' the laborious much-read 
 Zachary Grey,' and the ' redundant notes ' on his ' Hudi- 
 bras,' ' the single book extant in which above five hundred 
 authors are quoted, not one of which could be found in 
 the collection of the late Dr. Mead ;' but, whatever was 
 said against the commentator, no reflections were cast on 
 the man. But Warburton seems to have conceived, or 
 assumed, dislike to Grey in both characters ; and, in his 
 Preface to Shakspeare, passed this sentence on him and 
 his ' Hudibras ' : ' If the folhes of particular men were 
 sufficient to bring any branch of learning into disrepute, 
 I do not know any that would stand in a worse situation 
 than that for which I now apologise,' meaning the art of 
 the commentator ; ' for,' he adds, ' I hardly thiak there 
 ever appeared, in any learned language, so execrable a 
 heap of nonsense, under the name of commentaries, as hath 
 lately been given us on a certain satiric poet, of the last 
 age, by his editor and coadjutor.' The coadjutor meant 
 
 » Letter to Birch, Aug. 12, 1741 ; Nicliols's Lit. 111. vol. ii. p. 124. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 LIFK OF BISHOP "WARBURTON. [Ch. XVIIL 
 
 is Dr. Joseph Smith, who had incurred Warburton's 
 displeasure by assisting Hanmer also in his edition of 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Alexander Chalmers, in his article on Grey, can only 
 consider Warburton's attack as wanton and unprovoked; 
 and Disraeli, who endeavoured to find a cause for it, 
 could imagine no other than that Warburton, having 
 himself contemplated an edition of Butler, ' sickened ' at 
 seeing, when Dr. Grey's appeared, how much he was 
 excelled by Grey in the knowledge requisite for an 
 effective commentary on Butler's great poem. 
 
 Whatever was the truth of the matter. Grey did not 
 bear Warburton's haughty censures in silence. He 
 hurled against him three pamphlets : 1. ' Eemarks upon a 
 late Edition of Shakspeare, with a long string of Emen- 
 dations borrowed by the celebrated Editor from the 
 Oxford Edition without Acknowledgment.' 2. 'A Word 
 or two of Advice to William Warburton, a Dealer in 
 Many Words. By a Friend. With an Appendix con- 
 taining a Taste of Wilham's Spirit of Eailing.' 3. 'A 
 Eree and Eamihar Letter to that great Eefiner of Pope 
 and Shakspeare, the Eev. Mr. WiUiam Warburton.' Nor, 
 when he published his 'Notes on Shakspeare,' in two 
 volumes, eight years afterwards, did he forget to notice 
 Warburton in his Preface, adverting to his unreasonable 
 abuse of Sir Thomas Hanmer, and calhng him ' a gentle- 
 man whose slander stands for nothing with every candid 
 and ingenuous person.' 
 
 In the first of his pamphlets he states that Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer frequently complained among his friends that 
 Warburton had puffed off as his own many emendations 
 which he had received from Sir Thomas under promise of 
 secresy. But as Hanmer and Warburton had been in 
 intimate communication about Shakspeare, and Warbur- 
 ton's papers had been in Hamner's hands, it must always 
 be doubtful which was the greater borrower from the other. 
 
1747.] GREY'S BEMARES ON WARBURTON. 341 
 
 He touches on some of Warburton's emendations. In 
 ' As You Like It,' in the stanza, 
 
 Blow, blow, thou winter wind. 
 Thou art not so unkind 
 
 As man's ingratitude ; 
 Thy tooth is not so keen, 
 Because thou art not seen, 
 
 Although thy breath be rude, 
 
 Warburton altered ' seen ' into sheen, to which he gave 
 the sense of ' smiling, hke an ungrateful court servant, 
 who flatters while he wounds, which was a very good 
 reason for giving the winter's wind the preference.' He 
 also adduced three quotations to support his interpreta- 
 tion, but in all these Grey very justly replied that it 
 means shining, bright. ' But the reason,' he adds, ' that 
 Warburton would have sheen signify what it never did 
 before, is that he knew shining flattery would be shining 
 nonsense ; but that smiling flattery would be very good 
 sense.' As for the real sense of the words, ' because thou 
 art not seen,' Grey supposes them to mean, ' because thou 
 art no flatterer ; thou art so far from presenting a de- 
 ceitful outside, that thou presentest no outside, no appear- 
 ance at aU.' 
 
 He, as well as Edwards, made merry with Warbm-ton's 
 note on Grumio's words in the ' Taming of the Shrew,'* 
 the oats have eaten up the horses. ' Oats,' says Warburton's 
 explanation, ' is the distemper so called.' ' Mr. Warbur- 
 ton,' says Edwards, ' has discovered one distemper incident 
 to horses which neither Markham, Newcastle, Soleysel, 
 nor Bracken, ever dreamed off ' Mr. Warburton,' says 
 Grey, ' has confused oats with bots, a disease mentioned 
 in 1 K Hen. IV., Act ii. sc. 1.' 
 
 Opheha says that ' the owl was a baker's daughter.' 
 ' This was a metamorphosis,' observes Warburton, ' of the 
 common people, arising from the mealy appearance of the 
 
 * Act iii. sc. 8. f Canons of Criticism, can. vi. ex. 19. 
 
342 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XYHI. 
 
 owl's feathers, and her guarding the bread from mice.' 
 ' You mean,' retorts Grey, ' guarding the corn in the 
 hams, owls being of great use in such places, but not in 
 bakers' shops, as every farmer and baker in the neigh- 
 bourhood could have informed you.' 
 
 But as to alterations in the text, Warburton's ' emenda- 
 tion of emendations,' says Dr. Grey,* ' is the change of 
 cap to cup in " Coriolanus,"-j- " Take my cup, Jupiter, 
 and I thank thee ; hoo, Marcius coming home ! " with this 
 reason and explanation of the correction : " I will offer a 
 libation to thee for thy good news," which was the 
 custom at tliat time ; and there is a pleasantry in his way 
 of expressing it very agreeable to his (Menenius's) con- 
 vivial character. But the editors, not knowing this use 
 of the cup, altered it to cap.' Here is abundance of 
 absurdity ; the editors are represented as not knowing 
 that a cup was used for libations ; and libations are made 
 to be offered by throwing up a cup into the air, or 
 holding it up for Jupiter to take it. Johnson very kindly 
 spares this alteration of Warburton's, by leaving it alto- 
 gether unnoticed, and merely observing, ' Shakspeare so 
 often mentions throwmg up caps in this play, that Me- 
 neniiis may be well enough supposed to throw up his cap 
 in thanks to Jupiter.' 
 
 Upton's ' Critical Observations on Shakspeare ' are weU 
 known. The first edition of them was pubhshed before 
 Warburton's ' Shakspeare ' appeared. He offended War- 
 burton, he says, by noticing Theobald without alluding 
 to Theobald's coadjutor, the author of ' The Divine Le- 
 gation.' Warburton vindictively took occasion to speak 
 with contempt of the ' Critical Observations.' Upton 
 retaliated in a Preface to his second edition, in which he 
 exposed many of Warburton's transformations of the text, 
 
 * Remarks upon a Late Edition of Shakspeare, &c. f Act ii. sc. 1. 
 
1747.] MERITS OF WABBURTON'S ' SHAKSPBAEE.' 343 
 
 calling them errors ' such as the most inveterate enemy 
 would pity, did not an unusual insolence destroy every 
 degree of pity.' Warburton then prepared a gibbet for 
 Upton in one of his ' established places of execution,' a 
 note in the margin of the ' Dunciad,' sneering at him as 
 ' a renegado critic,' who directed against Pope's com- 
 mentator all the virulence which the Gildons and Dennises 
 had displayed against Pope ; but this note, from some 
 cause, was cancelled before pubhcation, though a re- 
 ference to it still stands in the Index.* 
 
 But it would be unjust to Warburton, after having 
 noticed so many of his unhappy attempts at correction, not 
 to specify one or two of his more fortunate efforts. His 
 palmary emendation, as he himself would perhaps have 
 called it, is that in ' Hamlet,' which Johnson declared to 
 ' set the critic almost on a level with the author.' In the 
 speech of Hamlet, Act ii. sc. 2, which, in the old copies, 
 stands, ' For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, 
 being a good kissing carrion — Have you a daughter ? ' 
 he altered ' a good kissing carrion ' into ' a god, kissmg 
 carrion,' a reading which has since been universally 
 adopted. His comment on the jjassage, which Johnson, 
 according to Malone, admired more than the emenda- 
 tion, is able and acute, though the remark about ' man- 
 kind, dead in original sin, breeding only corruption and 
 vices,' might well have been excluded from an annota- 
 tion on Shakspeare. His observation that Hamlet is 
 made to leave what he was saying unfinished, and start 
 aside to the question about Polonius's daughter, lest his 
 talk should seem too consequential for insanity, is ex- 
 tremely happy. 
 
 Praise is also due to his suggested alteration of another 
 passage in Hamlet, though succeeding editors have justly 
 
 * Index to 'Dunciad,' iv. 237. Letters from an Em. Prelate, p. 42; 
 Nichols's Lit. 111. vol. ii. p. 849. 
 
344 LIFE OF BISHOP "VTAEBUETON'. [Ch. XVIII. 
 
 tliought it too bold to be received into the text. In tlie 
 lines, 
 
 King. — But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son — 
 
 Ham. (Aside). — A little more than kin, and less than kind, 
 
 lie thought, with great reason, that something was wanting 
 to introduce Hamlet's play upon the words kin and kind, 
 and give occasion to it. He therefore proposed to 
 read, 
 
 But now, my cousin Hamlet, — land my son, 
 
 in the sense of ' Good my son,' a reading and interpreta- 
 tion for which support may be found, and which would 
 clear the passage of much of its difficulty ; for Hamlet's 
 remark aside, ' a little more than kin,' in the sense of 
 cousin (in which Farmer says it is still used in the mid- 
 land counties), ' and less than kind,' in the sense of child 
 (which Johnson gives it), would then naturally arise from 
 the king's words. 
 
 Nor, perhaps, should the proposed change of defeat 
 into disseat in ' Othello,' Act i. sc. 3, go without com- 
 mendation. Eoderigo says to lago, ' Defeat thy favour 
 with a usurp'd hand.' Warburton would read, ' Disseat 
 thy favour,' &c., that is, ' turn thy favour out of its seat ; 
 change it for another.' For the word ' disseat ' authority 
 is found in ' Macbeth ' : * 
 
 — this push 
 Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now. 
 
 But, on the whole, in taking leave of Warburton's com- 
 mentary on Shakspeare, we must acknowledge that the 
 evil in it so far predominates over the good as amply to 
 justify Quin's remarks to the players in the green room : 
 ' He should have confined himself to his owri Bible, and 
 left ours alone.' 
 
 Charles Yorke, however, who seems to have lost no 
 
 * Act V. sc. 3. 
 
1747.] COMMENDATION FEOM CHARLES YOEKE. 345 
 
 opportunity of telling Warburton liow much lie esteemed 
 him and his works, delighted him with a high eulogy on 
 his Shakspeare : ' Mr. Allen was so good as to show me 
 the two first volumes of your Shakspeare. I had only 
 time to read over the first volume, which gave me the 
 highest entertainment. It is no great comphment to tell you 
 that there is more genius in a little finger of your com- 
 mentary than in the loins of the heavy Oxford edition of 
 this poet. I observed that you had, with a pen, in the 
 margin, added new notes, sometimes with great success, 
 and now and then not doubted ccedere vineta iua. You 
 have, with excellent learning and acumen, pursued the 
 general principles of your commentary in particular in- 
 stances, and shown that what is principally requisite to 
 the understanding of Shakspeare is expounding his anti- 
 quated words and allusions, rather than amending liis 
 text, which has too often ended in corrupting it.' * The 
 bestower of this praise appears to have written with 
 sincerity, but, if so, certainly with unlucky partiahty, for 
 no edition of Shakspeare has presented so many indica- 
 tions how the text may be corrupted under pretence of 
 amending it. 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p, 500. 
 
346 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XIX. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 RICHARDSON. TOWNB AND JACESON. DR. NATHANIEL 
 FOESTER. 
 
 ' LETTER TO A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT CONCERNING LIBRARY PRO- 
 PERTY ' PREFACE TO RICHAEDSON's ' CLARISSA ' ARCHDEACON 
 
 TOWNE THE REV. JOHN JACKSON DB. NATHANIEL FORSTER 
 
 HIS PRAISE OF WARBURTON HIS REMARKS ON THE PASSAGE IN 
 
 JOSEPHUS RELATING TO JESUS CHRIST OPINIONS OF CRITICS AS TO 
 
 THE GENUINENESS OF THE PASSAGE THIRD EDITION OF THE ' ALLI- 
 ANCE ' DEDICATED TO LORD CHESTERFIELD. 
 
 THE same year, 1747, Warburton published a pamphlet, 
 entitled ' A Letter from an Author to a Member of 
 Parhament concerning Literary Property,' showing, con- 
 trary to what some were at that time maintaining, that an 
 author has as much a natural right' in the produce of his 
 mind as an instrument-maker has in what is called the 
 produce of his hand, and that it could only be ignorance 
 or knavery that would represent the Act of Queen Anne 
 in favour of hterary property as the sole foundation of 
 it, instead of an additional support to it.* 
 
 He presented Eichardson, about the same time, with a 
 preface to his ' Clarissa Harlowe,' pointing out the variety 
 in its characters, and commending the moral tendency of 
 a work by which general readers, while they admire how 
 weU the minds of its personages are represented, may 
 doubt whether virtue has been much strengthened. It 
 may be mentioned that Eichardson, like many other per- 
 sons favoured by Warburton, fell at last under his displea- 
 
 * "Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 413. 
 
1747.] PREFACE TO RICHARDSON'S 'CLARISSA.' 347 
 
 sure. On one occasion, Mr. and Mrs. Allen, being in 
 London, and having Warburton resident with them, left 
 a card on Eichardson, who returned their call, but did not 
 find them at home. A few days afterwards, Eichardson, 
 walking with Millar in the Strand, met Warburton, who 
 paid much attention to Millar, but would scarcely notice 
 Eichardson. The author of ' Clarissa,' surprised at his 
 incivility, and thinking it must be owing to some fancied 
 neglect, observed that he had returned Mr. AUen's call, 
 but that the servant might possibly have forgotten to 
 mention his coming. 'He answered,' says the novelist, 
 ' loith a face all his own, and with a voice and manner 
 equally peculiar to himself, that they were very often 
 abroad.' Warburton's ground for displeasure, as Eichard- 
 son with some difficulty discovered, was, that he had 
 inserted in a new edition of ' Clarissa ' some reflections 
 on Pope which were not in the first, and had had the 
 insolence to present a copy of the edition to Mrs. War- 
 burton. ' I know notliing,' said Eichardson, ' of any new 
 reflections on Pope, but I did indeed present a copy to 
 the lady, intending it as a civihty to one whom I knew 
 before she was his.' Edwards, the author of the ' Canons 
 of Criticism,' Eichardson's intimate friend, to whom he 
 teUs the story, learned that one of the objectionable reflec- 
 tions on Pope was a censure of the sentiment, 'Every 
 woman is at heart a rake.'* 
 
 He also wrote, this year, a short Preface to the second 
 edition of Towne's ' Critical Enquiry into the Opinions 
 and Practices of the Ancient Philosophers concerning the 
 Nature of the Soul and a Puture State.' 
 
 Towne was Archdeacon of Stowe, and Eector of Little 
 Ponton, in Lancashire, in which county Warburton had 
 become acquainted with him. As he agreed with War- 
 burton in his views regarding the principal subjects 
 
 * Eichardson's Correspondence, by Mrs. Barbauld, vol. i. p. 60. 
 
348 LIFE OP BISHOP WARPURTON. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 discussed in 'The Divine Legation,' they readily became 
 friends ; and he afterwards read Warburton's writings 
 witli such attention that Warburton used to say of him 
 that he understood them better than himself. 
 
 Jackson, whom we have had occasion to notice before, 
 had written a treatise in opposition to ' The Divine Lega- 
 tion,' and to the first edition of Towne's book, to show 
 that Warburton was wrong in his assertions that the 
 ancient pliilosophers disbeheved the existence of the soul 
 after death ; that they had esoteric and exoteric doctrines ; 
 and that, Avhenever they affirmed the certainty or proba- 
 bihty of a future state of rewards and punishments, they 
 advocated it only as a doctrine of salutary influence on 
 the ignorant multitude. Towne remodelled his book to 
 reply to Jackson, and to add new demonstrations that 
 Warburton was right, as was indeed easily made apparent 
 by quotations from the philosophers. The author wants 
 the force of Warburton, but sometimes affects his manner 
 and phraseology. Adducing some passages which, though 
 urged by Warburton, Jackson had disregarded, he says 
 that ' he chooses to rub his nose with them once more.' 
 Jackson, in one place, had told Towne that he ' grossly 
 misrepresented ' some point, and caUed upon Warburton 
 'for his own sake, for the sake of truth, and for the sake 
 of common justice, not to make himself responsible for 
 such representation.' ' These, we see,' retorts Towne, ' are 
 •well joined. I believe he has pretty much the same regard 
 to truth and justice that he has to Mr. Warburton, and is 
 equally solicitous that none of the three suffer at my hands. 
 But what has an answerer hy profession to do with any of 
 them, unless to misrepresent them ? ' 
 
 Jackson made some reply, in a pamphlet not worth 
 notice. When he brought out his ' Chronological Anti- 
 quities,' in three volumes, containing a dissertation on the 
 Eleusinian Mysteries, Warburton remarked to Hurd, ' You 
 would hardly think that all his account of the Mysteries 
 
J747.] JACKSON AND TOWNE. 349 
 
 should be one entire theft from me, a transcript of my 
 account, without one word of acknowledgment.' * This 
 was literally true. ' He certainly,' said a correspondent of 
 Mr. Nichols, ' took all that he has said about hieroglyphics 
 and mysteries from Warburton ; but so totally forgot or 
 overlooked it (as was his custom on other occasions), that 
 he vainly thought it aU his own.' He was author of 
 thirty-sis publications, chiefly pamphlets against Tindal, 
 Middleton, and other writers of free opmions, but was 
 himself condemned of Arianism, as a follower of Dr. 
 Clarke. ' The wretch,' said Warburton, ' has passed his 
 days in the republic of letters just as your vagabonds do 
 in the streets of London, in one unvaried course of begging, 
 railing, and stealing.'' 
 
 Long afterwards, Warburton and Jackson, who were 
 personally unknown to each other, happened to be toge- 
 ther in the shop of Whiston, the bookseller. As "Warburton 
 was making his way towards Whiston's back parlour, Jack- 
 son, who was at some distance, inquired his name of the 
 shopman, and, on hearing it, observed, ' I thought it was 
 some such conceited fellow.' Warburton, just afterwards, 
 noticing Jackson, asked a similar question, and, receiving 
 a reply, made a remark in almost the very words that had 
 been used by Jackson, f 
 
 The intimacy between Warburton and Towne continued 
 till Warburton's death, whom he survived some years. 
 He wrote some other theological pieces, chiefly in support 
 of ' The Divine Legation,' some of which he submitted to 
 Warburton for revision, who said of him that he was ' a 
 reasoning engine, as Yoltaire caUs Dr. Clarke,' J but ' so 
 little skilled in the art of composition, that, when any of 
 his pieces passed through his hands, he had more trouble 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 117. 
 
 •j- Nichols's Lit. Aneo. vol. ii. p. 527. 
 
 \ Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 49. 
 
350 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBUETON. [Ch. XIX. 
 
 in reforming the style and method of them than it would 
 have cost him to write the whole afresh in his own 
 manner.' * 
 
 In the following year, 1748, Warburton was presented 
 by Dr. Nathaniel Forster, who had recently edited his 
 'Dialogues of Plato,' and was preparing to pubhsh his 
 Hebrew Bible, without points, with his ' Dissertation on 
 Josephus's Account of Jesus Christ,' a tract in which he 
 bestowed much praise on the author of ' The Divine Le- 
 gation,' calling him ' learned and ingenious,' and * a great 
 writer.' Forster had also spoken of Warburton in similar 
 terms in his pamphlet of ' Eeflections on the High Anti- 
 quity of Egypt,' in which he expressed himself of the same 
 opinion with Warburton in regard to the early prosperity 
 and civili2ation of that country ; observing that there 
 were natural foundations for its rapid progress in power 
 and arts, as the land produced with ease and quickness 
 the several necessaries and conveniences of life ; the 
 women, as related by Strabo and Phny, were extremely 
 prolific ; and the Nile, by its fertilising exundations, kept 
 the people together on its banks, so that they would 
 soon form into societies, and, feehng the want of union, 
 would establish a general government ; while the natives 
 of such a warm country, not being inclined to activity, 
 would indulge in contemplation and cultivate science, and, 
 when they took to building, and meditated distinction in 
 architecture, would be induced, by the uncertain risings 
 of the river, to erect structures of great strength and mag- 
 nitude, such as would not easily be overthrown or damaged 
 by extraordinary floods. 
 
 Warburton, it may be supposed, was well pleased with 
 the advances of a man of learning who showed such con- 
 currence in his views, accompanied with the incense of 
 praise. As to the passage in Josephus, however, War- 
 
 « Letter of Hurd to Balguy, ' Kilvert's Hurd,' p. 178. 
 
1748.] DE. NATHANIEL FOESTER ON JOSEPIIUS. 351 
 
 burton was opposed, but with soft words, by the writer 
 who now addressed him. The author of 'The Divine 
 Legation ' had pronounced, in his decisive style, that the 
 passage was ' a rank forgery, and a very stupid one too ; ' * 
 but Forster endeavoured, with gentle persuasions, to induce 
 him to alter his opinion, offering him, at the same time, 
 what he conceived to be the true sense of it. Warburton 
 had taken the words, o Xpta-rog ourog rjv, in the vulgar 
 acceptation ; ' this was the Christ or Messiah ; ' an asser- 
 tion which, he said, would never have been made by so 
 sincere a Jew as Josephus. Forster argued that the words 
 meant nothing more than hie erat ille or iste Christus, 
 ' this was the much talked of Christ, or the man so well 
 known under the name of Christ,' a sense in which a 
 Jew might very well use them. TaAvj^vj, in the passage, 
 ' true things,' he proposed to alter into ra arf^vj, ' strange 
 thmgs :' a change which would make the passage still 
 more suitable to Josephus. And the following words, 
 which are commonly translated, ' He appeared to them 
 [his followers] alive again on the third day, as the Divine 
 prophets (Qs/coi/ xpoc^Tjrcov, which Forster would fain 
 have altered into tEov Wiwv rrpocpTjribv) had foretold these 
 and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning Him,' 
 he rendered, ' He appeared to them to be alive again on 
 the third day, their own preachers having reported both 
 these and numberless other wonderful things concerning 
 Him : ' a sense somewhat forced, but giving the passage 
 much more the air of being the genuine production of the 
 Jewish historian. 
 
 The sense of the whole passage is given by Whiston and 
 Forster as foUows. Whiston renders thus : 
 
 ' Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if 
 it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of won- 
 derful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth 
 
 * Div. Leg., book ii. § 6. 
 
352 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cn. XIX. 
 
 ■witli pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the 
 Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ ; 
 and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men 
 amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that 
 loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared 
 to them alive again the third day, as the Divine prophets 
 had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful 
 things concerning him ; and the tribe of Christians, so 
 named from him, are not extinct at this day.' 
 
 With Forster's emendations the sense would be thus : 
 
 Now there lived about this time Jesus, a wise man, if 
 it be lawful to caU him a man, for he was a doer of won- 
 derful works, a teacher of such as receive strange [or neiii] 
 things with pleasure. He drew over to him both many 
 of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the well 
 known Christ ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the 
 principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the 
 cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake 
 him, for he appeared to them alive again on the third 
 day, their own preachers having foretold these and num- 
 berless other wonderful things concerning him, &c. 
 
 Forster, indeed, might have taken his notion of the 
 words Xpio-ros ourog r^v from Whiston, who, in his 
 Dissertation on the passage at the end of his volume, 
 published in 1736, expressly asserts that the phrase. This 
 ivas Christ, or the Christ, does not mean that this Jesus 
 was the true Messiah of the Jews, but that he was distin- 
 guished from aU other persons of the same name by the 
 addition of the name Christ, or that he was the person 
 whom all the world knew as Jesus called Christ ; though, 
 in his text, he translates the words, ' This was [the] Christ,' 
 giving the unlearned reader a false notion of the sense in 
 which he himself understood them. 
 
 Warburton, in returning thanks for the pamphlet, made 
 the following remarks upon it : ' I have read it over,' he 
 says ' with great pleasure, and wiU tell you my sentiments 
 
1748.] PASSAGE IN JOSEPHUS. 353 
 
 of it with a friendly freedom. I think it one of the most 
 ingenious and chaste pieces of criticism that ever was 
 written. / think that o 'iLpia-Tog oorog yjv can admit of 
 no sense but the common one, especially while Sslwv 
 '7rpo(prjTa)u stand their ground. But how far the hberty of 
 altering the text by conjecture only, without support of 
 manuscripts, is to be indulged, when the question is con- 
 cerning the genuineness of a whole paragraph, I leave to 
 your consideration. So far 07i our side ; then, on yours, 
 it must be owned that your very fine emendation to. avjSij, 
 not only greatly mends the sense, but the expression. It 
 is now really elegant, which before, I agree with Faber, 
 was tristis et putida elegantia.' 
 
 TanaquO. Faber was one of those who most strongly 
 maintained the spuriousness of the paragraph ; and there 
 can be, indeed, no doubt that it is an interpolation, from its 
 utter want of connexion with what precedes and follows it, 
 while that which follows it has an evident connexion with 
 that which precedes. If it were omitted, all would pro- 
 ceed in regular course. Dr. Parr, who has a right to be 
 heard on such a subject, maintained that it was a manifest 
 interpolation, but gave his opinion that it was inserted by 
 Josephus himself. There is nothing in the style, indeed, 
 to show that it might not have proceeded from Josephus ; 
 and, taken in the sense which Forster, with his emenda- 
 tions, would give it, it might be considered as Josephus's ; 
 taken in the common acceptation, it must be regarded as 
 the intrusion of a forger. But Forster's emendations are 
 too bold, and his interpretation recedes too far from the 
 natural sense ; so that the paragraph, unsuitable as it is 
 to the character of a Jew, must be rejected as spurious. 
 
 As to the antiquity of the passage, it is quoted by Euse- 
 bius, in his Demonstratio Evangelica, as early as a.d. 324, 
 but there was plenty of time for interpolation between 
 the age of Josephus and that of Eusebius. Gifanius and 
 Osiander, in the sixteenth century, were the first that 
 
 a a 
 
S54 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOX. [Ch. XIX. 
 
 expressed doubts of its genuineness; and their notions 
 were adopted by Daniel Heinsius, Boxhorn, Salmasius, 
 Gronovius, Freinshemius, TanaquU Faber, and Lardner. 
 Daubuz wrote a treatise in its favour, and Jacob Bryant 
 supported Daubuz, taking the words 6 XpfcrToj oZrog ^f, 
 however, in the same sense as Forster. 
 
 Warburton's objections to the alterations which Forster 
 would have made in the text, though they were less 
 audacious than he himself would have made in ' Shaks- 
 peare,' were very just ; for if such arbitrary innovations 
 were to be allowed in writings, any passage of an author 
 might be moulded to signify anything. 
 
 The only thing that Warburton sent to the press this 
 year was a third edition of the ' Alhance between Chm-ch 
 and State,' dedicated to Lord Chesterfield. The Dedication 
 served Edwards for the subject of a joke in a subsequent 
 edition of his ' Canons of Criticism.' * ' The first edition 
 pf the " Alliance," ' said he, ' came out without a dedica- 
 tion, but was presented to aU the Bishops ; and, when 
 nothing came of that, the second one 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.' 
 
 * P. 261. 
 
1749.] COMMENCEMENT OF 'JULIAN.' 353 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 HURD. BOLINGBEOKE. MALLET. 
 
 COMMENCEMENT OF ' JULIAN ' ADVANCES OF HURD TO WAEBUETON ; 
 
 INTIMACY FORMED BETWEEN THEM BOLINGBEOKE'S CHARGE AGAINST 
 
 POPE CONCERNING THE ' IDEA OF A PATRIOT KING ' WAEBURTON'S 
 
 DEFENCE OF POPE ' EPISTLE TO THE MOST IMPUDENT MAN LIVING;' 
 
 REPLT TO IT mallet's DISLIKE OP WABBUETON BISHOP NEWTON's 
 
 EDITION OF MILTON — WAEBUETON'S OPINION OF LAUDEe's BOOK ON 
 MILTON. 
 
 THE next literary effort on wIugIi Warburton employed 
 himself was ' Julian, or a Discourse Concerning the 
 Earthquake and Fiery Eruption which Defeated Julian's 
 Attempt to Eebuild the Temple at Jerusalem.' But this 
 treatise was not completed till 1750, and, during its pro- 
 gress, he became acquainted with Hurd, to whom he 
 submitted the sheets of it for revisal before they were 
 given to the pubHc. The connexion of Warbm'ton with 
 Hurd was an important event to both, having great effect 
 on the remainder of their hves. 
 
 Of the commencement of their personal intimacy there 
 is no account.* In print, the first advance was made by 
 Hurd, who, at the end of the introduction to his ' Com- 
 ment on Horace's Art of Poetry,' bestowed on Warburton 
 the following eulogy : 
 
 ' Eor the kind of interpretation itself ' [that is, the inter- 
 pretation of a running commentary], ' it must be allowed, 
 of all others, the fittest to throw hght upon a difiicult and 
 obscure subject, and, above all, to convey an exact idea of 
 
 * Kilvert, Life of Hurd, p. 34, 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 LIFE OB BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Ch. XX. 
 
 the scope and order of any work. It hath, accordingly, 
 been so considered by several of the foreign, particularly 
 the ItaHan, critics, who have essayed long since to illus- 
 trate in this way the very piece before us. But the success 
 of these foreigners is, I am sensible, a slender recommenda- 
 tion of their method. I choose, therefore, to rest on the 
 single authority of a great author, who, in his edition of 
 our English Horace, the best that was ever given of any 
 classic, hath now retrieved and established the full credit 
 of it. What was the amusement of his pen becomes, 
 indeed, the labour of inferior writers. Yet, on these un- 
 equal terms, it can be no discredit to have aimed at some 
 resemblance of one of the best of those merits which shed 
 their united honours on the name of the illustrious friend 
 and commentator of Mr. Pope.' 
 
 Warburton had at tliis time edited only a portion of 
 Pope's works. When he sent forth a complete edition, 
 he took occasion to make an ample pubhc repayment of 
 Kurd's comphment. 
 
 In the meantime he acknowledged the favour privately 
 in the following letter, in which he thanks Hurd for a 
 present of the ' Commentary on Horace,' and- which ap- 
 pears to have formed the commencement of their corres- 
 pondence. It is evident that they had not yet met ; and 
 that no intimacy had arisen between them : 
 
 ' Bedford Eow, June 1, 1749. 
 
 'Eev. Sie, — I received the favour of your edition of 
 " Horace's Art of Poetry," for which I beg leave to make 
 my best acknowledgments. 
 
 ' You have given very httle advantage to the critics, 
 but where you speak of me ; and yet my self-love will not 
 suffer me to wish it unsaid, when I consider how much 
 real honour is done to every one whom such an author 
 commends. 
 
 ' I tell you, with aU sincerity, I think the notes one of 
 
1749. J COMMENCEMENT OF ACQUAINTANCE WITH HURD. 357 
 
 the most masterly pieces of criticism that ever was written. 
 I am sure, and I ought to be ashamed to say it, that I should 
 have envied you for it, had I not found you so generous 
 to the commentator of Mr. Pope. As it is, I take a pride 
 in it as my own ; a greater than I can take in any of my 
 own. I wish it was in my power to make a suitable 
 acknowledgment for my obligations. The best thing I 
 liave to offer you is a very unprofitable friendship. Such 
 as it is, you have a right to it. And, if you will make me 
 still more your debtor, you must give me yours. You 
 will always find in mine all the frankness and warmth 
 wherewith I now beg leave to subscribe myself, 
 'Eev. Sir, 
 ' Your very obliged and most faithful humble servant, 
 
 ' W. Waeburton.' 
 
 What induced Hurd to seek acquaintance with War- 
 burton, he stated in a letter to him written seven years 
 afterwards. 
 
 ' For the first years of residence at the University,' said 
 he, ' when I was labouring through the usual courses of 
 logic, mathematics, and philosophy, I heard httle of your 
 name and writmgs ; and the httle I did hear was not 
 likely to encourage a young man, that was under direction, 
 to enquire farther after either. La the meantime, I grew 
 up into the use of a httle common sense ; my commerce 
 with the people of the place was enlarged. Still the cla- 
 mours increased against you, and the appearance of your 
 second volume opened many mouths. I was then Bachelor 
 of Arts ; and having no immediate business on my hands, 
 I was led, by a spirit of perverseness, to see what there 
 was in these decried volumes that had given such offence. 
 
 ' To say the truth, there had been so much apparent 
 bigotry and insolence in the invectives I had heard, 
 though echoed, as was said, from men of note amongst us, 
 that I wished, perhaps out of pure spite, to find them ill- 
 
358 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTOJST. [Ch. XX. 
 
 founded. And I doubt I was half-determined in your 
 favour before I knew anything of the merits of the case. 
 
 ' The effect of all this was, that I took " The Divine 
 Legation " with me down into the country, where I was 
 gomg to spend the summer of, I think, 1741, with my 
 friends. I there read the three volumes at my leisure, 
 and with the impression I shall never forget. I returned 
 to college the winter foUoAving, not so properly your con- 
 vert, as all over spleen and prejudice against your defamers. 
 From that time, I think, I am to date my friendship with 
 you. There was something in your mind, still more than 
 in the matter of your book, that struck me. In a word, 
 I grew a constant reader of you. I enquired after your 
 other works. I got the " Alliance " into my hands, and 
 met with the " Essay on Portents and Prodigies," which 
 last I Hked the better, and still like it, because I understood 
 it was most abused by those who owed you no goodwill. 
 Things were in this train when the " Comment on Pope " 
 appeared. That Comment, and the connexion I chanced 
 then to have with Sir Edward Littleton, made me a poor 
 critic ; and in that connexion you found me. I became, 
 on the sudden, your acquaintance ; and am now happy in 
 being your friend. You have here a shght sketch of my 
 history : at least of the only part of it which wiU ever 
 deserve notice.' * 
 
 It may seem strange that any strong or lasting attach- 
 ment should have been formed between men of such dis- 
 similar characters. Warburton was hot, Hurd cool; 
 Warburton impetuous, Hurd calm and sedate ; Warburton 
 was free and bold in speech, Hurd cautious and restrained ; 
 Warburton was daring, Hurd timid and subtle ; Warbur- 
 ton was void of taste in vniting, Hm'd affected and fasti- 
 dious ; Warburton was a son of energy, Hurd a disciple of 
 art ; Warburton struck directly at an object, Hurd endea- 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, let. xcii. 
 
1749.] IIUED "AND WAEBUETON COMPARED. 359 
 
 voured to secure a side blow. But the truth is, that the 
 dissimilarity of their dispositions was one great cause of 
 the strength and endurance of their friendship. Each 
 hked those quahties in the other which he had not in 
 himself. Such, indeed, appears to have been the case in 
 most of those friendships which history has celebrated as 
 most lasting ; in the attachments of Damon and Pythias, 
 Orestes and Pylades, Achilles and Patroclus ; one of the 
 two seems, as in the connexion between man and woman, 
 to have been ready to submit to the more prominent 
 influence of the other; and Virgil has but adhered to 
 nature in estabhsliing such a connexion between J3neas 
 and Achates. One of the two was adapted by nature 
 cedere potentis amici — imperiis. They were not hke 
 two rough substances, of which, when brought into con- 
 tact, the prominences of the one are obstructions to those of 
 the other, but like a rough substance and a smooth, which 
 can be rubbed as closely together as possible without 
 impediment. Hurd, assuredly, entered into the connexion 
 with a determination to be as subservient, even as Sir Per- 
 tinax Macsycophant himself, to the superior influence of 
 his friend. 
 
 When the intimacy was once commenced, there was no 
 delay on either side to improve it. Warburton wrote his 
 letter of thanks for the ' Horace ' on the first of June ; on 
 the fourth he received an acknowledgment of it ; on the 
 sixth he wrote to Hurd to invite him to call on him in 
 town, or at Prior Park ; mentioning, at the same time, his 
 contemplated - JuHan,' and recommending Hurd to write 
 a commentary on ' Horace's Epistle to Augustus,' similar 
 to that which he had written on the ' Art of Poetry.' 
 On the ninth Hurd thanked him for the suggestion ; and 
 on the thirteenth Warburton thanked him for his thanks. 
 In August, Warburton sent him some manuscript notes of 
 his own on the ' Epistle to Augustus,' and Hurd agreed to 
 write the proposed commentary. 
 
3G0 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XX. 
 
 Henceforward they corresponded frequently, on various 
 literary and other subjects. Towards the end of the year 
 Warburton ventured to ask of Sherlock, the Bishop of 
 London, though he was disposed to quarrel with his Lord- 
 ship for having suffered some of his dependents to attack 
 ' The Divine Legation,' a preachersliip at Whitehall for 
 Hurd ; a request which the Bishop granted, and Hurd 
 entered on his office in the following May. 
 
 In the meantime, while Warburton was preparing to 
 send forth ' Julian,' Bohngbroke pubhshed his ' Letters on 
 the Idea of a Patriot King, the Spirit of Patriotism, and 
 the State of Parties,' with an Advertisement said to have 
 been written by Mallet, but in reahty by Bohngbroke 
 himself, containing the weU-known charge against Pope 
 of having printed an edition of those letters without his 
 Lordship's permission or knowledge. The accusation, as 
 made in the name of MaUet, stated that the original 
 draughts were committed to a man to whom the author 
 trusted to keep them secret, or to communicate them only 
 to five or six persons who had been named to him ; that 
 the author rested in this confidence for some years, but 
 at length began to suspect that the letters had been com- 
 municated to more persons than he deshed ; a suspicion 
 for which he was repeatedly assured there was no ground. 
 After the man was dead, however, he discovered that an 
 edition of fifteen hundred copies had been printed, under 
 the superintendence of the man, and left in the hands of 
 the printer, except a few copies which the man carried 
 away. On an inspection of the copies, it appeared that 
 the man had altered certain passages, omitted others, and 
 made new divisions of the matter, to please his own fancy ; 
 and it was also found that fragments of them had even 
 been suffered to make their way into a monthly magazine, 
 which was expecting farther portions of them. The copies 
 in the liands of the printer were burnt under Bolingbroke's 
 eye ; but his Lordship found portions of the papers so well 
 
1749.] BOLINGBROKE'S ATTACK ON POPE. 361 
 
 known, that, to prevent the tenor of the whole from being 
 misunderstood, he had resolved on allowing the editor to 
 pubhsh them entire. 
 
 That this Preface was written by Bohngbroke appears 
 from the manuscript of it preserved among the Bohng- 
 broke papers in the British Museum, which is m the hand 
 of an amanuensis, but with corrections in Bohngbroke 's. * 
 The persons to whom copies of the ' Letters ' were to be 
 presented were Wyndham, Bathurst, Murray, Marchmont, 
 and Lyttelton. Pope had also shown a copy to Ealph 
 Allen, who admired the performance so much that he 
 offered to print an edition of it at his own expense ; and 
 it is not certain, mdeed, that the cost of the edition which 
 Pope printed was not defrayed by Allen. 
 
 For this virulent attack of Bohngbroke on Pope's me- 
 mory, in so gross and unbecoming a style, there may have 
 been two motives. Bohngbroke may have been displeased 
 at Pope's corrections in his composition, and may have been 
 indignant, also, that the poet should have bequeathed the 
 copyright and control of his works to Warburton instead 
 of himself, and thus secured comments upon them at 
 variance with the philosophical doctrines that he had been 
 constantly endeavouring to instil into the author and into 
 the world. 
 
 Warburton lost no time in defending Pope's conduct, in 
 ' A Letter to the Editor of the " Letters on the Spirit of 
 Patriotism, the Idea of a Patriot King, and the State of 
 Parties," occasioned by the Editor's Advertisement.' This 
 is a spirited and judicious performance, and attributes 
 Pope's act, apparently, to its true motives. Pope could 
 not have meditated plagiarism, or thought of assuming to 
 himself the honour of his friend's work, for the pamphlet 
 told on its titlepage that it was written ' By a Person of 
 Quality,' and the real author was known to the Drinter. 
 
 * Cooke's Life of Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 218. 
 
362 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XX. 
 
 who applied to Bolingbroke to know what he should do 
 with the copies. Nor could he have made lucre his object, 
 for he was not in such circumstances as to be even sus- 
 pected of desiring to appropriate fifteen himdred copies of 
 an eighteenpenny pamplilet. What, then, was his motive ? 
 Evidently ' an excessive and superstitious zeal for Lord 
 Bohngbroke's glory : ' to whose divine attributes he paid 
 even a kind of idolatrous homage. ' It was his common 
 subject of complaint,' proceeds Warburton, ' among his 
 other friends, that Lord Bohngbroke was faultily neghgent 
 of his glory, even where the good of his country, and the 
 happiness of the world, depended on its being unveiled. 
 . . . And this being an important concern was the reason, 
 I suppose, why his friend chose to prevent the loss of 
 those " Letters," which hkewise very well accounts,' adds 
 Warburton, with increased sarcasm, ' for Iris allaying the 
 extreme splendour of them, so offensive to mere mortals, 
 with that terrestrial mixture of his own.' That there was 
 such ' terrestrial mixtvire ' Warburton does not attempt to 
 deny, but offers some justification for it on the ground 
 that Pope expected Bohngbroke, if his Lordship died 
 before him, to leave his writings to his disposal, and that 
 consequently he might reasonably consider himself ' more 
 than a mere porte feuille of his friend's papers,* and retouch 
 them, where he thought them susceptible of improvement. 
 As to printing. Pope might have printed the pamphlet in 
 the hope that he would one day overcome Bohngbroke's 
 pretended modesty, and obtain his consent to pu.blication. 
 Or, if he should be disappointed in this expectation, he 
 would at least have consulted his friend's fame, and pre- 
 served what he thought an invaluable composition for the 
 admiration and applause of posterity. 
 
 Horace Walpole, it may be observed, though no great 
 
 friend to Pope, expressed the same opinion in respect to 
 
 his conduct in this matter as Warburton. 'His printing 
 
 . so many copies,' said he, ' was certainly a compliment. 
 
1749.] ' EPISTLE TO THE MOST IMPUDENT MAN LIVING.' 363 
 
 If one had a mind to defend Pope, should not one ask if 
 anybody ever blamed Virgil's executors for not burning 
 the ^neid, as he ordered them ? ' * Spence, also, was 
 told by Martha Blount, that she had heard Pope speak of 
 Bolingbroke's work, and could take her oath that he 
 printed it merely from esteem for his Lordship and his 
 abilities. 
 
 Boliagbroke, calling the agency of Mallet again into opera- 
 tion, immediately issued a rejoinder, under the striking title 
 of ' A Pamiliar Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living : ' 
 a title that attracted great notice, and made Orator Henley 
 anxious to show that the pamphlet did not refer to him- 
 self f But the title is the most remarkable part of the 
 production ; the abuse which it pours forth is coarse and 
 dull, and its argument amounts to nothmg. That it was 
 written by Bolingbroke is now weU known ; for it exists 
 entire in Bohngbroke's hand. J The writer begins by 
 owning himself a great favourer of Lord BoHngbroke, and 
 an abhorrer of the scurrilous libels published against him, 
 particularly of Warburton's, which ' have a peculiax inde- 
 cency distinguishing them from those of any other man.' 
 'Arnall, an impudent scribbhng attorney,' he proceeds, 
 ' was set up to be his casuist in matters of pubhc morahty. 
 You,' he continues, addressing Warburton, ' have been an 
 attorney as weU as he, and, being a httle more impudent 
 than he was (for ArnaU never presumed to conceal his 
 turpitude under the gown and scarf), have set yourself up 
 to be his casuist in matters of private morahty. 
 
 ' You have signahsed yourself by affecting to be the 
 bully of Mr. Pope's memory, into whose acquaintance, at 
 the latter end of the poor man's hfe, you were introduced 
 by your nauseous flattery ; and whose admirable writings 
 you are about to pubhsh, with commentaries worthy of 
 
 * To Sir H. Mann, May 17, 1749. 
 
 •)■ Confusion Worse Confounded, p. 8. 
 
 J Cooke's Life of Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 218. 
 
3G4 LIFE OF BISHOP AVAEBURTON. [Cii. XX. 
 
 Scriblerus himself; for we may judge of them beforehand 
 by the specimens we have aheady seen of your skill in 
 criticism. 
 
 ' . . . Lord Bohngbroke wants no defence. You deserve 
 no answer. You assume, indeed, certain airs of superiority 
 on every occasion, even on those where you have not the 
 least pretence of equality ; but you sustain them by nothing 
 better than hypotheses, sophisms, foul language, and im- 
 pudence. In this you had some success at first. A vain 
 ostentation of literature, awkwardly dragged in, and ab- 
 surdly apphed, had dazzled many. But the imposition did 
 not last. That which some foretold, even then, has been 
 verified. Your readers have discovered that you can 
 neither quote properly nor argue fairly, and that, when 
 you pretend to demonstrate, you do not so much as define. 
 In short, by continuing to write, you have wrote yourself 
 into the contempt of all those who have either sense or 
 taste. You may now scribble about imaginary " AUiances," 
 " Divine Legations," and dramatic criticisms : 
 
 Explain the tiling till all men doubt it, 
 
 And write about it, goddess, and about it ; 
 
 or you may indulge yourself in saucy invectives as much 
 as you please. Contempt will be your security, and you 
 wiU have no reply to apprehend from any man who would 
 not dispute with a common scold, nor viTestle with a 
 chimney-sweep. You have proved yourself incorrigible, 
 as well as unworthy of correction ; and all that some very- 
 respectable men of your own order have got by attempting 
 to amend you has been to make you rail the loudest at 
 those you could answer the least. 
 
 ' In this contempt I found you, and in this I leave you. 
 I write against you, not against the miserable productions 
 of your pen ; and I join in this manner with every rea- 
 sonable man to hoot out of society an animal who is a 
 nuisance to it. But besides this contempt you have often 
 
1749.] REPLY TO BOLINGBEOKE S ' EPISTLE.' 365 
 
 had, and have on the present occasion particularly, another 
 security. You cavil, you cannot argue ; to write against 
 what you say, would be to write against nothing, and that 
 would be no easy task.' 
 
 Having observed that Pope had made known other 
 writings of BoHngbroke, besides those under consideration, 
 without the author's permission, a breach of trust which 
 Bohngbroke had- discovered and forgiven, and having ex- 
 pressed his surprise that Pope should not have opened his 
 heart, and confessed this second breach of trust to Bohng- 
 broke on his death-bed, he adds that, though he would give 
 no formal answer to Warburton's libel, he would, out of 
 charity, give him a little advice. ' I would advise you,' 
 he says, ' to keep within that low sphere to which nature 
 and fortune have confined you. Coax your young wife, 
 flatter her old uncle, and be sure, when any corporative 
 dispute arises at Bath, to inform the heedless public of it, 
 to extol him ridiculously, and to rail at those whom he 
 oppresses, or who presume to support such as are op- 
 pressed. If you write on any other subject, which 
 I cannot advise you to do, collect plentifully, affirm 
 dogmatically, but never attempt to reason ; for they 
 who can reason agree very unanimously that it is not your 
 talent.' 
 
 To this ' Familiar Letter ' an answer of a similar kind 
 was returned in ' A Letter to the Lord Viscount Bohng- 
 broke, occasioned by his Treatment of a Deceased Friend:' 
 an efiusion by some attributed to Warburton ; but who 
 was the real author is unknown. Another pamphlet or 
 two, and sundry paragraphs in newspapers, reflecting on 
 Pope or Warburton, kept the matter before the pubhc for 
 some time longer ; and Mallet took occasion to deny, in 
 some of the periodical prints, that he was the author of 
 the 'Famihar Letter.' In reference to this denial, there 
 are, among the Bohngbroke manuscripts in the British 
 Museum, two pieces of writing, one of which appears to 
 
366 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XX. 
 
 be a copy of part of a letter addressed to somebody by 
 Warburton, and the other contains a couple of notes at- 
 tached to it by Mallet. The first is as follows : 
 
 ' With regard to Mr. MaUet's declaration, there is only 
 one way to convince me he is not the author of the infa- 
 mous Hbel [the " Famihar Epistle "], which is, by taking 
 an opportunity of disavowing it pubUcly. I think my 
 honour is concerned that it be publicly known I had no 
 hand in the letter to Lord B. [the letter in reply to the 
 "Famihar Letter"], merely on account of the ApoUo 
 story, and I shall do it on the first occasion. If Mr. M. 
 does not do the same with regard to this hbel, I shall 
 consider him the author of it, and act in consequence of 
 that behef. -Sir, I desire you would let Mr. Millar know, 
 and, if he chooses, let him have a transcript of what I here 
 say.' 
 
 Mallet's notes are these : 
 
 ' N.B. — 1 never took the shghtest notice of this impu- 
 dent silly threatening from Warburton. The writer I had 
 no reason to be afraid of ; the man I abhorred. A head 
 filled with paradoxes, unproved and unprovable ; a heart 
 overflowing with virulence and the most slanderous mahce. 
 ' N.B. — 1 never wrote a pamphlet, nor a sentence in 
 any pamphlet, concerning this wrong-headed and dogma- 
 tical pedant.' * 
 
 This denial Mallet might fairly make, for the attacks 
 on Warburton were written, as we have seen, by Boling- 
 broke. The ApoUo story was this : Mallet was one day 
 in company with Warburton, who was supposed to be 
 meditating a Life of Pope. As an anecdote for the book, 
 Mallet told Warburton somethJDg that had occurred, he 
 said, during Pope's last iUness : I was sitting with him 
 one day, he related, when, coming suddenly out of a 
 reverie, and fixing his eyes steadfastly upon me, he said, 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. An. vol. v. p. 651. 
 
1749.] BISHOP NEWTON'S MILTON. LAUDBE'S FOEGEEY. 367 
 
 ' Mr. Mallet, I have had an odd land of vision. Methought 
 I saw my own head open, and Apollo come out of it ; I 
 then saw your head open, and Apollo went into it ; after 
 which our heads closed up again.' Warburton hstened 
 to the story with a sarcastic smile, and replied, ' Why, sir, 
 if I had an intention of writing your hfe, this might be a 
 proper anecdote ; but I don't see that in Mr. Pope's it 
 will be of any consequence at all.' * This retort would 
 not improve Mallet's feelings towards Warburton. 
 
 In the course of this year Bishop Newton published 
 his Milton, for which Warburton had given him leave to 
 use the notes that he had sent, some years before, to be 
 printed in the ' History of the Works of the Learned.' 
 They extended, however, no farther than the first three 
 books, for those on the other books were lost — ' a loss,' 
 said the Bishop, ' of which the excellence of those that 
 remain sufficiently evinces the greatness. 'f Warbiurton 
 and Newton were each eager to praise the other. War- 
 burton, in his Preface to Shakspeare,J announced that an 
 elegant edition of Milton was soon to be expected from 
 a gentleman of distinguished ability and learning ; and 
 Newton, in his Preface to Milton, § asserted, though with 
 much less truth, that Warbm-ton had proved himself to 
 be the best editor of Shakspeare by a variety of happy 
 conjectures on the most diificult passages. 
 
 Of Lauder's book on Milton, which appeared about the 
 same time, and to which Johnson showed such unfortunate 
 favour, Warburton formed a much happier estimate. ' I 
 have just read,' he writes to Hurd,|| ' the most silly and 
 knavish book I ever saw ; one Lauder on Milton's imita- 
 tions. An observation at the bottom of page forty-four. 
 
 * A Letter to the Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, &c., p. 14. Disraeli's 
 Quarrels of Authors, Art. on Bolingbroke, Mallet, and Pope, 
 t Pref. to Milton, p. 32. $ Sub fin. § P. 30. 
 
 Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Dec. 23, 1749. 
 
368 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBURTOlSr. [On. XX. 
 
 and the top of forty-five proves him either one or the other 
 v?ith a vengeance. If there are those things in Masenius, 
 wliy did he not produce them ? They are of more weight 
 to prove liis charge than all he says besides. I think he 
 has produced about half-a-dozen particular thoughts that 
 look hke imitations.' But he adds a remark that shows 
 he felt, or affected to feel, httle respect for Milton : ' In 
 one view the book does not displease me : it is hkely 
 enough to mortify all the silly adorers of Milton, who 
 deserve to be laughed at' 
 
 The same kind of feeling is also manifested in a letter 
 to Jortin, written about the same time, where he ob- 
 serves, ' Lauder has offered much amusement to the 
 pubhc, and they are obliged to him. What the public 
 wants, or subsists on, is news. Milton was their reigning 
 favourite ; yet they took it well, of a man they never 
 heard of before, to tell them the news of Milton's being 
 
 a thief and a plagiary ; had he been proved a it 
 
 had pleased them much better. When this was no longer 
 news, they were equally dehghted with another [Dr. 
 Douglas], as much a stranger to them, who entertamed 
 them with another piece of news, that Lauder was a 
 plagiary and an impostor ; had he proved him to be a 
 Jesuit in disguise, nothing had equalled the satisfaction.' 
 
1750.] OCCASION OF PUBLICATION OF 'JULIAN.' 369 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ' JULIAN.' MIDDLETON. MATHEMATICS. 
 
 PUBLICATION OF ' JULIAN ' OCCASION OF IT MIDDLETOn'S OPINION 
 
 ON MIRACULOUS POWERS IN THE EARLY DATS OF THE CHURCH 
 
 CHARACTER OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS ; OF THEIR SUCCESSORS 
 
 WARBURTON'S REPLIES TO MIDDLETON CHARACTER AND OBJECTS OF 
 
 JULIAN — Julian's attempt to rebuild the temple at Jerusa- 
 lem; ITS RESULT WARBURTOn'S ARGUMENTS THAT IT WAS DEFEATED 
 
 BY A MIRACLE AUTHORS OPPOSED TO THAT NOTION; BASNAGE, 
 
 GIBBON, LARDNER ASSERTIONS OF MOYLE AND JORTIN WARBUR- 
 
 TON's OPINION ON THE EFFECT OF MATHEMATICAL STUDIES ON THE 
 
 MIND OPINIONS OF GIBBON AND OTHERS CONSIDERATIONS ON THE 
 
 QUESTION. 
 
 IN 1750, ' Julian,' wloich Thomas Dunham Whitaker, 
 Warbufton's friendly critic in the ' Quarterly,' calls 
 ' the gravest, the least eccentric, and the most convincing 
 of his works,' was sent forth into the world. 
 
 It was occasioned by Dr. Middleton's 'Free Inquiry 
 into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have 
 subsisted in the Christian Church from the Earhest Ages 
 through several successive Centuries.' Middleton's de- 
 sign, in this treatise, was to establish the behef that aU 
 the accounts of miracles alleged to have been wrought 
 in the Church, after the days of the apostles, are utterly 
 without foundation. ' If miraculous powers,' he argues, 
 ' continued to be communicated from heaven after the 
 apostolic times, it might have been expected that they 
 would have been possessed by men of zeal and piety who 
 had lived under the apostles, and who had been ap- 
 pointed to succeed them in the government of the Church, 
 and that we should find some account of their manifestation 
 
 B B 
 
370 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 in the writings of the apostolic fathers. But we search 
 in vain in the pages of Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius, 
 Polycarp, and Hennas, for any intimation of the least 
 claim or pretension to the power of working miracles, 
 either as exerted by themselves, or as existing in the 
 Church at large. If they speak of spiritual gifts, they 
 mean only the ordinary gifts and graces of the gospel, as 
 faith, hope, and charity, love of God and of man. "Wake, 
 indeed, and DodweU, would willingly suppose that they 
 were endowed with extraordinary gifts of the Spirit; 
 but, if we examine carefully what they have written, we 
 shall find that they even disclaim, especially Ignatius and 
 Polycarp, any possession of extraordinary powers. 
 
 Among their immediate successors, however, we meet 
 with repeated declarations of such wonderful powers 
 existing in the Church. Justin Martyr, who is supposed 
 l)y most critics to have written his first ' Apology ' about 
 A.D. 140, speaks of persons possessed with devils being 
 cured ; Irenseus, who wrote a few years later, relates that 
 many sick persons were healed, and many dead raised to 
 hfe, who lived many years afterwards. Theophilus of 
 Antioch, TertuUian, and Minucius Felix, offer similar 
 testimony to the expulsion of devils ; Origen, who wrote 
 at the beginning of the third century, says that things to 
 come were foretold, cures performed, and devils driven 
 away by a word ; and his disciple, Gregory Thaumatur- 
 gus, exercised such eminent power over devils, that, as 
 Socrates records, he could send them off, not only by 
 addressing them when he was present, but even by a 
 message or a letter from a distance. Arnobius, who 
 wrote at the beginning of the fourth century, declares 
 that Christ sometimes appeared to good and pious men, 
 in a bodily shape, and that soothsayers and magicians 
 were struck dumb at the mention of his name ; and both 
 he and his scholar Lactantius tell the same story with 
 their predecessors as to the wonderful power of Chris- 
 
1750.] MIDDLETON'S EEMARKS on the fathers. 371 
 
 tians over demons. In the fathers, as they are called, of 
 subsequent thues, we find plenty of similar attestations to 
 the working of miracles. 
 
 What, then, are we to behove concerning this ques- 
 tion? Are we to suppose that the power of working 
 miracles was withheld from the Church for a time, and 
 afterwards restored to it ? Or are we to conclude that 
 the ecclesiastical writers who succeeded the apostohcal 
 fathers were weak and credulous persons, who were 
 easily deceived by jugghng pretenders, and ready to pro- 
 pagate any wild improbability that foUy or imposture 
 brought to their knowledge ? 
 
 Middleton proceeds to examine what credit is due to 
 the successors of the apostohcal fathers ; observing that 
 our trust in a writer must depend on the notion which 
 we form of his veracity and his judgment. If we con- 
 sider him veracious, we shall feel assured that he does 
 not willingly deceive us ; if we think him a man of judg- 
 ment, we shall be persuaded that he was not likely to be 
 deceived himself ; but, if we see cause to doubt either of 
 these qualities in him, we can have but Httle confidence 
 in the truth of what he delivers ; for the want of judg- 
 ment, in many cases, and especially in regard to matters 
 of an extraordinary or miraculous nature, will have as ill 
 an effect on his credibihty as the want of veracity. 
 Looking first to Justin Martyr, we find in him innume- 
 rable manifestations of want of judgment. Eemarking 
 on the mystery of the crass, he says, ' Consider all the 
 things in the world, whether they could be admiiiistered 
 or have any communication with each other, without 
 this form of the cross. The sea could not be passed 
 unless that trophy called the sail were preserved in the 
 ship ; the earth could not be tiUed without it ; for neither 
 diggers nor artificers could do their work but by instru- 
 ments of this shape. The form of man, in the erection 
 of his body, the extension of his arms, and the projection 
 
372 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 of his nose from his forehead, through which inspira- 
 tion is made, shows nothing else but the figure of the 
 cross, in which sense, also, it is spoken of by the prophet, 
 Christ the Lord is the breath before our face.'' And in 
 another place he says that, when the Israelites fought 
 with the Amalekites, and Moses held up his hands in 
 support of his countrymen, their success was by no means 
 due to his prayers, but simply to his representation of the 
 figure of a cross. He also says ' that Christ, when he was 
 crucified, fidfiUed the symbol of the tree of life in Para- 
 dise, and of all other things that were to happen after- 
 w^ards to the righteous ; for Moses was sent with a rod to 
 release liis people ; with this rod he divided the Eed 
 Sea ; brought water out of the rock ; and, with a piece 
 of wood, made the bitter water sweet ; Jacob, also, with 
 sticks, made his uncle Laban's sheep bring forth such 
 lambs as were to be his own again,' &c. ' And so,' says 
 Middleton, ' he goes on to apply aU the sticks and pieces 
 of wood in the Old Testament to the cross of Christ.'* 
 Silly and ridiculous as these interpretations may seem, 
 Justin dreams that they were all imparted to him from 
 heaven, and gravely asks the Jews, in his ' Dialogue with 
 Trypho,' whether they thought it possible for him to have 
 acquired so profound a knowledge of the Scriptures if he 
 had not received from the Author of the Scriptures grace 
 to understand them. 
 
 Irena3us was of a similar character with Justin Martyr, 
 as is sufficiently shown by his affirmation that Christ must 
 have been at least fifty years old when He died ; for, as 
 He came to save all men, of all ages. He must surely be 
 thought to have passed through all stages of hfe ; and by 
 his record of a tradition, which he asserts to have re- 
 ceived from Christ himself, that, in the millennium, there 
 
 * ' Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers' suh init. Just. Mart. 
 Apol. i., and Dial, with Trypho. 
 
1750.] CHARACTER OF THE FATHERS. 373 
 
 would grow vineyards, each having ten thousand vines, 
 each vine ten thousand branches, each branch ten thousand 
 shoots, each shoot ten thousand bunches, each bunch ten 
 thousand grapes, and each grape yielding twenty-five 
 measures of wine. Could a man who would crowd his 
 pages with such ridiculous notions, whether the product 
 of his own imagination or that of others, be thought a 
 competent witness to the existence of miraculous powers 
 in the Church ? 
 
 The later fathers must be held in hke estimation 
 with these two, whose statements, indeed, they copy on 
 trust, and to whom they refer as undoubted authorities. 
 It would require volumes to exhibit the strange stories 
 they have told of miraculous manifestations, especially in 
 casting out devils, in healing the sick, in prophesying and 
 seeing visions, in expounding the Scriptures, and in speaking 
 with tongues. Theophilus, TertulHan, St. Jerome, Athena- 
 goras, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyprian, Dionysius of 
 Alexandria, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and other authors of 
 that class, abound in accounts of such wonders. But aU 
 these narratives serve only to show the want of judgment, if 
 not the want of veracity, in those who record them ; they 
 are trifling, vain, purposeless ; they bear, at least most of 
 them, marks of fraud and imposture ; and they are alto- 
 gether of such a nature that, if we are asked whether we 
 should not believe good and pious men when they relate 
 them, we can only answer, shortly and simply, that they 
 are incredible, and that he who relates them as credible 
 cannot be regarded as a writer of authority. 
 
 In opposition to aU this censure of the fathers as his- 
 torians, which Middleton added to that of Daille, Whitby, 
 and Barbeyrac, who condemn them as injudicious inter- 
 preters of Scripture, and unsafe morahsts, Warburton is 
 willing to try what he can say in their behalf He enters 
 on his ' Julian ' by observing that, as the fathers were 
 once too much reverenced, so there has been a disposition 
 
374 LIFK OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 in later times, too much to undervalue tliem. Thought 
 they have been too credulous, they may be competent 
 witnesses to the state of rehgion in their own day. We 
 are too apt to judge of ancient authors by a modern 
 standard, when, if we form just notions of them, we 
 should estimate them by the standard of their own times. 
 Growing then very bold, he says, ' To know the true 
 value of the fathers, we should place them by their con- 
 temporaries, the Pagan writers of greatest estimation ; 
 and, if they suffer in their neighbourhood, e'en let them 
 stay, Avhere most of them aheady.are, with, the grocers. 
 But it is a fact none acquainted with antiquity wiU deny, 
 how great a secret soever modern Divines may make of 
 it, that as polite scholars (which is a thing their despisers 
 now most affect to value), the Christian writers have in- 
 disputably the advantage, both in eloquence and ethics. 
 And we may venture to say that there are some of them 
 who have successively [successfuUy ?] rivalled the best 
 writers of the higher and purer antiquity. St. Chrysos- 
 tom has more good sense than Plato ; and the critic may 
 find in Lactantius almost as many good words as in 
 TuUy. So that if, on the principles of a classical taste, 
 we discard the fathers, we should send along with them 
 the Pagan writers of the same ages ; unless the won- 
 derful theology of the latter can atone for (what they both 
 have in common) their false rhetoric and bad reasoning. 
 
 ' These imperfections, therefore, in both being equal, it 
 is plain they were the faults of the time. For whatever 
 advantages the ancients had over us in the arts of poetiy, 
 oratory, and history, it is certain we have over them in 
 the science of reasoning, as far as it concerns the investi- 
 gation of moral truth.' * 
 
 Having thus advocated . the literary character of the 
 fathers, setting Chrysostom above Plato, and Lactantius 
 
 * Introd. to ' Julian :' Works, vol. viii. 
 
1750.] JULIAN'S ATTEMPT TO KKBUILD THE TEMPLE. 375 
 
 almost on a level with Cicero, he observes that they had 
 no immoral intention to deceive (an assertion which, with 
 regard to most of them, may doubtless be received as 
 true), and proceeds to shoAv that whether there was a 
 general cessation of miracles after the days of the Apos- 
 tles, or not, there had occurred at least one miracle since 
 that time, of which the reality was not to be disputed. 
 This was wrought to decide a contest between Jehovah 
 and Baal, between Christianity and Paganism, between 
 Jesus and Julian. The temple of Jerusalem, it was pro- 
 phesied, should be destroyed ; and the destruction must 
 be final and irremediable ; for, if the temple were rebuilt, 
 and the local worship of the Jews restored, there would 
 be an end to aU the pretensions of Christianity. 
 
 Juhan, detesting his uncle Constantine, detested also 
 the religion that he professed, although, while he was still 
 in an inferior station, he was obliged to conceal his desire 
 to exalt its rival. When he became emperor, he mani- 
 fested his love of Paganism without disguise. He was 
 fond'of Greek literature, the soul of which, he said, was 
 the old theology, and that soul he desired to reinstate 
 in its former position. But, in considering what means to 
 adopt for this purpose, whether force or art, he saw that 
 his predecessors, even when the Christians were fewer, 
 had proved the inutility of force, which would assuredly 
 be of stni less effect now that their numbers were in- 
 creased. He therefore had recourse to art ; he en- 
 com-aged Paganism by laws, and ordered the temples to 
 be opened for sacrifice ; he revoked the privileges and 
 honours which his uncle and cousin had granted to the 
 clergy, of- whom he degraded and banished some of the 
 more arrogant or rebellious ; and he disqualified Chris- 
 tian laymen for bearing office in the state. But the most 
 effective means which he adopted was to prohibit all pro- 
 fessors of learning, who were of the Christian religion, 
 from teaching in the public schools, thus detachmg the 
 
370 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 youth from the influence of Christianity, and depriving 
 Christianity of the support of profane hterature. He 
 endeavoured, at the same time, by his own writings and 
 by personal addresses, to convince the people of the 
 advantage of reviving the ancient superstition. 
 
 But not finding his schemes advance so rapidly as de- 
 sired, he determined on confounding Jewish and Christian 
 prophecy by rebuilding the temple at Jerusalem. When 
 he conceived this design, he was preparing for his expedi- 
 tion into Persia, but his ardour for its execution would not 
 allow him to wait till he should return. He committed 
 the conduct of the affair, during his absence, to Alypius, 
 a nobleman of high character for probity, learning, and 
 versatility of talent, to whom he was greatly attached. 
 Alypius secured the aid of the governor of Palestine, and 
 took proper measures for the performance of the under- 
 taking. The result is told in the well-known passage of 
 Ammianus MarceUinus, thus translated by Warburton, 
 whom Gibbon transcribes without acknowledgment: 
 ' When Alypius had set himself to the vigorous execution 
 of his charge, in which he had aU the assistance that the 
 governor of the province could afford hhn, horrible balls 
 of fire breaking out near the foundations, with frequent 
 and reiterated attacks, rendered the place from time to 
 time inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen ; 
 and the victorious element continuing in this manner, 
 obstinately and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to 
 a distance, Alypius thought best to give over the enterprise.' 
 
 The occurrence is also mentioned in three writers that 
 hved shortly after it took place, Ambrose, Chrysostom, 
 and Gregory Nazianzen. Ambrose, who lived -at a great 
 distance from the scene, and Chrysostom, who was in the 
 neighbourhood of it, notice the matter but shghtly, merely 
 observing that a fire, bursting from the foundations, de- 
 stroyed or dispersed tlie workmen. But Gregory JSFazianzen 
 gives a much longer and more circumstantial history of 
 
1750.] WHETHER JULIAN WAS DEFEATED BY A MIEACLE. 377 
 
 tlie event. Julian assured tlie Jews, says he, that the 
 time was come when they should return into their own 
 land, and promised to restore their Temple for them to 
 its ancient dignity and splendour. Of Alypius, and the 
 governor of Palestine, he makes no mention ; but speaks 
 of the attempt as being wholly an effort of the Jews, who, 
 under the Emperor's encouragement, engaged in the work 
 of rebuilding with great ardour and resolution. But they 
 were driven from their occupation by a violent wind 
 and a sudden earthquake, and fled for refuge to a neigh- 
 bouring church, when, as some say, the building refused 
 their admission, the doors being shut by an invisible power, 
 and, ' as is now affirmed and believed by all,' when they 
 attempted to effect an entrance by force, the fire, which 
 bui-st from the foundations of the Temple, met and stopped 
 them, consuming some, and maiming others. ' But the 
 thing most wonderful and illustrious,' he proceeds, ' was 
 a light, which appeared in the heavens, of a cross within 
 a circle. . . . Nay farther, they who were present and 
 partakers of the miracle, show, to this very clay, the sign 
 or figure of the cross which was then marked or impressed 
 upon their garments. Por, at that time, as these men, 
 whether such as were of us, or strangers, were showing 
 these marks, or attending to others who showed them, 
 each presently observed the wonder, either on himself or 
 his neighbour, having a radiant mark on his body or on 
 his garment ; in which there was somethmg that, in art 
 and elegance, exceeded all painting or embroidery.' * 
 
 It is the latter part of this miraculous account of which 
 Warburton labours chiefly to establish the probability. 
 ' The light that was seen in the heavens,' he says, ' of 
 a cross within a circle, will give us very httle trouble ; 
 for it was neither more nor less than one of those me- 
 teoric lights, in a still and clouded sky, which are not 
 
 * Greg. Nazianz. orat. iv. adv. Julian. Warburton's Julian, b. ii. c. 3. 
 
378 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 imfrequently seen in solar or lunar halos.' It was such a 
 phenomenon as appeared to Constantine the Great, and to 
 Cyril of Jerusalem in the time of Constantius ; and ap- 
 pearances of the same kind have been recorded, at various 
 times, by historians of the middle ages, who generally 
 noticed them as miraculous, but, since the revival of 
 learning, naturalists and astronomers have attempted to 
 explain their physical causes. For information on this 
 subject he refers to a treatise of J. A. Fabricius, Exerci- 
 tatio Critica, qua disputatur Crucem, quam in ccelis vidisse 
 se juravit Cojistantinus Imperator, fuisse p)hcenomenon 
 naturale in halone solari* observing that he directs the 
 reader to it with much satisfaction ; ' for,' he adds, ' it is 
 not my Avay to repeat what others have proved before me, 
 or to defraud them of the praises due to their discoveries.' 
 For the crosses on the garments he proceeds to account 
 in a similar manner. The ecclesiastical historian Socrates, 
 in his relation of the occurrence, says that ' fire,' or 
 lightning, ' which fell from heaven, spoiled all the workmen's 
 tools ;' a circumstance which is mentioned by no other 
 narrator of the event. Warburton, however, is pleased to 
 take the lightning on the historian's word, and to make the 
 most of it, ' as being,' he says, ' one of the most constant 
 accompaniments of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 
 Lightning has been known to leave the impressions of 
 crosses on the clothes and persons of those whom it has 
 enveloped.' To estabhsh this fact, he produces a passage 
 from Isaac Casaubon's ' Adversaria,' "vvi-itten while Casau- 
 bon was in England, and, as his son Meric, who preserved 
 it, conjectures, about the year 1611. It gives an account 
 of a thunderstorm, related to Casaubon by Dr. Lancelot 
 Andrews, then Bishop of Ely, who received it from Dr. 
 John Still, Bishop of Wells. ' In the city of Wells,' says 
 tlie narrative, as translated by Warburton from Casaubon's 
 
 * Vid. Bibl. Grtec. torn. vi. 
 
1750.] PHENOMENA AT JERUSALEM. 379 
 
 Latin, ' about fifteen years ago, one summer's day, while 
 the people were at Divine service in the cathedral church, 
 they heard, as it thundered, two or three claps above 
 ■measure dreadful, so that the whole congregation, affected 
 alike, threw themselves on their knees at this terrifying 
 sound. It appeared that hghtning fell at the same time, 
 but without harm to any one. So far, then, there was 
 nothing but what was common in the Hke cases. The 
 wonderful part was this, which afterwards was taken 
 notice of by many, that the marks of a cross were found 
 to have been imprinted on the bodies of those who were 
 then at Divine service in the cathedral. The Bishop of 
 WeUs told my Lord of Ely that his wife (a woman of 
 uncommon probity) came to him and informed him, as of 
 a great miracle, that she had then the mark of a cross 
 impressed upon her body ; which tale, when the Bishop 
 treated as absurd, his wife exposed the part and gave 
 him ocular proof He afterwards observed that he had 
 upon himself, on his arm (as I take it), the plainest mark 
 of a X . Others had it on the shoulder, the breast, the 
 back, or other parts. This account that great man, my 
 Lord of Ely, gave me in such a manner as forbade me 
 even to doubt of its truth.' * 
 
 But, lest those who doubt the reahty of a miracle at the 
 Temple of Jerusalem, should say that, though fire from 
 heaven might imprint crosses on garments or bodies, it is 
 mentioned only by one writer of a later date, and there- 
 fore, however frequently repeated, may never have hap- 
 pened, Warburton is ready with another instance to show 
 that the same crosses may also be imprinted by fire from the 
 earth. He finds, in Boyle's ' Discourse of Some Unheeded 
 Causes of the Lisalubrity and Salubrity of the Air,' Eather 
 Khxher's account of the eruption of Vesuvius in 1660, 
 
 * Ex Advers. Is. Casaub. apud Meric. Casaub. in Tract, intit. ' Of 
 Credulity and Incredulity,' p. 118 ; Warburton's Julian, book ii. c. 3. 
 
380 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTOJiT. [Cu, XXL 
 
 which was followed by the appearance of crosses on the 
 clothes of many of the people in the country. ' These 
 crosses,' says Boyle, 'were seen on linen garments, as 
 shirt-sleeves, women's aprons, that had lain open to the 
 air, and upon the exposed parts of sheets ; which is the 
 less to be admired, because, as Kircher fairly guesses, the 
 mineral vapours were, by the texture that belongs to 
 linen (which consists of threads crossing one another, for 
 the most part at or near right angles), easUy determined 
 to run along in almost straight lines crossing each other, 
 and consequently to frame spots resembhng, some one, 
 and some another, kind of crosses. These were extremely 
 numerous in the several parts of the kingdom of Naples ; 
 insomuch that the Jesuit, who sent the relation to Kircher, 
 says that he himself found thirty in one altar-cloth, that 
 fifteen were found upon the smock-sleeve of a woman, 
 and that he reckoned eight in a boy's band ; also their 
 colour and magnitude were very unequal, and their figures 
 discrepant, as may appear by many pictures of them 
 drawn by the relator; they would not wash out with 
 simple water, but required soap ; their duration was also 
 unequal, some lasting ten or fifteen days, and others 
 longer, before they disappeared.' * 
 
 ' Thus,' remarks Warburton, ' these Vesuvian crosses, 
 proceeding from terrestrial fire, were impressed only on 
 the garments ; the crosses at Wells, proceeding from the 
 hghtning, only on persons' bodies ; while the Juhan crosses 
 appeared on both ; and the reader may therefore, if he 
 thinks proper, in regard to the fire at Jerusalem, consider 
 that the crosses on the bodies were caused by the hghtning, 
 and the crosses on the garments by the flames from the 
 ground.' 
 
 Such are the efforts that Warburton makes to render 
 it probable that the fiery eruption at Jerusalem was a 
 
 Boyle's Works, folio, vol. iv. p. 293. 
 
]7.:0.] OPINIONS CONCERNING THE PIIiENOMENA. 381 
 
 miracle. But the truth is, that the nearer he allies its 
 effects to those of natural phasnomena, the more he detracts 
 from the likelihood that it was miraculous. Nor must all 
 the circumstances from which he argues be considered to 
 have been certainly attendant on the event. The earth- 
 quake is mentioned only by Christian writers ; * the 
 lightning is mentioned only by one of those writers ; and, 
 when these two concomitants are withdrawn, there remains 
 only Ammianus's eruption of horrible balls of fire. This, 
 as some, whom Warburton feels himself obliged to notice, 
 contend, may have been produced by some artificial con- 
 trivance of the Christians. ' It is said the Egyptians, from the 
 earhest times, had the secret of making combustible mate- 
 rials in such a manner as to produce the effects of exploded 
 gunpowder,' and ' that Sir "William Temple, Lord Herbert 
 of Cherbury, and an abler man than either of them. Sir 
 Thomas Browne, of Norwich, have dropped hints as if 
 some of the greatest wonders, both in sacred and profane 
 antiquity, were the effects of this destructive composition.' •j' 
 Basnage, whom "Warburton attempts to refute, concludes, 
 in his ' History of the Jews,' J from the variations and 
 contradictions in the different accounts of the occurrence, 
 that it was not only no miracle, but an affair of much less 
 magnitude and importance than is generally supposed. 
 Gibbon observes that, however satisfactory the state- 
 ment of Marcelhnus may appear, ' a philosopher may still 
 require the original evidence of impartial and intelligent 
 spectators ; ' and argues from the silence of Jerome, as 
 Basnage argues from that of Cyril, both of whom Hved at 
 the time, that ' the story which was celebrated at a dis- 
 tance might be despised on the spot.' Jortin, on the 
 contrary, in his ' Eemarks on Ecclesiastical History,' § 
 declares himself of opinion that a miracle was really 
 
 * Julian, book ii. o. 2. f Julian, book ii. c. 5. 
 
 if Tom. viii. pp. 157-168. § Vol. i. p. 297. 
 
382 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 wrought, observing that ' the defeat of Julian's attempt 
 to rebuild the Temple may justly be ascribed to a parti- 
 cvilar providence.' In this belief he concurs with Walter 
 Moyle, whom he quotes, and who calls the occurrence at 
 Jerusalem a miracle so fully attested that he does not see 
 with what forehead anyone can question the truth of it* 
 Lardner,f on the contrary, rejects the whole story of the 
 affair, denying that any attempt was ever made by Julian to 
 rebuild the Temple ; for Julian, in liis ' Letter to the Com- 
 munity of the Jews,' written when he was about to enter 
 on the Persian war, merely promises that, if he terminated 
 that war successfully, he would then rebuild the Temple ; 
 but, as he never returned from Persia, he could therefore 
 never have set about rebuilding the Temple. He adds 
 that Ammianus MarceUinus was credulous, and might 
 have taken the account from the Christians Avithout exami- 
 nation ; that the history of the pretended miracle is loaded 
 with trifling circumstances inconsistent with the Divine 
 Majesty ; and that there are two writers of that period, 
 Jerome and Prudentius, as well as Orosius, who lived 
 about fifty years later, that make no mention of the pre- 
 tended miracle ; nor does Cyril, in his books against 
 Julian, allude at all to any miraculous defeat of the Em- 
 peror, though, had such an event occurred, it would have 
 been much to his purpose to make the most of it. 
 
 Warburton had intended to divide his ' Discourse ' into 
 three parts : the first, to establish the truth of the miracle 
 by human testimony ; the second, to answer objections ; 
 and the third, to inquire what evidence will justify a rea- 
 sonable man in giving credit to a miraculous fact. The 
 second part he thought might be ' a little ticldish.' % The 
 thu'd part, hke the third part of ' The Divine Legation,' 
 was never written. He, indeed, glanced again at the 
 
 * Moyle's Works, vol. ii. pp. 100, 289. 
 
 + Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. iv. p. 47, seq. 
 
 i Letter to Doddridge, June 15, 1750. 
 
1750.] OPmiONS KESPBCTIN'G 'JULIAN.' 383 
 
 subject in his ' Sermon on tlie Eesurrection,'* observing 
 that ' a miracle, well attested by human authority, is one 
 of the most legitimate objects of belief.' But the fulness 
 with which he enlarged on the first two heads rendered 
 it quite superfluous for him to say much on the third. 
 
 Kurd's revision of Julian may have been of some ad- 
 vantage to its style, which is more temperate and correct 
 than that of some of Warburton's other works. Warbur- 
 ton charged Hurd to be very severe before pubhcation, 
 and very indulgent afterwards, -j" 
 
 He was deHghted with the attention that the work 
 received in France. ' It has procured me,' said he, ' the 
 goodwill of the best and greatest man in France,' the Due 
 de NoaiUes, ' while there is hardly a nobleman in England 
 knows I have written such a book.' J Montesquieu, also, 
 in a letter to Charles Yorke, said, ' When you see Dr. 
 Warburton, pray let him know the satisfaction I propose 
 to myself in making a farther acquaintance with him, and 
 in taking a nearer view of his great talents. His Julian 
 charms me.' § But the book ' had the fate of the author's 
 other writings,' says Hurd, ' to be censured at home.' The 
 attacks on it, however, were far less numerous than those 
 which had been made on ' The Divine Legation,' and are 
 of too Httle importance to require notice. Sykes menaced 
 an assault, but did nothing. Philip Mchols, Warburton's 
 bitter foe, declared that he had been anticipated by Dr. 
 John Spencer in proving Julian to have been defeated by 
 a miracle, and said what he could besides against the 
 book. ' Sykes threatened,' said Warburton, in a letter to 
 Balguy, ' to draw his redoubtable pen upon poor Julian ; 
 but he left the execution to another. And who do you 
 think that other proves? Somebody or other, by far 
 
 * Disc. xxix. Works, vol. x. p. 225. 
 
 t Letter to Hurd, Aug. 19, 1749. 
 
 J Letter to Hurd. 
 
 § Kurd's Life of Warburton, p. 53. 
 
384 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUBTOISr. [Cn. XXL 
 
 more curious than myself, would unearth this vermin ; 
 and he is found to be one Nichols, which your University 
 some time ago prosecuted for steahng their books ; or 
 rather should have prosecuted. Have I not reason to 
 blame you for your ill-timed clemency ? Had they 
 hanged him, as Justice called upon them to do, my book 
 had been safe. It is true he has not fulfilled the old pro- 
 verb, but rather contributed to a new one, Save a rogue 
 from the gallows, and — he will endeavour to save his 
 fellow. I had gibbeted up Juhan, and he comes by night 
 to cut him down.' 
 
 But we must not take leave of ' Julian' before we notice 
 certain remarks on mathematics and mathematicians which 
 the author has inserted in his Introduction. He thought 
 that on the study of the mathematics irreligion was a 
 general attendant. ' The mathematicians,' he says to Hurd, 
 ' declare that what happened at the attempt to rebuild 
 the Temple was a natural event. This tribe of men — I do 
 not mean the inventors and geniuses among them, whom I 
 honour, but the demonstrators of others' inventions, who 
 are ten times duUer and prouder than a damn'd poet — ^have 
 a strange aversion to anything that smacks of religion.' * 
 There are considered to be, he says, two great instru- 
 ments or aids for the discovery and estabhshment of 
 truth — logic and mathematics. As to logic, it is in 
 practice, he asserts, more a trick than a science ; that we 
 may apply to the art of syllogism what Butler has ob- 
 served of the art of rhetoric, that it only teaches us to 
 name the tools which nature had before given us, and of 
 which habit had taught us the use ; that all its real virtue 
 consists in the compendious detection of a. fallacy; that 
 its true value is now well known, and that it is, therefore, 
 unnecessary to put it lower in general estimation. 
 
 ' However,' he proceeds, ' what logic hath lost of its 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, let. xix. 
 
1750.] KEMAEKS ON MATHEMATICS. 385 
 
 credit, mathematics have gained ; and geometry is now- 
 supposed to do wonders as well in the system of man as 
 of matter. It must be owned, the real virtue it hath, it 
 had acquired long since ; for, by what is left us of anti- 
 quity, we see how elegantly it was then handled, and 
 how subhmely it was pursued. But the truth is, all its 
 use, for the purpose in question, besides what hath been 
 already mentioned, seems to be only habituating the mind 
 to think long and closely ; and it would be well if this 
 advantage made amends for some inconveniences, as in- 
 separable from its study. It may seem, perhaps, too 
 much a paradox to say that long habit in this science 
 incapacitates the mind .for reasoning at large, and espe- 
 cially in the search of moral truth. And yet, I believe, 
 nothing is more certain. The object of geometry is 
 demonstration ; its subject admits of it, and is almost the 
 only subject that doth. In this science, whatever is not 
 demonstration, goes for nothing, or is, at least, below the 
 subhme inquirer's regard. Probability, through its almost 
 infinite degrees, from simple doubt up to absolute cer- 
 tainty, is the terra incognita of the geometer. And yet 
 here it is that the great business of the human mind, the 
 search and discovery of all the important truths which 
 concern us as reasonable beings, is carried on. And here, 
 too, it is that aU its vigour is exerted ; for to proportion 
 the assent to the probabihty accompanying every varying 
 degree of moral evidence, requires the most enlarged and 
 sovereign exercise of reason. But as to excel in the use 
 of anything, the habit must always be in proportion to 
 the difficulty, it seems very unlikely that the geometer 
 (long confined to the routine of demonstration, the easiest 
 exercise of reason, where much less of the vigour than of 
 the attention of mind is required to excel) should form a 
 right judgment on subjects whose truth or falsehood is to 
 be rated on the degrees of moral evidence. I venture to 
 call mathematics the easiest exercise of reason, on the 
 
 C c 
 
386 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI, 
 
 authority of Cicero, who observes that scarce any man 
 ever set himself upon this study, who did not make what 
 progress in it he pleased* But, besides acquired in- 
 ability, prejudice renders the veteran mathematician still 
 less capable of judging of moral evidence. He who hath 
 been so long accustomed to lay together and compare 
 ideas, and hath reaped demonstration, the richest frait of 
 speculative truth, for his labour, regards all the lower de- 
 grees of evidence as in the train only of his mathematical 
 principality ; and he commonly ranks them in so arbitrary a 
 manner that the ratio ultima mathematicorum is become 
 almost as great a libel upon common sense as other 
 sovereign decisions. I might appeal for the truth of this 
 to those wonderful conclusions which geometers, when 
 condescending to write on history, ethics, or theology, 
 have made from their premises. But the thing is no- 
 torious, and it is now no secret that the oldest mathe- 
 matician in England is the worst reasoner in it. But I 
 would not be mistaken as undervaluing the many useful 
 discoveries made from time to time in moral matters by 
 professed mathematicians. Nor will any one so mistake 
 me, who does not first confound the genius and the 
 geometer ; and then conclude that which was the achieve- 
 ment of his wit was the result of his theorems.'! 
 
 He had previously aimed a similar blow at Sir Isaac 
 Newton in ' The Divine Legation :' J ' What is it to truth, 
 what a courtier judges of a church, a politician of con- 
 science, or a geometer, grown grey in demonstration, of 
 moral evidence ? ' 
 
 Whether these expressions influenced Gibbon when he 
 deUvered his judgment on mathematics, is uncertain ; but 
 the thought is very similar in both writers. Gibbon says 
 that mathematics ' harden the mind by the habit of rigid 
 
 * De Orat. lib. i. c. 1. 
 
 •f Introd. to ' Julian,' p. xiv. 
 
 J B. V, sect. iv. Works, vol. v. p. 134. 
 
1750.] VALUE OF MATHEMATICAL STUDIES. 387 
 
 demonstration, so destructive to the finer feelings of moral 
 evidence, which must determine the actions and opinions 
 of our hves.' He, therefore, reUnquished the study be- 
 fore this effect was produced upon him. 
 
 Whoever is of opinion with these two authors, will be 
 inchned to question whether it is right, in any public place 
 for general education, that young men should be called 
 upon to devote three or four of the best years of their 
 hves, at a season the most important for training and 
 forming the mind, to the almost exclusive study of the 
 mathematics. They who beheve that mathematics have 
 that influence on the mind which Warburton and Gibbon 
 impute to them, will question whether young men in- 
 tended for the church, or the bar, or the senate, are not 
 injured, rather than beneiited, by the devotion of so long 
 a period of time to mathematical studies. It is true that 
 the requisition to study mathematics, to a great extent, in 
 those places of education, may be said to be, though 
 strong, not absolute ; the students may give but a com- 
 paratively moderate portion of their time to mathematics, 
 and devote the greater portion to other studies ; but this, 
 with young men of ambition, who are desirous to attain 
 honours and distinctions in their university before they 
 leave it, is not likely to be the case, as long as those 
 honours and distinctions depend principally, if not wholly, 
 on proficiency in mathematics. Or it may be said that 
 they may allot the time which they are to spend at the 
 university before taking their degrees, to mathematics, and 
 may then relinquish the study altogether, and give them- 
 selves up to the other pursuits which they may think more 
 necessary for their career in public hfe ; but then it must 
 be inquired whether the years which have thus been em- 
 ployed on mathematics have not been in a great degree 
 wasted, and whether the students would not enter on 
 pubhc life with better qualifications, and with a better 
 prospect of success, if they had devoted the time spent 
 
 c c 2 
 
?83 LIFE OB" BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 in mathematical investigations to studies of a literary na- 
 ture, to the perusal of the great authors in their own 
 and other languages, and to exercise in composition, in 
 Avriting, or speaking, in which many young men, after 
 long residence at a university, are lamentably deficient. 
 
 It must be granted that mathematics have the virtue 
 which Warburton allows them, the power of habituating 
 the mind to close and patient thought. It is not to be for- 
 gotten that Plato deemed geometry of so much importance 
 as a preparative to manly studies, that he wrote on the 
 door of his gymnasium, let no one ignorant of geometry 
 enter. But Plato seems to have thought, and it is for us 
 to consider, whether we ought not to think also, that 
 mathematical or geometrical training should be received in 
 boyhood, and should then be quitted by those who do not 
 intend to continue mathematicians all their hves, for those 
 other studies, philosophical and hterary, which are to fit 
 a young man for his career in civil employments. 
 
 It is argued by those who defend the present devotion 
 to mathematical studies at the university, that young 
 men who prove themselves able to pvirsue long investiga- 
 tions in the higher mathematics, who master large portions 
 of Newton's ' Principia,' or other difiicult mathematical 
 works, prove their capacity for accomphshing anything 
 whatever. They may prove their capacity, perhaps, for 
 accomplishing anything whatever in mathematics, but, if 
 they are not to be mere mathematicians for ever, it is 
 worthy of consideration whether they might not have 
 proved their capacity better in some other kind of men- 
 tal exercise. 
 
 Those, indeed, who, like Warburton and Gibbon, object 
 to mathematics as a means of cultivating the mind, without 
 having made any great progress in the study themselves, 
 are always hable to the retort, Damiiant quod non intel- 
 liqunt. But the question is in reahty a question of com- 
 mon sense. If long attention to the mathematics, far 
 
1750.J OPINIONS ON MATHEMATICIANS, 389 
 
 from expanding the entire powers of the mind, and 
 extending its views of things in general, tends rather to 
 contract and incapacitate it for reasoning at large, — for 
 the most extensive and sovereign exercise of reason (a 
 charge which mathematicians themselves have never been 
 able to refute), — how is it fit that young men, at a most 
 influential period of hfe, should be confined to the study of 
 that which rather disquahfies than prepares them for 
 what they will have to do in after years ? Buonaparte 
 hoped to find that La Place, the greatest of mathematicians, 
 would prove one of the most valuable of ministers, but 
 discovered that his previous studies had unfitted him for 
 the ordinary duties of office, and was obliged to let him 
 conceal his deficiencies in a sinecure. 
 
 Sir Benjamin Brodie, after observing that to reason 
 well seems the result of faculties originally implanted in 
 us by nature, expresses great doubts whether mathe- 
 matics, however they may strengthen the power of atten- 
 tion, tend to improve the judgment on those subjects 
 to which they are not immediately apphcable ; * and 
 adduces support to his behef from the authority of 
 Dugald Stewart, who had remarked the weakness of 
 judgment in mathematicians, and said that he had never 
 met with a mere mathematician who was not credulous 
 to a fault, not only with respect to human testimony, bvit 
 also in matters of opinion.^ And Charles Butler was so 
 convinced of the incompatibihty of mathematical studies 
 with other pursuits, that, though he saw a world of 
 intellectual gratification in them, he soon found it would 
 be his duty, if he was to do anything else, to turn his. 
 attention from them altogether. J 
 
 As to the discovery of truth, mathematics, it is evident, 
 can discover no truth but in their own department ; and, if 
 
 * Psychological Inquiries, dial. i. p. 27. 
 
 f D. Stewart's Moral Philosophy, vol. iii. p. 280. 
 
 I Charles Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 253. 
 
390 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUBTON. [Ch. XXI. 
 
 the study of them destroys the finer feelings of moral 
 evidence, it disqualifies for the discovery of truth in most 
 other branches of inquiry. 
 
 The sum of what is said in favour of mathematical 
 studies, as a beneficial training for the mind, may be con- 
 sidered as contained in the following words of Dr. Thomas 
 Brown : * ' Those precise definitions which insure to 
 every word the same exact signification in the mind of 
 everyone who hears it pronounced, and that lucid pro- 
 gress, in the development of truth after truth, which 
 gives, even to ordinary powers, almost the same facility 
 of comprehension with the highest genius, are unques- 
 tionably of the utmost benefit to the mathematical student 
 while he is prosecuting his particular study, without any 
 contemplation of other advantages to be reaped from 
 them. But there can be no doubt that they are, at the same 
 time, preparing his mind for excellence in other inquiries, of 
 which he has then no conception ; that he will ever after 
 be less ready to employ, and be more quicksighted than 
 he could otherwise have been in detecting, vague and 
 indefinite phraseology, and loose and incoherent reasoning.' 
 But if these advantages of the study be counterbalanced 
 by inconveniences ; if the mind be hardened and cramped 
 by it ; and if it be no due preparation, but rather the 
 contrary, for the ordinary pursuits of public life, it stiU 
 remains a question whether young men, at an age when, 
 
 — as tbe twig is bent, the tree 's inclin'd, 
 
 should be kept under mathematical influence at any uni- 
 versity for so long a period. 
 
 * Philosophy of the Human Mind, lect. v. 
 
1751wJ CHAEACTEE OF .MIDDLETON's WEITINGS. 391 
 
 CHAPTEE XXII. 
 MIDDLETON. EDITIOIf OF POPE. EVANS'S PEOPHECIES. 
 
 CHAEACTEE OF CONYEES MIDDLETON's WEITINGS WAEBDETOn's 
 
 THOUGHTS EESPECTING HIJI SIE EOBEET SUTTOn'S SON WAEBDE- 
 
 TOn'S EDITION OF POPE ; HUED's OPINION OF IT AKENSIDE'S ODE 
 
 TO EDWAEDS JOHN GILBEET COOPEE ; WAEBUETOn's NOTE ON THE 
 
 DUNOIAD CONCEENING HIM EEiSIAEKS ON WAKBUETON'S NOTES ON 
 
 POPE ' NEW BOOK OF THE DUNCIAD ' PEOPHECIES OF AEISE 
 
 EVANS — JOETIN AND WAEBUETON ' CONFUSION WOESE CONFOUNDED ' 
 
 SECOND EDITION OF ' JULIAN ' HUBD VISITS ALLEN ANECDOTES 
 
 OF QUIN AND WAEBUETON. 
 
 DE. MIDDLETON did not live long enough to make 
 any reply to this work of Warburton's, even if he 
 had been as well inclined to do so as he was to repel 
 Cliurch and Dodwell, who were made Doctors of Divinity 
 for attacking him. He was preparing answers against 
 these two adversaries, names now forgotten, when he fell 
 ill, and died in July of this year. His character as an 
 Enghsh writer, generally accurate, but not very animated 
 or attractive, is well known. His ' Free Inquiry,' and his 
 ' Letter from Eome,' hke his assault on Sherlock's book 
 on Prophecy, are said to have arisen from his resentment 
 at being disappointed of church preferment. He left 
 behind him several memoranda for tracts of an equally 
 unfavourable tendency towards the Christian rehgion. 
 One of these, which he nearly or quite completed, was a 
 treatise on ' The Inefficacy and Liutility of Prayer,' which 
 Avas shown to Lord Bolingbroke, who approved it, and 
 was anxious that it should be published ; but Middleton's 
 widow retained it in manuscript as long as she lived, and 
 
392 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cb. XXII. 
 
 Dr. Heberden, to whom she bequeathed her papers, put 
 it into the fire.* When a friend condoled with him that he 
 had not been made a bishop, he rephed, ' Well, Sir, as 
 they have not thought fit to trust me, I am at liberty to 
 speak my mind.' He professed to have but a moderate 
 desire for the temporal bread of the Church, and to be 
 ready to be satisfied with anything but mere emptiness. 
 His great wish, as he declared to Lord Hervey, in a letter 
 written fifteen years before his death, was to see religion 
 reconciled with reason, or, where that cannot be, to have 
 them brought as near together as possible.f Hurd afTects 
 to depreciate him as a theologian, saying that his know- 
 ledge of divinity was but shght, and his talents unsuited 
 to excel in that science ; but Hurd was httle inclined to 
 commend anyone whom Warburton opposed, and might 
 have spoken otherwise of Middleton's knowledge had he 
 been on the other side of the question. 
 
 Warburton, writing to Hurd, at the time that Middle- 
 ton's death was expected, says : ' Had he had, I will not 
 say piety, but greatness of mind enough not to sufier the 
 pretended injuries of some chmxhmen to prejudice him 
 against rehgion, I should love him living, and honour him 
 when dead. Good God ! that man, for the discourtesies 
 done him by his miserable fellow-creatures, should be con- 
 tent to divest himself of the true viaticum, the comfort, the 
 solace, the asylum from all the evils of human hfe, is per- 
 fectly astonishing.' J And in a letter to Jortin, just after 
 Dr. Middleton died, he says he had heard from Cambridge 
 that he had ' declared he should die with that composure 
 of mind which he thought must be the enjoyment of 
 every man who had been a sincere searcher after truth ; 
 expressed some concern that he felt his strength and spirits 
 
 * Bishop Newton's Life, by Himself, p. 24. 
 
 I Nichols's Lit. An. vol. v. p. 421. 
 
 I Letters from au Eminent Prelate, p. 54. 
 
1751.] DE. CONYERS MIDDLETON. 393 
 
 decline so fast, that he could not complete some designs he 
 had then in hand [the answers to Church and Dodwell] ; 
 and that he imagined he had given the miracles of the 
 early ages such a blow as they would not easily recover.' 
 ' I do not see,' remarks Warburton on this intelligence, 
 ' how the mere discovery of truth affords such pleasure. 
 If this truth be, that the providence of God governs the 
 ' moral as weU as natural world, and that, in compassion to 
 human distresses, He has revealed His will to mankind, 
 by which we are enabled to get the better of them by a 
 restoration to his favour, I can easUy conceive the plea- 
 sure that, at any period of Hfe, must accompany such a 
 discovery. But if the truth discovered be, that we have 
 no farther share in God than as we partake of his natural 
 government of the universe, or that all there is in his moral 
 government is only the natural, necessary efiects of virtue 
 and vice upon human agents here, and that all the pre- 
 tended revelations of an- hereafter were begot by fools 
 and hurried up by knaves ; if this, I say, be our boasted 
 discovery, it must, I think, prove a very uncomfortable 
 contemplation, especially in our last hours. But every 
 man has his taste. I only speak for myself. All that I 
 hope and wish is, that the scribblers will let his memory 
 alone ; for though (after the approbation of the good and 
 wise) one cannot wish anything better for one's self or one's 
 friend, than to be heartily abused by them in this hfe, 
 because it is as certain a sign of one's merit as a dog's 
 barking at the moon is of her brightness, yet the veil 
 that death draws over us is so sacred that the throwincr 
 
 a 
 
 dirt there has been esteemed at all times, and by all 
 people, a profanation. If the Eomans suffered their slaves 
 to abuse their heroes on the day of triumph, they would 
 have regarded the same ribaldries with horror at their 
 funerals.' 
 
 Warburton also recommended, about this time, a son 
 of his old patron, Sir Eobert Sutton, to the notice of 
 
394 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXII. 
 
 Hurd, as the most extraordinary boy that he ever knew. 
 The youth was then going to Cambridge, after having 
 been some time at the head of Westminster School. 
 ' Besides his knowledge of the ancient languages,' said 
 Warburton, ' he speaks and writes Spanish and French 
 with great exactness, understands Itahan, and is now 
 learning High Dutch. I believe the acquaintance and 
 friendship of so promising a youth will be a pleasure to 
 you.' Dr. Nicoll, who was then Master of Westminster 
 School, said that he never met with his fellow.* ' But 
 Westminster,' he remarks in a subsequent letter, in which 
 he thanks Hurd for having noticed him, 'has made his 
 mind a httle whimsical. He has an insatiable thirst after 
 new languages. Pray check this in him. He wrote me 
 word, the other day, he had a mind to study Arabic. 
 I asked him whether the oratory of the writer of ' Pocock's 
 Life ' had won upon him, who, in an earnest address to 
 youth to apply themselves to this charming language, 
 assures them, as the height of their solace and consolation, 
 that it contains twelve miUions three hundred and fifty 
 thousand fifty and two words. I told him I consented he 
 should learn the odd two, provided he chose those two 
 which signified the ne plus of the Latins. 
 
 ' Were I,' he adds, ' to be the reforiner of Westminster 
 School (with the highest reverence be it only whispered), 
 I would order that every boy should have impressed upon 
 his accidence, in great gold letters, as on the back of the 
 horn-book, that oracle of Hobbes, that words are the 
 counters of wise men, and the money of fools, f 
 
 The young man relinquished the pursuit of words for 
 a different sort of occupation ; for Hurd, in 1761, speaks of 
 him, on receiving a visit from him at Thurcaston, as being 
 intent on the study and practice of the law, but preserving 
 the same sweetness of temper, and simpUcity of manners, 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pjD. 52, 62. f lb. p. 75. 
 
1751.] WARBURTON'S EDITION OF POPE. 395 
 
 that had distinguished his earlier years. * He succeeded 
 to the title on the death of his father. 
 
 In 1751 came forth the complete edition of Pope's 
 Works, with such annotations as Warburton thought 
 proper to attach to them. It is amusing to read Kurd's 
 opinion of this publication. 'He appeared again as a 
 critic and commentator in the noble edition he gave of 
 Mr. Pope's Works. And as here there was no room for 
 emendatory criticism, of all others the easiest to be mis- 
 applied or misconstrued, so the public found very little to 
 censure on this occasion. Indeed, the main object of the 
 edition being to do justice to his friend, it was natural for 
 him to exert his whole force upon it ; and as none can 
 define so happily of a poet's meaning as the weU-exercised 
 critic, if he be at the same time of a congenial spirit with 
 his author, it is no wonder that he made this (what I 
 formerly said of it, and still think it to be) the best edition 
 that was ever given of any classic' 
 
 It would not have been easy, in the same number of 
 words, to give more commendation less in conformity 
 with truth. The pubhc soon found very much to censure 
 on the occasion. The main object of the edition was not to 
 do justice to Warburton' s friend., but to make a display of 
 Warburton's own powers of writing comments. The 
 critic was so far from being of a congenial spirit with his 
 author, that it would hardly be possible to produce two 
 minds less congenial. And the edition itself, so far from 
 being the best that was ever given of a classic, is, in regard 
 to the importance of the annotations, one of the very worst. 
 
 One of the most offensive pecuharities in the edition 
 was the Hberty that Warburton had taken to insert in the 
 notes, especially those on the ' Dunciad,' sarcasms on any- 
 one that had incurred his dislike. He boldly said that he 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 324. 
 
396 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUBTON. [Ch. XXII. 
 
 made the notes his instruments for chastising his adver- 
 saries. ' I once saw,' says Disraeh, ' a great literary curio- 
 sity ; 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 hostihties of 
 this singular genius.'* The edition was not unfairly cha- 
 racterised by Akenside in the following ' Ode to Thomas 
 Edwards, Esq.,' which the poet pubhshed, as soon as 
 the work appeared, with Warburton's early letter to 
 Concanen appended : 
 
 Believe me, Edwards, to restrain 
 
 The license of a railer's tongue, 
 Is what but seldom men obtain 
 
 By sense or wit, by prose or song : 
 A task for more Herculean pow'rs, 
 Nor suited to the sacred hours 
 Of leisure in the Muses' bow'rs. 
 
 In bow'rs, where laurels wed with palm, 
 The Muse, the blameless queen, resides, 
 
 Fair Fame attends, and Wisdom calm 
 Her eloquence harmonious guides ; 
 
 While shut for ever from her gate, 
 
 Oft trying, still repining, wait 
 
 Fierce Envy, and calumnious Hate. 
 
 Who then from her delightful bounds 
 
 Woiild step one moment forth to heed 
 What impotent and savage sounds 
 
 From their unhappy mouth proceed ? 
 No ; rather Spenser's lyre again 
 Prepare, and let thy pious straia 
 For Pope's dishonoru-'d shade complain. 
 
 * Quarrels of Authors, art. Warburton. 
 
1751.1 EDWARDS ON WAEBURTON'S NOTES. 397 
 
 Tell how displeas'd was every bard, 
 
 When lately in th' Elysian grove 
 They of his Muse's guardian heard, 
 
 His delegate to fame above, 
 And what with one accord they said 
 Of Wit in drooping age misled. 
 And Warburton's officious aid : 
 
 How Virgil mourn'd the sordid fate 
 
 To that melodious lyre assign'd, 
 Beneath a tutor who so late 
 
 With Midas and his rout combin'd, 
 By spiteful clamour, to confound 
 That very lyre's enchanting sound. 
 Though list'ning realms admir'd around : 
 
 How Horace own'd he thought the fire 
 
 Of his friend Pope's satiric line 
 Did farther fuel scarce require 
 
 From such a militant divine : 
 How Milton scorn'd the sophist vain 
 Who durst approach his hallow'd strain 
 With unwash'd hands and lips profane. 
 
 Then Shakspeare, debonnair and mild. 
 
 Brought that strange comment forth to view ; 
 
 ' Conceits more deep,' he said, and smil'd, 
 ' Than his own fools or madmen knew ; ' 
 
 But thank'd a generous friend above. 
 
 Who did, with free adventurous love, 
 
 Such pageants from his tomb remove. 
 
 And if to Pope, in equal need. 
 
 The same kind office thou wouldst pay, 
 
 Then, Edwards, all the band decreed 
 That future bards with frequent lay 
 
 Should call on thy auspicious name. 
 
 From each absiu'd intruder's claim 
 
 To keep inviolate their fame. 
 
 One person on whom Warburton let loose his vengeance 
 in this edition was John Gilbert Cooper, author of the 
 ' Life of Socrates,' ' Letters on Taste,' and some other light 
 pubhcations ; a gentleman of fair classical scholarship, 
 having been educated at Westminster under Dr. Nicoll, 
 
898 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXII. 
 
 and -well acquainted with the French and Itahan languages, 
 and with the Uterature of his own country. But he had no 
 great force as a writer, and was pronounced by Burke an 
 insufferable coxcomb. According to Malone, he was one of 
 the ' sentimental benevohsts,' who expressed unbounded 
 admiration of virtue, but whose feehngs affected only their 
 words, having no influence at all on their practice. He 
 was the man, as related by Boswell, whom Mr. Fitzherbert 
 found under violent apprehension, as it seemed, about his 
 son, who was at a school near London, manifesting such 
 dread lest the- boy should be ill or dying, as to appear 
 beyond all reach of consolation. At length he exclaimed 
 to Mr. Fitzherbert, ' I' U write an elegy.' Mr. Fitzherbert, 
 being thus enabled to guess the depth of his emotions, 
 disconcerted him by rejoining, 'Had you not better take 
 a post-chaise, and go and see him ? ' 
 
 He was a little fat man, mixed a good deal in society, 
 and took every opportunity of depreciating Johnson, de- 
 claring him ' nothing more than a literary Cahban.' When 
 this was repeated to Johnson, he said, 'Well, then, you. 
 must allow that he is a hterary Punchinello.' Dr. Warton, 
 one day, dining with Johnson and Burke, said something 
 in Cooper's favour, observing that ' he was at least very 
 well informed, and a good scholar.' ' Yes,' said Johnson, 
 ' it cannot be denied that he has good materials for playing 
 the fool ; and he makes abundant use of them.' * 
 
 He had made some remarks, in his ' Life of Socrates,' 
 in which he was assisted by Dr. John Jackson, who agreed 
 with him in nothing but in hating Warburton, unfavour- 
 able to Warburton's notions about certain of the ancient 
 philosophers, and Warburton retorted, in a note on the 
 ' Essay on Criticism,' on the lines, 
 
 The generoiis critic fann'd the poet's fire, 
 And tauglit the world with reason to admire, 
 
 * Priors Life of Malone, p. 427 ; Croker's Boswell, vol. vi. p. 289. 
 
1751.] cooper's ' LIFE OF SOCRATES;' 399 
 
 in the following note: 'For, as ignorance, when joined 
 with humility, produces stupid admiration, on which ac- 
 count it is so commonly observed to be the mother of 
 devotion and blind homage, so, when joined with vanity 
 (as it always is in bad critics), it gives birth to every ini- 
 quity of impudent abuse and slander. See an example 
 (for want of a better) in a late worthless and now forgot- 
 ten thing called the Life of Socrates, where the head of 
 the author (as a man of wit observed on reading the book) 
 has just made a shift to do the office of a camera obscura, 
 and represent things in an inverted order, himself above, 
 and Sprat, Eollin, Voltaire, and every other author of 
 reputation, below.' 
 
 To this abuse Cooper replied in a very weak pamphlet ; 
 and indeed it is to be observed of all the rephes to War- 
 burton, with but two or three exceptions, that they were 
 weapons of very little strength or sharpness. He, how- 
 ever, not unhappily, called Warburton's comments on 
 Pope ' an indigested heap of learned and unlearned lum- 
 ber, huddled together from the motley dregs of desultory 
 reading ; ' and asked him how the "^ Life of Socrates,' if 
 it were a thing forgotten, could serve the world for an 
 example. He also reproached him, very justly, with his 
 ' unprovoked treatment ' of Akenside, and with being 
 unable to speak of any opponent without abuse. He 
 likewise noticed, with due reprehension, his malicious 
 perversion of ' his master's commendation ' of Foster : 
 
 Let modest Foster, if he will, excel 
 Ten Metropolitans in preaching well,* 
 
 'a commendation so plain,' observes Cooper, 'that one 
 would imagine it was out of the power of dulness to mis- 
 take, or the most prejudiced partiality to dare to misin- 
 terpret ;' yet Mr. Warburton has endeavoured to turn it 
 into satire. ' This confirms,' says he, in a note on the lines, 
 
 * Epilogue to the Latins, dial. i. ver. 131. 
 
400 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXH, 
 
 ' an observation which Mr. Hobbes made long ago, that 
 there he very few bishops that act a sermon so well as 
 divers presbyterians and fanatic preachers do.' 
 
 Such kind of comment, it must be allowed, was a breach 
 of trust to him who had confided his works to Warburton's 
 care. Yet Hurd could speak of ' such a poet being im- 
 proved by such a critic,' and ' cannot enough rejoice at 
 Warburton's editions of our two great poets.' * Walpole 
 was nearer the truth when he called the edition of Pope 
 ' a ridiculous edition. 'f Walpole also declares that War- 
 burton, under annoyance from the ' Canons of Criticism,' 
 cancelled, in passing the edition through the press, above 
 a hundred sheets on which he had written notes ;J and 
 Mr. Cunningham, in a remark on the passage, says that 
 this is ' curiously confirmed by papers which he had 
 seen in Mr. Croker's possession.' 
 
 Many copies of satirical verses were pubhshed on this 
 edition of Pope, which were afterwards collected into a 
 pamphlet, entitled ' Verses occasioned by Mr. Warburton's 
 late edition of Mr. Pope's Works.' The following speci- 
 mens wiU show the nature of them : 
 
 As on the margin of Thames' silver flood 
 Stand little necessary piles of wood, 
 So Pope's fair page appears with notes disgrac'd : 
 Put down the nuisances, ye men of taste. 
 
 Close to the grotto of the Twickenham bard, 
 Too close, adjoins a tanner's yard : 
 So vei-se and prose are to each other tied, 
 So Warburton and Pope allied. 
 
 The frontispiece to the edition, also, in which Warbur- 
 ton's bust is larger and more prominent than Pope's, gave 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 144, 214. 
 f Detached Thoughts, Works, vol. iv. p. 371. 
 
 I Letter to Geo. Montague, June 13, 1751 ; Cunningham's edition 
 of Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. p. 257. 
 
1751.] 'NEW BOOK OF THE DUNCIAD.' 401 
 
 rise to satirical observations. Blakey, who made the 
 drawing for the engraver, told Burke it was by Warbur- 
 ton's express desire that he made him the principal figure, 
 and Pope only secondary, and caused the hght to go up- 
 ward, contrary to the rules of art, from Warburton to 
 Pope. A gentleman who was present when Burke was 
 spealdng on the subject, said it was remarkable, too, that 
 the poet and the commentator are looking in different 
 directions.* 
 
 Cooper, before he composed his pamphlet, wrote to 
 Warburton, saying that he thought himself very ill used 
 in the note, and intimating an intention of taking pubhc 
 notice of it. Warburton, it appears, vouchsafed no answer 
 to the letter, but told a friend of Cooper's he was surprised 
 the writer should think himself ill used, for he had never 
 mentioned his name or his publications but with com- 
 mendation, until he wrote a book in which he treated hun 
 with a scurrility worse than Billingsgate, when all the 
 revenge he took was the casual mention of the author of 
 the Life of Socrates, with a slight joke. 
 
 ' Scurrihty worse than Billingsgate' is too strong a term. 
 Sneers there certainly are in the book, which speaks of 
 'the renowned Mr. Warburton's great sagacity,' and 
 ' parade of exphcation ' on Virgil, and reproaches him for 
 his ignorance in not knowing that Aristophanes was 
 guiltless of the death of Socrates. But the writer stops 
 short of abuse. He, however, does not hesitate, hke War- 
 burton himself, to speak contemptuously of great men. 
 Spinosa and Hobbes he calls ' wretches,' and Sprat's ' His- 
 tory of the Eoyal Society ' ' fustian.' 
 
 Another satirical publication on Warburton's Pope, 
 which we may notice here, was entitled ' A New Book of 
 the Dunciad, occasioned by Mr. Warburton's Few Edition 
 of the Dunciad, by a Gentleman of one of the Inns of 
 
 * Prior's Life of Malone, p. 370, 
 D D 
 
402 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXII. 
 
 Court.' It is but a weak imitation of Pope's versification, 
 yet has some lines worthy of notice. The subject is the 
 dethronement of Gibber, and the enthronement of War- 
 burton in his place : ' Great Dunce the Second yields to 
 Dunce the Third.' Dulness is represented lying asleep, 
 and Colley near her, when a jovial throng, in which are 
 Knapton and three other booksellers, bearing Warburton 
 on a chair, burst in and awake them : 
 
 ' Down witli King Gibber,' was the general cry, 
 ' Down with King Gibber,' all Moorfields reply ; 
 Huzza, huzza ! King Warburton 's our own ; 
 Be he our king, be his King CoUey's throne. 
 
 Gibber sneaks off at the din, and Warburton is to be en- 
 throned. He is led to the throne by four audacious forms : 
 
 The first was Impudence, with dauntless eye. 
 With face of brass, and stare that look'd a lie ; 
 The second Pedantry, whose words profess'd 
 All skill, all science, and yet none possess'd ; 
 The third Scurrility, whose envious tongue 
 With loud abuse and scandal ever rung ; 
 The fourth proud Vanity, pufF'd up with air. 
 With glass reflecting each self- virtue clear. 
 
 When he is seated, Mason and Hurd place the crown on 
 his head. He makes a speech of thanks, and the poem 
 concludes. 
 
 During this year Warburton sent forth a few pages 
 which afterwards brought upon him much ridicule. 
 
 Jortin was at this time preparing for the press the first 
 volume of his ' Eemarks on Ecclesiastical History,' and, 
 in speaking of fancied prophetic dreams and visions, took 
 occasion to mention, with others, those of a Welshman 
 named Eice, Ap-Eice, or Arise Evans, who wandered from 
 his native mountains to London in the time of Oliver 
 Gromwell, where he made pretences to inspiration, and, 
 setting at nought the power of the Eound-heads, uttered 
 
1751.] AEISE EVAXS. 403 
 
 predictions in favour of the Eoyalists. In 1652 lie pub- 
 lished a small book called ' AnEccho from Heaven,' in which 
 his hallucinations were fully set forth. Desiring to know 
 more of this pseudo-prophet, Jortin applied to Warburton, 
 observing that he had heard some of his friends speak 
 of one prophecy of Evans's ' in terms of astonishment.' 
 Warburton, happening to have Evans's book, sent Jortin an 
 extract from it, ' contauiing,' he said, ' a prophecy which 
 astonishes aU who carefully consider it.' This extract, 
 with Warburton's remarks on it, Jortin too easily con- 
 sented to attach as an Appendix to his volume. ' By some 
 fatality,' says a writer of that day, ' he was duped to ac- 
 cept of a postscript to the first volume of " Ecclesiastical 
 Eemarks," exhibiting the visions of a Welsh prophet, 
 vdth the commentaries of Warburton upon them.'* ' So 
 much more mischief,' says Dr. Disney, in his ' Life of Jor- 
 tin,' ' does the ill-judging friendship of some men effect 
 than their resentments can accomplish, that Mx. Jortin has 
 lost more credit by the admission of these few pages of 
 Mr. Warburton's than if this imagined Colossus had replied 
 to every line of the " Eemarks," or ' whipped him at the 
 cart's tail in a note to " The Divine Legation," the ordinary 
 place of his Hterary executions, or pilloried him in the 
 " Dunciad," another engine which, as legal projjrietor, he 
 very ingeniously and judiciously applied to the same 
 purpose. 'f 
 
 Let us see what this extract, which caused so mucli 
 mischief, was. It was entitled ' A Vision that I had pre- 
 sently after the Eing's Death :' 
 
 ' I thought,' says Evans, ' I was in a great Hall, like the 
 Shire Hall in the Castle in Winchester, and there was 
 none there but a judge, that sat upon the bench, and 
 
 * Disney's Life of Jortin, p. 88. Lowth's Letter to Warburton, 
 p. 4. 
 
 f Collection of Letters and Essays in favour of Public Liberty, 
 vol. iii. p. 263. 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOW. [Ch. XXH. 
 
 myself; and, as I turned to a window north-westward, 
 and looking iato tHe palm of my hand, there appeared to 
 me a face, head, and shoulders, hke the Lord Fairfax's, 
 and presently it vanished again; then arose the Lord 
 Cromwell, and he vanished hkewise ; then arose a young 
 face, and he had a crown upon his head, and he vanished 
 also ; and another young face arose with a crown on his 
 head, and he vanished also ; and another young face arose 
 with a crown upon his head, and he vanished also ; and 
 another you.ng face arose with a crown upon his head, and 
 vanished in hke manner. And as I turned the palm of 
 my hand back again to me, and looked, there did appear 
 no more in it. Then I turned to the judge, and said to 
 him. There arose in my hand seven, and five of them had 
 crowns ; but when I turned my hand, the blood turned 
 to its veins, and there appeared no more ; so I awoke. 
 
 ' The interpretation of this vision is, that after the 
 Lord Cromwell there shall be kings again in England, 
 which thing is signified unto us by those who arose after 
 him, who were all crowned ; bvit the generations to come 
 may look for a change of the blood and of the name 
 in the royal seat, after five kings' reigns once passed. 
 2 Kings X. 30.' [The words of this text are : ' And the 
 Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in 
 executing that which is right in mine eyes . . . thy chil- 
 dren of the fourth generation shaU sit on the throne of 
 
 Israel.'] 
 
 Such is Arise Evans's prophetic vision. Warburton, 
 treating it as an inspired prediction, annexes to it this 
 elaborate explanation : 
 
 ' The restoration of the monarchy is here plainly pre- 
 dicted ; together with the crown's passing from the 
 House of Stuart into another family. But the prophet, 
 at first sight, appears to be doubtful about the number of 
 reigns before that event. He reckons up in his hand 
 only four successions to the monarchy ; yet in his speech 
 
1751.] EVANS S PEOPHECIES AND VISIONS. 405 
 
 to the judge he calls them Jive ; in his interpretation he 
 says the change shall be after the reign of Jive, kings ; and 
 yet referring, in conclusion, to a text in the Second Book 
 of Kings, we are brought back again to the numher four. 
 But it is this very circumstance vs^hich makes the prodi- 
 gious part of this afiair. A good guesser (who, an 
 ancient writer says, is the best prophet) might reasonably 
 conjecture the monarchy, after the subverter of it, Crom- 
 well, was taken off, would be restored ; and if it con- 
 tinued m the same family tor four ov five generations, that 
 was as much as, in the ceaseless revolutions of human 
 affairs, could be expected. But we shall find there was 
 something more in this matter. The succession of the 
 House of Stuart, during the course of these four genera- 
 tions, was disturbed ; and that circumstance our prophet 
 has distinctly marked out. The four crowned heads he 
 saw in his hand denote Charles II., James II., Queen 
 Mary, and Queen Anne. They are afterwards called 
 five ; and so they were ; for King WiUiam III. shared the 
 sovereignty with Queen Mary, and reigned alone after 
 her. But he, being of another family, when the succes- 
 sion in the House of Stuart is reckoned up, he could not 
 be numbered ; so they must be then called four. When 
 the prophet reckons the reigns. King William comes in, 
 and then they are called five. The key to this explana- 
 tion is the text he concludes with : " Thy children of 
 the fourth generation shall sit on the throne." 
 
 'A great and extraordinary genius lately deceased, 
 struck with this wonderful coincidence, hath written vdth 
 his own hand, in the margin of the page, these words : 
 " A manifest prophecy." You know,' he says to Jortin, 
 ' who I mean. But every one must judge for himself, 
 unless (which I had rather) you would give us your own 
 sentiments upon it.' * 
 
 * Jortin's Remarks on Eccl. Hist. vol. i. p. 252. 
 
403 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXII. 
 
 Such a grave and serious comment plainly shows that 
 the expositor must have considered what Evans said as 
 a real prophecy. He adds to it also one of Evans's 
 visions, which is thus given in his book : 
 
 ' My heart was for London ; and, as one Mr. Ohver 
 Thomas preached, Cant. ii. 10, Arise up, my love, my fair 
 one, and come away, my heart was allured with it, that 
 I thought it was a hastening of me to London ; and at 
 the time in a dream methought I was on Ishngton Hill, 
 by the Water-house, and London appeared before me as 
 if it had been burnt with fire, and there remained 
 nothing of it but a few stone walls ; but I made nothing 
 of this dream.' 
 
 Warburton favours this vision with the following 
 annotation : 
 
 ' Whosoever reflects upon what we are told by Burnet 
 in the " History of his Own Times," vol. i. p. 231, of the 
 condition in which the works were put at the Water- 
 house at Ishngton, when the fire of London happened, 
 cannot but think Evans's making this the scene of his 
 dream a very unaccountable circumstance. His telling 
 us that he made nothing of this dream adds to the credit 
 of his relation.' * 
 
 Yet Warburton, in the very letter in which he made 
 these communications to Jortin, admitted that Evans, so 
 far from being an open honest fellow, proved himself a 
 knave by showing ' a spice of what we seldom find want- 
 ing in the ingredients of a modern prophet, prevarica- 
 tion.' Warburton produces an instance, but dismisses it 
 with no other animadversion than that it ' contains an 
 uncommon fetch of wit.' 
 
 ' There are two confessions,' says Evans,f ' subscribed 
 by my hand in the city of London, which, if not now, in 
 
 * Jortin's Eemarks on Eccl. Plist. vol. i. p. 254. 
 I Eccho from Heaven, p. 42. 
 
1751.] EEV. HENRY TAYLOR. 407- 
 
 after ages will be considered. The one was made at the 
 Spittle, and subscribed with the right hand, in the afore- 
 said vestry, before Sir Walter Earl ; and that is a confes- 
 sion made by the inner man, or new man. The other 
 confession is a confession of the flesh, called the outward 
 man, or old man; and this confession I made before 
 Green [the Eecorder], and subscribed with the left hand, 
 as the difference in the writing, being compared, will 
 make it appear. I know the Bench and the people 
 thought I recanted, but, alas ! they were deceived.' 
 
 In regard to what Warburton says of this knave by his 
 own confession, Disraeh * very pertinently remarks that 
 he ' has fixed himself in this dilemma : Either he was a 
 greater impostor than Arise Evans, or he was more cre- 
 dulous than even any follower of the Welsh prophet, if 
 he really had any.' 
 
 But though many reflections were cast upon this ap- 
 pendix to _ Jortin's volume at the time of its pubhcation, 
 it was not till twenty years afterwards that it received a full 
 measure of reprobation, when the Eev. Henry Taylor, the 
 author of ' Ben Mordecai's Apology for becoming a Chris- 
 tian,' and some other minor effusions, pubhshed ' Confu- 
 sion Worse Confounded, Eout on Eout,' an examination 
 of Warbuxton's comments on Eice or Arise Evans's 'Eccho 
 from Heaven,' by Indignatio. In reference to Warbur- 
 ton's assertion that Evans was a prophet, and his admis- 
 sion that he was also a prevaricating knave, Mr. Taylor 
 observes that what people had hitherto said about War- 
 burton arose from their considering him as they consider 
 other men, ' who can only beheve one side of a contra- 
 diction at a time, whereas his Lordship [Warburton had 
 then become a bishop] frequently beheves, or at least 
 defends, both. So that it would be no great wonder if he 
 should maintain that Evans was both a real prophet and 
 
 * Quarrels of Authors, art. Warburton. 
 
408 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOK. [Ch. XXII. 
 
 an impostor. It was no more than we find in the adven- 
 ture [a use of the word borrowed from Warburton] of 
 the theocracy, in which he attempts to show that an 
 extraordinary providence over the Jews entirely ceased 
 upon their return from captivity, and yet continued over 
 them tUl the time of Christ ; that is, it continued about 
 five hundred years after it had ceased. It was no more 
 than we find in the achievement [another Warburtonian 
 term] of the Jewish revelation; which revelation con- 
 sisted, according to his Lordship, in conceahng from the 
 Jews what everybody else knew. It is not so easy a 
 thmg, therefore, to confute his Lordship, as may be 
 imagined. For, unless you confute both sides of the 
 question, you do your business only by halves.' 
 
 As the reader may wish to see another specimen of 
 this pubhcation, we shall extract the remarks on Evans's 
 divination by lot. 
 
 Jortin, having procured a copy of Evans's book, added 
 from it the following passage : ' Being perfectly awake, a 
 voice said to me, " Go to thy book ;" whereupon I sud- 
 denly started up, and to the table I went, where my 
 Bible lay open, immediately fastening my eye upon Eph. 
 V. 14, being these words : " Awake, thou that sleepest, 
 and arise from the dead," &c. ' ' Evans, who was illite- 
 rate,' observes Jortin upon these words, ' httle thought 
 that he was practising a kind of divination in great 
 request among the Pagans and the ancient Jews and 
 Christians, who had recourse to their Sortes Homericce, 
 Virgilianoi, Evangelical, and Bihlicce. The same causes 
 produce the same effects, and nothing is more like one 
 enthusiast. Mystic, Cabbahst, or Quietist, than another.' 
 
 Upon this reflection Taylor, taking a hint from Hot- 
 spur's retort to Glendower, that the frame of the earth 
 would shake in a storm, uninfluenced alike either by Ms 
 own birth, or the Idttening of his mother's cat, says : 
 ' But this bemg a matter of great importance, already 
 
1751.] 'CONFUSION WOESE CONFOUNDED.' 409 
 
 bolted to the bran in a dialogue between Sir Hugh. 
 Evans, a relation, I suppose, of Arise Evans, his Lord- 
 ship's prophet, and his scholar. Master WiUiam Page, I 
 shall give it you as I find it in the MS. 
 
 Sir Hugh. — William Page, how many kittens bad your mother's 
 cat in her last litter ? 
 
 William Page.' — Five, Sir Hugh. 
 
 Sir H. — Take up your Virgil, William — for thou art a good sprank 
 
 lad — and read me the first line that comes into your eye. \_Aside.'\ I 
 
 want to find out whether the Sortes Virgiliance will give me any light 
 
 into the fate of these kittens, before I venture to try it upon myself 
 
 Will. P. — ' Ires Notus abreptas in saxa latentia torquet.' That is, 
 
 Three by the winds were dash'd against the rocks. 
 
 Sir H. — Try again, WiUiam ; but shut the book first. There, now 
 open it. 
 
 Will. P. — ' Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.'' 
 
 In the great stream a few are seen to swim. 
 
 Sir H. — Try once more, William; for the number three is ominous. 
 Will. P. — ' Tres Eurus ab alto 
 
 In brevia et syrtes urget.'' 
 
 Three from the deep are driven by the storm 
 To perish in the shoals. 
 
 Sir H. — There is a good William. [_Aside.'\ Now I will examine 
 into the fate of the kittens. [_Aloud.'\ Have you saved any of the 
 kittens, William ? 
 
 Will. P. — Yes, two. I saved one, and my sister, Anne Page, the 
 other. 
 
 Sir H. — And what is become of the other three ? 
 
 Will. P. — They were drowned. Sir Hugh. 
 
 Sir H. — Drowned! You amaze me. Drowned? You mean thev 
 were knocked on the head. 
 
 Will. P. — No, Sir Hugh ; they were all three drowned in the great 
 pond. 
 
 Sir H. — All three, do you say ? Tres Notus abreptas — prodigious ! 
 Tres Eurus ab alto — Wonderful coincidence ! Apparent rari nantes 
 — Who can speak of it but in terms of astonishment? And in the 
 great pond, too — in gurgite vasto — a manifest prophecy ! It is im- 
 possible to resist the evidence of these unhappy sufferers. I'll certainly 
 try my own fortune by the same divination. 
 
410 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOIS'. [Ch. XXH. 
 
 ' Triste per augurium Teucrorum pectora ducunt.' 
 The dismal augury demands our faith. 
 
 wonderful ! wonderful ! and most wonderfully wonderful ! and 
 yet again wonderful, and out of all whooping ! 
 
 Here ends the dialogue, and Sir Hugh's soliloquy.' 
 
 This year Warburton pubhshed a second edition of 
 Juhan, which varied in some respects, but not greatly, from 
 the first. ' In Juhan,' he wrote to Hurd, towards the end of 
 the preceding year, ' there were some things I would not 
 venture to say on the first appearance of it, as you will 
 see when I send you a copy of the second edition, which 
 is now printing,'* ' Mr. Pope used to tell me,' he says 
 in another letter to Hurd, ' that when he had anything 
 better than ordinary to say, and yet too bold, he always 
 reserved it for a second or third edition, and then nobody 
 took any notice of it.'f 
 
 Nichols says that Warburton, after the first edition 
 was printed by Bowyer in 1750, ' called in the impres- 
 sion ; why,' he adds, ' is not known ; but the fact is 
 curious. 'J I find no mention of this recall elsewhere. 
 The first edition of Julian was ia the hands of the pubhc 
 in 1750. 
 
 With regard to Bowyer's connexion with Warburton, 
 it may be noticed here that he printed the earher por- 
 tions of Warbm-ton's works, but that Warburton, from 
 some fancied want of correctness in his printing, after- 
 wards put his books into other hands. Bowyer wrote 
 Mm three long letters of remonstrance on the occasion, 
 which were never sent, but which have since found theh 
 way into print, as the writer apparently intended, through 
 Mr. Nichols. § The matter is of no great interest to the 
 pubhc, but the letters, on the whole, seem to indicate 
 that Bowyer could not have been handsomely treated by 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, let. xxv. f lb. let. xxxv. 
 
 1 Nichols's Lit. An. vol. ii. p. 182. § lb. pp. 384-390. 
 
1751.] WAEBUETON AND QUIN. 411 
 
 Warburton. As to the first three volumes of ' The 
 Divine Legation,' Bowyer tells him that he appears to 
 have felt no abatement of reputation from the inaccuracy 
 of the printer, though he was sometimes attacked on the 
 impropriety of his translations. There vs^ere letters to 
 Bowyer from Warburton, according to Mr. Nichols, 
 showing that ' The Divine Legation ' had ' received no 
 small advantage from Bowyer's corrections.' 
 
 This year, also, Warburton was permitted by Allen to 
 give Hm'd an invitation to Prior Park, where he was 
 afterwards a frequent visitor, and advanced much in the 
 good graces of Mr. aiid Mrs. Allen. ' 1 wish you had 
 seen Mr. AUen,' he says in a letter to Balguy, written 
 shortly afterwards ; ' he comes up to the notion of my 
 favourites in Queen EHzabeth's reign ; good sense in 
 connexion with the plainest manners — simplex et nuda 
 Veritas' At his first dinner with Allen he met Field- 
 ing, whom he calls ' a poor, emaciated, worn-out rake, 
 whose gout and infirmities have got the better even 
 of his buffoonery.'* Fielding had vitality enough, how- 
 ever, to last four years after this opinion was passed upon 
 him. 
 
 Another prominent character, who was often to be 
 seen at Prior Park about this time, was Quin the actor. 
 Warburton, in his talk with Quin before the company, 
 always addressed him in such a way as to remuid him 
 that he was but a player, and, as some accounts say, took 
 opportunities of admonishing him on his luxury and 
 looseness of hfe. One evening, however, with much 
 apparent civihty, he requested Quin, whom he should 
 never see on the stage, to give him a specimen of his 
 acting, in presence of a large number of guests, in Mr. 
 AUen's drawing-room. Quin replied, carelessly, that 
 plays were then almost out of his head, but that he 
 
 * Kil vert's Life of Hurd, p. 45. 
 
412 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXII. 
 
 believed he could repeat a few verses of ' Venice Pre- 
 served,' and, standing up, declaimed, ore rotundo, the 
 passage in which occur the lines 
 
 ' Honest men 
 Are the soft easy cushions on wliicli knaves 
 Eepose and fatten ; 
 
 and, as he pronounced the words ' honest men ' and 
 ' knaves,' directed his looks so pointedly towards Allen 
 and Warburton, that none of the hearers could mistake 
 the intended apphcation. Warburton never afterwards 
 asked the actor for a specimen of his skill.* 
 
 Another occurrence between the Bishop and the player, 
 which took place in the same house, is told by Walpole. 
 ' The saucy priest,' says he, ' was haranguuig at Bath in 
 behalf of prerogative. Quin said, " Pray, my Lord, spare 
 me ; you are not acquainted with my principles ; I am a 
 republican ; and perhaps I even think that the execution 
 of Charles I. might be justified." " Aye," said Warbur- 
 ton, " by what law ? " Quin replied, " By all the laws 
 that he had left them." The Bishop would have got off 
 upon judgments, and bade the player remember that aU 
 the regicides came to violent ends — a He, but no matter. 
 " I would not advise your Lordship," said Quin, " to 
 make use of that inference ; for, if I am not mistaken, 
 that was the case of the twelve apostles." There was 
 great wit ad hominem in the latter reply, but I think the 
 former equal to anything I ever heard. It is the sum of 
 the whole controversy couched in eight monosyllables, 
 and comprehends at once the king's guilt and the justice 
 of punishing it. The more one examines it, the finer it 
 proves. 'f 
 
 * Prior's Life of Malone, p. 345. 
 f Walpole's Letters, vol. v. p. 14. 
 
1752.J SERMONS AT LINCOLN'S INN. 413 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 BYROM. BOLINGBROKE. CLERICAL ADVANCEMENT. 
 
 SERMONS AT LINCOLN'S INN SIX EPISTLES OF DE. BYEOM WAR- 
 
 EUETON MADE A PEEBENDAET OF GLO0CESTEE BY LORD HARDWICKE 
 
 LETTER TO HOGAETH — - ' VIEW OF LOED BOLINGBEOKE's PHILOSOPHY ' 
 
 CAUSES OF WAEBUETON's ACEIMONY AGAINST BOLINGBROKE BOLING- 
 
 BEOKE's ABUSE OF EELIGION AND DIVINES STYLE OF WAEBURTON'S 
 
 ANIMADVERSIONS ; LORD HAEDWICKE's DISLIKE OF IT SPECIMENS OF 
 
 BOLINGBROKE' S MANNER LETTER TO WARBURTON FROM MONTES- 
 QUIEU WARBURTON MADE A KING's CHAPLAIN AND A DOCTOR OF 
 
 DIVINITY EESIGNS THE LIVING OF FEISBY ; HIS ATTENTION TO THAT 
 
 PAEISH SECOND VOLUME OF SERMONS AT LINCOLN'S INN DEDICA- 
 TION OF ' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' TO LOED HAEDWICKE. 
 
 IN the summer of the next year, 1752, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Warburton resided for some time at Weymouth, 
 being dislodged from Prior Park by the Princess AmeHa, 
 to whom, as she was recommended, for some indisposition, 
 to try the Bath waters, Ealph Ahen lent his house for 
 several weeks. Warburton indulged in bathing, and 
 spoke of himself, in his letters, as ' courting the favours 
 of the sea-nymphs every morning except Sunday.'* 
 
 Warburton's only publication in 1752 was the first 
 volume of a course of sermons preached at Lincoln's Inn, 
 ' On the Principles of Natural and Eevealed Eeligion.' 
 A second volume followed in 1754. 'The sermons of 
 Warburton,' remarks Bishop Newton,f ' are not the most 
 valuable of his writings ;' and the public has readily 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, let. xlix. 
 ■j- Life by Himself, p. 68. 
 
414 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIH. 
 
 concurred in the Bishop's estimation of them. It would 
 be wrong, however, to withhold what Hurd, though too 
 eager a panegyrist, has said in their favour : 
 
 ' He had used himself very little to write sermons tiU 
 he came to Lincoln's Inn. His instructions to his parish 
 had either been delivered without notes, or extracted from 
 the plainest discourses of our best preachers. In his 
 present situation he found it necessary to compose his 
 sermons, and with care ; his audience consisting wholly 
 of men of education, and those accustomed to reasoning 
 and enquiry. Here was then a scene in which his learn- 
 ing and knowledge might be produced with good effect ; 
 and it was in this kind of discourse that his taste and 
 studies had qualified him to excel. His sermons are, 
 accordingly, aU of them of this cast ; not shght harangues 
 on ordinary subjects, but close, weighty, methodical dis- 
 courses, on the most momentous doctrines of natural and 
 revealed rehgion ; opening the grounds of them, and 
 supporting them against objections; expressed in that 
 style of nervous eloquence which was natural to him, and 
 brightened occasionally, but without affectation, by the 
 hveliest strokes of imagination. In short, they were 
 written only for the use of men of parts and learning, 
 and will only be relished by such. They are masterly in 
 their way, but fitter for the closet than the church ; I 
 mean those mixed auditories that are usually to be ex- 
 pected in that place.' 
 
 Another sermon of his, ' The Ofiice and Operations of 
 the Holy Spirit,' which was afterwards incorporated into 
 the 'Doctrine of Grace,' ehcited from the amiable visionary, 
 Dr. John Byrom, distinguished ahke for his shorthand and 
 his verses, ' Six Familiar Letters to a Friend ' upon the 
 subject of sermons, in which it is intimated that the great 
 duty of a preacher is to propagate, not strife, but peace, 
 and to unite Christians rather than set them at variance ; 
 otherwise he does not fulfil the conditions of preaching. 
 
1752.] DE. JOHN BYEOM. 415 
 
 The passage which gave Warburton the greatest offence 
 was this : 
 
 With such a fimd of learning, and a skill 
 To make it serve what argument he will, 
 With choice of words for any chosen theme. 
 With an alertness rulingly supreme, 
 What, sir, can single persons, or a sect, 
 When he is pleased to preach at 'em, expect ? 
 Just what they meet with in the present case — 
 All the dogmatic censure and disgrace 
 That a commanding genius can exert 
 When it becomes religiously alert ; 
 With narrow proofs, and consequences wide. 
 Sets all opponents of its vote aside ; 
 The Papists first, and then th' inferior fry. 
 Fanatics, vanquish'd with a who but It 
 These are the modish epithets that strike 
 \.t true religion and at false alike. 
 
 In these expressions the author of the sermon chose to 
 think that the letter-writer had taken unwarrantable 
 hberty. ' Byrom,' he writes to Hurd, ' is very hbellous 
 upon me, but I forgive him heartily, for he is not male- 
 volent, but mad.' He, however, admits the merits of 
 Byrom's style. ' He is certainly a man of genius,' he 
 says, ' but plunged deep into the rankest fanaticism. His 
 poetical epistles show him both ; which, were it not for 
 some unaccountable negligences in his verse and language, 
 would show us that he has hit upon the right style for 
 famUiar didactic epistles in verse.' He gives also his own 
 notion of enthusiasm, in opposition to that of Byrom : ' As 
 to Byrom's notion of enthusiasm, I agree with him in this, 
 that it is foohsh to confine the passion to rehgion, when it 
 spreads through all human hfe ; but I disagree with him 
 in supposing an intense application of the mind to any 
 object is enthusiasm. If I were to define it, I would say 
 it is such an irregular exercise of it as makes us give a 
 stronger assent to the conclusion than the premises will 
 warrant; then reason begins to be betrayed, and then 
 
416 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON". [Ch. XXIII. 
 
 enthusiasm properly commences. This shows why enthu- 
 siasm is more frequent in rehgious matters than in any 
 other ; for those interests being very momentous, the 
 passions bear the greatest sway, and reason is the least 
 heard.' * The EngHsh word ' enthusiasm,' which, in the 
 time of "Warburton, was almost wholly confined to reli- 
 gion, is now, and has long been, apphed to unreasonable 
 or immoderate ardour or fancies in any study or occupa- 
 tion whatever. Byrom was himself much of an enthu- 
 siast. He told Warburton in one of his Epistles that men 
 are not to be condemned as fanatics who believe that 
 miracles may still occasionally appear. He was a friend 
 of Wesley, and a reader of Jacob Behmen ; and is the 
 ' Behmenist ' in the dedication to the second part of ' The 
 Divine Legation,' who is said to have made the last attack 
 on Warburton, the first having been made by the ' false 
 zealot ' Webster. 
 
 In the early part of the year 1753, Warburton's inti- 
 macy with Charles Yorke led to the offer from his father. 
 Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, of a prebend at Gloucester. 
 Lord Hardwicke told him that it was ofiered as a mark 
 of regard, and wished that it had been better ; though it 
 was the best prebend, as Warburton believed, that he had 
 to give. Dr. Birch, who gave him some instruction about 
 the mode of taking possession, observed that it was so long 
 since he had had any preferment that he must have for- 
 gotten all the formalities. ' There was another thing,' 
 said Warburton, ' that he chd not dream of, that it is so 
 long since I had occasion to inquire about the formahties, 
 that I am become very indifferent to the things them- 
 selves.' f Such was his nolo episcopari tone; but he 
 expressed due thankfulness to Lord Hardwicke, assuring 
 him that no favours from such a hand could be unaccept- 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, let. xxxviii. xl. 
 t lb. let. Hi. liii. 
 
1753.] LETTER TO HOGARTH. 417 
 
 able ; and when, in the following year, he pubUshed a 
 new edition of ' The Divine Legation,' he dedicated the 
 first volume of it to Lord Hardwicke, observing that it 
 was the first opportunity he had had of tendering his 
 grateful acknowledgments for so distinguishing a mark 
 of favour. 
 
 ' Some who were curious in observing coincidences,' 
 says Hurd, ' and meant to do honour both to the patron 
 and chent, took notice that the stall, to which Mr. War- 
 burton was preferred, was the same in which the Lord 
 Chancellor Nottingham, that great patron of all the learned 
 churchmen in his time, had placed Dr. Cudworth. Such 
 a similitude was there apprehended to be between the 
 two magistrates, and, still more strikingly, between the 
 two divines, authors of Tlie Intellectual System and The 
 Divine Legation.' Let it be noticed, however, that, as 
 intellectual workers, the ardent and temerarious Warbur- 
 ton and the calm and cautious Cudworth differed greatly. 
 
 About the same time Hogarth the painter was sohciting 
 subscriptions for his ' Analysis of Beauty ; ' and Warburton 
 addressed to him the foUowing comphmentary letter : 
 
 ' March 28, 1753. 
 
 'Dear Sir, — I was pleased to find by the public papers 
 that you have determined to give us yoiu' original and 
 masterly thoughts on the great principles of your pro- 
 fession. You owe this to your country, for you are both 
 an honour to your profession, and a shame to that worth- 
 less crew professing virtii and connoisseurship, to whom 
 ah that grovel in the splendid poverty of wealth and taste 
 are the miserable bubbles. I beg you would give me 
 leave to contribute my mite towards this work, and 
 permit the inclosed to entitle me to a subscription for two 
 copies. 
 
 ' I am, dear sir, with a true sense of your superior 
 talents, your very affectionate humble servant, 
 
 ' W. Warbueton.' 
 
 E E 
 
418 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXIII. 
 
 His next literary effort was an attack on Lord Boling- 
 broke's writings, under the title of ' A View of Lord 
 Bolingbroke's Philosophy, in Four Letters to a Friend ; ' 
 the first two of which came forth in 1754 and the others 
 in 1755. His Lordship had died in 1751, and his philo- 
 sophical works were published in 1753, under the editor- 
 ship of Mallet. He had been wont to boast, according 
 to Hurd, of the change that his arguments, when they 
 appeared, would make in metaphysics and theology ; but 
 during his life he sent forth little on the subject, content- 
 ing himself chiefly, to use Johnson's illustration, with 
 charging his blunderbuss, of which a rascally Scotchman, 
 bribed by a legacy of half a crowia, was to puU the trigger 
 after his death. Between Bohngbroke and "Warburton, 
 ever since their meeting at Murray's table, there had been 
 deadly hatred, 
 
 Irafuit capitalis, iit ultima divicleret mors ; 
 
 hatred wliich had possibly commenced, on Bohngbroke's 
 side, when "Warburton pubhshed his reply to Crousaz ; 
 for his Lordship was not liltely to forgive the man who 
 was too persuasive to Pope. Before he died, he scattered 
 over his pages abundance of sarcasm against the ' Alli- 
 ance ' and ' The Divine Legation,' and plenty of abuse of 
 then" author, whom he called, besides other names, 'a 
 scribbler ' and ' a stupid fellow.'* Thus Warburton had 
 sufficient provocation, whatever other motive might ani- 
 mate him, to engage with vigour in a hostile criticism. 
 
 How Bolingbroke assailed Moses and the prophets, 
 Jews and Christians, rehgion and the clergy, is well 
 known. He railed and sneered rather than argued. He 
 is said by Warburton, not unfairly, to have manifested 
 ' the rankness of Lowth without his force, and the malig- 
 nity of Marvel without his wit.' He protested that Moses 
 
 * Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 417, 418; Warburton's Works, 
 vol. vii. p. 340, 851 ; vol. xii. p. 310, 338. 
 
1754.] 'VIEW OF LOED BOLmGBEOKB'S PHILOSOPHY.' 419 
 
 must be regarded with contempt as a philosopher, and 
 with horror as a divine ; and that St. Paul was a fanatic, 
 who attempted to supply, by artificial theology, the defi- • 
 ciencies of an obscure and imperfect revelation. He called 
 Cudworth's ' Intellectual System ' ' a nonsensical para- 
 phrase of nonsense.' He accused Cumberland of ' talldng 
 metaphysical jargon and theological blasphemy.' Abbadie 
 he pronomiced to be mad ; and declared Selden, Grotius, 
 Cumberland, and PufFendorf to be great writers on natural 
 law, just as he might be called a great traveller who 
 should go from London to Paris by the Cape of Good 
 Hope. He even spoke of Montesquieu's ' Spirit of Laws ' 
 as a dishonour to the French genius. He caUed Clarke 
 ' an audacious and vain sophist, full of presumptuous 
 reasoning and profane absurdities ; ' and abused Wollaston 
 as ' a learned lunatic,' fit only to be a patient of Doctor 
 Monro. The whole body of divines, he asserts, are either 
 incapable of reasoning, or unprincipled supporters of 
 imposture. Duncan Porbes, though something better 
 than a divine, yet is utterly unworthy of attention, for he 
 belonged to ' an unlearned profession, of which ninety- 
 nine in a hundred at least are pettifoggers, sharpers, 
 brawlers, and cavillers.' The writings of all the fathers of 
 the church consist of nothing but nonsense and artifice. 
 But all these disorders and foUies, however much to be 
 pitied, can be no subject of wonder, for our whole world, 
 he says, seems to be ' the Bedlam of every other system 
 of inteUigent creatures, with this unlucky circumstance, 
 that they who are most mad govern in things of the 
 greatest moment them who are least so.' Most authors, 
 who make any pretence to philosophical discrimination, 
 find somebody to commend ; but Bohngbroke, writing as 
 a philosopher, abuses everybody aUke. 
 
 Unhappily, Warburton's mode of reasoning very much 
 resembles that of his antagonist. His attacks are desul- 
 tory, and he presents no chain of continuous argument. 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTON. [Ch. XXIII. 
 
 He imputes bad motives rather than overthrows weak 
 assertions. The result is that the ' Letters ' are terribly 
 tedious ; for the reader finds no connexion in the matter 
 to draw him onwards. The friend to whom he addresses 
 them is Ealph Allen, but it may be deemed a matter of 
 certainty that Ealph Allen's friendship was not strong 
 enough to secure from him a complete perusal of what 
 was laid before him. If any other reader has gone 
 through the mass, it must have been Hurd, who found 
 ' the reasoning and the wit ahke irresistible, the strongest 
 and keenest that can be conceived.' Other readers the 
 author has pleased as httle as the orators who latrant, 
 non hquuntur, pleased Cicero. The language is, in 
 many parts, not merely unstudied, but vulgar and offen- 
 sive. 
 
 The style of the whole was so much disliked by Murray 
 that he wrote him an anonymous letter, expostulating 
 with him on the manner in which he had treated both 
 the subject and his adversary. The vsriter expressed his 
 concern to hear many deciding who the author of the 
 ' View ' must be by his ' scurrdity and abuse ; ' and ob- 
 served that to however httle mercy Lord Bohngbroke 
 was entitled, it might be considered dishonourable to a 
 gentleman and a clergyman to give him the treatment 
 which he deserved, especially after his death. ' Every- 
 body,' he added, ' would have applauded your selecting 
 those instances of his reviling, arrogance, and abuse, had 
 you not followed his example.' Warburton surmised who 
 was the writer of this remonstrance, and rephed to it 
 publicly in an ' Apology ' prefixed to the ' View.' He 
 could not but be strongly moved, he says, at the sight of 
 ' three or four bulky volumes of redhot impiety,' abound- 
 ing with ' the lowest malice and most barefaced misrepre- 
 sentation,' and, in attempting a confutation of them, had 
 put himself in the place of a scavenger, who ought not 
 to be blamed for the stench from the dirt which he is 
 
1754.] STYLES OF BOLmOBKOKE AND WARBURTOlSr. 421 
 
 endeavouring to remove, But the best defence of liis 
 vehemence is given in the following passage : 
 
 ' When men are smcere in their mistakes, after a dili- 
 gent and candid search ; when the subject is of small 
 moment, such as the mode of discipHne, the measure of 
 conformity, or a distinction in metaphysics ; the mistaken, 
 and even the perverse, should be treated with tenderness. 
 But when the avowed end of a writer is the destruction 
 of rehgion in all its forms ; when the means he employs 
 are every trick of prevarication and ill-faith, and every 
 term of scurrility and abuse ; when, to use the expression 
 of Cicero, est inter nos, non de terminis, sed de tota pos- 
 sessione contentio ; then a practised calmness and an 
 affected management look like betraying the cause we are 
 intrusted to defend ; or, what is almost as ill, hke defend- 
 ing it in that way only which may turn most to our 
 private advantage ; as when, in questions of the greatest 
 moment, we comply with this fashionable indifference, or 
 iiatter it into a vii^tue, when we should have striven to 
 rekindle the dying sparks of religion by a vigorous colh- 
 sion with its ^arofessed enemies, whose faces, to use the 
 unpolite language of the prophet, are hairier than a rock.' * 
 
 He has one very good passage about Bolingbroke's 
 assaults on Clarke. Bohngbroke argued that, though the 
 natural attributes of God could be proved a posteriori, his 
 moral attributes could not, and, as to the arguments for 
 them a prioin, he pronounced them to be aRjartjon, non- 
 sense, impiety, and blasphemy ; ' so that,' remarks War- 
 burton, ' the moral attributes of God are fairly erased at 
 once out of the intellectual system ; and he [Bohngbroke] 
 had no farther trouble on this head than to decorate 
 Clarke, who was chiefly conversant in the reasorung a 
 priori, with a variety of abusive names. As to the 
 reasoning itself, our great man's respect for that is so 
 
 * Wai-'burton's Works, vol. xii. p. 79. 
 
422 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTON. [Ch. XXni. 
 
 profound and so distant, that I defy anyone, unacquainted 
 with metaphysical arguments, even to guess what kind of 
 things they are for which the famous minister of St. 
 James's is so severely handled ; for, while the divine 
 suffers, the reasoner, as we say, always escapes. Now, 
 indeed, you see him seized upon, and ready, as you would 
 think, to be cut up ahve, and immolated to the first phi- 
 losophy, when a Jit of railing shakes his Lordship, and the 
 storm falls upon the whole body of modern schoolmen ; 
 and so the doctor escapes for that time. He is again laid 
 hold on, and everything ready for execution, when a Jit 
 of learning comes upon liis Lordship, and Pythagoras, 
 Plato, Socrates, and the whole band of ancient metaphy- 
 sicians, pass in review, and each receives a lash as he 
 passes ; and so the doctor escapes for the second time. 
 After all these victories without bloodshed, his Lordship, 
 as is fitting, takes his ease, intent only on his future 
 triumphs ; in the meantime, amidst such self-applause, his 
 essays end, and the subtile doctor remains unhurt.'* 
 
 I hope not to weary the reader, if I quote another 
 passage of a similar nature, which characterises Boling- 
 broke's show of reasoning very justly : 
 
 ' When I reflect on what this has cost me, the reading 
 over two or three bulky volumes to get possession of a 
 single argument, which now you think you hold, and then 
 again you lose ; which meets you full when you least 
 expect it, and slips away fi-om you the very moment it 
 promises to do most ; when, I say, I reflect upon all this, 
 I cannot but lament the hard luck of the English clergy, 
 who (though apparently least fit, as being made parties, 
 certainly least affected, as there is nothing that can 
 impose on a scholar, and a great deal that may mislead 
 the people) are hkely to be the men most engaged with 
 his Lordship in this controversy. Time was, when, if a 
 
 * Let. ii. Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 137. 
 
1754.] BOLINGBEOKE NOT AN ATHEIST. 423 
 
 writer had a disposition to seek objections agaiast religion, 
 though, he found them liardly, and urged them heavily, 
 yet he would digest his thoughts and methodise his rea- 
 soning ; the clergy had then nothing to do but to answer 
 him, if they found themselves able. But since this slo- 
 venly custom (as Lord Shaftesbury calls it) has got 
 amongst our free-thinkers, of taking their physic in pub- 
 lic, of throwing about their loose and crude indigestions 
 under the name of fragmeiits, things which in then- very 
 name imply, not so much the want, as the exclusion, of 
 all form, the advocate of rehgion has had a fine time of 
 it ; he must work them into consistence, he must mould 
 them into shape, before he can safely lay hold of them 
 himself, or present them handsomely to the public. But 
 these gentlemen have provided that a clergyman should 
 never be idle. AU he had of old to attend, was the 
 saving of the souls of those committed to his care ; he 
 must now begin his work a great deal higher ; he must 
 first convince his flock that they have souls to be 
 saved.'* 
 
 In one particular Warburton is unjust to BoHngbroke. 
 He insinuates that his Lordship ought rightly to be deemed 
 an Atheist, as being one who, in Scripture plarase, is 
 ' without God in the world,* because he maintained that 
 God's moral attributes covdd not be proved from the state 
 of things m the world. But to charge Bolingbroke with 
 atheism is to go too far ; his Lordship admitted that ' we 
 know the physical and moral system of the world to be 
 God's work,'f and that God is the physical and moral 
 governor of it, however unable we are to see by its aid 
 into the nature and attributes of God himself 
 
 The fourth letter is httle more than a panegyric on ' The 
 Divine Legation ' and the ' Ahiance between Church and 
 
 * Let. ii. Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 151. 
 t lb. vol. xii. pp. 123, 133, 134. 
 
424 LIFE OF BISHOP -WAEBUKTOlSr. [Ch. XXIII. 
 
 State ; ' a mode of drawing attention to those works which 
 Warburton was always ready to adopt. 
 
 A present of the ' View ' to Montesquieu, accompanied 
 with Warburton's other works, drew from that eminent 
 writer a letter with which Warburton was highly gratified, 
 and which contains some remarks well worthy of atten- 
 tion : 
 
 ' I have read some of the writings of my Lord Bohng- 
 broke, and, if I may be allowed to say how I was affected 
 by them, I must say that he writes with much warmth ; 
 but it seems to me that he generally directs it against 
 things, when he ought to employ it only in painting 
 things. But in the posthumous work of which you, Sii', 
 have given me a notion, he appears to me to have pre- 
 pared for you constant matter of triumph. He that 
 attacks revealed religion, attacks revealed religion only ; 
 but he that attacks natural rehgion, attacks all the reli- 
 gions in the world. If men are taught to think themselves 
 under no obhgations from revealed religion, they may 
 stiU consider that they are under other obhgations ; but 
 it is most pernicious to persuade them that they are under 
 no restraint at all. It is possible to make attempts on 
 revealed rehgion, inasmuch as it rests on particular facts, 
 and facts are, in their nature, liable to become matter of 
 dispute ; but such is not the case with natural rehgion, 
 for it is drawn from the nature of man, about which 
 there can be no dispute, and from the inmost senti- 
 ments of manldnd, which are equally incapable of being 
 disputed. 
 
 ' I would ask, besides, what motive there can be for 
 attacking revealed religion in England, where it is so 
 thoroughly cleared of all destructive prejudices that it 
 can do no harm, but, on the contrary, may produce num- 
 berless good effects. I can understand that, in Spain or 
 Portugal, a man who is going to be burnt, or is afraid of 
 being burnt, because he does not believe certain articles 
 
1754.] APPOINTED KING'S CHAPLAIN. 423 
 
 connected, or not connected, with revealed religion, may 
 have good reason to attack it, since he may thus hope to 
 provide for his natural defence ; but in England the case 
 is different, for there every man who attacks revealed 
 religion attacks it without prospect of personal advantage, 
 and the assailant, although he should succeed, and even 
 be right in the main, would only do away with a large 
 portion of practical benefit for the sake of establishing a 
 merely speculative truth. 
 
 ' I was pleased to find, Sir, that you have extended your 
 " Divine Legation." This work, and your " Juhan," are 
 very well known in this country, and would be still better 
 known if they were translated. I beheve, indeed, that a 
 translation of them is about to be undertaken ; but I 
 should be sorry that they should fall into the hands of 
 some of our translators, who disfigure all that they touch, 
 and turn gold into iron.' * 
 
 In September 1754, Warburton was appointed one of 
 the King's chaplains in ordmary. ' I see in the " Pubhc 
 Advertiser," ' said Akenside in a letter to Birch, ' that 
 Warburton is made Bang's chaplain, and enters into waiting 
 immediately. Can you tell me whether this be true ? If 
 there be any hazard of finding him at Kensington, I shall 
 not choose to go thither to-day.'f 
 
 Thinking that this new dignity required him to take 
 his doctor's degree, he obtained that distinction, of which 
 he had been disappointed at Oxford, from Dr. Herring, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 Writing to Hurd respecting his appearance at court in 
 his quahty of chaplain, ' You expect, perhaps, I should 
 tell you,' says he, ' of the wonders I met Avith in this new 
 Elysium. I found but two things to admire, as excellent 
 
 * Kilvert, Selections from Wai-burton's Papers, p. 236 ; Warbur- 
 ton' a Works, vol. xii. p. 73. 
 
 f Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 656. 
 
426 LIFE OF BISHOP -WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXHI. 
 
 in their kinds ; tlie one is the beef-eaters, whose broad 
 faces bespeak such repletion of body and inanition of mind 
 as perfectly fright away those two enemies of man, famine 
 and thought. The other curiosity is our table-decker, of 
 so placid a mien and so entire a taciturnity (both of them 
 improved by the late elopement of his wife) that he is 
 much fitter for the service of a minister of state than of 
 the Gospel. In short, I found him the only reasonable 
 man not to converse with.' * 
 
 He continued to hold his prebend at Gloucester, till, in 
 1755, he was offered one of greater value, five hundred 
 a year, at Durham, through the interest of Murray, now 
 Attorney-General, with Bishop Trevor, ' who,' says Hurd, 
 ' did himself honour by the disposal of his preferments.' 
 ' The Bishop of Durham,' he writes to Hurd, ' concurring 
 with the Attorney-General, has given me the prebend 
 which was lately Mangey's. He had other friends, you 
 may imagine, to obhge ; so I have resigned the prebend 
 of Gloucester, and I shall resign another piece of prefer- 
 ment in the country. But the free motive and friendly 
 manner in which this thing was done, you will easily be- 
 Heve, enhances the value of it to me. My friends are 
 solicitors in these matters for me ; I myself, at this time 
 of hfe, extremely little.' Such was the mode in which he 
 spoke of the prebend at Gloucester, when it was offered 
 him. Such depreciations of preferment, which is at the 
 same time accepted, every one must beheve to be mere 
 affectation. 
 
 Warburton, it may be supposed, could hardly be mis- 
 taken in saying that the prebend conferred upon him had 
 been held by Dr. Mangey, editor of ' Philo-Judasus,' and 
 author of several theological tracts, who died in 1754 ; 
 yet there goes a story that Warburton's immediate pre- 
 decessor in that stall was Lowth, who held it for a short 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Oct. 28, 1754. 
 
1754.] MADE PEEBENDARY OF DURHAM. 427 
 
 time, and that tlie commencement of the ill-feehng be- 
 tween hhn and Warburton was a disagreement between 
 their wives about tlie value of some articles of furniture, 
 which the incomer was to take from the outgoer.* 
 
 Anotlier story concerning Warburton as prebend of 
 Durham isj that he was the first who disused copes. The 
 occasion is thus told by the writer of an article on Pope 
 in the ' Quarterly Eeview : f ' ' A friend of ours, many 
 years ago, on being shown, among the curiosities of Dur- 
 ham Cathedral, the splendid vestments formerly worn by 
 the prebendaries, asked how they had come to be disused ; 
 when the verger said, " It happened in my tinie. Did 
 you ever hear of one Dr. Warburton, Sir ? A very hot 
 man he was, Sir ; we never coidd please him in putting 
 on his robe. The stiff high coUar used to rufBe his great 
 full-bottomed wig ; till, one day, he threw the robe off in a 
 great passion, and said he would never wear it again ; and 
 he never did ; and the other gentlemen soon left off theirs 
 too." ' 
 
 When he went to Durham, he found in the Episcopal 
 Library a copy of Neal's ' History of the Pmritans,' but 
 observed that there was no answer to it, without which 
 he said that the book ought not to remain there. He 
 accordingly took the volumes home with him one day, 
 and filled the margins with what he considered to be ' a 
 full confutation of all the false facts and partial represen- 
 tations.' These remarks were included by Hurd in his 
 edition of Warburton's Works. They afford as much 
 proof that he was ' a hot man ' as his impatience about 
 the cope. When JSTeal speaks of something that ' blew 
 up the liberties ' of the sectarians, Warburton exclamis, 
 ' Blew up a fool's head ! ' and abuses the author for 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. ii. p. 421. 
 
 f Vol. xxxii. p. 273. See also Eev. G. Ormsby's Sketches of Dur- 
 ham, p. 129. 
 
428 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXIII. 
 
 going on ' the true Puritan principle, that whatever was 
 Popish was false.' In a note of a page long he declares 
 that King Charles was the real author of ' Icon Basilike,' 
 and that Gauden, getting it into his hands, transcribed it. 
 
 Soon after, he dined with the clergy at the Archbishop 
 of York's Palace. In the course of conversation his Grace 
 observed that Mr. Eidley, his chaplain, had undertaken to 
 answer PhiUips's ' Life of Cardinal Pole.' Warburton was 
 uncourtly enough to observe that he could have wished his 
 Grace had not left the task to his chaplain, but had under- 
 taken it himself ; citing Sarpedon in Homer, who tells 
 Glaucus that those who hold superior rank should perform 
 superior achievements. The company were struck dumb 
 for a while. But when they recovered, somebody asked 
 Warburton why he did not take the matter on himself. 
 Warburton replied that when any service could be done 
 for the Church, he did not stay to be caUed upon ; and 
 jestingly referred them to Neal's ' History of the Puritans,' 
 which they might see, if they would go to the Library at 
 Durham, scribbled all over with his refutations. Good 
 humour was thus restored, and the company separated 
 pleasantly.* 
 
 ' Lord Clarendon's History ' and Lord Orrery's ' Letters 
 on Swift ' were similarly annotated by Warburton. The 
 remarks on Clarendon have been pubhshed. Of those on 
 Lord Orrery's book, still unprinted, now in Hartlebury 
 Library, the character may be sufficiently understood 
 from what Warburton says of his lordship in writing to 
 Hurd, that the sovereign quahty of his style is galimatias, 
 and that Hurd could hardly have had patience to read 
 enough of ' those detestable letters on Swift ' to discover 
 ' the hundredth part of the offences against common sense 
 and science that may be met with in them.' 
 
 The piece of preferment in the country which he speaks 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 355. 
 
1755.] RESIGNS THE LIVING OF FRISBY. 429 
 
 of resigning was Erisby, the small living in Lincolnshire, 
 to which, as has been related, he was presented by the 
 Duke of Newcastle in 1730, and which, having never 
 resided on it, he vacated in 1756. 
 
 On the mode in which the affairs of this parish were 
 conducted in his absence, some light is thrown by a letter 
 addressed, in March 1820, by the rector of Frisby of that 
 day, to the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' in which some 
 inquiries had been made by a correspondent as to the fact 
 of Warburton having been incumbent of Frisby. He left 
 the superintendence of all parochial matters, temporal 
 and spiritual, to a Mr. Wright, who was to collect the 
 rents of the glebe, and to take care that a cui'ate of good 
 character should be always resident in the parish. In the 
 possession of this Mr. Wright's daughter were left, at her 
 father's death, several letters from Warburton, which the 
 rector was permitted to inspect ; but they were all short 
 and unimportant, relating almost wholly to the collection 
 of rents, and remittances to Knapton, the bookseller. The 
 first was written in 1745 and the last in 1755, and they 
 were nearly all franked by Allen. ' He seems,' says the 
 rector, after perusing these letters, ' to have been more 
 inattentive to the temporahties of his hving than I was 
 prepared to expect. He tells his agent, Mr. Wright (on 
 whom he is perpetually bestowing the most lavish enco- 
 miums for his fidehty and industry, and who in truth was 
 a very respectable character), that his former agent and 
 tenants had not only withheld the rent of the glebe from 
 him, but that they had actually bought and sold it one 
 amongst another, and that it was only in consequence of 
 their having quarrelled in dividing the spoils that he came 
 to hear of their vUlany. 
 
 ' To the spiritual concerns of the parish he seems,' in 
 the opinion of the same rector, ' to have been sufficiently 
 attentive ; ' for ' he repeatedly enjoins Mr. Wright, to whom 
 he intrusted the important task of finding him a curate 
 
430 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXIII. 
 
 whenever one is wanted, to take care that tie is of a sober 
 virtuous character, and resident in the parish.'* 
 
 On one occasion there had been some interruption in 
 the performance of the duties, and a Mr. Wliyte, who 
 appears, however, not to have been one of the parishioners, 
 wi-ote Warburton a letter of complaint on the subject. 
 Warburton repHed thus : 
 
 ' Sir, — You talk as if you wrote by the direction of I 
 can't tell what gentlemen and clergy. I cannot think that 
 any who bear either of those names would be so imperti- 
 nent as to concern themselves in a matter which belongs 
 only to me and my parish. 
 
 ' However, long before your- letter came, I wrote to Mr. 
 Wright that I must have a resident curate of good and 
 irreproachable character. And I make no doubt, from his 
 care and integrity, but that he wiU procure one as soon as 
 possible. You. seem to be in a great hurry, but a worthy 
 unexceptionable curate is not to be got at the shortest 
 warning for residence. 
 
 'Yours, &c., 
 
 ' To Mr. Whyte. ' W. WAEBUETOir.'f 
 
 From this correspondence it would appear, rather than, 
 otherwise, that Warburton left the examination into the 
 curates' characters and merits wholly to Mr. Wright. 
 There seems, indeed, to be no proof that Warburton ever 
 even visited the parish. Things of this kind are managed 
 somewhat differently in the present day. 
 
 About the same time he pubhshed a second volume of 
 ' Sermons preached at Lincoln's Inn,' which, when they 
 were afterwards repubhshed in 1766, he dedicated briefly 
 to Lady Mansfield. He also printed, in 1755, 'A Sermon 
 preached before the Duke of Marlborough and the Gover- 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. lU. vol. ii. pp. 59, 845. 
 t lb. vol. iv. pp. 731-733. 
 
1735.] DEDICATION TO LOED HARDWICKB. 431 
 
 nors of tlie Small Pox Hospital, at tlie Church of St. 
 Andrew, Holborn.' ' This,' he said, in a letter to Hurd, 
 ' was a fooHsh sermon they bulhed me into, but on con- 
 dition they would not press me to print it. I hate,' he 
 adds, ' to have my name in a dirty newspaper on any 
 account, which has always made me decline these charity 
 jobs, that everybody is fit for, and almost everybody ready 
 for.' They offended him, too, by some glaring advertise- 
 ment of the Sermon ; a proceeding in which proclaimers 
 of charity sermons generally show no great dehcacy. It 
 was put forth shortly after he was presented to the stall 
 at Durham. ' The impertinence of the advertisement on 
 this occasion,' he says, ' will make it difficult to draw me 
 into another. I don't like that every cobbler should know 
 I am a prebendary of the same church with Dr. Chapman 
 the great.'* 
 
 Another impression of ' The Divine Legation,' also, 
 being now required, he printed a fourth edition of the 
 first part of it, in two volumes, with a dedication to the 
 Earl of Hardwicke. 
 
 ' As an author,' he said, in his address to the Earl, ' I 
 am not sohcitous for the reputation of any literary per- 
 formance. A work given to the world every reader has 
 a right to censure. If it has merit, it will go down to 
 posterity ; if it has none, the sooner it dies and is forgot, 
 the better. 
 
 ' So far as any censure can show that my poor labours 
 are not calculated to promote letters or learning, to advance 
 truth, or, above aU, to serve the cause of religion, which I 
 profess as a Christian and a member of the Church of 
 England, I own I have missed my end, and will be the 
 first to join with the censure which condemns them. 
 
 ' In the mean time, the first book of this work, such 
 as it is, is here humbly commended to your Lordship's 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Mar. 31, 1755. 
 
432 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXDI. 
 
 protection. For to whom does it so properly belong to 
 patronise an argument showing the utility of religion to 
 society, as to that great magistrate, legislator, and states- 
 man, who is best able to recommend and apply the sub- 
 ject, by his being convinced of the truth of religion, and 
 by his giving the most exemplary proof of his belief, in a 
 steady regard to its dictates in his hfe and actions ? 
 
 ' It is this which makes me presume on your Lordship's 
 protection, not anything extraordinary in the work itself. 
 It is enough for your Lordship to find in those you favour 
 a real zeal for the interests of virtue and religion. The 
 effectual service of those interests depends on so many 
 accidents, respecting both the abihty of the writer and the 
 disposition of the reader, that your Lordship's humairity 
 and candour, enlarged, and not, as it often happens, 
 diminished, by your great knowledge of mankind, will 
 always dispose you to estimate merit by a better rule 
 than the success.' 
 
 In composing this dedication, he conferred with Murray 
 and Mr. Charles Yorke, who suggested a great portion 
 both of the matter and the language.* 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 176, note. 
 
1755.] HUKD'S SEVEISTTH DISSERTATION. 433 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 'DELICACY OF FRIENDSHIP.' HURD. JOETIN. 
 
 HUKD'S ' SEVENTH DISSERTATION* FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN "WARBDRTON 
 
 AND JORTIN; their CHARACTERS, BY BISHOP NEWTON DISRUPTION 
 
 OF THEIR INTIMACY IIURD'S DEFENCE OF WARBDRTON; HIS SATI- 
 RICAL REMARKS ON JOETIN; HIS FLATTERY LOWTH's OPINION OF 
 
 HURd's PUBLICATION ; BROWN'S AND GIBBOn's WARBDRTON'S GRA- 
 TIFICATION JORTIN FINDS SUPPORTERS ; WARBURTOn'S ABUSE OP 
 
 HIM JOETIn's indirect ALLUSIONS TO WAEBURTON SENSE OF 
 
 THE WORD ' PRINCEPS '; JORTIN's REMARKS ON IT WARBUBTON's 
 
 LETTER TO JORTIN JORTIN'S ANSWER. 
 
 BUT this year was most to be noted, in Warburton's 
 . life, for Kurd's publication of ' The Dehcacy of 
 Friendship, a Seventh Dissertation, addressed to the 
 Author of the Sixth ;' meaning Dr. Jortin. An examina- 
 tion into the cause of this publication will require us to 
 give a httle more attention to Hurd and Jortin than we 
 have yet bestowed upon them. 
 
 Warburton and Jortin had for some years been very 
 good friends. Warburton engaged Jortin, in 1747, to 
 assist him occasionally at Lincoln's Inn chapel, an engage- 
 ment which lasted, apparently to the satisfaction of both, 
 about three years. Wlien Warburton, in 1751, pub- 
 hshed a second edition of his ' Julian,' he took occasion to 
 say that the world might soon expect to be gratified with 
 ' the learned Mr. Jortin's curious dissertations on Eccle- 
 siastical Antiquity, composed, like his life, not in the 
 spirit of controversy, nor, what is still worse, of party, 
 but of truth and candour.' Jortin, on his part, seemed 
 equally ready to pay compliments to Warburton. He 
 
 F F 
 
434 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXI*'. 
 
 inserted, at the end of liis first volume of ' Eemarks on 
 Ecclesiastical History,' Warburton's unlucky notice of 
 Arise Evans, and expressed his sincere obligations to 
 Warburton, and to Bishop Pearce, vs^ho had sent him a 
 dissertation on the destruction of Jerusalem, for their 
 Avilhngness to appear as his friends and coadjutors in 
 the work ; subjoining these verses : 
 
 Ibit et hoc nostri per sscula foedus amoris, 
 
 Doctorumque inter nomina nomen ero : 
 Forsan et extinctum non spernet Patria dulcis, 
 
 Forsitan et dioet, Tu quoque noster eras. 
 Talibus inferiis placabilis umbra quiescet ; 
 
 Lenibunt manes talia dona meos. 
 Interea labor ipse levat fastidia vitse : 
 
 ^terno rectum sub duce pergat iter ! * 
 
 Having occasion, also, to observe that Horace's ode, 
 
 O navis, referent in mare te novi, &c., 
 
 has been a subject of dispute among the commentators, 
 some contending that it is to be understood literally, and 
 others allegorically ; but that, in truth, it has a double 
 sense, the poet addressing himself to a real ship, and 
 yet intending, under that emblem, to dissuade the Eomans 
 from engaging again in civil war ; he added : ' Mr. War- 
 brurton made the same remark, and to him I resign it, 
 as to the first occupier, unless he wiU let me claim a part 
 of it on the privilege of friendship, and as xoiva to. twv 
 iptXwv.'-f At this time, therefore, 1751, all was friendly 
 between them. 
 
 It may be proper to introduce here Bishop Newton's 
 characters of Warburton and Jortin, for an intimacy 
 with both of whom the Bishop was indebted to his edi- 
 tion of Milton. ' They were really,' says Newton, ' two 
 very extraordinary men ; and though their characters 
 
 * Remarks on Eccl. Hist. vol. i. p. 249. f lb. p. 129. 
 
1755.] WARBURTON AND JORTIN. 435 
 
 were much alike in some respects, yet they were very 
 different in others. They were both men of great parts 
 and abiUties, both men of imcommon learning and 
 erudition ; both able critics, both copious writers. But 
 the one was the more universal, the other perhaps the 
 better Greek and Latin, scholar ; the one had the larger 
 comprehension of things, the other the more exact know- 
 ledge of words ; the one had his learning more hke cash, 
 ready at hand, the other had his more like bills in his 
 common-place book; the one was the more rapid and 
 flowing, the other the more terse and correct, writer ; the 
 one was the more capable of forming the plan and system 
 of a large work, the other excelled more in little loose 
 detached pieces ; the sermons of the one are not the 
 most valuable, those of the other are the most valuable, 
 of all their writings. And in themselves, the one was the 
 more open and communicative, more inviting and en- 
 gaging in his manner ; the other was more close and 
 reserved, more shy and forbidding in his appearance ; 
 the one was warmer in his commendation, a more zealous 
 friend, and a more generous enemy ; the other was more 
 sparing of his praise, cooler both in friendship and en- 
 mity, and rather carping and undermining, than freely 
 judging and censuring. But their little failings will die 
 with them ; their superior excellences will live in the 
 mouths and memories of men.' * 
 
 Friendship continued, to all appearance, between them 
 till 1755, when Jortin pubhshed his 'Six Dissertations 
 on Various Subjects.' In the sixth of these disquisitions, 
 which treated of the ' State of the Dead as described by 
 Homer and Virgil,' Jortin, as we have seen, ventured to 
 express himself of a different opinion from "Warburton as 
 to the probability of the descent of ^Slneas into hell, in 
 the sixth book of the ^neid, being a representation of 
 
 * Bp. Newton's Life by Himself, p. 67. 
 r r 2 
 
436 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 an initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. But this dis- 
 sent was signified, as Johnson said of his censures of 
 Warburton's notes on Shakspeare, ' without bitterness of 
 malice, or wantonness of insult.' It was indicated, indeed, 
 so modestly and mildly, that the most irascible could 
 hardly have been thought likely to take offence. ' That 
 the subterraneous adventures of J^^neas,' he says, ' were 
 hitended by Virgil to represent the initiation of his hero, 
 is an elegant conjecture, which hath been laid before the 
 public, and set forth to the best advantage by a learned 
 friend.' The sixth book of the ^neid, he remarks in 
 another place, is certainly obscure, and presents ' a field 
 open for criticism,' in which ' all of us, who attempt to 
 explain and illustrate Virgil, have reason to hope that we 
 may make some chscoveries, and to fear that we may fall 
 into some mistakes ; and this should induce us to conjec- 
 ture with freedom, to propose with diffidence, and to 
 dissent with civility. 'AyaS?) 8' spig tJSs ^poroia-i.' These 
 are the only remarks that he makes in allusion to War- 
 bm'ton ; and it may be thought that they might have 
 been received with calmness. But Warburton could read 
 no objection to his own theories without resentment. 
 Whether he intimated his displeasure to Hurd or not, is 
 nowhere told ; but it is probable that Hurd had some 
 hint how Warburton felt. Whatever was the case, Hmxl 
 chose to appear in the field as the defender of Warbur- 
 ton, by putting forth a pamphlet entitled ' On the Delicacy 
 of Friendship ; a Seventh Dissertation addressed to the 
 Author of the Sixth ; ' a production printed, indeed, 
 without the writer's name, but with little care for conceal- 
 ment of the authorship. 
 
 The ' Dissertation ' is a tolerably successful attempt at 
 dehcate irony or elegant sneering. The writer's great 
 object is to make it apparent that Jortin's friendship for 
 Warburton, or gratitude to him, which he would wil- 
 Hngly have shown, was neutraUsed by the sense of duty 
 
1755.] HUED'S 'delicacy OF FRIENDSHIP.' 437 
 
 that he felt to oppose Warburton's conjecture. He com- 
 mences thus : 
 
 ' Eev. Sir, — As great an admirer as I must profess 
 myself of your writings, I little expected any of them 
 would give me the pleasure that I have just now 
 received from the last of your Six Dissertations on Dif- 
 ferent Subjects. 
 
 ' The other five have doubtless their distinct merits. 
 But in this, methinks, I see an assemblage, a very con- 
 stellation, as it were, of all your virtues, aU that can 
 recommend the scholar, or endear the friend. This last, 
 give me leave to say, is so imusual a part of a learned 
 man's character, and appears with so peculiar a lustre in 
 this discourse, that the pubhc will not be displeased to 
 have it set before them in full view, and recommended 
 to general imitation.' 
 
 All these praises, it will easily be seen, are to be under- 
 stood ironically. Hurd then adverts to the great com- 
 mendations which learned men have bestowed upon each 
 other, and sarcastically praises Jortin for his seasonable 
 endeavour to put a stop to such extravagant flatteries, for 
 his resolute efforts to overcome the inducements which 
 he must have felt to give way to the common weakness, 
 and for setting a precedent of the most heroic magna- 
 nimity and self-denial. ' I observe it to your honour,' he 
 proceeds, ' you have ventured on the same ground, in 
 this famous Dissertation, which hath been trodden by the 
 most noted, at least, of our present writers. But this is 
 not enough. It will be of moment to consider a little 
 more particularly the character of the person whom you 
 choose to follow, or rather emulate.' He then bestows, 
 as the effusions of a ' warm friend ' of Warburton's, with 
 Avhom he had lately been conversing, the most extrava- 
 gant encomiums on Warburton's literary and moral cha- 
 racter, calling him ' a writer whose genius and learning 
 have so far subdued envy itself, that every man of sense 
 
438 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 now esteems liim the ornament, and every good man the 
 blessing, of these times ; ' adding, besides, particular com- 
 mendations of ' his love of letters and of virtue ; ' of ' his 
 veneration of great and good men ; ' of ' his readiness to 
 give their due to ah men of real desert whose principles 
 he opposes ; ' of his ' ingenuous openness and candour, the 
 characteristics of a truly great mind,' displayed to such a 
 degree ' that they whom he opposes cannot be angry, and 
 they whom he censures are not misused.' The reader 
 might well suppose that Hurd, in such encomiums, meant 
 to satirise Warburton as well as Jortin ; but such is not 
 the case ; he expected Warburton to receive the praises 
 of this ' warm friend ' as the offspring of pure sincerity of 
 heart. 
 
 'It seems pretty well agreed,' proceeds the author of 
 the ' Seventh Dissertation,' ' that this learned person, though 
 so great a divine, is a very competent judge, and no mean 
 proficient, in classical criticism. There are many speci- 
 mens of his talents in this way dispersed through the 
 large and miscellaneous work of " The Divine Lega- 
 tion." But the greatest effort of his genius, they say, is 
 seen in the explanation of the sixth book of the " jEneis." 
 And with all its defects, I can easily perceive you were so 
 struck with it, that it was with the utmost reluctance you 
 found yourself obhged, by the regard which every honest 
 critic owes to truth, and by the superior delicacy of your 
 purpose, to censure and expose it. 
 
 ' Another man, I can easily imagine, would have said 
 to himself, before he entered on this task, " This fine 
 commentary, which sets the most finished part of the 
 ' jEneis,' and indeed the whole poem, in so new and so 
 advantageous a hght, though not an essential in it, is yet 
 a considerable ornament of so justly admired a work. 
 The author, too, is my particular friend ; a man the far- 
 thest of all others from any disposition to lessen the repu- 
 tation of those, he loves. The subject has been well nigh 
 
1755.] IIUED'S SARCASMS. 439 
 
 exhausted by liim ; and the remarks I have to offer on 
 his scheme are not, in truth, of that consequence as to 
 make it a point of duty for me to lay aside the usual re- 
 gards of friendship on their accoiint. And though he hath 
 greatness of mind enough not to resent this liberty, his 
 impatient and ill-judging friends will be likely to take 
 offence at it. The public itself, as little biased as it seems 
 to be in his favour, may be even scandahsed at an attempt 
 of this natm-e, to which no important interests of religion 
 or learning seem to oblige me." 
 
 ' After this manner, I say, a common man would have 
 been apt to reason with himself But you. Sir, under- 
 stand the rights of hterary freedom, and the offices of 
 sacred friendship, at another rate. The one authorises us 
 to deliver our sentiments on any point of literature without 
 reserve ; and the other will not suffer you to dishonour 
 the man you love, or require you to sully the purity of 
 your own virtue, by a vicious and vulgar complaisance.' 
 
 ' This person,' he also observes, ' you have the pleasure 
 to call your friend. Eeport says, too, that he has more 
 than a common right to this title ; that he has won it by 
 many services done to yourself. How doth the conscious- 
 ness of all this fire you ! and what pains do I see you take 
 to restrain that impatient gratitude which would relieve 
 itself by breaking forth in the praises of such a friend ! ' 
 
 Hurd then commends Jortin, with continued irony, 
 first, for writing on the same subject with his friend, since 
 this is to tell him delicately that public attention has been 
 fixed on it ; secondly, for expressing dissent from him, 
 since this is to intimate dehcately that his work is of 
 importance enough to be opposed ; thirdly, for glancing 
 at his arguments without naming him, since this is a 
 deHcate display of literary address ; fourthly, for objecting 
 to his principles without refuting his reasonings, since such 
 tenderness can belong only to thedehcacyof true friendship ; 
 fifthly, for suggestmg what he thought better reasonings 
 
440 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUBTON. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 than his, since this is a dehcate indication of readiness to 
 support him ; sixthly, for quoting from him with quahfied 
 approbation, since this is a dehcate avoidance of fulsome 
 flattery ; seventhly, for insinuating compHments which 
 can hardly give satisfaction to their object, since by such 
 dehcate faintness they will be rendered more welcome to 
 the ears of others ; and eighthly, for praising the unsub- 
 stantial rather than the substantial, for this is a delicate 
 mode of showing anxiety not to commend without dis- 
 crimmation. 
 
 The piece is then concluded with a Greek quotation, 
 conveying a sneer at Jortin as being a mere grammarian 
 or sophist. 
 
 This Dissertation of Kurd's was cleverly attacked in a 
 pamphlet entitled ' Eemarks on Dr. Warburton's Account 
 of the Sentiments of the early Jews concerning the Soul,' 
 pubhshed in 1757, the writer of which says that if Kurd's 
 paragraphs be translated out of Attic iro7iy into plaiii Eng- 
 lish, we shall have the following rules prescribing the 
 proper demeanour of all men towards the great sovereign 
 in the repubUc of letters : 
 
 ' 1. You must not write on the same subject that he does. 
 
 ' 2. You must not write against him. 
 
 ' 3. You must not glance at his arguments even without 
 naming him, or so much as referring to him. 
 
 ' 4. You must not oppose his principles, though you let 
 his arguments quite alone. 
 
 ' 5. If you find his reasonings ever so faulty, you must 
 not presume to furnish him with better of your own, even 
 though you approve and a,re desirous to support his con- 
 clusions. 
 
 ' 6. You must not pretend to help forward any of his 
 arguments that happen to fall lame, and may seem to 
 reqviire your needful support. 
 
 ' 7. When you design him a comphment, you must 
 express it in full form, and with all the circumstance of 
 
1755.] PUBLIC OPINIOK CONCERNING liURD. 441 
 
 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 
 
 ' 8. You must never call any of his discoveries by the 
 name of conjectures, though you allow them their fuU 
 proportion of elegance, learning, &c. ; for you ought to 
 know that this capital genius never proposed anything to 
 the judgment of the pubhc (though ever so new and 
 uncommon) with diffidence, in his life.' 
 
 The general feeling of the public, with regard to the 
 author of the ' Delicacy of Friendship,' and the object of 
 his satu-e, was, even at the time of its publication, when 
 Warburton and Hurd were ahve and commanded a cer- 
 tain degree of influence, manifested strongly in favour of 
 Jortin ; and it has increased largely in the same direction 
 since their deaths. The author of that Dissertation, 
 wrote Lowth to Warburton, pretends, I suppose, to be 
 your friend ; ' what your opinion of him is, I cannot tell ; 
 but I think you owe him httle thanks for his pains. He 
 has at least shown more zeal than discretion in the under- 
 taking, and more malevolent wit than good sense or 
 honest intention in the performance ; the manifest ten- 
 dency of which is to sow strife and foment discord ; and 
 its natural effect, if it has any, must be to lessen the 
 number of those who wish well to you and your designs.'* 
 Brown, the author of the ' Essays on the Characteristics,' 
 alluding to Kurd's pubUcation in a letter to a friend, says, 
 ' Whoever the author be, though I honour his zeal for his 
 friend, yet had I been of the council before it was pub- 
 lished, I would have whispered this one criticism in his 
 ear : " I think," my friend, " you are in danger of hurting 
 Dr. W. as well as yourself, by the intemperance of your 
 
 * Lowtli's Letter to Warburtoii, 1756. 
 
442 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 zeal. For though . . . [Jortin] has certainly offended, 
 yet you so far overrate his offence, and your consequential 
 accusations rise so far beyond it, that the offence, which, 
 if more gently touched, would have seemed considerable 
 in the eyes of the world, will, by these aggravations, 
 apparently groundless, sink into nothing in the opinion of 
 mankind.'"* Gibbonf called the Dissertation ' base and 
 malignant.' Even Mr. Kilvert, who never censiu-es Hurd 
 but with reluctance, admits that " no candid judge can do 
 otherwise than regret that so severe an attack should 
 have been made on a man of Jortin's talent and character 
 on such shght provocation.'^ 
 
 But Warburton himself was highly delighted. Nothing 
 could exceed his gratification. 'Just now,' he writes 
 to Hurd, ' Mr. Allen has shown me a pamphlet, which, 
 he says, was sent him by the post ; though I had seen the 
 title, without knowing what to make of it, in the news- 
 papers. I have read it, and you may judge with what 
 sentinrents. Though I have no data to judge from what 
 quarter it comes, yet I am as sure of the author as if I 
 had seen it written ; for I know but of one man from 
 whose heart or whose pen so fine a piece of irony could 
 come. Therefore, if I be mistaken, do not undeceive me ; 
 for the pleasure of thinking from whence it comes to me 
 is as great as the gift. In the meantime, I say to every- 
 body else (even to Mr. Allen, who, however, on the first 
 reading told me that the keen softness, the politeness, and 
 the delicacy, he thought, could come but from one liand), 
 what I say to you, that I have had no data to judge of 
 the author ; that I saw it first by accident after the pub- 
 Hcation ; and that I am sure Mr. Jortin wiU do me the 
 justice to think I had no hand in it, because I am sure 
 he does not think I am able ; in which he is not out. 
 
 * Brown's Letter to Lowtli, 1766 ; Tracts by Warburton and a 
 Warburtonian, p. 200. 
 
 t Misc. Works, vol. i. p. 209. % Life of Hiird, p. 54. 
 
1755.] WARBUETON GRATIFIED. 443 
 
 ' I will be frank with you ; next to the pleasure of 
 seeing myself so finely praised, is the satisfaction I take 
 in seeing Jortin mortified. I know to what degree it 
 will do it. He deserves to be mortified on this occasion ; 
 it will do him good ; and this is the worst I wish him. 
 There was but one thing that I, in good earnest, resented 
 for its baseness, and grieved at for its meanness. -It is 
 where, speaking of Libanius (I think in the " Sixth Disser- 
 tation," I am sure it is in one of the six), he evidently 
 insinuates that Juhan was murdered by some Christians 
 amongst his own soldiers. You know I have a large note 
 in my " Jidian" to refute this calumny ; and at the conclu- 
 sion of it it is that I refer the determination to Jortin in 
 the comphment that the author of the " Seventh Disser- 
 tation" makes so fine a use of And this is the deter- 
 mination that this amiable-minded man thinks fit to make 
 upon the occasion.' * 
 
 The compliment to Jortin, it may be remarked, was 
 omitted in the subsequent editions of ' Julian,' and the 
 ' long note ' is left, without any reference to the author 
 of the ' Six Dissertations,' to prove, chiefly from the 
 narrative of Ammianus Marcelhnus, that Juhan was killed 
 by a dart, one of a large shower hurled against the 
 Eomans from a body of retreating Persians. Jortin him- 
 self, too, it may be added, had given, in his ' Eemarks on 
 Ecclesiastical History,' f published in 1752, three years 
 before the ' Six Dissertations,' a similar account of Ju- 
 lian's fate, observing, that 'as this prince had his good 
 as well as bad quahties. Providence seems to have per- 
 mitted him to fall in battle and to die an honourable 
 death.' 
 
 After the publication of the ' Seventh Dissertation,' 
 Hurd fell in with some friends of Jortin, who took his 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Deo. 21, 1755. 
 I Vol. ii. p. 326. 
 
444 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 part, seemingly with some earnestness, against Warburton ; 
 and Hurd, perhaps with some misgiving or relenting, im- 
 mediately communicated to Warburton what he had 
 heard. Warburton at once replied : ' Who they are of 
 Jortin's friends you have met with, I don't know ; but 
 they must be du^ty fellows indeed who can think I have 
 no reason to complain of his mean, low, and ungrateful 
 conduct towards me ; or that the pamphlet, which ex- 
 presses so much resentment of it, was of my writing. 
 Jortin is himself as vain as he is dirty, to imagine I am 
 obliged to him for holding his hand ; and perhaps, if the 
 trutla were known, it was to this insolence he must ascribe 
 the " Seventh Dissertation." Nobody has yet written 
 against me but at their own expense ; and if he be a 
 gainer, I wiU forgive him. The profusion of comphment 
 in the "Dissertation" is so great, that he must be very 
 malignant wiio can suppose I gave it to myself ; and, at 
 the same time, so warm, that he must lie very dull not to 
 see it came from a generous and zealous friend. Whoever 
 he be, I envy him that he has got the start of me, and 
 that it was not my good fortune to do that for him which 
 he has done for me ; that is to say, give a seasonable 
 reproof to little low envy under the mask of friendship. 
 And I wish you would take an opportmiity to say aU this 
 from me, and in my name, to those friends of Dr. Jortin.' * 
 To Hurd's attack Jortin made no direct reply. He 
 knew himself to be far superior to Warburton, and at 
 least equal to Hurd, in wliat is called scholarship ; he was 
 on a level with them in general knowledge ; he had done 
 no injury to Hurd, nor given any offence, justly deserving 
 of resentment, to Warburton ; and he had no fear that 
 eitlaer of them would inflict any serious damage either on 
 his literary or moral reputation. He was aware, too, that 
 to reply to a calumny is to give it greater circulation, and 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Dec. 30, 1755. 
 
1755.] JOETIN'S RETALIATION. 445 
 
 that he who vindicates himself from a charge shows that 
 the charge was of weight enough to make some impres- 
 sion. But it was not liliely that he would altogether for- 
 bear from reference, in his subsequent writings, to the 
 published assault upon him. Mr. Kilvert * supposes that 
 the following passage in one of his sermons, on the text, 
 ' To speak evil of no man,' ' bears indirect but forcible 
 allusion' to the subject :f 
 
 ' And here one cannot well omit the mention of a fault 
 nearly related to evil-speaking, but more pernicious, and 
 that is evil-writing, or satire, in which the defects, weak- 
 nesses, indiscretions, follies, and yices, not of corrupted 
 human nature, but of particular persons, are exposed to 
 public view. If these writers can say for themselves that 
 they keep exactly to truth, yet they exercise an authority 
 to which they have no legal and just claim. But they 
 seldom have even that excuse to plead ; they often bestow 
 their censures as interest, partiality, ignorance, spleen, and 
 prejudice direct, and are usually the most malicious revilers 
 of some, and the most sordid flatterers of others. Thus a 
 person shall presume to pass sentence upon his rieighbour's 
 reputation who is not fit to open the cause, and shall set 
 himself up for a judge who has not the qualifications requi- 
 site even for an ordinary evidence. 
 
 ' And of this tribe of vien the most odious are those who 
 shoot their arrows from the dark ; who wear a mask, not 
 out of modesty, hut of fear and self-preservation ; who 
 themselves ivrite without a name, and abuse innocent per- 
 sons by name: a crime which deserves other correction 
 than words' 
 
 But more decided allusions to the matter were subse- 
 quently made in the ' Life of Erasmus,' of which the first 
 volume was published in 1758, three years afterwards. 
 We have noticed that the ' Dissertation on the Delicacy 
 
 * Life of Kurd, p. 53. 
 
 ■|" Serm. xii. vol. iv. p. 238. 
 
446 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 of Friendship ' was concluded with a Greek quotation, 
 which was recommended to Jortin's attention, but without 
 any indication from what author it was taken. It was 
 intended to throw contempt on Jortin as a mere gram- 
 marian. Jortin, in a note on his 'Life of Erasmus,' 
 turned the point of the dart against the author of ' The 
 Divine Legation,' by thus quoting the passage in a note, 
 translating it, and commenting upon it : 
 
 ' I remember to have met with a passage in a certain 
 writer which is not at all favourable to the grammarians : 
 'Eifx-oi TTpog (piTioa-oipoug s(m ^iT^ia.' irpog [xiv roi (ro^JKTTaf, rj 
 'ypa^[xari<rTa.g, v) Toiodro ysvog srepov av&pwTroov xaxo^iat- 
 ^ouwv, ours vuv sctti C^/A/a, iJ.r\TS ufrrspou ttots •ysvoiro. 
 
 ' 3Iy friendship I bestow upon philosophers ; as to 
 sophists, little grammarians, and such sort of scoundrels 
 and cacodmmons, I neither have, nor ever will have, any 
 regard for them. 
 
 ' The man abhors grammarians ; and grammars, I 
 suppose. But who is the author of this bit of Grreek ? 
 An extraordinary person, I assure you ; a projector, a 
 visionaire, a linguist by inspiration, a crack, a conjurer 
 — in short, Apollonius Tyanensis. He is the man ; and 
 the grammarians count it no disgrace to be vilified by a 
 mountebank.'* 
 
 It must have amused Jortin to string together these 
 terms, of which the learned reader, whether an enemy 
 or an apparent friend to Warburton, could so easily see 
 the application. ' To be misrepresented as a pedant and 
 a dunce,' he observed in another place, ' is no great 
 matter, for time and truth put folly to flight. 'f 
 
 The note is attached to the following passage in the 
 text, which is aimed at both Warburton and Pope : 
 
 ' Erasmus, in the earlier part of his life, carefully 
 studied the Greek and Latin grammars, read lectures upon 
 
 » Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 604. j- lb. p. 599. 
 
1755.] MISTRANSLATION OF ' PBINCEPS.' 447 
 
 them, and translated Greek books into Latin. This was 
 laying a right foundation for criticism and philology; 
 and it is much to be wished that our young students of 
 promising abilities would, in some measure, follow his 
 example. Be you ever so ingenious and industrious, yet, 
 if you neglect to cultivate and to preserve this humble 
 part of knowledge, you will be perpetually stumbling 
 when you tread on classic ground, when you attempt to 
 explain, to translate, or to correct ancient authors, or to 
 discuss any learned subject, or to compose a few pages 
 of Latin in prose or in verse. Then, beware of blunders, 
 and think not to make amends for them by insulting and 
 ridicuhng grammarians, scholiasts, commentators, lexico- 
 graphers, verbal critics, word-catchers, syllable-mongers, 
 and poachers in Stobasus and Suidas.' 
 
 He had also Warburton and Hurd in his thoughts 
 when he teUs us that Aleander, after he was exalted to 
 high stations, had wranglers under him, whom he would 
 set at Erasmus, though the laws of the Church forbid 
 ecclesiastics alere canes venaticos. It would be happy, as 
 he had before observed, ' if wrangling geniuses would 
 copy from the examples of Faber and Erasmus, and con- 
 sider a httle how all men of sense and manners applaud 
 such moderation, and how they abhor and despise those 
 who, having begmi to quarrel, perhaps, upon mere bau- 
 bles, never end their contests and animosities till death 
 comes and puts them to silence.'* 
 
 But the allusion to Warburton that touched him most, 
 in the ' Life of Erasmus,' was the correction of a blunder 
 that he had made in regard to the sense of the word 
 princeps in a passage of Cicero. Quoting what Cicero f 
 says of Plato, qui princeps de republicd conscripsit, he 
 translated the words, ' ivho wrote best of a republic,' with 
 this note : ' I read here, with Turnebus, qui princeps de 
 
 * Disney's Life of Jortin, p. 223. | De Legg. ii. 6. 
 
448 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTOjSr. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 repuhlicd conscripsit. Lambin objects to this reading, 
 because we gather from Aristotle that Plato was not the 
 first who ivrote of a republic, he supposing princeps signi- 
 fied primus, whereas it means optimus. This was Tully's 
 opinion of Plato, as may be gathered from many other 
 places in his writings. And in this sense Turnebus, 
 without doubt, understood the word ; a sense famihar to 
 his author, as in Verr. 1. iv. c. 49, in qud [patria] viultis 
 virtutibus et heneficiis floruit princeps. But the word 
 primus itself is sometimes used in the sense of princeps ; 
 as in Virgil, 
 
 Prima quod ad Trojam ' 
 
 Here was error enough for Jortin's animadversion, who, 
 coming to the word princeps in one of the letters of 
 Erasmus, inserted a note upon it, in which he restores the 
 proper sense to the passage which had been thus misre- 
 presented, and, without naming Warburton, closes his 
 observations with a quotation from Terence, which he 
 recommends to the critic as more decisive of his sense of 
 p)rimus than that which he had drawn from Virgil. But 
 it wDl be proper to give Jortin's note entire, as it will 
 show how determmed he was to put the question against 
 Warburton past dispute : 
 
 ' Egnatius, in the letter above-mentioned (Ep. 1272), 
 amongst other handsome comphments to Erasmus, says, 
 Til igitur, qui Ger^nanis tuis princeps hanc literarum 
 facem prcetulisti. 
 
 'There' is nothing particular in this use of the word 
 princeps for fii^st ; but it reminds me to do justice to a 
 passage in Cicero which hath been misinterpreted. 
 
 ' Here is the passage, De Legibus, ii. 6. Sed ut vir 
 doctissimus facit Plato, atque idem graiiissimus philoso- 
 phoruni omnium, qui princeps de repuhlicd conscripsit, 
 idemque separatim de legibus ejus. 
 
 'Here is the misinterpretation: '■'Plato, — who wrote 
 best of a republic." 
 
1755.] JORTIW ON ' PEINCEPS.' 449 
 
 ' It should have been translated, who wrote first of a 
 republic ; and it can admit no other sense. 
 
 ' When princeps means best, it cannot mean the adverb 
 best (optime), but the adjective best (optimus). Come 
 then, try it, and substitute optimus in the room of princeps. 
 
 '■Plato, — qui optimus de repuhlica conscripsit. 
 
 ' This, I think, vriU not pass for a Ciceronian phrase. 
 Let us throw it aside, and proceed. 
 
 ' Plato, says Cicero, wrote first of a republic ; and he 
 hath said the same in another place of this treatise, as his 
 learned editor Davies observes. Principem Platonem cle 
 republica disseruisse, testatur noster infra. It is in ill. 6 : 
 Nam veteres verbo terms, acute illi quidem, sed non ad hunc 
 usum popidarem atque civilem, de republica disserebant. 
 Ab hac familid magis ista manarunt Platone principe. — 
 Post Aristoteles, &c. 
 
 ' Plato, then, according to Cicero, was the first who 
 treated the subject in an extensive, useful, and practical 
 way. Cicero hath also hinted the same thing hi another 
 treatise : 
 
 ' Atque his libris annumerandi sunt sex de Republic^, 
 quos tunc scripsimus : — magnus locus pliilosophia3que 
 pro23rius, a Platone, Aristotele, Theophrasto, totaque Peri- 
 pateticorum famiha tractatus uberrime. — De Divin. ii. 1. 
 
 ' Princeps is he qui primum capit, and in its original 
 signification it means the first in time or order ; and then, 
 by a very easy metaphor, it means the chief, best, and 
 most excellent. 
 
 'In princeps exiit, rediit, scripsit, invenit, sententiam 
 dixit, verba fecit, in these and such like expressions, 
 princeps means first, and not best. To many passages 
 collected in Gesner, these may be added : Sicilia princeps 
 se ad amicitiam populi Romani applicuit. — Cic. de CI. 
 171, b. Is princeps ex Latinis hoec tractavit. — De Orat. 
 154. Gorgias princeps ex omnibus ausus est, Sfc, — 
 Acad. 44. 
 
 G G 
 
450 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ca. XXIV. 
 
 'These citations I take as I find them in NizoUus, 
 Lucret. i. 94 : — 
 
 ' Nee miserce prodesse in tali tempore quihat, 
 Quod patrio princeps dondrat nomine regem. 
 
 ' Horat. Carm. iil. 17 : 
 
 ' Qui Foiiniarmn mmnia dicitur 
 Princeps, et innantem Maricm 
 Littoribus tenuisse Lirim. 
 
 ' Lambin knew Xh&X princeps conscripsit could only mean 
 writing^7^5f ; and therefore he proposed to alter the place, 
 because, said he, Plato did not write first concerning a 
 repubhc. Falsum est Platonem principem, id est, primum 
 de Republica scripsisse. But this was not a sufiicient 
 cause for attempting an emendation, as Lambin might 
 have seen, if he had considered the case a Httle better. 
 Horace says of himself, Carm. iii. 30 : 
 
 ' Princeps Solium carmen ad Italos 
 Deduxisse modes. 
 
 He meant that he was the Jirst. And yet here it might 
 be objected that, strictly speaking, he was not the first, 
 since Catullus, before him, had composed some Sappluc 
 odes. But either Horace did not recollect it, or he might 
 think that CatuUus had not done enough that way to earn 
 the name of a lyric poet. 
 
 ' The person, whose interpretation of Cicero is here 
 examined, hath also informed us, ex abundanti, that as 
 jjrinceps, so like'svise primus is used for best or chief; 
 which he gravely proves from Virgil, ^n. i. 27: 
 
 ' Veterisque memor Saturnia belli, 
 Prima quod ad Trojam pro caris gesserat Argis. 
 
 ' There is a passage in Terence which would suit him 
 better : Eunuch, ii. 11, 17 : 
 
 ' Est genus hominum qui esse primos se omnium rerum volant, 
 Nee sxmt. 
 
1755.] LETTER TO JORTIN. 45 J 
 
 Where primus certainly and undeniably means summus, 
 prcecipuus.'* 
 
 Dr. Salter, the Master of the Charterhouse, showed 
 these passages, and some othei's, which he supposed to 
 point at Warburton, to Archbishop Seeker. The arch- 
 bishop expressed doubts, as to most of them, whether 
 they were really intended against Warburton, but, when 
 they came to the note on princeps, he at once admitted 
 that there could be no uncertainty as to its design. f 
 
 The following passages may have been among those 
 shown by Dr. Salter to the archbishop : — 
 
 ' Dorpius, writing against Erasmus, represented himself 
 as a divine, and Erasmus as a grammarian.' For this he 
 received castigation in a letter from Sir Thomas More. 
 
 ' Qui tam indoctas n^nias evulgant libris, miro super- 
 cilio objurgant, miro fastu insultant et tantiim non ti'i- 
 umphant, rectiiis facturi, si discerent interim Grsecas 
 Latin^que Grammatices rudimenta.' — Erasmus ad 1 
 Cor. X. 16. 
 
 ' Et quoniam per saltum, ut aiunt, Doctor factus est 
 Bedda, redeat ad necessariam Grammaticam et Latinam 
 et Grascam, ex cujus insciti^ to ties gravem calumniam 
 intendit proximo, toties non inteUigit auctores qui Latin^ 
 scripserunt, ut de Gr^cis taceam.' — Erasmus adversus 
 Beddam, t. ix. c. 398. 
 
 Warburton, rendered uneasy by these attacks or innu- 
 endos, wrote a letter, expressing his displeasure, to 
 Whiston, Jortin's bookseller, to be shown to Jortin, but, 
 before it was despatched, changed his mind about the 
 mode of communication, and sent it direct to Jortin 
 himself It was as follows : 
 
 ' Sept. 30, 1758. 
 
 ' Mr. Whiston, — I have read over Dr. Jortin's " Life of 
 Erasmus " with great pleasure. If all his readers hke it 
 
 * Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 552. 
 •f Disney's Life of Jortin, p. 221. 
 
 G u 2 
 
452 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOJSr. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 as well, as I do not doubt they will, you will find your 
 account in it. 
 
 - 1 perceive myself indebted to him here and there, as 
 particularly in note c?, p. 552. I have only one difficulty 
 about it, which is (as he thinks me mistaken in the sense 
 of princeps) how it happened he did not tell me of it 
 during the time he professed a friendship for me. He 
 will say, perhaps, I should not have had it now, but for 
 the joke at the end of it. As to that, the joke has been 
 so much worn, by its frequent apphcation to many of my 
 betters, that it might have been left at rest. 
 
 ' However, he will give me leave to requite his kindness, 
 and in that way I should have been contented to receive 
 his, in observmg to him, and to him only, that when, at 
 p. 114, he translates the words of Bembus, apud inferos 
 poena, by the pains of hell, I think it should have been the 
 plains of jmrgatory, and not of hell ; as Bembus's apud 
 inferos contained both a hell and a purgatory. 
 
 ' But these are trifles. There is another thing more 
 worth his attention (for it can hardly have escaped his 
 knowledge), that, from the first moment of my acquaint- 
 ance with him to the last that he would allow me to call 
 him friend, I had the vanity to be always recommending 
 him to those of the first quality whom I knew ; some of 
 whom are yet living, and ready to do me justice in this 
 particular. I will go farther, that from that time to this 
 day, I never wrote a line or a word reflecting on him 
 (unless he so interprets my vindication of Socrates' beha- 
 viour at his death), nor did I ever instigate any other to 
 do so, nor was I ever privy to anything so done. I have 
 indeed been foolishly enough officious, formerly, to ridi- 
 cule some of his slanderers in a public paper. As to his 
 own conduct during the same period, I leave that to his 
 own reflections. It is a pleasure to me, though it should 
 be none to him, that he is the first man of parts that has 
 ever entered himself in the numerous list of writers against 
 me. 
 
1755.] JOKTIN'S BEPLY. 453 
 
 ' Thus mucli I thought proper to say, and I hope Dr. 
 Jortm will not be so mean and so vain to imagine I had 
 any other purpose in it than to hold him up a faithful 
 pictm-e of things as in a mirror. I think he has given too 
 much ear to tale-bearers and malevolent people ; or per- 
 haps I am mistaken, and he acts by his own disposition. 
 But this is not my concern, but his. This paper is for no 
 one's sight but Dr. Jortin's and yours, unless he wUls 
 otherwise. ' I am, &c., 
 
 'W. W. 
 
 ' P.S. — As this is a letter which requires no answer, I 
 judged it best, on second thoughts, to send it direct to the 
 person who only has any concern in it.' * 
 
 Jortin lost no time in replying thus : — 
 
 ' London, Oct. 3, 1758. 
 
 ' Eeverend Sir, — I had the favour of yours, which gave 
 me a mixture of pain and pleasure, — of pain, for having 
 ever been at variance with you ; of pleasure, from some 
 prospect of seeing an end of it, unless I deceive myself. 
 
 ' You complam ; I could complain too ; but to what 
 purpose would that serve ? To irritate, perhaps, and that 
 is not my present design. 
 
 ' You say that you never was concerned in the attacks 
 made upon me. I ought to beheve you ; and I do beheve 
 you. But, before you informed me of it, I thought other- 
 wise ; and so did many a person besides me. 
 
 ' Give me leave, also to say, that I stand equally clear 
 towards you, in that respect, and that I have never, 
 directly or indirectly, been concerned in any of the pieces 
 which have appeared against you. 
 
 ' That you recommended me to persons who had it in 
 their power to do me service, I doubt not. Vouchers are 
 needless. Your own word sufiiceth with me, and I thank 
 you for it. 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 218. 
 
454 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 ' As to the passage in Cicero, which I ought in civihty 
 to have mentioned to you, if I did not mention it, my 
 memory deceives me egregiously. Surely, unless I am 
 utterly mistaken, I did tell you of it ; and you rephed that 
 Bishop Hare had once said the same thing to you. 
 
 ' As to Bembus, you know that our English word hell, 
 if not in the vulgar way of speaking, yet in its original 
 sense, hath a lax signification, and may answer weU 
 enough to inferi. But your version is more accurate than 
 mine ; and (imless you should forbid it) I would wilhngly 
 take occasion to mention it in the next volume, with 
 respect, and with thanks. 
 
 ' Sit simultatis depositee et nunquam resumendce pignus 
 et monumentum I 
 
 ' If I should hve to pubhsh the volume, I intend that 
 there shall be nothing in it, or in anything else that comes 
 from me, to give you even the shghtest offence. 
 
 ' I ought to return you thanks for the very candid 
 judgment which you pass upon the account wliich I have 
 given of Erasmus. It is a more favourable judgment than 
 my own hath been, and will give me a better opinion of 
 the work than I had before. 
 
 ' I am, Sir, your most humble servant, 
 
 'J. JORTIiX.'* 
 
 Jortin kept his word about apud inferos poena, by in- 
 serting Warburton's notion of the sense of those words in 
 an appendix to his second volume. ' I am obliged,' says 
 he, ' to Dr. Warburton, who, since I wrote this note, is 
 Bishop of Gloucester, for having reminded me that it 
 should rather be the pains of purgatory. I might plead 
 that our English word hell is lax enough to answer to 
 inferi, or to all the supposed districts of the infernal 
 regions. But I had rather own that his version is more 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 220. 
 
1755.] HUKD SUPPORTS WARBURTON. 455 
 
 accurate tlian mine, and take this oj)portunity to return 
 him my thanks, and to repay civihty with civility.'* 
 
 There was, however, no renewal of correspondence 
 between Warburton and Jortin. Jortin had said and 
 done enough. He was no Hurd to offer further obse- 
 quiousness, and was henceforth regarded by Warburton 
 as an enemy. 
 
 It will scarcely be believed that Hurd, to gratify War- 
 burton, set himself, Avith perverse subtilty, to excogitate 
 a vindication of Warburton's sense of prmceps, a sense 
 which, with his scholarship, he must have known to be 
 indefensible. Yet such was the case, as appears from 
 Warburton's answer to a letter which Hurd sent to him 
 on the subject, but which is now lost : 
 
 ' Your last letter,' says Warburton, ' sets the poor man's 
 criticism in a very ridiculous light, but certainly not a 
 false one. How doubly ridiculous must it be, if it be 
 groundless, which it certainly is, and which you partly 
 hint at. It stands on this grammatical principle, that if 
 one Latin adjective cannot be used adverbially, no other, 
 of what are called the synonymous adjectives, can; which 
 is false in almost any language. I told you he was 
 ashamed of himself. I made him so by writing a letter to 
 his bookseller, to be communicated to him, to show him 
 a true picture of himself, by setting together our different 
 conduct to one another. I said, this required no answer. 
 However, I had one, which showed how glad he was to 
 get out of the scrape.' He then alludes to what he had 
 remarked about apud inferos poena, and adds, ' I did this 
 to intimate to him that his translations were fuH of mis- 
 takes, and that this was a gross one, for a man to under- 
 take the hfe of Erasmus, while he was ignorant of the 
 nature and apphcation of the bulls of indulgences.' Hurd, 
 however, did not venture on laying his exposure of ' the 
 
 * Life of Erasmus, vol. ii. Append, p. 712. 
 
456 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBURTON'. [Ch. XXIV. 
 
 poor man's criticism ' before the public, but wisely con- 
 fined it to his correspondence with Warburton. Nor did 
 he ever remark, what he must have well known, that, if 
 Jortin's translations were ' full of mistakes,' the mistakes 
 would have been far more numerous if the translations 
 had been made by "Warburton instead of Jortin. 
 
1755.] HUEDS LIFE AND CHARACTER. 457 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV. 
 
 HURD. PARR. TRACTS BY WARBURTON AND A 
 WARBURTONIAN. 
 
 HURD'S life and character HIS RESERVE VISITED BY WAK- 
 
 BURTON HIS LOVE OF EPISCOPAL DISPLAY — HIS STYLE HIS 
 
 CONTEMPTUOUS REMARKS ON OTHER WRITERS, EVEN THE MOST EMI- 
 NENT INSTANCE OF HIS PEDANTRY — DR. PARr'S PUBLICATION OF 
 
 ' TRACTS BY WARBUHTON AND A WARBURTONIAN ' REASONS WHICH 
 
 HE GAVE FOR THE PUBLICATION; OTHER ALLEGED REASONS — HURD's 
 
 REMARK ON PARR'S SERMON NOTICES OF PARR'S PREFACE TO THE 
 
 ' TRACTS ' THOMAS WARTON's PRAISE OF IT BANKRUPTCY OF 
 
 WARBIIRTON'S PUBLISHER HONOURABLE CONDUCT OF WAEBURTON. 
 
 LET US here give a little more attention to Hurd's cha- 
 racter. The son of a farmer and a farmer's wife, 
 plain honest people, he made his way, with some talent 
 and much perseverance, to an honourable station in the 
 world ; and, hke Pope and Warburton, did not forget to 
 honour his parents in the days of his elevation ; a merit 
 m the characters of all the three that cannot be too 
 highly praised. He was the second of three brothers, 
 the eldest of whom became a farmer, and the youngest 
 was in the Birmingham trade. The third was the only 
 one that married ; and, as he died in the prime of hfe, 
 and left a widow, Hurd took care of her, and, when he 
 became master of Hartlebury Castle, received her, though 
 she was a person of no education, as a visitor, and used 
 to lead her up, as Mr. Kilvert records, 'with stately 
 courtesy,' to the head of his table. 
 
 But with his attention to his relatives, Hurd's amia- 
 bihty of character ends. Perhaps, indeed, his care for 
 
458 LIFE OP BISHOP ■WAEBUBTOK. [Cn. XXV. 
 
 his family may be thought to have proceeded from a 
 sense of duty, rather than from affection or feeling ; for 
 certainly, when we look to his literary and ecclesiastical 
 character, we find little to love or Hke. The ' terse, neat, 
 httle, thin man,' as one of his college contemporaries 
 describes him, seems to have been sadly deficient in 
 warmth and cordiality. His temper and disposition will 
 be best estimated from his habits and course of hfe. 
 
 When he was about thirty-seven years old, he suc- 
 ceeded, from his fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cam- 
 bridge, to the rectory of Thurcaston, a small parish about 
 four miles from Leicester, where he resided for several 
 years. Here, as Mr. Cradock, of Gumley Hall, not far 
 from Thurcaston, a member of the same college with 
 Hurd, tells us, he showed himself ' distant and lofty,' and 
 Avas ' not at all admired by those who did not estimate 
 him in a hterary capacity,' and to whom, indeed, he paid 
 little attention, but kept them off as much as possible. 
 In conversation ' he was always so much upon his guard ' 
 that Mr. Cradock did not ' believe that either his friend 
 Lord Mansfield, or even Warburton, ever talked freely or 
 intimately with him.' The only man that Cradock ever 
 met, when he visited Thurcaston, was Mi\ Ball, the curate, 
 who never spoke of his position but with dissatisfaction. 
 ' I do not pretend,' said he to Mr. Cradock, 'to be very 
 learned, but I have never been treated with such distance, 
 or rather disdain.' Cradock advised him to bear a Avhile 
 longer with Hurd's stiffness, who, he was sure, had a good 
 opinion of him ; but his situation grew daily more and 
 more irksome and dreary, and he was preparing to quit 
 it, when Hurd was appointed, by Warburton's influence, 
 to the preachership of Lincoln's Inn, and, by his frequent 
 absences, allowed his curate greater comfort. It is but 
 just, however, to Hurd, to say that, when he became a 
 bishop, he took the earliest opportunity of securing Mr. 
 Ball an incumbency with a comfortable income. 
 
1755.] CHARACTEK AND HABITS OF KURD. 459 
 
 While Hurd was at Thurcaston, he was more than once 
 visited by Warburton. On one occasion, after Warburton 
 had become a bisliop, when he came to stay a week, and 
 had been shut up in dulness for two days, he inquired 
 whether there were no neighbours. ' None that might 
 be perfectly agreeable to your lordship,' was the reply, as 
 Mr. Cradock tells the story. ' What,' says the bishop ; 
 ' are aU the good houses that I see around me here utterly 
 uninhabited ? Let us take our horses, and beat up some of 
 their quarters. I have no doubt but that several will be 
 inclined to be friendly and sociable.' ' I certainly cannot 
 refuse attending on your lordship anywhere.' Accordingly 
 they waited upon five gentlemen, ' whom,' says Mr. Cra- 
 dock, ' I had the pleasure to know ; and they all kindly ac- 
 cepted an invitation to take a family dinner at Thurcaston. 
 When I heard of this at Leicester, I determined to call 
 on Mr. Hurd, who received me with great cordiahty. 
 " Why, sir," said I, " there is nothing talked of but your 
 gaiety ; it has even reached your friend Dr. Bickham at 
 Loughborough." " I don't doubt it," rephed he ; " and 
 if you wUl pass the day with me, I will treat you with 
 the remains of the festival, and give you an account of 
 all particulars. I can assure you I was at first alarmed 
 as to the provision that could be made by my httle 
 household ; but all the company were disposed to be 
 pleased. The bishop was in the highest spirits ; and 
 when the gentlemen took leave of me in the hall, they 
 went so far as to declare that they thought they had 
 never passed a much pleasanter day." " And, as you 
 have been so successful, sir," I ventured to add, " in this 
 first effort, I have no doubt but the experiment will soon 
 be repeated." Mr. Hurd was silent.' He returned to 
 the enjoyment of the quiet which, as he said in one of 
 his letters to Warburton, the ' delightfully bad roads ' 
 secured him. 
 
 But the most remarkable proof of his concentration of 
 
460 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXV. 
 
 his thougtits on himself, one of the greatest instances, 
 indeed, of extravagant conceit and self-complacency ever 
 exhibited, is given in a letter to Mr. Cradock, re- 
 garding an intended visit to Gumley with a friend, 
 specifying what he should like to eat and drink in his 
 entertainer's house. ' My young friend, we shall not reach 
 you till after breakfast, and then you will give us, as 
 usual, only a nice leg of your mutton and some turnips, 
 a roast fowl, and a plain pudding, or something only of 
 that kind, as I do not eat anything but what is plain. 
 I know you will expect me to drink the University of 
 Cambridge in a bumper of your old hock. . . My young 
 friend tells me he has adopted my tea rules from me. I 
 hke none so weU as Twining's hyson at seventeen shihings 
 a pound; by choice I never take any other, and indeed I 
 never find it affect my nerves.' Surely he might have 
 left the furnishing of the table to his host, without ad- 
 monishing him of roast fowl, hock, and the most costly 
 hyson. 
 
 He maintained, when he was raised to the bench, the same 
 kind of reserve, and desire to draw attention to himself. 
 Hartlebury church is not above a quarter of a mile from 
 Hartlebury castle, yet that quarter of a mile he always 
 travelled in his episcopal coach, with his servants in full 
 dress hveries.* When he used to go from Worcester 
 to Bristol Hot Wells, he never moved without a train of 
 twelve servants. This state he maintained, as he avowed, 
 not from love of ostentation, but to support the dignity 
 necessary to his position and character. Had there been 
 less Uldng for stateUness in the man, however, there would 
 have been less of it shown in the bishop. 
 
 But if this personal assumption, this perpetual intima- 
 tion that Hurd was somebody, was manifest in the course 
 of his ordinary hfe, it is equally, if not more, conspicuous 
 
 * KUvert's Life of Hurd, p. 200. 
 
1755.] HURD's LITEEARY CONCEIT. 461 
 
 in his literary productions. He writes as one whose 
 purpose is to be stiffly didactic, little solicitous to please, 
 provided that he may be acknowledged to instruct. His 
 style is such as justly to entitle him to Johnson's desig- 
 nation of ' a word-picker ;' he is precise and particular, 
 studied and elaborate, but producing pages rather free 
 from faults than attractive with beauties. His matter 
 and his manner alike give the notion of a writer con- 
 ceited and self-satisfied. These qualities are still more 
 offensively apparent in the superciHous tone in which he 
 speaks of other writers, as Jortin and Leland, authors at 
 least equal to himself His letter to Dr. Leland, which 
 we shall have occasion to notice hereafter, he wrote ' oTit 
 of pure indignation at a coxcomb,'* a designation which 
 he was so ready to apply to others, that others may have 
 felt inclined to consider how far it was applicable to him- 
 self 'Toup,' he says, 'is certainly well skilled in the 
 Greek tongue,' but ' with all this he is a piece of a cox- 
 comb. How is it that there are so many coxcombs, 
 indeed so many, that one hardly meets with anything 
 else ? 'f This was eminently gratifying to Warburton, to 
 whom it was addressed, and who immediately expresses 
 his concurrence in it : ' What, you say of Toup is un- 
 doubtedly true. Wherever nature has sown her cox- 
 comb-seeds, whether at court or in the country, they will 
 spring up ; and the man in the world, and the man out 
 of the world, who was born with them, will be coxcombs 
 alike, though coxcombs of very different species. How- 
 ever, this maxim is verified in all, which I think I once 
 
 laid down to you in applying it to ; that nature 
 
 never yet put one grain of gratitude or generosity into 
 the composition of a coxcomb. 'J Encouraged thus, it is 
 
 * Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 94. 
 
 I Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 349, 377. 
 
 X Ibid. p. 378. 
 
462 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXV. 
 
 no wonder that Hurd persisted in the use of the term. 
 AUuding to Farmer's ' Essay on the Learning of Shak- 
 speare,' in a letter to Balguy, he says that he ' knows 
 nothing of it but from scraps in the papers ; ' that he 
 knows nothing of Farmer himself, but ' that he is a young 
 man,' but that he remembers the advice ' to shun all 
 authors,' for 'the prince of coxcombs is the scribbhng 
 coxcomb.'* Priestley, as may be expected, is dubbed ' a 
 wretched coxcomb ;' this, he says, he knows, though he 
 has not been curious enough to read him.f Another 
 person, of a different stamp, poor Bishop Shipley, is, 
 though a good man, ' a very coxcomb ! ' J And Dr. Chap- 
 man is ' an insolent coxcomb. '§ 
 
 But how does he speak of other men, of somewhat 
 higher rank in literature than these ? Mr. Kilvert him- 
 self regrets the ' supercihousness ' and ' self-complacency ' 
 with which he aUows himself to speak of many men of 
 eminence. Eobertson's ' Histoiy of Ameiica,' he tells Dr. 
 Balguy, ' may be worth your running over ; there is a deal 
 of prate in it, according to the Scotch way of writing 
 history, and indeed everything else.' He has, therefore, 
 ' very httle kindness for any Scotch writer, except one or 
 two, and for those only or chiefly because they have the 
 feelings of men. " Vanity, parade, false taste, and infidehty, 
 are the portion of the rest.'|| Of Gibbon he says, in a 
 lordly strain, ' The author of the " History of the Dechne," 
 &c., appears to have possessed a considerable share of 
 sense, iiigenuity, and hiowledge of his subject, together with 
 great indiistri/ ;' .j. a noble specimen of the cunning of 
 ' damning with faint praise.' Johnson, who had offended 
 Warburton by his Shakspeare, was of course to be decried, 
 and is pronounced to be ' a confident, overweening, dic- 
 tatorial pedant.'** 
 
 * Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 100. f Ib.p. 106. 
 
 i lb. p. 115. § lb. p. 45. II lb. pp. 132, 133. 
 
 j lb. p. 250. ** lb. p. 254. 
 
1755.] PEDANTRY. 463 
 
 /BairiXijac ora (77-(5;u' e^uc ayopevet, 
 Kai (T(piv dcfi^Ea . . irpoipepei. 
 
 Of pedantry he might have been slow to accuse John- 
 son, being himself much more of a pedant. Towards 
 the close of his hfe, Mainwaring, Lady Margaret's pro- 
 fessor of divinity, paid him a visit, and speaking, during 
 dinner, of some Erench people that he had seen passing 
 through Worcester, he called them ' emigrants.' Hurd 
 laid down his knife and fork, and exclaimed, ' Have I 
 lived to hear the Lady Margaret's professor of Cam- 
 bridge say emigrant ? ' The company were struck with 
 astonishment, and the professor rephed, ' My lord, I am 
 certainly aware that the i in the Latin emigro is long, 
 
 but modern usage ' ' Nay,' interrupted Hurd, ' if 
 
 you come to modern usage, I certainly say no more.' 
 Mainwaring, from regard to Hurd's age and infirmities, 
 said also no more.* This is pedantry indeed. But if we 
 grant that the first syllable in migro is always long, did 
 the. bishop always adhere to Latin quantities in his Eng- 
 hsh, and always say senator, orator, execiitor, and always 
 speak of the indicative, imperative, infinitive moods ? 
 Another anecdote, or another version of the same anec- 
 dote, in Johnstone's Memoirs of Parr,-}- makes the bishop 
 himself call the French fugitives emigrants. 
 
 The ' Dissertation on the Dehcacy of Eriendship,' and 
 the ' Letter to Leland,' with Warburton's early ' Miscel- 
 laneous Translations ' and ' Liquiry into Prodigies and 
 Miracles,' were repubhshed, as is well known, by Dr. 
 Parr, under the title of ' Tracts by Warburton and a 
 Warburtonian, not admitted into the collections of their 
 respective Works.' Parr had, doubtless, some strong 
 motive for this repubhcation. He himself, in his Dedica- 
 tion of the volume to Hurd, and in his Preface, gives 
 certain reasons for the proceeding ; but it is universally 
 
 * Cradock's ' Memoirs,' vol. iv. f P. 324. 
 
464 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXV. 
 
 supposed that he must have had other reasons of a more 
 private and personal nature. 
 
 Let us first see what excuses he offers for reproducing 
 the two tracts of Warbm-ton, which Warburton himself 
 had endeavoured to suppress. ' The author,' he says, 
 'from unnecessary caution, or ill-directed pride, would 
 probably have wished these performances to be forgot- 
 ten. But, among readers of candour and discernment, 
 the character of Bishop Warburton cannot suffer any 
 diminution of its lustre from this repubhcation. They 
 who are curious in collecting books, must certainly be 
 anxious to possess all the writings of the eminent prelate. 
 They who mark with philosophic precision the progress 
 of the human understanding, will look up to Warbm-ton 
 with greater reverence and greater astonishment, when 
 they compare the better productions of his pen with the 
 worse. The faults of the one are excused by the im- 
 perfections of his earlier education ; but the excellencies 
 of the other must be ascribed only to the unwearied 
 activity, the unshackled boldness, the uncommon and 
 almost unjjaralleled vigour of his native gemus.' ' If the 
 bishop,' he adds in a note, ' imposed any prohibition' on 
 the repul)lication of those tracts, ' the right reverend editor 
 has acted an honourable part in holding them back. 
 But no obligation of this sort lies upon those to whom 
 the bishop's commands were not communicated.' 
 
 These reasons for bringing again to Hght such forgotten 
 compositions, which their author himself wished to re- 
 main in oblivion, are not very cogent ; for the gratifi- 
 cation to ' readers of candour and discernment,' or the 
 advantage to the public in general, is surely quite insuf- 
 ficient to justify the Hberty taken. The motives for the 
 republication of the two 'Tracts by a Warburtonian,' 
 the ' Dehcacy of Friendship,' and the ' Letter to Leland,' 
 are given as follows in the Dedication to Hurd : 
 
 After observing that the Tracts have become scarce. 
 
1755.] LELAND AND JORTTN. 465 
 
 Parr says, ' That scarcity has been shrewdly, or, if you 
 please, my lord, perversely imputed, not so much to the 
 avidity of the purchasers as to the management of the 
 writer. But whatever may have been the cause, the fact 
 is notorious, and therefore, in bringing tliem back to a 
 tribunal, from wWch they are supposed to shrink, I shall 
 endeavour to rescue them from the obhvion which some- 
 times overtakes the best publications, even at the hazard 
 of exposing them to that infamy which is never inflicted 
 but on the worst.* 
 
 'The biographer of Philip -of Macedon, and the author 
 of " Eemarks upon Ecclesiastical History," had a right to 
 expect, from their clerical opponent, a milder and more 
 respectful treatment.f To a compensation of some kind 
 or other they are certainly entitled ; and your lordship, I 
 trust, will concur with me in thinking that the republi- 
 cation of the books written against them will more 
 effectually answer this honourable and necessary purpose 
 than a direct argumentative defence, which, as the subjects 
 are not exhausted in Jortin's note on Leland's pamphlet, 
 I once intended to prepare for the press. It will show 
 by the brightest proofs that Leland and Jortin scarcely 
 need any elaborate justification ; and that their antagonist, 
 however plausible in his objections, or smart in his raillery, 
 cannot, without the greatest difficulty, be justified by him- 
 self or his admirers.' J 
 
 To these reasons for the republication, other remarks in 
 its justification are added in a Preface : 
 
 'By the writer of these pamphlets, the characters of 
 two very learned and worthy men were attacked with 
 most unprovoked and imprecedented virulence. The 
 attempt to stifle them is, however, a very obscure and 
 equivocal mark of repentance in the offender. PubHc 
 
 * Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 145. 
 I lb. p. 162. t lb. p. 1.65. 
 
 H H 
 
466 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Ch. XX7. 
 
 and deliberate was the insult which he offered to the 
 feelings of those whom he assailed, and therefore no com- 
 pensation ought to be accepted which falls short of a 
 direct and explicit retractation.* 
 
 ' Jortin and Leland now repose in the sanctuary of the 
 grave, and are placed beyond the reach of human praise 
 and human censure. Be it so. But there was a time 
 when enemies, such as the unfettered opinions of one, 
 and the shining talents of the other, were sure to pro- 
 voke, found a momentary gratification even from such 
 charges as the letter-writer" ventured to allege. There 
 was a time when those charges might have clogged their 
 professional interests, and certainly did disturb the traa- 
 quillity of their minds. Yet, while they were living, no 
 balm was poured into theu' wounded spirits by the hand 
 that pierced them ; and if their characters, after death, 
 remain unimpaired by the rude shocks of controversy, 
 and the secret mines of slander, their triumph is to be 
 ascribed partly to their own strength, and partly to the 
 conscious weakness of their antagonist, rather than to his 
 love of justice or his love of peace. That antagonist, 
 too, is stiU alive, and still finds his admirers among those, 
 who themselves panting after greatness, are careful to 
 utter only smooth things concerning the faults of the 
 great. But his silence has not yet been represented even 
 by his friends as the effect of contrition. His pen has 
 not been employed in any subsequent publication to 
 commend two writers against whom he had formerly 
 brandished such censures as, according to his own estima- 
 tion and his own wishes, were " aculeate and proper." His 
 example — and this is the Avorst of all — his example, I say, 
 is at hand to encourage any future adventurer, who may 
 first be disposed to attack the best books and the best 
 men, and afterwards, when the real merits of the dispute, 
 
 * Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 175. 
 
1735.] ON PARR'S HOSTILITY TO HUED. 467 
 
 or the real character of his opponents, are known, may- 
 contrive to let his mischievous cavils quietly sink into 
 obhvion, to skulk, as softly as he can, from detection and 
 disgrace ; nay, to set up serious pretensions to candour 
 as a writer, to decency as an ecclesiastic, and to meeliness 
 as a Christian. 
 
 ' This republication has not the smallest tendency to 
 " sow strife " among scholars. But it may prevent, and 
 certainly it is intended to prevent them, from scattering 
 the seeds of discord with wanton cruelty. It may deter, 
 and certainly it is intended to deter them, from indulging 
 any mean expectation that a calumniator can derive 
 security from the very failure of his calumnies, or that 
 what he has repeatedly and deliberately done in secret 
 will not, sooner or later, be publi-hed openly. It may 
 lessen, and certainly it is intended to lessen, tlie number 
 of those who speak too well of a man by whom War- 
 burton was most extravagantly flattered, Leland most 
 petulantly insulted, and Jortin most inhumanly vilified.' * 
 
 For such strong vituperation of Hurd, we repeat, as 
 for Johnson's vilification of excisemen, it has always been 
 considered that there was some sharp personal stimu- 
 lant in the breast of Parr. What it was, has been 
 matter of frequent conjecture. He himself, it is believed, 
 never told. ' My reasons,' he says, in a letter to Henry 
 Homer, ' are to be found in Hurd's pamphlets, and I 
 shall give no other. Personal reasons are out of the 
 question.' f Perhaps there may have been more incen- 
 tives than one. Three or four occurrences are related, 
 from each of which may have arisen in Parr dislike or 
 ill feehng towards Hurd. 
 
 One account is, that when Parr went to Hartlebury 
 Castle for institution to the benefice of Hatton, which is 
 
 * Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 177. 
 f Johnstone's Life of Parr, p.. 303. 
 
 H II 2 
 
468 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON". [Ch. XXV. 
 
 in the diocese of Worcester, Hurd received him coldly, 
 and did not even ask him to stay to lunch.* This want 
 of attention, when we consider the reserve of Kurd's 
 character, appears not at all incredible ; and Mr. Kilvert 
 allows its probability. But Mr. EHvert attempts, at the 
 same time, to apologise for Kurd's conduct, by observing 
 that, though it may well seem inexcusable to have re- 
 ceived a man of Parr's standing, a member of his own 
 university and even college, with scant entertainment and 
 courtesy, yet that, as party feelings were then running 
 high, and Parr had placed himself in opposition to the 
 court, Kurd, who had received his appointments from the 
 sovereign, might have thought it reasonable to signify his 
 antagonism to Parr's pohtical views by affording him no 
 very warm reception. 
 
 Another story is, that when Parr, on the same occasion, 
 laid his papers before Kurd, Hurd objected to one of the 
 signatures. Parr, glowing with rage, took up the paper, 
 and exclaimed, ' That gentleman's name is as respectable 
 as your own. Dr. Kurd.' Kow they afterwards settled 
 the matter, the story does not tell. 
 
 By Dr. Watkins, in his ' Life of the Duke of York,' f 
 Parr's enmity to Hurd is attributed to his disappointment, 
 through Kurd's influence, of obtaining the post of sub- 
 preceptor to the Princes, which, when Parr applied for 
 it, was given to Dr. Arnald. To some tiling of this kind 
 Parr unmistakably alludes in his Dedication to Hurd. 
 Contrasting Warburton's character with that of Kurd, he 
 says, ' He, my lord, threw a cloud over no man's brighter 
 prospects of prosperity or honour by dark and portentous 
 whispers in the ears of the powerful ; he blasted no man's 
 good name by shedding over it the cold and deadly 
 mildews of insinuation.' J 
 
 * Johnstone's Life of Parr, p. 307 ; Quart. Rev. vol. xxxix. p. 276; 
 Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 173. 
 
 f P. 39. I Tracts by Warb. and a Warbui-tonian, p. 156. 
 
1755.] PAER'S LONG VEKNACULAB SEBMON. 469 
 
 Another cause of offence, wliich may indeed have been 
 one of the greatest, is said to have been Hurd's well- 
 known sneer at Parr's grand sermon on Education. Being 
 asked by somebody how he liked it, Hurd rephed he did 
 not much Uke ' Dr. Parr's long vernacular sermon.' 
 
 He prints a sermon ; Hiird, witli judging eye, 
 Beads, and rejects with critic dignity.* 
 
 That there was some foundation for this story is plain 
 from a passage in the Dedication : ' Knowing, my lord, the 
 rooted antipathy which you bear to long epistolary intro- 
 ductions in classical writers, to long vernacular sermons 
 from Dr. Parr, and to long Latin annotations from Philip 
 D'Orville, I will take care, in the language of the War- 
 burtonian school, not to stray beyond the limits of a 
 just and legitimate Dedication.' f ' Parr,' observes Dis- 
 raeli, 'has furnished posterity with a specimen of the 
 force of his own vernacular style, giving a lesson to the 
 wary bishop, who had scarcely wanted one all his hfe, of 
 the dangers of an unlucky epithet.' Hurd seems to have 
 had some special reason for fixing on the word vernacular, 
 but I know not what it was. I can discover none in the 
 sermon. 
 
 Some weight may also be due to the fact that Parr was 
 patronised by Lowth, to whom Warburton and his fol- 
 lowers were outrageously hostile. Whatever was the true 
 cause, or whatever were the concurring causes, of Parr's 
 displeasure, he certainly apphed himself to the display of 
 it with a hearty good will. We have paid almost atten- 
 tion enough, perhaps, to the Doctor's Preface and Dedi- 
 cation, but another specimen or two of their spirit may 
 possibly b» allowable. The pieces, like most of Parr's 
 writings, consist of imperfectly connected remarks, and 
 
 * Pursuits of Literature, Dial. iii. ver. 187 ; Disraeli's Quarrels of 
 Authors, ' Quarrels from Personal Motives.' Barker's Parriana, 
 vol. ii. p. 333. t Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 170. 
 
470 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XXV. 
 
 paragraphs not naturally following each other, and con- 
 tam a strange mixture of vehement and exaggerated 
 praise and censure. 
 
 The followmg irony is very strong and significant : 
 
 ' I am not apprehensive of any contradiction, even from 
 your lordship, v?hen I venture to pronounce these Tracts 
 to have been produced by the same understanding, to be 
 marked by the same spirit, and to have been directed to 
 the same end. That understanding, doubtless, was acute ; 
 that spirit professes, at least, to be candid ; and that end, 
 probably, according to yaur lordship's estimation, was in 
 the highest degree honourable. It was to dehver two 
 illustrious, but whimsical, hypotheses, from the imperti- 
 nent and tyrannical intrusions of common sense. It was 
 to unmask the hypocrisy, and to subdue the insolence, 
 of two impotent sciolists, one of whom had presumed to 
 commend your patron without adulation, and the other 
 to confute him without asperity. It was to convince an 
 undiscerning and incredulous pubhc that Warburton was 
 an infallible reasoner, Leland a superficial trifler, and 
 Jortin a most dastardly, a most insidious, and a most ma- 
 hgnant calumniator.' * 
 
 One of the best paragraphs is that wliich presents a 
 laboured comparison of Warburton and Hurd as writers : 
 
 ' He blundered against grammar, and you repined against 
 idiom. He, from defect of taste, contaminated Enghsh 
 by Galhcism, and you, from excess of aSectation, some- 
 times disgraced what would have risen to ornamental 
 and dignified writing by a profuse mixture of vulgar or 
 antiquated phraseology. He soared into sublimity without 
 effort, and you, by effort, sunk into a kind of famiharity 
 which, without leading to perspicuity, borders ^pon mean- 
 ness. He was great by the energies of nature, and you 
 were little by the misapplication of art. He, to show his 
 
 * Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 147. 
 
1755.] SPECIMENS OF PARR's INVECTIVES. 471 
 
 strength, piled up huge and rugged masses of learning, 
 and you, to show your skill, split and shivered them into 
 what your brother critic calls -ij-t^y^aTa xa.) ocpaKvixara.* 
 He sometimes reached the force of Longinus, but without 
 his elegance, and you exhibited the intricacies of Aristotle, 
 but without his exactness, f 
 
 ' To grapple with the unwieldy was among the frolics 
 of Warburton, whilst your lordship toiled in chasing 
 the subtle. He often darkened the subject, and you per- 
 plexed it. He, by the boldness and magnitude of his 
 conceptions, overwhelmed our minds with astonishment, 
 and you, by the singularity and nicety of your quibbles, 
 benumbed them with surprise. In him, we find our in- 
 tellectual powers expanded and mvigorated by the fidl 
 and vivid representation which he sometimes holds up, 
 both of common and uncommon objects, whUe you, my 
 lord, contrive to cramp and to cripple them by all the 
 tedious formahties of minute and scrupulous analysis. He 
 scorned every appearance of soothing the reader into at- 
 tention, and you failed in almost every attempt to decoy 
 him into conviction. He instructed, even where he did 
 not persuade, and you, by your petulant and con- 
 temptuous gibes, disgusted every man of sense, whom 
 you might otherwise have amused by your curious and 
 showy conceits. ' J 
 
 Let us conclude with one of the severest passages : 
 ' Your critical writings, my lord, have by few scholars 
 been more frequently read, or more carefully studied, 
 than bymyself. I have " paced it," § like Homer's mules, 
 " with many a weary step," through the heights and the 
 depths, the obhquities and the asperities, the archaisms 
 and the modernisms, the strained analogies and the crooked 
 
 * Longin. sect. 10. 
 
 f Tracts by Wayb. and a Warburtonian, p. 149. J lb. p. 152, 
 
 § An expression from the Letter to Leland. 
 
472 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTO^T. [Ch. XXV. 
 
 anomalies, the rhetorical flourishes and the logical quaint- 
 nesses, the colloquial familiarities and the oracular so- 
 lemnities, of your most elaborate and peerless style. To 
 snatch so many varied graces was not beyond the reach 
 of your lordship's art. But I had learned, from the highest 
 authority, that " the more generally the best models are 
 understood, the greater danger there is of running into 
 that worst of Hterary faults, affectation."* This, my lord, 
 is one of the reasons which deterred me from every pre- 
 sumptuous attempt to imitate your diction ; another was, 
 the conscious disparity of my intellectual powers ; and a 
 third, not less efficacious than the rest, I shall, with the 
 most painful reluctance, now reveal. Let my sincerity 
 atone for my insensibility, when I confess to you that, 
 often as I have read, and much as I may admire your 
 learned researches, I seldom felt myself glow with that 
 enthusiastic fondness for my original, which is indispens- 
 ably necessary to successful imitation. 'f 
 
 Tom Warton was so delighted with these antitheses that 
 he told Dr. Eouth, if he were desired to point out some 
 of the finest sentences in English prose, he would quote 
 Parr's Preface and Dedication of the Warburtonian 
 Tracts.^ And, indeed, with all their faults, their ver- 
 bosity and ampuUce, their stiffness of phrase and strain 
 after effect, it must be acknowledged that they are, on 
 the whole, among the most nervous and energetic, and 
 the most happily polished, of Parr's compositions. 
 
 Mr. Ealvert blames Parr for attacking Hurd with such 
 virulence when he was sixty-nine years old, in •delicate 
 health, and seekmg retirement ; and intimates that, had 
 Hurd been nearer the meridian of life, Parr would have 
 added another to the Hst of sufferers for meddling with 
 
 * Kurd's Comm. on Hor. A. P. ver. 404. 
 
 ■f Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 166. 
 
 j Johnstone's Life of Parr, p. 325, 
 
1755.] PAMPHLET OP DR. LUCAS. 473 
 
 Strife not belonging to them. But the truth is, that Hurd 
 was not so far sunk in imbecihty as to be unable to 
 answer ; for he had strength enough, five years afterwards, 
 to give the world his ' Account of the Life of Warburton,' 
 though much of this may indeed have been written pre- 
 viously. That he had any share, as Dr. Johnstone supposed, 
 in a reply to Parr, which appeared before the close of the 
 year in which the ' Tracts ' were pubhshed, entitled ' A 
 Letter to the Eev. Dr. Parr, occasioned by his Eepublica- 
 tion of the Tracts of Warburton,' &c., is not, it appears, 
 true, for he told Dr. Balguy that he had ' no degree of 
 guidance ah extra to direct his judgment' as to the author- 
 ship of it, and observed that it was ' written with great 
 spirit and vivacity, and with such a turn of humour, as 
 well as glow of friendship, that only one person could 
 write it ; ' which person he conceived, as Mr. Kilvert ob- 
 serves, to have been Mason the poet. But it is now known 
 to have been written by Dr. Lucas, rector of Eipple, near 
 Tewkesbury, who had married one of Kurd's nieces.* 
 
 Before we conclude the record of the year 1755, we 
 ought to notice that, during the course of it, Paul Knap- 
 ton the publisher, whom Pope had recommended to 
 Warburton, failed. He was generally considered to be 
 the richest bookseller in London ; his debts were twenty 
 thousand pounds, and his stock was valued at thirty thou- 
 sand. Warburton, to whom he owed a large sum, but 
 who thought him an honest man, was his principal cre- 
 ditor, and accordingly had the influence, at a meeting of 
 the creditors, to secure him favourable terms, inducing 
 them to put his afiairs, tiU they could be settled, into the 
 hands of trustees, and to allow him, in the meantime, a 
 handsome maintenance. Warburton said that his great 
 fault was extreme indolence, and that he was to be pitied 
 by everyone in his fall. 
 
 * Johnstone's Life of Parr, p. 313 ; Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 171 ; 
 Barker's Parriana, vol. ii. p. 337. 
 
474 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXV. 
 
 ' 1 was never more satisfied,' he writes to Hurd, ' in any 
 action of my life, than in my service of Mr. Knapton on 
 this occasion, and the preventing (which I hope I have 
 done) his being torn in pieces. Yet you must not be sur- 
 prised — I am sure I should not — if you hear (so great is 
 the world's love of truth and of me) that my severity to 
 him destroyed his credit, and would have pushed him to 
 extremity. I will assure you you have heard many things 
 of me full as true ; which, though at present apocry^^hal, 
 may, by my never contradicting them, in time become 
 Holy Writ, as the poet says.' * 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 196. 
 
1756.] BIRTH OF A SOJST. 475 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 HUME. DR. JOHJS! TAYLOR. 
 
 WARBUKTON's son WARBURTON MADE DEAN OF BRISTOL ANEC- 
 DOTE OF HIS ' READING IN ' ' REMARKS ON HUMe's NATURAL HIS- 
 TORY OF religion' by WARBURTON AND KURD HUME's CHARACTER 
 
 OF \hE ' REMARKS ' WAKBURTOn'S GROSSNESS OF STYLE UNFAIR- 
 NESS OF HIS REASONING HIS VISIT TO HUBD'S MOTHER — DEDICA- 
 TION OF THE SECOND PART OF ' THE l^IVINE LEGATION ' TO LORD 
 
 MANSFIELD CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE REV. JOSEPH JANE 
 
 ATTACK ON DR. TAYLOR CAUSES OF IT WARBURTONIAN PHRASE- 
 OLOGY PASSAGES FROM WARBURTON's LETTERS. 
 
 THE only event of any importance in Warburton's life, 
 during tlie year 1756, was the birth of a son, the 
 only child he ever had, to whom he gave Mr. AUen's 
 Christian name of Ealph. As the boy grew up, the father 
 became extremely fond of him. Being asked to what 
 profession he should devote him, he said he would deter- 
 mine according to his abihty. If he proved himself a lad 
 of good parts, he should make him a lawyer ; if but me- 
 diocre, he should breed him a physician ; but that if he 
 turned out a very dull fellow, he should put him into the 
 Church.* The boy gave such proofs of talent that he was 
 destined for the law, but died in his nineteenth year. 
 
 He also printed a sermon, which he preached at Lin- 
 coln's Inn on a fast day, on ' Natural and Civil Events,' 
 being ' the Instruments of God's Moral Government,' but 
 which requires no particular notice. 
 
 In 1757, by the influence of Ahela with Pitt, whom he 
 
 * Prior's Life of Malone, p. 445. 
 
476 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 had assisted to become Member of Parliament for Bath, and 
 that of Pitt with the Duke of Newcastle, he was promoted 
 to the Deanery of Bristol, an elevation of which he af- 
 fected to speak with the same indifference as he had pre- 
 viously spoken of his appointment to a prebend. As far 
 back as 1753 the Duke of Newcastle had signified to Allen 
 that he thought of asking the King for the Deanery of 
 Bristol for Warbiu-ton, supposing it would be acceptable 
 to both on account of its nearness to Prior Park. But ' if 
 it comes,' said Warburton, ' as Palstaff says of honour, it 
 comes imlooked for, and there 's an end.' * 
 
 'Last Friday,' he writes to Hurd from Weymouth, 
 September 19, 1757,f 'I came to this place with a pur- 
 pose to stay a week. The next day an express came to 
 me from Bath, acquainting me with the death of the Dean 
 of Bristol. You know I had a kind of promise of it some 
 time ago from the Duke of Newcastle. What alterations 
 some late transactions, or rather what revolutions they 
 have made, in his Grace's promissory system, I can't teU. 
 But I am very indifferent of obligations fi-om that quarter ; 
 so I stay here with much tranquillity and unconcern, 
 instead of posting to liis levee.' But nine days afterwards 
 he had the pleasure of hearing that Pitt had procured his 
 nomination to the Deanery. 
 
 When he went to read himself in, as it is called, at 
 Bristol, he fixed upon a saint's day for the ceremony ; a 
 day on which the rubric orders the Athanasian creed to 
 be read. But this creed, perhaps from inadvertence, he 
 omitted. At this omission some of the leading members 
 of the congregation expressed discontent, and would not 
 be satisfied unless he should go through the ceremony 
 again, including the Athanasian creed, on the following 
 Sunday. With this condition he complied. But, in 
 consequence of this irregularity, it has been questioned 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 154. f lb. p. 255. 
 
1757.] HUMES 'NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION.' 477 
 
 whether he ever was, in legal strictness, Dean of Bristol. 
 He omitted the creed when it was appointed to be read, 
 and read it at a time when it was not appointed, com- 
 plying with the directions of the rubric in neither of the 
 services. However, the Bristolians were satisfied, and 
 no one took advantage of the breach of rule to annoy 
 Warburton.* 
 
 In the same year was pubhshed ' Eemarks on Hume's 
 "Natural History of Eeligion,"' a joint production of 
 Hurd and Warburton, of the rise and progress of which 
 we learn the following particulars from Hurd : 
 
 'In 1749,' says Hiu'd, 'Hume gave the pubhc a hash 
 of his stale notions, served up in the taking form and 
 name of " Essays." These Essays came under Warbur- 
 ton's notice about the time that he was sending " Julian " 
 to the press ; and he soon after wrote to a friend at Cam- 
 bridge, saying, " I am tempted to have a stroke at Hume 
 in parting. He is the author of a little book called " Phi- 
 losophical Essays," in one part of which he argues against 
 the being of a God, and in another (very needlessly you 
 will say) against the possibility of miracles. He has 
 crowned the Hberty of the press. And yet he has a very 
 considerable post under the government. I have a great 
 mind to do justice on his arguments against miracles, 
 which I think might be done in a few words. But does 
 he deserve this notice ? Is he known amongst you ? Pray 
 answer me these questions ; for if his own weight keeps 
 him down, I should be sorry to contribute to his advance- 
 ment to any place but the pillory, 'f 
 
 What reply was returned to this application is not 
 known ; but Warburton left Hume at that time unmo- 
 lested. Early in 1757, however, came forth his ' Natural 
 History of Eeligion,' on which Warburton, as he read it, 
 
 * MSS. of the Rev. J. Jones, cited in Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. 
 p. 609. 
 
 f Kurd's Life of Warburton, p. 66. 
 
478 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 made various remarks in the margin, or, wlien the margin 
 was too narrow, on scraps of paper which he stuck 
 between the leaves. In this condition the book was 
 shown to Hurd, who chanced, at the time, to meet War- 
 burton in London. Hurd, commending the remarks, 
 advised Warburton to prepare them for pubUcation, a 
 suggestion which he at first affected to slight, but after- 
 wards returned to the subject in a letter :* 
 
 ' As to Hume, I had laid it aside ever since you were 
 here. I will now, however, finish my skeleton. It will 
 be hardly that. If then you think anything can be made 
 of it, and wiU give yourself the trouble, we may perhaps 
 between us do a httle good, which I dare say we shall 
 both think wiU be worth a httle pains. If I have any 
 force in the first rude beating out the mass, you are 
 best able to give it the elegance of form and splendour 
 of polish. This wiU answer my purpose, to labour to- 
 gether in a joint work to do a httle good. I will tell you 
 fairly, it is no more the thing it should be, than the 
 Dantzic iron at the forge is the gilt and painted ware at 
 Birmingham. It wiU make no more than a pamphlet ; 
 but you shall take your own time, and make it your 
 summer's amusement, if you wiU. I propose it bear some- 
 thing like this title : " Eemarks on Mr. Hume's late Essay 
 called ' The Natural History of Rehgion,' by a Gentleman 
 of C'ambridge, in a Letter to the Rev. Dr. Warburton." 
 I propose the address should be with the dryness and 
 reserve of a stranger, who likes the method of the 
 Letters on Bohngbroke's Philosophy, and follows it here 
 against the same sort of writer, inculcating the same im- 
 piety, Naturalism, and employing the same kind of argu- 
 ments. The address will remove it from me ; the author, 
 a gentleman of Cambridge, from you ; and the secrecy of 
 printing from us both.' 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 240. 
 
1757.] ATTACK ON HUME. 479 
 
 Seeing Warburton in this disposition about tlie remarks, 
 Hurd transcribed and put them in order, and, adding the 
 Address and a short Conclusion, sent them to the press. 
 Warburton, when he saw the pamphlet, told Hurd that 
 he should have worked up the portions more into a 
 whole, and expressed his fears that the real author would 
 be suspected. But his apprehensions proved groundless, 
 for the disguise, though very shght, served to keep War- 
 burton's share in the performance concealed. Hume tried 
 to discover the writer, and concluded that it was Hurd ; 
 for, happening to employ the same bookseller as Hurd, he 
 learned from him, as Hurd supposes, from whom the 
 manuscript had come. ' He was much hurt,' says Hurd,* 
 'and no wonder, by so lively an attack upon him, and 
 could not help confessing it in what he calls his " Own 
 Life ; " hi which he has thought fit to honour me Avith 
 greater marks of his resentment than any other of the 
 writers against him ; nay, the spiteful man goes so far as 
 to upbraid me with being a follower (indeed a closer, in 
 this instance, than he apprehended) of the Warburtonian 
 school.' 
 
 Hurd reprinted the ' Eemarks ' in his edition of War- 
 burton's Works, but without the ' Address.' The passage 
 in which Hume, 'the spiteful man,' complains of the 
 attack on his book, is this : ' Dr. Hurd wrote a pamphlet 
 against it, with all the ilhberal petulance, arrogance, and 
 scurrility, which distinguish the Warburtonian school.' 
 
 Hume had, indeed, just cause for thus characterising 
 the pamphlet. It may seem strange that Warburton, 
 when he might have adopted a calm gentlemanly tone 
 towards his adversaries, or those whom he chose to regard 
 as adversaries, should have assailed them all alike, the 
 higher and the lower, the more and the less educated, 
 the liberal philosopher and the narrow-minded bigot, 
 
 * Life of Warburton, p. 68. 
 
480 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 with the coarsest and most unreasonable railing and 
 abuse. He acts the part of a brutal clown making furious 
 assaults on a gentleman, standing sword in hand, with a 
 bludgeon ; or he may be hkened, to use a comparison of 
 his own, to a scavenger, scattering that ' theological dirt,' 
 as Bishop Watson calls it, which he himself was unwilhng 
 to hurl even on Tom Paine. It may seem strange that 
 Hurd, who was to give the pamphlet against Hume 
 ' elegance of form and splendour of pohsh,' should have 
 left it full of the most offensive and rude phraseology 
 that can well be conceived, of which a very little trouble 
 wovdd have cleared it. It may appear surprising that 
 Hume should not have been induced, by the character of 
 the style, to attribute it to the general-in-chief rather 
 than the lieutenant ; for it is certainly very different in 
 diction from any of Kurd's pubhshed compositions. 
 
 To Hume's philosophy we need pay no more attention 
 than we paid to BoHngbroke's, the one being as well 
 known as the other ; but we may, perhaps, not unreason- 
 ably bestow a httle attention on the phraseology in which 
 Warburton set himself to batter it. To give a notion of 
 the tone of affected superiority pervading the ' Eemarks,' 
 it would be requisite to transcribe whole pages ; but some 
 conception of it may be formed from the selection of a 
 few phrases and terms : ' Some time or other he may 
 come to his senses ; a few animadversions on the Essay 
 before us may help him forwards.'* ' Oiu- philosopher 
 and his gang, with their pedlar's ware.'f ' Eumiing his 
 usual philosophic courses from knavery to nonsense.' 'An 
 essay devoid of aU manly sense, and even plausibility of 
 reasoning. 'J 'This great philosophic detection of one 
 of the prime master-wheels of superstition labours with 
 immovable nonsense.' § ' His vanity, perverseness, and 
 
 * Warburton's "Works, 8vo. vol. xii. p. 341. f lb. p. 344. 
 
 J lb. p. 252. § lb. p. 353. 
 
1757.] UNFAIRNESS TO HUME. 481 
 
 love of paradox, make him always think at large, and 
 write at random.'* 'I shall let this passage go miex- 
 amined, notwithstanding it looks so asquint both to the 
 right and left.'f ' This wretched man. 'J ' His last 
 effort is to defend his dogmatical nonsense with scepticism 
 still more nonsensical. '§ 
 
 Enough of these verbal impugnations. But I cannot 
 dismiss these ' Eemarks ' without noticing one specimen 
 of fallacious reasoning, in which Warburton was as ready 
 to indulge in dealing with Hume as with Bolingbroke. 
 Hume says : 
 
 ' After the commission of crimes, there arise remorses 
 and secret horrors, which give no rest to the mind, but 
 make it have recourse to rehgious rites and ceremonies, 
 as expiations of its offences. Whatever weakens or disor- 
 ders the internal frame, promotes the interests of super- 
 stition ; and nothing is more destructive to them than 
 a manly steady virtue, which either preserves us from 
 disastrous melancholy accidents, or teaches us to bear 
 them.' 
 
 Upon this passage Warburton thus remarks : 
 
 ' " Nothing" says our philosopher, " is more destructive 
 to the interests of superstition than a manly steady virtue" 
 which, in plainer English, is : " None will be so free from 
 superstition as the most hardened rogue." For the fact 
 from which he deduces this proposition is this, that after 
 the commission of crimes, there arise remorses and secret 
 horrors, which rrmke men have recourse to expiatory rites. 
 These remorses, hy weakening and disordering the internal 
 frame, promote superstition. Now, the contrary state of 
 this internal frame can be no other than such as enables 
 us to bear the retrospect of our rogueries without remorse 
 and horror ; this he calls a manly steady virtue.' \\ 
 
 * Warburton's "Works, 8vo. vol. xii. p. 363. 
 t lb. p. 365. X lb. p. 370. § lb. p. 376. || lb. p. 374. 
 
 I I 
 
482 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOK". [Cn. XXVI. 
 
 How unfairly Hume's words are treated, even a child 
 may see. 
 
 Warburton flattered himself that he had crushed Hume 
 into insignificance. But his exultation reminds us of Eey- 
 nolds's portrait of Beattie, who, as the author of the ' Essay 
 on Truth,' and for the gratification of George IH., is re- 
 presented by Sir Joshua as tramphng on certain demons 
 of infidehty, with faces greatly resembhng those of Hume, 
 Gibbon, and Voltaire. But these authors have not been 
 affected by the aggressions of Beattie ; they are still 
 read and regarded ; while Beattie, though deservedly ho- 
 noured as a poet, is, as an antagonist of philosophers, 
 utterly forgotten. Warburton affected contempt of Hume, 
 but how much higher a place in hterature does Hume 
 now hold than Warburton ! 
 
 A more pleasing subject of contemplation presents 
 itself in the account of a joiu^ney made by Warburton to 
 Durham, in the course of which he visited some of his 
 relatives, and saw Hurd's mother : 
 
 ' I had the pleasure,' he writes to Hiurd from Durham, 
 ' of finding a sister and a niece well at Broughton, with 
 whom I spent a few days with much satisfaction ; for you 
 must know I have a numerous family, perhaps the more 
 endeared to me by their sole dependence on me. It 
 pleased Providence that two of my sisters should marry 
 unhappily, and that a third, on the point of venturing, 
 should escape the hazard, and so engage my care only for 
 herself I reckon this a lucky year ; for I have married 
 a niece to a reputable grocer at York, and have got a 
 commission for a nephew in the regiment of artillery ; 
 and this fierce man of war hes at present encamped, 
 much at my expense, at Amersham, near High Wycombe, 
 as he notifies to me, with two field-pieces under his com- 
 mand.'* ' I came through Birmingham,' he says in another 
 letter ' and then I met with a person whose sight and 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 247. 
 
1757.] HUED'S MOTHEE. 483 
 
 good health gave me great pleasure.'* Hurd, from his 
 manner of expressing himself, surmised that he meant 
 his mother, and wrote to inquire. ' It was indeed Mrs. 
 Hurd,' he rephed, ' that I was so happy to see at Bir- 
 mingham. You must give me leave to be a sharer with 
 you in your tenderness to her. But it was by great 
 accident I had this pleasure, and not till after two or three 
 blundering messages of my servant. For as soon as I came 
 into town I sent to your brother ; but there being two of 
 the name, I wanted to be certain I was right, so sent 
 again and again. All this time I had not the least con- 
 ception that Mrs. Hurd lived in Birmingham. But she 
 having the goodness to speak to my man, as soon as she 
 knew from whom he came, I got, at last, to the knoAv- 
 ledge of her being with her son ; and as soon as I did, 
 I went to wait on her. Every word she spoke showed 
 the goodness of her heart ; and her sentiments would 
 have become a duchess, or, to speak more properly, a 
 saint. Mentioning you in the manner I thought fit, she 
 said that if you did your duty, and was of honour to 
 your profession, it was the greatest pleasure she could 
 possibly have in hearing of you. In short, all her notions 
 were generous, affectionate, and pious ; and you are 
 worthy of one another. 'f 
 
 To this Hurd made a very sensible and appropriate 
 acknowledgment, for he thought and felt rightly when 
 his relatives were concerned : 
 
 ' I write one line to teU you how tenderly affected I 
 am by your goodness to my poor mother. The honour 
 of such a visit was best acknowledged by the language 
 of the heart. And this, I am persuaded, would not be 
 wanting, however she might be unable to express her 
 sense of it in any other manner. Nothing, I know, can 
 exceed her gratitude for your constant favours towards 
 me. And if they make me happy on other accounts, 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 250. f lb. p. 250. 
 
 I I 2 
 
484 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBURTON. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 think how they rejoice me when I see them contribute, 
 as they do, to make her happy who is so dear to me. 
 
 ' I must have more than the bias of fihal piety in my 
 mind to be mistaken in tliinking she is all you so kindly 
 conceive of her. My poor, father was just such another : 
 the same simphcity of mind and goodness of heart, with 
 an understanding that dignified both. In a word, my 
 dear Sir (for though I spoke of writing but one hne, I 
 could fill my paper on this subject), it has pleased Heaven 
 to bestow upon me two of its choicest blessings, the best 
 of parents and the best of friends. While I live, I must 
 retain the warmest sense of such mercies, and, of course, 
 be more than I can express,' &c.* 
 
 In 1758, Warburton published a third edition of the 
 second part, that is, of the fourth, fifth, and sixth books, 
 of ' The Divine Legation,' with a dedication to the Earl 
 of Mansfield. As Hurd thought that this dedication 
 Avould be read by posterity with attention, and be reck- 
 oned among the chief honours of the noble person to 
 whom it is addressed,f we may well see of what it con- 
 sists. Warbm'ton enlarges in it, as he was fond of doing, 
 on his writings and their objects. He first speaks of the 
 purpose of the ' Alliance between Church and State.' He 
 had lived, he says, to see the time when that had come to 
 pass which lawgivers always seemed to dread, as a certain 
 prognostic of public ruin, the loss of the hold of rehgion 
 on the minds of the people ; a state of things which had 
 its origin in the days of King Wilham and Queen Anne, 
 when, under the design of repressing the encroachments of 
 a popish or half-popish hierarchy, the party in power de- 
 pressed the Church so efiectually, that they deprived her 
 in reahty of every power and privilege to which, as a society, 
 she had a right, and kept her gagged and bound as a 
 
 " Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 252. 
 j Kurd's Life of Warburton, p. 7. 
 
1758.] DEDICATION TO LOED MANSFIELD. 485 
 
 rebel, whereas true policy required them to go no farther 
 than to prevent her from becoming factious, or being made 
 the tool of faction. In this condition the Church con- 
 tinued, as Warburton represents, till his own day, when, 
 ' to repel the cruel inroads made upon its rights and pri- 
 vileges,' he wrote his ' Alhance,' which, though setting forth 
 only what was evidently intended to be, was considered by 
 many as a Utopian refinement. Some, too, from dread of 
 the mischiefs inflicted on society by fanaticism, had, by a 
 strange mistaken pohcy, encouraged a clamour against es- 
 tablishments, the only means of preventing rehgion from 
 degenerating into fanaticism. But not deterred by oppo- 
 sition, he proceeded to a second effort, ' The Divine Lega- 
 tion,' an endeavour ' to support religion itself,' which, ex- 
 periencing a strange reception, '' awaked a thousand black 
 passions and idiot prejudices, the zealots inflaming the 
 bigots,' and many, even of the well-meaning, afiixing on 
 the work the charge of being paradoxical, a charge, how- 
 ever, which did not prevent them, or the pubhc at large, 
 from being eager to see the conclusion of it. As to the 
 nature of the performance, he says it was a work of rea- 
 soning, one in which nothing is introduced which his 
 course of argument did not sanction, for, if he enlarged 
 on the Grecian Mysteries, it was to show the behef of the 
 ancient lawgivers in the use of religion to society ; and, if 
 he expatiated on the Egyptian hierogl}rphics, it was ' to 
 vindicate the logical propriety of the prophetic language 
 and sentiment ; ' and whatever other dissertations were 
 inserted, all had reference to the illustration of the sub- 
 ject. But the httle respect which is now paid to rehgion, 
 is, he fears, a sure indication of approaching ruin to the 
 State ; for when Aristophanes began to abuse and ridicule 
 the gods at Athens, the fall of that republic soon followed ; 
 and when, in England, ' wretches the most contemptible 
 for their parts and the most infernal for their manners,' 
 are allowed to rail against religion and civil authority. 
 
486 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 the destruction of our constitution may shortly be 
 expected. 
 
 Such was his dark description of the nation's prospects ; 
 but happily his predictions, hke those of many other pro- 
 phets of evil, deserved no regard. 
 
 One passage in this dedication drew forth a mild and 
 respectful remonstrance from the Eev. Joseph Jane, a 
 student and tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, a man of 
 retired life, and justly respected, as Warburton afterwards 
 discovered, for his learning and piety.* The words which 
 gave occasion to Mr. Jane's expostulation were these : 
 Warburton, alluding to the obhgation on the part of the 
 clergy, in the generation succeeding the great depression of 
 the Church, to influence the people in favour of religion, 
 and to reason them into it again, had observed : ' Those 
 whom their profession has dedicated to this service, ex- 
 perience has taught that the talents requisite for pushing 
 their fortune he very remote from such as enable men 
 to figure in a rational defence of religion ; and it is very 
 natviral to think that, in general, they will cliiefly be dis- 
 posed to cultivate those quahties on which they see their 
 patrons lay the greatest weight.' Mr. Jane's remarks on 
 this passage exhibit a striking mixture of humility and 
 boldness. He begins by calhng Warburton 'a man of 
 vast genius, and, for the age, of prodigious learning,' who 
 may well despise what comes from a humble person who 
 is no scholar, and whom nothing but sincere love of truth 
 would have moved ' to declare his abhorrence,' such is 
 his expression, of one paragraph in the dedication which 
 he ' has been no less surprised than grieved at reading.' 
 He then expresses his fears that Warburton may be want- 
 ino- in ' that poverty of spirit to which the first beatitude 
 is promised,' for, says he, 
 
 ' Did you not, in sad truth, love and study the praise of 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 275. 
 
1758.J THE EEV. JOSEPH JANE. 487 
 
 men more than the praise of God, wlaen you gave way 
 to all that train of thinking of which this is the close : 
 " Those whom their profession has dedicated to " (the 
 cause of Christ, the Gospel of Salvation, the truth in the 
 love of it, would I say) " this service " (say you, " the rea- 
 soning the people into their rehgion again,") " experience 
 has taught that the talents requisite " (for the work of the 
 ministry I would have expected) " for pushing their for- 
 tune " (whom are you speaking of, Sir, the ministers of 
 Christ or the servants of sin ?) "he very remote from what 
 enable men to figure " (in heaven, I am sure ; yea, or truly, 
 you. say well) "in a successftd defence of revelation.'" 
 
 This extract will give a notion of the letter, which pro- 
 ceeds to ask Warburton whether, at the last day, he would 
 rather present himself at the tribunal with the simple 
 ejaculation of Stephen the proto-martyr, or -with aU his 
 ' popular, admired, singularly ingenious, learned, and 
 inimitable productions,' and concludes with observing 
 that the author of ' The Divine Legation,' if he is at all 
 disposed to think with the writer, vdll, ' far from making 
 a King's Bench matter of this free-spoken, honest, friendly 
 letter,' thank the person who has ventm-ed thus to address 
 him. 
 
 Warburton received the letter apparently in a very 
 friendly spirit. ' He wrote a reply,' says Hurd, ' with 
 wonderful softness and Condescension,' expressing himself 
 much edified with the appearance of piety which animated 
 all the parts of Mr. Jane's letter, and declaring that so far 
 from being capable of prosecuting the author of such 
 advice as a libeller, he had, ' of a hundred real hbellers, 
 never yet called one to account in a court of justice.' He 
 then alludes to the different occupations of labourers in 
 the rehgious vmeyard, and to his own ' poor endeavours 
 to clear the sacred enclosure of profane men and their 
 profane opinions,' and justifies the remark so offensive to 
 Mr. Jane's sentiments, by the following comment : — 
 
488 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBDETON. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 ' The general body of the clergy have been, and, I am 
 afraid, always wiU be, very mtent upon pushing their tem- 
 poral fortunes ; a fact so apparent to government, both 
 civil and ecclesiastical, that they have found it necessary 
 to provide rewards and honours for such advances in 
 learning and piety as may best enable the clergy to serve 
 and advance the interests of the Church of Christ. And, 
 as this was the case, I endeavoured, in these obnoxious 
 words, to show that if those rewards and honours be so 
 misemployed, that, instead of giving them to learning and 
 merit, they were diverted upon such as can only promote 
 the interests and flatter the passions of the great, young 
 men, in the entrance into hfe, seeing how matters were 
 carried, would be tempted rather to cultivate the sordid 
 arts of intrigue and adulation (which I insinuate to lie very 
 remote from their duty), rather than the liberal endow- 
 ments of learning and piety, which I call the quahties 
 that enable men to figure in a successful 'defence of revela- 
 tion.'' 
 
 ' But,' he adds, towards the conclusion of the letter, 
 ' you have taken it for granted that I despise others, and 
 especially men of your turn and character. Believe 
 me. Sir, I am better employed. Neminem contemno nisi 
 meipsum. Here I go on good grounds. I know myself 
 best' 
 
 Mr. Jane was dehghted with the reply. He knew not 
 hoiv to acknowledge the honour which Warburton had done 
 him, and which he had gained to himself by ' answering 
 his rude address and warm expostulation so meekly and 
 obhgingly,' and lamented that a severe illness disabled 
 him from expressing his feehngs as he desired, concluding 
 with assurances to Warburton of his high and affec- 
 tionate regard. ' The good man entertained ever after,' 
 says Hurd, ' the greatest veneration for Dr. Warburton, 
 and showed his letter on all occasions when he was 
 Bishop of Gloucester, by which time Mr. Jane had been 
 
1758.] DE. JOHN TAYLOE. 489 
 
 preferred by his college to the rectory of Iron-Acton, in 
 that diocese.' 
 
 The good man would perhaps have felt less veneration 
 for Warburton, if he had known with what levity, not 
 to say contempt, he spoke of the letter and its writer in 
 a commimication to Hurd. ' One llr. Jane wrote me an 
 expostulatory letter in the very spirit of Methodism. You 
 will not be surprised that I should give much offence to 
 this rigid piety ; but you will never guess what he picked 
 out to declare his abhorrence of. It was this passage in 
 the dedication. Those whom their profession has dedicated 
 to this service, experience has taught, &c. He is scanda- 
 hsed that a minister of Christ should be supposed busied 
 m pushing his fortune but towards the cross, or that he 
 can desire to figure anywhere but in heaven. There were 
 the marks of great candour and goodness throughout the 
 letter ; and it struck my fancy to try whether I could not 
 soften and humanise a httle this atrocious virtue, which 
 I attempted to do m a very long answer.' * 
 
 But the great distinction of this edition was not the 
 dedication ; there was a preface to it, of which the object 
 was a grand attack on Dr. John Taylor, the learned editor 
 of Demosthenes, author of the ' Elements of Civil 
 Law,' and known to all readers of Boswell as the Dr. 
 Taylor that dined in company with Dr. Johnson, and 
 spoke only one word during the whole evening. The 
 pretext for this onset was that Taylor had expressed 
 an opinion different from that of Warburton respecting 
 the persecutions of the Christians in the time of the 
 Eoman emperors. Warburton, in his ' Divine Legation,' f 
 had concurred in the general opinion that the primitive 
 Christians held their assembhes secretly and in the night 
 to avoid molestation from the civil power. Taylor, in his 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 275 ; Kilvert's Selections from 
 "Warbnrton's Papers, pp. 164-177. 
 ■j" Book ii. sect. 6. 
 
490 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETOlSr. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 ' Elements of Civil Law,' denied that sucLi was tlie rigtt 
 view of the matter, and asserted that they suffered moles- 
 tation from the civil power because their assembhes were 
 secret and nocturnal. For this contradiction, ostensibly, 
 he was assailed with great virulence in a preface of forty 
 pages, entirely devoted to the refutation of his opinion. 
 But the real cause for the assault is said to have been that 
 Taylor, in some company at Cambridge, had thrown out 
 a remark that Warburton was no scholar. This observa- 
 tion, through the agency of some good-natured friend, 
 reached the ears of Warburton, who is reported to have 
 sent somebody, very injudiciously, to inquire of Taylor 
 whether he had reaUy said those words. Dr. Taylor, as 
 the story is told, answered that he did not remember 
 ever hmiing said that Dr. Warburton was no scholar, but 
 that he had certainly always thought so.* If this was 
 true, it cannot be doubted that Warburton, who was al- 
 ways anxious for fair opinions of his scholarship, would 
 be highly provoked. Warburton, indeed, had spoken very 
 shghtingly of Taylor's scholarship in a letter to Birch : ' I 
 have a very poor opinion both of Markland and Taylor's 
 critical abihties, between friends ; 'f but this probably had 
 not come to Taylor's knowledge. 
 
 As to the argument, Warburton appears to be in the 
 right. None of the ancient writers, he shows, assign the 
 holding of nocturnal assembhes as a cause why the Chris- 
 tians were persecuted ; the only reason given for molesting 
 them was, that they refused to offer sacrifice to the gods of 
 Eome, and thus to testify that they were good citizens, and 
 well-wishers to the safety of the empire and the state. 
 Mysterious and nocturnal assemblies, for the celebration 
 of religious rites, as those of the Bona Dea, of Ceres, and 
 of Bacchus, had been universally tolerated throughout the 
 Eoman dominions ; and why should any objection have 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 613. f lb. vol. ii. p. 96. 
 
1758.J WAEBUETON'S DISRESPECT TO TAYLOE. 491 
 
 been made to the nocturnal meetings of the Christians, 
 merely because they were nocturnal ? 
 
 But Taylor was not to escape from being pelted with the 
 usual Warburtonian phraseology. He is one of ' a bundle 
 of grammarians ' who objects to the account of the Chris- 
 tian persecutions because it ' had never passed through his 
 pliilologic office,' but ' lay open till our master critic was 
 at leisure to examine it.' He is told that a dissertation 
 which he had added to his book, on a tablet containing a 
 decree about the worshippers of Bacchus, is ' a misappli- 
 cation of his attention upon an old mouldy brass, and a 
 set of stroUing Bacchanals ; ' and that ' he seems much 
 better fitted, whether as critic or civihan, to manage the 
 intrigues of the Greek and Eoman alphabets than to de- 
 velop the pohcy of empires or adjust the rights of civil 
 and rehgious societies.' And happening to say, rather 
 imluckily, ' Antiquity, in its civil capacity, was generally 
 indulgent to all who dissented from the estabhshed wor- 
 sliip,' Warburton took advantage of the phrase to launch 
 a sarcasm against the Antiquarian Society, a society of 
 which Taylor was a great supporter, but which Warbur- 
 ton hated or despised. 'He speaks of antiquity in its 
 public capacity, meaning, I suppose, the civil states of 
 Greece and Eome, though in the mode of ordinary lan- 
 guage it would be no inelegant periphrasis for the New 
 Incorporated Society of Antiquaries.' * 
 
 Hurd had previously .attempted a sneer at Taylor, in 
 his address to Jortin ' On the Delicacy of Friendship.' 
 ' There are several ways,' says he, ' of a writer's expressing 
 his devotion to his patron, without observing the ordinary 
 forms of dedication, of which, to note it by the way, one 
 of the latest and best instances I have met with is A 
 certain thing prefatory to a learned work, entitled The 
 Elements of Civil Law! This was shot forth to please 
 
 * Warburton's "Works, vol. iv. pp. 39, 43, 51, 57. 
 
492 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. _ [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 Warburton, of whose disposition towards Taylor Hurd 
 must have been well aware.* 
 
 Hurd was also consulted about the new preface before 
 it was sent to the press. Warburton had proposed to 
 omit the old preface, and give the new one in its stead. 
 ' If,' replied Hurd, ' the former is to be only displaced, I 
 have no objection. But if you mean to have it quite out, 
 I cannot easily give my assent. I know that a great part 
 of it was chiefly proper at the time ; and Webster you 
 think too insignificant (if, besides, the poor man were not 
 chsabused before now) to have this distinction continued 
 to him. Yet, for all this, I shall regret the loss. I think 
 
 it, in point of writing, one of your masterpieces 
 
 Otherwise this has the advantage greatly in many respects. 
 Taylor is a more creditable dunce than Webster ; and the 
 object is not so personal as the other. As to the manner 
 of introducing it, I can trust to your judgment to choose 
 the best. . . . But, by the way, what do you think to do 
 with the Appendix to this volume against Tillard and 
 Sykes ? I would not lose them on any account. And 
 why might not Taylor rank with them ? After aU, keep 
 me but the old preface in some shape or other, and I wiU. 
 have no dispute with you about the place.' f 
 
 In another letter Hurd suggested that Warburton might 
 omit the former preface for the present, and leave it to be 
 reprinted as one of his controversial pieces, in a complete 
 collection of his works, which was sure at some time to 
 be made. To this proposal Warburton consented, and 
 said, ' As Gibber supphed the place of Tibbald, so shall 
 Taylor take place of Webster, though (I will teU you my 
 mind sincerely) / do not thmk he has nearly so good an 
 understanding as Webster ! 'J In this way could Warbur- 
 ton speak of one of the first scholars of his country, with 
 
 * Tracts by "VVarb. and a Warburtonian, p. 223. 
 j Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 213, 216. 
 X lb. p. 225. 
 
1758.] REMAEKS ON JOB. 493 
 
 whom few would have thought of bringing Webster, 
 though a fair theologic scribbler of periodicals and 
 pamphlets, into comparison. 
 
 Of Warburton's clamour Taylor wisely took no notice. 
 He knew by this time the effect of an assault from the 
 author of ' The Divine Legation,' and resolved that there 
 should be no mecum certdsse feretur. A friend of Taylor's, 
 however, rose in his defence, and pubhshed anonymously 
 a pamphlet, entitled ' Impartial Eemarks on Dr. Warbur- 
 ton's Preface ; ' * but this was a weak performance, the 
 author having neither learning nor abihty to give the 
 least weight to Taylor's side of the argument. 
 
 In concluding the account of this year, we may notice 
 two passages in his letters which are perhaps worthy of 
 remark. 
 
 One relates to the opinions which he had pubhshed on 
 Job. ' Job,' he tells Hurd, ' becomes now as much the 
 subject of dissertations abroad as he has been at home ; 
 and I am wrote against on the Contment, both in French 
 and Latin; but with more decency than here at home 
 in BiUingsgate and English.' f His assailant in French 
 was Bouiller, who propounded objections against liis 
 theory somewhat different from Dr. Grey's, ' with more 
 art,' as Maclaine, the translator of Mosheim, observed, ' but 
 with less modesty.' [{: Maclaine offered to insert any re- 
 futation from Warburton in the Bibliotheque des Sciences; 
 but Warburton made no effort to vindicate himself. He 
 contented himself with inserting among the notes to ' The 
 Divme Legation ' a piece of wit which he had previously 
 used in letters to his friends : ' Job's life, by means of 
 the Devil and his false friends, was an exercise of his 
 patience ; and his history, by means of criticism and his 
 commentators, has since been an exercise of ours. I am 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 614. 
 
 ■j" Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 269. 
 
 \ Kilvert's Selections from Warbitrton's Papers, p. 250. 
 
494 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XXVI. 
 
 far from thinking myself unconcerned in this mischief; 
 for by a fooHsh attempt to support his name and charac- 
 ter, I have been the occasion of bringing down whole 
 bands of hostile critics upon him, who, like the Sabseans 
 and Chaldasans of old, soon reduced him back to his dung- 
 hill. Some came armed in Latin, some in English, and 
 some in the language of Bilhngsgate. Most of them were 
 professedly written against me, but all, in reality, bear 
 hardest upon the good old patriarch. ... If I scribbled 
 ten pages on his back, my adversaries and his have made 
 long furrows, and scribbled ten thousand.' * 
 
 The other passage is from a letter to Charles Yorke, 
 who had sent him an account of an excursion that he had 
 made into Nottinghamshire. ' I am glad to understand,' 
 writes Warburton in reply, ' that you have amused your- 
 self agreeably with a ramble into Nottinghamshire. It 
 would have been the greatest pleasure to have chopped 
 upon you at Newark, and I would have done so on the 
 least intimation. I could have led you through dehcious 
 walks, and picked off, for your amusement in our rambles, 
 a thousand notions which I hung upon every thorn, as I 
 passed, thirty years ago.'f 
 
 Such was Warburton's reflection at the age of sixty. 
 Of the notions hung upon the thorns, thirty years before, 
 he had carried some into effect ; more, doubtless, remained 
 stUl unaccomphshed. Of those carried into effect, the 
 result of some, we may suppose, had brought him grati- 
 fication ; others, assuredly, had caused him only trouble 
 and vexation of spirit. 
 
 * Div. Leg. 2nd note on b. vi. 
 
 f Kurd's Life of Warbm-ton, p. 42. 
 
1759.] ELEVATED TO THE BENCH. 495 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 
 SERMONS. STEKNE. LITEEARY AFFAIES. 
 
 WAEBUBTON MADE BISHOP OF GLOTJCESTEE ; BY WHAT INFLUEKCE 
 
 DEAN TUCKER HUED'S OBSEEVATIONS ON WAEBUETON'S PKOMOTION 
 
 SERMON BEEOKE THE HOUSE OF LORDS ON THE 30tH OF JANUARY ; 
 
 ITS MERITS EEPOET CONCEENING ' TEISTEAM SHANDY ' — ■ LETTEE 
 
 FEOM STERNE TO GARRIGK — LETTERS BETWEEN STERNE AND WAR- 
 
 BUETON SERMON ON THE EUCHARIST ; OBSERVATIONS ON IT — 
 
 WARBURTON's RELIGIOUS LAXITY NEW EDITION OF POPE DR. 
 
 JOSEPH WARTON HORACE WALPOLE RUFFHEAD's ' LIFE OF POPE ' 
 
 EPITAPH ON POPE. 
 
 ON the twenty-second of December, 1759, in the sixty- 
 second year of his age, the Dean of Bristol was nomi- 
 nated to a vacant seat on the bench of bishops. 
 
 It was a lucky moment for Warburton, as far as pro- 
 motion in the Church was concerned, when he first 
 thought of ' rescuing Pope from the talons of Crousaz.' 
 Pope, filled with gratitude, introduced him to Murray, 
 who procured him the preachership of Lincoln's Inn, and 
 afterwards a prebend at Durham ; and to AHen, who, 
 having made Pitt, by his influence, member for the city of 
 Bath, had interest to obtain for the husband of his niece 
 the Deanery of Bristol and the Bishopric of Gloucester. 
 
 He was consecrated January 20, 1760, and requested 
 Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, to preach liis consecration 
 sermon. In one passage of the sermon Warburton is thus 
 commended : ' When divines, eminent for hterature, con- 
 spicuous as preachers, illustrious as authors, are advanced 
 to the first stations in the Church, it is not only a security 
 to rehgion, but an encouragement to learning, and a strong 
 incitement to others to prosecute the same studies, and to 
 excel in the same usefiil arts.' 
 
496 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXVII. 
 
 While he was Dean of Bristol, Mr. Allen had expended for 
 him a considerable sum in repairing the deanery-house, which 
 was not quite finished when Warburton was promoted; 
 but Allen, who was no niggard of his money, was wilhng 
 to complete what he had begun, provided a gentleman 
 was appointed hkely to do honour to the post. Dr. Squire 
 and Dr. Tucker, well known for his writings on trade, 
 were named as the two expectants, and Allen inquired 
 of Warburton what sort of men they were. Warburton 
 replied that the one made religion his trade, and the other 
 trade his rehgion. Dr. Squire, who was afterwards Bishop 
 of St. David's, and the patron of Dr. Dodd, was the suc- 
 cessful candidate. Dr. Tucker was soon after made Dean 
 of Gloucester ; but there never appears to have been any 
 great concord between him and his bishop. Bishop 
 Newton gives the following account of their intercourse : 
 Dr. Tucker 'had strong and lively parts, and,. with many 
 of the excellencies, it is no wonder that he had also some 
 of the failings of every great genius. He was, too, an ex- 
 cellent parish priest, and an exemplary dean in keeping 
 his residence and performing his duty, in managing the 
 chapter estates, in living hospitably, in repairing and im- 
 proving his house, and in adorning and beautifying the 
 church and the churchyard. In these things he merited 
 well, and had many good quahties ; but it is to be lamented 
 that he had not the respect for the bishop which was 
 really due to his personal character as well as to his higher 
 station, so that there was not that friendship and harmony 
 between them which ought always to subsist between the 
 bishop and the dean of the same cathedral. They were 
 both men of great virtues, but they were both also men 
 of strong passions. Both were irascible, but the bishop 
 was more placable and forgiving ; the dean longer bore 
 resentment.'* 
 
 Hurd, though he signifies that a bishopric was but due 
 
 * Bishop Newton's Life by Himself, p. 79. 
 
1760.] WARBUETOX AS A BISHOP. 497 
 
 to Warburton's merits, cannot forbear intimating some 
 regret that he was raised to tliat dignity. Mr. Pitt him- 
 self, he states, gloried in Warburton's promotion, as an 
 honour to his administration. ' I remember to have seen 
 a letter of his,' he adds, ' in which he said that nothing of 
 a private nature, since he had been in office, had given him 
 so much pleasure as his bringing Dr. Warburton upon the 
 bench. This virtuous self-congratulation,' proceeds Hurd, 
 ' became the minister ; and others may be of his mind. 
 But I have sometimes doubted with myself whether the 
 proper scene of abihties Hke his be not a private station, 
 where, only, great writers have the leisure to do great 
 things. 
 
 ' But let me not,' he continues, ' be misunderstood, 
 when I say that great men should not be taken from their 
 privacy, I mean great men indeed. The Church is, no 
 doubt, much benefited and adorned by a learned pre- 
 lacy. The pastoral functions cannot well be discharged 
 by any other. But a genius of the high order here men- 
 tioned is given by a gracious Providence, now and then 
 in a course of ages, to correct, as Dr. Middleton observed, 
 the sentiments and manners of ma7ikind. Such a man as 
 this is lessened by elevation ; he is in himself, methinks, 
 too great to be advanced. 
 
 ' But be this as it may, it must be allowed that rehgion 
 and learning suffered somewhat by his promotion, as it 
 interrupted those designs which he had formed for the 
 service of both, and would have executed, if his whole 
 time had been at his command. He himself lamented 
 this inconvenience of his public station ; and, after all, 
 was not able (such was the root his former habits of study 
 had taken in him) to be so active in it as he wislied. He 
 performed the ordinary duties of his office with regularity ; 
 but further than this he could not prevail with himself to 
 go.' * 
 
 * Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 70. 
 K K 
 
498 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXVII. 
 
 On the 30th of January following he was called upon to 
 preach before the House of Lords the customary sermon 
 on that anniversary. His sermon, in Kurd's judgment, was 
 one of the best that he ever wrote, and unquestionably the 
 best that was ever preached on that day. He was extremely 
 well acquainted with the history of the times of Charles 1, 
 and told Hurd that there was scarcely a memoir or a 
 pamphlet published between 1640 and 1660 which he 
 had not read. His grandfather had been active in those 
 scenes, and his grandmother, as we have observed, had 
 told him stories of them ; and, having been thus early 
 initiated into that portion of our annals, he continued 
 through life' so fond of it that he had thoughts occasion- 
 ally of writing the history of the civil wars.* 
 
 The excellence which Hurd found in the sermon, in- 
 deed, appears in its merit, not as a sermon, but as a 
 history. The preacher gives a rapid sketch of the for- 
 tunes of James I. and his son. James, he says, succeeded 
 to a hne of imperious monarchs, who had made great en- 
 croachments on the liberty of the subject, and was himself 
 eager to carry their over-exercised prerogative into -a 
 system of arbitrary power. He trained his son, who was 
 but too willing to obey, to pursue the same course with 
 himself, and the consequences were fatal ; for ' what was 
 only pohcy in James, became rehgion in the martyr 
 Charles, and king- craft is made of much more ductile stuff 
 than church bigotry.' Charles, on his accession, was un- 
 able to see that the people, having become rich by com- 
 merce during a long peace, were less disposed to bear 
 whatever they thought oppression. They sought' redress 
 for what they considered grievances, but at length found 
 relief hopeless. Meanwhile Puritanism was strugghng 
 for toleration, but Charles, detesting the Puritans as the 
 enemies of prelacy, which he regarded, not like his father, 
 
 * Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 73. 
 
1760.] HIS CHAEACTEK OF CHARLES I. 499 
 
 as a mere support to the crown, but as an ordinance of 
 heaven, treated them with such severity as to force many 
 of them to quit their country. Thus the patriots and the 
 Puritans were ahke disposed to resist his authority. He 
 attempted to govern without the help of parHaments, but, 
 being forced by circumstances to reciu- to their aid, he 
 called one, which manifested its willingness to treat with 
 him on a reasonable footing, but which he impatiently 
 dissolved ; and the next which he assembled, exasperated 
 by his, frequent breaches of faith, resolved on efforts for 
 vengeance, and determining to sit as long as they pleased, 
 continued their remorseless proceedings till they brought 
 destruction on the king, the constitution, and themselves ; 
 for ' a swarm of armed enthusiasts, who outwitted the 
 patriots, out-prayed the Puritans, and out-fought the 
 cavaliers, overturned and desolated all before them in 
 their extreme haste to set up the fifth monarchy of King 
 Jesus.' 
 
 The character which he draws of the king is one of his 
 best hterary efforts ; 
 
 ' The king had many virtues, but all of so unsociable a 
 complexion, as to do him neither service nor credit. 
 
 ' His religion, in which he was sincerely zealous, was 
 overrun with scruples, and the simphcity, if not the purity, 
 of his morals was debased by casuistry. 
 
 'His natural affections (a rare virtue in that liigh 
 station) were so excessive as to render him a slave to all 
 his kia ; and his social so moderate as only to enable him 
 to lament, not to preserve, his friends and servants. 
 
 ' His knowledge was extensive, though not exact ; and 
 his courage clear, though not keen ; yet, his modesty far 
 surpassing his magnanimity, his knowledge only made him 
 obnoxious to the doubts of his more ignorant ministers, 
 and his courage to the irresolution of his less adventurous 
 generals. 
 
 ' In a word, his princely qualities were neither great 
 
500 LIPK OF BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Ch. XXVII. 
 
 enough, nor bad enough, to succeed in that most difficult 
 of all attempts, the enslaving a free and jealous people. 
 
 ' The full conviction of this truth made Laud (who was 
 not so despicable a politician as we commonly suppose 
 him), upon seeing his coadjutor Strafford led out to 
 slaughter, lament his fate in these emphatic and indignant 
 words : He served a prince who knew not how to he, nor to 
 he made, great.' * 
 
 Hurd, immediately on the bishop's consecration, was 
 made his chaplain, and assigned one of the best rooms, 
 called the Abbot's apartment, in the palace at Gloucester, 
 an honour, as he tells Warburton, never to be sufficiently 
 appreciated, for ' the chaplains of other bishops, and even 
 Lambeth chaplains, are usually thrust, with the other 
 lumber of the family, into any bhnd corner.' \ 
 
 ' I shall be obliged,' he writes to Hurd, in February, 
 ' to print my 80th of January sermon ; but don't fancy I 
 shall think it worth while to send you one ; buy it, and 
 welcome ; you may have it for a groat.' Hurd rephes, 
 '• I resolve to have your sermon, though at the expense of 
 sixpence, which your lordship will consider as one argu- 
 ment, amongst others, of the regard with which I am 
 ever, &c.' | 
 
 1\\ the early part of this year a rumour was spread that 
 Sterne, who had, in the preceding year, pubUshed the first 
 two volumes of his ' Tristram Shandy,' and, shortly after- 
 wards, tAVO volumes of sermons, intended to make Bishop 
 Warburton Tristram's tutor ; and Garrick, who was then 
 intimate with Sterne, mentioned to him the report, to as- 
 certain whether there was any foundation for it. Sterne 
 sent him the following letter, in true Tristram Shandy 
 style ; 
 
 ' Thursday, 10 o'clock, night. 
 
 ' Dear Sir, — ' T was for all the world like a cut across 
 
 * Warbiirton's Works, vol. x. p. 30 ; Senn. xix. 
 
 I Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 302. % lb. pp. 300, 303. 
 
1760.] REPORT CONCERNING STERNE. 501 
 
 my finger witli a sharp penknife. I saw the blood, gave 
 it a suck, wrapped it up, and thought no more about it. 
 But there is more goes to the heahng of a wound than 
 this comes to ; a wound (unless it is a wound not worth 
 talking of, but, by-the-bye, mine is) must give you some 
 pam after. Nature will take her own way with it; it 
 must ferment ; it must digest. The story you told me of 
 Tristram's pretended tutor this morning. My letter by 
 right should have set out with this sentence, and then the 
 simile would not have kept you a moment in suspense. 
 This vile story, I say — though I then saw both how and 
 whom it wounded, I felt httle from it at first — or, to 
 speak more honestly (though it ruins my simile), I felt a 
 great deal of pain from it, but affected an air, usual on 
 such accidents, of less feeling than I had. I have now got 
 home to my lodgings since the play (you astonish me in 
 it), and have been unwrapping this self-same wound of 
 mine, and shaking my head over it, this half-hour. What 
 the devil ! Is there no one learned blockhead, through- 
 out the many schools of misapphed science in the Christian 
 world, to make a tutor of for my Tristram ? Ex quovis 
 ligno nonjit. Are we so run out of stock, that there is 
 no one lumber-headed, muddle-headed, monster-headed, 
 pudding-headed chap amongst our doctors ? Is there no 
 one single wight, of much reading, no learning, amongst 
 the many children in my mother's nursery, who bid high 
 for this charge, but I must disable my judgment by choosing 
 a Warburton ? Vengeance ! Have I so httle concern for 
 the honour of my hero ? Am I a wretch so void of sense, 
 so bereft of feehng for the figure he is to make in story, 
 that I should choose a preceptor to rob him of aU the im- 
 mortahty I intended him ? Oh ! dear Mr. Garrick, malice 
 is ingenious, unless where the excess of it outwits itself 
 I have two comforts in this stroke of it : the first is, that 
 this one is partly of this kind ; and, secondly, that it is 
 one of the number of those which so unfairly brought 
 
502 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBDETON. [Ch. XXVH. 
 
 poor Yorick to his grave. The report might draw blood 
 of the author of " Tristram Shandy," but could not harm 
 such a man as the author of " The Divine Legation." 
 God bless him ! though, by-the-bye, and according to the 
 natural course of descents, the blessing should come from 
 him to me. Pray have you no interest, lateral or colla- 
 teral, to get me introduced to his lordship ? Why do you 
 ask ? My dear sir, I have no claim to such an honour, 
 but what arises from the honour and respect which, in 
 the progress of my work, will be showii the world I owe 
 so great a man. 
 
 ' WliUst I am talking of owing, I -wish, my dear sir^ 
 anybody would teU you how much I am indebted to you. 
 I am determined never to do it myself, or say more upon 
 the subject than this, that I am, yours, 
 
 ' L. Stebne.' 
 
 The two volumes of sermons were soon afterwards dis- 
 patched to the bishop with the subjoined letter from 
 
 York: 
 
 ' York, June 9, 1760. 
 
 ' My Lord, — Not knowing where to send two sets of 
 my sermons, I could think of no better expedient than to 
 order them in to Mr. Berenger's hands, who has promised 
 me that he will wait upon your lordship with them the 
 first moment he hears you are in town. The truest and 
 humblest thanks I return to your lordship for the gene- 
 rosity of your protection and advice to me ; by making 
 a good use of the one, I will hope to deserve the other. 
 I wish your lordship all the health and happiness in this 
 world, for I am your lordship's most obHged and most 
 
 grateful servant, 
 
 'L. Sterne.' 
 
 To what offers of ' protection ' allusion is here made, I 
 do not know. As to ' advice,' it appears from the follow- 
 incr letter, in which Warburton acknowledges the receipt 
 
1760.] LETTER FROM WAEBURTON TO STERNE. 503 
 
 of the sermons, that he had repeatedly admonished Sterne 
 as to his writings, though Sterne, it seems, had never been 
 introduced to him. ' He shows,' says Mr. Kilvert, ' how 
 clearly he saw the errors of his correspondent, and how 
 judiciously, according to the low standard of the day, he 
 applied himself to correct them.' 
 
 ' Prior Park, June 15, 1760. 
 
 ' Eev. Sir, — I have your favour of the 9th instant, and 
 am glad to understand you are got safe home, and em- 
 ployed in your proper studies and amusements. You 
 have it in your power to make that which is an amuse- 
 ment to yourself and others useful to both ; at least you 
 should, above aU things, beware of its becoming hurtful 
 to either, by any violations of decency and good manners ; 
 but I have already taken such repeated hberties of ad- 
 vising you on that head, that to say more would be need- 
 less, or perhaps unacceptable. 
 
 ' Whoever is in any way well received by the pubhc is 
 sure to be annoyed by that pest of the pubhc, profligate 
 scribblers. This is the common lot of successful adven- 
 turers. But such have often a worse evil to struggle 
 with ; I mean the over-officiousness of their indiscreet 
 friends. There are two odes, as they are called, printed 
 by Dodsley. Wlioever was the author, he appears to be 
 a monster of impiety and lewdness. Yet, such is the 
 mahgnity of the scribblers, some have given them to 
 your friend HaU ; and others, which is still more impos- 
 sible, to yourself ; though the first ode has the insolence 
 to place you both in a mean and ridiculous hght. But 
 this might arise from a tale, equally groundless and ma- 
 hgnant, that you had shown them to your acquaintance 
 in MS. before they were given to the pubhc. Nor was 
 their being printed by Dodsley the hkehest means of dis- 
 crediting the calumny. 
 
 ' About this time another, under the mask of friend- 
 
50i LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXVII. 
 
 ship, pretended to draw your character, which was first 
 published in a Female Magazine (for Duhiess, who often 
 has as great a hand as the Devil in deforming God's 
 works of the creation, has made them, it seems male and 
 female), and from thence it was transferred into a Chronicle. 
 Pray have you read it, or do you know its author ? 
 
 ' But of all these things I dare say Mr. Garrick, whose 
 prudence is equal to his honesty or his talents, has remon- 
 strated to you with the freedom of a friend. He knows 
 the inconstancy of what is called the public towards all, 
 even the best-intentioned, of those who contribute to its 
 pleasure or amusement. He (as every man of honour and 
 discretion would) has availed himself of the pubUc favour 
 to regulate the taste, and, in his proper station, to reform 
 the manners of the fashionable world ; while, by a well- 
 judged economy, he has provided against the temptation 
 of a mean and servile dependency on the foUies and vices 
 of the great. 
 
 ' In a word, be assured there is no one more sincerely 
 wishes your welfare and happiness than, Eeverend Sir, &c., 
 
 'W. G.' 
 
 Sterne did not leave this letter unanswered : 
 
 ' Coxwould, June 19, 1760. 
 
 ' My Lord, — This post brought me the honoiu- of your 
 letter, for which, and for your kind and most friendly ad- 
 vice, I return your lordship all I am able, my best thanks. 
 Be assured, my lord, that willingly and knowingly I mil 
 give no offence to any mortal by anything which I think 
 can look hke the least violation either of decency or good 
 manners ; and yet, with all the caution of a heart void of 
 offence or intention of giving it, I may find it very hard, 
 in writing such a book as " Tristram Shandy," to muti- 
 late everything in it down to the prudish humour of 
 every particular. I will, however, do my best ; though 
 laugh, my lord, I will, and as loud as I can too. 
 
1760.] LETTER FROM STEKNE TO WARBURTON. 505 
 
 ' With regard to the " Lyric Odes," all I know of them 
 is this : that the .first ode, which places me and the author 
 in a ridiculous hght, was sent to me in a cover without a 
 name, which, after striking out some parts, as a whimsical 
 performance, I showed to some acquaintance ; and as Mr. 
 Garrick had told me, some time before, he would write 
 me an ode, for a day or two I supposed it came from him. 
 I found afterwards it was sent me from Mr. Hall ; for 
 from a nineteen years' total interruption of all corres- 
 pondence with him, I had forgot his hand, which at last 
 when I recollected, I sent it back. The second ode, 
 which abounds with indecencies, is, I suppose, his too ; 
 as they are published together, there can be little doubt. 
 He must answer for them ; having nothing myself to 
 answer for with regard to them but my extreme concern, 
 and that a man of such great talents as my acquaintance 
 Mr. Hall is, should give the world so much offence. He 
 has it greatly in his power to make amends ; and, if I 
 have any penetration, and can depend upon the many 
 assurances he gives me, your lordship will, I hope, live to 
 see it. He is worth reclaiming, being one of those whom 
 nature has enabled to do much hurt or much good. 
 
 'Of all the vile things wrote against me, the letter 
 your lordship mentions in the Female Magazine is the 
 most inimicitious, and gave me, for that reason, the most 
 concern ; under which I had no better rehef than deny- 
 ing the facts, and crying out against the hardship done 
 me by such a contexture of his tacked together, not to 
 serve me, but to overthrow me. Such profligate wretches 
 too often gain their end. Every mortal in town says it 
 was wrote by a Dr. Hill, who wrote the Inspectors, and, 
 they tell me, has the property and management of that 
 magazine. Garrick tells me the same story, and with 
 reasons to confirm it. These strokes in the dark, with the 
 many kicks, cufis, and bastinadoes I openly get on all 
 sides of me, are beginning to make me sick of this foohsh 
 
506 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXVH. 
 
 humour of mine of sallying forth into this wide and 
 wicked world to redress wrongs, &c., of which I shall re- 
 pent as sorely as ever Sancho Panza did of his in follow- 
 ing his evil genius of a Don Quixote through thick and 
 thin ; but as the poor feUow apologised for it, so must I : 
 " It was my iU fortune, and my errantry, and that's all 
 that can be said on't." Otherwise, I wish from my heart 
 I had never set pen to paper, but continued hid in the 
 quiet obscurity in which I had so long hved ; I was quiet, 
 for I was below envy, and yet above want ; and indeed 
 so very far above it, that the idea of it never once entered 
 my head in writing; and as I am 200^. a year further 
 from the danger of it than I was then, I think it never 
 will ; for I declare I have all I wish or want in this 
 world, being in my calculation of money, all out, as rich 
 as my friend Garrick, whose goodness of heart and 
 honest cowardice ui keeping so far out of the way of 
 temptation, I nevertheless esteem and admire. 
 
 ' The Bishop of Carhsle did me the honour yesterday 
 of a call ; of whom I had the satisfaction of inquiring 
 after your lordship's health, and particularly how far the 
 waters had relieved you under the pain and indigestion 
 you complained of He hoped your lordship was better. 
 
 ' I wish your lordship aU the most grateful man can 
 wish — happiness in this world and in the next. 
 ' I am, my lord, with all esteem and duty, 
 
 ' Your affectionate servant, 
 
 'Lau. Steene.' 
 
 The correspondence terminated with the following 
 rejoinder from the bishop : 
 
 ' Prior Park, June 26, 1760. 
 
 ' Eev. Sir, — I have the favour of your obhging letter of 
 the 19th. It gives me real pleasure (and I could not but 
 trouble you with these two or three hues to tell you so) 
 that you are resolved to do justice to your genius, and to 
 
1760.] WAEBURTON'S OPINION OF STERNE. 507 
 
 borrow no aids to support it, b"ut what are of tlie party 
 of honour, virtue, and religion. 
 
 ' You say you will continue to laugh aloud. In good 
 time. But one who was no more than even a man of 
 spirit would wish to laugh in good company, where 
 priests and virgins may be present 
 
 ' Do not expect your friends to pity you for the trash 
 and ribaldry scribbled against you ; they will be apter to 
 congratulate you upon it. 
 
 ' Notwithstanding all your wishes for your former 
 obscurity, which your present chagrin excites, yet a wise 
 man cannot but choose the sunshine before the shade ; 
 indeed, he would not wish to dwell in the mahgnant heat 
 of the dog-days, not for the teasing and momentary annoy- 
 ance of the numberless tribes of insects abroad at that 
 time, but for the more fatal aspect of the superior bodies. 
 
 ' I would recommend a maxim to you which Bishop 
 Sherlock formerly told me Dr. Bentley recommended to 
 him, that a man was never writ out of the reputation he 
 had once fairly won, but by himself 
 
 ' I am, &c., 
 
 'W. G.'* 
 
 When Sterne pubhshed his fifth and sixth volumes in 
 1761, Warburton spoke of him, in a letter to Hurd, thus : 
 ' Sterne has pubhshed his fifth and sixth volumes of 
 " Tristram ;" they are wrote pretty much hke the first 
 and second ; but whether they will restore his reputation 
 as a writer with the pubhc, is another question. The 
 fellow himself is an irrecoverable scoundrel.' f 
 
 Cradock says, I know not on what authority, that 
 Sterne and Warburton were for a while on fair terms, but 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 239-246. 
 Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vol. v. pp. 616-618. 
 t Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 335. 
 
508 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXVII. 
 
 afterwards quarrelled, when Sterne threatened in print 
 to make Warburton the tutor of ' Tristram.' * 
 
 In 1761 he revised and reprinted a sermon on the 
 Eucharist, which he had preached some time before, 
 entithng it ' A Eational Account of the Nature and End 
 of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.' Of this dis- 
 course it will be necessary to give some, but only a brief, 
 notice. Bishop Hoadly had pubhshed a tract, from 
 which Warburton took the title of his sermon, called 
 ' A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacra- 
 ment of the Lord's Supper ;' in which he sought to prove, 
 with very elaborate argument, from the words, ' This do 
 in remembrance of me,' that the celebration of the 
 Eucharist is nothing more than the commemoration of 
 a deceased benefactor ; a doctrine controverted by 
 William Law, in a pamphlet demonstrating its ' gross 
 and fundamental errors,' characterising the institution as 
 it is generally understood. The Papists, on the other 
 hand, of whom Warburton singles out Bossuet as the 
 champion, go to the extent of asserting that the bread 
 and wine are really changed into that which Protestants 
 consider them only as representing. Between these ex- 
 tremes, Warburton takes a middle position ; maintaining 
 that the ceremony of the Eucharist, hke that of the 
 passover, is a feast upon a sacrifice — the sacrifice, in the 
 one, having been actually slain, but in the other, at the 
 time when the ordinance was instituted, being yet to be 
 offered. He adds that it was also a federal rite, convey- 
 ing the benefits of Christ's death and passion, and that 
 those who were said to be guilty of the body and blood 
 of Christ were such as shghted those benefits, and, by 
 rendering Christ's death ineffectual, aided in effect the 
 purpose of those who put him to death. In setting 
 forth this view of the ceremony he is but a disciple of 
 
 * Cradock's Lit. and Misc. Memoii's, vol. iv. p. 204. 
 
17G1.] SEEMOJf ON THE EUCHARIST. 509 
 
 Cudworth, who advanced the same doctrine in a ' Dis- 
 course concerning the true notion of the Lord's Supper,' 
 and whose tenets on the subject Warburton had em- 
 braced twenty years before, when he declared Cudworth 's 
 'Discourse' to be a masterpiece in its Idnd, expressing 
 the true nature and idea of the sacrament, supported 
 with all the author's learning.* 
 
 He gives, in this sermon, a singular example of his oc- 
 casional odd use of words. Eefuting the doctrine of the 
 real presence against Bossuet, and asserting that the words 
 used at the time of the institution, iAis is my body, this is my 
 blood, are figurative, he adds that such ' figurative use ' 
 of them was ' easy, natural, elegant and necessary ;' and in 
 another place he observes that the ' elements substituted 
 were, in an elegant conversion, called by the improper, 
 but very necessary, names of body and blood.' 
 
 ' As concerning my Discourse,' he observes in a letter 
 to Hurd, ' it is assuredly orthodox. So says the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury ; and that I have demolished both 
 Hoadly and Bossuet ; for 
 
 'Tis the same rope at either end they twist. 
 
 The archbishop did not say this, but Mr. Pope. How- 
 ever, the archbishop says, what you are likely enough to 
 say after him, that the people, for whom I intend this 
 edition, are not likely to profit much by it'\ 
 
 Mr. Nichols, dipping into the manuscripts of the Eev. 
 John Jones, whom we have previously noticed as crurate 
 to the author of the ' Night Thoughts,' finds it there 
 recorded that Warburton is said to have written his 
 discourse on the Eucharist out of ' mere opposition to a 
 much better treatise,' meaning, I suppose, that of Hoadly. 
 How far this opinion regarding Warburton's book spread 
 I cannot say ; but the circulation of it seems not to have 
 
 * Letter to Birch, Nichols's Lit. 111. vol. ii. p. 129. 
 f Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 319. 
 
510 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBURTON. [Cu. XXVII. 
 
 been great ; and the prediction, as to its unprofitableness 
 to the people at large, was verified. 
 
 The same Mr. Jones relates that Warburton himself 
 was extremely lax in his attendance on the communion, 
 even when regard to his office and character seemed to 
 require his presence. Of this negligence he gives the 
 following anecdotes : 
 
 ' A gentleman of eminence in the Church assured me 
 that a daughter of his, being in the same pew with 
 Warburton, then a bishop, in a certain great church in 
 London, both on Good Friday and on the Easter-day 
 next following, on both which days the holy communion 
 was there administered, observed with concern the pre- 
 late's leaving the church both times, when that solemn 
 act of worship was coming on, and not joining in it. 
 This was his then parish church. 
 
 'A worthy dignitary of the Church observed, with 
 equal concern, the same omission or neglect in the Abbey 
 Church at Bath. The Eight Eeverend went out, to the 
 sm-pjise of the congregation, when the act of adminis- 
 tering the communion came on. 
 
 'The same dignitary told me this also from his own 
 certain knowledge, and, probably, many similar obser- 
 vations might be added. This great author upon the 
 sacrament, when he himself administers it, is said to be 
 very precise and particular, drawing on a clean pair of 
 white kid-skin gloves, &c. I almost wonder why his 
 reverend lordship should not rather have his gloves for 
 this office made of lawn.' * 
 
 This year also Warburton began to adopt very great 
 strictness as to the rite of confirmation, addressing a letter 
 to the clergy of his diocese, requesting them to adhere 
 exactly to his direction concerning this rite, and to take 
 care that no candidates but such as were duly prepared 
 
 * Nichols's Lit Anecd. vol. v. p. 618. 
 
irei.] DISPLEASED WITH DR. WARTON. 511 
 
 should receive certificates of admission, which appear 
 then to have been a novelty, at least in that diocese. 
 Before he issued these regulations, he consulted Hurd as 
 to their propriety, who apparently offered no opposition. 
 But he seems to have thought the generahty of his clergy 
 hkely to prove careless or refractory, for the efficiency of 
 all ' wUl depend,' he says, ' upon the clergy's observing my 
 direction, an attention to me which I do not expect.' * 
 ' If the clergy did not understand confirmation before,' 
 remarked John Yorke to his brother Charles, ' they won't 
 be greatly edified by his lordship's letter. 'f 
 
 In the midst of these ecclesiastical employments he did 
 not omit his attention to hterary subjects. Dr. Joseph 
 Warton, by some remarks about Pope or his editor, had 
 roused Warburton's ire. What the remark was, is now, 
 I suppose, undiscoverable ; it was probably something 
 similar to those which are scattered up and down in 
 Warton's 'Essay and Notes on Pope,' as to the ground- 
 lessness and futihty of many of Warburton's annotations. 
 The booksellers, contemplating a new edition of ' Pope,' 
 asked his editor whether he wished to introduce any im- 
 provements ; and Warburton wrote an angry note reflecting 
 on Warton, but, before inserting it, sent it to Hurd for his 
 opinion. ' I have added the enclosed,' he says, ' to the 
 long note in the beginning of the Rape of the Lock, in 
 answer to an impertinence of Joseph Warton. When you 
 have perused it, you will send it back.' Hurd argued 
 against its insertion, and Warburton listened. ' Your 
 advice,' he rephes, ' wiU determine me to strike out the 
 note ; the reasons you give have sufficient weight.' % 
 
 His wrath was also excited, about the same period, 
 against Horace Walpole, whom he suspected of intending 
 a sneer at him, in conjunction with Tom Hearne and 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 619 ; Letters from an Eminent 
 Prelate, p. 326. f Harris's Life of Lord Hardwicke, vol. iii. p. 484. 
 
 \ Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 335, 339. 
 
512 LIFE OF BISHOP -WAEBUETOIir. [Uh. XXVII. 
 
 Bro-wne Willis, in his ' Anecdotes of Painting.' * He 
 accordingly wrote to Garrick,| requesting him to sound 
 Walpole on the subject, 'for if,' said he, 'he means me, I 
 shall be about his pots, as Bentley said to Lord Hahfax of 
 Eowe — I mean the gaUipots and washes of his toilet ; for 
 I know he has a fribble-tutor at his elbow as sicklied o'er 
 with affectation as himself Garrickin consequence spoke 
 to Walpole on the matter, who denied on his honour, 
 both to Garrick and Lord Mansfield, that he had Warbur- 
 ton at all in his thoughts when he was writing ; and 
 Warburton, in another letter to Garrick, J thanks him for 
 communicating with Walpole, and says : ' His denying 
 such intention on his honour gives me full satisfaction, 
 though neither I nor my friends know what the passage 
 aims at if he has not that intention.' 
 
 Walpole's own account of the affair is as follows : 
 ' I had been told [by Garrick] that Bishop Warburton 
 resented something in the chapter of Architecture in my 
 " Anecdotes of Painting," and that he intended to abuse 
 me in the new edition of Mr. Pope's works. ... As I 
 had not once thought of him in that work, it was not easy 
 to guess at what he was offended. On looking over the 
 chapter, I concluded he had hit some nonsense about the 
 Phoenicians ; but having read very few of his works, it 
 was impossible for me to tell where to find it. As I would 
 not disoblige even a coxcomb unprovoked, and know how 
 silly a hterary controversy is, in which the world only 
 laughs at both sides, I desired Dr. Charles Lyttelton, 
 Bishop of Carhsle, to ask him if what I had said of the 
 Phoenicians was the rock of offence, and to assure him I 
 had read few of his things, and had no intention of laughing 
 at him. I name Bishop Lyttelton, because if it had not 
 come from one of his own order, all arrogant and absurd 
 as Warburton is, one could scarce beheve it possible that 
 
 * Vol. i. pp. 106, 107. t Feb. 17, 1762. % April 22, 1762. 
 
1761.J ASSISTS KUFFIIEAD. 513 
 
 he could have pushed vanity and folly to such a height as 
 appeared in his answer. He replied : ' The Phoenicians ! 
 No, no. He alluded to my note in the edition of " Pope," 
 in which I have spoken of Gothic architecture ; I have 
 exhausted the subject.' I will only remark on this excess 
 of impertinent self-conceit, that if he can exhaust subjects 
 in so few hnes, it was very unnecessary for him to write 
 so many thousands. After this, I would as soon have a 
 controversy with a peacock, or with an only daughter that 
 her parents think handsome. The fowl, the miss, and the 
 bishop, are ahke incorrigible. The first struts naturally ; 
 the second is spoiled ; reason itself has been of no use to 
 the last.' * 
 
 The booksellers were at the same time asking him, or, 
 as he expresses it, teasing him for a Life of Pope ; and he 
 was sometimes uachned to comply with their sohcitations. 
 For the foundation of Pope's biography, he thought of 
 assembling his scattered anecdotes and critical observa- 
 tions into a body ; but such a collection would have ne- 
 cessitated an entire remodelling of the notes on Pope, from 
 which everything of the kind must have been withdrawn. 
 But the proposal was never executed ; what he did in that 
 way was merely to assist Euflfhead, whose book, after all 
 the aid that it received, gave ample cause for Johnson's 
 remark that the writer ' knew nothing of Pope and nothing 
 of poetry.' Several passages in the work bear evident 
 marks of Warburton's hand. One of them, a glaring 
 purpureus pannus, far above the feebleness of Euffhead, 
 respecting the purpose of ' The Dunciad,' has been marked 
 by Disraeh : ' The good purpose intended by this satire was, 
 to the herd in general, of less efficacy than our author 
 • hoped ; for scribblers have not the common sense of other 
 vermin, who usually abstain from mischief, when they see 
 
 * ' Short Notes of My Own Life ;' Walpole's Letters, vol. i. p. Ixxiii., 
 Cunningham's edition. 
 
 L L 
 
514 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXVII. 
 
 any of their kind gibbeted or nailed up as terrible examples.' 
 A coarse simile, wliicli Warburton has used elsewhere. 
 
 But if he did not write the Life of Pope, he compounded 
 an inscription for a monument to him, which, during this 
 year, seventeen years after Pope's death, the Bishop of 
 Gloucester thought proper to attach to the waU of Twick- 
 enham Church. The inscription, beneath a medallion 
 portrait of the poet, is this : 
 
 Alexandre Pope 
 
 M.H. 
 
 Giilielmus Episcopus Glocestriensis 
 Amicitije causa fac. cur. 
 
 MDCCLXI. 
 
 Poeta loquitur : 
 For one who would not be buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Heroes and kings, your distance keep ! 
 In peace let one poor poet sleep, 
 Who never flatter'd folks like you : 
 Let Horace blush, and Virgil too. 
 
 It manifested sad Avant of judgment, and of what was due 
 to his friend's memory, to select for his monument these 
 hght verses, which their author had written but in jest, 
 and without any expectation that they would ever be 
 placed over his own or any other person's grave. He 
 hiniSL'lf had signified in his will a desire that nothing should 
 be written over him but a single line recording the time 
 of his death, subjoined to the following inscription wliich 
 he had put up to his parents : 
 
 Alexandro Pope, viro innocuo, probro, pio, 
 
 Qui vixit aimos lxxv. ob. mdcc xvii. 
 Et EdithtB conjugi inculpabili, pientissimaj, 
 
 QucE vixit annos xciii. ob. m dcc xxxiii. 
 
 Parentibus bene merentibus Filius fecit. 
 
1761.] HIS MONUMENT TO POPE. 515 
 
 The line to be added was this : 
 
 Et sibi. Obiit An. m dcc xlix. iEtatis lvi. 
 
 The Bishop, for whatever reason, kept his tablet at a dis- 
 tance from that of Pope, the one being on the north wall, 
 and the other on the east. 
 
 , T> 2 
 
516 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Cu. XXVIII. 
 
 CHAPTER. XXVIII. 
 
 'DOCTRINE OP GRACE.' WESLEY AND WHITFIELD. 
 
 PUBLICATION OF ' THE DOCTRINE OF GRACE ' MIDDLETON ON THE 
 
 GIFT OF TONGUES WAKBURTOn's ARGUMENTS IN REPLY TO HIM 
 
 INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DIFFERENT NOTIONS OF 
 
 ELOQUENCE WARBUKTOn's OPINIONS OF WESLET AND WHITFIELD 
 
 MODERN FANATICS WESLEY's JOURNALS CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUE 
 
 WISDOM ZINZENDORF ; LAW ; THE BEHMENISTS REMAKES ON WES- 
 LEY'S PROCEEDINGS ; EXTRAVAGANT EFFECTS OF HIS PREACHING AND 
 
 THAT OF HIS FOLLOWERS WESLEY's DISREGARD OF PRUDENCE 
 
 CONCLUSION OF WARBURTOn'S BOOK. 
 
 THE year 1762 saw the publication of ' The Doctrine of 
 Grace,' two volumes intended chiefly against John 
 Wesley, whose enthusiasm was then fermenting among 
 the lower classes, but, that Wesley might not have the 
 honour of the whole attack, directed in part against Mid- 
 dleton, who had questioned, or rather denied, the plenary 
 inspu^ation of the Scriptures. The book was an enlarge- 
 ment or re-composition of a sermon which he had printed 
 on the influence of the Holy Spirit, with a copious infusion 
 of Wesley's records of his experiences. 
 
 We must review, however briefly, the whole tract, as 
 we shall have occasion to notice Dr. Leland's answer to 
 the first part of it. The full title is, ' The Doctrine of 
 Grace ; or, The Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit 
 Vindicated from the Insults of Infidelity and the Abuses 
 of Fanaticism ; with some Thoughts (humbly offered to 
 the consideration of the Established Clergy) regarding the 
 Eight Method of defending Eehgion against the Attacks 
 of either Party.' 
 
 Warburton had previously published a sermon on the 
 
1762.] ' THE DOCTEINE OF GRACE.' 517 
 
 text, ' Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou 
 also be like to him ; Answer a fool according to his 
 foUy, lest he be wise in his own conceit ; ' which sermon 
 he now remodelled for a preface to his new work. It 
 was directed principally on the enthusiastic Wesleyans, 
 who were not to be answered according to their folly, lest 
 the answerer should contaminate himself with the abuses 
 which he would remove ; and who were to be answered 
 according to their folly, in order that they might be 
 made to perceive, if possible, the grievous consequences 
 arising from conduct prompted by their vain conceit of 
 superior wisdom. 
 
 But the first assault is made upon Middleton. That 
 ' learned person,' as Warburton calls him, had declared 
 that the gift of tongues, on the day of Pentecost, was not 
 a lasting endowment, but a mere temporary sign that the 
 person distinguished by it was a chosen preacher of the 
 Gospel. Had it been a permanent quahfication, he con- 
 siders such a gift from the Divinity must have affected the 
 whole language of the New Testament. Had the gift of 
 tongues been lasting, he argues, ' it would have been em- 
 ployed in the composition of the Gospels and Epistles ; 
 but that it was not there employed, appears from the 
 barbarity of the style ; since whatever comes from God 
 must be perfect in its kind ; so that, in this case, we 
 should be sure to find the purity of Plato and the elo- 
 quence of Cicero.' 
 
 That the gift of tongues was merely temporary, War- 
 burton stoutly denies, because St. Paul expresses his thank- 
 fulness that he spoke with tongues more than they all, 
 evidently showing that, while others retained the endow- 
 ment, he himself, as being the apostle of the Gentiles, 
 enjoyed a greater share of it than any of them ; and be- 
 cause, when once the gift was conferred, it became a 
 natural power, and to have withdrawn it from the posses- 
 sors would have required another miracle. 
 
518 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII. 
 
 But, as to the otlier part of Middleton's argument, which 
 tends to show, from the style of the New Testament, that 
 it was not inspired, how far do those who maintaia its 
 inspiration suppose that the several writers of it were 
 ins-pired, and what sort of inspiration did they receive ? 
 Some kind of assistance was doubtless vouchsafed them, 
 the Spirit having been promised to guide them into all truth. 
 Having received the truth, they were to communicate 
 it by two methods of ministration : they were to impart 
 instruction, by oral addresses, to their contemporaries, and 
 to compose written rules for the direction of the Church 
 in all ages ; and if they were divinely fit for uttering in- 
 struction of a temporary and occasional nature during 
 their hves, it is improbable that they were left unaided in 
 writing what was to remain permanent after their deaths. 
 
 Wliat sort of aid, then, did they experience "? How were 
 they insphed ? They did not receive organic inspiration ; 
 the writers were not mere passive organs through which 
 every word was conveyed ; for, as Warburton argues, 
 such constant inspiration would, in the first place, have 
 been needless, as the writers would state much from their 
 own knowledge ; secondly, if it had been afTorded, there 
 must have been the most perfect agreement among the 
 four evangehsts, even in the minutest particulars ; thirdly, 
 there must then have been similar phraseology through- 
 out all the writings ; and, fourthly, every word, we must 
 suppose, would in that case have been preserved pure 
 throughout all ages, unaffected by the bhndness and mis- 
 takes of transcribers, ' otherwise the Holy Spirit would 
 appear to have laboured in vain.' But the sense in which 
 the inspiration given is to be understood is this : that the 
 writers were so far directed, that no error of importance 
 should proceed from them ; that they were enlightened 
 in all particulai-s which were necessary for the instruction 
 of the Church, and which, from ignorance or incapacity, 
 they would have represented imperfectly, partially, or 
 
1762.] JIIDDLETON ON IXSPIUATION. 519 
 
 falsely ; and that they were under such influence only, as 
 allowed them the use, and left them to the guidance, of 
 their own faculties, as long as they avoided mistakes, and 
 restrained them only when they were in danger of going 
 wrong.* 
 
 Such a notion of inspiration not only agrees with the 
 general nature and aspect of the New Testament, but is 
 supported by the very words of its writers. St. Peter, 
 speaking of the Epistles of St. Paul, expresses himself in 
 very temperate phrase concerning their inspiration : He 
 hath written to you according to the wisdom given unto him. 
 And St. Paul himself, on one occasion, speaks with doubt 
 of his own inspiration ; he first gives his own judgment, 
 and then adds, and 1 think that I have the Spirit of God ; 
 a mode of expression which shows that he could not have 
 been under organic inspiration, about the presence of 
 which he could have been in no uncertainty. 
 
 ' It may be said,' remarks Warburton, ' that on this 
 moderated idea of inspiration we shall never be able to 
 distinguish which parts were written under the immediate 
 influence of the Spirit, and which were the product of 
 human knowledge only.' But ' what,' he asks, ' if we shall 
 not ? Where is the mischief or inconvenience ? WhUe all we 
 want to know is, that every sentence of Scripture, which 
 but remotely concerns either faith or practice, is infalhbly 
 true, it is of httle consequence to us to be instructed how 
 or in what manner that truth came to be secured ; whether 
 by du-ect inspiration, or by that virtual superintendence 
 of the Spirit, which preserved the writers of it from error. 
 Scri]Dture is the rule of Christian conduct ; and, if the rule 
 be known to be unerring, this is all that is wanting to 
 effectuate its end.' The mode of the dehvery of the trutlis, 
 he adds, does not affect the origin of the truths th em- 
 selves, f 
 
 After thus setthng the question as to the degree in 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. i. c. 6, 7. t lb. o. 7. 
 
520 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXVHI. 
 
 whicli the New Testament was inspired, he considers that 
 Middleton's remarks on the style, purporting that it cannot 
 be inspired at all, require some further comment. Mid- 
 dleton's words are, ' We should naturally expect to find an 
 inspired language to be such as is worthy of God ; that 
 is, pure, clear, noble, and affecting, even beyond the force 
 of common speech ; since nothing can come from God 
 but what is perfect in its kind. Now, if we try the 
 apostohc language by this rule, we shall be so far from 
 ascribing it to God, that we shall scarce think it worthy of 
 man ; that is, of the liberal and pohte ; it being iitterly 
 rude and barbarous, and abounding with every fault that 
 can possibly deform a language. And though some 
 writers, prompted by a false zeal, have attempted to 
 defend the purity of the Scripture Greek, their labour has 
 been idly employed.' * 
 
 These observations, says Warburton, are founded on 
 two propositions which are taken for granted, but of 
 which neither is true : the first, that an inspired language 
 must necessarily be a language of eloquence ; the second, 
 that eloquence is something ' congenial and essential to 
 human speech.' 
 
 On the first proposition he remarks that, even if the 
 style of the New Testament were such as Middleton de- 
 scribes it, 'utterly rude and barbarous, and abounding 
 with every fault that can possibly deform a language,' this 
 rudeness and barbarity would be so far from proving the 
 language not divinely inspired, that it would be a certain 
 mark of its divine original ; since the style of persons who 
 had had the Greek tongue 'miraculously infused into 
 them,' and who ' had not afterwards cultivated their 
 knowledge of the language,' as was the case with these 
 persons, ' on the principles of Grecian eloquence, would 
 be precisely such as we find it in the books of the New 
 
 * Middleton's Essay on the Gift of Tongues, Works, vol. ii. p. 91. 
 
1762.] REMARKS ON ELOQUENCK. 521 
 
 Testament.' ' For,' he proceeds, and we must quote his 
 own words for fear- of misrepresentation, ' if this only be al- 
 lowed which no one will contest with me, that a strange 
 language acquired by illiterate men, in the ordinary way, 
 would be full of the idioms of their native tongiie, just as 
 the Scripture-Greek is observed to be full of Syriasms and 
 Hebraisms, how can it be pretended, by those who reflect 
 on the nature of language, that a strange language divinely 
 infused into illiterate men, like that at the day of Pente- 
 cost, could have any other properties or conditions ? ' * 
 
 As to the second proposition, that ' eloquence is some- 
 thing congenial and essential to human speech,' it supposes, 
 he says, that there is some certain archetype in nature, on 
 which eloquence is to be formed and modelled ; and in- 
 deed, if such were the case, it might be but reasonable to 
 conclude that when the Author of Nature inspired a dis- 
 play of eloquence, he would adhere in every respect to 
 the archetype. But the supposition that there is any such 
 archetype, or that eloquence is an essential of speech, is 
 fanciful and groundless. The quahties of eloquence are 
 unsettled and arbitrary, dependent on the customs and 
 fashions, tempers and manners, of the various nations of 
 the earth. ' So that that mode of composition, which is 
 a model of perfect eloquence to one nation or people, must 
 appear extravagant or mean to another.' And thus in 
 fact it was. Indian and Asiatic eloquence were esteemed 
 hyperbohc, abrupt, and puerile, to the more phlegmatic 
 inhabitants of Eome and Athens. And the western elo- 
 quence, in its tone, appeared nerveless and effeminate, 
 frigid or insipid, to the hardy and inflamed imaginations 
 
 of the East But inspired writing, the objectors 
 
 say, imphes the most perfect eloquence. 'What human 
 model then was the Holy Ghost to follow ? And a human 
 model, of arbitrary constitution, it must needs be, because 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. i. c. 8. 
 
522 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUKTON. [Ch, XXYHI. 
 
 tliere was no other : or, if there was another, it would 
 never suit the purpose, which was to make impressions on 
 the minds and affections ; and this impression such an 
 eloquence only as that which had gained the popular 
 ear could effect. Should therefore the Eastern eloquence 
 be employed ? But this would be too inflated or gigantic 
 for the West. Should it be the Western ? But this would 
 be too cold and torpid for the East. Or suppose the 
 generic eloquence of the more polished nations was to be 
 preferred, which species of it was to be employed ? The 
 rich exuberance of the Asiatic Greeks, or the dry concise- 
 ness of the Spartans ? The pure and poignant ease and 
 flowing sweetness of the Asiatic modulation, or the 
 strength and grave severity of the Eoman tone ? Or 
 should all give way to that African torrent which arose 
 from the fermented mixture of the dregs of Greece and 
 Italy, and soon after overflowed the Church with theolo- 
 gical conceits in a sparkling luxuriancy of thought, and a 
 sombrous rankness of expression ? Thus various were the 
 specieses ! all as much decried by a different genus, and 
 each as much dishked by a different species, as the elo- 
 quence of the remotest East and West, by one another.'* 
 But are there not certain substantial principles of 
 eloquence, common to aU ? Doubtless there are. Why 
 then should not these have been employed in the apostolic 
 language? Because etoquence was not at all required. 
 Neither was the speaker to make an impression on the 
 hearers by the aid of eloquence ; nor were the hearers to 
 expect the speaker's words to be recommended by any- 
 thing else than their sound sense. It was not the feelmgs 
 that were to be moved, but the reason that was to be con- 
 vinced. For this purpose it was the great quahties, not 
 of eloquence, but of language in general, that were needed. 
 Preaching was not to be icitli enticing ivords. Clearness 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. i. c. 9. 
 
1762.] THE METHODISTS. 5-23 
 
 and precision of expression were the only requisites ; the 
 only means necessary to convey the sense of the speaker 
 or writer to the mind of the hearer or reader. These are 
 the qualities essential to intelligible language ; qualities 
 always the same, and independent on custom or climate. 
 These qualities are found, says Warburton, in an eminent 
 degree, in the writers of the New Testament, so that what- 
 ever difficulties, in regard to the understanding of their 
 language, present themselves, arise, not from any rudeness 
 or barbarity in it, but from the sublime or obscure nature 
 of the subjects about which it is employed, or occasionally, 
 perhaps, from conciseness of expression in the writer. 
 
 The shrewd Wesley and the weak Wliitfield had long 
 been objects of attention to Warburton. He had been a 
 dihgent reader of Wesley's journals, and had formed from 
 them no unfair estimation of the writer's character. He 
 had for many years regarded such fanatics as insensible 
 to reason, and to be kept down only by drawing on them 
 the ridicule and contempt of their fellow-creatures. 
 
 As early as 1738 he had thus spoken of these enthusi- 
 asts in a letter to Des Maizeaux : ' What think you of our 
 new set of fanatics, called the Methodists ? I have seen 
 Whitfield's Journal, and he appears to me to be as mad 
 as ever George Fox the Quaker was. These are very fit 
 missionaries, you will say, to propagate the faith among 
 infidels. There is another of them, one Wesley, who came 
 over from the same mission. He told a friend of mine 
 that he had lived most deliciously the last summer in 
 Georgia, sleeping under trees, and feeding on boiled maize, 
 sauced with the ashes of oak leaves ; that he will return 
 thither, and then will cast off his English dress, and wear 
 a dried skin, like the savages, the better to ingratiate 
 himself with them. It would be well for virtue and 
 rehgion if this humour would lay hold generally of our 
 over-heated bigots, and send them to cool themselves in 
 
524 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTOW. [Ch. XXVIII. 
 
 the Indian marshes. I fancy that Venn and Webster 
 would make a very entertaining, as well as proper, figure 
 in a couple of bear-skins, and marching in this terror of 
 equipage, hke the Pagan priests of Hercules of old : 
 
 Jamque sacerdotes, primusque Potitius, ibant, 
 Pellibus in morem oincti, flammasque ferebant.'* 
 
 In a letter to Dr. Birch, also, written in the same year, 
 he says, ' Your sentiments of the Methodists are unques- 
 tionably right ; and of their original from a discountenanced 
 party. Fanaticism rises from oppression ever. A couple 
 of these Methodists, of whom Wesley was one, travelhng 
 into this neighbourhood (that of Brant-Brovighton) on 
 foot, took up their lodging with a clergyman of their 
 acquaintance. The master of the house gomg into their 
 chamber in the morning to salute them, perceived ' a 
 certain vessel ' fuU of blood, and on asking the occasion, 
 was told it was their method, when the blood grew 
 rebelhous, to draw it off by breathing a vein in this 
 manner ; that they had been heated with travel, and 
 thought it proper to cool themselves. If common report 
 may be credited, the men from whom they sprung, as 
 Hicks and Colher, had a more natural way of evacuation.' 
 As to Whitfield, he says, ' The poor man is quite mad. I 
 could not but take notice of some very ridiculous expres- 
 sions he uses [in his Journal] ; as that " the mor.e you do 
 for God, the more you may." ' f He had also formed the 
 design of exposing these "idle fanatics," as he calls them, 
 by printing, for the purpose of comparison, passages from 
 George Fox's Journals, Ignatius Loyola, the " Trials and 
 last Behaviour of the Eegicides," and the Journals of the 
 modern Methodists, showing how aU were set on flame 
 with unreasoning enthusiasm. 
 
 This desio-n he now partly executed, but confined his at- 
 tention chiefly to the Journals of Wesley and the accounts 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Ulustr. vol. ii. p. 65. -f lb. pp. 95, 96. 
 
1762.] PRESUMPTION OF METHODISM. 525 
 
 of Wesley's followers, of remarks on which the second 
 part of ' The Doctrine of Grace ' chiefly consists. • 
 
 We see how the minds of the New Testament writers, 
 according to Warburton, were qualified to compose a 
 Rule of Faith for the Church. But a set of modern 
 fanatics, he says, have arisen, who conduct themselves as 
 if no such EvQe of Faith were in being, or as if it were 
 so imperfect as to require ncAv inspiration to supply its 
 deficiencies. These men read the history of the dispen- 
 sations to the first propagators of our holy faith ; they 
 look with admiration on the privileges and powers con- 
 ferred on those chosen instruments ; their imagination 
 grows heated ; they forget the difference between the 
 present and past economy of things ; they seem to feel the 
 impressions they hear of ; and they assume the airs, and 
 mimic the authority, of prophets and apostles. . . . Were 
 we to make our estimate of the present state of the 
 rehgious world from the journals of modern fanatics, we 
 should be tempted still to think ourselves in a land of 
 Pagans, with all their prejudices full blown upon them. 
 For the account they give us of their provincial missions 
 always runs on in such strains as these : ' the name of 
 Jesus is preached up in this city ; the glad tidings of the 
 Gospel conveyed to that hamlet ; a new light springs up in 
 a land of darkness ; and life and immortality is now first 
 offered to those who sit in the shadow of death.' When 
 we hear the obstinate claims of these fanatics to a primi- 
 tive abundance of the Spirit, we feel mclined to examine 
 on what ground those claims rest, and call to mind the 
 text in which we are exhorted to try the Spirits. ' Believe 
 not every spirit,' says St. John, ' but try the Spirits, 
 whether they be of God, because many false prophets are 
 gone out into the world.' The test by which we may try 
 them we find in another apostle : ' The wisdom that is from 
 above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be 
 
526 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTON". [Ch. XXVIII. 
 
 intreatecl, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality 
 and without hypocrisy.'' 
 
 The first distinction of wisdom from above is purity, 
 that is, that it is free from carnal and spiritual pollution. 
 But Methodism, whatever be said of its paternity, which 
 appears to have been from Law's ' Christian Perfection ' 
 and ' Serious Call,' books which mightily impressed the 
 soul of Mr. Wesley, cannot boast of very pure education, 
 for its cradle was rocked by Count Zinzendorf, the founder 
 of tlie Moravians, who, to say nothing of their hymn-book, 
 a mass of absurd and filthy nonsense, adopted such pro- 
 fane and impure practices in the consummation of mar- 
 riage (or, as their ritual calls it, the Marriage Economy), 
 as entitle them to be ranked, not in the number of Chris- 
 tian sects, but with the Turlupins of the thirteenth century, 
 the ' Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit,' whose creed 
 was Pantheism, and whose practice was exempt from aU 
 restraints of morality and rehgion. 
 
 The Behmenists, indeed, have not gone so far from 
 rectitude and decency, but, though they have expressed 
 an abhorrence of carnal imjmrit)/, yet their great leader 
 among us, Mr. Wilham Law, has fallen very low into spi- 
 ritual impurity, for he has written a book to recommend 
 Pantheism. Mr. Wesley, though he does not adopt this 
 doctrine, yet is so deeply infected with the foUy or 
 impurity of fanaticism, as to make a separation between 
 reason and religion, for ' it is a point we chiefly insist 
 upon,' says he, ' that orthodoxy or right opinion is at least 
 but a very slender part of religion, if any part of it at all.' 
 The religion of Mr. Wesley is therefore very different from 
 that of the primitive ages, which he professes to emulate, 
 for that was a reasonable service, a quality by which it 
 was distinguished from the various forms of Pagan 
 worship, arising from the raptures of their prophets or the 
 superstition of their priests. There is little wonder, then, 
 that such a man, who discards reason from religion, should 
 
176-2.] JOHN WESLEY'S EXTRAVAGANCES. 527 
 
 admit the reality of the miracles said to have been 
 wrought at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, since, in his 
 opinion, errors in faith can offer no imjaediment to the 
 reception of the highest spiritual gifts. Nor is it wonder- 
 ful that he should have disciples of such a character as he 
 describes in the following words : ' The more I converse 
 with this people, the more I am amazed. That God has 
 wrought a great work is manifest. And yet the main of 
 them are not able to give a rational account of the plainest 
 principles of religion.' He speaks even of his teachers and 
 preachers as ' a handful of raw young men, without name, 
 learning, or eminent sense,' though senseless as they were, 
 he says, they prosecuted their work efficiently ; nor was 
 defect in understanding confined only to the more ilhterate 
 among his followers. ' He had made,' says Warburton, 
 
 ' a proselyte of Mr. D— , vicar of B . And to show 
 
 he was no discredit to his master, he delivers him to us 
 under this character : " He seemed to stagger at nothing, 
 though as yet his understanding is not opened." He then 
 attempts at the cause of this strange phasnomenon : " It 
 is plain God begins His work at the heart ; then the inspi- 
 ration of the Highest giveth understanding." But this 
 solution, though it be in Scripture language, is neither 
 Scripture doctrine nor history. In the first propagation 
 of rehgion, God began with the understanding, and 
 rational conviction won the heart.''* 
 
 The next quahty distinctive of the wisdom from above 
 is that it be peaceable. Christ's advent was with peace 
 ayid good-will towards men, and His legacy, when He 
 departed from the world, was peace. But that the pro- 
 pagation of Methodism has occasioned great violations of 
 peace, is shown in the ' journalary history,' as Warburton 
 calls it, of Mr. Wesley's adventures. He who bequeathed 
 peace to the world admonished His followers to be, while 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 7. 
 
528 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUKTON. [Ch. XXVIII. 
 
 they were harmless as doves, loise also, or rather prudent, 
 as serpents, and gave an example, as well of prudence as 
 of innocence, in his life. But Mr. Wesley, as is indeed 
 perfectly consistent in one who has parted reason from 
 religious opinion, divorces also prudence from religious 
 p)ractice. ' God dehver me,' he says, ' and all that seek 
 Him in sincerity, from what the world caUs Christian pru- 
 dence.' He even calls prudence the mystery of iniquity, 
 and the offspring of hell. ' I believe,' he records, ' that 
 it pleased God to bless the first sermon most, because it 
 gave most offence, being indeed an open defiance of that 
 mystery of iniquity which the loorld calls prudence ; ' and 
 he tells a friend, ' I fear that offspring of hell, worldly or 
 mystic prudence, hath drawn you away from the simplicity 
 of the Gospel.' 'The Eoman satirist pretended,' says 
 Warburton, foUoAving the corrupt reading, 
 
 ' nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia,' 
 
 Where prudence governs, no God is wanting to keep the 
 ivorld in order. We may say, with more sobriety and 
 truth, that when inijjrudence takes the lead, there needs 
 no devil to throw it into confusion. What, for instance, 
 more strongly tends to tumult and disorder than for one 
 who professes to propagate only the plain old religion of 
 the Church of England, to set at nought its estabhshed 
 discipline, by invading the province of the parochial min- 
 ister ; by assembhng in undue places and at unfit times ; 
 by speaking evil of dignities, in scurrilous invectives 
 against the governors and pastors of the National Church ? ' 
 . . . '■Peace is the cure oi fanaticism, as fanaticisin is 
 the bane of peace. Sectaries must either kick or be 
 lacked. They must either persecute, or they must pro- 
 voke persecution. To be in this turbulent state is living 
 in their proper element. '* 
 
 ' The next mark of celestial wisdom,' proceeds War- 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 9. 
 
1762.] WESLEY'S EXTEAVAGANCES. 529 
 
 burton, ' is its being gentle and easy to he entreated ; that 
 is, neither a rigid reprover of the indifferent manners of 
 others, nor obstinately tenacious of its own ; but, as far 
 as truth and honesty will permit, comphant and even 
 obsequious to all men.' Of Mx. "Wesley's gentleness we 
 have examples in the titles which he bestows upon his 
 opponents, calling them the devil's servants and the devil's 
 children. How far he was easy to be entreated, we have 
 abundance of indications. The Church of God at Herrn- 
 huth had expressed an opinion that they ' might conform 
 to the world so far as to talk on trifling subjects, and to 
 join in worldly diversions, in order to do good.' Wesley, 
 in a letter to them, objected to such conformity. They 
 rephed, ' We believe it much better to discourse out of 
 the newspapers than to chatter about holy things to no 
 purpose.' Wesley rejoined, 'Perhaps so; but what is 
 this to the point ? I beheve both one and the other to 
 be useless, and, therefore, an abomination to the Lord.' 
 ' Fay,' continues Warburton, ' he pushed this matter so 
 far as to come to a solemn resolution never to laugh ; and, 
 to guard himself against the approaches of this paltry 
 infirmity, never to speak a tittle of worldly things. And 
 certainly he who carries this dissociability to this extreme 
 is in no danger of being easily entreated. He was now 
 fit company only for the devil (with whom, as we have 
 seen, he had a great deal to transact) — indeed, not for 
 hun neither, till the more sociable fiend had a little re- 
 laxed his muscles ; for the first trick Satan played him, 
 after they grew acquainted, was, as he himself tells us, to 
 make him burst out into an immoderate Jit of laughter. " I 
 was a Httle surprised at some," he says, " who were buffeted 
 of Satan in an unusual manner by such a spirit of laughter. 
 I knew the same thing ten or eleven years ago. Part of 
 Sunday my brother and I then used to spend in walking 
 in the meadows and singing Psalms. But one day, just as 
 we were beginning to sing, he burst out into a loud laughter. 
 
 M M 
 
530 LIFE OF. BISHOP WAEJBUETOJSr. [Cu. XXVIII. 
 
 I began to be very angry, and presently after to laugh as 
 loud as he. We were ready to tear ourselves in pieces, but 
 were forced to go home without singing another Hne." ' * 
 
 Warburton concludes his remarks on this head with 
 some very happy similes, illustrating the difference of 
 spirit apparent in St. Paul and Mr. Wesley. ' The genial 
 Spirit of God,' operating in St. Paul, 'could breathe 
 nothing but the balm of gentleness and ease. The pestilent 
 heat of fanaticism raises an inflammation and a tumour in 
 the mind, whose symptoms are an obdurate rigour and 
 impatience under the probe. The heaven-struck heart is 
 affected like the purer metals, which easily soften, and 
 run speedily at the touch of the ethereal ray. But the 
 fanatic spirit, self-heated by its own fiery nature, retains 
 the property of its congenial earth, which grows harder 
 and more intractable as it burns.' 
 
 St. James's description of celestial wisdom rises, as it 
 proceeds, higher and higher in its characteristics. Its 
 next quahty is, that it is full of mercy and good fruits. 
 What mercy, then, is in Methodism, may be seen by its 
 readmess to fling about judgments, to call down fire from 
 Heaven, and to ' deal damnation round the land ' on all 
 that venture to oppose it. Every calamity that falls upon 
 its adversaries is called a divine judgment. 'Mr. S.,' 
 says Mr. Wesley, 'while he was speaking against my 
 brother and me to the Society at Kingswood, was in a 
 moment struck raving mad.' ' I preached at Darlaston,' 
 he says on another occasion, ' late a den of lions ; but 
 most of the fiercest of them God had called away by a 
 train of amazing strokes ; and those that remain are now 
 as lambs.' ' We rode to T., where the minister was slowly 
 recovering from a violent fit of the palsy, with which he 
 was struck immediately after he had been preaching a 
 violent sermon against the Methodists.'' Of certain persons 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 4, 10. 
 
1762.] WESLEY'S NOTION OF TRUE EELIGION. 531 
 
 wlio had raised a riot about him, he says, ' One of the 
 chief of those who came to make the disturbance had 
 hanged himself. A second of tliem had been for some 
 days in strong pain, and had many times sent to desire 
 oiu- prayers. A third came to me himself, and confessed 
 he was hired that night, and made drunk on purpose ; 
 but when he came to the door, he knew not what was the 
 matter, he coidd not stir nor open his mouth.' ' But here, 
 by ill luck,' observes Warburton, ' the miracle suffers ; 
 for drunkenness alone is but too apt to deprive a man of 
 his faculties of speech and local motion.' There are many 
 other instances, extracted from Wesley's jom'nals by War- 
 burton, of similar fanciful judgments, but we have noticed 
 enough. Let us next look to the good fruits of Mr. 
 Wesley's proceedings. 
 
 •' Mr. Wesley's idea of true religion,' exclaims Warbur- 
 ton, ' does not promise much ' on this head. ' True reh- 
 gion,' he says, ' does not consist in any or aU of these 
 three things, the living harmless, using the 7neans of grace, 
 and doing much good ; a man may do aU this and have 
 no true rehgion at all.' ' St. James,' proceeds the Bishop, 
 ' talks another language. Pure religion (and, I suppose, 
 pure and true differ only in sound) ajid undefiled before 
 God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and 
 widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted 
 from the world. Now, what is visiting the fatherless and 
 widows but the doing much good ? And what is keeping 
 one's self unspotted from the world, but ushig the means of 
 grace ? 
 
 'In what a fearful taking, then, must Mr. Wesley's 
 zealots be, who, misled by the Bible, have so long mis- 
 taken true religion ! The least it wiU do is to drive them 
 to despair. But this is the very state in which their 
 master delights to take them up. And his assurance that 
 true religion consists in God's dwelling and reigning in 
 the soul, soon makes way for a happier madness ; the 
 
 M M 2 
 
532 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ca. XXVIII. 
 
 jaws of hell begin to close, the gates of heaven to open. 
 But what the overlaboured imagination suflFered during 
 the course of this operation requires the hand of a master 
 to describe. I shall give it, therefore, in Mr. J. "Wesley's 
 own words ; and as these, his spiritual cures (which he 
 reports with the exactness of a Hippocrates or a Syden- 
 ham), are aU the good fruits he pretends to, he will not 
 be displeased to have a few of the choicest of them set in 
 a fair hght. 
 
 ' The condition of his audience, on his first operation 
 upon them, is thus graphically described : " I preached in 
 an open place, two or three miles from Newcastle ; the 
 wind was high and extremely sharp ; but I saw none go 
 away till I went. Yet I observed none seemed to be 
 much convinced ; only stunned, as if cut in the head." 
 This was in order. They were first to be stunned ; the 
 watchman reason was to be laid asleep, before he could 
 set fire to their imaginations. But he brings them to 
 their senses with a vengeance, the vengeance of the 
 devil. " I felt the fre of hell already kindled in my 
 breast," says one, " and all my body was in as much pain 
 as if I had been in a burning fiery furnace." " I was 
 interrupted," says Mr. Wesley, " by the cries of one who 
 was pricked at the heart;" one of those, I suppose, who 
 had before been cut in the head; and, having now got 
 possession both of the head and the heart, the game 
 begins : " Another person dropped down. A little boy 
 near him was seized in the same manner. A young man 
 who stood behind fixed his eyes on him, and sunk down 
 himself as one dead, but soon began to roar out and beat 
 himself on the ground, so that six men could scarcely 
 hold him. Meanwhile, many others began to cry out to 
 the Saviour of all that he would come and help them, 
 msomuch that all the house, and indeed all the street for 
 some space, was in an uproar." " Forty or fifty of those 
 who were seeking salvation desired leave to spend the 
 
1762.] ABSURDITIES OF WESLEY'S FOLLOWERS. 533 
 
 night together in the society room. Before ten I left 
 them, and laid down." For our engineer had so amply 
 provided them with combustibles, and so fitly laid his 
 train, that he knew they would take fire from their own 
 collisions. He was not disappointed. Between two and 
 three in the morning he was awaked, and desired to come 
 down stairs. " I immediately," says he, " heard such 
 a confused noise as if a number of men were all putting 
 to the sword. It increased when I came into the room, 
 and began to pray," &c. Others went distracted, and were 
 tied down raving on their beds. And with this spiritual 
 madness,' pursues Warburton, ' he is so enamoured, 
 that he calls it, when at its height, a glorious time. 
 
 ' But though Mr. J. Wesley does so ably in this new 
 trade of turning fools into madmen, yet his craft's-master 
 is certainly one Mr. Wh — y, of whom Mr. Wesley tells 
 this extraordinary tale : " A poor woman gave an account 
 of what I think ought never to be forgotten." Truly, I 
 think so too. " It was four years, she said, since her son, 
 Peter Shaw, then nineteen or twenty years old, by hear- 
 ing a sermon of Mr. Wli — y, feU into great uneasiness. 
 She thought he was ill, and would have sent for a 
 physician. But he said, No, no, send for Mr. Wli — y. 
 He was sent for, and came ; and, after asking a few 
 questions, told her. The boy is mad; get a coach, and 
 carry him to Dr. Monro ; use my name ; I have sent 
 several such to him." Wko this Mr. Wli — y is, or what 
 he is, I know not. But, we see, he sends his people to 
 Monro with the same unconcern in search of lost brains 
 that one would inquire of Sir J. Fielding for a lost 
 portmanteau. 
 
 ' Such are the exploits which Mr. J. Wesley calls 
 "blessings from God," and which, therefore, we may 
 well call the good fruits of his ministry.' * 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 11. 
 
534 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXVIII. 
 
 The last qualities specified in the wisdom from above 
 are, that it is without ijartiality and without hypocrisy. 
 How partial enthusiasts and fanatics are to themselves, as 
 being children of God, and how hostile to their adver- 
 saries, as children of the devil, we have already seen. 
 On enthusiasm a few such just remarks are made by 
 Warburton, concluding with an illustration of the cha- 
 racter of Cromwell, that I cannot but subjoin them. 
 ' An enthusiast considers himself as an instrument em- 
 ployed by Providence to attain some great end, for the 
 sake of which he was sent out. This makes Mm dihgent 
 in his work ; impatient under any let or obstruction, and 
 attentive to every method for removing it. Persuaded 
 of the necessity of the end, and of the Divine commission 
 entrusted to that instrument, he begins to fancy that such 
 a one, for the obtaining so great a purpose, is dispensed 
 with in breaking, nay, is authorised to break, the common 
 laws of morality ; which, in the cant of those times when 
 fanaticism had its full play, was called the heing above 
 ordinances. In the first apphcation of these means, the 
 people are the dupes of their leader ; but the success 
 being frequently far beyond even his own conception, he 
 becomes, in his turn, the dupe of himself, and begins in 
 good earnest to believe that the trick which he played 
 them was indeed not of his own contrivance, but the 
 inspired instigation of heaven. This will explain an 
 obscure passage of Tacitus, where, speaking of this sort 
 of character in his oracular way, he says, fingunt simul 
 creduntque. Let me add that this seems to have been 
 much the case with Ohver Cromwell, from his first 
 mounting into the saddle and the pulpit, to his last 
 reveries on his death-bed.' * 
 
 Last of all, we come to hypocrisy. Partiahty may be 
 reo-arded as the assumption of too much to ourselves, 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 12. 
 
1762.] WESLEY'S FAJfCIES. 535 
 
 and the recognition of too little in others ; hypocrisy 
 endeavours to conceal our partiahty by false represen- 
 tations. Mr. Wesley is guilty of hypocrisy by indulgence 
 in evasion and prevarication. He gives an example of 
 evasion vk^hen he pretends that a mkacle is wrought in 
 his favoiu", but adds an observation to secure himself 
 from presumption in case the miracle should be doubted. 
 He is going to preach, and, just before he begins, there 
 is a very high wind ; but, during all the time he held 
 forth, scarce a breath was felt. He evidently intimates 
 that the lull of the wind ought to be considered miracu- 
 lous. He praises God for it, and then adds, ' Is it enthu- 
 siasm to see God in every benefit which we receive ?' * 
 If the occurrence was not miraculous, he trusts he may 
 be pardoned for being so much of an enthusiast as to 
 imagine it was. And the same salvo may be apphed to 
 the other miracles in which his journal abomids. It 
 would be of great use to him when questioners became 
 too importunate. 
 
 He is guilty of hypocrisy when he makes pretences to 
 a spirit of forgiveness, and yet manifests strong mahce 
 towards those whom he calls his persecutors. At St. 
 Ives, he and his followers are saluted with stones or 
 pieces of dirt. He exalts this puny attack into a violent 
 persecution ; a persecution which ' was owing, in a great 
 measure, to the indefatigable labours of Mr. Hoblin and 
 Mr. Simmons ; gentlemen,' he says, ' worthy to be had 
 in everlasting remembrance for their unwearied endea- 
 vours to destroy heresy : 
 
 Fortunati ambo ! Si quid mea pagina possit, 
 Nulla dies unquam memori vos eximet sevo.' 
 
 ' Here,' says Warburton, ' he tells us without disguise 
 that it is his holy purpose to gibbet up the names of 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 12. 
 
536 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cii. XXVm. 
 
 these his two persecutors, to everlasting infamy ; wliUe, 
 by the most unregenerate mahce in the world, he dips 
 his curses in the gaU of irony, and, that they may strike 
 the deeper, fletches them with a profane classical 
 parody. 
 
 ' Yet this is the man who says, " God forbid that I 
 should rail at a Turk, infidel, or heretic. I would point 
 out their errors, and, I trust, in the spirit of meekness." ' 
 And in another place he says, ' If I have any strength 
 at all, it is in forgiving injuries' * 
 
 It is also strange that Wesley, who had pronounced 
 discourse out of the newspapers to be an abomi7iation to 
 the Lord, and had solemnly resolved never to speak a 
 tittle of worldly things, should have allowed himself to 
 recur, for a moment, to the profane studies of his youth, 
 and absolutely astonishing that he should have dwelt on 
 the pagan hues of Virgil long enough to produce a 
 parody, and have recorded that parody in his journal, 
 which was written for the edification of all men. Must 
 not his zealous followers, even if they were too illiterate 
 to understand his jest, have felt inclined to think him a 
 backslider ? 
 
 Wesley, as we have seen, abhorred worldly prudence, 
 as the mystery of iniquity. But he is not disinclined to 
 have recourse to it, when he thinks it hkely to promote 
 an object. He had published a sermon on free grace ; 
 Whitfield had vratten a letter in answer to it. Wesley 
 told him it was imprudent to pubhsh the letter, as putting 
 weapons into the hands of the enemies of them both, 
 and that, if he felt constrained to bear his testimony, as 
 he expressed it, against the sermon, he might have done 
 so without mentioning Wesley's name. He was even so 
 prudent that, though he pronounces a certain Mr. G. to 
 \)Q absolutely above conviction, he asked Mr. G. to meet 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 10. 
 
1762.] WESLEY'S ALLEGED HYPOCRISY. 537 
 
 him half ivay, offering never to preach publicly against 
 Mr. G. if Mr. G. would promise never to preach against 
 him. 'When prudence would have advised him,' says 
 Warburton, ' not to preach publicly against the body of 
 that clergy to which, he says, he belongs, then is prudence 
 the bane of religion, the mystery of iniquity ; but when 
 she prompts him to tempt a brother of the same trade 
 to meet him half way, and not to preach publicly against 
 him, then is prudence of heavenly birth, and sent for the 
 assistance of the saints ; at present, indeed, honourably 
 employed in the charitable errand of inviting Mr. G. to 
 play the hypocrite with him, for he declares Mr. G. to be 
 absolutely above conviction.'* 
 
 Another example of what Warburton calls his hypocrisy 
 affects his character strongly. He professed to desire per- 
 secution, as a blessing ; but when persecution presented 
 itself, he withdrew from it as an intolerable evil. He 
 had no objection that it should hght upon his flock, but 
 wanted heart to meet it himself. Thus when, ia Georgia, 
 he had the finest opportunity of submitting to be bufl'eted, 
 he retned before his assailants, content with merely shak- 
 ing off the dust of his feet against them. In that country 
 he had made acquaintance with one Mrs. Wilhamson, to 
 whom he refused the sacrament, on the ground that she 
 had done some wrong to her neighbour. Mrs. William- 
 son's uncle stood forth in her behalf, and desired Wesley 
 to declare pubhcly what the v^rong was. Mr. Wesley 
 declined, alleging that many ill consequences might arise 
 fi'om such declaration. ' Wliat you will not do, then,' 
 said the uncle, ' I will do myself. The wrong is, that she 
 has rejected your proposals of marriage, and married Mr. 
 Williamson.' Mr. Williamson, the husband, prosecuted 
 Wesley for defamation of his wife's character, and the 
 wife made affidavit that Wesley had many times proposed 
 
 * Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 12. 
 
538 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII. 
 
 marriage to her, and been as frequently rejected. The 
 grand jury declared that he ought to be tried, not only 
 for repelhng Mrs. Williamson from the sacrament, but 
 for having spoken and written to her, as it appeared, 
 against her husband's consent. Wesley was perplexed, 
 and consulted his friends whether God did not call him to 
 return to England ; they were of opinion that he ought 
 to go, but not yet. But soon after he was found guilty of 
 the charges against him, and declared an enemy to the 
 pubhc peace. He then consulted his friends again ; and 
 they agreed that the time for his departure was come. 
 He might have met this trial with the devotion of a 
 martyr ; but he prepared to flee, giving notice to the 
 Georgians, however, that he intended to shake off the dust 
 of his feet against them. But the magistrates ordered 
 that, before he performed this ceremony, he should find 
 security for his appearance before them. As he paid no 
 regard to this requisition, they put forth a placard, com- 
 manding all persons to prevent him from leaving the 
 province. Wesley then saw plainly that the hour for his 
 departure was come ; and one evening, as soon as prayer 
 was over — ' for prayer,' remarks Warburton, ' must always 
 make a part in his stratagems' — about eight o'clock, when 
 he foimd the tide favourable, he shook off the dust of his 
 feet, and decamped without beat of drum. ' He shook 
 off the dust of his feet,' exclaims Warburton : ' much 
 easier done than shaking off his infamy.' 
 
 The book concludes with an address to the clergy, 
 counselling them to avoid bigotry, to favour toleration, to 
 discountenance fanaticism, and to prevent schism, as far 
 as possible, by juchcious conciliation and correct example. 
 ' This discourse,' says Hurd, ' will, hke Pascal's Letters, 
 and for the same reason — the singular merit of the com- 
 position — be read when the sect that gave occasion to it 
 is forgotten ; or, rather, the sect will find a sort of 
 
1762.] USE OP ' THE DOCTRINE OF GEACE.' 539 
 
 immortality in this discourse.' This prophecy is rather 
 too coniident ; bT,it the book well deserves to be kept in 
 memory, and will not be without its use, if it contribute, 
 in the smallest degree, to diminish the evils arising from 
 irrational enthusiasm. 
 
540 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 BR. THOMAS LELAND. "WILKES. 
 
 Wesley's keplt to waebueton ; its temperance — the eev. johk 
 
 ANDREWS ; letters FROM WARBURTON TO HIM MR. JOHN PAYNe's 
 
 'letter TO A PKIEND ON THE DOCTRINE OF GRACE ; ' HIS ATTEMPTED 
 
 defence OP LAW DR. LELAND's ANSWER TO WARBURTON ; HIS 
 
 OBSERVATIONS ON ELOQUENCE HURD's UNCOURTEOHS REPLY TO 
 
 LELAND A BEOliEN ARM WILKEs'S ' ESSAY ON WOMAN ' WARBUR- 
 
 TOn's speech ON IT IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS WlLKEs's DUEL 
 
 A SECOND SPEECH OF WARBURTON'S DISPLAYS LITTLE ELOQUENCE. 
 
 THE work drew pamplilets, in answer, from both 
 Wesley and Whitfield, as weU as from others who 
 thought it required contradiction. 
 
 Wesley rephed to Warburton with such mildness, and 
 even deference, as was amazing towards one who had so 
 insulted him. To Bishop Lavington, of Exeter, who had 
 censured the proceedings of the Methodists in the same 
 tone, and with as much effect, as Warburton, in ' A 
 Comparison between the Enthusiasm of Methodists and of 
 Papists,' showing that the one sort of Christians were as 
 credulous as the other, he had addressed an answer of 
 much asperity, lamenting, however, the heaviness of the 
 work, which he undertook only from a feeUng of its 
 necessity, and observing that it was well said by an 
 ancient, ' God made practical divinity necessary, the Devil 
 controversial.' But to Warburton he adopted a gentler 
 mode of address, even apologising for the plainness of 
 speech which he should use, but maintaining the reasona- 
 bleness of his own course of action, and affirming that his 
 
1763.] WESLEY'S REPLY TO WARBURTON. 541 
 
 preacliing was supported by the attestation of miracles, 
 especially those of casting out devils and healing the sick, 
 which had been beheld by many competent witnesses, so 
 that there would soon be no ground either for denying 
 or contemning them, or disputing that God might add to 
 their number. He desired, he said, only diligent and 
 fair inquiry, and expressed his readiness to name numbers 
 of persons who would give their testimony to the miracles 
 on oath. He did not pretend to work these miracles 
 himself, but felt certain that he was favoured with them 
 by the grace of God. Let Bishop Warburton but exa- 
 mine, and he would be convinced.* Such was Wesley's 
 excessive credulity and self-delusion, such his persuasion 
 that Providence was ready to wait on every Jack and 
 Tom among his followers. 
 
 As to his departure from America, through the affair 
 with Mrs. Wi , he had recourse, he says, not to ' reve- 
 lations,' as Warburton states, but to consultations with his 
 friends, whether there were not strong reasons for his 
 going ; that the magistrates' senseless declaration that he 
 was an enemy to the peace made him go neither sooner 
 nor later ; that he neither languished for persecution nor 
 invited it, though he expected and was ready to submit 
 to it ; and that Warburton's charge about ' hiding pol- 
 troonery m a bravado ' was so ' kind and civil, equally 
 serious and genteel,' that he might be excused from 
 taking notice of what followed. 
 
 He concludes his pamphlet thus temperately, not to 
 say servilely : 
 
 ' I have now finished what I had to say, either con- 
 cerning myself or on the operations of the Holy Sphit. 
 In doing this, I have used great plainness of speech, and 
 yet, I hope, without rudeness. If anything of that kind 
 has sHpped from me, I deske to retract it. I desh-e, on 
 
 ' A Letter to the Eight Kev. the Lord Bp. of Gloucester, by John 
 Wesley, M.A., 1762. Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. ii. pp. 211, 213. 
 
542 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 the one hand, to accept no man's person, and yet, on the 
 other, to give honour to lohom honour is due. 
 
 ' If your Lordship should think it worth your while to 
 spend any more words upon me, may I presume to request 
 one thing of your Lordship, to he more serious. [Warbur- 
 ton had said, in the Preface to the " Doctrine of Grace," 
 that " to employ buffoonery in the service of religion is to 
 violate the majesty of truth," and that " to examine, men 
 must be serious."^ It cannot injure your Lordship's 
 character or your cause. Truth is great and will prevail. 
 Wishing your Lordship all temporal and spiritual blessings, 
 ' I am, my Lord, 
 
 ' Your Lordship's dutiful and obedient son and servant, 
 
 ' John Wesley.' 
 
 Wesley survived Warburton, and, after his death, said, 
 ' He is gone to rest, I well hope, in Abraham's bosom.' * 
 
 Whitfield's answer was a poor whining pamphlet of 
 four-and-twenty pages, complaining that Warburton would 
 fam withdraw the Holy Spirit from the Church altogether, 
 and crying ' woe to the Christian world if he succeeded in 
 his unhallowed attempt.' 
 
 Another pamphlet proceeded from one John Andrews, 
 LL.B., of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, who, after having visited 
 America, and stayed there for some years, had, on his 
 return to England, obtained, through the interest of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, the small living of Stinch- 
 combe, in the Bishop of Gloucester's diocese. He, being 
 favourable to Wesley, and offended at the light tone of 
 certain passages in the ' Doctrine of Grace,' thought fit to 
 publish, in 1763, a heavy pamphlet of two hundred 
 and twenty-four pages, to correct his Lordship's notions 
 on the subject of that treatise. The performance is a 
 dull sermon, rather than anything else, aiming merely 
 pellets of wool against the Bishop's buff jerkin, the only 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 234. 
 
17C3.] THE EEV. JOHN AKDEEWS. 543 
 
 severe remark in it being that the part which charges 
 Wesley with hypocrisy is full of ' empty declamation, 
 irreverent wit, and personal invective.' He indeed ad- 
 monishes the Bishop that there is ' a standard of elo- 
 quence founded in reason and nature,' and that, ' if the 
 Scripture-language abounded with every fault that could 
 deform a language,' it would be no more a proof of its 
 Divine original than the omission of a future state from 
 the -writings of Moses would be a proof of Moses" Divine 
 legation. But these are the only forcible passages in so 
 many leaves of feebleness ; and it would have been wise 
 in one possessed of so httle vigour to forbear from show- 
 ing a warhke front to Warburton. 
 
 Before the publication of this volume, Mr. Andrews 
 had given offence to Wai-burton by his open attachment 
 to Methodism, or other forms of dissent, for he had even 
 preached for Lady Huntingdon at Bath ; and he had 
 received from the Bishop, previously to the assault upon 
 him in print, the following letter : 
 
 ' Mar. 25, 1763. 
 
 ' Mr. Andrews, — I have received several complaints of 
 you. Those which concern your own curacy, are on 
 account of your frequent absence, and for not giving your 
 parish service both morning and afternoon on a Sunday. 
 Unless I have satisfaction on these two particulars, 
 more especially the former, I shall revoke your hcence by 
 process hi my court. I shall insist upon your constant 
 residence in your parish, not so much from the good you 
 are hkely to do there, as to prevent the mischief you may 
 do by rambling about in other places. 
 
 ' Your Bishop and 
 (though your fanatic conduct has almost made me ashamed 
 to own it) your Patron, 
 
 ' W. Gloucester.' 
 
 Mr. Andrews replied to this letter by saying, as to the 
 
544 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XXIX., 
 
 first charge, that he had resided in his parish at least two 
 years and nine months out of three years that he had held 
 the hving ; and, as to the second, that the Bishop, at an 
 interview with him at Bath, had given him leave, in con- 
 sideration of the smallness of the income, and of Mr. 
 Andrews's dehcate health, to officiate at Stinchcombe 
 only once on a Sunday. 
 
 The Bishop immediately rejoined : 
 
 ' If I indulged you in giving your parish only one ser- 
 vice on a Sunday, I hereby revoke the indulgence, and 
 insist on your giving them full service. 
 
 ' W. Gloucester.' 
 
 The diocese of Gloucester was thus rendered too hot for 
 Mr. Andrews. But Archbishop Seeker had a liking for 
 him, as a pious well-meaning man, and gave him some 
 preferment in Kent. 
 
 Another antagonist, of rather more vigour, but able 
 only to offer a dagger of lath to the Bishop's crab-tree 
 truncheon, was Mr. John Payne, once a bookseller, but 
 afterwards accountant of the Bank of England, who dab- 
 bled, with a very httle learning, in theology ; and, in a 
 volume of five hundred pages, consisting half of sundry 
 discoiu-ses of his own, and half of a ' Letter to a Friend ' 
 on the ' Doctrine of Grace,' accused the Bishop of unfair- 
 ness towards Mr. Law, of whom he himself was a pro- 
 found admirer, declaring that his Lordship had made a 
 vigorous attempt to traduce Law's character, but no 
 attempt at aU to refute his arguments. To confute Law's 
 arguments indeed, if arguments they could be called, 
 Warburton was very vdse not to attempt ; for neither 
 Law himself, nor his followers, would have had sense or 
 modesty to know or admit that they were confuted, 
 but would have persisted to argue under defeat. Law 
 himself had previously written a pamphlet against War- 
 burton : ' A short but sufficient Confutation of Dr. 
 
17C3.] DB. LELAND ON ELOQUENCE. 545 
 
 Warbiirton's projected Defence of Christianity, in a Letter 
 to Bishop Sherlock,' in which he said that Warburton's 
 hypothesis, in ' The Divine Legation,' was ' a scheme so 
 contrary to Scripture and the truth of things, as no art 
 of words, or stretch of genius, however powerful in para- 
 dox, could ever be able to support,' Warburton in 
 return had sneered at his ' ravings ' and ' execrable 
 frenzy;'* and indeed all his writings, whatever Jolmson 
 thought of his reasoning, whatever Gibbon, to whose 
 father he had been tutor, says of his scholarship and 
 abihty, and whatever praise Wesley bestowed on his style, 
 may very well be suffered to sink into forgetfulness. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Leland, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 was an antagonist of very different standing and attain- 
 ments, but produced a tame and spiritless examination of 
 Warburton's assertions. He told the Bishop, very pro- 
 perly, that his definition of eloquence, as a compound of 
 the three qualities of purity, elegance, and sublimity, was 
 faulty; for the first quality may be considered as included 
 in the second, and the third is not a necessary constituent 
 of eloquence, since a speaker may be highly eloquent 
 without being sublime. He also showed that elegance 
 was not, as Warburton had asserted, the capricious pro- 
 duction of fashion or fancy, but founded on the general 
 sense and reason of mankind, as is evident from an exa- 
 mination of the better sort of writings in all civilised 
 countries. All cultivated nations have thought it fit ' that 
 words should be so ranged and connected as to convey 
 the sentiment with ease and perspicuity, reheving the 
 voice and ear with intervals and pauses duly disposed and 
 varied, so as to adorn and harmonise, without weakening, 
 the composition ; that all this should be conducted with 
 a due regard to propriety, without discovering a minute 
 and affected solicitude, or diverting the attention from the 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. iv. p. 68 ; vi. 350. 
 
 N N 
 
546 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 more important parts of eloquence. In these again we find 
 nothing capricious or variable ; they are the maxims which 
 have been approved and recommended by all pohshed 
 ages and nations ; they have their foundation in truth and 
 nature, in that love of order and harmony, that aversion 
 to confusion and dissonance, which are congenial and 
 essential to the human mind.'* Nor is the true subhme, 
 as Warburton would have us believe, ' whatever is dig- 
 nified and ennobled by arbitrary or casual connexions,' but 
 that which the man of just critical judgment will, through- 
 out all time, and under all changes of manners, approve 
 and admire. General principles of rational criticism, there- 
 fore, in regard to elegance and sublimity, may evidently 
 be estabhshed. The Eomans studied and admired the 
 same excellences of speech which had been studied and 
 admired in Greece ; and the English, and other modern 
 nations, still study and admire the same excellences ; and it 
 therefore follows that fitness and propriety of language 
 cannot be merely local or nominal. 
 
 As to the style of the New Testament, it is not to be 
 considered that rudeness and barbarity, as Warburton 
 asserts, is a proof of the Divine inspkation of the Apostohc 
 writings, but only that such rudeness and barbarity afford 
 no proof or presumption that the writers were not in- 
 spired. We are not to look for exquisite elegance in the 
 Apostohc writers, even supposing that the authors received 
 their language by miraculous infusion ; for polish of style 
 is a quahty, which, even in the ordinary afiau's of human 
 life, is accounted but of inferior value, and often obhged 
 to give way to higher and more essential -requisites. 
 Matter, rather than manner, in important subjects, is to be 
 regarded. If Newton had written his Principia, 'not in 
 his own neat Latinity,' but in a style less correct and 
 accurate, what should we think of the man who, though 
 
 * Leiand's Dissertation, p. 43. 
 
1763.] PIUED's SAECASTIC NOTICE OF LELAND. 547 
 
 capable of following him through all his stupendous in- 
 vestigations, should yet sit down in wilful ignorance, lest 
 his taste should be shocked with phrases not exactly- 
 Ciceronian ? Or if we knew that a man could teach us 
 a sure method of growing rich, should we be unwilling 
 to receive his directions because we dishked the language 
 in which they were conveyed ? Or would a person re- 
 duced by sickness to the point of death, reject the advice 
 of an experienced physician, because his prescriptions were 
 inelegantly expressed? We should be satisfied, in these 
 cases, if the language sufficed to communicate the requi- 
 site information ; and we may be satisfied, for the same 
 reason, observes Leland, with the language of the Evange- 
 hsts and Apostles ; in which we need desire only clearness 
 and simplicity of statement, earnestness of address, and 
 whatever other properties are essential to the language of 
 mankind in general, constituting ' that real and substantial 
 eloquence which no particularities of diction can impair, 
 which does not depend on a nice conformity to the rules 
 of any language, but can abide the severe test of a 
 Longinus, and must approve itself to all nations, tongues, 
 and ages.' * 
 
 Such was the reasoning of Leland, addressed to War- 
 burton in language temperate and not uncourteous. But 
 Hurd thought proper to answer it, on behalf of his master, 
 in a tone of sarcasm and contemptuousness, affecting 
 to know nothing of him but what he had heard of his 
 writings ; but to be wilhng to think favourably of a scholar, 
 who, they say, employs himself in works of learning and 
 taste, and to feel concern at the hurt he was likely to do 
 himself by engaging in controversy with a icriter of 
 such distinguished eminence as Warburton. Hurd's 
 pamphlet, which Parr republished, we have occasion to 
 notice elsewhere. 
 
 * Leland's Dissertation, pp. 41, 42, 50, 68, 7G, 89, 92, 93, 98. 
 
 l« N 2 
 
548 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 During this year Warburton had a shght illness, caus- 
 ing some alarm at Prior Park ; but it passed off without 
 any material consequences.* But in the early part of the 
 following year he had a far more serious affliction ; he 
 fell down in the garden, and broke his left arm, which, 
 at his age, was a sad disaster. It was some time before 
 the bone was united ; and he complained, for months 
 afterwards, of numbness in his wrist and fingers. ' The 
 surgeon's over care,' he writes to Dr. Attwell in April, 
 ' and my lying in bed too long, with my hand motionless, 
 has deprived me of the use of my wrist. I have apphed 
 many things of the same mtention with a bullock's paunch,' 
 which Dr. Attwell appears to have recommended him. 
 ' If it does not mend faster very soon,' he adds, ' I shall 
 apply to what the physical people here call their sovereign 
 remedy, the Bath pump.' f In the following September 
 he acquainted the same correspondent that a quarter of a 
 year's pumping had restored aU but his thumb and fore- 
 finger. It was well, he said, that he was left the use of 
 his sword arm. He also used oils recommended by his 
 friend Dr. Stukeley ; and his habitual temperance was of 
 effect in promoting the healing. J 
 
 His wife was also much indisposed in April and May, 
 but, after languishing for weeks under the Bath physicians, 
 and resolving, as a last resource, to go to a German Spa, 
 she recovered in London under the care of Dr. Heberden 
 and Dr. Letherland.§ 
 
 He appeared, however, in some force in the House of 
 Lords in November, in which month Parhament assembled. 
 Lord Hahfax sent him notice that it was desirable he 
 should be present at the opening of the session, and, in 
 
 * Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 85. 
 
 + Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 266, 267. 
 j Nicliols's Lit. IRustr. vol. ii. pp. 56-58, 143 ; Letters from an 
 Eminent Prelate, pp. 340-347. 
 
 § Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 346. 
 
1763.] AFILKES'S SLANDERS. 549 
 
 about a week after he liad come to town for the purpose, 
 Lord Sandwich came to him from Lord Hahfax, to show 
 him Wilkes's parodies on Pope's ' Universal Prayer,' on 
 the Veni Creator, and above all, on Pope's 'Essay on 
 Man,' which was travestied into an Essay on Woman, 
 accompanied with ' Notes and a Commentary,' in the form 
 of those on Pope's works, and professedly written 'by 
 Dr. Warburton.' Lord Sandwich desired to know whether 
 he would wish to have Wilkes prosecuted for a breach of 
 privilege. Warburton repHed that, though he was dia- 
 bohcally treated, in having his name attached to such 
 lewdness and blasphemy, yet that he so much despised the 
 man, as being infinitely beneath him, that he was hardly 
 inclined to prosecute him unless the King desired it as for 
 Ms service. Lord Sandwich declared that his Majesty 
 desired it greatly ; and it was agreed between them that 
 Lord Sandwich should bring the matter before the House 
 on the following day, when Warburton would say what 
 he thought necessary. 
 
 The matter was weU arranged, and brought forward in 
 a very fuU house. Lord Sandwich (who was himself, it 
 may be observed, no example of morality, and had parti- 
 cipated in the orgies of Medmenliam Abbey with the man 
 whom he was now going to assail), entered upon his 
 statement with many expressions of horror. It was 
 necessary, in order to support the charge, that some 
 portions of the ' Essay on Woman ' should be read, and 
 Lord Sandwich read such passages as he thought would 
 not be too offensive. While he was reading, Lord 
 Lyttelton rose, and, afiecting to be shocked, desired that 
 no more might be read. The House, however, said 
 ' Go on.' Lord Sandwich then finished reading those 
 parts which he had selected, and was then expected to call 
 witnesses to prove Wilkes to be the author. But before 
 the witnesses were brought forward, Warburton stood up, 
 and dehvered the following speech. He appears to have 
 
550 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 written it in full before it was spoken. An exact copy 
 was sent the day after to Ealph Allen. 
 
 ' My Lords, being made a party to this prosecution, 
 till your Lordships had come to some determination, I 
 thought it most decent to keep silent. 
 
 ' But now, the duty I owe to this House, and the 
 reverence every honest man owes to his own character, 
 whose just boast it is nulld pallescere culpa, force me to 
 beg your Lordships' indulgence for a few moments. 
 
 ' It is with just concern apprehended, I say, that some 
 noble Lords, distinguished for their honour and virtue 
 both in pubhc and private hfe, have appeared not unAvil- 
 ling, as opportunity offered, to soften the edge of justice 
 on this occasion. Their arguments I shah leave with aU 
 their weight ; their motives, I am sure, did not want the 
 due share of generosity and honour. But I apprehend 
 there may be a prejudice which will deserve to be 
 examined. It is founded, I suppose, in a certain suspicion 
 that the pure love of virtue and rehgion, unmixed with 
 the intrigues and resentments of ministers of state, did not 
 set this prosecution on foot. 
 
 ' Now, not to insist on so uncandid a suspicion, where 
 the crime is so very enormous, let us for a moment 
 suppose that the prosecution was not quite free from the 
 mixtiu-e objected to it ; I would beg leave to ask those 
 noble Lords (so well acquainted with the history of 
 ancient and modern times), whether they have ever found, 
 throughout the whole story of manldnd, any great and 
 general good obtained, or any enormous evil suppressed, 
 when human passions did not mix themselves with the 
 work of that reformer ? 
 
 ' Was the Great Charter obtained and secured by disin- 
 terested patriots, out of pure love to the people's liberties? 
 Your Lordships best knoAV that it was Avrested from the 
 Crown by a factious, turbu.lent, and ambitious baronage, 
 
1763.] SPEECH AGAINST WILKES. 551 
 
 into whose hearts the love of the people never entered, in 
 order to share the sovereign power with their master. 
 
 ' Was the avarice, the usurpation, and the superstition 
 of the Church of Eome overturned on the virtuous prin- 
 ciple, the vindication of the rights of mankind ? Do we 
 not all knoAv that that dreadful enchantment, which had 
 for so many ages bound up the intellects of a whole 
 people, was broken and dissolved by the rapine, the 
 pride, and the luxurious passions of a single man ? 
 
 ' To descend from generals to particulars. These latter 
 times have seen, on different occasions, the highest magis- 
 trates of justice exemplarily arraigned and punished for 
 gross corruption in the execution of their office ; but who 
 is so ignorant as not to know that those salutary prosecu- 
 tions owed their birth to the displeasure and resentments 
 of favourites and ministers of state ? 
 
 ' Alas ! were we to stay for reformation tUl pure 
 virtue set reformers on work, we must wait for the return 
 of that Platonic vision when Virtue is to appear in all 
 her blaze of charms in person. 
 
 ' Surely it is enough for us that, in the present case, 
 Virtue's most august, most spotless representative, has 
 directed this offender to be brought to justice. 
 
 ' If the prosecution has not escaped censure, the prose- 
 cutor, we may be sure, would be less covertly attacked. 
 A noble Lord, when this affair was last in agitation, told 
 a story, and seemed to recommend it as worthy to have 
 been followed in the present case. As his Lordship was 
 pleased to represent it, it was this. A tract of Servetus 
 fen into the hands of Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, and 
 he chose rather to suppress than to prosecute it. 
 
 ' Let us examine, then, the pretended likeness in the 
 two cases. 
 
 ' 1. Servetus had been dead near two hundred years ; 
 so here was no offender to be found. And this is all the 
 likeness under the first head. 
 
552 LIFK OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 ' 2. Again, Serve tus had, unhappily, entertained some 
 tlieologic tenets which the Church justly terms heresy ; 
 and for these he was most cruelly and iniquitously burnt at 
 Geneva. But Servetus was serious, was virtuous, was a 
 scholar. Mr. Wilkes you all know to be a buffoon without 
 wit, and a debauchee without dehcacy, and a fine gentle- 
 man (as I thiak they call them) without letters. His 
 performances were suitable to his character and talents. 
 They consisted of the most horrid insults on religion, 
 virtue and humanity, and the most shocking blasphemies 
 against the Almighty; which would have subjected him 
 to the faggot, not only in the little State of Geneva, but 
 in every country on the globe (where a God and Provi- 
 dence is confessed), from Calais to Japan. And this is all 
 the hkeness under the third. 
 
 ' 3. Again, none of the followers of Servetus had the 
 insolence to put Dr. Gibson's name to a number of notes 
 supporting their master's impieties ; but Mr. Wilkes has 
 taken the liberty to put Dr. Warburton's name to a series 
 of notes which countenance and even outdo the bestiality 
 and blasphemy of his doggrel. And this is all the simili- 
 tude I can find under the third. 
 
 ' On the whole, then, I suppose your Lordships wih be 
 ready to agree with me that in the case of Servetus, the 
 Bishop of Gloucester would have done as the Bishop of 
 London did, and that in the case of Mr. Wilkes, the 
 Bishop of London would have acted as the Bishop of 
 Gloucester has done. 
 
 ' To conclude, I have, my Lords, given my name to this 
 prosecution out of a pure sense of my duty to God and 
 the King. Li this my private resentments had no share. 
 Yet for this I have been further calumniated and outraged 
 in the most viUanous and diabolic manner. 
 
 ' As to enemies of a better rank (if this prosecution has 
 raised up any such against me), virtue whispers me, tu 
 co7itra audentior ito ; and as to the natural movements to 
 
1763.] PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 553 
 
 revenge and vengeance for tlie calumnies and villanies of 
 cut-throat libellers, I offer them all up at the sacred shrine 
 of religion.' 
 
 When Warburton concluded, Lord Sandwich proceeded 
 to examine the witnesses, and had no difficulty in fixing 
 the authorship on Wilkes, who, it appeared, had sent the 
 manuscript of the parodies to the press, had corrected the 
 proofs, and had observed that the compositions cost him 
 great care and labour. Thirteen copies only had been 
 printed, which Wilkes, who had dispersed them among 
 his friends, endeavoured to recal before Parliament met, 
 and thought that he had succeeded. 
 
 It came out, in the course of the examination, that some 
 letters of Wilkes, which were produced to confirm the 
 charge against him, had been seized by a general warrant 
 from the Secretary of State. When they were laid before 
 the House, Lord Temple said that he had as great an 
 abhorrence of the parodies as any Lord in the House 
 (though, according to Warburton, it was generally reported 
 that he had at that moment copies of them in his posses- 
 sion, and had been showing them to others with great 
 dehght) ; but that whatever testimony was brought against 
 the accused ought to be legally obtained, as the hberty of 
 the subject was concerned in the proceeding. He was 
 seconded by Lord Sandys, and answered by Lord Sand- 
 wich, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Hahfax, and Lord Chan- 
 cellor Thurlow. Lord Temple still urged his objection, 
 tiU Lord Mansfield ended the dispute by observing that 
 the acquisition of evidence illegally does not render the 
 evidence itself illegal ; for evidence of any kind, in what- 
 ever manner brought to fight, may be used to further the 
 ends of justice. The u'reteA, therefore, as Warburton caUs 
 him, was pronounced guilty by the House of Lords ; and 
 the House was proceeding to vote upon the case, when 
 Lord Mansfield, again interposing, said he doubted whether 
 
554 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBURTOlSr. [Cir. XXIX. 
 
 it would be regular to vote till Wilkes had been lieard in 
 his defence. Lord Sandwich then said that, from regard 
 to that doubt, he would defer the voting till the following 
 day. 
 
 While this affair was in agitation in the House of Lords, 
 the House of Commons, in consequence of a message from 
 the King, were debating whether No. 45 of the ' North 
 Briton,' in which his Majesty had been accused of false- 
 hood in his speech to Parliament, was a seditious hbel or 
 not. Martin, the member for Camelford, who had been 
 violently assailed in the ' North Briton,' inveighed bitterly 
 against anonymous slanderers, when Wilkes owned him- 
 self the author of the paper, and Martin immediately 
 challenged him to fight on the following morning. When 
 they met, Wilkes was so severely wounded as to be incap- 
 able of appearing in Parhament. But, in his absence, the 
 House of Lords voted an address to the King, praying 
 that Wilkes, with his aiders and abetters, might be prose- 
 cuted by the Attorney-General for blasphemy ; and voted 
 also that the offence against Warburton ought to be 
 punished by the House itself During tlie debates in the 
 House of Commons, when No. 45 of the ' North Briton ' 
 Avas voted a seditious libel, a vote in which the House of 
 Lords concurred, Pitt, who had the lawyers against him, 
 declared that the impious man who had occasioned the 
 dispute, and had blasphemed God and the King, ought to 
 be thrust out of the House, stretching out his crutch at 
 the same time in the manner of a man driving a noxious 
 animal from him.* 
 
 Warburton also delivered himself to the following effect, 
 a few days afterwards, before the House of Lords : 
 
 ' My Lords, the life and health which Providence has 
 been graciously pleased to bestow upon me have been all 
 employed (and, I hope, neither unfruitfuUy nor inglo- 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 224-232. 
 
1763.] SECOND SPEECH AGAINST WILKES. 655 
 
 riously) in the service of religion ; in defending revelation, 
 and the Estabhshed Church of this land, against the rude 
 attacks of ribald writers of all denominations, atheists, 
 deists, hbertines, free-thinkers, bigots, and fanatics, and, 
 what is the accumulation of aU that is execrable in one, 
 pohtical scribblers of all sides and parties, the trumpeters, 
 the incendiaries, of sedition and confusion. 
 
 ' These services, my Lords, have brought down upon 
 me a fierce and dirty torrent of abuse and slander from 
 all quarters ; in which, however, not one opprobrious fact 
 ever imputed to my life (if any such have been imputed) 
 was true, nor one fallacious argument ever imputed to 
 my writings has been proved ; so that my usual revenge 
 was silence and contempt. 
 
 ' This is the first time, my Lords, that I ever applied 
 to public justice for assistance ; not for myself or my 
 writings, for while I have the hydra infidelity at my feet, 
 I can well bear with its hisses ; nor yet for this reverend 
 bench, though I know how severely they feel for every 
 insult offered to religion ; no, my Lords, it is for rehgion 
 itself, for civil society, yea, even for our common humanity, 
 all most audaciously insulted by this man. 
 
 ' And how insulted ? With the arms of a gentleman 
 and a scholar ? With wit or with argument ? For these 
 have been too often abused and misapplied in support of 
 rehgion and impiety. No, my Lords, nor with the arms 
 even of a man, or of one who appears to bear any relation 
 to the human species ; but with such arms as the demons 
 of lust and blasphemy might be supposed to use when let 
 loose to blot the fair face of day and natm-e. 
 
 ' But I injure these elder sons of perdition by my com- 
 parison ; for let the most poetical imagination set himself 
 on work to conceive how 
 
 Devils with devils damn'd hold converse ; 
 
 and, when he had put his fancy on the rack, he would 
 
556 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBUKTON'. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 still find himself infinitely short of tlie horrors of these 
 portentous parodies, which, if suffered to go unpunished, 
 not a hundred acts of national humiliation would be suffi- 
 cient to expiate and atone ; in which there is so foul a 
 mixture of sensuality interlarding his fearful blasphemies, 
 that the hardiest inliabitant of hell would blush, as well 
 as tremble, to hear repeated.' * 
 
 It was expected by many that Warburton, when he got 
 into the House of Lords, would be eager to make frequent 
 displays of eloquence, and be ready to put himself forward 
 on every possible occasion. But these oratorical attempts 
 which we have here noticed, must, if delivered as he wrote 
 them down, have sounded but stiff and tame. ' I have 
 heard of a certain minister,' says Hurd, 'who dreaded 
 Warburton's promotion, and thought he saw a second 
 Atterbmy in the new Bishop of Gloucester. But all such 
 were egregiously mistaken. Alas ! he had neither talents 
 nor inchnation for parhamentary intrigue or parhamentary 
 eloquence. He had other instruments of fame and con- 
 sideration in his hands, and was infinitely above the vanity 
 of being caught 
 
 "With the fine notion of a busy man, 
 
 as one of our poets well expresses it.' f 
 
 The Duke of Cumbei'land, as Warburton himself relates, 
 came up to him one day, as he was sitting, with some 
 other bishops, on the Episcopal bench. ' My lords,' said 
 the Duke, ' it is observed that you always keep silence, 
 and except you,' addressing Warburton, ' I never heard 
 any of the bishops speak.' ' Sir,' said I (as Warburton 
 records his own words), ' whenever I hear religion or the 
 bench insulted, your Eoyal Highness shall hear me speak 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 281. 
 ■j- Kurd's Life of Warburton, p. 72. 
 
1763.] gibbon's character OF WILKES. 557 
 
 in their vindication.' ' Aye, but why will not your Lord- 
 ships speak on other occasions ? ' ' Sir,' replied I, 
 ' haranguing in this assembly is a trade Hke other trades, 
 and generally the bishops come to this bench so far ad- 
 vanced in years as to be too old to learn. Besides, Sir,' 
 said I, ' we have been long accustomed to severe reason 
 and exact method ; so that we would be as much at a 
 loss to talk nonsense as some others, more habituated, to 
 talk sense.' * 
 
 "Wilkes deserved all that Warburton, and all that any- 
 body else, said against him, except that he was a fine 
 gentleman without letters. He had a considerable portion 
 of classical learning, but his mind 
 
 Was never yet with Honour caught, 
 Nor on poor Virtue lost one thought. 
 
 Let those who are disposed to think more favourably 
 concerning him, read the following character of him by 
 Gibbon, a perfectly impartial observer, who wrote it 
 immediately after dining with him at mess when he was 
 a Colonel of the Buckinghamshire Mihtia. ' He has in- 
 exhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, but [is] a 
 thorough profligate in principle as in practice, his life 
 stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blas- 
 phemy and indecency. These morals he glories in ; for 
 shame is a weakness he has long since surmounted. He 
 told us himself that in this time of public dissension he 
 was resolved to make his fortune.'-f Such was the dema- 
 gogue whom the deluded or designing extolled as a 
 patriot ! 
 
 Among his 'aiders and abetters,' in his attacks upon 
 the King, and other great personages, in the 'North 
 Briton,' was the writer from whom we have borrowed the 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 342. 
 f Gibbon's Misc. Works, vol. i. p. 144. 
 
558 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Cs. XXIX. 
 
 preceding couplet, which, we need hardly say, he does not 
 apply to Wilkes, whom, on the contrary, he pronounces 
 to be honoured through the land, and whose chief or only 
 crime was that he loved his country too well. He even 
 couples his name with that of Algernon Sydney, and says 
 that 
 
 Old Time himself, his scythe thrown by, 
 Himself lost in eternity, 
 An everlasting crown shall twine. 
 To make a Wilkes and Sydney join.* 
 
 In moral feelings and practice, Wilkes and Churchill, though 
 Churchill doubtless 'at times showed himself less black than 
 Wilkes, were, on the whole, well suited to each other, and it 
 is therefore no wonder that, when they once came into con- 
 tact, they formed that sort of connexion, which, as Cicero 
 says, is between the good called friendship, and between the 
 bad confederacy. Churchill assisted Wilkes in the ' North 
 Briton,' supplying prose, however, of an inferior quahty to 
 his verses ; and when Wilkes, as he well deserved, was 
 reprobated by Warburton in the House of Lords, Churchill 
 was ready to hft his pen in his defence. To this end he 
 produced the vehement and coarse satire on Warburton 
 in the third book of the ' Duellist,' which I have no inten- 
 tion to transfer from ChurchUl's pages to these. ChurchUl 
 was a powerful satirist, but so ready to satirise everybody, 
 and so unwilling to find anything to commend in any 
 body, that his satire has been of Httle effect ; he was a 
 blustering railer, prepared, hke Boreas, to blow on good 
 or bad indiscriminately. Mr. Martin, a man of unre- 
 proached character, is visited by him with as heavy blasts 
 of invective as Lord Sandwich. 
 
 Churchill was sadly, though not totally, deficient in that 
 which Leslie the painter has called the first requisite of a 
 poet, a true perception of moral beauty, and his verses, 
 
 * Duellist, b. i. sub fin. 
 
1763.] CHURCHILL. 
 
 559 
 
 with the exception of a very few couplets, have fallen 
 deservedly into neglect. 
 
 Is tliis the land that boasts a Milton's fire, 
 
 And magic Spenser's wildly warbling lyre? 
 
 The land that owns th' omnipotence of song, 
 
 Where Shakspeare whirls the throbbing heart along ? 
 
 The land where Pope, with energy divine. 
 
 In one strong blaze bade wit and fancy shine ? 
 
 And shall a Bufo's most polluted name 
 
 Stain the bright tablet of untainted fame ? 
 
 Shall his disgraceful name with theirs be join'd. 
 
 Who wish'd and wrought the welfare of their kind ? 
 
 His name accursed, who, leagued with Wilkes and hell, 
 
 Labour'd to rouse, with rude and murderous yell, 
 
 Discord the fiend, to toss rebellion's brand. 
 
 To whelm in rage and woe a guiltless land. 
 
 To fi'ustrate wisdom's, virtue's noblest plan, 
 
 And triumph in the miseries of man ! 
 
 Drivelling and dull, where crawls the reptile muse 
 Swoln from the sty, and rankling from the stews. 
 With envy, spleen, and pestilence replete. 
 And gorg'd with dust she lick'd from Treason's feet, 
 Wlio once, like Satan, raised to heaven her sight. 
 But turn'd abhoiTcnt fr-om the hated light — 
 O'er such a muse shall wreaths of glory bloom ? 
 No — shame and execration be her doom. 
 
 Walpole, always ready to abuse Warburton, makes 
 merry with the part which he acted on this occasion m 
 the House of Lords, a part ' which,' he says, ' was only 
 ridiculous,' and ' was heightened,' he adds, ' by its being 
 known that Potter, his wife's gallant, had had the chief 
 hand in the composition of the verses.' * 
 
 There was indeed a report that Thomas Potter, the 
 profligate member of Parliament, son of the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, an intimate associate of Wilkes, and a fre- 
 quent visitor at Prior Park,f had paid extraordinary atten- 
 
 * Walpole's Letters, i. 312. 
 
 ■j- Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vol. iv. p. 41. 
 
5G0 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTOlSr. [Ch. XXIX. 
 
 tion to Mrs. Warburton ; and scandal went even so far as 
 to insinuate that Ealph Allen Warburton, her only child, 
 was the son, not of the Bishop, but of Potter.* Mr. 
 Cradock, who knew Mrs. Warburton well, and w;is kindly 
 disposed towards her, admits that ' the public had much 
 to say against her ;' for, notwithstanding the good sense 
 which she was allowed to possess, she was sometimes 
 guilty of foohsh frivohty, as an instance of which Mr. 
 Cradock relates that she once, in sport, scared away a 
 candidate for ordination, by representing the Bishop as 
 so terrific a person that she herself dared hardly look 
 him in the face. Such playfulness might make people 
 talk. But Mr. Cradock observes, at the same time, that 
 she seemed always to entertain much respect for the 
 Bishop, and ' to feel a pecuhar satisfaction,' both during 
 his life and after his death,' in recounting his many ex- 
 cellences.' f 
 
 That Potter had some concern in the composition of the 
 ' Essay on Woman,' may be inferred from the hue in 
 Churchill's ' Dedication ' to the ' Great Gloucester,' in 
 allusion to his speech in the House of Lords, 
 
 And Potter trembles even in his grave. 
 
 And there is other evidence, besides Walpole's, to the same 
 purpose. Endeavours have even been made to prove 
 that Potter was the author of the whole, and that Wilkes 
 was guUty only of the printing. J But Wilkes himself 
 seems to have shown no anxiety to clear himself of the 
 authorship, and none need be solicitous to do for him 
 what he cared not to do for himself If the charge of 
 writing the parody was altogether groundless, why did he 
 never deny it ? Had he so strong a desire for infamy as 
 to clothe himself with that to which he was not entitled ? 
 
 * Prior's Life of Malone, p. 445. 
 
 ■\ Cradook's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. i. p. 188; iv. p. 205. 
 
 i Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vol. iv. pp. 1, 21, 41 ; v. 77. 
 
1764.] DEATH OF ALLEN. 561 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 CONTEOVERST WITH LOWTH. 
 
 death of ralph aulen his bequests to waeburton wak- 
 
 burtqn's failing health — lowth's lectures, in which war- 
 burton FANCIES HIMSELF ATTACKED LOWTH's OBSERVATIONS 
 
 lowth's father; his commentaries TOWNE's EXAMINATION OF 
 
 SHERLOCK'S SERMONS ; OCCASIONS A SECOND CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN 
 
 WARBORTON AND LOWTH LOWTh'S LONG LETTER TO WAEBURTON J 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM IT DIFFERENCE IN EARLY EDUCATION BETWEEN 
 
 WARBUETON AND LOWTH WHITAKFE JOHNSOn'S REMARKS ON THE 
 
 CONTROVERSY HURD's SUPERCILIOUS MENTION OF LOWTH AND SECKER 
 
 — Cumberland's pamphlet against lowth. 
 
 IN the month of June, 1764, died Warburton's amiable 
 patron, Ealph Allen. This event, said the Honourable 
 Charles Yorke, writing to Warburton shortly afterwards, 
 must cause the greatest grief to us both ; ' to myself, who 
 regret a friend, and to your Lordship, who mourns a 
 parent,' for ' such he truly was to all mankind, to all who 
 came within the reach of his care and bounty. In short, 
 he was a rare example of piety and charity ; one of those 
 excellent persons who always die too soon for the world. 
 He ^vill be sincerely and universally lamented ; and that 
 circumstance I have often thought a pleasing advantage 
 which amiable and benevolent men have over the great 
 and ambitious.' * 
 
 The munificence which he had practised in his life he 
 did not omit to observe in his will. He left many hand- 
 some legacies to his friends and dependents, and for 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 508. 
 
 
562 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 purposes of charity. To Warburton and his wife he 
 bequeathed 5,000/. each ; and the reversion of Prior Park 
 and the lands adjoining, with the estate of Claverton, of 
 about 3,000/. a year, to Mrs. Warburton on Mrs. Allen's 
 death. Mrs. Allen survived her husband only two years. 
 
 Warburton's health, however, was now becoming such as 
 to detract from the enjoyment of additional wealth. He 
 complains, in a letter to Hurd, of his usual dizziness, for 
 which he was going to be bled. 
 
 This year also was marked by his great controversy 
 with Lowth, with whom he had had some not very 
 friendly correspondence, in reference to 'The Divine 
 Legation,' several years before. 
 
 When Lowth published his Lectures de Sacrd Poesi 
 HehrcEorwn, Warburton thought that certain remarks in 
 them were aimed, particularly and offensively, against 
 portions of his own work. He accordingly spoke to two 
 of his friends, whom Lowth calls Dr. C. and Mr. S.,* on 
 the subject, and requested them to communicate his 
 opinion to Lowth. This commission they executed, and 
 Lowth rephed by a letter, in which he said that he had 
 felt obliged to differ in opinion, especially about the Book 
 of Job, from many writers of great authority, as Grotius, 
 Le Clerc, Bishop Hare, Warburton himself, and others 
 whom it was unnecessary to name ; and that the chief 
 points which he maintained, in opposition to them, were, 
 that the Book of Job was the most ancient book extant ; 
 that it had no reference to the affairs of the Israehtes ; 
 and that it was neither allegorical nor properly dramatic. 
 ' You seem to think,' he tells Warburton, ' that I ought 
 to have quoted you, or referred to your book ; and a 
 friend of yours charges me with writing against you, and 
 be'ing afraid of you. Your friend is mistaken in both 
 these particulars ; and the ground of your complaint I 
 
 * Lowth's First Letter to "Warburton, Sept. 9, 1756. 
 
1764.J LOWTH'S first DISPUTE WITH WAEBURTON. 663 
 
 cannot possibly comprehend. Why should I single out 
 you, and attack you for opinions which were common to 
 you with twenty other authors of note ? Would this have 
 been a mark of respect to you? Would it not rather 
 have argued a busy and Htigious spirit in me ? There 
 were several living writers of great learning and eminence, 
 who stood just in the same situation, with regard to me, 
 that you did. ... I have never heard that any of those 
 gentlemen have been offended with me for acting with 
 respect to them just in the same manner as I have done 
 with respect to you.' 
 
 After alluding to two or three passages, in which War- 
 burton thought himself designated, but which were not 
 directed against him more than against others, and ob- 
 serving that his Lectures, and every expression in them, 
 might have stood just as they do now, though Warburton's 
 remarks on Job had never been written, he adds, with a 
 just reflection on Hurd, ' I beg the continuance of that 
 regard and esteem which you have been so kind as to ex- 
 press towards me ; I will not teU you how highly I shall 
 prize it ; your friend, the author of the " Dissertation on 
 the Dehcacy of Friendship," has stopped my mouth, and 
 makes me very cautious of saying anything that may be 
 construed into flattery or fear of you.' He then says that 
 he leaves his opinions, which he is still inclined to retain, 
 but of which he is not so fond as to love disputing for 
 them, to such treatment from Warburton as his own cause 
 and the cause of truth may seem to require : ' As to the 
 manner in which you shall treat them,' he concludes, ' I 
 shall be very httle concerned about it. If you use me 
 otherwise than I deserve, your own character will suffer, 
 and not mine. Lay aside all regard to me upon this 
 occasion, but respect yourself and the public' 
 
 This letter, as may perhaps be supposed, had httle 
 effect in propitiatmg Warburton. He persisted in point- 
 ing out passages which he says must have been intended 
 
 o o 2 
 
5C4 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 against him. One of these is as follows : Hoc autem ut 
 concedamus, vix erit satis ; sunt qui majus quiddam pos- 
 tulare videntur. Loquuniur enim de rerum constitutione, 
 de catastrophe dramatis, ©sov oltto [jLrj^uvrjg induci dicunt — 
 iisdem certh voeibus utuntur. ' When I read this,' says 
 Warburton, ' I could no longer doubt that I only was 
 meant, because I speak of all these things ; and of the God 
 from the machine no one could speak but me ; because no 
 one else, in their interpretations of the Book of Job, con- 
 tended for the thing understood by it. You seem your- 
 self to have been sensible that this needed a softening, by 
 your correction, iisdem certe voeibus utuntur.' Lowth, in 
 his reply, refers Warblirton to a passage of Calmet's ' Pre- 
 face sur Job,' in which exactly the same expression is used : 
 ' II s'est trouve plusieurs ecrivains qui ont doute de la 
 verite de I'histoire qu'il contient. lis traitent de paraboles 
 et d'allegories tout ce qui y est raconte. lis veulent que 
 Job, &c., soient de noms feints et empruntes ; que tout ce 
 recit soit fait k plaisir ; une piece de poesie ; non ce qui 
 etoit en effet, mais ce qui pouvoit etre.' He then gives an 
 account of the conduct and speeches of the book, and says, 
 ' Dieu entre dans cette dispute, paroit dans un tourbillon, 
 comme Ton dit, Deus e machind. Quoi de plus semblable 
 que tout cela k une trag^die ? ' ' And why,' he asks, 
 ' should I not have had Calmet in my thoughts as much 
 as yourself? Or I might, indeed, have been supposed to 
 have my mind on Bishop Hare, who declares that the 
 Book of Job is indisputably a drama, divisible into seven 
 acts, in the last of which God appears to produce the 
 catastrophe.' 
 
 On this point Warburton said no more. But he had 
 remarked to Lowth, in one passage : ' You tell me you 
 are not afraid of me. All I will say to this is, that who- 
 ever injures me may not, in the long run, have reason to 
 applaud ]iis situation. But no man need be afraid of him 
 he has not injured. And I am very ready to beheve that 
 
1764.] LOWTH'S FATHER. 565 
 
 it is a consciousness of that, which makes you so brave. 
 For my own part, I am not fond of resenting that as an 
 injury which was never intended.' 
 
 To this Lowth replies : ' You guess the true reason of 
 my not being afraid of you, and I will give you the 
 reason why I told you so. After what your friend [Hurd] 
 had published to the world, and what you had said your- 
 self, (for your dread of an explanation was attended with 
 a sort of denunciation of your resentment in case of a 
 refusal, or an unsatisfactory account of myself,) I thought 
 it incumbent on me to tell you explicitly, and to repeat 
 it, that I was not to be frightened. I should not have 
 thought of setting forth my bravery if I had not first 
 been called a coward, and accordingly looked upon as 
 one that was to be awed by menaces.' 
 
 But there was another complaint that Lowth had 
 against Warburton. Lowth's father, a learned divine, 
 who published ' Commentaries on the Prophets,' and 
 other theological works, had written also ' Notes on 
 Josephus and the Ecclesiastical Historians,' of which 
 Eeading had copied some into his echtion. Warburton, 
 fixing on one of these in his ' Juhan,' had charged the 
 writer with uncharitableness towards Basnage, in accus- 
 ing him of wilfully suppressing the well-known pas- 
 sage of Ammianus Marcellinus. Against this charge 
 Lowth strongly remonstrated, and remarked also that, as 
 his father had previously appUed the account of the 
 meteoric crosses in Casaubon's ' Adversaria ' to the phe- 
 nomena at the temple, it would have been but just and 
 generous in Warburton to have acknowledged his obli- 
 gation for the indication of the passage ; expressing his 
 expectation, at the same time, that Warburton would 
 supply this omission in a future edition of ' Julian.' 
 
 Warburton immediately replied that he had never had 
 the least suspicion that the Lowth who had written the 
 ' Notes on the Ecclesiastical Historians,' was Dr. Lowth's 
 
566 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 father ; that if he had known it, he would have forgiven 
 all that was said in the ' Lectures,' since the injurer of 
 his father's memory assuredly deserved no quarter from 
 him ; and that he would erase the note reflecting on his 
 father on the first opportunity : a promise which he kept, 
 for the note is not to be found ia the later editions. As 
 to the accusation of having taken a hint from the elder 
 Lowth, without acknowledgment, he said, ' That I may 
 not continue worse in your esteem than I deserve, give 
 me leave to tell you I am no plagiary of your father's 
 observations. By an odd fancy to a strange unequal 
 writer, I had read Meric Casaubon's writings through and 
 through ; and I had finished my book of " Julian," and 
 it was half printed off, when Dr. Jortin wrote me word 
 of this note of Mr. L.'s. This is a point of honour in 
 which I am particularly dehcate. I will venture to boast 
 that I beheve no author was ever more averse to take to 
 himself what belonged to another.' ' To your fihal piety,' 
 he adds, ' I am ready to sacrifice every disgust that some 
 parts of your last might be naturally supposed to give 
 me.' He then concludes by expressing his willingness 
 to be in friendship with Lowth, and observes that there 
 was a vacancy among the King's chaplains, of which he 
 should be glad to find Lowth take advantage. 
 
 Lowth answered, with much courtesy, that he had 
 been unwilling to say anything in behalf of his father, 
 tUl he had first defended himself ; that in those portions 
 of his ' Lectures ' which had given offence to Warburton, 
 he would, though they were written, as he could prove, 
 before ' Juhan ' was pubhshed, soften or alter any ex- 
 pressions that Warburton disapproved ; that he had 
 meant to say nothing in his last letter but what War- 
 burton's remarks had fairly occasioned ; and that he Avas 
 going to Durham in the following week, when he hoped 
 to have frequent opportunities of improving the concord 
 now arising between them. Thus ended Lowth and 
 
1765.] TOWNE'S CBITICISM ON SHERLOCK. 567 
 
 Warburton's first correspondence about their matters of 
 dispute.* 
 
 Things remained quiet between them for a few years, 
 but Towne, in his ' Free and Candid Examination ' of 
 Bishop Sherlock's Sermons, had chosen to ask this ques- 
 tion, in allusion, apparently, to a passage of Lowth's 
 •• Lectures :' ' Where was idolatry ever punished by the 
 magistrate but under the Jewish economy ? ' Lowth, in 
 the second edition of his Lectures, pubhshed in 1763, 
 did not think it well to leave this inquiry unanswered, 
 and noticed it thus : ' It was punished under the economy 
 of the patriarchs, in the families and under the dominion 
 of Abraham, Melchisedec, and Job. As idolatry spread 
 itself more widely, Abraham was divinely called from 
 Chaldea, that he might become the father of a people, 
 which, set apart from aU other nations, might worship 
 the true God, might give an example of pure religion, 
 and bear testimony against the worship of false deities. 
 "Was it not, then, the special duty and office of Abraham, 
 exercising the sovereignty in his own family, to inflict 
 punishments on idolatry ? Was it not the duty of Mel- 
 chisedec, Job, and aU the chiefs of tribes of that period, 
 who still retained the knowledge and worship of the true 
 God, amidst an almost general defection of the surround- 
 ing nations, to take care that their own people did not 
 fall away ? Was it not incumbent on them to lay re- 
 straint on offenders, and to punish the obstinate and 
 rebellious, and such as spread the contagion of this 
 vice ? ' 
 
 On this passage Warburton, publishing a fourth edition 
 of ' The Divine Legation,' in 1765, took occasion, in an 
 Appendix to the sixth book, to animadvert, not in a 
 friendly or courteous style, but in his usual flippant and, 
 contemptuous manner, affecting to consider it ' so plea- 
 
 * Warburton's Works, vol. xii. pp. 444 — 463. 
 
568 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 sant an answer, and so little needing the masterly hand 
 of the Examiner to correct, that a few strictures in a 
 cursory note would be more than sufficient to do its 
 business.' He then denies that Lowth had any ground 
 for investing these old patriarchs, or chiefs of tribes, with 
 royal dignity ; sneers at him for making them act upon 
 a right of his own fancy ; assures him that ' such a set 
 of persecuting patriarchs is nowhere to be found but in a 
 poetical praslection ;' and warns him that the Examiner, 
 who had not spared Sherlock, would easily demohsh the 
 ' praslections,' if he should feel inclined to take them in 
 hand. Such an insolent tone, especially towards one for 
 whom the writer had recently professed friendship, there 
 was nothing in Lowth's observations to justify ; and he 
 accordingly prepared, with sufficient reason, to express 
 his resentment in a pamphlet. 
 
 This pamphlet, entitled ' A Letter to the Eight Eeve- 
 rend Author of the Divine Legation of Moses Demon- 
 strated,' had such attractions for the pubhc that it went 
 through four editions in the course of about eighteen 
 months. 
 
 Lowth begins by declaring himself much indebted to 
 Warburton for honouring him with an Appendix ap- 
 propriated to him alone ; an honour which he had 
 previously bestowed upon no one except Lord Bohng- 
 broke. He had heard, he says, that Warburton consi- 
 dered himself affronted, and ' You expressed your indig- 
 nation,' he tells him, ' to almost every one whom you met, 
 except to myself, whom you, at the same time, received 
 with fair words and a smooth countenance ; insomuch 
 that I was then really persuaded that what I had heard 
 of your resentment was all an idle and groundless report. 
 However, I did not imagine, either that the subject on 
 which we differed was so important in itself, or the person 
 who differed from you so considerable in your estimation, 
 as to merit so formal a process and so solemn a chastise- 
 
1765.] TOWNE'S subserviency TO WARBURTON. 569 
 
 ment. I thought you might possibly whip me at the 
 cart's tail, in a note to " The Divine Legation," the ordi- 
 nary place of your literary executions ; or pillory me in 
 the " Dunciad," another engine which, as legal proprietor, 
 you have very ingeniously and judiciously apphed to the 
 same purpose ; or, perhaps, have ordered me a kind of 
 Bridewell correction by one of your beadles in a pam- 
 phlet. I never flattered myself with the expectation of 
 being exhibited on a scaffold, erected on purpose for me, 
 and in so conspicuous a place. 
 
 ' You complain as if I had attacked you in a certain 
 note of mine. How so, my Lord ? My note expressly 
 referred to an anonyxQous book entitled ' A Free and 
 Candid Examination of the Bishop of London's Sermons,' 
 in which I was several times called to account with a 
 pecuhar air of insolence that marks the controversial 
 writings that come from a certain quarter. I answered 
 such of the Candid Examiner's objections as I thought 
 at all worth answering. . . . And pray, my Lord, what 
 is all this to you .? You will say, perhaps, " They 
 were my arguments." And pray, what is that to me ? 
 They were urged against me by the Candid Examiner ; 
 if they had come immediately from you, I would have 
 directed my answer to you. If I had taken the con- 
 trary method, and fallen upon you instead of the Candid 
 Examiner, you might then, with some reason, have repre- 
 sented me as a petulant and quarrelsome fellow, who 
 had attacked you " without the least provocation given." ' 
 
 Warburton, at the end of his second Preface to the 
 second part of ' The Divine Legation,' pubhshed in 
 1758, in which he attacked Dr. Taylor, had said that, 
 wishing to settle accounts with the bigots and others who 
 had signalised themselves against his work, he employed 
 a friend to look over their productions, and see what was 
 worthy of attention in them. ' I apphed,' says he, ' to 
 a learned person, who, in consideration of our friendship. 
 
570 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 hath been prevailed upon to undergo the drudgery of 
 turning over this dirty heap, and marking what he 
 imagined would in the least deserve, or could justify, 
 any notice ; for I would not have the reader conceive so 
 miserably of me as to think I was ever disposed to look 
 into them myself. He will find, as he goes along, both 
 in the text and the notes, what was thought least un- 
 worthy of an answer.' This scornful announcement, 
 with which Towne, humble follower of Warburton as he 
 was, could hardly have been much dehghted, Lowth did 
 not fail to turn to good account. 'After aU, you may 
 say,' he continues, ' that this is a mere evasion, and that 
 I must know that, in the present case, to attack the 
 Candid Examiner or you was, in effect, the same thing. 
 Why, really, my Lord, there is some truth in this ; I did 
 indeed suppose that there was an intimate union between 
 you and the Candid Examiner. I could not but observe 
 the same cause managed much in the same manner, and 
 much of the same spirit breathing in both. His book 
 came forth at least with your approbation ; you clapped 
 upon its head a prologus galeatus (for the public was not 
 mistaken, I beUeve, when it ascribed the Preface to you), 
 and while Uttle Teucer shot at all the leaders of Troy, 
 and had the vain ambition to think of vanquishing the 
 great Hector himself, he skulked behind the shade of the 
 mighty Telamonian shield, 
 
 — with seven thick folds o'ercast 
 Of tough bull- hides ; of solid brass the last. 
 
 I presume, my Lord, that the Candid Examiner is the 
 same person whom your Lordship, in regard to his 
 former services, some time since, preferred to the honour- 
 able office of being your hterary scavenger ; whose 
 patent stands upon record at the end of the second 
 Preface to the second part of "The Divine Legation." 
 I applaud your choice ; you could not easily have found 
 
1765.] SPECIMENS OP LOWTH'S SECOND LETTER. 571 
 
 a person more expert, not only in raking up dirt, but 
 (which is a still more useful qualification) in throwing it 
 too, than this Candid Gentleman ; and it must be sup- 
 posed that your connexion with him is of the closest 
 nature. Still further, my Lord, I will confess that I 
 think it probable, as from some other marks, so in par- 
 ticular from a notion which very often possesses this 
 writer's imagination, that all authors whatever, while 
 they are writing, think of nobody but you, and whatever 
 opinions they advance or confute, they aim at nothing 
 but " The Divine Legation ;" from hence, I say, I think 
 it probable that you had some hand in the book itself 
 But till you publicly acknowledge aU this, and lay in 
 your claim to your share of the performance, I shall still 
 think that any one, who has any matters to settle with 
 the Candid Examiner, is quite at hberty to do it in what 
 manner he thinks proper, without being in the least 
 accountable to your Lordship for so doing.' 
 
 In reference to their former correspondence, and its 
 seemingly amicable termination, Lowth expresses himself 
 very effectively : 
 
 ' You signified to me that you were offended, and called 
 upon me to answer to the charge of having dissented in 
 opinion from you. 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 ex- 
 ample in the republic of letters, and hardly to be paral- 
 leled among the disciples of Dommic ; exacting their 
 opinions to the standard of your infalhbility, and pro- 
 secuting -with implacable hatred every one that presumed 
 to differ from you. I knew that such a protest would 
 lead immediately to what I was willing to avoid. I 
 obeyed your summons ; I gave you by letter the account 
 
572 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 of myself which you demanded ; and, with due freedom, 
 but, I hope, with civihty and good manners, I asserted 
 my right of thinking for myself, and endeavoured to 
 remove the grounds of your resentment. The debate 
 ran out into some length, but ended in an amicable 
 manner, which was much to my satisfaction. You 
 perhaps may still suppose that I was afraid of you. I 
 will tell you fairly what I was really afraid of: I was 
 afraid that two members of the same ecclesiastical 
 society, engaging in an open quarrel and a hostile alter- 
 cation, (for such I knew it must be, when you were one 
 of the parties,) upon a difference of opinion, in a point 
 not only of no great importance, but so dubious as to be 
 incapable of being perfectly settled between them, would 
 make a contemptible figure, and exhibit a ridiculous 
 spectacle to the public' 
 
 As to the revival of the controversy, Lowth observes 
 that he was much surprised, after having been civilly 
 dismissed from his Lordship's presence, to find his foot- 
 man, meaning Towne, at the door, armed with his master's 
 cane, ready to lay it upon his back as he went out ; that 
 he wrested the weapon from him, and broke it, when his 
 Lordship, it seems, received an unlucky blow in the 
 scufile ; that it was a general complaint of the members 
 of the Eepublic of Letters, that they could not go peace- 
 ably on their business, along the public road, without 
 being liable to meet, at any time, a sturdy bravo to 
 dispute their passage ; that Warburton, in quahty 
 of Demonstrator-General of ' The Divine" Legation of 
 Moses,' (though Moses's Legation had often been de- 
 monstrated before, and might be demonstrated by any 
 young student in five pages better than Warburton had 
 demonstrated it in five volumes,) claimed power as Lord 
 Paramount over all the realms of science, and declared 
 that whoever failed of abject submission to him, or 
 offered only moderate praise, was guilty of malignant 
 
1765.] WAEBURTON'S DISRESPECT TO OXFORD. 573 
 
 parsimony, disrespect, and indignity, crimes for which 
 correction had been pubhcly inflicted on the offender. 
 
 This ' correction ' is Hurd's ' DeUcacy of Friendship,' 
 from which the terms in italics are taken. 
 
 I must extract one passage more, one of the strongest 
 and happiest pieces of satire that it contains. Warburton, 
 mindful of the repulse which he had suffered, when he 
 was the companion of Pope, at Oxford, ventured, in his 
 Appendix, to speak thu.s disrespectfully of the University, 
 and of one whom it regarded among its greatest ornaments : 
 ' 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 inquire into facts [in regard to the 
 punishment of idolatry], when he was secure of the right.' 
 This unhappy sarcasm brought upon him the following 
 powerful retort, ' in which,' says Whitaker, ' the appli- 
 cation of Lord Clarendon's character of an attorney's clerk 
 was one of those lucky hits which are seldom given to the 
 most witty and dexterous of mankind more than once in a 
 life. With what affected scorn, with what inward rage 
 and vexation, such a blow must have been received by 
 Warburton, it requires nothing more than an ordinary 
 intuition into his character to conjecture.' 
 
 ' Pray, my Lord, what is it to the purpose where I have 
 been brought up ? You charge me with principles of in- 
 tolerance, adding a gentle insinuation also of disaffection to 
 the present royal family and government ; you infer these 
 principles, it seems, from the place of my education. Is 
 this a necessary consequence ? Is it even a fair conclusion ? 
 May not one have had the good sense, or the good fortune, 
 to have avoided, or to have gotten the better of the ordi- 
 nary prejudices of education ?. . . To have made a proper 
 use of the advantages of a good education is a just praise; 
 but to have overcome the disadvantages of a bad one, is 
 a much greater. In short, my Lord, I cannot but think 
 
fi74 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBDETON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 that this inquisition concerning my education is quite 
 beside the purpose. Had I not your Lordship's example 
 to justiiy me, I should think it a piece of extreme imper- 
 tinence to enquire where tou were bred ; though one 
 might justly plead in excuse for it a natural ciuriosity 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 apphcation, and elegance of ex- 
 pression, conferred the unrivalled title of the Chancellor 
 of Human Nature,)* that it particularly disposes them to 
 be proud, insolent, and pragmatical : " Colonel Harrison 
 was the son of a butcher, near Nantwich, in Cheshire, and 
 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, inchnes young men to more pride than any other 
 kind of breeding, and disposes them to be pragmatical and 
 insolent." f Now, my Lord, as you have in your whole 
 behaviour, and in aU your writings, remarkably dis- 
 tinguished yourself by your humility, lenity, meekness, 
 forbearance, candour, humanity, civihty, 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. 
 
 'But I am wholly precluded from aU claim to such 
 merit. On the contrary, it is weU for me if I can acquit 
 myself of a charge that is hard upon me, the burden of 
 
 * Critical Inquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles. 
 I Lord Clarendon's History, vol. iii. p. 246, 8vo. 
 
1765.] LOWTH'S EDUCATION. 575 
 
 being responsible for the great advantages which I 
 enjoyed. For, my Lord, I was educated in the University 
 of Oxford ; I enjoyed all the advantages, both public and 
 private, which that famous seat of learning so largely 
 affords. I spent many happy years in that illustrious 
 society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and 
 studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce of 
 gentlemen and scholars ; in a society where emulation 
 without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention 
 without animosity, incited industry and awakened genius ; 
 where a hberal pursuit of knowledge, and a generous 
 freedom of thought, was raised, encouraged, and put 
 forward, by example, by commendation, and by authority. 
 I breathed the same atmosphere that the Hookers, the 
 ChiUingworths, and the Lockes, had breathed before; 
 whose benevolence and humanity were as extensive as 
 their vast genius, and their comprehensive knowledge ; 
 who always treated their adversaries with civility and 
 respect ; who made candour, moderation, and liberal 
 judgment, as much the rule and law, as the subject, of 
 their discourse ; who did not amuse their readers with 
 empty declamations and fine-spun theories of toleration, 
 ■ while they were themselves agitated by a furious inquisi- 
 torial spirit, seizing every one they could lay hold on for 
 presuming to dissent from them in matters the most 
 indifferent, and dragging them through the fiery ordeal of 
 abusive controversy. And do you reproach me with my 
 education in this place, and this most respectable body, 
 which I shall always esteem my greatest advantage, and 
 my highest honour ? . . .' 
 
 To characterise these remarks more fully, we will bor- 
 row yet a few more words from Whitaker : ' To the 
 dignity, spirit, indignation, and eloquence of tliis passage, 
 we know of nothing that can fairly be opposed on the 
 part of Warburton ; and it is further memorable as one 
 proof, though not the last, that the venerable and illus- 
 
576 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 trious body, whose insulted honour the writer so nobly 
 defends, has never to despair of finding a son able and 
 willing to inflict ample vengeance on the assailant.' 
 
 It was not to be expected that the learning of Lowth 
 would be brought to bear upon Warburton without show- 
 ing something of Warburton's deficiency in that respect. 
 Speaking of Warburton's opinion that the Book of Job 
 was written by Ezra, he says, ' I will venture to afiirm 
 that the critic who gives forth this as his decisive judg- 
 ment, never read either Job or Ezra ; I mean, in the 
 original, and with a competent knowledge of the language. 
 I was very well convinced before that the only interpreter 
 who has made the Book of Job intelligible, [a boast of 
 Warburton's,] had never read Job in Hebrew ; and I now 
 suspect that the demonstrator of " The Divine Legation " 
 of Moses never read the Hebrew Pentateuch.* .... I 
 will venture to say that he who pretends to set up for a 
 deep and critical expositor of the writers of the Old Tes- 
 tament, and of some of the most difficult of them in 
 particular, with no knowledge, or at best a very superfi- 
 cial knowledge, of Hebrew, though he may amuse common 
 readers with fanciful interpretations and ingenious hypo- 
 theses, yet will be esteemed by proper judges as no other 
 than a Quack in Commentatorship, and a Mountebank in 
 Criticism.' f 
 
 Warburton had called Lowth ' the contemptuous pro- 
 fessor.' Lowth rejoins, • Yes, my Lord, the professor does 
 avow a perfect contempt for a miserable caviller [Towne], 
 who prostitutes his pen to do the drudgery of an impe- 
 rious task-master. I see, my Lord, you have intimated 
 your orders to him to take the preelections in hand once 
 more ; and may I not hope then for the honour of your 
 Lordship's animadversions ? In good time — when the 
 Candid Examiner understands Latin a httle better, and 
 
 * Lowth's Letter to Warburton, p. 74. t lb. p. 89. 
 
1765.] JOHNSONS EEMAEK ON THE CONTROVERSY. 577 
 
 when your Lordship has a competent knowledge of Hebrew. 
 And a httle more civility, too, may not be amiss ; for if 
 he, who has demoHshed the Appendix, should take it into 
 his head to examine the book itself, he might possibly 
 make some havoc in The Divine Legation of Moses 
 Demonstrated.' 
 
 This was no empty boast. Had Lowth desired to write 
 a critique on Warburton's work, his learning and acuteness 
 might easily have exhibited plenty of vulnerable parts in 
 its structure ; he might have noted erroneous appUcations 
 of authorities, unintentionally misconceived or wilfully 
 misrepresented, and have discovered abundance of in- 
 exact or sophistical reasoning, which Warburton would 
 have found it difficult to justify. Dr. Johnson's account 
 of the dispute between Lowth and Warburton, as given 
 to George HI., is by no means fair. ' Warburton has 
 most general, most scholastic learning,' said he ; ' Lowth 
 is the more correct scholar. I do not know which of 
 them calls names best.' ' You do not think, then. Dr. 
 Johnson,' said the King, ' that there was much argument 
 in the case ? ' Johnson said he did not think there was.* 
 But the truth is, that there is much argument, and of the 
 soundest description, in Lowth's pamphlet, though some- 
 times diluted and weakened by being thrown into too 
 many words. Another statement of Johnson's, that ' War- 
 burton kept his temper aU along, while Lowth was in a 
 passion,' and that ' Warburton drew Lowth on to write 
 some very abusive letters, and then asked his leave to 
 pubhsh them, which he knew Lowth could not refuse 
 after what he had done,'f seems to have arisen from some 
 misconception or groundless rumour. Warburton was 
 in as much of a passion at least as Lowth. Lowth pub- 
 lished some of Warburton's letters, together with his own, 
 
 * Boswell's Johnson, 1767. t lb. 1773. 
 
 P P 
 
578 LIFE OF BISHOP WABBUETON. [Ch. XXX. 
 
 written in 1756, an act of which Warburton affected to com- 
 plain. ' The strangest thing of all,' says he, ' is this man's 
 publishing my letters without my leave or knowledge. 
 ... Is not this universally esteemed dishonourable con- 
 duct, to pubhsh a man's letters without his knowledge or 
 consent ? The absurdity, too, is amazing, to those who 
 will attend to the chronology of this affair. We were 
 come to a good understanding, and some years afterwards 
 he falls again upon poor Job, and in an insulting manner.'* 
 Lowth, it may be supposed, would have let poor Job 
 alone, had not Warburton encouraged Towne to meddle 
 with Lowth, who, doubtless, thought himself justified in 
 printing Warburton's letters with his own, that the public 
 might understand the quarrel from its origin, and see that 
 it commenced with Warburton. But Warburton himself 
 pretended to find another cause : ' I think I see the 
 reason of the publication of these letters ; it was to show 
 how he defied me, and what a high opinion I had of 
 him.' 
 
 ' But,' he adds, with assumed contempt, ' he is beneath 
 another thought.' ' His wit and his reasoning, God hiows, 
 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. If he expected 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 
 pubhc diversion, as ever was made with him in the old 
 Moralities.' f The majority of the public, however, and 
 especially the more judicious, appear to have been of 
 another opinion, and to have thought that Warburton 
 acted very discreetly in leaving Lowth unmolested, and 
 boasting in safety what he would have done if he had 
 thought proper. Lowth's epistle, said Gibbon, was 
 'printed and published,' and 'his victory was clearly 
 
 * Letters froili an Eminent Prelate, pp. 369, 371. f Ibid. 
 
17G.').] IIUKD S DEPKECIATION' OF LOWTH. 579 
 
 established by the silent confession of Warburton and his 
 slaves.' 
 
 Hurd's account of the controversy, an account which 
 deserves to be noticed for its caution, is this : ' The dis- 
 pute was managed, on both sides, with too much heat, 
 but on the part of the Bishop ' [Warburton] ' with that 
 superiority of wit and argument, which, to say the truth, 
 in all Ms controversial writings, he could not well help. 
 For it may, I beheve, be as truly said of liim as of Car- 
 neades, that he never defended an opinion which he did 
 not prove, nor opposed any which he did not confute. 
 
 ' Dr. Lowth, afterwards Bishop of London, was a man 
 of learning and ingenuity, and of many virtues ; but his 
 friends did his character no service by affecting to bring 
 his merits, whatever they were, into competition with 
 those of the Bishop of Gloucester. His reputation as a 
 writer was raised cliiefly on his Hebrew hterature, as dis- 
 played in those two works, his Latin Lectures on Hebrew 
 Poetry, and his English Version of the Prophet Isaiah. 
 The former is well and elegantly composed, but in a veui 
 of criticism not above the common. The latter, I think, 
 is chiefly valuable as it shows how little is to be expected 
 from Dr. Kennicott's work, (which yet the learned Bishop 
 pronounces to be the greatest and most importa?it that has 
 been undertaken and accomplished since the revival of 
 letters,) and from a new translation of the Bible for pubhc 
 use. 
 
 ' On the subject of his quarrel with the Bishop of Glou- 
 cester I could say a great deal, for I was well acquainted 
 with the grounds and the progress of it. But, besides 
 that I purposely avoid entering into details of this sort, I 
 know of no good end that is hkely to be answered by ex- 
 posing to public censure the weaknesses of such men.' * 
 
 The reader will observe the whole tone of this passage, 
 
 * Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 7'J. 
 P p 2 
 
580 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUKTON. [Cu. XXX. 
 
 and the sarcastic toucli on Lowth's merits, whatever they 
 were. Whitaker, though a stout champion for Warburton, 
 is nevertheless indignant at this mention of his opponent. 
 ' Of Bishop Lowth, the dignified, the spirited, the only- 
 equal antagonist of Warburton,' Hurd ' permits himself to 
 speak in such terms of measured approbation, and com- 
 parative though disguised contempt ! . . . . The reserve 
 on the part of the good Bishop, it must be confessed, was 
 discreet and charitable ; but as he is careful to premise 
 that while " the dispute was managed on both sides with 
 too much heat," but on the part of Warburton " with that 
 superiority of wit and argument which he could not help" 
 (meaning, as we suppose, that he earnestly endeavoured 
 to appear inferior,) we shall beg leave to hint a suspicion 
 that it was not the weaknesses of two great men, but the 
 strength of Lowth and the petulance of Warburton 
 which the biographer of the latter shrank from ex- 
 posing.' * 
 
 The Monthly Eeviewers, it may be worth while to add, 
 were dehghted with Lowth's pamphlet. ' When a person 
 of gentle and amiable manners, of unblemished character, 
 and eminent abihties, is calumniated and treated in the most 
 injurious manner by a haughty and overbearing Colossus, 
 it must give pleasure to every generous mind to see such 
 a person vindicating himself with manly freedom, resenting 
 the insult with proper spirit, attacking the imperious aggres- 
 sor in his turn, and taking ample vengeance for the injury 
 done him. Such is the pleasure which every impartial 
 reader, every true repubhcan in literature, wiU receive 
 from the perusal of the letter now before us.'f 
 
 Another prelate, we may here observe, of whom Hurd 
 allows himself to speak with the same superciliousness as 
 of Lowth, was Archbishop Seeker, who had made objec- 
 
 * Quarterly Keview, vol. vii. p. 386. 
 f Monthly Eeview, vol. xxxiii. p. 388. 
 
■ 1765.] PAMPHLETS AGAINST IIUKD. 58l 
 
 tions to certain passages in ' The Divine Legation,' and 
 against whom, in consequence, Warburton directed some 
 of his notes. ' Dr. Seeker,' says Hurd, ' was a wise man, 
 an edifying preacher, and an exemplary bishop. But 
 the course of his hfe and studies had not quahfied him 
 to decide on such a work as that of " The Divine Lega- 
 tion." Even in the narrow wall<; of hterature he most 
 affected, that of criticising the Hebrew text, it does not 
 appear that he attained to any great distinction. His 
 chief merit (and surely it was a very great one) lay in 
 explaining clearly and popularly in his sermons the 
 principles delivered by his friend Bishop Butler, in his 
 famous book of the " Analogy ;" and in showing the 
 important use of them to religion.' 
 
 A remonstrance was addressed to Hurd, on behalf of 
 Lowth and Seeker, in a pamphlet published in 1796 by 
 the Eev. Ealph Churton, Archdeacon of Oxford, and 
 another, in 1797, by the Eev. Thomas Wintle, Eector of 
 Brightwell, who had been Fellow of Pembroke College, 
 Oxford. Archdeacon Churton asks, very pertinently, ' If 
 Seeker, Hebrew scholar as he was, was unquahfied to 
 judge of Warburton's "Divine Legation," how could 
 Hurd, who was no Hebrew scholar, think himself so 
 well quahfied to pronounce on the labours of Seeker ?' 
 
 Dr. Seeker, according to Hurd, has great merit, except 
 when he approaches ' The Divine Legation,' before which 
 he is disquahfied and powerless. Yet his course of study 
 had been directed chiefly to the Hebrew text, a know- 
 ledge of which would appear to be one great requisite for 
 judging of such a work as Warburton's. Warburton him- 
 self, though he spoke lightly of the Hebrew text from its 
 uncertainty, and thought that no man needed the original 
 who had the Septuagint translation, would yet have been 
 better fitted for his work by a better insight into the 
 Jewish language. Lowth praised many of Seeker's 
 criticisms as those of a man of great judgment and 
 
582 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON'. [Cii. XXX. • 
 
 perspicacity. Bishop Porteus, also, in his ' Life of Seeker,' 
 has vindicated the Archbishop, both as a Hebrew critic 
 and as a general scholar, against the rash depreciation of 
 Bishop Hurd. 
 
 The controversy, it may be added, drew forth a pamph- 
 let also from Brown, the author of the ' Estimate,' 
 and another from Towne, on behalf of Warburton ; but 
 the only other pubhcation, in connexion with the dis- 
 pute, that need be noticed, is one of Cumberland's, 
 addressed to Lowth, in vindication of the hterary cha- 
 racter of his grandfather. Dr. Bentley. Warburton had 
 spoken of ' the incomparable Bentlej'', as standing in the 
 foremost rank of modern critics.' Lowth rejoined that 
 he might stand in the foremost rank of verbal critics, 
 but that, as to taste and judgment for discerning beauties 
 and excellences in writing, he was merely, in the words 
 of Catullus, Unus caprimulgus aut fossor, ' terms that in 
 English,' said Cumberland, ' would have been downright 
 blackguardism.' ' In which of Bentley's labours,' he 
 asked Lowth, ' have you traced the brutal ignorance of 
 a goatherd, the clownish stupidity of a hedger and 
 ditcher T Had his Lordship not said, he adds, that he 
 was educated at Oxford, it might have been just matter 
 of doubt in what spot of the globe he had acquired 
 such elegance of phraseology. And did he defend his 
 fether against Warburton, and suppose that no relative 
 of Bentley would rise in his defence against himself ? 
 
 Cumberland, before he wrote his pamphlet, apphed 
 to his uncle, Eichard Bentley, to undertake the task ; but 
 he, ' with a philosophical contempt for the sparring of 
 pens,' declined to have anything to do with the affair, 
 saying to Cumberland at the same time, ' you are unequal 
 to maintain an argument against Lowth.'* Cumberland's 
 
 * Cum'berland's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 456 ; Letter to tlie Rt. Eev. the 
 Lord Bp. of O d. 
 
1765.] LOWTH AND CUMBEKLAND. 583 
 
 pamphlet, however, had an effect, and Lowth made no 
 attempt to reply ; but, when a clergyman of his diocese 
 volunteered to be his champion, refused the offer, ac- 
 knowledging that Cumberland had reason for retaliation. 
 If Cumberland wrote with more will than power, he had 
 his quarrel just, and Lowth might very well forbear to 
 vindicate his disrespectful mention of Bentley. 
 
584 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBURTON. [Ch. XXXI. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 STUKELEY. BIECH. BKOWN. SERMONS AND CHARGES. 
 
 DEATH OF DR. STUKELET ; HIS CHARACTER DEATHS OF DR. BIRCH 
 
 AND DR. JOHN BROWN BROWN's CHARACTER DECLINE OF WAR- 
 
 BURTON's POWERS IMPERFECT CONCLUSION OF ' THE DIVINE LEGA- 
 TION ' WARBURTON's DISCONTENT AT THE RECEPTION OF THE WORK 
 
 REVIEW OF THE NINTH BOOK INCONSISTENCIES THIRD VOLUME 
 
 OF SERMONS SERMONS FOR THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF 
 
 THE GOSPEL, AND FOR THE LONDON HOSPITAL WARBURTON's STYLE 
 
 OF PREACHING CHARGE TO THE CLERGY OF GLOUCESTER IN- 
 
 STANCES OF UNCOURTLINESS ILLNESS TOUP's ' EPISTOLA CRITICA.' 
 
 IN the early part of this year, Warburton lost his friend 
 Dr. Stukeley, a man known to the pubhc only as an 
 antiquary, but distinguished in private life, it would seem, 
 by many excellent qualities. He was regularly educated 
 for a physician, and practised physic till he was forty- 
 two, when, partly from ill health, and partly, as he says, 
 to combat the infidel spirit so much prevailing in his time, 
 he went, like Dr. Linacre, the founder of the College of 
 Physicians, into the Church. Warburton had become 
 acquainted with him at Brant-Broughton ; and ' there 
 was in him,' he remarked to Hurd, ' such a mixture of 
 simphcity,*drollery, absurdity, ingenuity, superstition, and 
 antiquarianism, that he often afforded me that kind of 
 well-seasoned repast which the French call an ambigu, I 
 suppose from a compound of things never meant to meet 
 together. I have often heard him laughed at by fools 
 who had neither his sense, his knowledge, nor his 
 
1765.] DEATHS OF STUKELEY, BIECH, AND BROWN. 585 
 
 honesty, though, it must be confessed, that in him they 
 were all strangely travestied.'* Yet he did not escape 
 an occasional sneer from Warburton ; writing to Dod- 
 dridge, he says that Dr. Eobert Taylor had acquainted 
 him that, after having visited Dr. Doddridge at North- 
 ampton, he had the pleasure of his company ' contrasted 
 by a very different sort of man, one Stukeley of Stamford, 
 a Doctor, too, in his way.' ' Did this worthy antiquary,' 
 asks good Mr. Nichols, ' deserve this unkind reflection, 
 either from Dr. Taylor or Warburton ? ' -f 
 
 Stukeley 's death was soon followed by that of Dr. 
 Bkch, with whom "Warburton had maintained a corres- 
 pondence for more than thirty years, in the early part of 
 which period he had sent him papers on Milton and 
 Shakspeare for his General Dictionary. Many letters of 
 Warburton to Birch are preserved among Birch's manu- 
 scripts in the British Museum, most of which have been 
 printed in Nichols's ' Literary Illustrations ;' but Birch's 
 rephes have perished. 
 
 Another friend that he lost about the same time was Dr. 
 John Brown, the author of the tragedies, now httle known, 
 of ' Barbarossa ' and ' Athelstan,' and of the ' Estimate 
 of the Manners and Principles of the Times,' a book 
 which made a noise in its day, by telling the nation, in 
 an imposing and dictatorial tone, that the nobiUty were 
 universally corrupted by luxury ; and which, being pub- 
 hshed at a time when the body of the people were 
 discontented at the loss of Minorca, and other disasters 
 of the French war, had the fortune to pass through seven 
 editions in a year. He had brought himself under 
 Warburton's notice, as we have seen, by his 'Essay on 
 Satire,' and, through Warburton, under that of Allen 
 and Lord Hardwicke, who gave him a living in Kent, 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 358. 
 t Nichols's Lit. m. vol. ii. pp. 827, 845, 851. 
 
586 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXXI. 
 
 which he afterwards resigned for one at Newcastle, 
 and died there, in a fit of melancholy and dejection, by 
 his own hand. He seems to have visited Warburton, in 
 the early period of their acquaintance, very frequently, 
 and to have been always ready to extol him, but after- 
 wards became gloomy and sullen towards him ; an effect, 
 apparently, of incipient insanity.* Walpole said that 
 Brown was proud to deify Warburton in the first volume 
 of his ' Estimate,' but that, when ' that trumpery ' be- 
 came successful, Warburton grew jealous of Mm, and 
 good feeling between them ceased.f When Lowth pub- 
 lished his letter to Warburton, he alluded to Brown as 
 one of Warburton's extravagant flatterers ; Brown, con- 
 ceiving that his moral character was assailed by Lowth's 
 remarks, rephed ; Lowth pohtely rejoined that no reflec- 
 tion on his moral quahties was intended. He observed, 
 in a letter to a friend, about two years before his death, 
 that he was sorry for having far overpainted Warburton. 
 ' I cannot bring myself,' said he, ' to give up the freedom 
 of my mind to Warburton, and therefore we do not 
 agree ; but Dr. Hurd will never quaxrel with him.' J He 
 was a man of considerable power of imagination, but of 
 not much learning ; and, as might be expected from his 
 constitutional infirmity, of no great discretion or judgment. 
 
 This year, Warburton obtained the royal hcence for his 
 son Ealph, and his posterity, to take the surname of 
 Warburton- Allen. 
 
 From this time the life of Warburton offers but few 
 events of any importance. He continued to do some- 
 thing with his pen, giving portions of his writings an. 
 occasional revision, and producing a few sermons ; but 
 no great work afterwards proceeded from him. He 
 printed, in 1766, a fourth edition of the ' Alliance,' 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 300. 
 
 ■f Walpole's Letters, Cunningham's edit. vol. ii. p. 135. 
 
 i Davies's Life of Garrick, vol. i. p. 242. 
 
1766.] PLAN OF ' THE DIVINE LEGATION.' 5S7 
 
 and a fifth edition of the first and second volumes of 
 'The Divine Legation,' with a postscript, which we 
 have already noticed, to the ' Dedication to the Free- 
 tliinkers,' reflecting on Akenside and Lord Karnes ; but 
 the completion of the great work seems to have been 
 no longer contemplated. We have seen that, from 
 having had the subject long on his hands, and from 
 some other causes, he had many years ago begun to be 
 weary of it ; and that, to stimulate himself for a new 
 volume, he had to set the press prematurely to work, so 
 that he might be forced to supply it with copy.* To 
 such efforts he had now lost the power of exciting 
 himself, and shrimk from the work disheartened and 
 disgusted. 
 
 The plan of 'The Divine Legation' reqmred three 
 books in addition to the six already pubhshed, in order, 
 as the author said, ' to remove all conceivable objections 
 against the conclusion, and to throw in every collateral 
 hght upon the premises.' The seventh and eighth books, 
 however, though materials had been collected for them, 
 he made no attempt to compose. The substance of the 
 ninth book he kept under his hands many years, writing 
 portions of it, as Hurd says, who had an intimate know- 
 ledge of the closing part of his life, ' by snatches and 
 with difficulty,' and leaving it at last incomplete, though 
 he printed it, such as it was, a year or two before his 
 death, after which event, it remained unpubhshed for 
 • nine years. 
 
 The distaste which he felt for continuing the work was 
 owing, partly, to the ill reception which it had experienced 
 from many of the clergy. But if there was any pretext 
 for Lowth's remark, that a yoimg student in theology 
 would have given a better demonstration of ' The Divine 
 Legation of Moses ' in five pages, than Warburton had 
 
 * Letter to Doddridge, Feb. 2, 1741. 
 
588 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXXI. 
 
 given in his six books, there is little wonder that some of 
 the clergy should have thought the work unnecessary, 
 and that others should have found other grounds of ob- 
 jection to it. As he expressed dissent from many, it is 
 not strange that many expressed dissent from him. But 
 ' his resentment at the estabhshed clergy,' says Hurd, 
 * for their long and fierce opposition to his favourite 
 work, was the greatest weakness I ever observed in him. 
 When he had given two or three of his principal adver- 
 saries, as he did, a complete answer, he should not have 
 suiTered the clamour of the rest to divert him from the 
 great design he had projected. But his conduct, in this 
 instance, was not that which might have been expected 
 from his usual magnanimity. When I sometimes expostu- 
 lated with him upon it, his answer was, " I surely have 
 reason to think myself very ill used " by the clergy. " If, 
 indeed, the published volumes of ' The Divine Legation ' 
 be so weak or so mischievous as they suppose, I wiU not 
 add to the offence given them by adding any more." ' * 
 
 As we have noticed the contents of the other books, 
 we will now look also for a moment into the ninth. The 
 seventh and eighth, we may first remark, were intended 
 to be a continuance of the argumentation that, as the 
 Jewish rehgion and polity were unsupported by the doc- 
 trme of a future state, they must have been upheld by an 
 extraordinary providence. The ninth has for its subject 
 the nature and genius of the Gospel, and reviews the 
 progress of revelation, and the particulars of the several 
 dispensations ; setting them in much the same light m 
 which they are generally regarded, and discoursing of 
 them in a much lower tone than that which is used in the 
 preceding part of the work, though the old spirit is some- 
 times apparent, and paradox shows itself in it more than 
 once. Man, he says, was made at first mortal, (for ' immor- 
 
 * Life of Warburton, p. 81. 
 
1766.] FRAGMENT OF THE NINTH BOOK. 589 
 
 tal life was a thing extraneous to our nature, and not put 
 into our original paste or composition,') and was left under 
 the guidance of natural religion ; when he was put into 
 Paradise, he was placed under the revealed will of God, 
 and received the free gift of immortahty ; and when he 
 transgressed God's command in Paradise, he became again 
 mortal, having violated the condition on which immor- 
 tality was given him, and was expelled from Paradise, 
 lest, by eating of the tree of hfe, he should thus become 
 immortal again, through his own act. He was then left 
 subject as before to natural religion until the law was 
 given.* As to the origin of sacrifice, it sprung, not 
 from any special monition from Heaven, but from the 
 hght of natural reason, Cain and Abel, the first that 
 offered sacrifice, being wholly under the government 
 of natural religion ; and ' besides, the defects of language, 
 in its early rudiments, necessarily occasioned this mode 
 of intercourse between man and his Maker.' j- 
 
 It isno wonder thatinwhathe thusproduced there should 
 be some contradictions, or some inconsistencies with the 
 previous part of the work. Towne, the great student of 
 Warburton's writings, has observed that the opinion which 
 he here expresses concerning the origin of sacrifice is at 
 variance with that which he had adopted elsewhere, 
 though where he has given another opinion I have not 
 been able to discover. He says in one passage (as he is 
 generally supposed to have beUeved) that St. Paul was 
 not the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in a 
 subsequent passage that he was ; and he interprets a verse 
 in that Epistle, about Moses and the tabernacle, otherwise 
 than he had understood it before in ' The Divine Legation.' 
 In the first chapter of this ninth book he says the words, 
 'Man became a living soul,' in the second chapter of 
 
 » Div. Leg. book ix. ch. i. ; Works, vol. vi. pp. 246, 247, 255, 263. 
 t lb. p. 279. 
 
590 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUKTOJSr. [Ch. XXXI. 
 
 Genesis, intimate the continuance of life after the sepa- 
 ration of the soul and body : a sense totally different from 
 that which he had once attributed to them, and which 
 the general argument of ' The Divme Legation ' requires.* 
 
 He greatly abridged his labour, it may be observed, by 
 interweaving into his book large portions of three sermons 
 which he had already laid before the pubhc. One On 
 Antichrist, in which he asserts that St. Peter's ' more sure 
 word of prophecy' refers, not, as has been universally 
 understood, to the prophecies of the Old Testament, but 
 wholly to those of the New, especiaUy those of St. John ; 
 and that the Antichrist, or Man of Sin, set forth in those 
 prophecies, is unquestionably the Church of Eome ; another 
 On the Fall of Satan, in which he mamtains, in opposition 
 to Mead, that the demoniacs of the New Testament were 
 persons really possessed with devils ; and a third On the 
 Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in which he foUows Cud- 
 worth, as we have already noticed, in representing the 
 Eucharist as ' a feast upon a sacrifice.' 
 
 With these brief remarks on this imperfect ninth book, 
 we may take our leave of it. 
 
 In 17 07 he pubhshed a third volume of Sermons, dedi- 
 cated, in a very quiet style, to Lady Mansfield. The first 
 and second volumes had been pubhshed in 1752 and 1754. 
 
 He was also called upon, at times, to preach sermons 
 on pubhc occasions. He preached the Anniversary Ser- 
 mon for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
 before the Lord Mayor, at St. Mary-le-Bow. 
 
 In this sermon he extols the Jesuit missionaries, whose 
 practice was to make the teaching of the arts of civil hfe 
 prehminary and instrumental to the introduction of reli^ 
 gious doctrines, and commends them as an example to all 
 who would propagate the Christian rehgion with success. 
 
 * Towiie's Letters to Balguy ; Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's 
 Papers, pp. 179-191. 
 
1767.] SERMON BEFORE THE LORD MAYOR. 591 
 
 Alluding to the early English settlers in North America, 
 he remarks that they carried over with them ' an ample 
 cargo of rehgion, sufficient for themselves and their pos- 
 terity,' and might have been left to their own doings, had 
 they not been too poor to find means for disseminating 
 their stock among their neighbours. 
 
 The Lord Mayor, when the sermon was ended, invited 
 Warburton and some other bishops to dinner at the 
 Mansion House. In his prayer before the sermon. War- 
 burton had introduced, without precedent, a petition for 
 the Common Council. Giving an account of the affair to 
 Hurd, he says : ' I preached my Propagation Sermon, and 
 ten or a dozen bishops dined with my Lord Mayor, a 
 plain and (for this year at least) a munificent man. 
 Whether I made them wiser than ordinary at Bow, I 
 cannot tell ; I certainly made them merrier than ordinary 
 at the Mansion House, where we were magnificently 
 treated. The Lord Mayor told me that " the Common 
 Council were much obliged to me, for that this was the 
 first time he ever heard them prayed for." I said, " I 
 considered them as a body that much needed the prayers 
 of the Church." But, if he told me in what I abounded, 
 I told him in what I thought he was defective, that " I 
 was greatly disappointed to see no custard at table." He 
 said that they " had been so ridiculed for their custard 
 that none had ventured to make its appearance for many 
 years." I told him " I supposed religion and custard went 
 out of fashion together."' It is to be hoped that War- 
 burton has not here recorded the best thing that he said 
 to make the Mayor and his party merrier than ordinary, 
 for this is assuredly one of the duUest of dull clerical jokes 
 that ever was written in a book. 
 
 He also preached for the London Hospital before the 
 Duke of York, on the 30th of April 1767 ; and of his 
 performance on that occasion we have the advantage of a 
 full account from Mr. Cradock. He happened to call one 
 
592 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Cu. XXXI, 
 
 morning on Hurd, he says, at Lincoln's Inn, and learned 
 from him that Warburton was about to preach at St. 
 Lawrence's Church, near Guildhall. ' Then, Sir,' said I, 
 ' I shall certainly attend him.' ' I wish you would,' replied 
 he, ' and bring me an account of all particulars. I beheve 
 I know the discourse — it is a favourite one ; but I could 
 rather have wished that his Lordsliip would have substi- 
 tuted some other ; ' then, hesitating, he added, ' but it is 
 perhaps of httle consequence, for he does not always 
 adhere to what is written before him ; his rich imagination 
 is ever apt to overflow.' I was introduced into the vestry 
 by a friend, where the Lord Mayor and several of the 
 Governors of the Hospital were waiting for the late Duke 
 of York, who was their president ; and in the meantime 
 the Bishop did everything in his power to entertain and 
 alleviate their impatience. He was beyond measure con- 
 descending and courteous, and even graciously handed 
 some biscuits and wine on a salver to the curate who was 
 to read the prayers. His Lordship, being in good spirits, 
 once rather exceeded the bounds of decorum, by quoting 
 a comic passage from Shakspeare, in his lawn sleeves, and 
 with all his characteristic humour ; but, suddenly recol- 
 lecting himself, he so aptly turned the inadvertence to his 
 own advantage as to raise the admiration of all the com- 
 pany. Many parts of his discourse were quite subhme, 
 and were given with due solemnity ; but a few passages 
 were, as in his celebrated Triennial Charge, quite ludi- 
 crous ; and when he proceeded so far as to describe some 
 charitable monks who had robbed their own begging 
 boxes, he excited more than a smile from most of the 
 audience. ' Though certainly. Sir,' said I, ' there was 
 much to admire ; yet, upon the whole, to speak the truth, 
 I was not sorry that you were absent ; for I well know 
 that you would not absolutely have approved.' 'Approved, 
 Sir ! ' said he ; ' I should have agonised ! ' * 
 
 * Memoirs of Joseph Cradock, Esq. vol. iv. 
 
1767.] EPISCOPAL CIIAKGE. 593 
 
 The ' celebrated Triennial Charge ' was one delivered 
 to the clergy of Gloucester in the year 1761, which at 
 that time we omitted to notice. Looking into it now, we 
 shall find some passages that must have startled some of 
 those that hstened to it. He observes that, in the sim- 
 phcity of old times, when the clergy first met their bishop, 
 it was thought incumbent on him to give them some 
 intimation how he was lifted into ' so eminent but ha- 
 zardous a station ; ' but that this custom had gradually 
 fallen into disuse, as the clergy became less sohcitous to 
 know ' from whence their bishop had dropped down 
 among them,' and that these meetings were now intended 
 only as occasions for a diocesan to exhort his clergy to 
 the faithful discharge of their pastoral care. He then 
 addresses himself chiefly to the younger part of his flock, 
 and impresses upon them of how much advantage, in 
 conjunction with integrity of life, is extent of knowledge, 
 for the just fulfilment of their duties, as enabhng them to 
 oppose and discourage \fanaticism, whether spiritual or 
 hterary, bigotry, whether rehgious or civil, and infidelity, 
 whether philosophical or immoral.' Too many of his 
 hearers, he feared, ' were apt to mistake the completion 
 of their academic courses for the completion of their 
 theologic studies,' and, ' by a false modesty, to despair of 
 knowing more than they would suffer those august places 
 of education to teach them.' But such notions were not 
 to be entertained ; study must be continued ; for a church- 
 man who neglects to advance himself in knowledge is sure 
 to fall into contempt ; a layman may be found wanting in 
 a learned profession, and meet with nothing but neglect, 
 but a clergyman noted for ignorance will be a common 
 object of derision. Nor should a churchman devote him- 
 self to studies extraneous to his profession, since, if he does 
 so, he will not only seem to neglect the interests of the 
 Church, but will find himself, probably, arrive at no great 
 eminence in his foreign pursuits. A lawyer who occupies 
 
 Q Q 
 
594 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOK. [Ch. XXXI. 
 
 himself iu mathematical investigations will disquahfy 
 himself for considering the moral evidence on which the 
 interests of his chents depend ; the physician who turns 
 poet must hope for no patients but those of as warm 
 imaginations as his own ; and so a churchman, if he busies 
 himself in law, will probably make himself nothing better 
 than 'a tolerable justice of the quorum ;' or, if he amuses 
 himself with physic, must expect to be nothing more than 
 ' a village doctor.' One may conjecture whether, when he 
 uttered these exhortations, he thought of his own doings 
 with Shakspeare and Pope. 
 
 But the most surprising passage is at the conclusion, to 
 which any abridgment would be injustice. 'The usual 
 time you sojourn in the universities,' he proceeds, con- 
 tinuing to address his younger hearers, ' is very laudably 
 employed in the prosecution of such studies as are to fit 
 you for your degrees ; ' but ' the greater part of you are 
 turned out into the world before those incomparable 
 establishments have put the last hand to your education, 
 and led you through the more sacred parts of the Temple 
 of Wisdom. 
 
 ' It is true you no sooner step into the world than you 
 have your wants abundantly supplied. Instructors crowd 
 in upon you from all quarters. And, just as on man's 
 entrance into hfe, in the famed fable of Cebes, every 
 false species of happiness presents itself before him, each 
 striving who shall first get possession of the new comer ; 
 so, on your entry on the ministry, every phantom of false 
 science, raised up at the resistless call of the Sages in St. 
 Paul's Churchyard, open wide their hospitable arms to 
 receive you to their daily, their weekly, and their monthly 
 lectures. What shining collections of polite hterature, 
 what mighty volumes of profound criticism, have crowned 
 their generous labours ! But in Scriptural abundance 
 their unsparing bounty chiefly displays itself ; Commen- 
 taries, Histories, and even Dictionaries of the Holy Bible, 
 
1767.] CHARGES. 595 
 
 keep rolling down upon you from the same perennial 
 source ; while the smaller divinity, like the flies and lice 
 of Egypt from the dust of the land, meets you in your 
 dish, and lies hid in all you taste and handle. The artful 
 disguise, too, is no less taking than the plenty. And as 
 Flaminius's host of Chalcis entertained his guest with a 
 magnificent variety of viands, and all from the hog-sty, 
 so the whole of this delicious cookery comes from as dirty 
 a place — I mean a bookseller's garret. 
 
 ' While you retain any tincture of that noble learning 
 with which you were imbued in those pure fountains of 
 science which you left too soon, you will be in no danger 
 from the delusions of these miserable impostors, ow 
 ala-So[jisva)v Trig saurdSy ajxaSlag, as Origen elegantly 
 expresses it, when he characterises certain false teachers 
 of the same stamp. In this temper you will be prepared 
 for, and indeed "vyorthy of, better instruction. Whether 
 my mediocrity shall be able to impart it, must be left to 
 time, and to your use of it, to determine. Till then you 
 need not blush to recollect and bear in mind what you 
 once learned at school, 
 
 Virtus est vitium fugere, et sapientia prima 
 StultitiS. caruisse.' 
 
 He consulted Hurd, in 1766, about printing one of his 
 Charges, observing that it ' might perhaps excite as much 
 malice and nonsense against him as anything he had ever 
 written ;' and begging Hurd, therefore, ' to exert his 
 critical acumen on it with all severity.' I know not 
 whether he means this Charge of 1761, or another of 
 1764 ; but he speaks of it as one which he had thrown 
 by from being tired of it, but which, having taken it up 
 again, he had begun to like as a novelty. Hurd, in his 
 reply, said that he had noticed the strong passages, but 
 that his Lordship had said much the same on other 
 
 Q Q 2 
 
596 LIFE OP BISHOP WAKBUE.TON. [Ch. XXXI. 
 
 occasions, and need hardly attempt, at that time of day, 
 ' to affect the fame of an inoffensive writer.' * 
 
 His Charge in 1767, which is preserved by Mr. Kilvert,f 
 is of a very harmless character, consisting chiefly of ex- 
 hortations to the 'spiritual oculist' to take care that 
 there be no beam in his own eye when he offers to 
 extract the mote from his brother's. 
 
 He meditated, about this time, some strictures, in 
 three discourses, on Voltaire's censures of the Jewish 
 law and history, but was persuaded by Hurd to desist 
 from pursuing the design. Hurd affected to make ex- 
 cessively light of Voltaire, and told the Bishop that there 
 would be ' no end of confuting every shallow, though 
 fashionable, scribbler against religion ;' that he had done 
 enough in exposing Bolingbroke ' to the just scorn of 
 thinking men ;' and that to give a formal answer to 
 Voltaire, a writer so httle acquainted, with the subject 
 imder discussion, ' would be like breaking a hutterfly upon 
 a wheel l'"^ 
 
 In the early part of 1767 he was at Court. ' I brought 
 a bad cold with me to town,' he says, writing to Hurd, 
 ' and this being the first day I ventuired out of doors, it 
 was employed, as in duty bound, at Court, it being a 
 levee-day. A buffoon lord in waiting (you may guess 
 whom I mean) was very busy marshalling the circle ; and 
 he said to me, without ceremony, " Move forward ; you 
 clog up the door-way." I replied, with as httle, " Did 
 nobody clog up the King's door-stead more than /, there 
 would be room for all honest men" This brought the- 
 man to himself When the King came up to me, he 
 asked why I did not come to town before. I said I 
 understood there was no business going forward in the 
 
 * Letters fi-om an Eminent Prelate, pp. 375, 376. 
 I Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 3-17. 
 I Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 105. 
 
1767.] TOUP'S ' EPISTOLA CRITICA.' 597 
 
 House in whicii I could be of service to His Majesty. 
 He replied, he supposed the severe storm of snow would 
 have brought me up. I replied, " I was under cover of 
 a very warm house." You see, by all this, how unfit I 
 am for Courts.' * 
 
 The cover of a warm house, as he said in his speech 
 to the King, he seems at this time to have needed. He 
 complains, towards the end of the year, of rheumatism 
 in his shoulder, which was not alleviated without much 
 physical discipline. He had also an inflammation, per- 
 haps from cold, in his left eye, for which, he says, he had 
 had as many remedies proposed as visitors.^ He had 
 a disorder, too, of the gall-bladder, with symptoms of 
 the gravel, for which he was desired to drink the Seltzer 
 waters, then just come into fashion.J In the following 
 summer he complained again of fever and rheumatism, 
 and was obhged to dechne a confirmation, which he had 
 undertaken, for the Bishop of Bath and Wells. § 
 
 He may possibly have been somewhat gratified with 
 the honour done him by Toup, who, in 1767, pubhshed 
 his Episiola Critica ad Celeherrimum Virum Gulielmum 
 Episcopum Glocestriensem. The body of this epistle 
 consists wholly of additions to his emendations on Suidas. 
 His praise of Warburton is extravagant, such as he would 
 never have obtained from Hare. He extols him thus at 
 the beginning : 
 
 ' Quicquid hujus opuscuh est, tibi consecratum esse 
 volumus, prsestantissime Warburtone, prassul doctissime ; 
 nam et nostra hbenter legis, et h«c ^Do-rripia optim^ 
 intelligis ; quippe qui utrasque literas, tum sacras, tum 
 profanas, ita conjunxisti, ut uberrimos fructus inde retu- 
 leris. Quod omnes norunt, ■ qui tua scripta norunt ; h. 
 quibus nunquam profecto nisi doctiores discedimus : 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 392. 
 
 t lb. p. 406. % lb. p. 413. § lb. p. 434. 
 
598 LIFE OP BISHOP WARBUKTON. [Ch. XXXI. 
 
 Toia yap iifxfiiv £(^i;vac, d r' oh Trapoc aveptg 'iafier, 
 'Afjcjii TC ddavuTovg, a.fi<j>i ts rjjiidiovQ.^ 
 
 And thus at the conclusion : 
 
 ' Sed tandem jam desino. Neque enim diutius tua 
 tempora morabor, prsesul eruditissime. Perge ver6, ut 
 facis, de literis, de ecclesi^, de republic^,, optime mereri. 
 Eumpantur Codri, Bavii, Msevii. Adplaudunt omnes boni, 
 et quicquid usquam est gentium eruditorum. Sed nolo 
 nimius esse. Vale, Episcoporum doctissime, et nos Tui 
 observantissimos ama.' 
 
 In return, Warburton is said to have done his utmost 
 to serve Toup. He regretted that he had no preferment 
 vacant in liis see, for, ' had it been otherwise, he should 
 have been too selfish to invite any of his brethren to 
 share with him in the honour of properly distinguishing 
 such merit as Mr. Toup's.' But he recommended Toup 
 to Archbishop Seeker, and to Keppel, Bishop of Exeter, 
 who, in consequence, gave him a prebend at Exeter in 
 1774, and, two years afterwards, the vicarage of St. 
 Merryn, in Cornwall.* 
 
 * Gent. Mag. vol. Iv. p. 185. 
 
1768.] LECTURE AT LINCOLN'S INN. 599 
 
 CHAPTER XXXir. 
 
 LECTURE AT LINCOLN'S INN FOUNDED ENDEAVOURS TO SERVE THOMAS 
 
 WARTON LETTER FROM ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE VISIT TO 
 
 KURD, AND LETTERS FROM HIM REMOVAL FROM PRIOR PARK 
 
 DEAN TUCKER DECLINE OF WARBURTON's FACULTIES ASSISTS 
 
 BUFFHEAD gibbon's ' CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ' PUBLISHED HURD's 
 
 EXTRAVAGANT PRAISE OF WARBURTON ACCIDENT IN HIS LIBRARY 
 
 ' HE WILL WRITE NO MORE ' HIS SOLICITUDE ABOUT HIS SON 
 
 HIS son's death HCRD's ACCOL'NT of WARBURTON's LAST YEARS 
 
 HIS DEATH SILENCE OF THE PUBLIC RESPECTING HIM DIS- 
 POSAL OF HIS LIBRARY HURD's EDITION OF HIS WORKS, AND 
 
 MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR DESTRUCTION OF HIS LETTERS, EXCEPT 
 
 THOSE PUBLISHED BY HURD SPECIMENS OF WARBURTONIAN CRI- 
 TICISM. 
 
 IN 1768, he set apart the sum of 500/. in the four per 
 cent, annuities, for the foundation of a lecture, in the 
 form of a course of sermons, at Lincohi's Inn, for the 
 purpose of " proving tlie truth of revealed religion in 
 general, and of the Christian in particular, from the 
 fulfilment of the prophecies in the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, which relate to the Christian Church, and especially 
 to the apostasy of Papal Rome.' The money was given 
 in trust to Lord Mansfield, Sir Eardley Wilmot, and Mr. 
 Charles Torke. Each lecturer was to hold the lecture- 
 ship for three years, if he preached four sermons a year, 
 or four years, if only three sermons. He was afterwards 
 inclined to double the endowment, but his friends dis- 
 suaded him. Hurd, as might be expected, was appointed 
 the first lecturer, and was succeeded by Bishop Hallifax 
 and Bishop Bagot. 
 
 Bishop Newton, and others, considered that the field 
 
600 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUETON. [Ch. XXXII. 
 
 for the lecturer was too mucli circumscribed by the terms 
 of its institution. 'It was objected at the first,' says he, 
 ' that the plan was too narrow ; that it should have been 
 extended to the prgphecies at large ; that, being limited 
 to the prophecies relating to the Christian Church, espe- 
 cially to the apostasy of Papal Eome, the subject must, 
 in the course of some years, be quite exhausted ; little or 
 nothing could be added ; the same things must be repeated 
 again and again ; few lecturers could be found to do credit 
 to the institution like Dr. Hurd. This objection was 
 really so well founded, that, after the third in succession, 
 a fourth lecturer could not easily be procured, Eind there 
 was a failure, at least for some time.' * 
 
 Hurd declares himself of a different opinion. ' The 
 subject is infinitely curious, and of vast extent ; for those 
 who have taken it to be too much narrowed by specifying 
 the prophecies concerning Antichrist, seem not to have 
 understood the compass of the controversy, nor the terms 
 of the institution itself. The truth is, there is more 
 danger that lecturers will be wanting to the institution 
 than that it will not afford matter and scope enough for 
 their discussion.' Bishop Newton's opinion has proved 
 to be the better grounded. 
 
 The same year he made an effort, by application to the 
 Duke of Grafton, to secure the Professorship of Modern 
 History at Oxford for Thomas Warton, which Gray 
 had held as a sinecure, but which it was now resolved 
 to make an efiective appointment. He received a civil 
 refusal from the Duke, and the ofiice was given to a Dr. 
 Vivian by the influence of Lord Abingdon. Warburton, 
 in transmitting the Duke's answer to Warton, observes 
 that things were only going ' in their usual train, to the 
 exclusion of superior merit.' On Vivian's death, in 1770, 
 he made another application, on behalf of Warton, to 
 
 * Bishop Newton's Life by Himself, p. 155. 
 
1768.]' ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE. 601 
 
 Arclibisliop Cornwallis ; but superior merit was again ex- 
 cluded in favour of a Dr. Kowel, Principal of St. Mary 
 HaU. Warburton was annoyed, and Warton was left to 
 console himself with tlie consciousness of having deserved 
 the success which neither he nor his friends could com- 
 mand.* Posterity are apt to wonder at the fortune of 
 men so undistinguished over men universally known ; but 
 interest and envy have had their influence at aU times ; 
 and there are many, it must be remembered, who, though 
 not seeking to leave memorials to posterity, have well 
 deserved honour among the learned in their own day. 
 
 A present of Isaac Hawkins Browne's works, from 
 his son, drew from Warburton the following acknow- 
 ledgment : 
 
 ' Prior Park, Feb. 7, 1768. 
 
 ' SiE, — I have the honour and favour of receiving from 
 you a very valuable present of your father's works, whose 
 great parts and knowledge, in more arts and sciences 
 than one, few men had the pleasing opportunity of know- 
 ing more than I had. His happy vein in poetry made 
 him stand among the foremost of the art in his life-time ; 
 and he will be amongst the last that barbarity and 
 ignorance (fast returning upon us) shall be able to 
 obhterate. This mark of your fihal piety to so dis- 
 tinguished a person wdU do you lasting honour, and give 
 much pleasure to the friends of his family, in which 
 number I desire to be reckoned, being, 
 
 ' Sir, your obhged and obedient humble servant, 
 
 'W. GLOUCESTEE.'f 
 
 He began to be sensible of the declension of his 
 faculties. ' You talk,' said he to Hurd, ' of your golden 
 age of study long past. For myself, I can only say I 
 
 * ■VTooU's Life of Dr. Josepli Warton. Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vol. v. 
 p. 655. 
 
 f Biog. Brit., Art. 'Hawkins Browne.' 
 
602 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXXII. 
 
 have the same appetite for knowledge and learned con- 
 verse I ever had ; though not the same appetite for 
 writing and printing. It is time to begin to live for 
 myself ; I have lived for others longer than they deserved 
 of me.' * But he considered the season at which he was 
 then writing, the months of February and March, to be 
 the ' most unfriendly to the health of mind and body of 
 any throughout the whole year.' f 
 
 In the summer of 1769 he paid a visit of a fortnight 
 to Hurd at Thurcaston, who, seeing him in weak health, 
 took occasion, in writing to him shortly after, to advise 
 him not to apply too closely to study. ' I have received,' 
 he rephes, ' your kind letter of advice, and shaU, in the 
 banker's phrase, accept and honour the contents. 
 
 ' You know by experience how difficult it is, when we 
 have once got into a wicked habit of thinking, to leave it 
 off. All I can promise is, if that will satisfy you, to 
 think to no purpose ; and this I know by experience I can 
 do, having done so for many a good day. 
 
 ' I think you have oft heard me say that my delicious 
 season is the autumn, the season which gives most hfe 
 and vigour to my mental faculties. The hght mists, or, 
 as MUton calls them, the steams, that rise from the fields 
 in one of these mornings, give the same relief to the 
 views that the blue of the plum (to take my ideas from 
 the season) gives to the appetite. But I now enjoy httle 
 of this pleasure, compared to what I formerly had in an 
 autumn morning, when I used, with a book in my hand, 
 to traverse the delightful lanes and hedge-rows round 
 about the town of Newark, the unthinking place of my 
 nativity. Besides, my rheumatism now keeps me within 
 in a morning, till the sun has exhaled the blue of the 
 plum.'X 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Feb. 24, 1768. 
 t lb. Mar. 31. t lb. Sept. 4, 1769. 
 
17G9.3 DEAN TUCKER. 603 
 
 In August 1769, lie removed from Prior Park, which 
 was let to some nobleman, and fixed his residence at 
 Gloucester, to the great joy of Mrs. Warburton, who, 
 on I know not what account, had taken a dislike to 
 her uncle's house.* 
 
 The want of cordiality between Warburton and his 
 Dean, Dr. Tucker, whom, nevertheless, he calls 'good- 
 natured,' has been already mentioned. It was shown at 
 a visit which he made this year to Tucker, in company 
 with the Eev. Edward Sparkes, Head Master of Glou- 
 cester Grammar School. ' The Dean,' he says, ' soon took 
 advantage of my being off my guard, and confining him 
 to trade, and, before I was aware, was got deep into the 
 Calvinistic Articles, 'which he was resolved to clear of 
 that iinputation. A flow of more transcendent nonsense 
 I never heard on the occasion. Mr. Sparkes, who owed 
 him a grudge, . . . would needs contradict him ; and 
 this was fair. But he would needs understand him ; and 
 here the Dean, who did not understand himself, must 
 needs have the advantage. Sense sometimes, though 
 rarely, produces more sense ; but it comes up slowly, 
 and requires weeding. But the harvest of nonsense, on 
 good ground, produces a hundredfold, and springs up 
 immediately. In the course of it, our friend was insulted 
 by asking him whether he had read this divine and that 
 divine ; and ended in [Tucker's] fairly telling him that 
 his forte lay in classical learning, but that he was a mere 
 stranger to these profound researches. You may judge 
 how the harmless gravity of our friend must have been 
 disconcerted, and even violated, with this rudeness, which 
 nothing but the irresistible ambition of shining as a 
 divine before his Bishop could have drawn the good- 
 natured Dean into.'f 
 
 Warburton's health still continued uncertain, and he 
 
 * Letters fi-om an Eminent Prelate, p. 438. f I^. p. 443. 
 
604 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXII. 
 
 suspected that the pains which he had thought rheumatism 
 arose from St. Antony's fire, which, he said, fouls the 
 blood and continues long in it.* ' Old age,' he observed, 
 ' is a losing game.' f Dr. Heberden recommended an 
 issue in the right arm. J 
 
 Looking back into some of his writings, he said, ' The 
 retrospect is accompanied with a mortifying conviction 
 that the time is now past when I was able to write with 
 that force. Expect to find in my future writings the 
 marks of intellectual decay.' § 
 
 Hurd tried to soothe him with the following answer : 
 ' As to your not writing with the force you formerly did, 
 it may very well be, and yet be no subject of mortifica- 
 tion ; for, besides that you can afford to abate something 
 of your ancient force, and yet have enough left, force 
 itself has not, in aU. periods of hfe, the same grace. The 
 close of one of these long and bright days [in July] has 
 not the flame and heat of noon, and would be less 
 pleasing if it had. And I know not why it may not be 
 true, in the critical as well as moral sense of the poet's 
 words, 
 
 Lenior et melior fis accedente senect^. 
 
 But what I would chiefly say on the subject is this, that, 
 whether with force or without it, I would only wish your 
 future writings to be an amusement to you, and not a 
 labour ; and this, I think, is the proper use to be made 
 of your observation, if it be ever so well founded.' || 
 
 He had vigour enough, however, during this year, to 
 give considerable assistance to Euffhead for his ' Life of 
 Pope.' j 
 
 When Granger's ' Biographical History of England,' 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 446. 
 
 t lb. p. 448. % lb. p. 458. § lb. p. 451. 
 
 II lb. p. 454; Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 85. 
 
 4 Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 633. 
 
1770.] GIBBON AND HURD. C05 
 
 ■which appeared this year, was published, Warbiirton 
 bought it, and told Tom Davies, the pubhsher, that it 
 was an odd hook. This, said Davies to Granger, is praise 
 from him ; for, if he had not thought it worth reading, 
 he would have called it a sad book. * 
 
 About the same time came forth Gibbon's ' Critical 
 Observations on the Sixth Book of the jEneid.' Gibbon 
 had received, as he said, no private offence, like Lowth, 
 from ' the dictator and tyrant of the world of literature,' 
 whom his flatterers exalted above Aristotle and Longinus, 
 but he was ' ambitious of breaking a lance against the 
 giant's shield,' and he ' aimed his strokes against his person 
 and his hjrpothesis.' The Bishop and his party made no 
 reply, and the ' Critical Observations ' soon feU into ne- 
 glect. But Hayley and Heyne praised them, and Hayley 
 thought the acrimony of style, which Heyne rather disap- 
 proved, justifiable. ' But I could not forgive myself,' said 
 Gibbon, ' the contemptuous treatment of a man who, vsdtli 
 all his faults, was entitled to my esteem ; and I can less 
 forgive, in a personal attack, the cowardly concealment 
 of my name and character.' The public, however, have 
 excused Gibbon on this head ; and his pamphlet has been 
 considered a complete refutation of Warburton's hypo- 
 thesis, a refutation 'to which,' as Parr said, 'the greatest 
 name might with propriety have been affixed.' 
 
 The exaltation of Warburton above Aristotle and Lon- 
 ginus, to which Gibbon alludes, occurs in a passage of 
 Hurd's ' Dedication ' to the Bishop of his ' Commentary 
 on the Epistle to Augustus.' Speaking of those two great 
 critics of antiquity, he says : ' It was not enough, in your 
 enlarged views of things, to restore either of these models 
 [Aristotle or Longinus] to their original splendour. They 
 were both to be revived ; or rather a new original plan 
 of criticism to be struck out, which should unite the 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. AnecYol. v. p. 633. 
 
606 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXII. 
 
 virtues of each of them. This experiment is made on the 
 two greatest of our own poets [Shakspeare and Pope], 
 and by reflecting all the hghts of the imagination on the 
 severest reason, everything was effected which the warmest 
 admirer of ancient art could promise himself from such a 
 union. But you went farther ; by joining to these powers 
 a perfect insight into human nature, and so ennobhng the 
 exercise of hterary by the justest moral censure, you have 
 now at length advanced criticism to its full glory.' 
 
 In November he was in danger of dying, as was after- 
 wards the fate of Jacob Bryant, by a fall in his library 
 while reaching down a book. Dr. Balguy was with him, 
 and as they wanted to look at some volume that was on 
 a high shelf, Warburton stepped on the window-seat to 
 get it, but lost his footing and his balance, and fell down 
 backward, striking the side of his head against a candle- 
 stick, which cut through his ear. The wound was large, 
 but less troublesome than the bruise, and it was won- 
 derfid, he told Htird, that he escaped so well, for the 
 hurt was within half an inch of being fatal. * 
 
 Warburton was not yet a very old man. But his intel- 
 lects seem to have decayed at about the same age with 
 those of Swift, Marlborough, and Southey. Hurd, who 
 wrote very freely to his wife, and his other friends, con- 
 cerning him, saw the rapid weakening of his faculties, 
 and assured Mrs. Warburton, in a letter, in the early part 
 of 1771, when he was in his sixty-third year, that he 
 would write no more. Mrs. Warburton, aware of her 
 husband's condition, and pleased at Kurd's declaration, 
 communicated his opinion to Warburton, who heard it 
 with composure. 'I received this news,' he tells Hurd 
 in the following June, ' with an approving smde. I was 
 charmed with the tenderness of friendship, which con- 
 veyed, in so inoffensive a manner, that fatal secret which 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 460. 
 
1771.] DEATH OF HIS SON. 607 
 
 Gil Bias was incapable of doing, as lie ought, to his patron, 
 the Archbishop of Granada.' * 
 
 He received, about the same time, such pleasure as he 
 might find in the intelligence that ' The Divine Legation ' 
 had been translated into Dutch, by Abraham Van der 
 Meersch, with a Dedication to himself f The ' Doctrine 
 of Grace' had been translated into that language five 
 years before. J 
 
 Horace Walpole, who had been reviling him all his 
 life, and saying, that his conversion had not had the good 
 fortune, Hke that of Lord Lyttelton, to be believed, paid 
 him a visit, as he happened to be at Gloucester, in 1774, 
 and found him very infirm, speaking with much hesitation, 
 and beginning, as was said, to lose his memory. § 
 
 The remaining years of Warburton's existence are little 
 better than a blank. We find him sending a short letter, 
 now and then, to Hurd, chiefly about the education of his 
 son, the object in which he now felt more interest than in any 
 other. But he became incapable of conjtinued appHcation 
 either to writing or reading. And his faculties were still 
 more clouded and debilitated by the loss of his son, who 
 died of consumption in 1775, in his twentieth year. He 
 had been intended for the law, and placed at Trinity Hall, 
 Cambridge, under the care of Dr. HaUifax, afterwards 
 Bishop of St. Asaph. Warburton's sohcitude for his welfare 
 is apparent throughout his letters. He calls him half his 
 soul ; he notices how he is growing ; how he advances 
 in his reading ; and how he hopes to live to see him 
 an honest man. Dis aliter visum. Death is a relentless 
 disappointer of man's expectations. 
 
 . He had made a will in the hfe-time of his son, which 
 he lodged in the hands of Hurd, but, after his son's death, 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 462. 
 t Gent. Mag. for 1771, p. 266. 
 \ Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 388. 
 § Letter to Cole, Ax\g. 15, 1774. 
 
608 LIFE OF BISHOP WAREURTON, [Cii. XXXII. 
 
 made another in favour of his wife, whose interests he 
 especially recommended to Hm-d's care in the following 
 document : 
 
 ' To the Lord Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, to be opened and 
 delivered to him at my decease. — W. G. 
 
 ' To MY DEAR Friend, Dr. Eichard Hurd, Lord Bishop 
 of Lichfield and Coventry. — I do hereby press and conjure 
 him to take under his particular care and protection my 
 dear vdfe ; and to afford her all his assistance and aid 
 against all persons that may be disposed to injure or bear 
 hard upon her. And this I press him to do, and likewise 
 assist her mth his best advice, in memory of, and in return 
 for, the warm and sincere affection I have always borne 
 towards him. This earnest request I enforce under my 
 hand this 8th day of April, 1776. ' * 
 
 The account of his remaining years we must take from 
 Kurd's ' Memoir ; ' for nowhere else is there any history 
 of his dechning days to be found. ' The death of his son,' 
 he says, ' oppressed him to that degree as to put an end 
 to his literary labours, and even amusements, at once. 
 From that disastrous moment he lived on, indeed, for 
 two or three years ; but, when he had settled his affairs, 
 as was proper, upon this great change in his family, he 
 took no concern in the ordinary occurrences of life, and 
 grew so indifferent to everything that even his books and 
 writings seemed thenceforth to be utterly disregarded by 
 him. 
 
 ' Not that his memory and faculties, though very much 
 impaired, were ever wholly disabled. I saw him so late 
 as October, 1778, when I went into his diocese to confirm, 
 for him. On his first meeting, before his family, he 
 expressed his concern that I should take that journey, 
 and put myself to so much trouble on his account. And 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 491. 
 
1779.] DEATH OF WARBUETON. 609 
 
 afterwards he took occasion to say some pertinent and 
 obliging things, which showed, not only his usual friend- 
 hness of temper, but the command he had of his attention. 
 Nor was this aU. The evening before I left him, he 
 desired the family to withdraw, and then entered into a 
 confidential discourse with me on some private affairs 
 which he had much at heart, with as much pertinence 
 and good sense as he could have done in any former part 
 of his Hfe. Such was the power he had over his mind, 
 when roused to exert himself by some interesting occasion. 
 But this was an effort which could not be sustained very 
 long. In less than half an hour the family returned, and 
 he relapsed into his usual forgetfulness and inattention. 
 
 ' In this melancholy state he languished till the summer 
 following, when he expired at the palace in Gloucester, 
 on the 7th of June, 1779, and was buried at his cathedral, 
 at no great distance from the west door, and near to the 
 grave of one of his predecessors. Bishop Benson.' 
 
 Cradock mentions a striking circumstance which was 
 reported to have occurred at Warburton's death ; but 
 gives it only as a report. About the time that his only 
 son died, he became, as has been stated, almost imbecile, 
 and contiaued to take httle interest in anything for several 
 years, till, just before his death, a momentary revival of 
 intellect took place, and he asked his attendant, in a quiet 
 rational tone, ' Is my son reaUy dead, or not ?' The servant 
 hesitated how to reply, when the Bishop repeated the 
 question in a firmer voice. The attendant then answered, 
 ' As your Lordship presses the question, I must say, he is 
 dead.' ' I thought so,' said Warburton, and soon after 
 expired.* 
 
 It was observed that few men of such eminence have 
 passed to the tomb with so httle notice. The periodicals 
 of the time were totally silent respecting him, with the 
 
 * Cradook's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 205. 
 
610 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTON. [Ch. XXXH. 
 
 exception of a short article in the ' Westminater Magazine,' 
 which was copied, with some enlargement, into the 
 ' Gentleman's Magazine.' 
 
 A marble monument was erected to him in Gloucester 
 Cathedral, at the expense of his widow, with the following 
 inscription, written by Hurd, over a medalhon portrait : 
 
 To the Memory of 
 
 William Warbueton, D.D., 
 
 For more than nineteen years Bishop of this See : 
 
 A Prelate 
 
 Of the most sublime Genius and exquisite Learning, 
 
 Both which Talents 
 
 He employed, through a long life, 
 
 in the support 
 
 of what he firmly believed, 
 
 the Christian Religion, 
 
 and of what he esteemed the best Estabhshment of it, 
 
 the Church of England. 
 
 He was bom at Newark -upon-Trent, 
 
 Dec. 24, 1698 ; 
 
 was consecrated Bishop of Gloucester, Jan. 20, 1760 ; 
 
 Died at his Palace, in. this City, June 7, 1779, 
 
 and was buried near this place. 
 
 Eemarks were made on this epitaph by some who read 
 it without any stop after the word ' beheved.' Cradock 
 showed a copy of it to Dr. Thurlow, Bishop of Lincoln, 
 who, reading it in that way, said, ' Could your friend find 
 nothing better to say in honour of his former idol, than 
 that he died in the behef of what he conceived to be 
 Christianity ? ' Others, to whom Cradock showed the 
 copy, thought the language ambiguous, and could scarcely 
 believe that it was correctly transcribed.* 
 
 Warburton's widow, about two years after his death, 
 was married to the Eev. John Stafford Smith, Warburton's 
 chaplain, who, by the presentation of Hurd, became Rector 
 
 * Cradock's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 205. 
 
Ch. XXXn.] COLLECTION OF HIS WORKS. 611 
 
 of Fladbury in Worcestershire, a living of something more 
 than seven hundred a-year. She died in 1796, having 
 survived her husband more than seventeen years. 
 
 Of his books he bequeathed the principal part, vphich 
 were at Gloucester, to be sold for the benefit of the 
 Gloucester Infirmary. Hurd purchased them, and depo- 
 sited them in the hbrary at Hartlebury Castle. Those 
 that were in Grosvenor Square his wife seciu^ed, and, 
 finding that he had scribbled much in them in his later 
 years, when he was nearly imbecile, disposed of such as 
 she did not destroy, to Payne, the bookseller.* Some that 
 were sold in London were characterised as not choice, but 
 an awkward farrago in middhng condition.f 
 
 He had inherited Pope's copies of the quarto editions 
 of ' Shakspeare,' but had valued them so little as to sell 
 them himself to Payne in 1766, who immediately put them 
 into the sale of Mallet's books, among which they were 
 sold for three guineas. J 
 
 His published works were not collected tiU 1788, mne 
 years after his death, when a handsome edition, said to 
 exhibit his last corrections and improvements, was printed 
 in seven quarto volumes, at the expense of Mrs. Stafford 
 Smith, under the superintendence of Bishop Hurd. At 
 the same time some pieces, which had not before been 
 pubhshed, were put forth, oddly enough, in an octavo 
 form ; these pieces being the fragment of the ninth book 
 of ' The Divine Legation ; ' ' Directions for the Study of 
 Theology,' and ' Short Notes on Neal's History of the 
 Puritans,' with some correspondence of Warburton with 
 Middleton and Lowth. It is observable, that of this 
 edition only two hundred and fifty copies were printed : 
 ' a number which seemed to insinuate,' as Parr remarked, 
 ' either that Warburton's writings were too excellent for 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. Anecd., vol. v. p. 640 ; vol. vi. p. 490 ; Prior's Life 
 of Malone, p. 344. 
 
 f Nichols's Lit. lUustr. vol. vi. p. 352. | Prior, ib. 
 
 R K 2 
 
612 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOK. [Ch. XXXII. 
 
 the gross taste of the pubHc, or that the pubhc had shown 
 some inauspicious symptoms of indifference about War- 
 burton's writings.'* A 'Life of Warburton,' also, or 
 rather ' A Discourse by way of General Preface, contain- 
 ing some Account of the Life, Writings, and Character of 
 Warburton,' was promised, in an advertisement prefixed 
 to the edition, and said to have been prepared, but was 
 delayed, with much complaint from many quarters, tUl 
 1794, when two hundred and fifty copies of that also 
 were printed. This ' Life,' or ' Discourse,' was written by 
 Hurd, and was found to be a meagre and unsatisfactory 
 panegyric. The author, but for the importunity of certain 
 readers and critics, would have withheld it till after his 
 death. f Parr exclaimed vehemently against the delay; 
 observing that, if the ' Discourse ' were withheld because 
 it contained reflections on surviving opponents of Bishop 
 Warburton, they would surely rather meet attacks, which 
 they might hope to repel, while hving, than have their 
 memory subject to charges, of which they knew not the 
 nature, after their deaths ; or that, if the piece were kept 
 in hand for the sake of improving it, it might be expected 
 to farnish the Enghsh language with a proverbial example 
 of accuracy not less apt than the Smyrna of Cinna and 
 the panegyric of Isocrates. J 
 
 The Works have since been uniformly printed in twelve 
 volumes octavo, to which Mr. Ellvert, in 1841, added a 
 thirteenth, consisting of ' Selections from Warburton's 
 Unpubhshed Papers.' 
 
 In the year 1767, Warburton, acting on a suggestion 
 of Mr. Charles Yorke, began to collect the letters which 
 he had received from correspondents, and arrange them 
 in a book in order of time. ' I could have wished,' he 
 
 * Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 187. 
 
 t Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 147. 
 
 j Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, pp. 189, 191. 
 
Ch. XXXII.] WARBUETON's LETTEES. 613 
 
 said, ' for some of my answers, but as I never took any 
 copies except when I was afraid of misrepresentations, 
 these were extremely rare.' Hm-d approved of the design, 
 and observed to him, ' you cannot interpose too many of 
 your own letters, which will make the most valuable part 
 of the collection.'* 
 
 This correspondence was destroyed, it is beUeved, by 
 Warburton's widow. As for Hurd himself, he took care 
 to preserve all the letters that he received from Warbur- 
 ton, and appears to have kept copies of some of his own 
 to him. AU these he thought proper to print during his 
 hfetime, in a quarto volume, and to leave for pubhcation 
 after his death, with the following advertisement : 
 
 ' These letters give so true a pictm^e of the writer's cha- 
 racter, and are, besides, so worthy of him in all respects, 
 (I mean, if the reader can forgive the playfulness of his 
 wit in some instances, and the partiaUty of his friendship 
 in many more,) that, in honour of his memory, I would 
 have them pubhshed after my death, and the profits aris- 
 ing from the sale of them apphed to the benefit of the 
 Worcester Infirmary.' 
 
 Hurd died in 1808, and the volume was given to the 
 public in 1809. Only two hundred and fifty copies, the 
 same number as of Warburton's works, were printed, and 
 the Messrs. CadeU are said to have purchased them for 
 400/., which sum was apphed as Hurd had desired. A 
 second edition, in octavo, was published the same year. 
 The entire correspondence consisted of two hundred and 
 fifty-seven letters of Warburton, twenty-six of Hurd, and 
 five of the Honourable Charles Yorke to Warburton. 
 
 Hurd's great motive, as he beheved or alleged, for pub- 
 hshing these letters, is stated in one of his communications 
 to Balguy. ' I am turning over my old correspondence 
 with Dr. Warburton, in which I find frequent and friendly 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 397, 398. 
 
614 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBURTON. [Ch. XXXII. 
 
 mention of you. This, among other reasons, will tempt 
 me to preserve many of his letters, and to give them in 
 due time to this wretched world, if it be only to shame it 
 into a better opinion of that excellent man, by showing 
 the regard he had to real merit' * 
 
 To a reader who knew nothing of Hurd's alleged 
 reasons, the purpose of the pubhcation might seem to 
 have been of an exactly contrary nature ; for, if we ex- 
 cept Hurd himself, with Balguy and Towne, two names 
 hardly known to the world in general, we shall find almost 
 all the writers of the day, all the men whose real merit 
 the world has acknowledged, abused in these letters, 
 sometimes by Hurd, but mostly by Warburton, as persons 
 whose character, hterary or moral, or both, was such as it 
 was a favour to notice even with contempt. 
 
 Dr. Johnstone and Mr. Field, in their Memoirs of Parr, 
 have amused themselves with collecting some of the 
 flowers of censure and calumny with which these extra- 
 ordinary pages abound. They may be compared to the 
 conversations of Ben Jons on with Drummond, hx which 
 Ben does not speak well of a single individual. Hurd's 
 hberal use of the word ' coxcomb,' approved by Warbur- 
 ton, we have abeady noticed. Both the correspondents, 
 but Warbmrton especially, have plenty of other terms at 
 command of a similarly vituperative character. Warbiu-- 
 ton's letters afford such specimens of defamation as the 
 following : Young, the author of the ' Night Thoughts,' 
 is ' the finest writer of nonsense of any of this age.'f 
 Eutherforth, the author of the ' Essay on Virtue,' is ' the 
 meanest pedant of the age.' J Spence, of the ' Anecdotes,' 
 is ' an extreme poor creature.' § Smollett is ' a vagabond 
 Scot,' who ' writes nonsense ten thousand strong.' || John- 
 son is 'this Johnson,' of whom Warburton and Hurd 
 
 * Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 147. 
 I Let, cxxix. t Let. xxii. § Let. xlv. || Let. cxxv. 
 
Ch. XXXII.] WAEBURTON'S remarks on men of merit. 615 
 
 ' think much alike,' and whose remarks on Warburton's 
 Shakspeare are ' full of insolence and maUgnant reflec- 
 tions,' but ' having in them as much folly as malignity.'* 
 Jortin, as might be expected, is reviled in many varieties 
 of phrase; he 'is as vain as he is dirty;' his conduct 'is 
 mean, low, and ungrateful ; ' his ' heart is full of rancour ; ' 
 he 'played the hypocrite,' and 'his friends are dirty 
 fellows.'" Dean Tucker has ' a flow of transcendent non- 
 sense.' ' Jackson, author of ' Ancient Cluronology,' is ' a 
 wretch ' who ' spent his days in the repubhc of letters in 
 one unvaried course of begging, raihng, and steahng.' * 
 Demosthenes Taylor 'has less understanding than the 
 dunce Webster.^ Priestley is 'a wretched fellow,' and 
 Voltaire 'a scoundrel.'' Harris, of the 'Hermes,' 'leans 
 now to sense, now to nonsense,' as antiquity mclines him.^ 
 Garrick's Ode ' is below any of Gibber's ; Gibber's non- 
 sense was somethiag like sense ; but this man's sense, 
 whenever he deviates into it, is much more like nonsense. '"^ 
 In addition to these animadversions, we are told, in the 
 same tone of derision, that ' the Bench of Bishops is a 
 wooden bench ; * that ' the angel of dulness is ready to 
 pour his vial into the Gam ; ' ' and that ' the Goths and 
 Vandals, return when they will, cannot lurrt Gambridge ; "' 
 that the Gourt is ' an earthly pandemonium ; ' ' that ' the 
 Church is bestrid by some lumpish minister of state, 
 who turns and winds it at his pleasure ; ' ^ and that 
 ' the discourses of the whole crew of Scotch metaphy- 
 sicians are commonly full of moonshine.'" Of Hurd's 
 share in the correspondence no more need be said 
 than that he is ever ready to re-echo the sentiments of 
 his leader : 
 
 * Let. clxxv. ^ Lets. Ixxxviii. xc. cxxi. "= Let. ccxxi. 
 
 ^ Let. xlvii. * Let. xcv. * Let. ccxxxiv. 
 
 B Let. xxxviii. ^ Let. cxxix. ' Let. ccviii. 
 
 J Let. Ixix. ^ Let. xlvii. ^ Let. vii. 
 
 ™ Let. xlvii. " Let. ccxxxi. 
 
616 LIFK OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXXH. 
 
 Sic iterat voces, et verba cadentia tollit, 
 Ut credas — 
 
 — partes miiamn tractare secundas. 
 
 Hiird has been more censured for publisMng these 
 scurrilities than "Warburton for writing them ; for War- 
 burton threw them out in the heat of the moment, and 
 addressed them in confidential letters to an intimate friend ; 
 but Hurd printed them, with cool and mahcious dehbera- 
 tion, in his hfetime, and provided for their pubhcation, by 
 his own express directions, after his death. He adhered 
 to his character for wariness when, having resolved to 
 give these raUings of his friend to the world, he determined 
 to withhold them tiU he himseK should be insensible to 
 the indignant clamour which they would be certain to 
 excite. 
 
Ch. XXXUI.] personal appearance. 617 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 CHARACTER OF WARBURTON. 
 
 WARBUETON'S personal appearance — his temperance HIS LITE- 
 RARY COURAGE HIS CONVERSATION DR. CUMINO's ACCOUNT OF 
 
 HIM INTERVIEW WITH JOHNSON HIS WANT OF TASTE IN LITERA- 
 TURE PRETENDED COMPARISON OF HIM AND JOHNSON SPECIMENS 
 
 OF HIS COARSENESS OF STYLE HIS VIGOUR OF MIND HIS IMPER- 
 FECT ACQUAINTANCE WITH LANGUAGES HIS LOVE OF PARADOX 
 
 HIS FREEDOM FROM BIGOTRY — HIS GENERAL READING HIS COM- 
 MON-PLACE BOOK HIS SMART SAYINGS — GENERAL CHARACTER OF 
 
 HIS WORKS CONCLUSION. 
 
 OF the personal appearance and bodily frame of War- 
 burton, we find little description. Some intimations 
 that he was a man of rather large make appear in his 
 correspondence, but the only definite account of his size 
 and stature is that which is given us by Bishop Newton 
 in his memoirs of his own fife : ' He was rather a taU, 
 robust, large-boned man, of a frame that seemed to re- 
 quire a good supply of provisions to support it ; but he 
 was sensible, if he had lived as other people do, he must 
 have used a good deal of exercise, and, if he had used a 
 good deal of exercise, it must have interrupted the course 
 of his studies, to which he was so devoted as to deny him- 
 self any other indulgence, and so became a singular ex- 
 ample, not only of temperance, but even of abstinence, in 
 eating and drinking ; and yet his spirits were not lowered 
 or exhausted, but were rather raised and increased, by his 
 lowHving.' * He himself observes that he was ' a slender 
 
 * Bp. Newton's Life by Himself, p. 155. 
 
618 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Cn. XXXIII. 
 
 supper-man,' and speaks of himself, when he was only in 
 his fifty-ninth year, as being obhged to old age, like Cato, 
 for having diminished his care for eating and drinking, 
 while it increased his desire for conversation.* His tem- 
 perance in his earlier years, when he was reading hard at 
 Brant-Broughton, was great, though he is supposed, by 
 his extraordinary apphcation, to have laid the foundation, 
 at that period, of his subsequent giddiness and premature 
 decay of intellect. 
 
 In his literary character, he was of a bold and deter- 
 mined Enghsh spirit, ready to resist all opponents, and 
 willing to consider the state of authorship as a state of 
 war. If any deduction be made from this part of his 
 character, it must be on account of his conduct towards 
 Pope, in his advances to whom there appears no great 
 magnanimity, and whom he has always been suspected 
 of defending rather from hope of possible advantage 
 than from sincerity of settled opinion. 
 
 He appears, from what we find related of him, to have 
 been less dogmatical in his conversation than in his pubh- 
 cations. Mr. Malone records that Burke, the first time 
 he saw Warburton in company, sat next to him at dinner 
 without knowing who he was, and that, being much 
 struck with his talk, he at last observed, ' Sir, I think it 
 is impossible I can mistake ; you must be the celebrated 
 Dr. Warburton ; aut Erasmus aut Diabolus.' ' War- 
 burton,' adds Malone, ' though so furious a controver- 
 sialist in print, was very easy and good-humoured in 
 company, and sometimes entertaining.' f 
 
 Hurd's account of him as a companion is this : ' In 
 mixed companies he was extremely entertaining, but 
 less guarded than men of the world usually are, and dis- 
 posed to take to himself a somewhat larger share of the 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 246. 
 I Prior's Life of Malone, p. 370. 
 
Ch. XXXm.] CONYERSATION. 619 
 
 conversation than very exact breeding is thought to 
 allow. Yet few, I believe, wished him to be more re- 
 served, or less communicative, than he was : so abundant 
 was the information or entertainment which his ready wit 
 and extensive knowledge afforded them ! In private, 
 with his friends, he was natural, easy, unpretending ; at 
 once the most agreeable and most useful , companion in 
 the world. You saw to the very bottom of his mind 
 on any subject of discourse ; and his various hterature, 
 penetrating judgment, and quick recollection, made him 
 say the hveliest or the justest things upon it. In short, 
 I was in those moments affected by his conversation 
 pretty much as Cato was by that of Maximus Fabius, and 
 may say, as he does in the Dialogue on Old Age, / was 
 so fond of Ms discourse, and listened to it so eagerly, as 
 if I had foreseen, what indeed came to pass, that, when I 
 lost him, I should never again meet with so instructive a 
 companion.'* 
 
 Dr. Kippis says of him, 'The only time I had ever 
 the honour of being in his company, which was an hour 
 and a half in his own study, I found him remarkably 
 condescending in his manner, and admirably instructive 
 and entertaining in his conversation.' f 
 
 Charles Yorke, who met him at his first visit to Pope, 
 represents himself as delighted with the opportunities 
 which he had of conversing with him ; describing him 
 as a man 'surprisingly communicative, of prodigious 
 memory, and of enchanting fancy.' 'The fluency and 
 correctness of his conversation,' he said, was ' beyond 
 most men ;' but, he adds, somewhat satirically, ' I regard 
 him as a genius of so high a rank, that, unable to con- 
 tain himself within the hmits of ordinary capacities, he 
 spurns the dull earth, and soars above the skies ; or, to 
 
 * Life of Warburton, p. 112. 
 
 f Kippis's Biog. Brit. vol. v. p. 304. 
 
620 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUBTON. [Ch. XXXIII. 
 
 use an expression of his own concerning Mr. Bayle, 
 'strikes frequently into the province of paradox.' * 
 
 Dr. William Cuming, a physician of Dorchester, 
 writing to Dr. Lettsom, about six years after Warburton's 
 death, describes what he was, in manners and con- 
 versation, when he was more than sixty years old, as 
 follows : 
 
 ' Many years ago I read over the polemical and critical 
 works of the late Dr. Warburton, and, from the perusal, 
 I conceived a most unfavourable opinion of the man ; so 
 stiff and conceited in opinion ; so dictatorial in his senti- 
 ments, treating every one who thought differently from 
 himself with the most sovereign contempt. It is above 
 thirty years ago that Ealph AUen, of Prior Park, first 
 came to pass about three months in the summer annually 
 at Weymouth ; his niece, Mrs. Warburton, was always of 
 the party. ... I had been introduced to Mr. Allen's 
 acquaintance soon after his first arrival, and was always 
 professionally employed in the family. After a few years, 
 the Bishop, whom I had never seen, came to pass a month 
 of the summer with Mr. Allen at Weymouth. I was 
 soon after sent for to attend some one in the family. 
 After having visited my patient, Mrs. Warburton took 
 me by the hand and led me to the dining-room, where 
 we found the Bishop alone. She presented me to him 
 with, " Give me leave, my Lord, to introduce to you a 
 friend of mine, to whom you and I have great obligations 
 for the care he has repeatedly taken of our son." He 
 received me courteously enough, but I own to you I felt 
 an awe and awkward uneasiness. I determined to say 
 but httle, and to weigh well what I said. We were left 
 alone ; it was an hour to dinner ; he soon engaged me on 
 some hterary subject, in the course of which he gave me 
 the etymology of some word or phrase in the French 
 
 * Harris's Life of Lord Hardwioke, vol. i. p. 477. 
 
Ch. XXXni.] DR. CUMING. 621 
 
 language, with a " Do 'not you think so ?" I ventured 
 to dissent, and said that I had always conceived its origin 
 to be so and so. To this he immediately rephed, " Upon 
 my word I beheve you are in the right ; nay, 'tis past a 
 doubt ; I wonder it never struck me before." Well, to 
 dinner we went ; his Lordship was easy, facetious, and 
 entertaining. My awe of him was pretty well dissipated, 
 and I conversed with ease. Some time after dinner, when 
 he was walking about the room, he came behind me, 
 tapped me ou the shoulder, and beckoned me into an 
 adjoining room. As soon as we entered, he shut the 
 door, seated himself in an arm-chair on one side of the 
 fire-place, while he directed me by his hand to one on 
 the opposite side. My fit immediately returned ; I ex- 
 pected to be catechised and examined; but it was of 
 short dm^ation. He said he was happy in this opportunity 
 of asking the opinion and advice of a gentleman of my 
 character respecting some complaints he had felt for some 
 time past, and which he found increasing. On this my 
 spirits expanded : I did not fear being a match for his 
 Lordship on a medical subject. He then began to detail 
 to me the complaints and feelings of those persons 
 addicted to constant study and a sedentary hfe. As I 
 mentioned several circumstances which he had omitted 
 in his catalogue, and which he immediately acknow- 
 ledged, I gained his confidence. He was sensible I was 
 master of my subject. It is a good pohtical maxim, 
 Docti sunt docte tractandi. I explained to him the 
 ratio7iale of his complaints, and showed him the pro- 
 priety of the diet, exercise, and regimen, which I recom- 
 mended to him. In short, we parted, to join the 
 company, very well satisfied with each other. I found 
 my disgust and prejudice gradually abate. During 
 several subsequent years, I had repeated opportunities 
 of being in company with him, and never saw a single 
 instance of that fastidiousness and arrogance so con- 
 
622 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXXIII. 
 
 spicuous in his writings. He always received me with 
 great good humour; I conversed with him easily and 
 familiarly. On all subjects he showed an attention and 
 deference to the opinion of others. He had a great 
 fund of anecdote, and told his stories with much humour 
 and facetiousness. This change in my opinion relating 
 to Dr. Warburton, was the effect of my being personally 
 acquainted with him ; however, I can never forgive him 
 for defacing the immortal Shakspeare by his many 
 ridiculous and unlettered notes, though he made me a 
 present of that and aU his works.' * 
 
 Warburton is said by Johnson to have shown much 
 good humour when they once met ; for of one meeting 
 only between them have we any account. Somebody 
 asked Johnson whether he had ever been in company 
 with Warburton. ' I never saw him,' said he, ' till one 
 evening about a week ago, at the Bishop of St. Asaph's ; 
 at first, he looked surlily at me ; but after we had been 
 jostled into conversation, he took me to a window, asked 
 me some questions, and before we parted was so well 
 pleased with me that he patted me.' Patting, and tapping 
 on the shoulder, seem to have been among his habits.t 
 
 Dr. Monsey, however, the humorous physician of Chel- 
 sea Hospital, who was old enough to have seen Warburton • 
 in his best days, used to tell an anecdote of him that 
 shows him in a less favourable hght. He once dined at 
 Garrick's with him and Dr. Brown, at the time when 
 Brown was Warburton's obsequious flatterer. After 
 dinner, when they were talking over their wine, Garrick 
 said, on some remark from Monsey, ' Now, Monsey, don't 
 indulge in yoxir usual freedom, but let us be a httle 
 serious. ' ' Oh ! ' said Brown, ' you may be sure Dr. 
 Monsey wiU restrain his humour before Dr. Warburton, 
 
 * Nichols's Lit. HI. vol. ii. p. 839. 
 
 ■f Miss Hawkins : Croker's Johnsoniana, vol. i. p. 134. 
 
Ch. XXXIII.] WAEBUETON m company. 623 
 
 as he is afraid of him.' Monsey, astonished at Brown's 
 remark, waited a moment or two, to see whether War- 
 burton would say anything to reprove Brown, or ask 
 why Dr. Monsey should be afraid of him ; but as War- 
 burton was silent, Monsey retorted, with his customary 
 freedom of speech, ' No, sir, I am afraid neither of Dr. 
 Warburton nor of his jack-pudding.' A solemn pause 
 followed ; neither Warburton nor Brown appear to have 
 rephed. Garrick was confused, and saw that to restore 
 good humour was hopeless ; and the party in conse- 
 quence soon separated. Here Warburton appears to 
 little advantage. The story is given as Monsey himself, 
 who dishked Warburton as a writer, and thought lightly 
 of him as a scholar, told it to John Taylor of the ' Sun.' 
 
 Another anecdote, which gives a somewhat similar 
 view of Warburton, was related to Taylor by Dr. Wolcot. 
 Wolcot knew a garrulous old woman, a cousin of Allen's, 
 who used to say that people were quite mistaken in 
 supposing Warbui'ton to have been a proud man, for she 
 had often met him at AUen's, in the company of Bishops 
 and other great people, when he talked more with her, 
 and paid her more attention, than any of the high people 
 that were present. Wolcot smiled at the old woman's 
 simplicity, and concluded that it was to show his slight 
 estimation of the great people, that Warburton bestowed 
 his attention on a trifling old gossip.* 
 
 Perhaps the following passage from Walpole's letters 
 — whose representations of Warburton, however, are 
 seldom to be received without distrust — may be thought 
 to afford some intimation how the Bishop might at times 
 behave in company : ' The Bishop of Carlisle,' says he, 
 ' told me that, t'other day in the House of Lords, War- 
 burton said to another of the Bench, " I was invited by 
 my Lord Mansfield to dine with that Helvetius ; but he 
 
 * Taylor's 'Records of- My Life,' vol. i. pp. 85, 87 ; vol. ii. p. 238. 
 
624 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUETOK. [Ch. XXXHI. 
 
 is a professed patron of atheism, a rascal, and a scoundrel, 
 and I would not countenance him ; besides, I should have 
 worked him, and that Lord Mansfield would not have 
 liked." No, in good truth ; who can hke such vul- 
 garism ? His French, too, I suppose, is equal to his wit 
 and his piety.' * 
 
 For the higher branches of hterature he was dis- 
 quahfied by want of taste and want of imagination. 
 Of power to approach the subhme or elegant creations 
 of genius, he has nowhere given the least indication. 
 Nor as to poetry, had he any real judgment. If we 
 form an opinion from his early attempts at transla- 
 tion in verse — for on origin ahty in verse he never 
 ventured — we may beheve that no cultivation could 
 have made him even a mediocre poet. There is a most 
 ridiculous passage in ' Kurd's life of Warburton,' in 
 which it is said that when Mason published his monody 
 on the death of Pope, Warburton regarded it as so sure 
 a presage of his future eminence, and ' so advantageous 
 a picture of his mind,' that, on sight of it, he 
 
 ' Witli open arms received one poet more.' 
 
 The pages of Uteratm^e scarcely present anything more 
 ludicrous than the author of Warburton's clumsy verses 
 patting on the shoulder the refined elegance of Mason. 
 
 In poets, as true genius is but rare, 
 True taste as seldom is the critic's share ; 
 Both must alike from Heaven derive their light, 
 These born to judge, as well as those to write. 
 
 I recollect having observed, in one of the periodicals 
 of some years past, an afiected comparison of Warburton, 
 as an author, with Johnson. The attempt was absurd. 
 Doubtless, some points of resemblance might be found 
 between them, as vigour of thought, warmth of temper, 
 
 » Letter to the Earl of Hertford, April 5, 1764. 
 
Gh. XXXni.] READING AND TASTE. 625 
 
 and love of victory over adversaries ; but any general 
 comparison between the author of 'Easselas' and the 
 author of the ' Doctrine of Grace,' between one whose 
 compositions have refined and modulated our language, 
 and one who knew not what refinement or modulation of 
 language meant, between a writer who avoided all that 
 was inelegant, and a writer whose every phrase was tinged 
 with coarseness, is futile and ridiculous. 
 
 Johnson, at his interview with George III., was modest 
 enough to tell the King that he had not -read so much as 
 Dr. Warburton. Johnson, however, notwithstanding his 
 bad eyesight, his iU health, and his unsettled life, had 
 roamed over many volumes, and, with his tenacious 
 memory, had retained much of their contents ; but he 
 might, perhaps, have cast his eye on fewer pages than 
 Warburton in his calm retirement at Braut-Broughton. 
 We must inquire, however, as Seneca has admonished us, 
 not who has read most, but who has read best. ' No 
 man,' said Selden, ' is the wiser for his learning ; learning 
 may administer matter to work in, or objects to work 
 upon, but wisdom and wit are born with a man.' The 
 natural abilities and judgment of Johnson had enabled 
 him to turn his reading to far better account than War- 
 burton could turn his. 
 
 Warburton's want, or coarseness, of taste, exhibits itself 
 to his reader everywhere, and sometimes in the most ludi- 
 crous manner. Speaking of the Grecian artists having 
 taught the Egyptians to form the statues of their gods in 
 a walking posture, he says that the Egyptians then bound 
 them with chains, imagining that 'they had a strange 
 propensity to show them a fair pair of heels.'* Men- 
 tioning Alexander the Great as being supposed the son 
 of Jupiter Ammon, he observes that having had a hint 
 from his mother to that effect, he might have boasted of 
 
 * Div. Leg. book ii, sect. 4. 
 * S S 
 
626 LIFE OP BISHOP WAEBUETON. [Ch. XXXIII. 
 
 it to the priest as a certainty, ' and so the murder came 
 otit.'* The Hebrews, he states, adopted their astronomy 
 from the Greeks, and then ' learned the art of new trick- 
 ing up their sphere, and making it as fashionable as their 
 neighbours.'! Alluding to himself being censured, and 
 Bishop Bull, with whom he agreed, being approved, in a 
 certain publication, he says, ' This is the very hocus pocus 
 of controversy ; when the bishop and I have paid in the 
 same coin, that from the bishop's pocket shall be true ortho- 
 dox sterling, while that from mine comes out cHpped, 
 washed, and counterfeit.' In the same page he speaks of the 
 writer ' outfacing the fraud,' and ' patching up the cheat. 'J 
 He speaks of ' hocus pocus tricks,' too, in a Sermon on the 
 Kesurrection ; and in one of his Charges adverts to ' a 
 magnificent show of viands, and all from the hog-stye.' 
 Dr. Stebbing is told that he asks questions ' with ignorance 
 excusable only in a savage to his catechist,' that he is one 
 of those who come to the study of rehgion ' with un- 
 purged heads, stufied full of systems,' and admonished 
 ' to keep his advice for those whom it concerns.' § In 
 reflecting on TiUard, he observes that he is doubtless a 
 very good member of the Society for the Propagation of 
 the Gospel in Foreign Parts, for, ' finding the Gospel stay- 
 ing at home, he does his best to send it packing.' || He is 
 not ashamed to display such grammar as the following : 
 ' Who, when he had dissipated this terror by his martial 
 numbers, they rushed on to the charge.'4. He calls God's 
 moral government ' the bugbear to impiety.'** And as to 
 the coarse names which he apphes to his adversaries, 
 ' whoever dares to write or think without Justice Overdo 's 
 warrant, he is a gentleman of the Dunciad, a mushrooryi, a 
 
 * Div. Leg. book ii. sect. 4. 
 
 t ' Remarks on Several Occasional Eeflections ; ' pt. i. sect. 4 ; 
 Works, vol. xi. p. 271. | lb. p. 306. 
 
 § lb. pp. 331, 349. II lb. p. 427. 
 
 j. Div. Leg. book ii. sect. 4. ** Julian, book ii. c. 6. 
 
Ch. XXXin.] STYLE. 627 
 
 gentleman of the last edition, a Grub Street critic, a miser- 
 able, lost to shame as a man and as a writer, an idle 
 blunderer, an ass, ridiculously stupid, and intolerably 
 nonsensical.''* 
 
 The general, character of his style is well expressed by 
 Johnson as being ' copious without selection, and forcible 
 without neatness.' ' He took,' adds the critic, ' the words 
 that presented themselves ; his diction is coarse and im- 
 pure, and his sentences are unmeasured.' Wliat he says of 
 it himself is this : ' I have so imperfect an idea of my sub- 
 ject, and rough-cast my composition so loosely, that my 
 works, if they escape damning, are yet in a state of purga- 
 tory, and with so much terrestrial matter about them, 
 that they would take till Plato's great year to purge and 
 purify, had I time, and nothing else to do but attend to 
 them. I believe there are some thousand alterations in 
 the language only in the second edition of Julian ; and 
 the first volume of " The Divine Legation," now in the 
 press, is so traiismogrijied that you will hardly know it 
 again. ISTor is this the effect of modesty (which would be 
 some comfort), but of pride, and the having more respect 
 for myself than the pubhc ; who, to give them their due, 
 are not over delicate : 
 
 Curious, not knowing, not exact, but nice.' 
 
 In making so many alterations, it is to be wished that 
 he had expelled more vulgarisms. But such was his want 
 of taste that his changes must often have been no improve- 
 ments, what he substituted being as inelegant as what he 
 removed. 
 
 Yet, with all this rudeness, there is so much of energy 
 in the pages as moves the reader still to follow the writer. 
 ' There was something in your mind,' said Hurd to him, 
 ' still more than in the matter of your book, that struck 
 
 * Confusion worse Confounded, p. 10. 
 s s 2 
 
628 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBUKTON. [Ch. XXXIII- 
 
 me.' Thus it has been with most readers ; they have felt 
 that 
 
 Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. 
 
 Johnson did him ample justice in this particular. ' In his 
 " Divine Legation," you are always entertained. He 
 carries you round and round, without carrying you for- 
 ward to the point, but then you do not wish to be carried 
 forward.' At another time he said, ' Warburton is per- 
 haps the last man who has written with a mind full of 
 reading and reflection.'* 
 
 ' But his knowledge,' as the same authority reminds us, 
 ' was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits 
 too eager to be always cautious.' He knew indeed a good 
 deal of men, and a good deal of books, but his opinions 
 were often hastily and crudely formed, and rashly and 
 presumptuously expressed. 
 
 As who should say, I am Sir Oracle, 
 
 And, when I ope my mouth, let no dog bark, 
 
 and consequently were often at variance with those of men 
 that thought more carefully and sedately. We have seen 
 much of his offensive daring in his letters ; we meet with 
 examples of it in numbers of other places. He who re- 
 corded that he had a mean opinion of Blackstone, that he 
 pitied Descartes for being a visionary, and despised 
 Leibnitz for being a cheat, was not likely to meet with 
 universal concurrence in his notions.f Li regard to 
 languages, his want of exact knowledge, yet venturesome- 
 ness of experiment, is often sadly apparent. He could 
 not be said, mdeed, to have just perspicacity or judgment 
 in any language whatever. His deficiency in Hebrew 
 
 * Croker's Boswell, vol. viii. p. 17. 
 
 + Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 2G2, 832. 
 
Ch. XXXIII.] DEPENDENCE ON TEANSLATORS. G29 
 
 exposed liim to the ridicule of Lowth for imagining that 
 Ezra could have written ' Job.' His imperfect acquaint- 
 ance with Greek left him dependent on Latin or French 
 translators, the latter of whom he seems to have preferred. 
 His unskilfulness in the niceties of Latin led him into 
 mistakes to be corrected by Jortin, and suffered him to 
 attempt emendations of Velleius Paterculus which scholars 
 could but regard with amazement. 
 
 Upton made merry with his quotation from Homer 
 beginning 
 
 S' tvSlll'E J^lTWVa 
 
 Ka\6y .• 
 
 observing that as vuv and xa) begin sentences, so might Se, 
 for aught that Warburton knew to the contrary. The 
 same critic, too, laughed at his derivation of ' discomfit,' 
 from disconfictus, a word of his own making, for dissolutus 
 or disruptus.f 
 
 Of his dependence on translators for the sense of his 
 Greek, a very glaring instance has been noticed by the 
 author of ' Confusion worse Confounded. '| Quoting, in 
 a note on Shakspeare, the words of Eteocles from the 
 ' Phoenissas ' of Euripides, 
 
 'Eyi) yap ovdiv, fiarep, a.7roKpviJ!iae ipu>' 
 "Aarpijiv aviXdotfj,' r;Xcou Trpoc avroXae, 
 Kat yrjQ Evepde, Siivaroe Siv tpatrai raSe, 
 
 he translates them thus : ' I will not, madam, disguise my 
 thoughts. I could scale heaven, I could descend to the 
 very entrails of the earth, if so be that by that price I 
 could obtain a kingdom.' A plain rendering of Brumoy's 
 French in the 'Theatre des Grecs :'§ 'Je ne deguiserai 
 point id mes sentimens, Madame: j'escalerois le del, etje 
 
 * Note on Jul. Cses. act iii. sc. 2. 
 
 f Note oil Matibeth, act i. sc. 2^ 
 
 % P. 53. § Tom. ii. p. 406. 
 
630 LIFE OP BISHOP WAKBUETON. [Oh. XXXIII. 
 
 descendrois aux entrails de la terre ; si a ce prix je pou- 
 vois conquerir la plus brillante des couronnes.' 
 
 Yet his grasp and penetration of mind often enabled him 
 to form admirable general views of matters in the minutiw 
 of which he was but imperfectly versed. He pronounced 
 with great justice, that the existence of the Septuagint ver- 
 sion rendered the nice study of Hebrew in a great degree 
 superfluous, as the Hebrew Bible, without that version, would 
 have been as unintelligible as any cypher without its key, 
 especially since the introduction of the points, which were 
 affixed many years after the language was dead, and 
 forced it to say anything that the inventors of them 
 pleased.* Though he had no taste himself, he had just 
 conceptions of the mode in which the public taste is influ- 
 enced and corrected. ' Whenever the pubhc taste is right,' 
 said he, ' it is set so by half a dozen people of good under- 
 standing, who lead the rest to it. Sometimes they readily 
 foUow, sometimes not. But what is the genuine pubhc 
 taste, and properly their own, is the most wretched ima- 
 ginable.'! He knew but little of mathematics, but he saw 
 that that tribe of men, not indeed the inventors and 
 geniuses among them who were to be honoured, but the 
 mere demonstrators of others' inventions, were dull and 
 often conceited, with little general ability, and minds 
 sadly narrowed by confinement to one study. | 
 
 From his limited insight into the learned languages, it 
 follows that his quotations in them are not always to be 
 trusted. No reader should rely for his notion of the sense 
 or tendency of a passage in any author on the sole repre- 
 sentation of Bishop Warburton. 
 
 He is said by Disraeli to have delineated his own cha- 
 racter in describing that of Bayle. ' He struck into the 
 pursuit of paradox as an exercise for the restless vigour 
 
 * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 58. 
 
 t lb. p. 3, t lb. p. 41. 
 
On. XXXin.] PARADOX. 631 
 
 of his mind,' and, notwithstanding his great qualities, 
 ' had not yet enough of real greatness to overcome the 
 last foible of superior geniuses, the temptation of the hon- 
 our which the academic exercise of wit is conceived to 
 bring to its possessors.' The Bishop is even said by the 
 same writer to have been actuated by this ' secret prin- 
 ciple ' in the production of all his works, or in other words, 
 to have written nothing but from the desire of saying 
 something paradoxical, something different from what the 
 world in general thought, regarding the subjects of which 
 he treated. But to assert this is to assert too much. His 
 first work, the ' AUiance between Church and State,' was 
 of a calm and rational character, and stated fairly the 
 only principles on which a union between power civil and 
 ecclesiastical can well be conceived to subsist. Of a similar 
 description was ' Juhan,' in which he maintains by specious 
 arguments that an event which many were disposed to 
 consider miraculous, was miraculous in reality. Nor can 
 a character very dissimilar be given to ' The Doctrine of 
 Grace,' or to most of his sermons. His love of paradox 
 is shown principally, therefore, in his ' Divine Legation,' 
 and the controversies on minor points into which he was 
 led by the assailants of it ; and, we should add, in the 
 notes on Shakspeare, in which, indeed, propensity to 
 paradox is plentifully exhibited. 
 
 Whatever faults he had, he was no bigot. With bigots 
 he professed to be at perpetual war. His mind, certainly, 
 was not of the class in which bigotry fixes itself. It is 
 an excellent observation of Mendelssohn, that it is only 
 the smallest minds into which bigotry enters ; for, the 
 larger the circle of a man's mind, the more points will it 
 embrace which he can compare with the points in the 
 minds of others ; and the more numerous are the points in 
 which he compares himself with others, the less likely will 
 he be to be bigoted on any single point. 
 
 His notions about religion appeared to the French so 
 
632 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBURTON. [Ch. XXXIII. 
 
 extremely liberal, that they asked people who came from 
 England whether he was really in earnest in defence of 
 revelation, forming their notions of the state of rehgion in 
 Britain chiefly on the representations of Voltaire, who told 
 them that there was only just enough of it left there to 
 distinguish the Tories who had little, from the Whigs 
 who had less. Voltaire even remarked that, supposing 
 Warburton was in the right in ' The Divine Legation,' it 
 was not for a bishop to express his opinions on the right 
 with such freedom, and that, instead of being made a 
 bishop by a minister of state, he ought rather to have 
 been required by the Church to recant and ask pardon. 
 
 By many, also, in England, his sincerity was distrusted. 
 Bishop Hoadly, in a conversation with Sherlock, happened 
 to observe that he had received some comphmentary 
 letters from Warburton beariag on subjects on which 
 Warburton was then writing. Sherlock rejoined that he 
 also had received letters from the same gentleman to the 
 same purpose. 'Have you preserved them, my Lord?' 
 said Hoadly. ' ISTo,' said Sherlock, ' I have destroyed 
 them.' ' I wish you had not,' returned Hoadly ; ' I have 
 preserved those with which he favoured me ; and my 
 reason for such caution is, that I have often observed 
 writers of this cast change sides, receding from their first 
 positions and pretences ; and I like to amuse myself with 
 their inconsistencies.'* Warburton spoke well, at first, of 
 Hoadly's ' Plain Account of the Eucharist,' but afterwards 
 condemned it severely in his sermon on that subject. 
 
 Cradock states that one cause of Warburton's desire to 
 mthdraw the ' Enquiry into Prodigies and Miracles ' fi'om 
 circulation was, that it was supposed to have the same 
 tendency as Middleton's ' Letter from Eome,' or, in 
 the words of Ben Jonson, was designed to show that 
 'Nature once known, no prodigies remain.' His friends 
 
 * Kev. J. Jones's MSS. cited in Nichols's Lit. An. vol. iii. p. 141. 
 
Ch. XXXin.] GENERAL KNOWLEDGE. C33 
 
 were at first very anxious to buy up the book, but after a 
 while they 'became indifferent, and indeed the great 
 author himself,' says Cradock, ' almost daily gave in- 
 stances of not being strictly orthodox."* The book itself, 
 however, touched only on the mu-acles in profane history ; 
 and those who extended its arguments further did so of 
 themselves, not on any suggestion of Warburton's. There 
 was, however, a report, as is noticed by Parr,f that War- 
 burton had been, and, as some said, continued always to 
 be, inchned or attached to infidelity ; but Parr declared 
 that he saw no ground for such a behef. But his light 
 manner of expressing himself on sacred subjects was suffi- 
 cient to make many suspect his sincerity. 
 
 He is said to have expected the bishopric of London, 
 and when he was disappomted of it, took occasion, in a 
 sermon at court, to remark that all preferments were 
 bestowed on the most UHterate and worthless objects, 
 and, as he said this, turned about and stared full at 
 Bishop Terrick, who had been recently appointed to 
 that see.J 
 
 He was considered, by his acquaintance, to have such a 
 knowledge of books as to be able to direct their reading 
 on almost any subject. Not only did Hurd consult him 
 about his studies in divinity, but Lord Lyttelton inquired 
 of him what voyages it would be advantageous to read, 
 and expressed a hope of assistance from him in an account 
 of the ancient History of Lreland.§ He says of himself 
 that he was a great reader of history, but a greater still 
 of romances, as nothing came amiss to a man who con- 
 sulted his appetite more than his digestion ;|| an indica- 
 
 " Ci-adock's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 20. 
 I Tracts by Warburton and a "Warburtonian, p. 186. 
 J Gray's Letters; "Works, vol. iv. p. 49. 
 § Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 206. 
 II Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 387. 
 
634 LIFE OF BISHOP WAEBURTON. [Ch. XXXIII. 
 
 tion, it would seem, that Bentley's saying had come to his 
 knowledge. 
 
 He speaks of himself to Doddridge as being of ' a 
 melancholy habit,' which, with the distractions of hfe, 
 often impelled him to seek refuge from the uneasiness of 
 thought in wild and desultory reading. But his habitual 
 melancholy, according to Hmxl, meant no more than that, 
 as his mind was always at work, the activity of his 
 thoughts often exhausted and depressed his powers, and 
 forced him to look for relief in a change of pursuit, and 
 indulge in occasional desultory readuig ; which, however, 
 was not without its advantage ; for, while it repau-ed the 
 vigour of his faculties, it stored his mind with variety of 
 matter to decorate and vivify his writings. 
 
 Cradock, in a conversation with Mrs. Warburton, ob- 
 served that Hurd had expressed his wonder how the 
 Bishop acquired the knowledge of all the anecdotes in 
 which he so much abounded. 'I could have readily 
 informed him,' rephed Mrs. Warburton ; ' for when we 
 passed our winters in London, he would often, after his 
 long and severe studies, send out for a whole basketful of 
 books from the circulating hbraries, and at times I have 
 gone into his study and found him laughing, though alone, 
 and now and then he would double down some entertain- 
 ing passages for my after amusement.'* 
 
 He is said to have been fond, when he was in a playful 
 humour, of repeating the speeches of Falstaff in Shakspeare, 
 and to have recited them remarkably well. 
 
 He kept a common-place book, in which he occasionally 
 entered such thoughts and reflections as occurred to him. 
 One of these he transcribed in a letter to Hurd : ' In 
 your commerce with the great, if you would have it turn 
 to your advantage, you should endeavour, when the person 
 
 * Cradock's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. i. p. 188. 
 
Cii. XXXni.] SMART SAYINGS. 635 
 
 is of great abilities, to make him satisfied with you ; when 
 he is of none, to make him satisfied with himself.' * 
 
 He sometimes thought his sayings in conversation worth 
 recording : ' One day that Mr. Lyttelton, Hooke, and I, 
 dined with Mr. Murray, Hool?;e entertained us with a 
 number of ridiculous stories of the coxcombical vanity of 
 the Chevaher Eamsay ; on which Mr. Lyttelton said, " If 
 such be the man, how came you, Mr. Hooke, to follow 
 him perpetually as his eleve, to cry up his ' Eomance of 
 Cyrus,' and to translate it so finely into English ? " " As 
 for that matter," said I, " Mr. Hooke acted with the dis- 
 cernment and fidehty of Sancho Panza, who had discovered 
 his master to be a madman, but could not help admiring 
 him as the wisest madman in the world." ' f 
 
 He has the credit, however, of having uttered smarter 
 sayings than any that he has registered either in this book 
 or in his letters. When Lord Lyttelton, who had held 
 the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer for a short time, 
 was obliged to retire from incapacity, and was succeeded by 
 Mr. Dowdeswell, Warburton observed to Hawkins Browne 
 that there was a curious contrast between the two minis- 
 ters ; for ' the one could never in his life learn that two 
 and two made four, while the other knew nothing else.' J 
 This is very similar to his sarcasm on Dean Tucker and 
 Dr. Squire. His remark on Mallet's ' Life of Bacon,' and 
 projected 'Life of Marlborough,' is well known, that 
 'Mallet would perhaps forget that Marlborough was a 
 general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher.' 
 He has also been called the author of the saying that 
 ' there are two things for which every man thinks himself 
 competent, managing a small farm, and driving a whiskey. '§ 
 
 * Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 334 ; Letters 
 from an Eminent Prelate, p. 379. 
 
 t Kilvert, p. 341. % Prior's Life of Malone, p. 443. 
 
 § Quart. Eev. vol. xxxi. 
 
636 LIFE OF BISHOP WAKBUETOK [Ch. XXXIII. 
 
 He has tlie credit, too, of the famous distinction between 
 orthodoxy and heterodoxy : ' Orthodoxy is my doxy, and 
 heterodoxy is another man's doxy : ' a reply which he is 
 said to have made Lord Sandwich, who declared himself 
 puzzled to find the difference between the two doxies. 
 
 In the difference between the playfulness of his talk 
 and the severity of his writings, he may be compared with 
 Bentley ; a character to whom, it may be suspected, he 
 desired to be thought to bear some resemblance. A 
 similar diversity of character, in authorship and conver- 
 sation, is recorded of Salmasius by Huet : ' If the temper 
 and manners of this eminent person be estimated from his 
 Avritings, he may appear arrogant, haughty, and self- 
 sufiicient ; but in the intercourse of life nothing could be 
 more placid, gentle, and ready to obhge.' * 
 
 Pope's saying, that Warburton could see into all the 
 possibihties of things, had doubtless much truth ; and his 
 power of viewing a matter on all sides inchned him at 
 times to try the ' academic exercise of wit,' and to sport in 
 the fields of conjecture. He was no Locke, or Bacon, 
 or judicious Hooker, to leave a beneficial influence on all 
 time ; he sought to strike with temporary astonishment 
 rather than to profit by permanent instruction, and was 
 content to glare hke a transient meteor rather than to 
 shine with the perpetual radiance of a sun. His demon- 
 stration of Moses's mission deserved, far more than Huet's 
 Demonstratio Evangelica, the censure that it demonstrated 
 nothing but the learning of its author. His 'Divine 
 Legation,' as Gibbon observed, is ' a monument of the 
 vigour and weakness of the human mind.' To prove that 
 the doctrine of a future state, while it prevails in all other 
 pohties, was not to be found in that of Moses, was not to 
 prove that the pohty of Moses had a Divine foundation ; 
 this is indeed asserted or supposed throughout War- 
 
 * Huet's Memoirs of Himself, by Aikin, vol. i. p. 195. 
 
Ch. XXXIII.] GENEEAL ClIAEACTEE. 637 
 
 burton's volumes, but no reader, probably, has regarded 
 it as demonstrated. His ' Julian ' we have just noticed 
 as being similar in character, for gravity and sedateness, 
 to the 'Alliance between Church and State ;' yet his mode 
 of treating its argument is such, that many, after reading 
 through the work, may think it merits the sarcasm of 
 Walpole, that it proves the occurrence at Jerusalem a 
 miracle by proving it none. As a scholar, he has se- 
 cured himseK no reverence from scholars ; nor as a 
 critic, from critics ; nor as a divine, from divines ; yet 
 he cannot but command, from all classes of readers and 
 thinkers, some share of attention and regard. As to 
 style, he is 
 
 Horridns in jaculis, et pelle Libystidis ursK ; 
 
 yet men of taste are not repelled by his language from 
 giving attention to his matter. If there was much good 
 in which he was deficient, there was also much good 
 in which he abounded. He has gained for himself, with 
 all his faults, a permanent name in literature ; and his 
 vigorous pages are stiU read by many who, though they 
 may care little for the subjects of which he treats, desire 
 to see how a mind of such force and dexterity discusses 
 them. 
 
G38 
 
 Note on Page 7. 
 
 Warburton's Latin epitaph on his cousin is so characteristic 
 of its author, that it should hardly have been omitted in an 
 account of his life. It is inscribed on a brass plate on the wall 
 of Newark Church : — 
 
 Si sit in pretio, hospes, 
 
 aut virtus aut doctrina, 
 
 siste, et libato cineri vicino 
 
 Eev. GULIELMI WARBUETON, A.M. 
 
 Joannis superst. sancti senis fil, 
 
 ex agro Cestriensi 
 
 generos^ stirpe atque antiquissimS, 
 
 profecti. 
 
 Ore trilingui, ac animo omnis capaci 
 
 antiquis Uteris consignatas sapientis, 
 
 plurimum pollebat ; 
 
 Criticus sine fastu, 
 
 sine pertinacia Theologus. 
 
 Sed apage nasnias, 
 
 apage vos prostibiilas 
 
 justitise, prudentiae, castimonije, etc. 
 
 super omnem tumulum quotidie construpatas, 
 
 magnificas voces : 
 
 virtutem tarn sinceram inimico, 
 
 tam absolutam, immo etiam temerario amico, 
 
 enarrandam 
 
 ausim relinquere. 
 
 Hijjus amplitudinis, si quasras, 
 
 qualis data est merces ? 
 
 Pudet dicere : sileo. 
 
 Si tandem quaeras, 
 
 qualem merebat ilia ? 
 
 Dicam 
 
 Tempora feliciora. 
 
 Vix. ann. xli. Ob. ad. mccxxix. 
 
NOTE,S. 639 
 
 JS"0TE ON Page 180. 
 
 The opinions advanced by Sykes on the Grospel demoniacs 
 were much the same as those which Hugh Farmer afterwards 
 maintained, asserting that the phrase possessed with a demon 
 or devil was only a popular expression for affected with epilepsy 
 or madness, except that Farmer also supposed the demoniacs, 
 or some of them, might be possessed with souls of those dead 
 men whom the ancients worshipped as demons or heroes. Dr. 
 William Worthington, an amiable man and good scholar, wrote 
 an 'Enquiry' in opposition to Farmer, ofifering some spirited 
 arguments on what was called the orthodox side of the question. 
 Warburton, in his ' Divine Legation,' as well as in his ' Sermon 
 on the Fall of Satan,' expressed sentiments in agreement with 
 those of Jortin and others, that Christ had cast out devils to 
 show that He was to put an end to Satan's kingdom, who had 
 been allowed, at that period, to manifest his power more than at 
 former times, in order to make his discomfiture and subjugation 
 more evident. 
 
 The notion that what men called demoniacal possessions were 
 only natural diseases under that name, was advocated in Eng- 
 land as early as 1627 by Joseph Mede, in his ' Clavis Apocalyp- 
 tica ;' and Dr. Eichard Mead, who, though he wrote his name 
 differently, was of the same family, stoutly maintained that 
 doctrine in his 'Medica Sacra;' both of whom Warburton 
 labours to refute, desiring that believers should consider the devil 
 to have been allowed his part also in the ' Economy of Grrace.' 
 The several disquisitions on this subject, all full of argument, 
 illustrate the old lines on the Scripture, 
 
 ' Hie liber est in quo quserit sua dogmata quisque, 
 Invenit et quaerens dogmata quisque sua.' 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ADDISON, his ' Battle of the Pygmies 
 and Cranes,' translated by "War- 
 burton, 8 ; said by Warbnrton to have 
 borrowed out of modesty, 1 5 
 
 iEmilius Parisanus attacks Harvey respect- 
 ing the circulation of the blood, 290 
 
 jEneas, Warourton's supposition that he was 
 initiated into the Mysteries, 1 13, seqq. 
 
 Atenside publishes a letter of Warburton's 
 to Concanen, 16. Attack on him by 
 Warburton, 248. His opinion of ridi- 
 cule as a test of truth, 249. Defended 
 by Dyson, 251, seqq. His Ode to Ed- 
 wards, 335, 396 
 
 Allen, Ealph, his character, 202. His 
 benevolence, 204. The ' Allworthy' of 
 ' Tom Jones,' ib. Joke on him by Dr. 
 Burton, 239. A remark of his on War- 
 burton's adversaries, 294. Praised by 
 Hurd, 411. Procures Warburton the 
 deanery of Gloucester, 476. Also a 
 bishopric, 495. His death and lega- 
 cies, 561, 562 
 
 Allen, Mrs., her death, 562 
 
 ' Alliance between Church and State,' 
 nature of that work, 49 — 57. How re- 
 ceived by the public, 58. Such alliance 
 shown to the greatest advantage in Eng- 
 land, 56. Warburton complains that he 
 received no due praise for the work, 289. 
 Edwards's remark on the dedication to 
 the third edition, 354 
 
 Alypius entrusted with the rebuilding of 
 the Temple, 376 
 
 Ambrose, St., his notice of the supposed 
 miracle at Jemsalem, 376 
 
 Ammianus Marcellinus, his account of the 
 supposed miracle at Jerusalem, 376. 
 Thought credulous by Lardner, 382 
 
 Anabaptists justly debarred from civil 
 offices, 55 
 
 Andrews, Eev, John, his pamphlet against 
 Warburton, 542. Warburton's letters to 
 him, 543, 544 
 
 Answerers by profession, 283, 348 
 
 Apes of Plato and Aristotle, 25, 26 
 
 Arabic language, remarks on the, 394 
 
 Arise Ev-ans, a Welsh pretender to pro- 
 phecy, account of, 402. Warburton's 
 comments on, 404, 406. Evans's 
 roguery, 406, 407 
 
 Arnall, ' an impudent scribbling attorney,' 
 363 
 
 Arnauld saw only temporal sanctions in 
 the Old Testament, 95 
 
 Arnobius said to have undertaken the de- 
 fence of Christianity before he understood 
 it, 138 
 
 Athanasian creed, anecdote of its omission 
 by Warburton, 476 ■ 
 
 Atheists, Bayle's arguments that a society 
 of them might hold together, 9 6 — 99 
 
 Atwell, Dr. Warburton's physician, 548 
 
 BALAAM, an observation respecting, 85 
 Balguy, Dr., his estimate of IVar- 
 burton's ' Enquiry into Prodigies and 
 Mracles,' 24 
 
 Barbeyrac had no respect for the ' Fathers' as 
 historians, 373 
 
 Basnage, denies that Julian's attempt to 
 rebuild the Temple was defeated by a 
 miracle, 381 
 
 Bate, Dr. Julius, Warburton's estimate of 
 him, 292. Some account of him, ib. 
 
 Bathurst, Lord, testifies that Bolingbioke 
 assisted Pope in the ' Essay on lUan,' 1 67 
 
 Bayle argues that a society of atheists may 
 subsist, 96. Warburton's attempted re- 
 futation of him, 99 
 
 Beattie, Dr., his translation of Addison's 
 ' Battle of the Pygmies and Cranes,' 10, 
 11. Observations on his character as a 
 writer, 482. His character of Churchill, 
 559 
 
 Behmenists, 526 
 
 Bentley, Dr., a remark of his on Veil. 
 Paterculus, 65. Opinions of Warburton 
 concerning him, 198, 225, 228. War- 
 
 T T 
 
642 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 BET 
 
 burton's arguments against him regard- 
 ing Zaleucus, 225. Accused by Boyle 
 and his party of .stealing from Vizzanius, 
 226. A remark of his on Warburton, 
 228. His criticism on Pope's ' Iliad,' 
 228. Said that no man was written 
 down but by himself, 507. Defended 
 by Cumberland against Lowth, 582. 
 Warburton perhaps desirous to be thought 
 like him, 636 
 
 Bettesworth, ' Swift's Lawyer,' a poem dedi- 
 cated to him, 27 
 
 Birch, Dr., letter of Warburton to him on 
 Sh.akspeare, 298, 300. Specimen of 
 Shakspeare inserted in his * General 
 Dictionary,' 299. Gives instructions to 
 Warburton on taking a prebend at Glou- 
 cester, 416. His death, 585 
 
 Bishop, Hawley, assisted Tlieobald with 
 Shakspeare, 38 
 
 Blair, Dr. Hugh, his testimony that Boling- 
 broke furnished matter for the ' Essay on 
 Man,' 166 
 
 Blakey, designer of ths frontispiece to 
 Warburton's ' Pope,' 401 
 
 Blomfield, Bishop, adopted some of Theo- 
 bald's emendations of .^schylus, 41 
 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, bow far he assisted Pope 
 in the ' Essay on Man,' 166 — 173. Pro- 
 bably deceived Pope as to his tenets, 1 7 1 . 
 Pope effects a meeting between him and 
 Warburton ; its result, 222, 223. His 
 attack on Pope in the advertisement to 
 the ' Letters on the Idea of a Patriot 
 King,' 360. Motives for it, 361. Pope 
 defended by Warburton, ib. Wrote under 
 the name of Mallet, 363. ' Familiar 
 Epistle to the Most Impudent Man 
 Living,' 363. Pleased with Middleton's 
 tract on the ' Inefficacy of Prayer,' 391. 
 Warburton's ' View of Lord Bolingbroke's 
 Philosophy,' 418. His works edited by 
 Mallet, ib. His abuse of various writers, 
 419. Unjustly called an atheist by 
 Warburton, 423 
 
 Beuiller, an antagonist of Warburton on 
 'Job,' 493 
 
 Bowyer, the printer, correctness of his 
 printing, 225. His connexion with 
 Warburton, 410 
 
 Boyle and his party, their charge against 
 Bentley, 226 
 
 ' Brief Examination of the Divine Legation' 
 by the Free-thinkers, 212—218. Said to 
 have been written by Morgan, 212 
 
 Brodie, Sir Benjamin, his opinion of the effect 
 of mathematical studies on the mind, 
 389 
 
 Brown, Dr. John, his ' Essay on Satire,' 
 235. Introduced to Allen, 236. His 
 censure of the ' Delicacy of Friendship,' 
 
 CHU 
 
 441. His death and character, 585, 
 586. Used to flatter Warburton, 622 
 
 Brown, Dr. Thomas, his opinion of mathe- 
 matical studies, 390 
 
 Browne, Isaac Hawkins, Warburton's praise 
 of him, 601 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, alludes to explosive 
 compounds of the Egyptians, 381 
 
 Bull, Bishop, saw only temporal sanctions 
 in the Jewish religion, 72 
 
 Bunbury, Sir Henry, his opinion on War- 
 burton's accusations of Hanmer, 314 
 
 Burke, his meeting with Warburton, 618 
 
 Burlamaqui on free will and necessity, 
 103 
 
 Burroughs, Mr. Samuel, assisted by War- 
 burton in ' The Legal Judicature in 
 Chancery Stated,' 32 
 
 Burton, Dr. John, his ' Iter Bathoniense,' 
 238, 240. His name inserted by War- 
 burton in a note on the Dunciad and 
 erased, 239. Eidicule of his ' Iter 
 Bathoniense,' by Dr. King, 242, seqq. 
 
 Butler, Charles, his opinion of mathe- 
 matical studies, 389 
 
 Butler, Samuel, his remark on logic, 384 
 
 Byrom, Dr., his epistle on Warburton, 414, 
 Warburton's displeasure at it, 415. His 
 character, 416 
 
 CiESAB, remarks on his character, 25 
 Calmet, his opinion of the Book of Job, 
 564 
 
 Carter, Mrs., translated Crousaz, 153 
 
 Casaubon, Meric, his account of a thunder- 
 storm at Wells, 378, seqq., 565, 566 
 
 Cato, remarks on his character, 25 
 
 Chalmers, Alexander, a remark of his on 
 the disagreement between Zachary Grey 
 and Warburton, 340 
 
 Charitable Corporation, The, object of that 
 Society, 43. Sir Robert Sutton's con- 
 cern in it, 43 — 48 
 
 Charles I., Warburton's character of, 499. 
 Laud's remarks on him, 500 
 
 Charondas, his laws, 225 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, offers Warburton the 
 chaplaincy to him as Lord Lieutenant of 
 Ireland, 274. Dedication of the ' Alliance' 
 to him, ib. Warburton's estimate of his 
 character, 275. Kurd's remarks on it, 
 276 
 
 Chrysostom preferred by Warburton to Plato, 
 374. His notice of the supposed miracle 
 at Jerusalem, 376 
 
 ' Church and State, Alliance between,' 49 — 
 57 
 
 Churchill, his support of Wilkes, 557. His 
 'Duellist,' 558. His indiscriminate satire, 
 ib. His character by Beattie, 559 
 
INDEX. 
 
 643 
 
 CHU 
 
 Churton, Eev. Ealph, defends Abp. Seeker, 
 681 
 
 Cibber, his pamphlet against Pope and 
 Warburton, 229. Left unanswered, 231 
 
 Cicero, translation from, 8. Eemarlis on 
 his character, 25. His opinion of the 
 study of mathematics, 386 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, merits of his History, 18. 
 Annotations on it by Warburton, 428. His 
 character of an attorney's clerk, 573, 574 
 
 Clarke, Dr. Samuel, his opinion of moral 
 obligation, 104,233,235. How attacked 
 by Bolingbroke, 421 
 
 Clergy should not be maintained by volun- 
 tary contributions, 51. Some remarks 
 on the character of the, 253 
 
 Cockburn, Mrs. Catherine, writes to War- 
 burton, 233. Her notions of moral obli- 
 gation, 233, 235. Warburton writes a 
 preface to her book, 235 
 
 Collins, Antony, decried secondary senses in 
 prophecy, 197. His 'Discour.se on Free- 
 thinking ' and ' Grounds of the Christian 
 Eehgion,' 198 
 
 Concanen, Matthew, commencement of his 
 acquaintance with Warburton, 14. Letter 
 from Warburton to him, 1 5. Warburton 
 ' gave him money for many a dinner,' 23. 
 Some account of his life, 27, seqq. His 
 praise of Theobald's notes on Shakspeare, 
 28. Pope's satire on him, 29. War- 
 burton's remarks on his temper, 30 
 
 * Confusion worse Confounded,' by the Eev. 
 Henry Taylor, 109, 221 
 
 Oonstantine the Great, light that he saw in 
 the heavens, 378 
 
 Cooke, translator of ' Hesiod,' meets War- 
 burton, 14 
 
 Cooper, John Gilbert, attacked by Warbur- 
 ton in the notes on the 'Dnnciad,' 397. 
 Some account of him, 398. His pamphlet 
 against Warburton, 399. Provocation 
 that he gave Warburton, 401. Assisted 
 by Jackson, 398 
 
 Copes first disused by Warburton, 427 
 
 Coventry, Eev. Henry, author of ' Philemon 
 to Hydaspes,' his plagiarism from War- 
 burton, 193 — 195 
 
 Coxeter, a contributor to Theobald's * Shaks- 
 peare,' 38 
 
 Cradock, Joseph, his observations about 
 Hurd and his curate, 458. His account 
 of Warburton's visit to Hurd, 459. A 
 remark of his on Mrs. Warburton, 560. 
 Describes Warburton's preaching, 591 
 
 Crosses marked on the garments or bodies 
 of persons by lightning, 377, seq^q^ 
 
 Crousaz, his examination of Pope's ' Essay 
 on Man,' 162. Johnson's praise of 
 Crousaz, 153. Warburton's reply to 
 Crousaz, 157 
 
 Cudworth, his opinion on the Lord's Supper 
 followed by Warburton, 508 
 
 Cumberland, Eichard, his pamphlet in de- 
 fence of Bentley against Lowth, 582 
 
 Cuming, Dr., his intercourse with Warbur- 
 ton, 620 
 
 Cur]], the bookseller, meditates a reprint 
 of Warburton's ' Enquiry,' 23 
 
 Cyril silent concerning Julian's attempt to 
 rebuild the Temple, 381, 382 
 
 DAILLE had no respect for the ' Fathers' 
 as historians, 373 
 
 Dawes, Archbishop, oi'dains Warburton 
 deacon, 7 
 
 Dennis, John, meets Warburton, 14 
 
 Des Maizeaus inserts specimens of Warbur- 
 ton's emendations of Paterculus in the 
 Bibliotii^que Britannique, 59 
 
 Diagoras tlie Atheist, 99 
 
 Disney, his Life of Dr. Jortin, 403 
 
 Disraeli, a remark of his on Hanmer, 314. 
 His opinion on the cause of disagreement 
 between Zachary Grey and Warbui'ton, 
 340. Saw some proof sheets of War- 
 burton's edition of the ' Dunciad,' 396. 
 Eemark on Warburton's comments on 
 Arise Evans, 407. On Warburton's love 
 of paradox, 630 
 
 ' Divine Legation' translated into Dutch, 607 
 
 Dobson commences a Latin translation of 
 Pope's ' Essay on Man,' 187 
 
 ' Doctrine of Grace ' translated into Dutch, 
 607 
 
 Doddridge, Dr., offers to review the second 
 volume of the 'Divine Legation,' 190. 
 Eeviews it, 195 
 
 Dodsley, the bookseller, h witness to Pope's 
 first meeting with Warburton, 185, Ex- 
 tract from a letter to him, 236 
 
 'Dunciad,' character of Warburton's notes 
 on, 395, seqq, 403, 569 
 
 Du Eesnel, a translator of Pope's ' Essay on 
 Man,' 152 
 
 Dutton, ancestors of Warburton of that 
 name, 2 
 
 Dyson, Jeremiah, his pamphlet in defence 
 of Akenside, 251—254 
 
 EOCLESIASTICAL Courts, duty of, 54. 
 Subject to Civil Courts, 56 
 Edwards, Thomas, author of 'The Canons 
 of Criticism,' his translation of a passage 
 from Dr. Burton, 241. His remark on 
 a quotation of Warburton's from Horace, 
 295. Some account of him, 324. Said 
 to have had a dispute with Warburton at 
 Allen's, 325. Publishes the ' Canons af 
 
 T T 2 
 
644 
 
 mDEX. 
 
 Criticism,' 323. Abused by Warburton 
 in the notes on the ' Dunciad,' 324. Ee- 
 taliatioij of Edwards, 32.5 — 327. Speci- 
 mens of his book, 327, seqq. Abused 
 again by Warburton, 334. Eetaliates, 
 325. A friend of Richardson, 347. 
 His jolie on the editions of Warburton's 
 'Alliance,' 354. Akenside's ode to him, 
 396 
 
 Egypt, chronology of, considered, 264, seqq. 
 
 Egyptians had the art of making explo- 
 sive compounds resembling gunpowder, 
 381 
 
 Eleusinian Mysteries, 109, seqq. 
 
 Eloquence, Warburton's remarks on, 520 — 
 623. Leland's, 545, 546 
 
 * Enquiry into Prodigies and Miracles,' by 
 Warburton, 17. Alleged tendency of 
 the work, 632 
 
 Enthusiasm, meaning of it, 415. Illustra- 
 tion of, 534 
 
 Episcopius saw only temporal sanctions in 
 the law of Moses, 71 
 
 'Essay on Man,' remarks on it, 164, 165. 
 Confined to the present state of man, 172 
 
 ' Essay on Woman,' attributed to Wilkes, 
 549. To Potter, 560 
 
 Euhemerus the Atheist, 99 
 
 Eusebius cites the passage in Josephus 
 concerning Christ, 353 
 
 Ezra not the author of the Book of Job, 78. 
 His style, 79 
 
 FABEE, Tanaquil, a remark on, 60. De- 
 nied the genuineness of the passage in 
 
 Josephus concerning Christ, 353 
 Fabricius, J. A., his disquisition on the 
 
 cross that appeared to Constantino the 
 
 Great, 378 
 ' FamiHar Epistle to the Most Impudent 
 
 Man Living,' attributed to Mallet, 363 
 Farmer, Hugh, his notions on the Gospel 
 
 demoniacs, 130, 640 
 Farmer, Dr. Richard, contemptuously men- 
 tioned by Kurd, 462 
 Fathers of the Church, characterised by 
 
 Middleton, Warburton, and others, 369, 
 
 seqq. 
 Fielding, Henry, received kindness from 
 
 Allen, 204. His sarcastic remark on 
 
 Zachary Grey, 339. Met by Hurd at 
 
 Prior Park, 411 
 Folkes, Martin, assisted Theobald with 
 
 ' Shakspeare,' 38 
 Forster, Nathaniel, presents Warburton 
 
 with his tract on a passage in Josephus, 
 
 350. His observations on Egypt, ib. 
 
 Character of his tract on Josephus, 351, 
 
 seqq. 
 
 GEO 
 
 Foster, Dr. James, Pope's commendation of 
 his preaching peiTerted by Warburton, 
 339 
 
 Freethinkers, 68. Their address to War- 
 burton, 214 
 
 Freind, Dr., contributed to Theobald's 
 ' Shakspeare,' 38 
 
 Frisby, Warburton resigns the living of, 
 428. What attention he paid it, 429, seqq. 
 
 Future state, though not taught by Moses, 
 was occasionally intimated to the leadmg 
 Jews, 197 
 
 GALEN, bis allusion to the Mysteries, 
 111 
 
 Garrick, letter to him from Stenie on a 
 report about Tristram Shandy, 500. 
 Remark on his character by Warburton, 
 504. Warburton's correspondence with 
 him about Walpole, 512. His ode dis- 
 dained by Warburton, 615 
 
 Gibbon, his animadversions on Warburton's 
 doctrine of the Mysteries, 112, 115, segg*. 
 605. His remark concerning Julian's 
 attempt to rebuild the Temple, 381. His 
 opinion of the effects of mathematical 
 studies on the mind, 386. Called the 
 'Delicacy of Friendship,' ' base and ma- 
 lignant,' 442. Disrespectfully mentioned 
 by Hurd, 462. His character of Wilkes, 
 557. His remark on Lowth's letter to 
 Warburton, 578 
 
 Gibson, Bishop of London, ordains War- 
 burton priest, 14 
 
 Gift of tongues at Pentecost, opinions on 
 the, 517 
 
 Gordon, translator of Tacitus, attacks a ser- 
 mon of Bishop Hare's, 129 
 
 Granger, James, his ' Biographical History of 
 England,' Warburton's remarks on, 605 
 
 Granville, Lord, solicited by Pope on behalf 
 of Warburton, 222 
 
 Greene, William, consults Warburton on 
 his theological reading, 182 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen, his account of the 
 supposed miracle at Jerusalem, 376 
 
 Grey, Dr. Zachary, assisted by Warburton 
 in his ' Hudibras,' 236. Specimens of 
 Warburton's notes, 237. Criticises War- 
 burton's ' Shakspeare,' 322. Doubtful 
 origin of his hostility to Warburton, 338. 
 Sarcasm on him by Fielding, 339. 
 His pamphlets against Warburton, 340. 
 Specimens of his criticisms on Warbur- 
 ton, 341, seqq. 
 
 Grey, Dr. Richard, his dissension with War- 
 burton about the Book of Job, 268, 292 
 
 Grotius, saw only temporal sanctions in the 
 law of Moses, 71. His notion of Scrip- 
 tural inspiration, 136 
 
INDEX. 
 
 645 
 
 GTL 
 
 Gjles, Warbui'ton's publisher, 144, 189, 
 194. His death and unsettled affairs, 
 206. Warbui'ton's arrangement with 
 his executors, ib. 
 
 HALL, Stevenson, his ' Odes to Sterne,' 
 503, 505 
 
 Hanmer, Sir Thomas, visited by Warburton 
 in reference to ' Shalispeare,' 67, 306 — • 
 308. Their disagreement, ib. The con- 
 nexion between them, 297, seqq. War- 
 burton's praise of him, 298 ; abuse of him, 
 300. Warburton introduced to him by 
 Sherlock, 298, 306; falsely accused of 
 trafficking with Warburtou's papers, 301, 
 304. His merits as a critic, 304. Letter 
 from him to Dr. Smith, 305. His 
 honourable character, 315. Complained 
 that Warburton adopted emendations 
 from him without acknowledgment, 340 
 
 Hiirdwieke, Lord Chancellor, gives Warbur- 
 ton a prebend at Gloucester, 416. A 
 portion of the ' Divine Legation ' dedicated 
 to him, 417, 431 
 
 H^ire, Bishop, his approbation of Warbur- 
 ton's * Alliance,' 58. His friendship for 
 Warburton, ib. His endeavours to serve 
 him, 59, .127. Warburton's emendations 
 of Veil. Paterculus dedicated to him, 60. 
 Hare's opinion of them, 60 — 62. His 
 remailcs on Warburton's notion of moral 
 obligation, 102. His satisfaction with 
 
 ; the 'Divine Legation,' 127, 128, 131, 
 ISO. Attacked by Gordon, the trans- 
 lator of Tacitus, 129. His death, and 
 remarks on his character, 181. Thought 
 that Bentley stole from Vizzanins, 227. 
 Letter from him to Warburton respecting 
 Hanmer, 314. His opinion of the Book 
 of Job, 564 
 
 Harris, author of ' Hermes,' depreciated by 
 Warburton, 615 
 
 Harvey, fortune of his discovery of the cir- 
 culation of the blood, 290 
 
 Hayley, his praise of Gibbon's ' Observa- 
 tions ' on Warburton's theory of the Mys- 
 teries, 119. 
 
 Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, and afterwards 
 of London, 239 
 
 Heath, author of the 'Eevisal of Shaks- 
 peare's Text,' 322. Character of his 
 criticism, 337. His qualifications, ib. 
 His contempt for Warburton as a critic, 
 338 
 
 Heberden, Dr., destroyed Middleton's tract 
 on the ' Inefficacy of Prayer,' 392 
 
 Hebrew language, Warburton's estimate of 
 a knowledge of the, 581, 630 
 
 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, alludes to ex- 
 plosive compounds of the Egyptians, 381 
 
 HUE 
 
 Herring. Archbishop, confers a doctor's 
 
 degree on Warburton, 425 
 Heyne, his commendation of Gibbon's ' Ob- 
 servations ' on Warburton, 119. His 
 remarks about ilineas's exit at the ivory 
 gate, 125. His excellence as a verbal 
 critic, 337 
 Hieroglyphics, skill of the Egyptians in, 
 proves the high antiquity of Egypt, 196. 
 Why Warburton treated of them, 485 
 HiU, Dr., called editor of the ' Female 
 
 JMagazine,' 505 
 Hoadly, Bishop, his ' Plain Account of the 
 Lord's Supper,' 508. Opposed by Law 
 and Warburton, ib., 632. Distrusted 
 Warburton, ib. 
 Hobbes, his notions of Church and State, 49 
 Hogarth, letter from Warburton to, 417 
 Hooker, Eichard, his notions of Church and 
 
 State, 49 
 Horsley, Bishop, his approbation of War- 
 burton's ' Alliance,' 57 
 Hume, his ' Natural History of Eeligion ' 
 attacked by Warburton and Hurd, 477. 
 Hume's remarks on the style of the 
 attack, 479. His remarks justified, 
 480. His reasoning unfairly represented, 
 481 
 Hurd, Bishop, meets with Warburton's 
 ' Enquiry irrto Prodigies and Miracles,' 
 23. His commendation of it, 23, 24. 
 His praise of Warburton's ' Shakspeare,' 
 317. His defence of Warburton as a 
 critic, 336. Commencement of his per- 
 sonal acquaintance with Warburton, 355. 
 What led him to seek it, 357. Struck 
 with Warburton's power of mind, 358. 
 His ciraracter contrasted with that of 
 Warburton, ib. Eevised 'Julian,' 383. 
 His praise of Warburton's edition of Pope, 
 395, 400. Invited to Prior Park, 411. 
 His remarks on Warburton's sermons, 
 414. His praise of the 'View of Lord 
 Bolingbroke's Philosophy,' 421. Publishes 
 ' The Delicacy of Friendship,' 433. Cha- 
 racter and specimens of it, 437, seqq. 
 Attacked in a parrrphlet of ' Eemarks,' 
 440. Opinions of the public respecting 
 it, 441. Gratifies Warburton, 442. 
 Foolishly attempts to justify Wartiurton's 
 mistranslation of ' pi-inceps,' 455. Some 
 account of Hurd, 457. His attention to 
 his relatives, 457, 483, 484. His settle- 
 ment at Thurcaston, 458. His reserve 
 and general character, ib. His treatment 
 of his curate, ib. Visited by Warburton, 
 459. His self-complacency and love of 
 show, 460. His literary conceit, 461. 
 His ready use of the word * coxcomb,' 
 462. An instance of pedantry, 463. 
 Supposed causes of Parr's hostility to 
 
646 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 HUR 
 
 Hurtl, 464-, 467. His sneer at Parr's 
 long vernacular sermon, 469. Compared 
 with Watburton as a writer by Parr, 470. 
 His mother visited by Warburton, 483. 
 His remarks on Warburton's elevation to 
 a bishopric, 496. Made Warburton's 
 chaplain, 500. His commendation of 
 'The Doctrine of Grace,' 538. His in- 
 solence to Leland, 547. His account of 
 the dispute between Warburton and 
 Lowth, 579. His depreciation of Lowth 
 and Seeker, 579 — 581. Appointed to 
 the Lincoln's Inn Lecture, 599. Visited 
 by Warburton, 602. Exalts Warburton 
 above Aristotle and Longinus, 605. Mrs. 
 Warburton recommended to bia care, 608. 
 Purchases Warburton's books, 611. Edits 
 Warburton's works, ib. His 'Life' of 
 Warburton, 612. Publishes ' Letters 
 from an Eminent Prelate,' 613. His 
 account of Warburton as a companion, 
 618 
 
 IDOLATRY, remarks on, 217 
 Ignatius, disclaimed the possession of 
 miraculous powers, 370 
 ' lunocency of Error,' a tract by Dr. Sykes, 
 
 281. Censured, 282 
 Inspiration, opinions on, 518 
 Irenteus, his character given by Middleton, 
 370, 372 
 
 JACKSON, Rev. Juhn, censured by War- 
 burton, 289, 615. Criticised by 
 Towne, 348. Stole much of his * Chrono- 
 logical Antiquities' from Warburton, ib. 
 Called an Arian, 349. Sees Warburton 
 in Winston's shop, ib. Assisted John 
 Gilbert Cooper against Warburton, 398 
 
 James, St., his character of heavenly wis- 
 dom, 525, 531 
 
 Jane, Rev. Joseph, Warburton's correspond- 
 ence with, 486. Warburton's criticism 
 on him, 489 
 
 Jarvis, his ' Don Quixote,' with preface by 
 Warburton, 209 
 
 Jerome, silent concerning Julian's attempt 
 to rebuild the Temple, 381 
 
 Job, Book of, Warburton's opinion of its age, 
 73, seqq. Fancied allusions to the Jews 
 in it, 74, 75. Locke believed that the 
 writer of it was a Jew, 76, 81. Warbur- 
 ton supposed it to be written by Ezra, ib. 
 His interpretation of a passage in it, 77. 
 Style of the book, 78. Lowth's refuta- 
 tion of "Warburton's opinions, 78 — 80. 
 Real age of the book, 80. Dr. Richard 
 Grey's opinion of it, 268. Warburton's 
 observations on the critics on 'Job,' 493 
 
 Johnson, Dr., his depreciation of Theobald's 
 notes on Shakspeare, 37. His praise of 
 Crousaz, 153. A passage in his tenth 
 Sermon noticed, 190. His admission of 
 Theobald's merits as a commentator, 303. 
 His acknowledgment of Warburton's 
 praise, 318. His criticism of Warburton's 
 ' Shakspeare,' ib. Warburton's resentment, 
 319. His praise of an emendation of 
 Warburton's, 343. His remark on John 
 Gilbert Cooper, 398, Observation' on 
 Bolingbroke and Mallet, 418. Disre- 
 spectfully mentioned by Hurd, 462 ; by 
 Warburton, 614. His representation of 
 the dispute between Lowth and Warbur- 
 ton, 577. His interview with Warburton, 
 622. Absurdly compared with Warbur- 
 ton, 624. Had read better, if not more, 
 than Warburton, 625- His character of 
 Warburton's style, 627. Commends his 
 vigour, 628 
 
 Jones, Rev. J., curate to Dr. Young, his 
 manuscripts, 193, 509 
 
 ' Julian,' Warburton's ' Discourse ' so called, 
 355, 359. Contents of it, 369, seqq. 
 Revised by Hurd, 383. Second edition 
 of, 410 
 
 Julian, Emperor, his efforts to restore Pa- 
 ganism, 375. His design to rebuild the 
 Temple, 376. Remarks on his at- 
 tempt, 381, seqq. Whether be ever 
 made the attempt, 382, On the report 
 that he was murdered by his own soldiers, 
 443 
 
 Jortin, Dr., his animadversions on Warbur- 
 ton in his ' Sixth Dissertation,' 119, 435. 
 His ' Remarks on Spenser,' 145, seqq. 
 Thought Julian was defeated at Jerusa- 
 lem by a miracle, 381. Inserts Warbur- 
 ton's comments on ' Arise Evans ' in his 
 ' Remarks on Ecclesiastical History,' 403. 
 Connexion between him and Warburton, 
 433. Compliments Warburton, 434. 
 Bishop Newton's characters of Warburton 
 and Jortin, 424, 425. Disruption of 
 their friendship, 435. Hurd's sarcasms 
 on Jortin, 436, seqq. Jortin defended 
 by his friends, 443, 444. Made no reply 
 to Hurd, 445. Probably alludes to Hurd 
 in a sermon, 445; and in the 'Life of 
 Erasmus,' 446, 451. His note on War- 
 burton's mistranslation of the word ' prin- 
 ceps,' 448, seqq. Letter from Warburton 
 to Jortin on the subject, 451. Jortin's 
 reply, 453. Jortin praised by Parr, 465, 
 seqq. Notices an annotation of Bishop 
 Lowth's father, 566. Revised by War- 
 burton, 615 
 
 Joseph as, remarks on the passage in his 
 works relating to Christ, 351. Probably 
 an interpolation, 353 
 
INDEX. 
 
 34r 
 
 JUS 
 
 Justin Martyr, characterised by Middleton, 
 371, 372 
 
 "17' AMES, Lord, his opinion of ridicule as a 
 
 l\ test of truth, 255 
 
 Kilvert, Kev. Francis, apologises for Hurd's 
 inhospitality to Parr, 468. His censure 
 of Parrforattacking Hurd,472. Publishes 
 ' Selections from Warburton's Papers,'612 
 
 King, Dr. William, his satire on Dr. John 
 Burton, 242, seqq. 
 
 Kippis, Dr., his interview with Warburton, 
 619 
 
 Kircher, his account of crosses that ap- 
 peared on clothes at an eruption of 
 Vesuvius, 379, 380 
 
 Kirke, Mr., Warburton articled to, 4 
 
 Knapton, Warburton's publisher, 24, 25. 
 Recommended to him by Pope, 207. 
 Received remittances for Warburton from 
 Frisby, 429. His failure and Warburton's 
 generosity, 473, 474 
 
 LACTANTIUS, said to have defended 
 Ghristianity before he understood it, 
 138. Compared with Cicero by War- 
 burton, 374 
 
 La Place unfitted by abstruse studies for 
 the duties of office, 389 
 
 Lardner, Dr., thought the passage in Jose- 
 phus concerning Christ spurious, 354. 
 Rejects the whole story of Julian's at- 
 tempt to rebuild the Temple, 382 
 
 Lavater, bis remark on man's liberty, 103 
 
 Lavington, Bishop, his book on the Metho- 
 dists, 540 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, his remark on Charles I.'s 
 character, 500 
 
 Lauder's book on Milton, Warburton's esti- 
 mate of, 367, 368 
 
 Law, William, writes against Hoadly on 
 the Lord's Supper, 508. His fanati- 
 cism, 526. Payne's attempted defence 
 of him, 544. Praised by Johnson and 
 others, 545 
 
 Le Clero thought the Book of Job was 
 written after the captivity, 79. Fur- 
 nished Warburton with his notion of the 
 Mysteries, 112 
 
 Lecture at Lincoln's Inn founded by War- 
 burton, 599. Bishop Newton's opinion 
 on it, 600 
 
 ' Legal Judicature in Chancery Stated', 32 
 
 Leland, Dr. Thomas, Hurd's contemptuous 
 mention of him, 461. Praised by Parr, 
 465, sef^q. His examination of Warbur- 
 ton's opinions on eloquence, 545 
 
 ' Letter to a Member of Parliament on Lite- 
 rary Property,' 348 
 
 ' Letters on the Idea of a Patriot King,' &c., 
 Bolingbroke's advertisement to, 360 
 
 Livy, why accounts of prodigies abound 
 in him, 18 
 
 Locke mistaken in supposing the author of 
 ' Job ' must have been a Jew, 81 
 
 Lowth, Bishop, exposes a small plagiarism 
 of Warburton's, 21. Refutes Warburton's 
 opinions on the Book of Job, 78 — 80. 
 Also an opinion of Locke's, 76, 81. His 
 sarcasm on the miscellaneous contents of 
 the ' Divine Legation,' 107. His censure 
 of the 'Delicacy of Friendship,' 441. 
 Patronised Parr, 469. His controversies 
 with Warburton, 562, seqq. Commence- 
 ment of their differences, 562. His 
 notice of Hmd, 563, 565, 573. His re- 
 marks on the punishment of idolatry, 567. 
 His ' Letter ' to Warburton, 563. His 
 remarks on Warburton's learning, 576, 
 577. Hurd's injustice to him, 579. 
 Refuses to reply to Cumberland, 583 
 
 Lowth, Rev. Wilham, father of the bishop, 
 his notes on the ecclesiastical historians, 
 565. Charge against him by Warbur- 
 ton, ib. 
 
 Lucas, Dr., his tract against Parr, 473 
 
 MACLAINE, translator of Mosheim, 
 offers to serve Warburton, 493 
 
 Maimonides, Warburton did not take his 
 idea of the ' Divine Legation ' from him, 
 198 
 
 Mainwaring, Professor, an anecdote of him 
 and Hurd, 463 
 
 Mallet published an attack on Pope written 
 by Bolingbroke, 360. Published also, 
 for Bolingbroke, the 'Familiar Epistle to 
 the Most Impudent Man Living,' 363. 
 His hostility to Warburton, 366. De- 
 nies that he was the author of the ' Fa- 
 miliar Epistle,' ib. Edits Bolingbroke's 
 works, 418 
 
 Malone reprints Warburton's letter to Con- 
 canen, 16. His censure of Warburton's 
 ' Shakspeare,' 320 
 
 Manasseh Ben-Israel, his collection of texts 
 on the resurrection, 90 
 
 Mandeville, condemnation of his moral sys- 
 tem, 108 
 
 Mann, Nicholas, master of the Charter- 
 house, 264. Follows Sir Isaac Newton's 
 chronology, 264. Warburton's contro- 
 versy with him, 265 — 268 
 
 Marchmont, Lord, his remark on Warbur- 
 ton's reply to Crousaz, 164 
 
 Markland mentioned slightingly by War- 
 burton, 490 
 
 Marriage a civil compact, 56 
 
 Martin, his duel with Wilkes, 554 
 
648 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 MAS 
 
 Mason, Warburton's ridiculous commenda- 
 tion of him, 624 
 
 Mathematics and matliemalicians, remarks 
 on, 384, seqq. Effects of the study on 
 the mind, 386—390 
 
 Mead, Dr., assisted Theobald witt Shak- 
 speare, 38. His notion of the demoni- 
 acal possessions in the Gospels, 180, 640 
 
 Mede, Joseph, his opinions on demoniacal 
 possessions, 640 
 
 Methodists, Warburton's exposure of the, 
 524, seqq. 
 
 Meursius, Warburton indebted to him re- 
 garding Mysteries, 109 
 
 Middleton, Dr. Conjers, his remarks on 
 Warburton's emendations of Veil. Pater- 
 culus, 63. His religious opinions, 132. 
 Warburton's commendation of him, 133, 
 135. Correspondence between him and 
 Warburton noticed, 141, 142. His re- 
 marks on Warburton's reply to Crousaz, 
 162. Commencement and progress of 
 Warburton's disagreement with him, 258j 
 seqq. His 'Letter from Rome,' 260 — 
 262. Failed in obtaining the mastership 
 of the Charterhouse, 263. His hostility 
 to Sherlock, and attack on his ' Dis- 
 courses on Prophecy,' ib. His dis- 
 agreement with Dr. Sykes, 280. His 
 'Free Inquiry' occasioned Warburton's 
 ' Julian,' 369. His opinion respecting 
 miraculous powers in tlie early days of 
 the Church, 370. His strictures on the 
 Fathers, 371 — 373. Assailed by Church 
 and Dodwell, 391. His tract on the 
 * Inefficacy of Prayer,' ib. Warburton 
 deplores his infidelity, 392. Desired to see 
 religion reconciled with reason, ib. Op- 
 posed by Warburton on the gift of tongues, 
 517. His notions of inspiration, 518, 
 519. And of the style of the New Tes- 
 tament, and on eloquence, 520 
 Milton said by Warburton to borrow from 
 pride, 15. Warburton copies a passage 
 from him without acknowledgment, 20 — 
 22. Little esteemed by Warburton, 368 
 Miracles and prodigies, causes of the nu- 
 merous accounts of them in early history, 
 17 
 Monk, Bishop, a remark of his about War- 
 burton and Bentley, 198. Another, 229 
 Monsey, Dr., dines at Garrick's with War- 
 burton, 622 
 
 Montesquieu, his satisfaction with Warbur- 
 ton's ' Julian,' 383, 425. His praise of 
 the ' View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philo- 
 sophy,' 424. His remarks on attacking 
 revealed religion, ih. 
 
 Moore, James, meets Warburton, 14 
 
 Moravians, tlieir grossness, 526. Consult 
 Wesley, 529 
 
 OCE 
 
 Morgan, Dr., said to have written the 
 ' Brief Examination of the Divine Lega- 
 tion,' 212. Another pamphlet attributed 
 to him, 293 
 
 Moses did not teach the doctrine of a future 
 state, 69, seqq. 
 
 Moyle, Walter, thought that Julian was 
 defeated at Jerusalem by a miracle, 382 
 
 Miiller, his conjecture regarding the Mys- 
 teries, 113 
 
 Murray, Lord Mansfield, procures War- 
 burton the preachership at Lincoln's Inn, 
 278. Also a prebend at Gloucester, 426. 
 His censure of the style of the ' View of 
 Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy,' 420. 
 Dedication to him, 484. His remarks on 
 the general warrant in Wilkes's case, 
 553 
 
 Mysteries, Eleusinian, Warburton's disquisi- 
 tion on, \OB,seqq. Whence they originated, 
 109. Greater and Lesser, 110. What 
 taught in them, IIJ, 112 
 
 "VTASH, master of the ceremonies at 
 
 iN Bath, his white hat, 246 
 
 Neal's ' History of the Puritans,' anno- 
 tated by Warburton, 427 
 
 *New Book of the Dunciad,' a satire on 
 Warburton, 401 
 
 New Testament, style of the, remarks on, 
 520, 546 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, his chronology of Eeypt 
 censured by Warburton, 264, seqq. War- 
 burton's notice of him as a mathema- 
 tician, 386 
 
 Newton, Bishop, his edition of Milton, 367. 
 Praised by Warburton, ib. His cha- 
 racter of Warburton's sermons, 413. 
 Preaches the sermon at Warburton's 
 consecration, 495. His character of 
 Warburton and Dean Tucker, 496. His 
 opinion on Warburton's lecture at Lin- 
 coln's-inn, 599. His description of 
 Warburton's personal appearance, 617 
 
 Nichols, Philip, a writer in the ' Biographia 
 Britannica,' publishes a letter of Hanmer 
 regarding Warburton, 304, 305. His 
 pamphlet concerning Warburton and 
 Hanmer, 311. His character, ib. His 
 notice of Warburton's ' Julian,' 383, 384 
 
 Noailles, Due de, his satisfaction witli War- 
 burton's ' Juhan,' 383 
 
 OBLIGATION, Moial, Warburton's 
 notion of it, 100. Considerations on, 
 101 — 106. Clarke's opinion of, 104 
 Ocellus Lucanus, discussion regarding a 
 passage in, 226. Wrote in Doiic, ib. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 649 
 
 OPT 
 
 Optimism, remarks on, 169 
 
 Oiisin of books of chivalry, Warburton's 
 
 dissertation on confuted by Tyrwliitt, 
 
 209, 210 
 Orosius silent concerning Julian's attempt to 
 
 rebuild the Temple, 382 
 Orrery, Lord, his ' Letters on Swift' abused 
 
 by Warburton, 428 
 Osiris, not the same with Sesostris, 264, 
 
 PALEY'S foolish definition of virtue, 
 105 
 
 Palingenius, simile borrowed from him by 
 Pope, 1 60 
 
 Papists justly debarred from civil offices, 55 
 
 Parr, Dr., publishes ' Tracts by Warburton 
 and a Warburtonian,' 14. Thought the 
 passage in Joseplius concerning Christ an 
 interpolation, 353. Why he republished 
 ' Tracts by Warburton and a Warbur- 
 tonian,' 463, seqg. Possible causes of his 
 dislike of Hurd, 467 
 
 Paul, St., how inspired, 519 
 
 Payne, John, a follower of Law, writes 
 against Warburton, 544 
 
 Pearce, Bishop, sent Jortin a dissertation on 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, 434 
 
 Peck, the antiquary, noticed, 13 
 
 Peter, St., how inspired, 519 
 
 ' Philemon to Hydaspes,' a work by Henry 
 Coventry, 193 
 
 Philo-Judffius, a remark of his, 83 
 
 Philosophers, ancient, various opinions of, 
 64, 65 
 
 Pitt, Lord ■ Cliatham, rejoices in having 
 made Warburton a bishop, 49Si His de- 
 testation of Wilkes, 554 
 
 Plato, his estimate of mathematical studies, 
 388 
 
 Pococke, Dr., the traveller, Warburton's dis- 
 agreement with him, 264 
 
 Polycarp disclaimed the power of working 
 miracles, 370 
 
 Pope, his satire on Concanen, 29. A re- 
 mark of his on Theobald, 42. Erases 
 Sir Robert Sutton's name from his Satires 
 at Warburton's request, 44, 47. Quoted 
 and praised by Warburton, 139. De- 
 fended by Warburton against Crousaz, 
 151. His delight at Warburton's per- 
 formance, 162. His opinion of War- 
 burton as a critic, 164. Whether Pope 
 was supplied with matter for his ' Essay ' 
 by Bolingbroke, 166, seqq. His first 
 meeting with Warburton, 185. Letters 
 to Warburton, 183, 184, 186. His 
 desire to have the * Essay on Man' trans- 
 lated into Latin verse, or prose, 187. 
 Endeavours to procure Warburton a 
 
 EIC 
 
 living near London, 188. Eevises the 
 letters on Crousaz, 209. His desire to 
 bring Warburton nearer to London, 221. 
 Effects a meeting between Warburton 
 and Bolingbroke, 223. ' Dunciad' edited 
 by Warburton, 224. His hostility to 
 Bentley, 228. His ' Essay on Homer' 
 revised by Warburton, 231. His death, 
 and legacy to Warburton, 232. His 
 opinion of the ' Pleasures of Imagina- 
 tion,' 248. Said to have desired that 
 Warburton's notes on Shakspeare should 
 be mixed with his own, 317. His motives 
 for printing Bolingbroke's ' Idea of a 
 Patriot King,' 361, 362. Warburton's 
 complete edition of his works, 395. Cha- 
 racter of the edition, ih. Warburton 
 leaves the task of writing his life to 
 Euffhead, 513. Warburton's tablet to 
 his memory, 514 
 
 Person, his pre-eminence in verbal criti- 
 cism, 337 
 
 Potter, Archbishop, his reply to Middleton, 
 263 
 
 Potter, Thomas, son of the Archbishop, his 
 intimacy with Mrs. Warburton, 559, 560. 
 ' Essay on Woman' attributed to him, ib. 
 
 Professorship of History established at 
 Cambridge by George I., 20 
 
 Priestley called a 'coxcomb' by Hurd, 462; 
 ' a wretched fellow ' by Warburton, 
 615 
 
 Prudentius, his silence concerning Julian's 
 attempt to rebuild the Temple, 382 
 
 Puritans, their notions of Church and Slate, 
 49 
 
 QUAKERS justly debarred from civil 
 offices, 55. Admit the necessity of 
 a church polity, ih, 
 Quin, his remark on Warburton's ' Shak- 
 speare,' 344. Anecdotes of him and 
 Warburton, 411 
 QuintiUan, a remark of his, 99 
 
 RALEIGH, Sir Walter, merit of his His- 
 tory, 18 
 
 ' Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections,' 
 Warburton's, 248 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, a remark on his por- 
 trait of Beattie, 482 
 
 Richardson, Jonathan, his remark on the 
 fatalism in the ' Essay on Man,' 173 
 
 Richardson, Samuel, forgives Dr. Webster a 
 debt, 130. Sends Warburton a copy of 
 ' Pamela ; ' Letter of Warburton to him, 
 210. Presented by Warburton with a 
 preface to ' Clarissa,' 346. How he in- 
 curred Warhui-ton's displeasure, 347 
 
650 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ridicule, whether a test of truth, remarks 
 on the question, 248, 255 
 
 Kobertson's ' History of America,' Hurd 
 finds ' prate ' in it, 462 
 
 Eodericli:, Kichard, assists Edwards in the 
 ' Canons of Criticism,' 324 
 
 Eomaine, liis discreditable affair with War- 
 burton, 174 — 179 
 
 Kuffhead assisted by Warburton in his ' Life 
 of Pope,' 513, 604. Johnson's remark 
 on him, ib. 
 
 Eutherforth, Dr., his notion of a text in 
 Leviticus, 86. His notions on obligation 
 to virtue, 235. His ' Essay on Virtue ' 
 answered by Mrs. Cockburn. ib. Cen- 
 sured by Warburton, 289, 614 
 
 SACRIFICE, origin of, 589 
 Sallust, Warburton's translation from, 
 and an acute remark on an omission of 
 his, 19 
 
 Salter, Dr., his contradiction of Warburton 
 respecting Timceus, 228 
 
 Sanchoniatho, a fragment of his, 112 
 
 Sandwich, Lord, promotes Warburton's at- 
 tack on Wilkes, 549 
 
 Seeker, Archbishop, unjustly depreciated by 
 Hurd, 580. Defended by Ciiurton and 
 Wintle, 581. Praised by Lowth, ib. 
 Vindicated by BShop Porteus, 582 
 
 Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, 
 Warburton's value of the, 581, 630 
 
 Servetus, some remarks on his case by War- 
 burton, 551 
 
 Servius, his remark about .^neas's descent 
 into hell, 121 
 
 Sesostris, not the same with Osiris, 264, 
 seqq. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, his opinion of ridicule as 
 a test of truth, 248, 249 
 
 Sherlock, Bishop, whether he introduced 
 Warburton to Hanmer, 67. His pleasure 
 at the appearance of the ' Divine Lega- 
 tion,' 126. His remarks on that work 
 and the attacks upon it, 131 — 133. 
 Attacked by Middleton, 263. Flattered 
 ly Warburton, 271. Introduces Warbur- 
 ton to Hanmer, 298, 306, 308. Letter 
 to Warburton respecting Hanmer, 313. 
 Gives Hurd a preachership at Whitehall, 
 360 
 
 Shipley, Bishop, contemptuously mentioned 
 by Hurd, 462 
 
 Silhouette, a translator of Pope's ' Essay on 
 Man,' 152. Translates Warburton's Ee- 
 ply to Crousaz, 163 
 
 Silvestre de Sacy, his notion regarding the 
 Mysteries, 112 
 
 Smith, Dr. Joseph, letter of Hanmer to him, 
 305, 312 
 
 Smollett, Warburton's sneer at him, 614 
 
 Society of Antiquaries, 491 
 
 Spence, his testimony that Bolingbroke fur- 
 nished matter for the ' Essay on Man,' 
 168. Warburton's remark on, 614 
 
 Spencer, de Legibus, Hebraeorum, censured 
 by Warburton, 286 
 
 Spenser, Jortin's ' Remarks' on, 146, seqq. 
 
 St. Croix, his notion of the Mysteries, 
 112 
 
 Stebbing, Dr., assails Warburton, 279, 287. 
 Reproaches Warburton with attention to 
 matters 'unsuitable to his clerical func- 
 tion, 293. Called ignorant, 626 
 
 Steele, an actor, attends the funeral of Theo- 
 bald, 43 
 
 Sterne said to have intended to make War- 
 burton Tristram Shandy's tutor, 501. 
 Letter from Sterne to Garrick on the 
 report, ib. Sends his sermons to War- 
 burton, 502. Warburton's admonitions to 
 him, 503, 507. His letters to Warbur- 
 ton, 502, 504. Warburton's opinion of 
 him, 507 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, his opinion of the effect 
 of mathematical studies on the mind, 
 389 
 
 Stukeley, Dr., Warburton's friend, 13, 57, 
 63. Warburton's remarks to him on 
 marriage, 276. His death and character, 
 584, 585 
 
 Sutton, Sir Robert, Warburton's patron, 7. 
 Gives him the living of Greaseley, 14. 
 Dedications of Warburton's early publica- 
 tions to him, 7, 17. Procures Warburton 
 the degree of M.A., 33. Presents War- 
 burton with the living of Brant-Brough- 
 ton, 3*^ Warburton's ' Apology ' for 
 him, 43. How concerned in ' The Chari- 
 table Corporation,' ib. His name erased 
 from Pope's Satires at Warburton's re- 
 quest, 44, 47. His son commended by 
 Warburton to Hurd for his extraordinary 
 ability in acquiring languages, 396 
 
 Sykes, Dr. Arthur Ashley, denied that any 
 passage of Scripture can have more than 
 one sense, 197. Assails Warburton, 279, 
 282. Some account of him, 280. His 
 ' Enquiry into the Demoniacs,' 640 
 
 TANCHUM, Eahbi, his absurd interpre- 
 tation of a text, 90 
 Taylor, Rev. Henry, his ' Confusion worse 
 Confounded,' 109, 221, 407. Specimens 
 of that performance, 408, 409 
 Taylor, Dr. John, editor of ' Demosthenes,' 
 attacked by Warburton for his opinion 
 on the persecutions of the Christians, 489. 
 Wl)at he thought of Warburton's scholar- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 651 
 
 ship, 490. Wrong in the argument, ib. 
 Warburton's abuse of him, 491, 615 
 Tiiylor, Dr. Robert, a friend of Warburtoa, 
 
 278 
 Temple, Sir William, allades to explosive 
 
 compounds of the Egyptians, 381 
 Test law, propriety of, 53 
 Theobald, Lewis, becomes acquainted with 
 Warburton, 1 4. Solicits from him notes for 
 *Shakspeare,' 15. His correspondence on 
 ' Shukspeare' with Warburton, 16, segq. 
 Concanen's praise of his notes on ' Shuk- 
 speare,' 28. His sneers at Pope as a 
 commentator, 31. How far assisted in 
 * Shakspeare* by Warburton, 36 — 38. 
 Value of his notes, 37. Specimens of his 
 emendations, 38 — 41. His knowledge 
 of Greek, 41. Estrangement and recon- 
 ciliation between him and Warburton, 
 42. His death, 43. Warburton's abuse 
 of him, 300, 301. Thomas Warton's 
 praise of him, 302, 303. His merits 
 acknowledged t)y Juhnson, 303 
 Theodoras the Atheist, 99 
 Thirlby, Dr. Styan, assisted Theobald with 
 
 'Sbakspeare,' 38 
 Thurlow, Bishop, his observation on War- 
 burton's epitaph, 610 
 Tillard, his weak attack on Warburton, and 
 the reply to it, 218—220. A friend of 
 Birch, 220 
 Tillotson, his notion of scriptural inspi- 
 ration, 136 
 Timseus, Warburton's unjust remarks on, 
 
 227 
 Tithes, a reasonable mode of supporting the 
 
 clergy, 51 
 Tonson declines to publish Hanmer's ' Shak- 
 
 speare,' 313 
 Toup, Hurd's contemptuous mention of him, 
 461. Dedicates his ' Epistola Critica' to 
 Warburton, 597. Warburton's services 
 to him, 598 
 Towne, Archdeacon, his ' Critical Inquiry,' 
 with preface by Warburton, 347. Cha- 
 racter of him, 348. His examination of 
 Bishop Sherlock's sermons, .567. How 
 employed by Warburton, 569 — 571, 
 572, 578. Notices contradictions in 
 Warburton, 589 
 Translations, Miscellaneous, in Prose and 
 
 Verse, Warburton's first publication, 7 
 Tucker, Miss Gertrude, Allen's niece, mar- 
 ried to Warburton, 276. Dr. Cuming's 
 description of her, 277. Her illness, 
 548. Her intimacy with Potter, 559, 
 560. Married to Stafford Smith, 610 
 Tucker, Dean, Warburton's remark on, 496. 
 Bishop Newton's character of, ib. Vi- 
 sited by Warburton, 603 
 Tunstall, Dr. James, denied the genuine- 
 
 WAR 
 
 ness of the letters between Cicero and 
 Brutus, 209. Procured notes on ' Hudi- 
 bras' from Warburton for Zachary Grey , 
 339 
 Turlupins, their tenets, 526 
 
 UNIVERSITIES of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, Warburton's sneers at, 573 , 
 594, 615 
 Upton, his ' Critical Observations on Shaks- 
 peare,' 322. Why he attacked Warbur- 
 ton, 342. Reflects on Warburton's 
 Greek, 629 
 
 VARRO observed that some things should 
 be concealed from the multitude, 110, 
 113 
 
 Velleius Paterculus, Warburton meditates 
 an edition of, 59. Character of his style, 
 67. Warburton's emendations of the 
 text of, 63 - 66 
 
 Venn, Rev. Henry, an antagonist of War- 
 burton, 143, 144. Something that 
 would suit him, 524 
 
 Virgil, liis object in writing the JEneid, ac- 
 cording to Warburton, 114. Whether he 
 was initiated into the Eleusinian J\Iys- 
 teries, 117. Why he dismisses JEneas 
 and the Sybil through the ivory gate, 
 119, seqq. Tender judgments of divines 
 concerning him, 123 
 
 Vizzanius, a critic, said to have been ' pil- 
 laged ' by Bentley, 226 
 
 Voltaire, a rer.iark of his noticed by War- 
 burton, 196. Called Dr. Clarke ' a rea- 
 soning engine,' 349. Affected contempt 
 of him by Hurd, 596. By Warburton, 
 615. His remarks on Warburton and 
 the 'Divine Legation,' 632 
 
 W'ALPOLE, Horace, his opinion of 
 Pope's printing the ' Idea of a 
 Patriot King,' 362. Bis observations on 
 Warburton's edition of Pope, 400. His 
 praise of a repartee of Quin's to War- 
 burton, 412. Warburton offended with 
 him, 511. Walpole's account of the 
 affixir, 512. Hostile to Warburton, 559. 
 His remarks on Brown and Warburton, 
 686. Visits Warburton at Gloucester, 
 607. Tells an anecdote of Warburton, 
 623 
 Warburton, origin of that surname, 2 
 Warburton, Elizabeth, the Bishop's sister, 
 
 married, 3 
 Warburton, George, the Bishop's father, 2 
 Warburton, Mrs. (see Tucker) 
 Warburton, Peter, of Orley Hall, 2 
 
65-2. 
 
 mD^x, 
 
 Warburton, Sir Peter, the last baronet of 
 the family, 2 
 
 Warburton, Ralph Allen, Bishop Warbur- 
 ton's son, born, 475, Takes the surname 
 of Warburton -Allen, 586. His death, 
 607 
 
 Warburton, William, the Bishop's grand- 
 fatlier, 2, 4 
 
 Warburton, William, his parentage, 2. His 
 birth and education, 3. Gave no promise 
 of ability at school, 6, Articled to an 
 attorney, 4. His love of reading, 5. De- 
 termines to enter the Church ; his ordi- 
 nation, 6, 7. His first publication, 8. 
 Character of his attempts in versifi- 
 cation, 9. Specimens of his Latin, 12, 
 13. Is appointed to the living of Grease- 
 ley, 14. Becomes acquainted with Con- 
 canen and Theobald, 14. Theobald soli- 
 cits notes from him for ' Shakspeare,' 15. 
 His contemptuous mention of Pope, ib. 
 His second publication, 17. Character 
 and specimens of it, 18 — 26. His 
 anxiety to suppress his two earliest pub- 
 lications, 23. His censure of Concanen, 
 29, 30. Whether he conspired with the 
 inferior wits to humble Pope, 30, 31. 
 Listens complacently to Theobald's sneers 
 at Pope, 31. Joins with Mr. Burroughs 
 in writing ' The Legal Judicature in 
 Chancery Stated,' 32, 33. Created 
 M.A. at Cambridge by Sir Robert Sut- 
 ton's influence, 33. Presented by him to 
 the living of Brant-Broughton, 34. Ap- 
 pointed to the living of Frisby, 34. His 
 assiduous study, 34. Extent of his 
 knowledge, 35. Anecdote of his abstrac- 
 tion, 36. His contributions to Theobald's 
 'Shakspeare,' 37. Estrangement and 
 reconciliation between, him and Theobald, 
 42. Writes an ' Apology for Sir Robert 
 Sutton,' 43. Procures the erasure of Sir 
 Robert's name from Pope's Satires, 44, 
 47. His ' Alliance between Church 
 and State,' 49 — 57. He is recommended 
 to the Queen, 59. Meditates an edition 
 of Velleius Paterculus, 59, seqq. Speci- 
 men of it dedicated to Bishop Hare, 60. 
 Correspondence concerning it with Hare, 
 60—62. Opinion of Middleton on the 
 notes, 63. Extract from it, 64 — 66. 
 Visits Sir Thomas Hanmer, 67. Pub- 
 lished first part of ' The Divine Lega- 
 tion,' 68. Review of that work, 68, seqq. 
 His attempted refutation of Bayle on 
 atheism, 96, seqq. His remarks on Man- 
 deville, 108. His notions of Mysteries, 
 especially those of Kleusis, 108, seqq. 
 Took his notion of the Mysteries from 
 Le Clerc, 112. Opinions on ' The Divine 
 Legation,' 126, seqq. Attacked by Dr. 
 
 WAR 
 
 Webster, 129. * Vindication' against 
 Webster, 134. Calls Pope ' one of the 
 politest men of the age,' 139. Made 
 chaplain to the Prince of Wales, 145. 
 His criticism of Jortin's ' Remarks on 
 Spenser,' 145, seqq. His defence of Pope 
 against Crousaz, 15\, seqq. Pope pleased 
 with it, 162, 184. His afiair with Ro- 
 maine, 174 — 179- His application to 
 study, 180. Illness and recovery, 181. 
 His first meeting with Pope, 183. Cor- 
 respondence with Pope, 186 — 189. Pub- 
 lishes second volume of ' The Divine 
 Legation,' 189, 195. His mode of 
 writing, 192. His quarrel with Henry 
 Coventiy, 193. Second volume of ' The 
 Divine Legation' reviewed by Doddridge, 
 195. His dissatisfaction at the reception 
 of his writings, 197. His visit to Oxford 
 with Pope, 200. Visits Ralph Allen, 
 201. His ill health, 205. Suggests to 
 Pope a fourth book of the ' Dunciad,' ib. 
 Writes notes on Pope's Ethic Epistles, 
 206, 209, Gives a preface to Jarvis's 
 ' Don Quixote,' ib. Edits the ' Dun- 
 ciad,' 211,225, 238. Letter to Rich- 
 ardson on ' Pamela,' 212. Addressed in 
 ' A Brief Examination of the Divine 
 Legation' by the Freethinkers, 213. 
 Weak attack on him by Tillard, 218. 
 Pope's continued efforts to serve him, 
 221. His meeting with Bolingbroke, 
 
 223. His attention to his relatives, 
 
 224. How disposed towards Bentler, 
 225—229. Attacked by Cibber, 229. 
 Corrects Pope's ' Essay on Homer,' and 
 is bequeathed the property of Pope's 
 works, 231, 232. His correspondence 
 with l\Irs. Cockburn, 233—235. Sup- 
 plies Zachary Grey with notes on Hudi- 
 bras, 236. Assigns Dr. Burton a place 
 in the notes on the ' Dunciad,' 238. 
 His numerous adversaries, 247. He 
 attacks the author of ' The Pleasures of 
 Imagination ;' is answered by Dyson, 
 248 — 254. His remarks on ridicule, 
 255. His 'Remarks on Several Occa- 
 sional Reflections,' 257, seqq. His dis- 
 agreement with Dr. Middleton, 227 — 
 262. Criticism on Dr. Pococke, 263. 
 On Nicholas Mann, 254 — 268. On Dr. 
 Richard Grey, 268—271. Ofl"ered the 
 chaplaincy to Lord Chesterfield as Lord- 
 Lieatcnant of Ireland, 274. Dedicates 
 an edition of the 'AUiance between 
 Church and State' to Lord Chesterfield, 
 275. Marries Allen's niece, 276. Ap- 
 pointed to the preachership of Lincoln's- 
 inn, 278. His animadversions on Drs. 
 Stebbingand Sykes, 280, seqq. His edi- 
 tion of Shakspeare, and connexion with 
 
IXDEX. 
 
 653 
 
 Hanmer, 297, seqq. Specimens of the 
 edition published in Bircli's ' General 
 Dictionaiy,' 299. His abuse of Hanraei" 
 and Theobald, 300, 301. Accused Han- 
 mer of trafficking with his papers im- 
 properly, 301, 304. His affair with 
 Philip Nichols, 304, seqq. His apparent 
 motives in publishing ' Shakspeare,' 317. 
 Characters of the edition by Hurd and 
 Johnson, 317 — 319. Warburton's mali- 
 cious remarks on Johnson, 319. Malone's 
 character of the edition, 321. Attacked 
 by Edwards, Heath, Zachary Grey, and 
 Upton, 322. Edwards's ' Canons of 
 Criticism,' 324. Specimens of that 
 work, 328, seqq. Hurd's defence of War- 
 bnrton as a critic, 337. Heath's ' Ee- 
 visal,' 337, 33S. Zachary Grey, 338— 
 342. Upton, 342. Merits of Warburton's 
 ' Shakspeare,' 343 — 345. His ' Letter 
 to a Member of Parliament concerning 
 Literary Property,' 346. His preface to 
 Eichardson's ' Clarissa,' 346. Disagree- 
 ment with Eichardson, 347. His pre- 
 face to Towne's ' Critical Inquiry,' 347. 
 His contempt for Jackson ; sees Jackson 
 in Whiston's shop, 348, 349. His inti- 
 macy with Towne, ii. Presented by Dr. 
 Nathaniel Foster with his tract on Jose- 
 phus, 350. Eemarks on it, and on the 
 passage of Josephus concerning Christ, 
 350 — 354. Commences ' Julian,' 355. 
 Beginning of his acquaintance with Hurd, 
 ib. Why Hard desired it, 357. His 
 character contrasted with Hurd's, 358. 
 Procures Hurd a preachership at White- 
 hall, 360. Vindicates Pope against 
 Bolingbroke, 360. Answered in a 
 ' Familiar Epistle to tlie Most Impudent 
 Man Living,' 363. Contributes to 
 Bishop Newton's 'Milton,' 367. His 
 just estimate of Lauder's book, 367. 
 His little esteem for Wilton, 368. Pub- 
 lishes Julian ; occasion of its production, 
 369. Midcleton and Waiburton's opi- 
 nions of the ' Fathers,' 370—374. War. 
 burton's remarks on the alleged miracle 
 at Julian's attempt to rebuild the Temple, 
 375, seqq. Eeception of ' Julian ' by 
 the public, 383. Warburton's opinion of 
 mathematics and mathematical studies, 
 384 — 386. His observations on Mid- 
 dleton's infidelity, 392. Kecommends 
 Sir Robert Sutton's son to Hurd, 394. 
 Publishes Pope's works, 395. Charac- 
 ter of the edition, ib. Remarks on the 
 frontispiece to it, 400. Ridicules John 
 Gilbert Cooper, 397, 400. Satirised in 
 ' A New Book of the Dnnciad,' 402, 
 His comments on Arise Evans's prophe- 
 cies, 402, seqq. Ridiculed in ' Confusion 
 
 Worse Confounded,' 407. Connexion 
 with Bowyer, 410. Anecdotes of War- 
 burton and Quin, 411, 412. Visits 
 Weymouth, 413. Publishes a course of 
 sermons, ib. Remarks on his sermons, 
 414. Admonished by Dr. John Byrom, 
 414. Receives a prebend at Gloucester 
 from Lord Hardwicke, 416. A letter 
 from him to Hogarth, 417. His 'View 
 of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy,' 418, 
 seqq. Character of it, 419. Style of it 
 condemned by Lord Mansfield, 420. In- 
 justice to Bolingbroke, 423. Made a 
 king's chaplain, 425. Obtains a doc- 
 tor's degree, ib. Receives a prebend at 
 Durham, 426. Disuses the cope, 427. 
 Writes * Remarks on Neal's History of the 
 Puritans,' 427. Annotates Lord Claren- 
 don's History, and Lord Orrery's ' Letters 
 on Swift,' 428. Resigns the living of 
 Frisby, 428. Dedicates a volume of ser- 
 mons to Lady Mansfield, 430 ; and a 
 portion of the ' Divine Legation ' to Lord 
 Hardwicke, 431. Defended by Hurd 
 against Jortin in the ' Delicacy of Friend- 
 ship,' 433. Characters of Warburton 
 and Jortin by Bishop Newton, 435. 
 Their friendship and disagreement, ib. 
 Specimens of the 'Delicacy of Friendship,' 
 436, seqq. Opinions of that publication, 
 441. Delight of Warburton, 442. What 
 kind of retorts Jorlin made, 444, seqq, 
 Mistran.slation of ' princeps,' 447. Cor- 
 respondence between Jortin and Warbur- 
 ton, 451 — 454. His remark on coxcombs, 
 461. His early publications reprinted 
 by Dr. Parr, 463. Compared with Hurd 
 as a writer by Parr, 470. A son born 
 to him, 475. Promoted to the Deanery 
 of Bristol, 476. His 'Remarks on 
 Hume's Natural History of Religion,' 
 477. Character of that publication, 480 
 — 482. His relatives, 482. Visits 
 Hurd's mother, 483. Dedicates a portion 
 of the ' Divine Legation ' to Lord Mans- 
 field, 484. His correspondence with the 
 Rev. Joseph Jane, 486, seqq. His attack 
 on Dr. Taylor, 489. His remark on the 
 criticisms on ' Job,' 493. Promoted to 
 the Bishopric of Gloucester, 495. His 
 30th of January sermon, and character of 
 Charles I., 498, 499. Rumour that 
 Sterne would make Warburton Tristram 
 Shandy's tutor ; correspondence with 
 Sterne, 500 — 508. His 'Rational Ac- 
 count of the Lord's Supper,' 508, 509. 
 His neglect of that rite, 510. His letter 
 on confirmation, ib. His displeasure 
 against Dr. Warton and Horace Walpole, 
 541, Walpole's account of his affair 
 with Warburton, 512,513. Warburton 
 
651 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 WAR 
 
 assists EufPhead in his ' Life of Pope,' 
 513. Puts up a tablet to Pope in Twick- 
 enham church, 515. Publishes the 
 ' Doctrine of Grace,' 516. Attacks Mid- 
 dleton on the gift of tongues, 517. His 
 remarks on inspiration, eloquence, and 
 the style of the New Testament, 518 — 
 523. His sarcastic censures of Wesley 
 and his Journals, 523 — 539. His letters 
 to the Rev. John Andrews, 543. Attacked 
 by John Payne, 544. His opinions on 
 eloquence examined by Leland, 545. 
 Breaks his arm, 548. His attack on 
 Wilkes in the House of Lords, 548, seqq. 
 His parliamentary character, 556. His 
 repartee to the Duke of Cumberland, 
 556. His legacies from Allen, 561. His 
 ill health, 562. His great controversy 
 with Lowth, 562, seqq. How he em- 
 ployed Towne, 569, 570. His education 
 compared with Lowth's, 573 — 576. His 
 intimacy with Stukeley, Birch, and Brown, 
 583, scqq. Decay of his powers, 586. 
 His dissatisfaction at the reception of his 
 writings, 587. Contents of the imper- 
 fect ninth book of the ' Divine Legation,' 
 588 — 590. His ' Sermons,' and manner 
 of preaching, 590 — 592. His charges, 
 593 — 596. His uncourtliness, 596. His 
 increasing disorders, 597, 603. Lauded 
 by Toup, whom he endeavours to serve, 
 597, 598. Founds a Lecture at Lincoln's 
 Inn, 599. Endeavours to serve Thomas 
 Warton, 600. Letter on Isaac Hawkins 
 Browne, 601. Decay of his faculties, 
 601, 604, 606. His feelings towards 
 Dean Tuckei', 603. Attacked by Gibbon, 
 605, 606. Death of his son, 607. His 
 declining years, 608. His death, 609. His 
 death little noticed, ih. His library, 61 1. 
 His works collected, ib. Kurd's Account 
 of his Life, 612. His letters mostly de- 
 stroyed, except those to Hurd, 613. Pub- 
 lication of his letters to Hurd, 614. 
 Character of them, 614—616. His per- 
 sonal appearance, 617. His literary 
 character, 618. His conversation, 618, 
 seqq. Absurdly compared with Johnson, 
 624. His reading, 625, 634. His want 
 of taste, 625. His presumption, 628. 
 His want of classical learning, 629. His 
 sagacity, 630. On his love of paradox. 
 631. His freedom from bigotry, ih. His 
 apparent religious laxity, 632. His witti- 
 cisms, 635. His mental power, 637. 
 
 Warburton, Thomas, Archdeacon of Nor- 
 folk, 3 
 
 Warburton, Eev. William, Warbnrton's cou- 
 sin and instructor, 3, 5, 7, 14. Epitaph 
 on him, 630 
 
 WailoD, Dr., bis praise of Concanen, 29. 
 
 YOR 
 
 Of Theobald's ' Shakspeare,' 37. Offends 
 Warburton, 511 
 
 Warton, Thomas, his opinion of Parr's pre- 
 face to the Warburtonian tracts, 472. 
 Warburton's endeavours to serve him, 
 600 
 
 Watkins, his ' Life of the Duke of York ' 
 quoted, 468 
 
 Webster, Dr. William, his attack on War- 
 burton, 129. Some account of him, ib. 
 Seeks to propitiate Hare and Sherlock, ib. 
 Letters from Warburton to Dr. Birch 
 about him, 143. What would he suit- 
 able for him, 524 
 
 ' Weekly Miscellany,' Webster's, 1 30 
 
 Wesley, John, Warburton's opinions of him 
 and his followers, 523. Specimens of his 
 journals, 525, seqq. His religion, 526. 
 His contempt of prudence, 527, 528. 
 Yet very prudent about a certain j\Ir. G., 
 536 His affair with Mrs. Williamson, 
 537, 541. Called from America to 
 England, 538. His reply to Warburton's 
 ' Doctrine of Grace,' 540 
 
 Weston, Rev. Mr., one of Warburton's 
 tutors, 3 
 
 Whiston, a remark of his on the word * hell,' 
 88. His translation of the passage in 
 Josephus concerning Christ, 351 
 
 Whitaker, Thomas Dunham, bis commenda- 
 tion of Warbnrton's ' Alhance,' 59. His 
 opinion of Warburton's charges against 
 Hanmer, 314. His character of War- 
 burton's ' Julian,' 369. His remarks on 
 Lowth's letter, 573, 574, 575, 580 
 
 Whitby had no esteem for the ' Fathers ' as 
 historians, 373 
 
 Whitfield, George, Warburton's estimate of, 
 523. His weak reply to Warburton, 542 
 
 Wilkes justly attacked by Warburton in the 
 House of Lords, 548, seqq. His cha- 
 racter by Warburton, 552. His duel 
 with Martin, 554. His character by 
 Gibbon, 557. Whether author of the 
 ' Essay on Woman,' 549, 560 
 
 William III. approves of a test law, 53 
 
 Williamson, Mrs., her affair with Wesley, 
 537 
 
 Wolcot, Dr., tells an anecdote of Warburton, 
 621 
 
 Worthington, Dr. William, his * Enquiry into 
 the Demoniacs,' 640 
 
 Wright, Rev. Mr., one of Warburton's in- 
 structors, his opinion of Warburton as a 
 school-boy, 3 
 
 YOEKE, the Hon. Charles, his friendship 
 for Warburton, 33. Letter from him 
 to Warburton on the ' Divine Legation,' 
 
INDEX. 
 
 655 
 
 YOU 
 
 207. Keminds Warburton of a promise 
 to leave his opponents unanswered, 294. 
 His praise of Warburton's ' Shakspeare,' 
 345. Letter to him from Montesquieu 
 on ' Julian,' 383. His excursion into 
 Nottinghamshire, 494. His observa- 
 tions on the character of Ralph Allen, 
 561. On Warburton's conversation, 
 619 
 
 Young, Dr., his lines on the 'Essay on 
 Man,' 172. Contemptuously noticed by 
 Warburton, 614 
 
 ZALEUCUS, his laws, remarks on by War- 
 burton, 22.5, 227 
 Zinzendorf, Count, rocked the cradle of 
 Methodism, 526 
 
 LONDON 
 
 PRIWTED ET 8POTTISWOODE AMD CO. 
 
 NEW-STHEET SQUARE