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YALE
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THE LIFE

OF

WILLIAM WARBURTON, D.D.

LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER

FROM 1760 TO 1779:

WITH REMARKS ON HIS WORKS.

EEV. JOHN SELBY WATSON, M.A., M.E.S.T,
'1/
AUTHOE OF
'THE XIFJE OF RICHAED POESON,' 'THE LIFE 017 GEOBGE FOX,' ETC.

Avrcip 6 Tuiv aWwv hireirtitkuTO trri^ac dvdpiov,
"E-y^ft t, dopi Tf, [isyaXotai re xeppaSiourt.
Hom.

LONDON:
LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, & GREEN.
18C3.

MV\c3

PREFACE.

Ln submitting to the public this Life of Bishop Warbur-
ton, an attempt to accomplish 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 light
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 Ellvert's ' Selections from Unpub
lished Papers of Bishop Warburton,' and ' Life of Bishop
Hurd,' I ought to express my obligations for a few letters
of Hare, Sherlock, Jortin, 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 published after his death under the title of
' Letters from an Eminent Prelate to one of his Friends.'
Among the publications to which, in the prosecution
of my task, I was obliged 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-

vi PREFACE.
worn theological doctrine, with little argument, much
railing, and occasional scraps of flattery. Those who
may have the benefit of what they have supplied, 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 eli
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.

CHAPTER I.
warburton's early years.

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 II.
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 Reconciliation — 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 HANMER.
Warburton's First Work of Importance, ' The Alliance between Church
and State ' — Summary of its Contents — Bishops Horsley and Hare
pleased with the Book — Its Reception 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 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, ' 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 Idumasan — 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. MORAL OBLIGATION.
Whether a Society of Human Beings can subsist without a Belief in a
Future State • — Bayle's 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 .ENEID.
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 iEneas'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 iEneas 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 ' liked 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 CROUSAZ.

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 refutation of them — Optimism
— Warburton'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 Revision — Remarks on Pope's
' Essay on Man ' .  151

CHAPTER X.
HOMAINE. HARE.
Warburton's Disagreement with Romaine — Romaine's Sermon —
Letter from Romaine to Warburton — Romaine's pretended Ob
jections of Clergymen, in reabty a transcript from 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 — Warburton 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

CONTEXTS. xi
him a Living — Second Volume of ' The Divine Legation ' pre
pared — Correspondence with 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
burton — 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 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 Legation1 — 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 Tillard — 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.
HANMER. BURTON. 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 Karnes's Opinion — Some concluding Remarks
on the Question concerning Ridicule  Page 233
CHAPTER 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 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.
REMARKS 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 — Subjeots on which he differed from War
burton — Their opposite Notions regarding the Theocracy of the
Jews — Spencer, ' De Legibus Hebrasorum ' — Warburton's asser
tions of an equal Providence among the Jews — Dr. Stebbing ;
Warburton's Reply to him — Second Part of Warburton's ' Remarks
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 XVII.
' SHAKSPEARE.' HANMER.
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 ungentlemanly Sarcasms on
Edwards in the Notes on the 'Dunciad' — Edwards's Retorts —
Specimens of Edwards's Criticisms — Hurd's injudicious Praise —
Heath's ' Revisal of Shakspeare's Text'— Zachary Grey — Specimens
of Warburton's best Emendations . . . ... 316

xiv CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XIX.
RICHARDSON. TOWNE AND JACKSON. DR. NATHANIEL F0RSTER.
' 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.
HURD. BOLINGBROKE. 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 XXI.
1 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 — Warburton'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 ... . .  369
CHAPTER XXII.
MIDDLETON. EDITION OF POPE. _ EVANS'S PROPHECIES.
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 Ode to Edwards — John

CONTENTS.

Gilbert Cooper; Warburton's Note on the Dunciad concerning him
— Remarks on Warburton's 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.
BYROM. 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 from 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 FRIENDSHIP.' HURD. JORTIN.
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 Hurd'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. PARR.. TRACTS BY WARBURTON AND A WARBURTONIAN.
Hurd's Life and Character — His Reserve — Visited by Warburton — His
Love of episcopal Display — His Style — His contemptuous Remarks
on other Writers, even the most Eminent — Instance of his Pedantry
— Dr. Parr's Publication of ' Tracts by Warburton and a Warbur-
a

fi CONTENTS.
tonian ' — 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 — 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 Religion'
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 XXVII.
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 Religious Laxity —
New Edition of Pope — Dr. Joseph Warton — Horace Walpole —
Kuffhead's ' Life of Pope'— Epitaph on Pope  495
CHAPTER XXVin.
' DOCTRINE OF GRACE.' WESLEY AND WHITFIELD.
Publication 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.
DR. THOMAS LELAND. WILKES.
Wesley's Reply to Warburton; its Temperance — The Rev. 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 — Hurd'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
Warburton's — Displays little Eloquence  Page 540

CHAPTER XXX.
CONTROVERSY WITH LOWTH.
Death of Ralph Allen — His Bequests to Warburton — Warburton's
failing Health — Lowth's Lectures, in which Warburton fancies
himself attacked — Lowth's Observations — Lowth's Father ; his
Commentaries — Towne'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. Whitaker
— Johnson's Remarks on the Controversy — Hurd's supercilious
mention of Lowth and Seeker — Cumberland's Pamphlet against
Lowth  561

CHAPTER XXXI.
STUKELEY. BIRCH. BROWN. SERMONS AND CHARGES.
Death of Dr. Stukeley ; his Character — Deaths of Dr. Birch and Dr.
John Brown — Brown's Character — Decline of Warburton'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 Uncourtliness — Illness — Toup's
' Epistola Critica ' . . .  584

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXII.

DECLINING YEARS. 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 Ruff head — Gibbon's
' Critical Observations ' pubbshed — Hurd's extravagant Praise of
Warburton — Accident in his Library — ' He will 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 Public
respecting him — Disposal of his Library — Hurd's Edition of his
Works, and Memoir of the Author — Destruction of his Letters,
except those pubbshed by Hurd — Specimens of Warburtonian
Criticism  Page 599

CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHARACTER OF WARBURTON.
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

ERE ATA.
Page 73 line 20, for explanation read exclamation.
, 224 „ 33, for Richardus read Eicardus.

THE LIFE

BISHOP WARBURTON.

CHAPTEE I.
WARBURTON'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 READING  HIS ASPIRATIONS  DETERMINES
TO ENTER THE CHURCH  IS ORDAINED DEACON AT YORK  HI^
FIRST PUBLICATION DEDICATED TO SIR 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 Bishop Warburton produced
no permanent effects, either on literature 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 WARBURTON. [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 into 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,
settling at Warburton, a village near Warrington, in
Cheshire, changed his original name for that of his abode.
Some of his descendants removed to Arley, or Orley, in
the same county, where Peter Warburton, who died to
wards the end of the fifteenth century, built himself a
mansion, called Orley Hall. Peter's son John, who was
Sheriff of Cheshire, and one of the knights of the body to
King Henry VTL, 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 royalist in the civil wars of
the seventeenth century, and especially under Sir George
Booth at the affair of Chester, married Prances, daughter
of Eobert 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,
Elizabeth, daughter of William Hobman, an alderman of
Newark, by whom he had five children ; George, who
died young, William, Mary, Elizabeth, and Frances.

1698.J HIS EDUCATION. 3
William, the 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 Elizabeth. 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 dull scholars.
He continued at Oakham till 1714, when his cousin,
the Eev. William 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 calls ' a learned and respectable person,' and
observes that he was the father of the Eev. Thomas
Warburton, Archdeacon of Norfolk, from whom he re
ceived some communications concerning the Warburton
family. But all that the Bishop could learn of Warburton
as a school-boy was, that ' he loved his book and his play
as other boys do ; ' a very unsatisfactory notification, for
different boys divide their attention between books and
play in very different, degrees.
His father died when he was little more than eight
years old ; but his mother took great care of the interests
and education of her children, who acknowledged her
worth by paying her, in after life, all possible respect ;
and William, in particular, never ceased, amid all the dis
tractions of his busy career, to show her the utmost
attention while she lived, and never spoke of her, after
her death, which took place in his fifty-first year, but
with the greatest fondness and affection.
B 2

4 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. tCii. I.
His grandfather had been an active member of the
community in the time of Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell;
and his grandmother, who lived to a great age, would
often detail to him, in his boyhood, such occurrences of
those days as had fallen under her knowledge. These
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 greAV 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 himself.*
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 record
of which transaction Mr. Nichols's curiosity has extracted
from the Eegistry of the Stamp Office : — ' William, son of
Elizabeth 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 Saturday, June 19.'f
He remained with Mr. Kirke till 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.
From 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 was rather increased than lessened by the
* Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 73.
t Nichols's Lit. Anecd., vol. v. p. 531.

1719.] HIS DISLIKE TO THE LAW. 5
want of favourable opportunities for indulging it. Yet
he found means to enlarge his acquaintance with 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 his life, that,
on returning to his native town of Newark, he practised
there for some time as an attorney. Bishop Hurd's
inquiries, however, elicited 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 abilities 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 sylldbarum.
In illustration of what was thought of him at this time
by his friends, Mr. Nichols 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. I.
company ; all which he pleasantly enough received,
without 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 lively, he seemed
more than usually thoughtful ; not a word dropped from
his lips ; 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 replied, with a firmness to which they
thought him an entire stranger, " I know very well what
you and others think of me ; but I believe 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 little 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 life 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 desire 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. Anecd., vol. iii. p. 358.

1723.] ENTERS 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 obligations 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 circumstance that may have given
rise to the report, which has been often repeated, that he
was for some time master or usher in 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 little 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 political influence,
who had been on a mission to Constantinople, and was
then residing in Lincolnshire. Legal business seems to
* Vol. Iii. p. 288.

8 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. I.
have first brought them into contact, and Warburton
found in Sir Eobert a valuable patron. The volume con
tained translations of Cassarls Oration on Catiline's accom
plices, from Sallust ; of Cicero's Oration for Ligarius ; of
some Letters of Pliny ; 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 all 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 filled up the dreadful scene with slaughters, plunders,
rapes, and conflagrations. But to what end, in the name
of Heaven, is all 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
peculiar to itself. They whose low condition confines
them to obscurity may indulge a vindictive temper with
impunity : the world is unknowing of the frailty ; then-
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 inclination
or aversion is unbecoming; but revenge is monstrous.

1723.] • HIS FIRST PUBLICATION. 9
Eevenge, indeed, it is called aniong the little people ; but
in them 'tis pride, 'tis savageness and tyranny.'
The colt shows what he is likely to prove as a horse.
' The phlegmatic gentleman,' ' the little 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 field,
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 pecans echo through the lines.
The youth of Greece fill the wide mouth of fame ;
Theseus and stern Achilles triumph still.
Pious iEneas 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 tears.
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 from the clouds.

10 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. • [Ch. I.
These twenty-four lines are an imitation and expan
sion, rather than translation, of the seventeen fines 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 Beattie with a word, if not
with a suggestion, for one of the finest descriptive fines
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 :
Pygmead&m saevit, mediisque in millibus ardet,
Ductor, quern late hinc atque hinc pereuntia cingunt
Corpora fusa Gruum, mediaque in morte vagatur,
Nee plausu alarum nee rostri concidit ictu.
Me Gruum terror ; ilium densissima circum
Miscetur pugna, et bellum omne laborat in uno :
Cum subito appulsus (sic Di volue"re) tumultu
Ex inopino ingens et formidabilis Ales
Comprendit pedibus pugnantem ; et (triste relatu)
Sustulit in coalum ; Bellator ab unguibus hssret
Pendulus, agglomerat strepitu globus undique densus
Alituum ; frustra Pygmsei 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 shown ; 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 will'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 smiling 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 chariots to the warrior steed ;
Stern victors triumph o'er the tented field,
And furling ensigns to their axes yield.
Hail, prince ! who with your eastern brother hold,
With equal sway, a patrimonial world.
Warburton probably knew little of Latin prosody at
any time ; but he must have known very little of it
indeed, when he wrote these fines, not to have learned

12

LIFE OF 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 startling ; 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 turn.
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 unlucky hour, he took a fancy
to write in Latin : EXCELLENTISSLMO
PR>ESTANTISSIMO ET HONORATISSIMO VIR0
D° ROBERTO SUTTON
EQUITI AURATO, AD GALLICUM MONARCAM, DARE M0REM CATHOLICS PACIS,
CUM AUTHORITATE MAXIMA PROXIME MISSO :
IN LEGATIONIBUS,
GL0RI2E BRITANNLE ET EUROPE STABILITATIS ^EQUILIBRIS, FAUTORI TENACI ;
SENATU,
COMMODI PROVINCES ET LIBERTATIS PATRIAE, VINDICI EGREGIO ;
DOMI,
VIRTUTUM HUMANITATIS, RELIGIONISQUE MODERATIONUM,
EXEMPLARI PERILLUSTRI;
HAS NUGAS
IN SUMMI HONORIS, ANIMIQUE DICATISSIMI TESTIMONIUM,
D. D. D.Q.
W. WARBURTON.
CIO IOCC XXIII.

1723.] HIS SCHOLARSHIP. 13
This specimen of Latinity provoked much animad
version from the scholars in whose way it fell. It was
an unfortunate attempt ; but Warburton seems to have
persevered in his efforts to improve himself in writing
Latin, and to have been not unwilling to exhibit his
proficiency to his friends. Two Latin letters of his to
Dr. Stukeley, in 1729 and 1732, preserved by Mr.
Nichols, show, though not faultless, 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 Peckius, sidus {xuatTwv ap-
Xa.ioypa<pwu, inter itinera sua in domum nostram diver-
tebat, coenabat, discubuit. Vidula ejus de more conferta
erant et cruditatibus distenta ; similia bulgse isti infernali
de qua 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 asrumnis atque miseriis cloacarum degere
Eevum damnatorum ; usquedum, revolventibus fatis, hie
Eques erraticus incantamentum rumpat, et illos innocentes,
fcede laceratos et spoliatos jacentes, defendat, protegat, ac
in lucem revocet. Si fides sit isti primse philosophise,
qua a nutrice in gynaecio nos omnes imbuti sumus, quaj
docet homunciones ex Apiato oriri ; jurarem per omnes
Deos Deasque clarissimum hunc Antiquarium, qui a
Stanfordia petit originem, vice Apiati, singulari fortuna,
sepulchretum istud monasticum, herbis soporificis, pro
portis oppidi situm, natalitium locum habuisse ; hinc amor
cuculli ; hinc protervitas ingenii ; hinc odium in bonas
literas.' If we compare this with Swift's Latin, in his well-

14 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. I.
known criticism on Aulus Gellius, we shall, perhaps,
be inclined 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
all 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 Warburtonian,'
made it better known than ever.
He remained 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 Nottinghamshire, 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.*
Wherever 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
literary characters of the day, the chief of whom were
Concanen and Theobald ; among the others were Dennis,
James Moore, Hesiod Cooke, and Eoome. In his con
versation with 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.] LETTER TO CONCANEN. 15
rials, from every available source, for his 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 willing 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 perforin 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 replied
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 English 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 slime 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 WARBURTON. [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 obliged
friend and humble servant, 'W. Warburton.'
This letter, which -was first given to the public by
Akenside, in a note on his ' Ode to Edwards,' ' was found,'
as Akenside states, ' by Dr. Gawin Knight, first librarian
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
lication ; ' 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 this 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 application to Warburton
led to a long correspondence, of sixty or seventy letters,
written chiefly in 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 Mr.
* Vol. i. p. 222.

1727.] HIS SECOND PUBLICATION. 17
Nichols, 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
small volume entitled, 'A Critical and Philosophical
Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles, as
related by Historians ; with an Essay towards restoring
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, like 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 Sunderland, whom he had married, are por
trayed by Warburton in somewhat glaring colours.
The object of the book, which, however, is hardly
apparent through its rambling and incoherent style, is to
assign the causes why prodigies and miracles are more
numerous in the earlier than in the later pages of history.
One cause, he observes, is that the human mind, in its
weakness, has a longing to hear of what is marvellous ;
and that historians, in primitive times, took advantage of
this desire to narrate tales of wonder, deluding their
readers as jugglers delude the crowd. Another cause,
c

18 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. I.
he says, is national pride, under the influence of which
men have been eager that their histories should exhibit
as many prodigies as possible, such prodigies being con
sidered by them as Divine interpositions in 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 labyrinth, he
had recourse to prodigies and divine influences, by which
good or evil was supernaturally promoted or retarded,
introducing, like the tragic poets, a god to explain that
which to himself was inexplicable.
These are the chief causes, he states, why prodigies
have been so prevalent in History, and he proceeds to
censure our own old English 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 life, 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 hellish
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
replies 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, assuredly, 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 countenance 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
period of his fife employed his thoughts ; subjects which
were to occupy them to a far greater extent in the chief
work of his maturer years.
In regard to Sallust, he makes one very acute remark
as to the question how far imaginary miracles may be ad
mitted into history. Sallust, he says, has omitted one
which he might very properly have inserted, and which
is judiciously related by Plutarch and Dion Cassius. When
Cicero was undecided what to do with Lentulus and his
accomplices, being drawn one way by timidity and cle
mency, and another by justice and concern for his country,

20

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 solicitous 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 acknowledgment. Ob
serving that ' the late Eoyal Institution for the study of
Modern History,' meaning the Eegius Professorship of
Modern History established at Cambridge by George I,
had 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 believed 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 ; this noble Institution
must produce the master-builders to give us that finished
body of English history so long wanted, and till 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 journalists 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 with unfeigned love and
gratitude repeats her numerous obligations.'
Then follow 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 meteor ; while the
ill-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 : Methinks I see her, like the mighty eagle,
Renewing her immortal youth, and 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. I.

1 Warburton was conversant with our great vernacular
writers,' observes Disraeli, w 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 solidest and sublimest 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 like a strong man after sleep, and
shaking her invincible locks ; methinks I see her as an
eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling 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 birds, with those, also, that love the twilight,
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. From 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 publication of the volume, states that, after reading

1727-1 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 will.' To this
Warburton rejoined that Hurd'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 tell 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
little 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, like 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 literature 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 all 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.] HURD'S FLATTERY. 25
that in the Dedication, on the 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
little 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 Knapton has not destroyed the copies, you would
oblige 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 himself 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 Catiline's
factious popularity public 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 Cassar, 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 WARBURTON. [Cu. 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 reality, very little 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 Csesar 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 call him merely vain? or to
Cato, to pronounce him remarkable for nothing but
pride ? or to Cassar, 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.] CONCANEN. 27

CHAPTER II.
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
tn no haste to publish  his assistance to theobald in his
'shakspeare'  theobald's merits  unduly depreciated  spe
cimens of his emendations  estrangement between him and
warburton, and reconciliation  theobald's death  war-
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 dinners, and the manuscript of his
'Enquiry into Prodigies,' seems to have been a man of
more literary ability, and of better moral character, than
Warburton and Pope would lead us to believe. He was
an Irish barrister, but, having deserted the law for a time,
he brought on the stage at Dublin, in 1721, when he was
only twenty years old, a comedy called ' Wexford Wells ;'
and dedicated, in the same year, to Swift's 'Lawyer
Bettesworth,' a poem entitled ' A Match at Football, 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 WARBURTON. [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, intelligible to posterity. ' Every writer,'
he observes, ' is obliged to make himself understood of
the age in which he lives ; 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 obliged, as well in 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, intelligible 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 Italians 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,

172?0 POPE AND CONCANEN. 29
entitled ' A Supplement to the Profund,' 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 in some degree accountable,
having corrected what that gentleman did), but those of
the Duke of Buckingham and others.' Pope took his
revenge in the well-known lines,
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 malignant, 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
abilities, 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,

so

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. II.

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 live in his native country, but, on landing in London
in 1748, he suffered so much from the change of climate,
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 incfined him, to have had little 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 revilings ; and, had he con
tinued his application to literature, 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
literary persons that Warburton met at this time in Lon
don, with whom he appears to have formed any intimacy.
Warburton must have hked 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.

1727.] WARBURTON 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 reality, 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 listened 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 Santippe.'|| And when Theobald had
thoughts of publishing a satirical 'Essay on Mr. Pope's
Judgments, extracted from his own Works,' and sent
Warburton a specimen of it, Warburton 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. f Ib' P- 284-
t Ib. p. 317. § lb. p- 319. || lb. p. 334.
f Ib. pp. 551, 565.

32

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. n.

justifying 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 publicly with Pope's
adversaries ; for Theobald remarks, in acknowledging
some communication that he had received, 'As to the
three printed criticisms with which you obliged me and
the public, 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 into 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, some dispute having arisen among
the lawyers respecting the limits of the judicial powers
of the Court of Chancery and the Bolls' Court, Mr.
Burroughs took the side of the Court of Chancery, in a
small publication 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 Bolls,' a composition SO'
much superior to the ' History,' that the advocates of the
Court of Chancery saw their cause was likely to suffer,
unless they secured some additional aid.
* Nichols's Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 39L j lb. p. 621.

1728.] ' LEGAL JUDICATURE IN CHANCERY.* 33
' In this exigency,' says Hurd, ' Mr. Burroughs was
advised by one of his friends (I forget, 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. Burroughs's proficiency in
the art of writing ; and the Lord Chancellor King as
much as anybody. The author of the " Discourse " 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,
who, though then Attorney-General, had thought proper
to support his relative, Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of
the Bolls.
In 1728, in the month of April, the King made a visit
to the University of Cambridge, and Warburton, by the
interest of Sir Eobert Sutton, was included in the list of
Masters of Arts created on that occasion. Whether any
notice was taken by the people of Cambridge of the in
cense which he had offered to the University in his
'¦ Enquiry into Prodigies and Miracles,' we are not told.
D

34 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. H.
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 560Z. 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 life, from 1728 to 1746. Greaseley he resigned,
and indeed seems never to have fixed himself there at all.
But it appears that in 1730 he was presented by the
Duke of Newcastle, probably through Sir Eobert Sutton's
influence, to the living of Frisby, in Lincolnshire, with
about 250Z. 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 liberty to devote his
week days, with little interruption, to his books, of which
his income allowed 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, like 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 Hurd that they would sometimes invite themselves to
take coffee with him in his library after dinner, 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. 111. vol. ii. pp. 59, 845.

1728.] WARBURTON'S STUDIES. 35
His reading was at all times sufficiently 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 fight 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
had 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 literature 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
part to secure conquests. But he brought away spoils
enough to show the compass of his expeditions, and to
adorn and enliven his pages with allusions to all kinds of
authors and subjects. He had doubtless felt the want
of more knowledge when he was writing his treatise on
' Prodigies and Miracles ;' for its pages are pages of po
verty compared with those of ' The Divine Legation ;' and
he would thus be the more stimulated to enlarge his ac
quirements to the utmost.
How intensely his thoughts were often engaged about
his subjects of study, is shown by an anecdote commu
nicated by a correspondent to the 'Gentleman's Magazine.'*
* Vol. lxxix. p. 519.
D 2

36

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 in
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 himself
prominently before the public with any important work.
He was resolved to be well prepared for the lists before
he entered them. It was not till 1736, after eight years'
study at Brant-Broughton, that he presented to the world
his first publication of any weight.
In the meantime, however, and during the earlier
years of his residence at his country living, 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, l the best notes
were supplied by Warburton ;' but this is an assertion

1729.] THEOBALD'S NOTES ON SHAKSPEARE. 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 public, pronouncing Theo
bald ' a man of heavy diligence, but slender powers, who
escaped with 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
appeared. A recent writer in the ' Notes and Queries ' *
has said of Theobald, with no less justice than boldness,
' Every commentator is indebted to him, and everyone
has abused him, from Warburton and Pope to Coleridge ;
* First Series, vol. iv. p. 28. -

38

LIFE OF 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 acknowledging his obligations to
those who had assisted him, 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 concludes, 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
quality 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. sc. 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 wag
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.

!729.] THEOBALD'S EMENDATIONS. 39
In Twelfth Night, Act i. sc. 3, Sir Andrew and Sir Toby
discourse thus :
Sir And.  O 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 line 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,
From 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 live, however much he might
drink, quietly substituted,
I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.
Before Theobald's time, a line 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 boy, 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 Naso, 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. II.
In the 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 lines
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 bad,
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, — complain 'd
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 lines afterwards, these are called
' four threes of herdsmen,' and Theobald therefore aptly
conjectured that we should read goatherds instead of
carters.

41

1729'3 THEOBALD'S EMENDATIONS.
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 ah 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 little doubt but
Shakspeare wrote, Then, fore 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 punctuation.
All 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 iEschylus, paid willing
attention to ' L. T.'s ' suggestions. Bus attempts at origi
nal composition have been doomed, by the sentence alike

42 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. H.
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 which 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, replied 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 publication 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 The Charitable Corporation, a society
which was instituted, some years before, ' for the relief 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 living 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 little 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 published 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 all 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, obliged to him. So I am very
capable, and, you will readily believe, very much disposed,
to apologise for him. Yet, for all 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
public part and in the private one of the merchants'

1732.] APOLOGY FOR 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 negligence) 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 public ; for
not to think he came amongst them with a view to his

46 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. II.
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 guilty 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 own 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 will 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 neighbourhood 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
livings, on estates he had lately bought ; and, without the
least intimation or solicitation, 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
living, 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 living 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 replied 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 ROBERT 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
living 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 little an inclination 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. In a word,
there is nothing I am more convinced of than the inno
cence of Sir-B. 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 fine,
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 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. II.
popular prejudice and a public censure, it was no wonder
the poet, to whom 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 obliged
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, his ill-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 CHURCH AND STATE ' — ' VELLEIUS
PATERCULUS ' — SIR THOMAS HANMER.
WARBURTON'S FIRST WORK OF IMPORTANCE, ' THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN
CHURCH AND STATE '  SUMMARY OF ITS CONTENTS  BISHOPS HORSLET
AND HARE PLEASED WITH THE BOOK  ITS RECEPTION BT THE PUBLIC
 HARE'S DESIRE TO SERVE WARBURTON  WARBURTON'S DESIRE TO
EDIT 'VELLEIUS PATERCULUS '  DISSUADED FROM THE UNDERTAKING
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 Alliance
between Church and State.' The doctrines advocated in
this work it will be our 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 religion. 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. HI.
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 religious 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 alliance
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 relinquished in entering into
society, so should the Church receive an equivalent for
that which she relinquished in entering into alliance 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. | lb. p. 93.

1736.] DOCTRINES OF 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 obligation — 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 religious 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 public endowment on its minis
ters, assigning a fixed share of the national property for
their maintenance ; thus rendering that religious 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 securing the peo
ple's favour, to excite or encourage a spirit of resistance
to the civil power, and which must at all 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 WARBURTON. [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 Parliament.
This place in the legislature is only what the Church may
justly expect ; for having, when she formed an alliance
with the State, relinquished to the State her independence
and individual 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 opinions, 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 religious society, of the country, there may
exist, in that country, more churches, or religious socie
ties, than one. With which of them, then, will the State
form its junction ? Assuredly with the strongest, or most
numerous, of them, acting thus from motives of policy;
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 religious 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 injuring the religion allied with
* Warburton's Works, vol. vii. pp. Ill, 112. + 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 Church to which it allies itself.
This alliance between the State and the more numerous
religious society will not be indissoluble ; for it will natu
rally subsist only so long as the religious society, thus
placed in alliance with the State, maintains its superiority
in number over other religious societies. If this supe
riority is diminished to any perceptible extent, the alliance
naturally becomes void ; for the allied religious society
being no longer able to perform its part in the compact,
by influencing the majority of the nation to the observance
of morality and good order, the State is at once disengaged
from the alliance ; and a new alliance may now be formed
with such other religious society as has become the most
numerous. Thus, formerly, the alliance between the
Pagan Church and the empire of Borne was dissolved,
and the Christian established in its place ; and, of late,
the alliance between the Popish Church and the kingdom
of England was broken, and another made with the
Protestant in its stead.*
One reasonable method of restricting the religious
societies, or sects, not in alliance with the State, from in
juring that which is allied 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 H., as a security to the
Established Church against the Puritans ; a law of which
William HI., 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. IIL
entire toleration and the 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 points, he manifested
the same determination, expressing his willingness to
allow full toleration, but concurring with his councillors
in refusing to abolish the test.*
As to the maintenance of the clergy in the religious
society allied with the State, or, as we call it, the Estab
lished 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 religious 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 will 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, entirely
justifiable, for when opinions affect the peace of society
they necessarily come within the jurisdiction 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.] DOCTRINES OF THE 'ALLIANCE.' 55
of disqualification* Thus the English 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 believes defensive
war to be unchristian, are justly debarred from civil
offices, as they propagate opinions inimical to the peace of
the community and the stability of the government.
Such are the doctrines which Warburton advanced in
his ' Alliance between Church and State,' and which,
though many of them bear but little on the state of things
with us in the present day, are yet worthy of attention
with regard to the connexion of religion 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 established 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 belief in aid of the
ignorant, and a common repository that men may consult
for information ; and in settling this summary of belief 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 will the religious institution be. As to the
necessity of some religious connexion, even the Quakers
themselves, who profess aversion to everything resembling
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
* Warburton's Works, vol. vii. pp. 253, 254. | ^>- PP- 59; 61-

56 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. III.
of the State, and are to take cognizance only of such
matters and causes as do not properly fall under civil
jurisdiction ; 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 imperio, 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 allied, but incorporated with the State), yet
no ecclesiastic is to be allowed to exercise his functions
without the magistrate's approbation and licence.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 alliance between Church and State is shown
in the greatest perfection, says Warburton, in England,
* Warburton's Works, vol. vii. p. 149. j lb. pp. 152, 154.

1736.] MERITS OF THE 'ALLIANCE.' 57
which possesses the most perfect of all religious estab
lishments ; * and, with regard to what he has said in his
book concerning such an alliance, he thus proudly
expresses himself: — ' 0 magna vis veritatis, qum contra
hominum ingenia, calliditatern, solertiam, contraque fictas
omnium insidias, facile se, per seipsam, defendal ! Thus
breaks out the illustrious Eoman, transported by a fit of
philosophical 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 nature of man and the ends of
political society, we have cleared up a chaos of contro
versy, proved the justice and necessity of an alliance
between Church and Slate, deduced the mutual conditions
on which it was formed, and shown them to have an
amazing agreement with our own happy establishment, 'f
In writing to his friend Stukeley, in 1735, when he
was preparing the book for the press, he calls the subject
of it 'a ticklish subject,' adding,
 res antique laudis et artis
Ingredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.J
He, doubtless, rejoiced greatly that his daring 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 delighted with the book, and said
that Warburton ' had shown the general good policy of
an establishment, and the necessity of a test for its
security, upon principles which Eepublicans 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
applied to a political subject.' || By scientific reasoning,
* Warburton's Works, vol. vii. p. 165. | Ib- P- 240'
} Nichols's Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 33. § lb. pp. 35—37.
|| Keview of the Case of the Protestant Dissenters, Pref.

58 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. III.
Horsley meant close and cogent reasoning, such as
ought to be used on any subject to which reasoning is
applied, whether of a scientific character or of any
other. Hare, to whom Warburton sent a copy, replied 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 public may prove also to be for your own,
to which my endeavours, in any proper way, shall not be
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 abilities, 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 indifferent 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 admiration 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.] CRITICAL OPINIONS 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 Hurd'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 republication 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 Alliance' 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 ability, to be about her, and
to entertain her, at times, with reading and conversation ;
when the Bishop named the author of ' The Alliance
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
' Velleius Paterculus,' and sent Des Maizeaux, with whom
he had become intimate, a plan and specimen of the work
to be inserted in the ' Bibliotheque Britannique, ou His-
* Quart. Eev., vol. vii. p. 402.

60 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. in.
toire des Ou'vrages 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, under 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 which 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 your 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-natured,
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 will, 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, Avho 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 Gerrard'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 replied with much good
sense, but with less of cordiality than he had shown in
his former epistle : ' Vache, 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 obliging, 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 unnecessary as
compliments. ' You extend my hint about Tan. Faber much farther
than I intended it ; nothing was farther from my thoughts
than to make the application 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. III.
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
think 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 dislike in one or two instances ;
and if he finds them proposed with a show of certainty,
he will 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 airs 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 application with which he has made
the book familiar 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,
'Fr. Cicest.'*
Whether 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 replied as follows :
* Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 97.

1736.] VELLEIUS PATERCULUS. 63
' 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 generality 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 likely 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 civility,
and unwillingness 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, Cumas in Italia
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 all 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 diligently ; which, certainly, so fine a writer could
* Nichols's Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 7.

64

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. ILL

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 Neapolis 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 'Bibliotheque Britannique '
are thus entitled : ' Gulielmi Warburton, A.M., in C.
Velleii Paterculi Historias Emendationes. Ad amplissi-
mum virum,Theologorum literatissimum, 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 tantum
dementise, philosophis discitur ab antiquis. Hie enim
nihil nisi materiam in rerum natura, ille ne vel hilum
hujus esse contendit. Hie materise portiones quasdam
facilitate 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 Beos
sapientem suum collocat ; ille impurus infra bestias felicem
deturbat. Fatuus quidam fabas serere reformidat ; im-
pudens alius homines, quacunque ingreditur vi&, serere

1736.] NOTES ON PATERCULUS. 65
licitum esse clamat. Usque tarn en, 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
imprhnit se, et quasi signat gentis barbaras ac ferocis in
animis vel suam speciem, mirifice nos afficit voluptate.
Si in hoc loco sanguinis infernus imber perfundat nos
horrore, ccelesti priscas eloquentise rore derepente recrea-
mur. Hie, si bos obsccene vociferet, illic Bonias Athe-
narumque Genii Oracula divino afflatu fundentes audi-
untur. Fragmenta veterum historicorum quantivis igitur
pretii sunt asstimanda. Sane etiam inter hasc secufi felici-
oris ornamenta haud infimum locum tenet Caius Velleius
Patereulus. Cujus historici vis ingenii, qiue quidem
summa fuit, non fugit quenquam in Uteris antiquis me-
diocriter versatum. Ob hanc, quas in describendis, certis
signis, hominum naturis, elucet maxime, illoruin Scripto-
rum, per quos Imperii res Eomani in compendia sunt
redactas, merit6 Principis nomine dignatus est.'
He then laments, that of all the 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 still, and like 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)
Syriar\ to iterum rediens e Syria, 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 L 10- t L 17-
F

66

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 comcedia adum-
bratio tantum erat, sive primum comici operis linea-
mentum, quod Nova perficere contendit atque absolvere.
Quum igitur de quodam comcediae genere, ut prioris
reformatione et emendatione, commemorare author insti-
tuisset, suum erat docere lectorem an Novas Comics
artifices ad summum adduxerant earn, an opus erat pro-
fectu ulterior!' 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. urbes, where the sense requires the nominative ; the
later editors read, item ut alioe. The two following,
quippe — hue * into quo? pmnam — hunc, and sensibus
celebrem f into sensibus celerem, are two of his best. But
another, the change of pecuniae expellebatur cupidine% into
pecuniae pellicebatur 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, pecuniae 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 little importance ; but let us extract one more :
Paterculus speaks of Caesar, preparing to invade Britain,
as alterum posne imperio nostro ac suo quxrens orbem;
Warburton turns ac suo into accisum, which, he says, is
very applicable to an island, for ad in composition has
the same force as the Greek apfyl ; so that accisi
(Britanni) means undique cossi, or a.[xc$>ixoTrol.
Hurd says that Warburton was prompted to undertake
a commentary on Paterculus by being charmed with the
* IL 1. t n. 9. | II. 33.

1737.] VISITS SIR 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
literary 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 k 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 rivalry, 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 shall have to speak of
Warburton's edition of Shakspeare.

F 2

G8

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IV.

CHAPTEE IV.
' THE DIVINE LEGATION.' — LOWTH.
' THE DIVINE LEGATION OF MOSES ' PROJECTED  ITS OBJECT — WAR-
BURTON'S REASONING  HIS PROPOSITION THAT THE DOCTRINE OF A
FUTURE STATE WAS NOT TAUGHT BT THE JEWS  OPINIONS OF GROTIUS,
EPISCOPIUS, AND BISHOP BULL  WARBURTON'S NOTIONS OF THE BOOK
OF JOB ; SUPPOSES THAT IT WAS WRITTEN BT EZRA  HIS ARGUMENTS
IN SUPPORT OF THIS HYPOTHESIS  HIS INTERPRETATION OF THE TEXT,
'I KNOW THAT MT REDEEMER LIVETH '  LOWTH'S OPPOSITION TO
WARBURTON'S ASSERTION, THAT EZRA WAS THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK
OF JOB  STTLE OF EZRA  JOB PROBABLT AN IDUMiEAN — THE AUTHOR
OF THE BOOK OF JOB PROBABLT A JEW.
* rpHE Alliance between Church and State ' was a con-
JL siderable effort, but it was nothing to what 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 Eeligious
Theist, from the Omission of the Doctrine 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 religion coming from the Father of Lights, should
fail to support the belief in an existence after death, such
belief being 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 religion, and, conse
quently, against that of the Christian religion, 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
religion 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 allow to be reasonable :
' That a skilful lawgiver, establishing a rehgion and
civil policy, 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 inculcate 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 believing
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 WARBURTON. [Ch. IV.
to be evinced by one or both of the two following
syllogisms :
' Whatsoever religion and society have no future state
for their support must be supported by an extraordinary
providence :
' The Jewish religion and society had no future state for
their support :
' Therefore the Jewish religion and society were sup
ported by an extraordinary providence.'
And again :
' The ancient lawgivers universally believed 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 believed his religion 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.
Not only Freethinkers, or unbelievers in the divinity of

1738.] OPINIONS IN SUPPORT OF WARBURTON. 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 institution of the Jewish
religion, 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 promised, 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 fife ; 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 fife in a future state is neither pro
mised nor signified in the law of Moses, declaring that.
the notion or belief 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 WARBURTON. [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
fully 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 religion, 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 all of eternal life 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 term 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 life is given ; and to do this is certainly impos
sible. — Yet that under these words [of the law] was
comprehended eternal life 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
fife 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 believers or unbelievers had asserted or con
jectured on this subject, Warburton 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 lived before Moses' time.
As to the age of the book, Warburton, in opposition to
all 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. IT.
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 character 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
Israelites under the care of an, extraordinary providence ;
in his affliction, the Israelites, when the extraordinary provi
dence was withdrawing from them. When Job speaks of
troops coming against him, and of his brethren being put
from him, 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.] WARBURTON ON THE BOOK OF JOB. 75
says, ' Who is he that darkeneth counsel by words without
knowledge ? ' the prophets are to be imagined as rebuking
the people of Israel, and accusing them of wearying the
Lord with words 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 reahty 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 Elihu
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 admonitions of the Divinity, is an
admonition to the nation of obedience and submission
under the ordinary dispensations of Brovidence ; 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 WARBURTON. [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 be 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 understanding he smiteth through the proud, refers to
the destruction of Pharaoh and his 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 be
fresher than a child's, has regard to the recovery of
Hezekiah by the laying of a lump of figs on the boil.
And having thus settled that it was written by a Jew, and
with allusions 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 inquiry about the Book and its writer is but pre
paratory to the decision on the true interpretation of the
words, I know 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 I
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, but of a temporal deli
verance from afflictions, Warburton of course asserts without
scruple : first, because to interpret them of a resurrection
* Third Letter for Toleration.

1738,] JOB SILENT CONCERNING A RESURRECTION. 77
from the dead would be repugnant to the whole tenor of
the argument running through the speeches of Job and
his friends, and to interpret them of a temporal deli
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
thirdly, 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 down, 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 bliss 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 Elihu, 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 English
paraphrase of Job's speech : ' I believe that God fives 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 experience 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IV.

resurrection from the 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 fife after death, is noticed by
the prophets and other writers in the Scriptures, only to
signify what is most unlikely to come to pass. Thus, in
the Psalms, it is said, ' Wilt thou show wonders to the dead 1
Shall the dead arise and praise thee ? And when Ezekiel
was shown, in a vision, the valley of dry bones, and was
asked, Can these dry bones live f 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, 0 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 qualified 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's ' Argument of the Div. Legat. fairly stated,' p. 134.

1738.] LOWTH'S REFUTATION OF WARBURTON. 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. When 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 like Ennius, being, indeed,
no poet at all ; and that Le Clerc, who, like Warburton,
• had thought of making 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 qualified 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. [Ch. IV.
can, with a safe conscience, bestow any part of this com
mendation. Let him, moreover, take into account this
last author'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 Geoffry 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 doubt 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 earlier, 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 empire 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 carried on between all the
Eastern countries and Egypt, great part of which must
pass through Edom ; and it was a country of great repu
tation for wisdom, 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 Sacra Poesi Hebr.
Prsel. xxxii. not. 1.

J738.] AUTHORSHIP 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 Judasa, 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 foolish or vicious in other
countries besides Judasa, at least among the more intelli
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, applicable to the Jewish religion
and history throughout the book, will always leave the
question, whether the writer was a Jew or not, liable to
discussion.

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. V.

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 PUNISH
MENTS — 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.
"AVING settled the meaning of the great passage in
the Book of Job, Warburton proceeds to consider
the 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 immortality of the soul, or
its existence apart from the body; and such as are thought
to demonstrate a resurrection of the body, and a future
state of reward and punishment.
Of the first kind is the text at the beginning of Genesis,
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
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 endued
with an immaterial and immortal soul ; but Warburton
supposes that man's likeness to God consisted in being
gifted with reason, which was the only qualification that

17S8.] 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-Judseus, who, alluding to this text, says, Aoyog la-riv
elxciiv ©sou, 'Eeason is the image of God.' Certainly it
would be hard to deduce the immortality of the soul from
the text.
The next passage of this sort is, And the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into
his 'nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living
soul. This is understood to mean that man received
a soul, which, as it lived then, would five for ever.
' But this,' says Warburton, ' is only building 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 soul. Thus in
the Book of Numbers (vi. 6) it is said of the Nazarite, He
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 way in the Book
of Leviticus, xxi. 1 and 11. 'And indeed,' continues
Warburton, ' 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 with life. He breathed, says the sacred historian,
into this statue the breath of life, and the lump became a
living 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 written, 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. [Ch. V.
man's creation, that he opposes the mortal animal Adam
to the immortal-making spirit of Christ.'
The next text is the address to the serpent : / will put
enmity 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 life and immortality 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 belief 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 earliest times, of some common receptacle of souls,
from which the saying of a man being gathered to his
fathers, and gathered to his people, doubtless had its rise ;
though, that as little 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 life formed any part of the teach-.
ins of Moses.

*o

There remain to be considered those other texts which

1738.] 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, all 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 hi reality bearing on the land of Canaan, or on
the temporal condition of the Jews, in all the Mosaic lawr
but that everything in it had reference to a life beyond
the grave.
The particular texts, thought to favour the opinion of a
resurrection and a future state of rewards and punish
ments, Warburton discusses in the following order. God
says to Abraham, ' I Avill 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
life 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 representative ;
and adds that the gift of a heavenly Canaan to Abraham
could not have been a fulfilment 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. V.
•
is, both the force of the words, and their relation to the
context, restrain us to this literal 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 folly of expecting the last reward of virtue
for a life spent in the gratification of every corrupt appe
tite. But if any one will 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, he
shall live in them. Some have said that the life promised
in this text is eternal life ; but the folly of such a perver
sion is patent to all who know anything of the use of
similar expressions in other parts of the Scripture.
In noticing another passage of Leviticus,f Warburton,
in a later edition, made sport of Dr. Butherforth, 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 will venture 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 unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death.'
' Let me,' says Warburton, w first explain the text, before
I show Iioav it is perverted ' by Dr. Butherforth. ' 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. t xx- 2. '

1738.] TEXTS IN THE PSALMS. 8?
death by God's own hand in an extraordinary maimer.
..." 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 will set my face against
that man, and against his family, and will 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. Butherforth. This provision
for the execution of the law our professor being totally
unconscious of, he insists that " cutting 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 confounds law by
theology, and depraves theology by law ... To regulate
a little 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 Psahns, 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 life ; in thy presence is fulness
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 fall 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. V.
occur in the forty-ninth and seventy-third Psalms. ' But
the texts of texts,' adds Warburton, ' 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 into 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, I 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 trie 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 ? And if so, could the first, or the Old Testament
hell, be any other than the grave ? ' On this explication
Warburton's reader may set what estimation he pleases.
In another passage the Bsalmist says, ' Deliver my soul
from the wicked, from the men of the world, which have
their portion in this life, and whose belly thou finest with
thy hid treasure. As for me, I will 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
plural word, in vitis, having no singular, referring only to
life in this world, and not being opposed, as our translators
would seem to intimate, to life 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
life ;' that is, they are perfectly prosperous. The other

1738-] TEXTS IN ECCLESIASTES. 89
words, I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness,
are susceptible, according to the commentators and trans
lators, of so many renderings, and so many explanations,
that 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, when 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 symbolic 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 life. But he also says, Rejoice, 0 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, in favour of a future
state ? Does it not intimate retribution to be expected
in another 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. Por know that God will certainly
punish thy offences, either in thy own person or in thy
posterity.' * Ps. xxiii. 6.

90 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. V.
These 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 ventured 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 immortality of the soul and
the resurrection of the body, as they are collected by the
learned Manasseh Ben-Israel, in Ms tract, De Resurrectione
Mortuorum.' Warburton then enumerates seventeen texts
of this enigmatical kind, though not all from the Benta-
teuch, of which it will be sufficient to quote one qr two
specimens, to show of what material a learned Babbi 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 five 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,' continues 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 Babbi 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 thhie enemies, them shall he sling
out, as out of the middle of a sling.' ' It is the opinion 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. f Deut. xxii. 6.

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 life,
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, like 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 philosophers.
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,
WISDOM AND PHILOSOPHY.'
The principal texts in the Old Testament, which appa
rently advocate the belief 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 was spoken unto you by God, saying, I
am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob ? 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 living, the souls of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob were still surviving ; so that it would be
in vain for them to build a disbelief in the resurrection
of the body on their notion that the soul dies with the

92

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 still
lives. 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 would also protect their
posterity, ' whose affliction in Egypt he had surely 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 replies, If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the
dead. But as the preceding 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 believe to
have been confirmed by so many well-attested miracles,
neither will they regard a new miracle, that of the resur
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 inequalities should be
set even, and God's threats and promises executed to the
full.' The Pharisees, therefore, had already begun to
believe in the probability, or at least in the possibility, of
a future state ; but that Moses taught a future state,
nothing can be drawn from 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
solicited, to prove that Moses taught a life 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 promises afar
oft, 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. V.
must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that diligently 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 Eed Sea, and in surrounding
the walls of Jericho ; ' but was such faith,' asks War
burton, ' a faith in Jesus the Messiah, or a belief 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 Egypt,'
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 V f As to
the women and others that were tortured, ' not accepting
deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection,'
Warburton refers their sufferings, as is done in the margin
of our English Bibles, to the time of the Maccabees, when
* 'Kemarks on Several Occasional Reflections ; ' Works, vol. xi.
p. 298, seqq.
| Div. Leg., book vi. § 4 ; Works, vol. v. p. 431, 8vo.

1738.] TESTIMONY OF ARNAULD. 95
it is acknowledged that ' the doctrine of a future state
was become national.'
This portion of his work Warburton concludesj 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 million. ' 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 Galfican
Church, urges this important truth with still more frank
ness. ' C'est le comble de l'ignorance, ' says this
accomplished divine, ' de mettre en doute cette verite,
qui est une des plus communes de la rehgion Chretienne,
et qui est attestee par tous les peres, que les promesses de
l'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 WARBURTON. [Ch. VI.

CHAPTER VI.
BAYLE. — MORAL OBLIGATION.
WHETHER A SOCIETY OF HUMAN BEINGS CAN SUBSIST WITHOUT A
BELIEF IN A FUTURE STATE  BAYLE's CONJECTURES REGARDING A
COMMUNITY OF ATHEISTS  WARBURTON'S ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION
TO BAYLE  HIS SOPHISTRY  A REASONABLE BEING MUST ACT REA
SONABLY  BURLAMAQUI ON EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL OBLIGATION 
WARBURTON CONTRADICTS HIMSELF  OBJECTIONS TO PALEY's DEFINI
TION OF VIRTUE  BAYLE LEFT UNREFUTED.
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 feelings of
honour and shame, of the desire 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.] BAYLE ON A SOCIETY OF ATHEISTS. 97
wilfing 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 believers 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 Bagans or idolaters
who have maintained societies.
Even Christian societies, continues Bayle, 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 Baris, 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 world to come, does not render
a Christian or Bagan 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 discipline 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 easily excited to religious
zeal and fury against any that profess different religious
tenets from themselves. The Christians who engaged in
* Sect, cxxxi.
H

98

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VI.

the Crusades had abundance of religion ; they quitted
their country to make war with infidels ; they saw, as they
believed, 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 religious 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 cfi-cumstances
of affliction 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 more than an Atheist of a colder and calmer
temper, f There are men who go to mass daily, yet are
neither religious, 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,
* Sects, cxxxix. cxl. •(¦ Sects, cxliii. cxliv.

1738.] ATTEMPTED REFUTATION OF BAYLE. 99
Examine all the notions of civil life among Christians, and
you will scarcely find two derived from religion. The
Jews had a sect among them, the Sadducees, who openly
denied the immortality 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 likely that they were in
reality 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 Ath eist
may even have as strong a desire to secure 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 believing 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 like those against Quin-
tilian's position, that a great orator must be a good man ;
a society of Atheists may be men of upright lives, but
their lives might be still better if they believed 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 plausibility ;
while 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
h2

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 qualities 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
morality of actions, will not properly oblige him to act
virtuously ; for obligation necessarily implies an obliger ;
and the obliger 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 obliged 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 obligation 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 obligation ? Will he say right
reason ? 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 obliger, is to
make a man oblige 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 difficult to
apprehend.' He then adds that moral obligation implies
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 oblige a
reasonable being endued with will, who, though he may
judge by his understanding of the propriety or impn>

1738 -J MORAL MIGRATION.

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 Bredominant 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 little 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 belief 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,)
will 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
will 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VI.

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 life to death, until 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 morality. However, not 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 oblige him to act in conformity with it. If no
being acts morally or wisely, as Warburton's arguments
go to prove, but one who is obliged so to act by the will
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 obligation at all ; and
if it be no obligation in one case, it can be no obligation,
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 urge from the words " oblige " and

1738.] FREE-WILL AND NECESSITY. 103
" obligation," that it infers an " obliger," since you admit
that 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 secure the good opinion of his
fellow-creatures. To say that man's will is not free, and
that he acts under absolute obligation 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 Brinciples of
Natural Law, endeavoured to reconcile the difficulties
about free-will and necessity, by calling 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
obligation, 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 liberty,
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 WARBURTON. [Ch. VI.
yet it assuredly is liberty, and may be exercised alike by
him who believes in a superior Bower, and by him who be
lieves in none. Dr. Clarke, therefore, rightly maintains that
human obligation to act thus or thus, lies 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,' and 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 opinions 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 OF 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 will 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 five 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 affected 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 well-disposed make the

106 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 fife, 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 desirable that such com
munities should be multiplied, might live in great harmony,
and for a long period of time.

1738.] ANCIENT MYSTERIES. 107

CHAPTER VII.
ANCIENT MYSTERIES. SIXTH BOOK OF THE MNEIV.
VARIETY 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 .jENEAS'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 .ENEAS 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 scibili et de quoli-
bet ente ; it is a perfect encyclopaadia ; it includes in itself
all history, chronology, criticism, divinity, law, politics,

108 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBUKTON. [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 Bopish doctors, sounding the
note of triumph, but leaving the enemy unwounded, he
bestows a slight regard on Mandeville, the author of ' The
Pable 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 belief 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 establishing and
extending that belief, being artfully so formed and con
ducted as to strike forcibly on the minds and imaginations
of the multitude. In 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 concealing his obligations to
Meursius ; 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.' Por 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 falls
in,' observes the author of ' Confusion worse Confounded,'
one of the sprightliest attacks on Warburton's writings,
' with 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.' Warburton 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 and 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
Bceotia, and those of Ceres, celebrated at Eleusis. As the
ori°in 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 WARBURTON. [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, little 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
belief 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 life,, 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 bliss, 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 fives, 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 religion, 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 shows, 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.] WARBURTON'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 him that the gods who were
to be their examples, but in whose lives they saw so many
vices and irregularities, were in reality only dead and
deified mortals, and still subject to like 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 caUed epoptoe, overseers or inspectors, having
previously been called mysto?, or simply the initiated.
Por 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. Por 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 Saino-
thrace.' A passage in Josephus against Apion,^[ which he
* De Civ. Dei, iv. 27 ; viii. 5.
f Tusc Disp. i. 12, 13 ; De Nat. Deor. i. 42.
J De Err. Prof. Relig. c vi. § Strom, lib. v. p. 431, ed. Sylb.
II De Usu Part. xvii. 1. f Ib. ii. 23.

112 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch.' VII.
forces into his service, profits him little. 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 blind 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 bierophant, is still more unhappy, for it is
condemned, by the more judicious among the critics, as
a forgery. Though Warburton acknoAvledged his obligation to
Meursius, he very disingenuously concealed what he owed
to Le Clerc, for he gave no indication that his whole
hypothesis, 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 lives 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

!"38.] SIXTH BOOK OF THE ^ENEID. 113
German writers, as Schelling, 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 fellow-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 belief 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 iEneas,
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 .iEneid, was in
reality 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.' Thirlwall, Hist, of Greece, vol. ii. p. 140.
I

IU LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VII.
everything was clone in show and machinery, and where
a representation of the history of Ceres afforded oppor
tunity 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 politics. With this view he wrote
the JEneid, ' which is, indeed,' says Warburton, ' as com
plete an institute hi verse, by example, as the Eepublics of
Plato and Tully were in prose, by precept.' Numerous
are the instructions, in various forms, scattered throughout
it. Why are JEneas'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. Why 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 iEneas chosen by Virgil for his hero, and formed
into the character in which Virgil represents him ? Because
a system of politics, 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 public adventure of life ;' and hence iEneas was,
of necessity, to be found ' voyaging, with Ulysses, and
fighting with Achilles.' ' Such a key to the iEneid,' that
it is a system of politics, ' 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 iEneas 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 believes, all the ancient heroes and lawgivers

!738.] GIBBON'S ATTACK ON WARBURTON. 115
were initiated. They 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
Briscus, had been initiated in the Mysteries. Hercules,
when he is supposed, in the 'Hercules Furens ' 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 iEneid ' was taken from thence.' No poem of
the kind has come clown to us ; but Warburton was resolved
that Virgil's descent of iEneas 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 iEneas was ordered to seek, answers to the wreath
of myrtle, which the initiated were required to wear. The
words of the Sibyl, procul 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 spectacles
exhibited to their view. The metempsychosis was taught
in the Mysteries, and the metempsychosis is also taught
in the iEneid.
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 WARBURTON. [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, published nothing in English.
He disliked 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 religion, he would
rather have availed himself of the Oracles, which were not
less ancient nor less venerable than the Mysteries. Nothing
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
alliance between the avarice of the priest and the
credulity 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
believed or imagined of the lower world ; 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 fife, 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 celebrated 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 iEneas into hell as a representation of the
Eleusinian shows ; so that that part of the iEneid must
have been written previously to his visit to Greece. The
passage relating to Marcellus, indeed, and probably the

118 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cii. VII.
whole of the sixth book, he had read to Augustus and
Octavia about four years before.
But even if Virgil was fully acquainted with all 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 arcanse, sub isdem
Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum
Sol vat phaselon.
Such reprobation would have been cast on Virgil by all
who had heard of what the iEneid consisted ; and Horace,
who well 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 iEneas'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 licentious 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 little support there is for Warburton's
\ notion, that the account of iEneas'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
1 ingenious, but must acknowledge to be groundless.
Gibbon's ' Critical Observations ' nobody attempted
to answer. Warburton's party, as he remarks, maintained

1738.] JORTIN'S DISSERTATION. 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 respecting the descent
of iEneas, made the following remark : ' All 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 civility.' 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 unwilling to quit this consideration of the Sixth
Book of Virgil without adverting to the difficulty which
all readers and commentators have experienced respecting
the ivory gate at which Anchises lets out his son and the

120 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VII.
Sibyl from Hades, and the manner in which Warburton
endeavours to turn that circumstance to the purpose of
his own hypothesis. Homer, Virgil'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
deceitful phantoms :
Immur'd within the silent bower of Sleep,
Two portals firm the various 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 gemma? Somni porta? ; quarum altera fertur
Cornea, qua, veris facilis datur exitus umbris :
Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto ;
Sed falsa ad ccelum mittunt insomnia manes.
His ubi turn natum Anchises unique Sibyllam
Prosequitur dictis, portaque emittit eburna.
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. Dryden.
The reason why iEneas 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
hell 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.] JORTIN'S OPINION. 121
to himself.' If Virgil intended iEneas'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 pictures of them objected
to iEneas, were false ; as the scene did not lie 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
reality, 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 overset an elegant
system which he had put together and embellished with
no small pains, and which was partly calculated to pro
mote religion and morality, 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
willingly 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, intelKgi
falsa esse omnia quae dixit;' and most .other commen-

122 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VH.
tators have 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, animseque, marisque, fuissent,
Et liquidi simul ignis ; ut his exordia primis
Omnia, et ipse tener mundi 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,
Clung 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,
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis 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 obliquely,
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 iEneas, 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 iEneas out at the gate of Sleep. The

1738.] JORTIN'S REMARKS 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 iEneas
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.
' Virgil had studied and embraced the Epicurean philo
sophy, and whatever use he may have made, as a poet,
of the doctrines 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,
which 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 ; ipsaque mors nihil.
Tasnara, et aspero
Regnum sub domino, limen et obsidens
Custos non facili Cerberus ostio,
Eumores vacui, verbaque inania,
Et par sollicito fabula somnio.
' It would make 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 religious
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 WARBURTON. [Ch. VII.
a good-natured mistake — an innocent simplicity, which
thinketh no evil.'
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 realities, ' unwarily slid 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 this 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 :
Qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris.
The term shades, vera? umbrae, were those airy forms which
were continually sent to animate new bodies ; such light
and immaterial natures as would without difficulty pass
through a thin transparent substance. In this new sense,
iEneas and the Sibyl, who were still encumbered .with a
load of flesh, could not pretend to the prerogative of
true shades. In their passage over the Styx they had
almost sunk Charon's boat :

1738.] A REMARK OF HETNE. 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
polished ivory, was the only one that remained either for
them or for the poet.
'By this explanation we save Virgil's judgment and
religion, 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 Virgil 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 explicable crux, like the
 Die quibus in terris

Tres pateat cceli 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 iEneas 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.

126 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. Yin.

CHAPTEE VIII.
ATTACKS ON WARBURTON. WEBSTER, MIDDLETON, JORTIN.
' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' LIKED 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'  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 through
the press, Warburton sent some sheets of it to
Bishops Sherlock and Hare, asking their judgment of
the work. Both expressed approbation, but Sherlock at
greater length ; and ' it may be thought,' says Mr. El-
vert,* ' no trifling attestation to the orthodoxy 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.
' Beverend 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 which 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 you.
' 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 fife, the treating his
performance with an air of ridicule will be thought very
injurious to him, and very improper to come from you,
and will 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 in town very soon, and shall have the
pleasure of seeing the sheets as they come out.
' Your very affectionate 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 offence to the
admirers of that book. I have besides,' he added, k 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 Warburton 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 compliment, 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. VIII.
such a clear connexion, such a deduction of notions, and
so much good learning upon so useful a subject, all ex
pressed in proper and fine language, cannot but give an
intelligent reader the greatest satisfaction.' *
About a month afterwards Sherlock wrote again:
' Wallington, near Baldock, Herts, Nov. 29, 1737.
' Sir, — I am very much obliged 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 religion are very
copious and strong ; stronger, perhaps, than ever were
produced by the gentlemen who are willing 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 shall be glad of your assistance to clear it up.
' Mr. Wollaston was, I believe, a serious Christian. He
pursued his point to open the principles of natural religion
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 well informed that he had
begun the proof and explication of the Christian religion
in the same method. The unfinished work was found
among his papers after his 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,
* Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 17, 8vo. ed.

1738.] DR. WEBSTER. 129
told him that 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 little notoriety for themselves.
The first assault was made on him by one Dr. William
Webster, a writer now little known, even to the searchers
into theological controversy ; a writer who, like many
others of his class, spent much of a long fife in producing
matter for the press, but left not a page behind him that
deserves to be reprinted.
As he made some impression on Warburton, however,
who found it necessary to answer him, we may bestow a
little 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, published
' 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 be necessary to Salvation ; and the other,
that the Doctrine of the Trinity is not merely Speculative ; '
treatises directed against the liberal notions of Dr. Sykes,
who had published 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 Besurrection consi
dered • ' and, to propitiate Hare, two pamphlets on his
behalf against Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, who had
K

130

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 publication by which
he became most notorious, the ' Weekly Miscellany,' pro
fessedly edited by ' Bichard 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 religious 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 published 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 Botter,
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 thither in debt, he became
still more and more involved during seventeen years that
he held the living, 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 his
duty or of hiring assistance, among parishioners who were
eager to defraud him of his rights, and to render his life as
uneasy as possible. He stated that he had been forty-three
years employed 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 ' Bamela,' 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 Miscellany' that this unfortunate

1738.] LETTER FROM BISHOP HARE. 131
theologaster directed his assault upon 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 ; perhaps 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, clear
sir, your most faithful friend and servant,
' Fr. Cicest.' *
Bishop Sherlock wrote, a few days afterwards :
' March 2, 1738.
' Beverend Sir, — The Bishop of Chichester tells me that
* Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 100.
K 2

132 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VHI.
he sent you the " Miscellany " of last week, so there is
no occasion to give you any account of it. The very
absurd 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 all
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 politician, and to defend even the
Christian religion as useful only for the present circum
stances of fife. 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 your 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
ability 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.'f
* Dr. Conyers Middleton.
f Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 62.

1738.] SHERLOCK — MIDDLETON. 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 ttoXs^ov aa-jrovfiov, 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 public abuse.
' . . . . The case of Dr. M., which is the hinc UI03
lacrymce of the whole complaint, will require your best
consideration, whether to mention it at all, 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 light 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VIII.
not found, for, when the best papers of the ' Weekly Mis-'
cellany ' were collected for republication in volumes, of
which, I believe, only two were published, that epistle,
with 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 brethren ; ' 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 politic to obviate
the force of such animadversions beforehand.' 'If,' he
proceeds, ' he really means to defend Christianity, he hath
published 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 Bevelation,
or an indiscreet friend. I must own he has left me in no
doubt  Mr. Warburton modestly says, they [the
English 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 obligation and effects of the sacraments, and the
doctrine of grace ; ' and the Country Clergyman insinuates
that Mr. Warburton ' should be hindered from any further
advancement in the Church,' and prays ' for the forgive
ness and conversion of all bad men'
In his c Vindication,' Warburton commences by saying
that, ' after having twice offered his thoughts to the public

1738.] 'VINDICATION' AGAINST WEBSTER. 135
on two very important subjects, and had the 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 gaining himself
promotion, he says, 'When I presumed to publish, in
defence of the established clergy, a vindication of the
Church of England, under the title of " The Alliance
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 Bevela-
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 Scriptures in general

136 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VIII.
that they are divinely inspired; and that all which he
denies is, that the Scriptures are of absolute and universal
inspiration. 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 qualities.'
But however warm an advocate of Dr. Middleton the
letter- writer would make him, he observes that he is not
to be made responsible for all 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 be resolved
into fiction, or fable, or political lying ? No, far be it from
me to think or say so. But this perhaps one may venture
to say, that the supposition of some degree of such fiction
may possibly 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 which 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.] APOLOGIES FOR MIDDLETON. 137
those reasons or principles could have no place among the
founders and propagators of the Jeivish 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 the
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 suffer me to follow. v
' The opinion I have of Dr. Middleton's abihties, 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 Bevelation 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
inclined 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 all 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 WARBURTON. [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 laws ; the occasional
precepts there delivered, how excellent and divine soever,
arising only from conjunctures and circumstances that
were the subjects of those preachings 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 Baul,
whatsoever things are true,' &c. I suppose, if the letter-
writer 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
any such complete or regular 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 religion, I will assure the reader that, as I make it
one point of my religion 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 might not 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 Englishmen but the English clergy
wrote in defence of it ? I solemnly declare that in the
passage above quoted I meant no English clergyman
whatsoever. So far from that, I expressly say in the Dedi-

1738.] CONCLUSION OF ' VINDICATION.' 139
cation, that the clergy of the Established Church are they
who have been principally watchful in the common cause
of Christianity, and most successful in repelling the insults
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
affirmed,' 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-writer ' should
have known that all or most of those true Christian doc
trines,' which 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 Bope, 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 different humour. These titles have no charms for me.
I have lived some time in the world, and, blessed be God,
without 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,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep a while one parent from the sky.
Excess of zeal, in such as the letter- writer, and defect of
religion, 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 politest men of the age to keep

140 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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.
All 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
maimer, 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 religion, instead of
thinking he ought to be hindered from any further advance
ment in the Church. Instead of using any warm endea
vours to lessen his credit, which he professes in so many
words to be his purpose against me, I wish him all increase
of reputation and honour ; and, instead of insulting him
with the words he seems to apply to me, T pray for the
forgiveness and conversion of all bad 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 public on this occasion against a
false charge, the public 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 public 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.] LETTER FROM BISHOP HARE. 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 replied as follows :
' March 23, 1738.
' Dear Sir, — I received yesterday your " Vindication,"
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 little 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, under 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 instance of abuse.
' The part that relates to Dr. Middleton the bishops
think extremely well 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. Cicestr.'
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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VHI.
letters in his hands, says that Warburton employed every
kind of art to soften or remove Middleton's prejudices
against revealed religion, ' 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 everywhere his respect for revela
tion, and his real belief 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 replied: * ' I am pleased with the manner of
your address to the Freethinkers, and obliged to you for
your friendly intentions with regard to myself; and though
I should be as proud to have the testimony of your 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 lies,
very heavy upon me.'
This solicitude was very honourable to Middleton, but
did not make Warburton alter his resolution. He
wrote to him, a short time after, f saying that his book
would soon be published, and that 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
unjust prejudice, that might lie in the way of those honours
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 replied to the letter in the ' Weekly Miscel-
* Sept. 22, 1737. j Dec. 23, 1737.

1738.] LETTERS TO BIRCH ON WEBSTER. 143
lany,' he 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 inspiration of Scripture ; and from his imagi
nation (which is the ground of this clamour), that you
defend Bevelation, 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 him with no more animadversion.
Writing to Birch, and afiuding to a sermon which he was
about to publish, he says : ' You might perceive I was in
a passion against Webster when I wrote, but his last letter
against me has cured me of it, and / design to take no
manner of notice 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 working 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 future 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. Hurd's Life of Warburton, pp. 20, 21, 8vo. ed.

144 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 published all 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 all 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 Bope 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 little note but as the colleague of Webster,
and as having prevented Dr. Bundle, 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 inclination,' he tells Bishop Sherlock,
' it is not a bit abated for all the scurvy usage that I have
met with ; for I will tell your Lordship what it is that
supports me — it is a love of truth, and a thorough con
viction of the reality 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. 548 ; Lit. Illustr., vol. ii. p. 87.

1738.] JORTIN'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 in 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 Brince 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 June. It was reprinted in 1745, under the
title of ' A faithful Bortrait of Bopery,' and is the four
teenth among the discourses inserted in his collected works
by Hurd.
He did not occupy himself, however, so constantly with
his great work, as not to allow himself time for noticing
fighter matters. Jortin had recently published a thin
octavo of ' Bemarks on Spenser,' pointing out many of his
imitations of the Greek and Boman writers, and modestly
proposing a few emendations. Warburton, lighting 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 favour of the following lines to
a gentleman who has distinguished himself very eminently
in the commonwealth of letters, but who will not allow
* Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 65.
L

14G LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cn. VIII.
me the honour of naming my correspondent. There are
some people of so nice a decorum, that they will not be
seen hi 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 " Bemarks on Spenser's Boems,"
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 English poets, on pretence of amending and restoring
them. So masterly a piece of criticism, then, will 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 unawares,
That lay in wait her wreck for to beivail, &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.] WARBURTON'S CRITICISMS ON SPENSER. 147
' Of the first, Virgil says :
At Scyllam cajcis cohibet spelunca latebris
Ora exertantem et naves in saxa trahentem.
And of the latter :
Jamque adeo scopulos 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 applies to the rock what was said of them, and not
inelegantly or unlearnedly. For the original of these
fables was only the perpetual howling heard about those
rocks, by the waters running to and fro in the hollows of
them. The allusion, too, is very just and beautiful, for
the similitude 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 with 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 XL St. 46 :
There grew a goodly tree him fair beside, —
Great God it planted in that blessed sted
With his Almighty hand, and did it call
The tree of life, the crime of our first father's fall.
The learned author asks, " Why does he call the tree of
life 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,
i. 2

148 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VIII.
i.e., he gave it that name at the time of our first father's
fall ; he then named it. The particle at denoting time is
frequently omitted by writers of that age.'
This is tasteless enough. Jortin 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 fall, or be expelled, from
Eden, lest he should also eat of the tree of life, and live
for ever ; the tree of life being thus, in reality, the cause
of his expulsion.
' Book II Canto XII. St. 50 :
More sweet and wholesome than the pleasant hill
Of Ehodope.
"Methinks," says the author, "he should not have singled'
out Bhodope, a mountain of Thrace, as an agreeable
place. The ancients are against him." But this was
done in compliment 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 likewise meliorated the soil and
climate by the force of harmony. This was Spenser's
thought, always profound and sublime in his ideas, as his
great admirer 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 all 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.'

!738.] SPENSERIAN CRITICISM. 149
Upton concurs in this explanation, saying that not the
real but the poetical Bhodope is meant.
'Book HI. 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 dsedal hand would greatly fail and faint.
The learned author says, " Braxiteles was no painter." No,
nor did Spenser understand him such ; he supposed him,
as he was, a statuary, as appears by the first fine, which is
differenced from the second by the discretive nor ; and,
by living art, he had the spirantia mollius mra in view.'
Upton very properly refers 'living art' to Braxiteles,
and ' life-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 was one of the rivers of Baradise.'
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 recourse,
are silent.
' Book VI. 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 towards 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 forward it should be froward; froward is
opposed to toward." But the common reading is right,
and our Spenser has painted here with great exactness

150 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. VIII.
after the 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 froward, which,
he says, is frontward, in opposition to toward.
This is all that is of any importance in Warburton's
remarks.

1738.] CROUSAZ'S STRICTURES ON POPE. 151

CHAPTER IX.
DEFENCE OF POPE AGAINST CROUSAZ.
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 refutation of them —
optimism — warburton'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 how lightly Warburton, in the early
part of his career, had spoken of Bope in his letter
to Concanen, and how patiently he had listened to sneers
at him in his correspondence with Theobald. But he had
now formed a different notion of Bope's abilities, or, from
a view to his own interest in literature, had conceived
that it would be much better to propitiate so eminent a
writer than to depreciate or be at variance with him. In
his ' Vindication ' against Webster he expressed his
pleasure, when quoting Bope, 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 Bope's favour by pub
lishing 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. IX.
Warburton, in his younger days, is said to have
expressed very unfavourable opinions of the Essay, and
to have maintained, in dissertations, which he read weekly
at a literary 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 Byrrhonism Ancient and
Modern, and Observations on the Human Mind against
Antony Collins's Liberty of Thought and Leibnitz's Bre-
estabhshed Harmony ; and, having met with Bope's Essay
in French, and fancying that he saw much impiety in it,
he resolved on exposing what he conceived to be its
noxious tendency. He accordingly published, in 1737, an
Examen de I'Essai de Mr. Pope ; and, in the following
year, a more formal critique, entitled Commentaire sur la
Traduction en vers de M. I' Abbe Du Resnel de I'Essai de
Mr. Pope sur I' Homme. As Du Besnel's translation was
by no means faithful, and as there was a more exact
version in prose by M. de Silhouette, an attache of the
French 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 published in English ;
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. Bope's Essay on Man ; containing
a succinct View of the System of the Fatalists, and Con
futation of their Opinions ; with an Hlustration of the
* Warton's Life of Pope, p. xiv. ; Prior's Life of Malone, p. 430 ;
Disraeli's Quarrels of Authors, Art. ' Warburton.'

1738.] JOHNSON'S CHARACTER OF CROUSAZ. 153
Doctrine of Free-will, and an Enquiry what View Mr.
Bope might have in touching upon the Leibnitzian Bhilo-
sophy and Fatalism ;' the other was sent forth by the same
publisher in 1741, translated by Mrs. Carter (who with
held, however, her name), and entitled ' A Commentary
on Mr. Bope's Brinciples of Morality, or Essay on Man ;
with the Abbe du Besnel's Translation of the Essay into
French Verse, and the English interlined.' The titles of
the versions indicate that the authors of them had no
leaning in favour of Bope.
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 Bope, than they fairly deserved. He spoke of
Crousaz, first in the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' and after
wards in the Life of Bope, 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 abilities
and parts are such as may entitle him to reverence from
those who think his criticisms superfluous.'
In his Life of Bope 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 Byrrhonisme,' 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.

151 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IX.
'His incessant vigilance for the 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 Bope, as
they terminated for the most part in natural religion,
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 religious eye may easily discover
expressions not very favourable to morals or to liberty.'
Warburton's observations appeared in the form of
Letters in 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
lished in a volume till 1742.
The great charge that Crousaz makes against the Essay
on Man is that a noxious system of fatalism pervades the
whole of it. ' He cries out, Fate, fate,' observes War
burton, wherever he turns his eyes, ' as men in distraction
cry out, fire, fire.' Even the Eternal Being, says Crousaz,
was, according to Bope, 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 all
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 Bope why it is no better, we are told that of its
disorders and imperfections, God himself j 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, believing 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,
Why 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 spring, 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 bought, 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 willing
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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IX.
blind. Shall I then resign myself to the guidance of
animal nature ? 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 religion, if I consult the poet on the subject, I
gain very little 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 unconfin'd,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind ;
but I discover that this bhss is merely the result of
universal benevolence, of which every good man will 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 own bright prospect to be blest,
And strongest motive to assist the rest ;
so that 'height of bliss' 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 sufficiently worthy of God, unless there had

1738.] WARBURTON'S REPLY TO CROUSAZ. 157
been in it atheists, superstitious persons, persecutors,
tyrants, idolaters, assassins, and poisoners.
Such 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
world 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 Bope 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 follies and vices, brings good out of ill, as
health and hfe 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 Bope's direction ' to follow nature,' he says
that Bope 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
Bope, we must, nevertheless, not think the worse of
reason on that account. As to the ' height of bliss '
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, how 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 simplicity of the
argument, but would doubtless affect to admire it, could
any one find it for him in Blato.

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, like 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
your mutual relation might teach you to love, pretend to
have reached the very height and perfection of this
passion, the love of God, whom 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, fight for Him, as
you dread 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 virtuous mind to wake,
As the 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 :
Wide, 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 liis breast.''
With regard to the notion that the doctrine of opti
mism, or of partial evil being universal good, sets aside
the belief, and renders unnecessary the expectations of a
future state, ' because, if the evils which good men suffer
here promote the benefit of the whole, 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 replies 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 whole, 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, particular and universal good
shall coincide ; which comcidence 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 Bope'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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 into 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 controversialist,' a student of
seventy-five years, with false reasoning, with blindness to
the connexions in Bope's system, and with imputing to
Bope'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 Baul'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 alike the translator
and the critic who trusted in him. Bope, in the illus
tration which he borrowed from Balingenius, represents
superior beingd as admiring the genius of Newton, 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 unfold 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 VERSIONS 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 Bope speaks of Nature as directing man to learn
the arts of fife 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 Nature in such a passion at Man, and calling
him names, when Mr. Bope supposes her in her best of
good humour.'
When Bope says,
Nor God alone in the still 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
M

162 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. LX.
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' will not so readily pass unquestioned. As for his
penetration into morality, it was shown in forcing into
Bope's lines senses of his own. 'You have evinced the
orthodoxy of Mr. Bope's principles,' said Middleton to him,
' but, like the old commentators on his Homer, will be
thought perhaps in some places to have provided a mean
ing for him that he himself never dreamed of. However,
if you did not find him a philosopher, you will make him
one, for he will 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 vindicate a writer
of his genius, to whom the public is so highly indebted,
from the groundless cavils of a dull critic, which Mr.
Bope's name, and not his own, had spread into everybody's
hands.'* Bope 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 was not yet personally acquainted :
' April 11, 1739.
'Sir, — I have just received from Mr. B. [Bobinson] 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. YouNunder-
stand me as well as I do myself, but you express me
better than I could express myself. Bray 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 Bope
for revision. ' As to any correction of your letters,' says
Bope, 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 Bope in the ' Vindication '
against Webster, which Warburton had attached to the
second edition of the first three books of 'The Divine
Legation.' ' I am much more pleased,' continues Bope,
' with a compliment that links 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 WARBURTON. [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 Bope 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 possibilities of
things.* Many others held Warburton's commentaries in
much lower estimation than Bope. Among these was
Lord Marchmont, who, 'soon after Bope's acquaintance
with Warburton commenced, told Bope he was convinced
that he was one of the vainest men living. How so ? said
Bope. Because, replied 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 dulness you can carry down
on your back without sinking under the load.f
Of Bope'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 grateful to Bope for anything
that we have learned from him. The doctrine that
' whatever is, is right,' the doctrine that runs through
Bope's poem, we are willing, in humble submission to the
wisdom of a higher Bower, to believe, but we are not
more convinced of it after reading Bope 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 believe,
* Spence's Anecdotes by Singer, p. 337.
f Prior's Life of Malone, p. 386.

1739.]. 'WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.' 165
in the eighty-ninth 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 all the strength and colour of our life ;
the effect of either is seen but as in contrast with the
other. The exercise of man's free will, and the indulgence
of his passions, though, as human nature is not perfect,
often exercised and indulged to excess, are still the
elements of action in fife. The mind, says Bacon, would
be stagnant, if the passions, as winds, did not set it in
motion.

They say best men-

-become much more the better

For being a little bad.*
To eradicate the passions, as the Stoics professed to
attempt, would produce but little 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 Bope has left it :
He who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
What varied being peoples every star,
May tell why heaven has made us as we are.
As to the charge of Crousaz, that Bope had adopted
Leibnitz's pre-established harmony, Bope himself declared
that he had never read a fine of Leibnitz, nor had heard
of the term pre-established harmony until he found it in
Crousaz's book.f * Shaksp. Meas. for Meas. act v. sc. 1 .
f Ruffhead's Life of Pope, 8vo. ed. p. 244.

16G

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IX.

The question whether Bope, in. writing his 'Essay on
Man,' was supplied with matter for it by Bolingbroke,
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 Bope, but was not always consistent with
himself on the point. In a letter to Hurd, in 1753,
he declares ' the insidious report,' that Bope had his
philosophy from Bolingbroke, sufficiently confuted by one
of Bolingbroke's letters to Bope ; * yet in his ' View of
Lord Bohngbroke's Bhilosophy,' pubbshed in 1755, he
calls Bope Bolingbroke's ' pupil,' and says that he was
reasoned out of his master's hands by the Commentary in
reply to Crousaz. f
The common belief has been that Bope had much of
the tenets of the ' Essay,' and the plan of its execution,
from Bolingbroke ; and in support of that belief we find
much testimony. When Johnson was writing his Life of
Bope, 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 Borter, 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 Bolingbroke in prose, and
that Bope did no more than put it into verse ; that he had
himself read Lord Bohngbroke's manuscript in his own
hand- writing, and remembered well that he was at ' a loss
whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's
prose, or the beauty of Bope's verse.' Mallet remarked
to Blair that he might well keep this statement in mind,
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 135.
| Warburton'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 Bolingbroke, drawn up in a series of
propositions which Bope was to versify and illustrate. 'f
Bishop Law, too, in his Breface to Archbishop King's
' Origin of Evil,' says that Lord Bathurst had seen the
system of the ' Essay' in Bolingbroke's hand lying before
Bope when he was writing.
The author of an anonymous letter to Warburton,
written subsequently to the ' Epistle to the most Im
pudent Man living,' and supposed to have proceeded
from Mallet, offers similar evidence : ' If you were as
intimate with Mr. Bope 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. Bope. He started some
objections one day, at Mr. Bope's house, to' the doctrines
contained in the Ethic Epistles ; upon which Mr. Bope
told him that he would soon convince him of the truth of
it by laying the argument at large before him ; for which
purpose he gave him a large prose manuscript to peruse,
telling him, at the same time, the author's name. From
this perusal, whatever other conviction the Doctor might
receive, he collected at least this, that Mr. Bope 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 Bolingbroke's furnishing matter
* Croker's ' Boswell,' sub 1779, p. 284. .
t Ib. note. Warton's ' Essay on Pope,' vol. ii. p. 62.
t Cited in Eoscoe's ' Pope,' vol. i. p. 395.

168

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IX.

to Bope was prevalent ; whether Bope meant a kind of
admission of Bolingbroke's assistance in the line,
Together let us beat this ample field,
may be matter for consideration. But the strongest testi
mony of all is that which Spence records as having been
given by Bope himself in their conversations. Speaking one
day in praise of Bolingbroke, Bope, 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 Bolingbroke 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 Bolingbroke
contributed the groundwork of the ' Essay,' Boscoe, in
his Life of Bope, endeavours to prove wholly baseless,
chiefly on the authority of two or three passages in
Bolingbroke and Bope's letters.
The first epistle of the ' Essay on Man,' we may
observe, was published in 1732. But Bope and Boling
broke had been in the habit, for many years previous, of
discussing together moral and metaphysical subjects, and
Bolingbroke, in a letter to Swift in 1729, speaks of the
work which Bope is about ; which ' is a fine one, and
will be in his hands an original ;' and which Bope finds
so easy to execute, that Bolingbroke is happy to see his
judgment, in pronouncing it eminently and peculiarly
adapted to Bope's genius, fully confirmed ; all which
expressions are supposed to refer to the ' Essay on Man.'
In another letter to Swift, in August 1731, Bolingbroke
* Spence's Anecdotes by Singer, p. 144.

1739.] HOW FAR POPE WAS AIDED BY BOLINGBROKE. 169
says, ' Does Bope talk to you of the 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 Bope is
intent on the fourth ; all of which were then meant to
be preliminary to several more. From another letter of
Bohngbroke's to Bope, without date, but evidently written
" after the first three epistles of the ' Essay on Man' were
concluded, it appears that Bope had requested Boling
broke to write something on metaphysics himself, and
Bolingbroke, 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 Bope, in a
subsequent letter to Swift, but also without date, congra
tulates himself that he has ' contributed to turn Lord
Bolingbroke 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 Boscoe argues that Bolingbroke
did not begin to write on moral and metaphysical subjects
till after Bope had completed, or nearly completed, his
' Essay on Man,' and that consequently he could not have
supplied Bope 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 Bolingbroke had not
begun, when Bope was writing the earlier part of his 'Essay,'
to compose metaphysical treatises for the public ; not that
he had never made on such subjects any memoranda or
hints which might have served Bope 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 Bope. Thus

170 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. IX.
in Fragment forty-third : ' We ought to consider the world
we inhabit no otherwise than as a little wheel in our solar
system ; nor our solar system any otherwise than as a little
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 complicated schemes produce, very hardly
and very uncertainly, one single effect ; in 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 Bope !
In human works, though labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain ;
In 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 Bope's ' Essay,' treating
more of religion 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 earlier thoughts, and those on
more practical subjects, to Bope, 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 Bope as a fit
exercise for his powers, by Bolingbroke ; that Bolingbroke
probably gave Bope, 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 Bope
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 Bope,
doubtless, far from having been merely a versifier of Lord
Bolingbroke's prose, supplied from the stores and powers
of his own mind all 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 Bope 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
Brovidence 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 Brovidence
in this life ? 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 Bope ; for he observes
to Swift, in continuation, ' You will not understand, by
what I have said, that Pope will go so deep into the argu
ment, or carry it so far as I have hinted.' Bolingbroke's
revelation of his sentiments to Bope was therefore not
complete. A man with such opinions regarding the uncompen-
* Aug. 2, 1731.

172 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON'. [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 Bope
and Bolingbroke, probably Warburton himself, told Bope,
in his last illness, that Bolingbroke, in the course of a
recent conversation, had taken occasion to deny God's moral
attributes as they are commonly understood, Bope was so
shocked that he could not rest till he had asked Boling
broke whether his informant was not mistaken ; and that
Bolingbroke assured him he was. Bope repeated Boling
broke's reply to the ' common acquaintance,' who appears
to have said no more on the subject ; and Bope died in
the delusion that Bolingbroke was a believer in God's
moral attributes.*
Whether it was through the influence of Bolingbroke
or not, Bope, 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 fife. Bope 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 fatalism, that raised an outcry against the
* View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy; Warburton's Works,
vol. xii. p. 91. J Spence's Anecdotes by Singer, p. 142.

1739.] WARBURTON'S EXPLANATIONS. 173
poem as likely to produce evil effects. As the clamour
increased, Bope became uneasy, and, as Bichardson says,
' took terror about the clergy, and about Warburton
himself, at the general alarm of its fatalism and deistical
tendency.' The passages that appeared to have most of
this tendency had been frequently talked over by Bope and
the two Bichardsons in conversation ; but Bope, at the time
of their publication, showed no disposition to alter them.
When objections were raised, however, Bope was very
glad to accept Warburton as a defender ; but previously,
says Jonathan Bichardson, I know that he never dreamed
of the scheme he afterwards adopted, that is, of the sense
and tendency which Warburton's commentaries forced
upon the ' Essay.'

174 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. X.

CHAPTER X.
ROMAINE. 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 from 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.
DUBING this year Warburton was engaged in an un
pleasant affair with Bomaine. Bomaine, 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 the 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 :
Beverend 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 religion, 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 already 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 (like 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 divinity, 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 affair, 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 will favourably interpret my sending
you these (which are to me, but not to you) difficulties,
and oblige me with an answer to them, if ever an idle
half-hour should lie heavy on your hands.' He then
enumerates, as from the conversation of the clergymen,
various texts, which Warburton afterwards fully 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. Bomaine.'

176 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. X.
Warburton, on receipt of the letter, endeavoured . to
ascertain who ' W. Bomaine' 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 Bomaine'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
Warburton, before the publication 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 Bomaine's letter,
with his own comments upon it, to the ' Works of the
Learned.' He remarked on Bomaine'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 believe one word of what the said Mr.
Bomaine 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
opportunity 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

1739.] ROMAINE'S TERGIVERSATION. 177
his own kind intentions under a false accusation of his
brethren.' Such animadversions Bomaine could hardly be expected
to take quietly; and he accordingly signified his dis
pleasure in a letter to the editor of the ' General Evening
Bost ; ' 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 think 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 think he deserved, or that I meant in earnest,
those compliments in the letter, as he did, or at least says
he did. . . Unless necessity forces me, I shall not
answer him any more in that low 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. Bomaine.'
This letter, says the editor of the 'Works of tho

178 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 Bomaine little honour. If he
did not mean Warburton to take his praises as sincere,
he was wrong in praising him at all ; 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. Writing to Stukeley, he says
that his ' reputation is worried by the vilest of Theolo-
gasters,' Mr. William Bomaine, 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. Bomaine, he adds, ' is the
scoundrel I wrote to from your 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 will
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 outlive
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.] REMARKS ON ROMAINE. 179
another 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 ? ' Bomaine 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 pubhshing 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 published without their leave. And I do him
honour in 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 this fellow wears the mask
of friendship, betrays his brethren, and is kindling a faggot
for you while he pretends to offer incense.'
Bettenham, who pubbshed the sermon, so much dis
liked Bomaine's retort on Warburton, that, when he took
it to be printed, he replied 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 delighted.
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 like,
because I do not know what use may be made of it.
Litera scripta manet.'*
Towards the -end of this year Warburton pubbshed a
* Kilvert, Selections, pp. 85, 122.
*N2

180 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. X.
I new edition of the first volume of the ' Divine Legation.'
' There are,' he says, in speaking of it to Birch, w 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.
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,
on the other hand, was in favour of real possession, and
in the subsequent editions of ' The Divine Legation '
attacks Dr. Mead for his hostility 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, notwithstanding all the
pains to damn and stifle it in its birth. ... I believe,
since the first clamours of the " Miscellany " 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 inclination to serve you.'
The winter of 1739-40 he spent at his living 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 delight in them, that he rarely stirred
from home, which he would often say there was no good
reason for doing, except necessary business, and the satis-

1739.] DEATH OF BISHOP HAKE. 181
faction of seeing a friend. What 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 ill of an intermittent fever, by
which his fife 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 religion 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 all 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 encouragement of learning. I have had a great
loss in his death. He honoured me with his esteem and
friendship. This I esteemed a great obligation. I never
sought to increase it by 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 Divine
Legation,' he took the opportunity of giving his opinion
of the Bishop's character to the world : ' In him the
public has lost one of the best patrons and supporters of
letters and religion. 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 unjust reproaches of libertines and bigots
will never suffer us to forget. How generously he en
couraged and rewarded letters, let them tell who have
largely shared in his beneficence ; for his character may
be trusted with his enemies, or even with his most obliged
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 allay the bitterness of the Bangorian contro
versy. Mr. William Greene, a young student in divinity,
afterwards Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and author
of ' translations of the Bsalms 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 authors,
fight and heavy, but recommended ' above all Br.
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 life.' *
* Nichols's Lit. An. vol. viii. p. 564; ix. p. 716; Lit. 111. vol. iv.
p. 849.

1740.] POPE AND WARBURTON MEET. 183

CHAPTEE XL
POPE. DODDRIDGE. '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  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 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 the year 1740,
was his meeting with Bope, which took place on
May 6. Bope had expressed his wish for a visit from
Warburton, ' to whom,' he said, ' he really had more obli
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. Bope, writing
again to him, from Twickenham, says, ' I received with
great pleasure . . . the prospect you give me of a nearer
acquaintance with you when you come to town. 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 live as I ought, mihi et amicis. I therefore depend

f

184

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 hither cum zephyris et hirundine prima.
... In earnest,' he adds, in reference to the Vindication
against Crousaz, ' I am extremely obliged 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 ; your 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 compliment : 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 Bope was certainly very much in earnest. ' Bray 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 lodgings and a
library or two at my disposal, which, I believe, I need
not offer to a man to whom all libraries ought to be open,
or to one who wants them so little, but that 'tis possible
you may be as much a stranger to this town as I wish
with 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, ' like 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 RESPECT FOR WARBURTON. 185
heart, who seeks content only from within, and says to
greatness, " Tuas habeto tibi res; egomet habebo 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. Bobinson'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 Badnor's garden, adjacent to Bope'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 Bope to Warburton as
they approached, the poet declaring that he looked upon
Warburton as his greatest benefactor. Warburton stayed
several days at Bope's house. ' I passed about a week at
Twickenham,' he wrote to Middleton, ' in a most agreeable
manner. Mr. Bope 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. Bope continued to address Warburton with re
spect, and Warburton was careful not to contradict Bope.
One evening, when they were walking in the garden, Bope
began to converse with Warburton, very familiarly 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XL
in the faculty of invention. Warburton rejoined that he
would not offend his delicacy 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 with sublimity.
' Your wit,' said he, ' gives a. splendour and delicacy to
your sublimity, and your sublimity gives a grace and dig
nity to your wit.'* To this compliment, which, if cor
rectly reported, the poet must have thought rather extra
vagant and obscure — ' wit giving splendour to sublimity,
and sublimity giving grace to wit' — no reply of Bope'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 :
' Civility and compliment generally are the goods that
letter-writers exchange, which, with honest men, seems a
kind of ilhcit trade, by having been, for the most part,
carried on, and carried farthest, by designing men. I am
therefore reduced to plain inquiries, 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 delight
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 what you are to me in my opinion and affection
— so high in each, that I may, perhaps, seldom attempt
to tell 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 all 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.'
Bope had longed to have his 'Essay on Man' translated
into Latin verse, and had engaged Dobson, the translator
of Brior's ' Solomon,' to make a version of it ; but Dob-
son grew tired of the work, and left it incomplete. Bope
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 af
Cambridge, and Bope 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
Bope a specimen, done in close imitation of the style of
Cicero. ' The translation,' wrote Bope 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 familiarity with the learned languages makes
you infinitely more a master of them. I would only
recommend that the translator's attention to Tully's

188 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XL
Latinity may not preclude his usage of some terms which
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 Bope 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 feeling, 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 Bope to understand, would have served his friend

1740.] WARBURTON'S STUDIES. 189
if he had been able. ' It is not my friendship,' writes Bope
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 Bope corresponded with
Warburton ; and this friendly intercourse between them
continued uninterrupted till the day of the poet's death.
Itjs to be regretted that none of Warburton's letters to
Bope have been preserved.
At the commencement of the year 1741, Warburton
was preparing to send forth the second volume of ' The
Divine 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 wrote 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 still. 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 well 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-de-costas ; and, when good
weather and fair traffic 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XL

In July 1740, he tells Dr. Doddridge, who had been
much delighted with the first 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
everything 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, till 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 little 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.] WARBURTON AND DODDRIDGE. 191
article from me, which I will despatch 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 ' Bemarks 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 Bobinson, 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XL
profane mysteries. I am naturally very indolent, and apt to
be disgusted with what has been any time in my hands or
thoughts. When I published 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 listlessness, I was forced to have recourse
to an old expedient — that is, begin to set the press on
work, and so oblige 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 till the whole volume is printed, and to get it ready
by Lady-day. So that now I hurry 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 affectation. 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 life, joined 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 afford me pleasure, and attach me thoroughly.

1741.] COVENTRY'S ' PHILEMON TO HYDASPES.' 193
I will assure you, 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 but in the prospects which revealed
religion affords us. You see how I treat you, as if you
were my confessor. You 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 Bobinson 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. Bray 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 " Bhilemon to Hydaspes "
— to whom I showed some sheets ; and he has stolen my
general plan of the hieroglyphics, fyc, in a fourth con
versation just published. You will wonder I should let
such a sort of writer see anything of mine. But suspend
your censure till I tell you the whole history when I see
you.' ' Bhilemon 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 was engaged in composing
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
o

194 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XI.
Jones, curate, for many years, to the author of the ' Night
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 literature and religion. At
length Coventry took occasion to mention what he was
writing, and told Warburton, that though he had at first
intended to speak only of false religion among Christians,
he was now thinking of extending his inquiries to the
false theories of religion amongst the heathen, in the
course of which he should discuss the origin of hero-
worship and symbolic 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 publish 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 applied 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 off again, went to
Gyles, the publisher, and asked to see Warburton V 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 Warburton
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 published what had
been communicated to him confidentially. Warburton

1741.] SECOND VOLUME OF ' DIVINE LEGATION.' 195
immediately wrote to him 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 publication,* 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 malignants 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. Anecd. vol. v. p. 573.
o 2

196 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 literature. 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 all
other revelations, as they were called, to be mere fictions.
He replies 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 Sir Isaac
Newton, the high antiquity of Egypt, from the skill 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 history, 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 religion 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 Collins, 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 religion,
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 religion, 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
literary 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 all my brethren.
* Book v. sect. 2 ; Works, vol. v. p. 61.

198 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XL
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. Bossibly, 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 abilities, at times inclined to disparage ; and in War
burton's remarks on Colfins's ' Grounds of the Christian
Befigion,' in the sixth book of ' The Divine Legation,' the
Bishop thinks he discovers a desire to outshine the answer
of Bhileleutherus 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 qualification 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
explicabo, says Maimonides to his disciple, ut plane non
ampliiis dubitare queas, et differentiam habeas qud discer-
nere possis inter ordinationes legum conditarum ab horni-
nibus et inter ordinationes legis divinos. ' 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.
| lb. sect. 6 ; Works, vol. iv. p. 362.
% More Nevoch. Part II. c. 40, Buxtorf's Transl.

1741.] MAIMONIDES. — DR. JOHNSON. 199
themselves only with civil affairs, while 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 wiU, and had a religion
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 fife and immor
tality to light.'

200

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XH.

CHAPTEE XII.
VISIT TO OXFORD. ALLEN. PUBLICATIONS.
WARBURTON 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 Bope 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 Bope, after staying there a day, went westward, and
Warburton, who remained a day after him, to call 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 declining the
honour. About the same time a similar communication
was made to Bope, offering him a Doctor's degree in Law ;
and Bope 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, Bope 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.'
Warburton, however, begged him not to slight, on his
account, the honour offered by the University. But Bope
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 will not
have it there without you.'*
It was from resentment at this affair, as some suppose,
that the sneer at the Oxford Dons, as ' Apollo'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
Concluding a letter to Warburton the following year, he
says, ' Call me any title you please but a Doctor of Oxford.'
In the following November, Bope paid a visit to Allen
at Brior Bark, and obtained Allen's permission to invite
Warburton to join them. In a letter to him from Brior
Bark, he says, ' I am here in more leisure than I can
* Pope's Works by Warburton, vol. ix. pp. 341, 343.
•j- Dunciad, iv. 116, 577.

202 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XII.
possibly enjoy, even in my own house, vacare Uteris. . . .
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 civility and regard. He
is sincerer and plainer than almost any man now in this
world ; antiquis morions  You will want no servant
here ; your room will be next to mine, and one man
will 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 roa'd 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 all this a dream ? Or can you make it a reality ?
Can you give ear to me ?
Audistin ' ? an me ludit amabilis
Insania ?'
Balph Allen, whom Bope, in the epilogue to his Satires,
first called 'low-born,' and afterwards 'humble,' in the
couplet, ' Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame,'

1741.] CHARACTER OF RALPH ALLEN. 203
and who was the original of Fielding's Squire Airworthy,
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 great considera
tion by farming the cross-posts, which he put into the
admirable order in which we now find them, very much
to the public 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 hospitality 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 possessed in a
high degree the esteem of Mr. Bope.' Hurd, who was
introduced at his house by Warburton, 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 Bolitical Dialogues,' he prefixed
to it a portrait of Allen, with the following words from
Seneca beneath it : ' Si nobis animum boni viri liceret
inspicere, 0 quam pulchram faciem, quam sanctam, quam
ex magnifico placidoque fulgentem videremus 1 Nemo
ilium amabilem, qui non simul venerabilem, dicer et*
* Kilvert's Life of Hurd, pp. 45, 355.

204 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XII.
Warburton's character of him was this, given in a letter
to Doddridge : ' He is, I verily believe, 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 lies, 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
believe him to have been sent by Brovidence 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 his 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 liked Bope chiefly for the sen
timents contained in his letters, and to have been at times
almost alienated 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 Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 406, ed. Svo.

1741.] CONFERENCES 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 ' bilious indi
gestion,' of which, he observed to Doddridge, the writers
against me declare that I have given public 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 Allen made him promise to return for a further trial
of them.f
He had, at this time, much conversation with Bope
about his poems, and, to advance the ends of virtue and
religion, ' 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.' Bope
complied with his wishes in this respect without difficulty. J
He also conferred with Bope about the fourth book of /
the ' Dunciad,' which he had previously persuaded him to )
add to the other three. ' I often told him,' says War- '
burton, ' that it was a pity so fine a poem should remain
disgraced by the meanness of its subject, the most insigni
ficant of all 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 religion 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
artfully contrived to show that the follies and defects of a
* Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 831. f Ib. p. 830.
| Warburton's Pope, Pref. p. viii.

206

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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, will be sensible of
little refutation either in the text or in the notes.
. During the winter he wrote some notes on Bope's
' Ethic Epistles,' of which Bope was meditating a new
edition. The notes, whether written at Bope'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 ' bookseller'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 ' his favours should be entailed on a rich
family that wanted nothing.' With the demand of two-
thirds, however, the executors were unwilling 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 his cause
* Warburton's Pope, Pref: p. vii. ; and vol. ix. pp. 343, 348.

1742.] LETTER FROM CHARLES TORRE. 207
without a fee. He retained the entire copyright in his
own hands.* Bope recommended him Knapton, a man
of credit in the trade, as a successor to Gyles, and with
Knapton he continued to publish 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 allude
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 iEneas encountered, you cannot hurt 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 ingenious. Therefore, when a man
unites great application to great parts, throws down the
fences of prejudice, and strikes out new paths in know-
* Letter to Doddridge, March 3, 1742.
¦|" Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 495.

2C8 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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. Tully, I think,
says of his behaviour in the offices of friendship, coeteris
satisfacio quam maxime, mihi ipsi nunquam satisfacio.
And in writing 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 reipublicce. . . .
' I am, dear Sir, with the greatest affection and esteem,
' Your most obliged and faithful humble servant,
' Charles Yorke.'
The ' Epistle ' of Dr. Tunstall, mentioned in this letter,
was addressed to Dr. Middleton, and denied, with Markland

1742.] 'ORIGIN OF BOOKS OF CHIVALRY.' 209
and Buhnken, 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 Bope 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 Bope seems to have been much better pleased with
them than his readers have been. Some verses, which
Bope 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 Bhilosophical
Commentary on Mr. Bope's Essay on Man.' The book
received the revisal of Bope before it was published.
Warburton's intimacy with Bope 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, Bope, who had not been made aware
of Warburton's contribution to it, and who knew as little
of the origin of romance as Warburton himself, expressed
himself delighted 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 maimer 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XII.
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
Boncesvalles ; 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.
In the autumn Warburton again joined Bope 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
Infirmary. He printed his sermon, with an account of
the Infirmary appended, but Hurd did not think proper
to include it in his works.
He had much communication, about the 'Dunciad,'
notes to the ' Essay on Criticism,' and other matters, with
Bope, 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.] LETTER TO RICHARDSON. 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 public, of
your commentaries on the " Essay on Man," and on " Cri
ticism," which I propose to print next in another volume
proportioned to this. I only doubt whether an avowal of
those notes to so ludicrous a poem be suitable to a cha
racter so established as yours for more serious studies. 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 Bichard
son a copy of a new edition of ' Bamela,' and, in acknow
ledging the gift, gave him his opinion, as well as that of
Bope, on the work :
r ' 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 all 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. Bope and I, talking over your work, when the two
last volumes came out, agreed that one excellent subject
of Bamela's letters in high life would have been, to have
passed her judgment, on first stepping into it, on every-
p2

212 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XII.
thing 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
follies and extravagances of high life ; which, to one of
Bamela's low station and good sense, would have appeared
as absurd 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 Bamela, going into a new world,
where everything 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 obliged
' and most affectionate humble servant,
'W. Warburton.'

1742.] 'BRIEF EXAMINATION OF THE DIVINE LEGATION.' 213

CHAPTER XIII.
POPE. BENTLEY. DEATH OF POPE.
' BRIEF EXAMINATION OF MR. WARBURTON'S DIVINE LEGATION ' BT
THE FREE-THINKERS  EXTRACTS FROM THE WORK  PAGAN THEO
LOGY  ORIGIN OF IDOLATRY  TILLARD's ' FUTURE REWARDS AND
PUNISHMENTS BELIEVED BY THE PHILOSOPHERS '  WARBURTON'S
' REMARKS ' ON THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR  WARBURTON'S ' ADVER
TISEMENT '  LETTER TO BIRCH ABOUT TILLARD  POPE CONTINUES
HIS ENDEAVOURS TO BRING WARBURTON NEARER TO LONDON 
EFFECTS A MEETING BETWEEN WARBURTON 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 BENT
LEY HAD BORROWED FROM VIZZANIUS  HARE'S OPINION  BENTLEY
IN THE ' DUNCIAD '  CIBBEll's ' ANOTHER OCCASIONAL LETTER TO POPE '
 WARBURTON CORRECTS POPE'S ESSAY ON HOMER  POPE DIES, AND
LEAVES THE PROPERTY OF HIS WORKS TO WARBURTON.
WE must not take leave of the year 1742 without
noticing two publications directed against Warbur
ton about this time. One of them was a book entitled
'A Brief Examination of the Bev. Mr. Warburton's Divine
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 Bhilosopher,' and called
him the forwardest devil of all his assailants. But it was

214 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XHI.
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 :
c We, the Free-thinkers of Great Britain, beg leave to
approach your learned Berson, and, with the profoundest
humility, to return you our most grateful acknowledg
ments, "and sincerest thanks, for your invincible 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 profoundest 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 discipline for three years
together, or force us to read more Latin and Greek than
we can either understand or believe. It is our humble
opinion, that religion, true religion, virtue, and godliness,
cannot depend upon dark antiquity, verbal criticisms,
and the painful laborious study of dead languages. Were

1742.] SARCASMS OF THE FREE-THINKERS. 215
this so, we cannot conceive what must become of the
bulk of mankind, or how they should be able to judge
between you, Sir, and all 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 little 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 praemunire 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 interest, to be of the
established religion, 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 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIII.
religion everywhere, so far as he 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 Bagan theology and churchism,
in your demonstration of revealed religion, has left it
doubtful to us, and to your readers in general, for what
we can find, what religion you are of yourself, or whether
you think. there is any difference between one State reli
gion and another, more than political utility. If one might
judge by the rule of public utility, one must conclude,
from all that you have said, that the ancient Bagan systems
and schemes of religion were much better calculated and
contrived for the good of civil society than any of our
Christian establishments have ever been. The Bagan
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 religion,
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 moralists,
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 exemplifying their own
doctrines in fife, 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 would convince
* pP- !-5- f P. 84.

1742.] THE FREE-THINKERS ON 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 lies.'*
Warburton having affirmed, in speaking of the origin
and progress of idolatry, that local tutelar deities were
unknown 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
fives, 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 deifying and worshipping
those heroes, when that sort of worship had been received,
is probable enough ; but it will 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XLII.
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 earlier 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 Israelites
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 in the sun,
they worshipped the imaginary gods of the several con
stellations or configurations of stars.' f
This is a sufficient specimen of a book, which, if War
burton paid it but little attention in print, must have
touched him not a little 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 Tillard, and was a lawyer 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 replied
* Amos, v. 26. •(• p. 88, 90.

1742.] TILLARD. 219
to it. It was entitled ' Future Bewards and Bunishments
believed by the Ancients, particularly the Bhilosophers,
wherein some objections of the Bev. 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
civil society, they continued to teach it. Tillard sought
to prove that the philosophers did believe 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, like
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 k nice distinctions,
divisions, and subdivisions, as needless curiosities ;' and
Warburton asks him 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 believes
' the pubhc will pardon him, let him begin to do so when
he will.' Warburton then calls on the reader to admire
how the pamphleteer, though ' grievously bemired,' still
' flounders on.' Tillard blunders about a passage of
Flato, and then attributes the words of Timseus to Blato,
and Warburton exclaims, ' How admirable a progress
hast thou made, from Blato nothing to the purpose, to no

220

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIII.

Blato 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. Tillard'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 Tillard, 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.'
Tillard pubbshed his book at first anonymously, and
afterwards reprinted it with his name. Warburton, when
he republished his ' Bemarks,' prefixed to them this War-
burtonian ' Advertisement ' : ' The author of the pamphlet
here examined hath lately made a public 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 own 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 hath 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.'
Tillard was a friend of Dr. Birch, to whom Warburton,
writing about the time that the pamphlet appeared anony
mously, says, ' I will 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 desire 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 book. If I should esteem it a misfor
tune to have such adversaries as have hitherto appeared
against me, I have at least this pleasure, that they will

1743.] POPE'S EXERTIONS FOR WARBURTON. 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
favourably 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
publication of the ' Bemarks' on Tillard, 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 ill-faith.'
The author of 'Confusion worse Confounded' made
merry with Warburton's inconsistent condemnations of
Tillard ; first,, because he published anonymously, as being
a stabber in the dark ; and secondly, when he put his name
to the book, as being lost to all shame for owning such trash.
Bope 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 all, 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 ill
health, ' and my own absence, only quicken my ardent
wish that some good fortune woidd draw you nearer, and
enable me to enjoy both, for a greater part of our fives in

222

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XLTI.

this neighbourhood, 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 of obliged 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 application was ineffectual.
It was probably to this affair that Bope 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 solicited for proofs of their good-will,
they would succeed in evading performance. ' It was
but the other day,' said he, ' that a Noble Lord in my
neighbourhood, whom till 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 believed him, and, after waiting some time,
without hearing further of it, I reminded him of what
had passed, when he said, with some confusion, that his
steward had disposed of it, unknown to him or his lady.'f
Bope 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. Anecd. vol. v. p. 584.
| Euffhead's Life of Pope, p. 488, 8vo. ed.

1743.] QUARREL WITH BOLINGBROKE. 223
my hfe, 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 wish, 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
by that 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, w 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 Bope had
contemplated. Bolingbroke hated Warburton for his/'
expulsion of fatalism from the ' Essay on Man,' and for ',
the ascendancy which he had acquired over Bope's mind./
The three dined together, at Lord Mansfield's, a short time
before Bope's death ; when Bolingbroke made a remark
about the moral attributes of the Deity, to which War
burton, disliking it, replied 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 his 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 all my thoughts — the misfortunes of an excellent
sister and her children, by her husband's ill success in
trade, yet attended to with the utmost honesty and
* Warburton's Pope, vol. ix. pp. 321, 323.
f Euffhead's Life of Pope, p. 220. $ Jan. 22, 1743.

224 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XILT.
sobriety ; so that, to his own ruin, he has been a consi
derable benefactor to the public 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 meos liberis facere, quo possit expleri voluntas mea
aut offcium. 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 Bagan, 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 your
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 Bope's proposal, the new edition of the ' Dunciad,'
under the editorship of Warburton, who is said to have
furnished 'Bichardus Aristarchus on the Hero of the
Boem,' 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 Cibber,

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 Bope
to alter as he pleased, it is impossible to tell how much
of it was Bope'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 Bope, 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 Bre-
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, like alterations in many other writings,
for the sake of rendering the language clearer and more
intelfigible ; 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. f Book "• sect- 3-
Q

226 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIII.
not to that of any one else (for the words are of a kind
to which Ms remarks are inapplicable), ' 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 his party
against Bentley of having ' pillaged Vizzanius,' an obscure
editor of Ocellus Lucanus. Bentley, seeking to prove
that Ocellus Lucanus, who was a Bythagorean, and of
Doric origin, must have written in Doric, though his book
now appears in the Attic dialect, quoted a passage of
Jambhchus's 'Life of Bythagoras,' cited also by Vizzanius,
in which it is said that all the Bythagoreans, whose head
quarters were at Crotona, were required tpmvfj yf^a^m rf
irctrpvoa., 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 Bythagoreans ordered all who joined them
at Crotona, from whencesoever 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-
blichus'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 true
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 Bhalaris,' had seen the
words of Jamblichus only in Vizzanius, where, having but
hastily glanced at them, he had misunderstood their ten
dency, but that, when he was put on his defence, he
consulted Jambfichus'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 Bhalaris ' having remarked that Timaeus, who
questioned whether Zaleucus had ever existed, was, though
' of a virulent style, an inquisitive and accurate writer,'
Warburton, 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,'
malignant 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.
f Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 114.
Q2

228 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIIL
said Dr. Salter, is ' quite wrong in all he says about
Timaaus, . . very unfairly adding, in his pretended trans
lations, to the railing accusations against Timaaus, 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 malignity 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 Bope against Bentley ; to whom Bope had
been full of hostility ever since he had said that the trans
lation of the Iliad was ' a pretty poem, but not Homer,'
a remark which 'the portentous cub,' said the critic,
' never forgave.' Bope was delighted 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 peculiar. He had no
cause of offence against him, unless it were the sarcasm
on his literary digestion ; he did not, like Bope, regard
the race of critics with aversion or contempt ; on the
contrary, he would have been willing, had his scholarship
* Note on Diss, on Phalaris, p. 242, ed. 1817.
| Life of Bentley, pp. 655, 657.

1744.] ANOTHER LETTER FROM CIBBER. 229
allowed, to be numbered among them ; yet he seems to
have felt an uncontrollable desire, at times, to detract
from Bentley's fame, and to degrade him in public esti
mation, in a manner far from creditable ; while, at other
times, he manifests great anxiety to do justice to Bent-
ley's abilities ; * he applies to him, in a note on Bope, a
laudatory quotation from Cicero ; and he declares him
self, in a letter to Hurd, charmed with Hurd'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 Bope's Satire, Warbur
ton was vigorously, and not ineffectively, attacked by
Cibber, in a pamphlet entitled ' Another Occasional Letter
from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Bope, with an Expostulatory
Address to the Eev. Mr. W. Warburton, Author of the
new Breface, and Adviser in the Curious Lnprovements
of the Dunciad.'
' Being at first in some doubt,' says Cibber, ' whether Mr. >
W. W. really existed, or might be some phantom of Mr.
Bope'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 will 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.
Bope, 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.
f Letters from an Em. Prelate, p. 9.

230 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XHI.
hot and cold, and enter into so unexpected an alliance
with Mr. Bope, whose labours he had so unluckily dis
graced. But great wits, I find, like other troublers of
the world's repose, are friends or enemies just as their
varying interests or passions incline them. Now, though
I cannot determine which motive might more induce you
to a peace with him, your willingness 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. Bope 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. Bope pardons you. You forgive Bope. Tibbald
is released.'One of the severest reflections ever thrown on ' The
Divine Legation ' is here made by Cibber :
' 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 publish 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.
Bope may be of yours % 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 belief that
is not enjoined in the Scriptures, I hope. For 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
this while ? Wisely holding up the lamp of your lucu
brations, to show us the sun. Brodigious ! 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
absurd as you please, provided you will allow me to have
the same thoughts of your meddling with my squabbles.' *
Bope, who said that Cibber'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
Bope's ' Essay on Homer.' ' It is very unreasonable,'
wrote Bope 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 will not allow me time to do so myself.' f
Warburton, with ready pen, assented to the proposal, and.
made some alterations, at the same time, in the preface,
for which Bope returns his thanks in the usual terms :
' Your alterations to the Breface 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.
I Pope to Warburton, June 5, 1743.
j Same to same, July 18, 1743. J

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 Bope's.
This was the last service that he performed for Bope,
during his life, for the poet was now sinking into his last
illness, and growing too weak to attend to any literary
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 pubfish without future alterations. He also
left his library to Warburton and Allen, to be shared
between them. The property of Bope's works was
valued by Johnson at about 4,000£.

1744.] LETTER FROM MRS. COCKBURN. 233

CHAPTEE XIV.
HANMER. BURTON. AKENSIDE.
LETTER FROM MRS. CATHERINE COCKBURN  WARBURTON'S REPLY 
BROWN'S ' ESSAY ON SATIRE,' ADDRESSED TO WARBURTON  WARBUR-
TON'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 KAIMES'S OPINION
 SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE QUESTION CONCERNING RIDI
CULE.
SOON after Bope'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 inquire what works of Bope he had pub
lished, but in reality to ascertain Warburton's exact
notions of moral obligation, 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 Bope'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 who had twenty

234 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 morality. 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 surprised 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 obligation 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 any 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 believe no one would 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 saying so is
this : — It is a principle, I suppose, agreed on, " That crimes
committed upon wrong principles are equally punishable
with those committed against right ; for that the falling
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.' *
* Hurd's Life of Warburton, pp. 35, 125.

1744.] DR. JOHN BROWN. 235
In 1747, when Mrs. Cockburn, disliking the principles
advocated by Butherforth 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 morality preferable to
Butherforth'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.' Butherforth'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 obliger.
Among the publications, great and small, to which
Bope'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 Brinciples 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 Bope's
works. It commences thus :
Fate gave the word ; the cruel arrow sped,
And Pope lies number'd with the mighty dead !
Eesign'd, he fell ; superior to the dart
That quench'd its rage in your and Britain's heart.
You mourn ; but Britain, lull'd in rest profound
(Unconscious Britain 11 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 unextinguishable rage they burn,
And snake-hung Envy hisses o'er his urn ;

236 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIV.
Th' envenom'd monsters spit their deadly foam,
To blast the laurel that surrounds 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 delight ;
You visit oft his awful page with care,
And view the bright assemblage treasur'd there ;
You trace the chain that links 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. Bope ; 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 published 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 believe, was not executed.
The name of the author was readily communicated to
Warburton, who, by introducing him to the master of
Brior Bark, 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 Breface, 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., Bublic 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. 169.

1744.] GREY'S ' HUDIBRAS.' 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 Balpho, 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,f
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;
HI 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
ill ? Warburton understands it of shoemakers in general :
* Part i. canto i. ver. 616. f Part i. canto ii. ver, 146.

238 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Bope's death was a small edition of the ' Dunciad.'
In this edition appeared the lines to which we have alluded
in speaking of Bope 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 &e 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 Bope, with directions that they should be inserted
where they now stand as soon as Sir Thomas Hanmer's
Shakspeare should be published. 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 ' Bentalogia,' was assigned a place in a note for offence
given to Warburton, by a sarcasm on Allen, in his ' Iter
Bathoniense,' a playful satire on Bath, published 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.] DR. JOHN BURTON. 239
Breviously 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 drowsv 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 Bev. 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 grateful to our
goddess is the offering.'
Burton's offence is more fully stated in a letter from
Warburton 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 compliment.
I thought this did not excuse him being laughed at. And
I did no more. His intercessor had been a witness of the
civilities 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 WARBURTON. [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 Bathoniense, or ' Journey
to Bath,' in which he bestowed some satire, very innocent,
though such as exposed him to the charge of unfeeling
pedantry, on the frivolous amusements, and extravagant
devotion to gambling, 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
urbanissimce hospes inurbanus, thought of the fine assem
blies that he saw. ' Accedo,' he says, ' e multis unus.
Verum ipso in limine, pede paullulum represso, suspensus
hassi ; 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
praafibare. Videbar mihi videre machinas quasdam gesti-
culantes, frequentem popellum, mire officiosum, circumcur-
sitare, otiari, ridere, varioque demum lusu temere lascivire.
Ibi continu6 hasc mecum, " quot capita, tot ineptise !" '

1744.] BURTON'S 'ITER BATHONIENSE.' 241
After noticing the appearance of the gamesters, at a
subsequent period of the evening, with the rixatio impor-
tuna, et male dissimulata indignatio, imb forsan et impiw
preces, remarkable among them, he exclaims : ' Has tibi
sunt artes, has deficias, hasc oblectamenta, 0 eleganter
inepta, et damnose ingeniosa Thermopofis ! . . . 0 miram
et plane singularem, neque verd invidendam hujusce loci
fehcitatem! ubi omnes quasi ex pacto et dedita opera,
(valetudinis scilicet gratia), nee sine aliqua ingenii laude,
sedulo desipiunt ; adeo ut homini homo non ita multum
prasstet, stulto intelligens! ubi plurimus sine gaudio plausus,
sine facetiis risus, sine tranquillitate otium, sine fructu
negotium.' But what gave special offence to many was the way in
which he spoke of Nash, the Master of the Ceremonies,
as magister ineptiaruni, effostus et edentulus senex, crowned
with a white hat, and in whose countenance was ferrugineus
ardor, et sine verecundid rubor immutabilis. At the last,
however, he cries, ' I have found a man : '
* Heus Euprjxa! 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 praesentem parietes
ipsi medius fichus loquuntur; quem illustrat gloriosa
natalium obscuritas, fortunas eundem et virtutis filium,
tov oiuTo<purj, rou auToo/SaxTov, za! a-JTorsA?), virum quem
non ego sane doctissimum, at certe omnium quotquot fere
uspiam reperiuntur literatissimum appellare ausim, et ex
commercio suo hterario fructus pro merito suo uberrimos
sine invidia consecutum.'
Which 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 recoim
mended to me ; a man, by far the chief among all his
R

242 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIV.
fellow-citizens ; whose presence among them the 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 Badcliffe Library, in 1749, Dr. William
King, Brincipal of St. Mary Hall, delivered a Latin oration,
which was received with great applause, and was praised
by War ton in his 'Triumphs of Isis.' But Burton, not
hiring it, published a pamphlet of ' Bemarks ' on it, under
the name of Phileleutherus Londinensis, pointing out inac
curacies in the language ; among which was quamvis, in
one passage, for quum. King, who, like his namesake,
the author of the ' Account of the Heathen Gods,' was
ever ready for a sportive sally, retorted with ' Elogium
Famas inserviens Jacci Etonensis sive Gigantis, or the
Braises of Jack of Eton, commonly called the Giant;
collected into Latin and English Metre after the manner
of Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, John Burton, 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 open
contempt of his supremacy. This was the unfortunate
case of Dr. King. The Doctor, at the request of the
Badcliffe 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 censorial dignity. This excited our hero's
indignation. . . . He wrote an Epistle to the Bev. 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 published 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
likewise 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 Sternhold, me inspire, Tu, Sternholde, mi aspira !
And hither deign to bring,[lyre, Sonet, non Davidis, sed O
Not David's, but thine own sweet Dulce sonet tua 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 plane
All he had wrote before. Jaccum semet superasse.
r 2

244

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON.

[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 he 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 cura
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 :
When thrice our learned landlord Mendum nullum qui notabat,
Hume, Jacci hospes Humus, 'Heu me !'
And four times eke, did cry, Ter quaterque conclamabat,
O do not such fine things consume, Talia, Jacce, ne 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 (nse est
Liber cultus) emisisse ;
Omnibusque volu-pe est
Libruni huncce pellegisse.

And it is printed more correctly than Bote of Eton
would have printed it :

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 :

' En venustas quas typorum !'
Dicet qui non est asotus ;
' Quam dissimilis eorum
Utitur queis pravus Potus ! '

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
Soli artem hanc callere.

He next alludes to some disappointment of Bentham's,
or attack on him, and declares that he will be his de
fender :

And all shall see, though now
you've fallen,
By my bon mots I '11 raise you ;
And that fine thing I spake of
Allen
I '11 borrow here to praise you.
Thus : Neddy, you deserve a mitre
Much better than your betters,
For, since you are a letter writer,
You are a man of letters.
There publish' d was, in London
town,
A wretched pamphlet thing,
Which, though the author be well
known,
Some say was wrote by King.
And I afKrm 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.

Prasstans ceteris incedis :
Cur non quoque tu mitratus ?
Nam, cum literas tot edis,
Sane vir es literatus.
Editum est in Londino
Audax quid. Sic hsesit 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 Roman.

Quum sim elegantiarum
Omnium elegans spectator,
Uti essem rerum harum,
Coteril, curas quas, curator ;
Ut Latine si quis — hili
Ne putetur, neque sanus,
Ipse quum sim censor styli
Solus vere ac Romanus.

24G LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 primarios
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 turn gerebam
The same as with this King. Quocum, qualem nunc cum
Kingo.
For Nash did give me no offence, Nullam mi injuriam fecit
But with a right to scold Ille 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 mi commovit,
My choler did excite), Senem dum hunc nigrum qusero.
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 Mr.
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 opinion of others? Mr. Nash is old,
and sometimes wears a white hat. Two unpardonable
crimes I And such as a censor could not possibly pass
by without a public 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.] WARBURTON'S UNCEREMONIOUS ATTACKS. 247
0 rare Merton College,
O rare Dr. Holland !
Thou art a man of letters,
And so is William Poland.
William Boland 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,
disliking 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
himself, 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 nature 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 then
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 unbelievers, 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 "Bemarks on
Several Occasional Beflections," in two parts ; the former
published in 1744, and the second in 1745 ; and both
executed in such a manner as was not likely to invite any
fresh attacks upon him.'
What adversaries he assailed, and in what mariner, in
the body of these 'Bemarks,' 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 ' Bleasures of
Imagination,' who had not then set his name to his
recently published work. Had Warburton known what
opinion Bope 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 Bope for
his judgment, who advised the bookseller not to make a
niggardly offer, for ' this was no everyday writer.' But
Warburton was ignorant of Bope'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 and its notes, pubbshed in 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.' ' Notwithstanding
the general influence of ridicule on private and civil life,'
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 feehng of the ridiculous, and
since so good a reason may be assigned to justify the
Supreme Being for bestowing it, one cannot, without
astonishment, reflect on the conduct of those men who
imagine it is for the service of rehgion to vilify and
blacken it without distinction, and endeavour to persuade
us that it is never applied but in a bad cause. Bidicule 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.

2.M

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 which
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 unfeeling ; 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 " Bleasures of Imagination," one of those,' he says,
' to whom I applied the words of Tully, " non decet,
non 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, where he aims to make an absurd proposition for
* Note on book iii. ver. 259.

1744. J 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'* notion that ridicule was
given us by the Supreme Being to aid the tardy steps 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 Bev. Mr. Warburton, occa
sioned by his treatment of the Author of the " Bleasures
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 Breface to your late " Bemarks " that you are
now called upon to justify ; in which you have thought

252 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIV.
fit to treat upon a mighty 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 Bleasures 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 perpetually
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 against
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 Breface, 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, would 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, k 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.] DYSON'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 lines :
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 rephes 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

254 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 fines 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 have 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 ' Bemarks on Occasional Befiections,' with some
abbreviation, but with the admixture of a few strictures
on Lord Karnes, as a ' Bostscript to the Dedication to the
Freethinkers.'

1744.] CONSIDERATIONS ON RIDICULE. 255
Lord Karnes had touched, in his ' Elements of Criti
cism,'* on the 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.
Beason, we may see, if we rightly consider the matter, acts
quite independently of ridicule. Beason 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
solid 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. Beason 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 with ridicule, or with pity, or with any other feeling.
But it is neither ridicule, nor pity, nor any other feeling,
that decides against his effort. Beason 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 fines that had
provoked Warburton's animadversions.

1744.] ' REMARKS ON SEV. OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS.' 257

CHAPTER 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-
bubton's remarks in reply to him  his flattery of bishop
sherlock  his story of bertram the optician.
THE chief writers to whom the 'Bemarks on Several
Occasional Beflections ' were a reply, were Dr. Mid
dleton ; Dr. Bococke, the traveller in the East ; Nicholas
Mann, Master of the Charterhouse ; and Dr. Bichard
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

258

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 then- 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
ine engaged till they did understand me ; which I pre
sume no gentle reader would think a reasonable task for
one born when human hfe is at the shortest.'
As to Dr. Middleton, who stands first upon the fist,
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 published his ' Life of Cicero,' and Warburton had
complimented him upon it ; but, as Middleton had de
clared himself in favour of Cicero's belief 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. Md-
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.] DR. CONYERS MIDDLETON. 259
indulge hopes of future good. But he adhered to the
opinion which he had advanced, that Cicero, like all the
ancient philosophers, was destitute of any belief in a future
state ;* and quoted a long passage from Towne's ' Critical
Inquiry into the Opinions of the Ancient Bhilosophers '
to that effect. Writing, however, to Middleton, 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 mankind,
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 Tully," 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, 'f
Dr. Middleton's answer was of a similar 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.
f Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 31.
- 2

260 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Middleton, a few months afterwards, pub
lished his ' Letter from Borne,' in which he dwelt on the
similarity of the Bapal refigious 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 Bagan Borne, 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 much 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 morahty, 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 ' Better
from Borne,' added, in a postscript to it, that the question
whether the Catholics borrowed from the Bagans, 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 iihhhh.

1744.] DISAGREEMENT WITH MIDDLETON. 261
ton to a reply ; and, in his ' Eemarks on Several Occa
sional Eeflections,' he complained of his ' very learned
friend, the author of the elegant and useful ' Letter
from Borne,' 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 Borne, as being infected with 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 was derived from their early
Christian ancestors ; and theirs, from the neighbouring
Bagans.' Though this was but a just character of the 'Letter
from Borne,' 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 then 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 our 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 feelings 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 Bapists

262

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XV.

borrowing of the Bagans.' 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 Bapal being borrowed from Bagan Borne, 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 Borne."
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 little pamphlet wrote soon after the publication
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 liberty 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 will come .
to a better mind I cannot tell, but you shall know when
I do. You see to what disasters we authors militant 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.] DR. POCOCKE. 263
death of Dr. King, Middleton, being a candidate for it,
apphed to Sir Eobert Walpole for his support ; but Sir
Eobert told him fairly that he could not give it, as, on
talking with Bishop Sherlock about the matter, he had
learned that the majority of the bishops would be against
his appointment. Middleton, therefore, attributed his
want of success entirely to Sherlock, and took every
opportunity of showing hostihty towards him ; one of
his manifestations of enmity being an attack on his ' Dis
courses on Brophecy,' 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 replied that the Evangelists
had taken them separately, and sneered at the Bishop for
expecting his dressed up nonsense to go down with the
public* Waiting on Archbishop Botter, shortly after Mann's
appointment, he observed to him, very abruptly, ' I sup
pose your Grace knows you have chosen an Arian.' The
Archbishop was startled, but soon recollecting himself
replied, 'An Arian, perhaps, may be better than a Deist.'
Warburton's next object of attack was Dr. Bococke.
Warburton, in ' The Divine Legation,'f had said, in speak
ing of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, that they ' stood for
things, and not for words.' Bococke, 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 Bococke admits, might stand
for the sound that signified malice, it makes little differ
ence whether we say that the figure of a crocodile indi
cated the thing malice or the sound malice. Bococke
* Bishop Newton's Life by Himself, p. 23. Middleton's Works,
vol. v. p. 188, 190, 8vo. t Book iv- seot- 4-

264 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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
Bococke 's plates : ' As for those significative figures pro
perly called hieroglyphics, they never denoted other than
things. H 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 words, or of his verbal
descriptions to the engraver.' But this sarcasm was quite
harmless ; Bococke's accuracy has been fully acknowledged.
Nicholas Mann, though, as he wrote little, he is now
almost forgotten, was a person of great learning and
abihty, 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 office. He was author of
' Critical Notes on some Bassages of Scripture,' and of
two chronological dissertations, ' De Veris Annis D. K
Jesu Christi Natali et Emortuafi ; ' 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 think 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 Newton handled
turned to demonstration.
' But the sublimest understanding has its bounds ; and,
what is more to be lamented, the strongest mind has
its foible. And this miracle of science, who disclosed all
nature to our view, when he came to correct old time, in
the chronology of Egypt, 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 truth
is a favourite hypothesis ; an evil we have frequent occa
sion to lament, as it retards the progress of our inquiry
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 peculiar 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 empire of Egypt
contradicts everything which Moses and the Brophets
have delivered concerning these ancient people. Though
some, therefore, of his admirers may seem to think that no
more harm can derive to rehgion 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 fortunes of 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XV.
Sesostris were the same ; therefore Egypt was advanced
from a state of barbarity to civil policy 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, hving
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 lived after Sesostris,
might discover as many marks of similarity between the
Conqueror and King Arthur, and assert the identity of the
two English monarchs as plausibly as Newton had main
tained that of the two Egyptians.
As the excogitation of these marks of parallelism 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 [lived] 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 William 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 Egyptians 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
upon, 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 public, let
the learned determine of it.'
In reply to these animadversions, Warburton, while
* Div. Leg. book iv. sect. 5.

268 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 reality different persons,
and lived 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 calling
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 An Osiris.
The next assailant upon whom Warburton directed his
' Bemarks ' was Dr. Bichard Grey, author of the well-
known ' Memoria Technica,' of 'A New Method of Learning
Hebrew with out Boints,' and of 'A Commentary on the Book
of Job,' in which he dissented from Warburton's opinion
respecting the time at which the Book of Job was written.
Warburton had argued, as we have already seen, that the
Book of Job, a dramatical and allegorical composition,
but founded on true history, w-as 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.] DR. RICHARD 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 in 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 which, 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,y
it will be sufficiently jnanifest 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 Judaea, 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. j Ch. xxxiv. ver. 20.

270 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Bedeemer
would be present with him, and that God would decide in
his favour ; and 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 quibbhng 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 will 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 objection
for objection's sake. A hypothesis may be satisfactory
in its principal points, in the judgment of the majority of
* Ch. xix.

1744.] BISHOP SHERLOCK 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 likelihood 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 behef 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 certainty 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 ' Bemarks ' amount to little
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
Brelate, 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 WARBURTON. [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 literature,
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 naturaUy 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 fight.
The truth I mean is Iris 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, bpaxwv a-woa-Tonys,
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, until they learned the constellations,
in the later ages, from the Greeks, and even then they
admitted them with some reserve ; so that neither Moses
nor Ezra could speak of the constellation of the crooked
serpent, and the consequence is, therefore, that 'his Bord-
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, will be likely to rest satisfied
with Sherlock and Warburton's interpretation; for it is
utterly at variance with the whole scope of the passage,
which 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, Bococke, 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 then class, but also to those of a different
character, who, however limited in their conceptions, are
not to be neglected, though it is likely, he thinks, that
they will part from him with as little 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 reliever 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, " Sir, 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 any light 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XVI.

CHAPTER XVI.
REMARKS ON ADVERSARIES.
warburton 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  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 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.eorum ' — warburton's assertions of an equal
providence among the jews  dr. stebbing ; warburton's reply
to him  second part of warburton's ' remarks 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
yoeke on answering  sarcasm of edwaeds in his ' canons of
criticism.'
WABBUBTON had been introduced by Bope 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 declined the
offer with due acknowledgments. The civility 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 the privilege to appeal from
the ecclesiastical to a lay tribunal, under the protection of
a character which is going down to posterity in the full
lustre of those amiable qualities of humanity which nature
dehghts 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 delicate 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 effect, or sense,
Dies betwixt exigents and self-defence.
Of all 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] fife, are apt to fancy
tfiat 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 WARBURTON. [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 which
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 Warburton's for
tunes was now about to happen. Allen had a favourite
niece, Miss Gertrude Tucker, who lived with him at Prior
Bark, 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 lo 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 offer 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 in 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 accomplish
ments of such a companion the man receives peculiar
* Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 41.

1745.] MARRIAGE. 277
honour, as the younger Pliny says of his friend, magnd
gloria dignus qui uxorem, quam virginem accepit, tarn
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 cyfindrical steel
mirror, there immediately rises on its bosom 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 applied, he does the business of the cylinder.
The scattered lines are now reduced in order, an elegance
of design arises, and the reflected union of colours, and
harmony of fight 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
accomplished 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 pohteness,
and a most engaging naivete in conversation. 'f They
were married on September 5, 1745. What was said of
her in connexion with Mr. Thomas Botter, son of the
Archbishop, will be afterwards noticed.
* Letter to Stukeley, Aug. 18, 1731 ; Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol", ii.
p. 10. t lb- p. 838.

278 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 believe, revolts.' *
'From the time of his marriage,' says Hurd, 'Mr.
Warburton resided chiefly at Brior Bark. 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 fife 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 Solicitor-
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. Eobert 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.] PREACHEBSHIP 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 will
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 believe 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 I
had at heart ; and the demand for sermons, with which, /
as Hurd tells us, he was but slenderly provided, was I
particularly distasteful to him.
A short time before his appointment to the preacher
ship, he had delivered three sermons on the Bebellion,
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 hostilities, in an appendix to his ' Bemarks on
Several Occasional Beflections.' The three sermons were :
first, 'A Faithful Bortrait of Bopery,' in which he
* Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 43 ; Nichols's Lit. Anecd., vol. ix.
p. 622.

280 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVI.
argued that Popery, which the 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 Engi
land, was on the happily chosen text, ' I will remove far
off from you the northern army, and will drive him into
a land barren and desolate.' The third was delivered
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 irreligion, and the great
blessings of civil liberty. 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, till 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 living
of Bayleigh 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-three
publications, chiefly controversial pamphlets, and on
transient topics, one of which was a ' Vindication of Br.
Bentley,' into whose quarrel with Boyle he rashly thrust
himself, thus provoking the wrath of Conyers Middleton ;

1746.] 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, diligence 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, ' obliged 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 know 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 Bevelations, 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 delivered his will
in terms that are ambiguous.
' If simple and involuntary error be punished by God,

282 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 ? 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 all that he had stated before, and said he thought,
with the Bishop of Bangor, that unbelievers 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 civil 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

1746.] SYKES's ATTACK ON WARBURTON. 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
replied 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 his
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.'
' All 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,
politeness, and ingenuity ? at least, who would have
suspected the contrary ? ' But ' his civil preliminary,
when interpreted on the principles of the Double Doc
trine, is in plain English this : that the liberties which
he and old honest Mr. B. (a clergyman to whom he affects
to address his Bemarks) have so freely taken with my
book and character, should be entirely overlooked, or
received as compliments ; and that I should address
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. [Ch. 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 reheve or divert the reader." Mr. B. is then made to
express a doubt whether Mr. Warburton writes for utility
or truth ; " for he has told so much," he observes, " about
the practices of those old philosophers, and how much
they were wont to lie for the public good (and he declarer
himself to have come from the schools of those heathen
philosophers), that / cannot but think he may reasonably
be 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
his 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 call 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 Bevelation, 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

I"46-] REPLY TO SYKES. 285
they, good men, as faithful sentinels, thought it their duty
to give the alarm.'
Warburton then proceeds to consider which portion 01
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 all 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 Bagan 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 " Brinciples
and Connexion of Natural and Bevealed Behgion ;" 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,
though it were but retailing the objections of others. And
truly, as ill as he has managed these advantages, he was
not mistaken in his choice. For the rest, it is all over
such argument and such criticism ! as one might well
conceive should be reserved to close the scene of letters
in an age like this, when every science was retiring from
its professors to dictionary-makers and booksellers.'

286

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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
Legibus Hebrosorum. Spencer had said that the theocracy
was established by degrees and abrogated by degrees;
Warburton observed that this was ' an absurd conceit,' for
theocracy, being a form of government, must be established
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 Boman writers,
lawyers as well as philosophers, use it only in the sense of
dissolution, abolition, 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 English ? What ! is an alteration of government only
an abatement of it? The alteration of a theocracy we
understand ; but what is the abatement of it ? That indeed
I cannot tell.' 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 circumstances as sometimes
* Book v. sect. 4.

1746.] DR. 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 Bubfic says this, the
Public says that ; in short, the Pubbc 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 Warburton's
notion that Abraham obtained a foresight of Christ's death
from the injunction laid upon him to offer up Isaac. He
had also published ' 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 believed 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 sufficient to notice the

288

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 will tell
him,' rejoins Warburton, 'when he informs me (and per
haps before) why America was for so many ages debarred
the fight 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 will go a text-
hunting, fie at catch for an ambiguity, divorce the sentence
from its context, strip it naked ; and if, after all 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 religion by this undertaking.' f ' And
why,' inquires Warburton, ' will 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 I 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.
| 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 interruption to the publi
cation of our author's "Epistolary Dissertation."
' But, after all, what were these compliments ? And
where have they lain hid 1 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
complimenting, laudari a laudato viro, I prize the new,
now all in fashion, vituperari a putidissimo quoque. . . .
L I know of nothing for which I had more reason to
expect the compliments of the public than for the "Alliance
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
establishment ; at a time when the enemies of all Church
establishments were commonly supposed to have demon
strated it to be indefensible. Yet what public compliment
did I ever receive for this service? unless it may be
reckoned a compliment that those, in whose behalf it was
particularly written, have never yet pubhcly disavowed
the free and moderate principles on which it goes.' *
Warburton does not yet, however, leave Sykes and
Stebbing at peace. He devotes to some additional matter
of theirs a second part of his ' Bemarks,' and throws out
an observation or two, at the commencement of it, on
Butherforth, the author of the ' Essay on Virtue,' who had
maintained that ' natural religion lias not, which the law
of Moses has, the sanctions of future rewards and punish
ments,' and on the Bev. John Jackson, who had published
a treatise to prove that ' a future state was a fundamental
* Warburton's Works, vol. xi. pp. 322—324.
U

290 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVI,
article of belief in the religion of the Hebrews.' But he
is not so fond of controversy, he 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
furnished out more handles to unbelievers.' '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 conceit than
I have had of mine, scarce got better off with one iEnulius
Barisanus, 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 fidentid, says he, admirati; de clarissimcs
Londinensis Academics consensu et conspiratione obstwpe-
facti. Verum enimvero collecto spiritu, m,issd tandem
maxima? novitatis admiratione, melius nobis eonsulti, ad
vivum Harveii allata resecantes, ut commenticia et Jicta
excogitata colligentes, propria nostra sententia permansi-
mus. Semper in ore atque in animo habere debemus, ut
homines nos esse meminerimus, ed lege natos, ut exposita
fortunos telis omnibus et nostra sit vita, et nostras actiones
cunctos sub censoribus semper extent. Proindeque perpetuo
pugnandum sit, et nunc quam maxime, quum pro aris et
focis atque etiam Larariis (quippe de Corde, fyc.) fortiter
decertandum. Seriously, this was a sad story. The poor
* Warburton's Works, vol. xi. pp. 351, 352.

1746.] WARBURTON AND HARVEY. 291
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 venal valves. Nor does he take the hberty to tell
him that he ought to make amends for the wrong he has
done 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 politely 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 iEmihus comes a little to
himself, and nearer to our Examiner, in the language of
his conclusion. He had recovered heart ; his victories
had elated him ; and Harvey's numerous experiments
upon all 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 everrentes quam
longissime ablegavimus. Qua? in celebrium antiquorum
recentiorumque omnium, ab Harveio immerito notatorum,
defensionem dicta sunto. Hue — redeamus, ut qua; jam
reprobata et ablegata sunt, ratione, sensu, autopsid, experi-
mentis, in veritatis gratiam fortius obstringantur — prmdictm
opinionis omnia destruendo, et inter sese pugnantia ulterius
ostendendo, <$fc. And in the same strain our Examiner.' *
* Warburton's Works, vol. xi. pp. 357, 358.
tj2

292 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVI.
This comparison of his case with that of Harvey is very
happy ; though it might have been turned 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. Bichard 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 'Bemarks,' 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 published a pamphlet in reply to War
burton, written ' with a good deal of resentment.' ' The
pamphlet,' said Hurd, in a letter to the Bev. John Devey,f
' is thought to be well 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 Breface to 'The Divine Legation,' J
that ' one Julius Bate, in conjunction with one Bomaine,
had betrayed conversation, and written fictitious letters,'
had probably, though partially applicable to Bomaine,
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 Hurd, 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 my 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 liber
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 Besurrection,'
published 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
Bhilosopher.' Hurd, writing to Devey, at the time when these replies
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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVI.
Drs. Stebbing and Sykes is very ingenious, but wrote with
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 Divine 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 thinks 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 wrought a gradual
change in the general state of learning and opinions.
What 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 through Bath.' + Sept. 30, 1746.

1746.] CHARLES YORKE 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 would 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 answers
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 tedium 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 ' Bemarks,' Warburton had placed a very
coarse quotation from the Epodes of Horace, on which his
enemy Edwards, when he afterwards published 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. Bococke, Dr. Bichard Grey, Dr. Akenside, Dr. Sykes,
Dr. Stebbing, and other gentlemen, in the application of
these lines to them :
Quid inmerentes hospites vexas, Canis,
Ignavus adversum lupos ?

Nam, qualis aut Molossus, aut fulvus Lacon,
Amica vis pastoribus,

* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 503.

296 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVI.
Agam per altas aure sublata nives,
Quascunque praecedet fera.
Tu, quum timenda voce compl^sti nemus,
Projectum odoraris cibum. Hor. Epod. 6.
Here are the characters of two puppies ; one Mr. War
burton gives to the gentlemen mentioned above ; the other
he applies to himself; but to divide and choose is not
quite fair. Let the reader judge which 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 living in
the country ; and the feast, profit in general.' *
* Edwards's Canons of Criticism, Appendix, p. 257.

1747.] HIS ATTENTION TO SHAKSPEARE. 297

CHAPTEE XVII.
SHAKSPEARE. HANMER.
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  THEOBALD'S MERITS  HISTORY OF; THE AFFAIR BE
TWEEN 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 WAR-
BURTON'S SOLICITATION  CHARACTER OF PHILIP NICHOLS  LETTERS
FROM SHERLOCK AND HARE.
IT has been observed that one of Warburton's assailants,
Dr. Stebbing, had reproached him 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 will 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVH.
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 religion. And now the secret is out.' *
Warburton had 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 world. f Sir Thomas
Hanmer,' he adds, ' has a true critical genius, and has done
great things in this author ; so you may 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
feelings, had determined, as we see, on giving an edition
* Warburton's Works, vol. xi. pp. 320, 356.
\ Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 72.
j Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 84, 85.
§ See ante, p. 67.

1747.] EDITION OF SHAKSPEARE. 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 in his ' 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 Bowe, Bope, and Theobald, the article proceeds to say,
' But we may expect a much more correct edition of them
from the Beverend and Learned Mr. William 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 incomparable Mr. Bope, the ingenious
Mr. Bowe, and the plodding Mr. Theobald, have done to
cleanse and restore Shakspeare to his native lustre, there
still remain in him many faults to be amended, and a
thousand graces which have never yet been displayed.
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 still 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 exemplifying the beauties of this inestimable
author, which did not fall under their consideration ; so

300

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVII.

that we are like to be shortly furnished with a more
complete and accurate edition of his writings than has
hitherto been pubbshed.'" 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 little use to any other purpose, that I may get
them for my edition, as Mr. Bope did those of Ogilby's
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 Bope's edition, as ' the
best foundation for all further improvements,' Warburton
says : ' Nothing will give the common reader a better idea
of the value of Mr. Bope'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 ill fortune to have some accidental con
nexion with these two gentlemen, it will be incumbent on
me to be a little 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. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 129.

1747.] HANMER AND THEOBALD. 301
own advantage ; and he allowed himself the liberty 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 wdthout, 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,' was 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 Bope, Warburton's patron, had set him at
nought, but in order that Warburton's own edition, or
rather Warburton and Bope'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

302 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVH,
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
licentious in the common books, or only slightly 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
'Bemarks on Spencer's Fairy Queen,' observes, 'Expe
rience has fatally proved that the commentator on
Spencer, Jonson, and the rest of our elder poets, will
in vain give specimens of his classical erudition, unless,
at the same time, he brings to his 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." ' Bope laughs at Theobald for giving us, in his edition
of Shakspeare, a sample of
— all such reading as was never read ;

1747.] MERITS OF 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 useful 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, Bope tells us that the dreadful sagitlary 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 dehght of Shakspeare and of his age, be 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 i
labour, 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
JPope, 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 English
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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVII.
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 qualified 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
Bope, adding 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 all his public 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 publication to the ' Biographia Britannica,'
but which, after being actually printed in the work, was,
to gratify Warburton, excluded from it.
There was one Bhilip Nichols, who was for a time a
writer in fhe ' Biographia,' and afterwards bought a small
share in the publication, and who, though not, as we shall
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 Br.
Joseph Smith, Brovost 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 iii.

1747.] LETTER OF HANMER TO DR. SMITH. 305
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 broil with Warburton. Nichols
replied 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. Sir Thomas Hanmer's
letter was as follows :
' To the Eev. Dr. Smith, Bresident of All Souls' * College.
' Mildenhall, 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 WARBURTON. [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 civihty 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
hither 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 manner as was likely
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 v 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 'BIOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA.' 307
thought they may be of use or pleasure to the public, I
am willing to part with them out of my hands, and to
add, for the honour of Shakspeare, some decorations and
embellishments 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 discourage you from proceeding
in this affair, 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 Bhilip 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 public. 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
prietors 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 :

308 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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
upon an application from me to him. It began on an
application 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 publicly 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 living 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 Sir Thomas
Hanmer had been with him, to propose his printing an
edition of Shakspeare on the following conditions — of
its being pompously printed with 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 unwillingly comphed with, after
cavilling about the right of property in those letters, for
which he had, he said, paid the postage.

1747.] WARBURTON CONTRADICTS HANMER. 309
'When the bookseller would not deal with him on
these terms, he applied 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 behaviour was what
occasioned Mr. Bope'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
futility 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,/?/^ occasion

310 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 inserted, in the article ' Spehnan,'
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. Bepairing 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 public would
suspend their opinion of his conjectures till 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.] SUPPRESSION OF 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 published, 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 Bise of the present Bishop
of Gloucester's Quarrel with that Baronet, about his
edition of Shakspeare's Blays. To which is prefixed an
Account of the Extraordinary Means used to suppress
this remarkable Letter. By a Broprietor of that Work.
London, 1763. Brice Is.' It has no name of its author
on the title-page, but the name of Bhilip Nichols is
given at length within. If we inquire what this Bhihp
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 which
is written ' William Cole, 1763,' showing that it belonged
to the well-known Beverend William Cole, the friend of
Horace Walpole.* The note is in the same hand as the
name and date : ' Bhilip Nichols, LL.D., and Fellow 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
stealing books out of his own and other libraries in the
University.' Such had been Bhilip 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 WARBURTON. [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, ' shall print that letter, if
I can take any advantage against him, I will.' '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 me to relate. My
lord of Bristol, to whom I am not unknown, and who
was then a Fellow 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, Bhilip 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
affront 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 honour 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 FROM SHERLOCK. 313
made him promise that it should be published. 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 1001. 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.
' Beverend Sir, — 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 to 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVII.
'I inclose the copy of the letter you intend for Sir
Thomas, which may save you the trouble of transcribing
another. ' I am, Sir,
' Your very humble servant,
'Tho. Sarum.'*
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 ill 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 probability, wholly on Warburton's repre
sentation. The general opinion has always been in favour
of Hanmer. ' The honour and veracity of Hanmer,' says
Disraeli, ' must prevail over the " liveliness " 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, published fifteen years after Hanmer's death,
were ' false and calumnious.' ' Sir Thomas Hanmer,' says
Whitaker,J one of those most willing to advocate War-
* Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 84.
| Kilvert, ib. p. 121. J Quart. Eev. vol. vii. p. 391.

1747.] CHARACTER OF HANMER. 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 portfolio,' though such might have
been his fortune, had not his letter to Dr. Smith been brought
to light. Strict on the right he kept his steadfast eye,
With temperate zeal and wise anxiety ;
Nor e'er from Virtue's path was lured aside,
To pluck the flowers of pleasure or of pride.
Hanmer, like 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 all 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XVIII.

CHAPTER XVIIT.
SHAKSPEARE.
merits op 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 annota
tions  DISSATISFACTION OF WARBURTON WITH JOHNSON  MALONE's
JUST ESTIMATE OF WARBURTON'S EDITION — ATTACKS UPON WAR
BURTON  EDWARDS, AUTHOR OF THE ' CANONS OF CRITICISM ; ' ORI
GIN OF THE HOSTILITY BETWEEN HIM AND WARBURTON  WARBUR-
TON'S UNGENTLEMANLY SARCASMS ON EDWARDS IN THE NOTES ON
THE ' DUNCIAD '  EDWARDS'S RETORTS  SPECIMENS OF EDWARDS'S
CRITICISMS  HURD'S INJUDICIOUS PRAISE  HEATH'S ' REVISAL OF
SHAKSPEARE'S TEXT'  ZACHARY GREY  SPECIMENS OF WARBURTON'S'
BEST EMENDATIONS.

T

iHE merits and defects of Warburton's notes on Shaks-
JL 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 Bope.
' Such as they are,' he says, ' they were among my younger
amusements, when, many years ago, Ijised to turn over
these sort of writers to unbend myself from more serious
applications ; and what certainly the public 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.
Bope, whose memory and name
Semper acerbum,
Semper honoratum (sic Di voluistis) habebo.

1747.] REASONS FOR EDITING SHAKSPEARE. 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 Bope's Letters for this
persuasion to publish his notes, and this permission to
couple them with Bope's own notes, we search in vain for
any passage of such purport, in those letters of Bope to
Warburton which Warburton afterwards published. 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 Bope, which
was sure to keep its place in English literature ; a mali
cious longing, from whatever cause, to vilify the memory
of Theobald and Hanmer ; and an inclination, 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
pounds. Hurd, as might be expected, says all that he can in
praise of Warburton. ' Such is the felicity of his genius,'
he observes, 'in restoring numberless passages to their
integrity, and in explaining others which the author's
sublime conceptions, or his licentious 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 little mistakes and
* ' See his Letters to me.'

318 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 all 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 ' Bemarks on
Macbeth,' published in 1745, complimented Warburton
with the title of ' learned,' and Warburton, in return, spoke
of the ' Bemarks,' in his Breface 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 into notice, was ready to express his acknow-
f 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 Breface it would be unjust to
Warburton to omit.
' Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak [than of
Hanmer], Bespect 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 WARBURTON'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 pubhc 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 affected 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
malio-nity, I should have had reason to be offended with.

320 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 literature 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 literary 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 Breface, 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. Br.
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 license
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
Italian comic writer, would not have induced Betrarch,
were he living, to subscribe to the meaning which cer
tain 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
fight 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 with 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 public
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 rephes to me in the following lively 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.
Y

322 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVHI.
than any he 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 small estate at Bitshanger, in
Middlesex, from whence 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 Disraeh, J says that he was educated at Eton,
and became a fellow of King's College, 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. § It happened, however,
that, while he was in the army, he visited Bath, soon after
Warburton's marriage to Allen's niece, and was introduced
at Brior Bark, 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 that the young officer
* Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 44 ; Letters from an Eminent Pre-
'late, p. 13.
J Vol. Iii. p. 288. % Quarrels of Authors, Art. Warburton.
§ Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vol. ii. p. 199; vol. ix. p. 623.

1747.] THOMAS EDWARDS. 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
willing 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 editions of the ' Canons of
Criticism ' to Warburton. Eor 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 pubbshed,
v 2

324 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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. Bichard 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 ungentlemanly and outrageous terms, in his
notes on Bope'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 Boss, 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 with neither. Yet (as Mr. Bope 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 fines
Her children, first, of more distinguished sort,
Who study Shakspeare at the Inns of Court,!
he inserts this note, with the signature Scriblerus : ' 111
would that scholiast 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. Illustr,
vol. ii. p. 838.
f Ver. 463. J iv. 567.

1747.] 'CANONS OF CRITICISM.'

325

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 " Behearsal," and with the air of good nature and
politeness of Caliban, 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 birth, 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 think 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 will 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
undoubted 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 WARBURTON. [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 Fang's Bench.
' And if the terms he chooses to employ are so gross
that he is ashamed to use them in Engfish, 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 Canis in the
lines of Horace, prefixed to Warburton's 'Bemarks 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 civil treatment, so becoming a
gentleman and a clergyman, which I have received at
your hands, and to offer to your protection a work, from
which, if Shakspeare, or good letters, have received any
advantage, and the public any benefit or entertainment, the
thanks are due to Mr. Warburton ;' turning Warburton's
own words, in his Breface, against himself.
In his Breface, 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 gentility. 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 till 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.] RETORTS 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, would have
been a Doctor hi Divinity, or, as in his Breface he
decently expresses it, of the occult sciences ; he, I say, may
leave the care of his living 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 ? What is his birth, 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 fie at the
mercy of his petulant satire, to be hacked and mangled as
his ill-mannered spleen shall prompt him, while it shall 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 Breface, ' 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 WARBURTON. [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 fiis 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
unintelligible. ' He may contradict himself for the sake of showing his
critical skill on both sides of the question.

1747.] WARBURTON'S EMENDATIONS. 329
' He may use the very same reasons for confirming his
own observations which 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 English, 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 Henry VI., Act iii. sc. 4, editors were content with
— whoso 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 WARBURTON. [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 Henry 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 believe 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 all the sway of the earth shook
like 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 /rv?. 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
conjecture, for these reasons : Bloody is referred to the
water, because no mention is made of water in the passage ;
fiery to the air and fire, because the air was on fire, and
'tis 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 will 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 tfiat 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVHI.
— 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 piscem mulier formosa superne,
' Which,' remarks Edwards, ' those who do not understand
Latin will perhaps think is a proof of what our critic
asserts, or at least something to his purpose.' 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 English phrase, Friends of my soul.' On Sir John
Falstaff 's exclamation, J ' Hero 's lime in this sack too ;
there is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous
man ! ' he observes that lime was generally considered to
be a cause of the stone, but that the efficacy of Mrs.
Stephens's medicine had refuted that opinion.' In ' 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 Falstaffs
saying, ' If I travel but four foot by the square further
on foot,' || 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. t Mids. N. D. act ii. sc. 2.
% 1 Hen. IV. act ii. sc. 4. § Act ii. sc. 3.
I 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-half 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
IV., where Falstaff says to Brince 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 :
Which the 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 delicacy.'
'I believe,' rejoins Edwards, 'that Shakspeare uses
square for the full complement of all the senses ; and that
this imagined propriety and delicacy 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XVHI.
" nimble " men, " that leap as if they rebounded." The
phrase is taken from tennis-balls, which were stuff'd with
hair.' Warburton, observes Edwards, should have fixed
his 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. Bope, 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,
was resumed 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 Blay on the
fifth of November, we can only conjecture.' 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. Bope'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 another blunder in a note on the ' Taming of the
Shrew,' where a line of 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 mere printer's blunder, for
'though, in an outlandish Italian 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 spelling, pointing, and
the like, 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 Bope,' 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.
* Warburton's Pope ; note on Imit. of Hor. B. ii. ep. 2 ; vol. iv.
p. 226.
t Canons of Criticism, canons viii. and xviii. pp. 129, 192.

336

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVIU.

Hurd makes a very unhappy attempt in defence of
Warburton as a critic. He quotes from the ' Nouvelles
de la Bepublique des Lettres,' June 1684, the following
apology of 'an eminent French writer' for Joseph Scaliger :
' Je ne scais 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 1' 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
fitterature 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 a ce point d'antiquite^ et sur ce pied-la il corri-
geoit un passage. Si on n'aime mieux s'imaginer que
l'envie d'eclaircir un mistere d'erudition, inconnu aux
autres critiques, l'engageoit a 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,
ingenieuses, et fort scavantes, mais il n'est gueres appa
rent que les auteurs ayent songe a 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 liable 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 doctrine, 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
eminence as a critic ; and that stupidity is of far more use
than judgment in qualifying 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 ' REVISAL OF 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 foolishly. The most excellent verbal
critic, probably, that has ever appeared in the world, was
Bichard Borson ; 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 ability established by propensity to outrageous
conjecture. How httle dulness, or want of judgment,
has to do with the duty of an editor, Hurd might have
learned from Johnson's Breface 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 Br. Barr, ineptus
metrorum omnium perditor. * He then, irritated at
Warburton's audacity as a commentator, took to writing
notes on Shakspeare, which, after keeping them six years
in his desk, he pubbshed, with a dedication to Lord
Karnes, ' the truest judge and most intelligent admirer of
Shakspeare ;' calling them ' an imperfect attempt towards
rescuing Shakspeare's remains from the licentious 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 Hee. ver. 1002.
Z

338 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVIII.
yet, by gathering such 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 Bope 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 Warburton'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 peculiarly unhappy. The licentiousness of his
criticism overleaps all bounds or restraint, while the
slightest 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 in which
they are delivered.'
By these extracts from the Breface to the 'Eevisal,'
the reader may judge of the spirit of the work itself, of
which, having been so liberal of quotations from Edwards,
we shall forbear to encumber our pages with specimens.
Of the hostility 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.] ZACHARY 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 feeling towards Grey. Grey
' spoke to Mr. Tunstall,' he says, ' to desire him to get
what I had on that author for him ; and, purely to oblige
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 in. You
know the man ; but I could not deny a friend.'* Why
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 publishing
' 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 ' : ' H the follies 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 think 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 ; Nichols's Lit. HI. vol. ii. p. 124.
z 2

340 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVHI,
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 William's Spirit of Bailing.' 3. 'A
Free and Familiar Letter to that great Befiner of Pope
and Shakspeare, the Eev. Mr. William Warburton.' Nor,
when he published his 'Notes on Shakspeare,' in two
volumes, eight years afterwards, did he forget to notice
Warburton in his Breface, adverting to his unreasonable
abuse of Sir Thomas Hanmer, and calling 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 Hanmer's hands, it must always
be doubtful which was the greater borrower from the other.

1747.] GRET'S REMARKS 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, like 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, k 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 all.'
He, as well as Edwards, made merry with Warburton'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 of.'-f- ' Mr. Warburton,' says
Grey, ' has confused oats with bots, a disease mentioned
in 1 K Hen. IV., Act ii. sc. 1.'
Ophelia 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. t Canons of Criticism, can. vi. ex. 19,

342 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XVIII.
owl's feathers, and her guarding the bread from mice!
' You mean,' retorts Grey, ' guarding the corn in the
barns, 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,"f " 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 that 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 throwing up caps in this play, that Me-
nenius may be well enough supposed to throw up his cap
in thanks to Jupiter.'
Upton's ' Critical Observations on Shakspeare ' are well
known. The first edition of them was pubbshed 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 Breface to his second edition, in which he
exposed many of Warburton's transformations of the text,
* Remarks upon a Late Edition of Shakspeare, &c. j- Act ii. sc. 1.

1747.] MERITS OF WARBURTON'S 'SHAKSPEARE.' 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 plaees of execution,' a
note in the margin of the ' Dunciad,' sneering at him as
' a renegado critic,' who directed against Bope's com
mentator all the virulence which the Gildons and Dennises
had displayed against Bope ; but this note, from some
cause, was canceUed before publication, 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, kissing
carrion,' a reading which has since been universally
adopted. His comment on the passage, 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 Bolonius'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 WARBURTON. [Cn. XVIII.
thought it too bold to be received into the text. In the
lines, King. — But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son —
Ham. (Aside). — A little more than kin, and less than kind,
he 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, — kind 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. Boderigo says to Iago, ' 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 own Bible, and
left ours alone.'
Charles Yorke, however, who seems to have lost no
* Act v. sc. 3.

1747.] COMMENDATION FROM CHARLES TORKE. 345
opportunity of telling Warburton how much he 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 compliment 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 c&dere vineta lua. 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 his
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 partiality, 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XIX.

CHAPTER XIX.
RICHARDSON. TOWNE AND JACKSON. DR. NATHANIEL
FORSTER.
' LETTER TO A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT CONCERNING LIBRARY PRO-
PERTY '  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 ' ALLI
ANCE ' DEDICATED TO LORD CHESTERFIELD.
rE same year, 1747, Warburton published a pamphlet,
entitled ' A Letter from an Author to a Member of
Barfiament concerning Literary Broperty,' 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 fiterary property as the sole foundation of
it, instead of an additional support to it.*
He presented Bichardson, 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
well the minds of its personages are represented, may
doubt whether virtue has been much strengthened. It
may be mentioned that Bichardson, 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 Bichardson, who returned their call, but did not
find them at home. A few days afterwards, Bichardson,
walking with Millar in the Strand, met Warburton, who
paid much attention to Millar, but would scarcely notice
Bichardson. The author of ' Clarissa,' surprised at his
incivility, and thinking it must be owing to some fancied
neglect,- observed that he had returned Mr. Allen's call,
but that the servant might possibly have forgotten to
mention his coming. 'He answered,' says the novelist,
' with 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 Bichard
son with some difficulty discovered, was, that he had
inserted in a new edition of ' Clarissa ' some reflections
on Bope which were not in the first, and had had tho
insolence to present a copy of the edition to Mrs. War
burton. ' I know nothing,' said Bichardson, ' of any new
reflections on Bope, but I did indeed present a copy to
the lady, intending it as a civility to one whom I knew
before she was his.' Edwards, the author of the ' Canons
of Criticism,' Bichardson's intimate friend, to whom he
tells the story, learned that one of the objectionable reflec
tions on Bope was a censure of the sentiment, 'Every
woman is at heart a rake.'*
He also wrote, this year, a short Breface to the second
edition of Towne's ' Critical Enquiry into the Opinions
and Bractices of the Ancient Bhilosophers concerning the
Nature of the Soul and a Future 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
* Bichardson's Correspondence, by Mrs. Barbauld, vol. i. p. 60.

348 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cn. XIX.
discussed in ' The Divine Legation,' they readily became
friends ; and he afterwards read Warburton's writings
with 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 philosophers disbelieved the existence of the soul
after death ; that they had esoteric and exoteric doctrines;
and that, whenever they affirmed the certainty or proba
bility 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 hook 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 called 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 befieve 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 by 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

1747.] JACKSON AND TOWNE. 349
should be one entire theft from me, a transcript of my
account, without one word of acknowledgment.' * This
was fiterally 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 all his own.' He was author of
thirty-six pubhcations, chiefly pamphlets against Tindal,
Middleton, and other writers of free opinions, 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 Winston'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, j
, 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 Voltaire calls Dr. Clarke,' % 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.
f Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. ii. p. 527.
j Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 49.

350 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 publish 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 civilization 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 fife; the
women, as related by Strabo and Bliny, 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, feeling 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.] DR. NATHANIEL FORSTER ON JOSEPHUS. 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, 6 Xpia-rog ourog fy, 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. Tatojflij, in the passage,
' true things,' he proposed to alter into to. ayQ-q, ' strange
things:' 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 (Sslwv 7rpo<p7]Tfi>v, which Forster would fain
have altered into raov Ihiwv 7rpo<p7}ru)v) 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
Ifim : ' 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 follows. Whiston renders thus :
' Now there was 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 men as receive the truth
* Div. Leg., book ii. § 6.

352 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cu. XIX.
with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the
Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ;
and when Bilate, 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 call him a man, for he was a doer of won
derful works, a teacher of such as receive strange [or new]
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 Bilate, 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 o Xpia-Tog oZrog rtv from Whiston, who, in his
Dissertation on the passage at the end of his volume,
published in 1736, expressly asserts that the phrase, This
was Christ, or the Christ, does not mean that this Jesus
was the true Messiah of the Jews, but that he was distin
guished from all 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 will 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 6 Xpio-rog oi>Tog yv can admit of
no sense but the common one, especially while Bb'kov
%po^To>v stand their ground. But how far the liberty 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 on our side ; then, on yours,
it must be owned that your very fine emendation tu arjQr),
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!
Tanaquil 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. 1£ it were omitted, all would pro
ceed in regular course. Dr. Barr, 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 bis 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. 321,
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

354 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XIX.
expressed doubts of its genuineness ; and their notions
were adopted by Daniel Heinsius, Boxhorn, Salmasius,
Gronovius, Freinshemius, Tanaquil Faber, and Lardner.
Daubuz wrote a treatise in its favour, and Jacob Bryant
supported Daubuz, taking the words d 'Xpiarrlg outoj rjv,
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 ' Alliance between Church
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
of the " Alliance," ' said he, ' came out without a dedica
tion, but was presented to all 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.' 355

CHAPTEE XX.
HURD. BOLINGBROKE. MALLET.
COMMENCEMENT OF ' JULIAN '  ADVANCES OF HURD TO WARBURTON ;
INTIMACT 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;'
EEPLT TO IT  MALLET'S DISLIKE OF WARBURTON — BISHOP NEWTON'S
EDITION OF MILTON — WARBURTON'S OPINION OF LAUDER'S BOOK ON
MILTON.
[TuTE next literary effort on wfiich Warburton employed
JL himself was ' Julian, or a Discourse Concerning the
Earthquake and Fiery Eruption which Defeated Julian's
Attempt to Bebuild 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 public. Tfie connexion of Warburton with
Hurd was an important event to both, having great effect
on the remainder of their fives.
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 Boetry,' bestowed on Warburton
the following eulogy :
' For 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 light upon a difficult and
obscure subject, and, above all, to convey an exact idea of
* Kilvert, Life of Hurd, p. 34.
A a 2

356 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XX.
the scope and order of any work. It hath, accordingly,
been so considered by several of the foreign, particularly
the Italian, 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 estabhshed 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. Bope.'
Warburton had at this time edited only a portion of
Bope's works. When he sent forth a complete edition,
he took occasion to make an ample public repayment of
Hurd'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 then 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. Sir, — I received the favour of your edition of
" Horace's Art of Boetry," for which I beg leave to make
my best acknowledgments.
' You have given very little 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 all sincerity, I think the notes one of

1749.] 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. Bope. 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
have 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. Warburton.'
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 little of your
name and writings ; and the little I did hear was not
likely to encourage a young man, that was under direction,
to enquire farther after either. In the meantime, I grew
up into the use of a little 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 WARBURTON. [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
going 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 following, not so properly your con
vert, as ah over spleen and prejudice against your defamers.
From that time, I think, I am to date my friendship with
you. There wras 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 Eortents and Brodigies," which
last I liked 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 Bope "
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 will 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 writing, Hurd 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.] HURD AND WARBURTON 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 qualities 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 Bythias,
Orestes and Bylades, Achilles and Batroclus ; 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 establishing such a connexion between iEneas
and Achates. One of the two was adapted by nature
cedere potentis amici — imperiis. They were not like
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 Ber-
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 Brior Bark ; mentioning, at the same time, his
contemplated '- Juban,' and recommending Hurd to write
a commentary on ' Horace's Epistle to Augustus,' similar
to that which he had written on the ' Art of Boetry.'
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 WARBURTON. [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 preachership 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,' Bolingbroke pubbshed his ' Letters on
the Idea of a Batriot King, the Spirit of Batriotism, and
the State of Barties,' with an Advertisement said to have
been written by Mallet, but in reafity by Bolingbroke
himself, containing the well-known charge against Bope
of having printed an edition of those letters without his
Lordship's permission or knowledge. The accusation, as
made in the name of Mallet, 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 desired ; 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 fiundred 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 hands 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
pubbsh them entire.
That this Breface was written by Bolingbroke appears
from the manuscript of it preserved among the Bobng-
broke papers in the British Museum, which is in the hand
of an amanuensis, but with corrections in Bolingbroke's. *
The persons to whom copies of the ' Letters ' were to be
presented were Wyndham, Bathurst, Murray, Marchmont,
and Lyttelton. Bope had also shown a copy to Balph
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, indeed, that the cost of the edition which
Bope printed was not defrayed by Allen.
For this virulent attack of Bolingbroke on Bope's me
mory, in so gross and unbecoming a style, there may have
been two motives. Bolingbroke may have been displeased
at Bope'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 Bope's conduct, in
' A Letter to the Editor of the "Letters on the Spirit of
Batriotism, the Idea of a Batriot King, and the State of
Barties," occasioned by the Editor's Advertisement.' This
is a spirited and judicious performance, and attributes
Bope's act, apparently, to its true motives. Bope 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 Berson of
Quality,' and the real author was known to the printer,
* Cooke's Life of Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 218.

3G2

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cii.- 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 hundred copies of
an eighteenpenny pamphlet. What, then, was his motive ?
Evidently ' an excessive and superstitious zeal for Lord
Bolingbroke'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 Bobngbroke was faultily negligent
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 likewise very well accounts,' adds
Warburton, with increased sarcasm, ' for his allaying the
extreme splendour of them, so offensive to mere mortals,
with that terrestrial mixture of his own.' That there was
such ' terrestrial mixture ' Warburton does not attempt to
deny, but offers some justification for it on the ground
that Bope expected Bobngbroke, 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, Bope might have printed the pamphlet in
the hope that he would one day overcome Bohngbroke's
pretended modesty, and obtain his consent to publication.
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 Bope, expressed the same opinion in respect to
his conduct in this matter as Warburton. ' His printing
so many copies,' said he, ' was certainly a comphment.

1749.] ' EPISTLE TO THE MOST IMPUDENT MAN LIVING.' 363
H one had a mind to defend Bope, should not one ask if
anybody ever blamed Virgil's executors for not burning
the iEneid, as he ordered them ? ' * Spence, also, was
told by Martha Blount, that she had heard Bope speak of
Bolingbroke's work, and could take her oath that he
printed it merely from esteem for his Lordship and his
abilities. Bolingbroke, calling the agency of Mallet again into opera
tion, immediately issued a rejoinder, under the striking title
of 'A Familiar 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 nothing. That it was
written by Bobngbroke is now well known ; for it exists
entire in Bohngbroke's hand. J The writer begins by
owning himself a great favourer of Lord Bolingbroke, and
an abhorrer of the scurrilous libels published against him,
particularly of Warburton's, which ' have a peculiar inde
cency distinguishing them from those of any other man.'
'Arnall, an impudent scribbling attorney,' he proceeds,
' was set up to be his casuist in matters of public morality.
You,' he continues, addressing Warburton, ' have been an
attorney as well as he, and, being a bttle more impudent
than he was (for Arnall never presumed to conceal Ms
turpitude under the gown and scarf), have set yourself up
to be his casuist in matters of private morality.
' You have signalised yourself by affecting to be the
bully of Mr. Bope's memory, into whose acquaintance, at
the latter end of the poor man's fife, you were introduced
by your nauseous flattery ; and whose admirable writings
you are about to publish, with commentaries worthy of
* To Sir H. Mann, May 17, 1749.
j- Confusion Worse Confounded, p. 8.
| Cooke's Life of Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 218.

364 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XX.
Scriblerus himself; for we may judge of them beforehand
by the specimens we have already seen of your skill in
criticism. ' . . . Lord Bobngbroke 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 appbed, 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 " Alliances,"
" Divine Legations," and dramatic criticisms :
 Explain the thing 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
will have no reply to apprehend from any man who would
not dispute with a common scold, nor wrestle 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 BOLINGBROKE'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 Bope had made known other
writings of Bobngbroke, besides those under consideration,
without the author's permission, a breach of trust which
Bolingbroke had discovered and forgiven, and having ex
pressed his surprise that Bope should not have opened his
heart, and confessed this second breach of trust to Boling
broke on his death-bed, he adds that, though he would give
no formal answer to Warburton's bbel, 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 Bobng
broke, occasioned by his Treatment of a Deceased Friend:'
an effusion by some attributed to Warburton ; but who
was the real author is unknown. Another pamphlet or
two, and sundry paragraphs in newspapers, reflecting on
Bope or Warburton, kept the matter before the public for
some time longer ; and Mallet took occasion to deny, in
some of the periodical prints, that he was the author of
the ' Familiar Letter.' In reference to this denial, there
are, among the Bolingbroke manuscripts in the British
Museum, two pieces of writing, one of which appears to

366

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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. Mallet's declaration, there is only
one way to convince me he is not the author of the infa
mous hbel [the " Familiar Epistle "], which is, by taking
an opportunity of disavowing it pubbcly. 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
" Familiar Letter "], merely on account of tfie Apollo
story, and I shall do it on the first occasion. If Mr. M.
does not do the same with regard to this libel, I shall
consider him the author of it, and act in consequence of
that belief. 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. — I never took the slightest 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 malice.
' JST.B. — I 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 Apollo story was this : Mallet was one day
in company with Warburton, who was supposed to be
meditating a Life of Bope. As an anecdote for the book,
Mallet told Warburton something that had occurred, he
said, during Bope's last illness : 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. lauder's forgery. 367
' Mr. Mallet, I have had an odd kind 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 listened
to the story with a sarcastic smile, and repbed, ' Why, sir,
if I had an intention of writing your fife, this might be a
proper anecdote ; but I don't see that in Mr. Bope'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 Warburton
and Newton were each eager to praise the other. War
burton, in his Breface 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 Breface to Milton, § asserted, though with
much less truth, that Warburton had proved himself to
be the best editor of Shakspeare by a variety of happy
conjectures on the most difficult 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.
f Pref. to Milton, p. 32. J Sub fin. § P. 30.
Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Dec. 23, 1749.

368 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XX.
and the top of forty-five proves him either one or the other
with a vengeance. H there are those things in Masenius,
why did he not produce them ? They are of more weight
to prove his 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, little respect for Milton : ' In
one view the book does not displease me : it is likely
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
public, 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 delighted with another [Dr.
Douglas], as much a stranger to them, who entertained
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

CHAPTEE XXI.
' 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 oe
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,' which Thomas Dunham Whitaker,
Warburton'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 Bowers which are supposed to have
subsisted in the Christian Church from the Earliest Ages
through several successive Centuries.' Middleton's de
sign, in this treatise, was to establish the belief that all
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 WARBURTON^ [Ch. XXI.
in the writings of the apostolic fathers. But we search
in vain in the pages of Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius,
Bolycarp, and Hermas, 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 Dodwell, would willingly suppose that they
were endowed with extraordinary gifts of the Spirit;
but, if we examine carefully what they have written, we
slmll find that they even disclaim, especially Ignatius and
Bolycarp, 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
by most critics to have written his first ' Apology ' about
a.d. 140, speaks of persons possessed with devils being
cured ; Irenasus, who wrote a few years later, relates that
many sick persons were healed, and many dead raised to
life, who lived many years afterwards. Theophilus of
Antioch, Tertullian, 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 REMARKS ON THE FATHERS. 371
tians over demons. In the fathers, as they are called, of
subsequent times, we find plenty of similar attestations to
the working of miracles.
What, then, are we to believe 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 apostolical
fathers were weak and credulous persons, who were
easily deceived by juggling pretenders, and ready to pro
pagate any wild improbability that folly 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 quahties 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. Bemarking
on the 7nystery of the cross, he says, ' Consider all the
things in the world,, whether they could be administered
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 tilled 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
n II 2

372 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI.
of his nose from his forehead, through which inspire
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
clue to his prayers, but simply to his* representation of the
figure of a cross. He also says ' that Christ, when he was
crucified, fulfilled the symbol of the tree of life in Bara-
dise, and of all other things that were to happen after
wards to the righteous ; for Moses was sent with a rod to
release his people ; with this rod he divided the Bed
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 all 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.
Irenasus 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 fife ; 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' sub init. Just. Mart.
Apol. i., and Dial, with Trypho.

175°d 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 like 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, Tertullian, 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 all
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 all this censure of the fathers as his
torians, which Middleton added to that of Daille, Whitby,
and Barbevrac, who condemn them as injudicious inter
preters of Scripture, and unsafe moralists, Warburton is
wihW 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 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI.
in later times, too much to undervalue them. Though
they have been too credulous, they may be competent
witnesses to the state of religion 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 Bagan writers of greatest estimation;
and, if they suffer in their neighbourhood, e'en let them
stay, where most of them already are, with the grocers.
But it is a fact none acquainted with antiquity will 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 [successfully ?] rivalled the best
writers of the higher and purer antiquity. St. Chrysos
tom has more good sense than Blato ; and the critic may
find in Lactantius almost as many good words as in
Tully. So that if, on the principles of a classical taste,
we discard the fathers, we should send along with them
the Bagan 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 poetry,
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 Blato, and Lactantius
* Introd. to < Julian :' Works, vol. viii.

1750.] JULIAN'S ATTEMPT TO REBUILD 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 show 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 Baganism, 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 all the pretensions of Christianity.
Julian, 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 Baganism 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 still less effect now that their numbers were in
creased. He therefore had recourse to art ; he en
couraged Baganism 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 detaching the

376

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI.

youth from the influence of Christianity, and depriving.
Christianity of the support of profane bterature. 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 Bersia, 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 Balestine, and
took proper measures for the performance of the under
taking. The result is told in the well-known passage of
Ammianus Marcelfinus, 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 all the assistance that the
governor of the province could afford him, 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
lived 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 slightly, merely
observing that a fire, bursting from the foundations, de
stroyed or dispersed the workmen. But Gregory Nazianzen
gives a much longer and more circumstantial history of

1750.] WHETHER JULIAN WAS DEFEATED BY A MIRACLE. 377
the event.' Julian assured the 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 Balestine, 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
burst 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 bght, 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 day, the sign
or figure of the cross which was then marked or impressed
upon their garments. For, 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 something 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI.

unfrequently 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, qud disputatur Crucem, quam in cmlis vidisse
se juravit Constantinus Imperator, fuisse phcenomenon
naturale in halone solari* observing that he directs the
reader to it with much satisfaction ; ' for,' he adds, ' it is
not my way 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 Soerates,
in his relation of the occurrence, says that 'fire,' or
lightning, 'Avhich 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 establish this fact, he produces a passage
from Isaac Casaubon's ' Adversaria,' written 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 Br.
John Still, Bishop of Wells. ' In the city of Wells,' says
the narrative, as translated by Warburton from Casaubon's
* Vid. Bibl. Gi-ebc. 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 lightning fell at the same time,
but without harm to any one. So far, then, there was
nothing but what was common in the like 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
Wells 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 reality 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 Insalubrity and Salubrity of the Air,' Father
Kircher'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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON'. [Cu. XXI.

which was foUowed 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), easily determined
to run along in almost straight lines crossing each other,
and consequently to frame spots resembling, 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
lightning, 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 lightning,
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.

]7c0.] OPINIONS CONCERNING THE PHENOMENA. 381
miracle. But the truth is, that the nearer he allies its
effects to those of natural phenomena, the more he detracts
from the hkelihood 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 obbged 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.' f
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 Marcellinus 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 'Bemarks on Ecclesiastical History,' §
declares himself of opinion that a miracle was really
* Julian, book ii. c. 2. f Julian, book ii. c. 5.
• % Tom. viii. pp. 157-168. § Vol. i. p. 297.

382

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI.

wrought, observing that ' the defeat of Julian's attempt ~
to rebuild the Temple may justly be ascribed to a parti
cular 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 his ' Letter to the Com
munity of the Jews,' written when he was about to enter
on the Bersian war, merely promises that, if he terminated
that war successfully, he would then rebuild the Temple ;
but, as he never returned from Bersia, he could therefore
never have set about rebuilding the Temple. He adds
that Ammianus Marcelfinus was credulous, and might
have taken the account from the Christians without 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 Brudentius, 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 ticklish.' $ The
third 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.
•j- Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. iv. p. 47, seq.
j Letter to Doddridge, June 15, 1750.

.1750.] OPINIONS RESPECTING 'JULIAN.' 383
subject in his ' Sermon on the Besurrection,'* 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.
Hurd'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 publication,
and very indulgent afterwards, f
He was delighted 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 Noailles, ' 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 little importance to require notice. Sykes menaced
an assault, but did nothing. Bhilip Nichols, Warburton's
bitter foe, declared that he had been anticipated by Dr.
John Spencer in proving Juhan 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.
f Letter to Hurd, Aug. 19, 1749.
j Letter to Hurd.
§ Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 53.

384

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI.

more curious than myself, would unearth this vermin;
and he is found to be one Nichols, which your University
some time ago prosecuted for stealing 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 Julian, 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 duller 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 establishment 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.] REMARKS 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 subbmely 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
sublime inquirer's regard. Brobability, 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 all its vigour is exerted ; for to proportion
the assent to the probability 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 fruit 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. 'f
He had previously aimed a similar blow at Sir Isaac
Newton in ' The Divine Legation :' \ ' 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
delivered 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.
| Introd. to ' Julian,' p. xiv.
% 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 fives.' He, therefore, relinquished the study be
fore this effect was produced upon him.
Whoever is of opinion with these two authors, will be
inclined 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
fives, at a season the most important for training and
forming the mind, to the almost exclusive study of the
mathematics. They who believe 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 benefited, 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 life ; 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
public fife with better qualifications, and with a better
prospect of success, if they had devoted the time spent
c c 2

388

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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
writing, or speaking, in which many young men, after
long residence at a university, are lamentably deficient. i
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 Blato 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 Blato 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 lives, for those
other studies, philosophical and literary, 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 pursue long investiga
tions in the higher mathematics, who master large portions
of Newton's ' Brincipia,' or other difficult mathematical
works, prove their capacity for accomplishing 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. i
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 liable to the retort, Damnant quod non Intel
ligunt But the question is in reality a question of com
mon sense. If long attention to the mathematics, far

1750.] 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 life, should be confined to the study of
that which rather disqualifies than prepares them for
what they will have to do in after years ? Buonaparte
hoped to find that La Blace, 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 applicable ; * 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, but
also in matters of opinion.f And Charles Butler was so
convinced of the incompatibility 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.^
' 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.
t D. Stewart's Moral Philosophy, vol. iii. p. 280.
t Charles Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 253.

390

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 still
remains a question whether young men, at an age when,
— as the 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.

1751.] CHARACTER OF MIDDLETON'S WRITINGS. 391

CHAPTEE XXII.
MIDDLETON. EDITION OF POPE. EVANS'S PROPHECIES.
CHARACTER OF CONYERS MIDDLETON'S WRITINGS  WARBURTON'S
THOUGHTS RESPECTING HIM  SIR ROBERT SUTTON'S SON  WARBUR-
ton's EDITION OF POPE ; hurd's OPINION OF IT  akenside's ODE
TO EDWARDS  JOHN GILBERT COOPER ; WARBURTON'S NOTE ON THE
DUNCIAD CONCERNING HIM  REMARKS ON WARBURTON'S 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.
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
Church 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
English writer, generally accurate, but not very animated
or attractive, is well known. His ' Free Inquiry,' and his
' Letter from Borne,' like his assault on Sherlock's book
on Brophecy, 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 rebgion.
One of these, which he nearly or quite completed, was a
treatise on ' The Inefficacy and Inutility of Brayer,' which
was 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 replied, ' 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 affects
to depreciate him as a theologian, saying that his know
ledge of divinity was but slight, and his talents unsuited
to excel in that science ; but Hurd was little 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 suffer the
pretended injuries of some churchmen to prejudice him
against religion, 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 life, 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.
f Nichols's Lit. An. vol. v. p. 421.
$ Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 54.

1751.] DR. 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 well 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 easily conceive the plea
sure that, at any period of fife, 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 effects 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. AB 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 throwing
dirt there has been esteemed at all times, and by all
people, a profanation. J£ 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Italian, 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 bttle whimsical. He has an insatiable thirst after
new languages. Bray 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 ' Bocock'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 millions 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 reformer 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 simplicity of manners,
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 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 Bope's
Works, with such annotations as Warburton thought
proper to attach to them. It is amusing to read Hurd's
opinion of this pubhcation. 'He appeared again as a
critic and commentator in the noble edition he gave of
Mr. Bope'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 well-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 pubbc 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 peculiarities 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXII.

made the notes his instruments for chastising his adver
saries. ' I once saw,' says Disraeb, ' 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 bis note on Edwards. Thus Bope's book afforded
renewed opportunities for all the personal hostilities of
this singular genius.'* The edition was not unfairly cha
racterised by Akenside in the following ' Ode to Thomas
Edwards, Esq.,' which the poet published, 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
Would 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 strain
For Pope's dishonour'd shade complain.

* Quarrels of Authors, art. Warburton.

1751.1 EDWARDS ON WARBURTON'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 absurd 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
publications; a gentleman of fair classical scholarship,
having been educated at Westminster under Dr. Nicoll,

398

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXII.

and well acquainted with the French and Italian languages,
and with the literature 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 benevobsts,' who expressed unbounded
admiration of virtue, but whose feelings 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' 11 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 Caliban.' When
this was repeated to Johnson, he said, ' Well, then, you
must allow that he is a literary Bunchinello.' 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 generous critic fann'd the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire,
* Prior's 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, Bollin, 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 replies 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
Bope ' 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXII.
' an observation which Mr. Hobbes made long ago, that
there be 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 Fope
' 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 ;$ and
Mr. Cunningham, in a remark on the passage, says that
this is ' curiously confirmed by papers wfiich he had
seen in Mr. Croker's possession.'
Many copies of satirical verses were published on this
edition of Bope, which were afterwards collected into a
pamphlet, entitled ' Verses occasioned by Mr. Warburton's
late edition of Mr. Bope's Works.' The following speci
mens will 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 verse 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 Bope's, gave
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 144, 214.
X Detached Thoughts, Works, vol. iv. p. 371.
X 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 Bope only secondary, and caused the light to go up
ward, contrary to the rules of art, from Warburton to
Bope. A gentleman who was present when Burke was
speaking 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 hi used, for he had never
mentioned his name or his pubbcations but with com
mendation, until he wrote a book in which he treated him
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.
' Scurrility worse than Bilbngsgate' 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 explication ' 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 Boyal Society ' ' fustian.'
Another satirical publication on Warburton's Bope,
which we may notice here, was entitled ' A New Book of
the Dunciad, occasioned by Mr. Warburton's New 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXII.
Court.' It is but a weak imitation of Bope's versification,
yet has some fines worthy of notice. The subject is the
dethronement of Cibber, 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
Enapton and three other booksellers, bearing Warburton
on a chair, burst in and awake them :
' Down with King Cibber,' was the general crj-,
' Down with King Cibber,' all Moorfields reply ;
Huzza, huzza ! King Warburton 's our own ;
Be he our king, be his King Colley's throne.
Cibber 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 abu&e 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 ' Bemarks on Ecclesiastical History,' and,
in speaking of fancied prophetic dreams and visions, took
occasion to mention, with others, those of a Welshman
named Bice, Ap-Bice, or Arise Evans, who wandered from
his native mountains to London in the time of Oliver
Cromwell, where he made pretences to inspiration, and,
setting at nought the power of the Eound-heads, uttered

1751.] ARISE EVANS.

403

predictions in favour of the Eoyalists. In 1652 he 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, ' containing,' he said, ' a prophecy which
astonishes all 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
Bemarks," exhibiting the visions of a Welsh prophet,
with 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 then resentments can accomplish, that Mr. 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 fine of the " Bemarks," or ' whipped him at the
cart's tail in a note to " The Divine Legation," the ordinary
place of his literary executions, or pilloried him in the
"Bunciad," another engine which, as legal proprietor, he
very ingeniously and judiciously applied to the same
purpose. 'f
Let us see what this extract, which caused so much
mischief, was. It was entitled ' A Vision that I had pre
sently after the King'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 b 2

404 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXII.
myself; and, as I turned to a window north-westward,
and looking into the palm of my hand, there appeared to
me a face, head, and shoulders, like the Lord Fairfax's,
and presently it vanished again ; then arose the Lord
Cromwell, and he vanished likewise ; 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 young face arose with a crown upon his head, and
vanished in fike 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 ; but 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 shall 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 PROPHECIES AND VISIONS. 405
to the judge he calls them five ; in his interpretation he
says the change shaU be after the reign of five kings ; and
yet referring, in conclusion, to a text in the Second Book
of Kings, we are brought back again to the number four.
But it is this very circumstance which makes the prodi
gious part of this affair. 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 in the same family for four or 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 IL, Queen
Mary, and Queen Anne. They are afterwards called
five ; and so they were ; for King William HI. 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 Wifiiam 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 with
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.

40S

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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. Oliver
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 Islington 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 wrere put at the Water-
house at Islington, 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 Remarks on Eccl. Hist. vol. i. p. 254.
X Eccho from Heaven, p. 42.

1751.] REV. 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 Becorder], 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, Disraeli * 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 Bev. Henry Taylor, the
author of ' Ben Mordecai's Apology for becoming a Chris
tian,' and some other minor effusions, pubbshed ' Confu
sion Worse Confounded, Bout on Bout,' an examination
of Warburton's comments on Bice 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 believe one side of a contra
diction at a time, whereas his Lordship [Warburton had
then become a bishop] frequently believes, 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXE,
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 till 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 concealing from the
Jews what everybody else knew. It is not so easy a
thing, 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, 'little thought
that he was practising a kind of divination in great
request among the Bagans and the ancient Jews and
Christians, who had recourse to their Sortes Homericce,
Virgilianos, Evangelical, and Biblicce. The same causes
produce the same effects, and nothing is more like one
enthusiast, Mystic, Cabbalist, 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 his
own birth, or the kittening of his mother's cat, says :
' But this being a matter of great importance, already

1751.] 'CONFUSION WORSE 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 William Bage, I
shall give it you as I find it in the MS.
Sir Hugh. — William Page, how many kittens had j'our mother's
cat in her last Utter ?
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 Virgilianas will give me any light
into the fate of these kittens, before I venture to try it upon myself.
Will. P. — ' Tres Notus abreptas in saxa latentia torquet.' That is,
Three by the winds were dash'd against the rocks.
Sir H. — Try again, William ; 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 urgeV
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 Jf.  Drowned ! You amaze me. Drowned ? You mean they
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 WARBURTON. [On. XXH*.
' Triste per augurium Teucrorum pectora ducunt.'
The dismal augury demands our faith.
O wonderful ! wonderful ! and most wonderfully wonderful I and
yet again wonderful, and out of all whooping 1
Here ends the dialogue, and Sir Hugh's soliloquy.'
This year Warburton published a second edition of
Julian, which varied in some respects, but not greatly, from
the first. ' In Julian,' 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. Bope 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 in the hands of the public
in 1750.
With regard to Bowyer's connexion with Warburton,
it may be noticed here that he printed the earlier por
tions of Warburton's works, but -that Warburton, from
some fancied want of correctness in his printing, after
wards put his books into other hands. Bowyer wrote
him three long letters of remonstrance on the occasion,
which were never sent, but which have since found their
way into print, as the writer apparently intended, through
Mr. Nichols. § The matter is of no great interest to the
public, 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. t Ib. let. xxxv.
X Nichols's Lit. An. vol. ii. p. 182. § Ib. pp. 384-390.

1751.] WARBURTON 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 were 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 Hurd an invitation to Brior Bark, where he was
afterwards a frequent visitor, and advanced much in the
good graces of Mr. and Mrs. AUen. ' I wish you had
seen Mr. Allen,' he says in a letter to Balguy, written
shortly afterwards ; ' he comes up to the notion of my
favourites in Queen Elizabeth'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 Brior Bark 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 remind him
that he was but a player, and, as some accounts say, took
opportunities of admonishing him on his luxury and
looseness of life. One evening, however, with much
apparent civility, 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.
Allen's drawing-room. Quin replied, carelessly, that
plays were then almost out of his head, but that he
* Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 45.

412 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXII.
believed he could repeat a few verses of ' Venice Bre-
served,' and, standing up, declaimed, ore rotundo, the
passage in which occur the lines ' Honest men
Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves
Repose and fatten ;
andj 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 appbcation. 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 haranguing at Bath in
behalf of prerogative. Quin said, " Bray, 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 all
the regicides came to violent ends — a lie, 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.] SERMONS AT LINCOLN'S INN. 413

CHAPTER XXIII.
BYROM. BOLINGBROKE. CLERICAL ADVANCEMENT.
SERMONS AT LINCOLN'S INN  SIX EPISTLES OF DR. BYROM  WAR
BURTON MADE A PREBENDARY OF GLOUCESTER BY LORD HARDWICKE 
LETTER TO HOGARTH  ' VIEW OF LORD BOLINGBROKE'S PHILOSOPHY '
CAUSES OF WARBURTON'S ACRIMONY AGAINST BOLINGBROKE  BOLING-
BROKE'S ABUSE OF RELIGION AND DIVINES  STYLE OF WARBURTON'S
ANIMADVERSIONS ; LORD HARDWICKE's DISLIKE OF IT  SPECIMENS OF
BOLTNGBROKE'S MANNER  LETTER TO WARBURTON FROM MONTES
QUIEU  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  DEDICA
TION OF ' THE DIVINE LEGATION ' TO LORD HARDWICKE.
IN the summer of the next year, 1752, Mr. and Mrs,
Warburton resided for some time at Weymouth,
being dislodged from Brior Bark by the Brincess Amelia,
to whom, as she was recommended, for some indisposition,
to try the Bath waters, Ealph Allen 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 Brinciples of Natural and Eevealed Eeligion.'
A second volume followed in 1754. 'The sermons of
Warburton,' remarks Bishop Newton,y 'are not the most-
valuable of bis writings ;' and the pubbc has readily
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, let. xlix.
f Life by Himself, p. 68.

414 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXHL
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 till
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, all 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 rebgion ; 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
liveliest 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 Office and Operations of
the Holy Spirit,' which was afterwards incorporated into
the 'Doctrine of Grace,' elicited 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.] DR. JOHN BYROM.

415

The passage which gave Warburton the greatest offence
was this : With such a fund 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 ivho but 1 ?
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
liberty. ' Byrom,' he writes to Hurd, ' is very libellous
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
familiar 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 foobsh to confine the passion to religion, when it
spreads through all human fife ; 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIII;
enthusiasm properly commences. This shows why enthu
siasm is more frequent in religious 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, applied 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 offered 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 did not dream of, that it is so
long since I had occasion to inquire about the formalities,
that I am become very indifferent to the things them
selves.' j 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.
X Ib. let. Iii. liii.

1753.] LETTER TO HOGARTH. 417
able ; and when, in the following year, he published 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 client, 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 The 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 sobciting
subscriptions for his ' Analysis of Beauty ; ' and Warburton
addressed to him the following complimentary letter :
' March 28, 1753.
'Dear Sir, — I was pleased to find by the public papers
that you have determined to give us your 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 virtu and connoisseurship, to whom
all that grovel in the splendid poverty of wealth and taste
are the miserable bubbles. I beg you would give me
s leave to contribute my mite towards this work, and
I' 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. Warburton.'
E E

418 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Bhilosophy, 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 bfe 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 crown, was to pull the trigger
after his death*. Between Bolingbroke and Warburton,
ever since their meeting at Murray's table, there had been
deadly hatred, Ira fait capitalis, ut ultima divideret mors ;
hatred which had possibly commenced, on Bohngbroke's
side, when Warburton published his reply to Crousaz ;
for his Lordship was not likely to forgive the man who
was too persuasive to Bope. Before he died, he scattered
over his pages abundance of sarcasm against the ' Alli
ance ' and ' The Divine Legation,' and plenty of abuse of
their 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, religion 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, 351 ; vol. xii. p. 310, 338.

1754.] 'VIEW OF LORD BOLINGBROKE'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 ' talking
metaphysical jargon and theological blasphemy.' Abbadie
he pronounced to be mad ; and declared Selden, Grotius,
Cumberland, and Buffendorf to be great writers on natural
law, just as he might be called a great traveller who
should go from London to Baris by the Cape of Good
Hope. He even spoke of Montesquieu's ' Spirit of Laws '
as a dishonour to the French genius. He called 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 Forbes, 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 follies, 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 intelhgent 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 Bobngbroke, writing as
a philosopher, abuses everybody abke.
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 WARBURTON. [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 Balph Allen, but it may be deemed a matter of
certainty that Balph Allen's friendship was not strong
enough to secure from him a complete perusal of what
was laid before him. H any other reader has gone
through the mass, it must have been Hurd, who found
' the reasoning and the wit alike irresistible, the strongest
and keenest that can be conceived.' Other readers the
author has pleased as little as the orators who latrant,
non loquuntur, pleased Cicero. The language is, in
many parts, not merely unstudied, but vulgar and offen
sive. The style of the whole was so much dishked 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 writer expressed his
concern to hear many deciding who the author of the
' View ' must be by his ' scurrility and abuse ; ' and ob
served that to however little mercy Lord Bobngbroke
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 replied 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 BOLINGBROKE AND WARBURTON. 421
endeavouring to remove. But the best defence of his
vehemence is given in the following passage :
' When men are sincere in their mistakes, after a dili
gent and candid search ; when the subject is of small
moment, such as the mode of discipbne, 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 religion 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 totd 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 ib1, like 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
flatter it into a virtue, when we should have striven to
rekindle the dying sparks of religion by a vigorous colli
sion with its professed enemies, whose faces, to use the
unpolite language of the prophet, are harder than a rock! *
He has one very good passage about Bolingbroke's
assaults on Clarke. Bobngbroke 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 priori, he pronounced them to be all jargon, 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 [Bobngbroke]
had no farther trouble on this head than to decorate
Clarke, who was chiefly conversant in the reasoning a
priori, with a variety of abusive names. As to the
reasoning itself, our great man's respect for that is so
* Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 79.

422 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXLLT.
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 alive, and immolated to the first phi
losophy, when a fit 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 ft
of learning comes upon his Lordship, and Bythagoras,
Blato, 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 from 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 bkely 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.] BOLINGBROKE NOT AN ATHEIST.

423

writer had a disposition to seek objections against religion,
though he found them hardly, 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 fragments, things which in their very
name imply, not so much the want, as the exclusion, of
all form, the advocate of religion 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. All 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 Bolingbroke.
He insinuates that his Lordship ought rightly to be deemed
an Atheist, as being one who, in Scripture phrase, is
' without God in the world,' because he maintained that
God's moral attributes could not be proved from the state
of things in 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,' j 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 little more than a panegyric on ' The
Divine Legation ' and the ' Alliance between Church and
* Let. ii. Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 151.
X Ib. vol. xii. pp. 123, 133, 134.

424 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Boling
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, Sir,
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 religion, attacks all the reli
gions in the world. H men are taught to think themselves
under no obligations from revealed rehgion, they may
still consider that they are under other obligations ; but
it is most pernicious to persuade them that they are under
no restraint at all. It is possible to make attempts on
revealed religion, 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 mankind, which are equally incapable of being
disputed. ' I would ask, besides, what motive there can be for
attacking revealed rehgion 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. 425
connected, or not connected, with revealed rehgion, 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 " Julian," 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.' *
La September 1754, Warburton was appointed one of
the King's chaplains in ordinary. ' I see in the " Public
Advertiser," ' said Akenside in a letter to Birch, ' that
Warburton is made King'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 quality of chaplain, ' You expect, perhaps, I should
tell you,' says he, ' of the wonders I met with in this new
Elysium. I found but two things to admire, as excellent
* Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 236 ; Warbur
ton's Works, vol. xii. p. 73.
f Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 656.

426

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXLH.

in their kinds ; the 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 oblige ; 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
lieve, enhances the value of it to me. My friends are
solicitors in these matters for me ; I myself, at this time
of life, extremely little.' Such was the mode in which he
spoke of the prebend at Gloucester, when" it was offered
lrim. 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 ' Bhilo-Judseus,' 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 PREBENDARY OF DURHAM. 427
time, and that the commencement of the iU-feeling be
tween him and Warburton was a disagreement between
their wives about the value of some articles of furniture,
which the incomer was to take from the outgoer.*
Another story concerning Warburton as prebend of
Durham is, that he was the first wfio disused copes. The
occasion is thus told by the writer of an article on Bope
in the ' Quarterly Beview : 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 time. Did
you ever hear of one Dr. Warburton, Sir ? A very hot
man he was, Sir ; we never could please him in putting
on his robe. The stiff high collar used to ruffle 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 Buritans,' 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 l a hot man ' as his impatience about
the cope. When Neal speaks of something that ' blew
up the liberties ' of the sectarians, Warburton exclaims,
' 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 Rev. G. Ormsby's Sketches of Dur
ham, p. 129.

428 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Balace. In the course of conversation his Grace
observed that Mr. Bidley, his chaplain, had undertaken to
answer Bhilhps's ' Life of Cardinal Bole.' 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 called upon ; and
jestingly referred them to Neal's ' History of the Buritans,'
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 pubbshed. 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 quabty 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 Frisby, the small living in Lincolnsfiire,
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 curate 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 temporalities of his living 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 fidelity 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 hi dividing the spoils that he came
to hear of their villany.
' To the spiritual concerns of the parish he seems,' in
the opinion of the same rector, ' to have been sufficiently
attentive;' for ' be repeatedly enjoins Mr. Wright, to whom
he intrusted the important task of finding him a curate

430 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIII.
whenever one is wanted, to take care that he 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. Whyte, who
appears, however, not to have been one of the parishioners,
wrote Warburton a letter of complaint on the subject.
Warburton replied 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 will 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. Warburton. '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 tune he published a second volume of
' Sermons preached at Lincoln's Inn,' which, when they
were afterwards repubbshed 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. 111. vol. ii. pp. 59, 845.
t lb. vol. iv. pp. 731-733.

1755.] DEDICATION TO LORD HARDWICKE. 431
nors of the Small Box Hospital, at the Church of St.
Andrew, Holborn.' ' This,' he said, in a letter to Hurd,
' was a foolish sermon they bulbed 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 delicacy. 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 all, 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXILL
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 bfe 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 ability of the writer and the
disposition of the reader, that your Lordship's humanity
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.] HUED'S SEVENTH DISSERTATION. 433

CHAPTER XXIV.
'DELICACY OF FRIENDSHIP.' HURD. JORTIN.
HURD'S ' SEVENTH DISSERTATION'  FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN WARBURTON
AND JORTIN; THEIR CHARACTERS, BY BISHOP NEWTON  DISRUPTION
OP THEIR INTIMACY  HURD'S DEFENCE OF WARBURTON; HIS SATI
RICAL REMARKS ON JORTIN; HIS FLATTERY  LOWTIl's OPINION OF
HURD'S PUBLICATION ; BROWN'S AND GIBBON'S  WARBURTON'S GRA
TIFICATION  JORTIN FINDS SUPPORTERS ; WARBURTON'S ABUSE OF
HIM  JORTIN'S INDIRECT ALLUSIONS TO WARBURTON  SENSE OF
THE WORD ' PRINCEPS '; JORTIN'S REMARKS ON IT  WARBURTON'S
LETTER TO JORTIN  JORTIN'S ANSWER.
BET this year was most to be noted, in Warburton's
hfe, for Hurd's publication of 'The Delicacy 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 little 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. When Warburton, in 1751, pub
lished a second edition of his ' Julian,' he took occasion to
say that the world might soon expect to be gratified with
1 the learned Mr. Jortin's curious dissertations on Eccle
siastical Antiquity, composed, like his fife, 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 complhnents to Warburton. He
F F

434 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXI v.
inserted, at the end of his first volume of ' Bemarks on
Ecclesiastical History,' Warburton's unlucky notice of
Arise Evans, and expressed his sincere obhgations to
Warburton, and to Bishop Bearce, who had sent him a'
dissertation on the destruction of Jerusalem, for their
willingness to appear as his friends and coadjutors in
the work ; subjoining these verses :
Ibit et hoc nostri per ssecula fcedus amoris,
Doctorumque inter nomina nomen ero :
Forsan et extinctum non spernet Patria dulcis,
Forsitan et dicet, Tu qnoque noster eras.
Talibus inferiis placabilis umbra quiescet ;
Lenibunt manes talia dona meos.
Interea labor ipse levat fastidia vitas :
iEterno 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
burton made the same remark, and to him I resign it,
as to the first occupier, unless he will let me claim a part
of it on the privilege of friendship, and as xotva to. tS>v
(plxwv.'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 abilities, both men of uncommon 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 like cash,
ready at hand, the other had his more hke 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 five in the
mouths and memories of men.' *
Friendship continued, to all appearance, between them
till 1755, when Jortin published 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 probabibty of the descent of iEneas into hell, in
the sixth book of the iEneid, being a representation of
* Bp. Newton's Life by Himself, p. 67.
r f 2

436

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 iEneas,' he says, ' were
intended 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
riend.' The sixth book of the iEneid, 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 discoveries, 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. 'AyaQrj 8' epig r$e @poTo7<ri! These
are the only remarks that he makes in allusion to War
burton ; 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, Hurd
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
lingly have shown, was neutrabsed by the sense of duty

1755.] HURD'S 'DELICACY OF FRIENDSHIP.' 437
that he felt to oppose Warburton's conjecture. He com
mences thus :
' Bev. 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, all that can
recommend the scholar, or endear the friend. This last,
give me leave to say, is so unusual a part of a learned
man's character, and appears with so peculiar a lustre in
this discourse, that the pubbc 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
whom 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIV.

now esteems him 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 all 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 a*s 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 " iEneis."
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 obliged, 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
' iEneis,' and indeed the whole poem, in so new and so
advantageous a fight, 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.] HURD'S SARCASMS.

439

exhausted by him ; 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 account. And though he hath
greatness of mind enough not to resent this liberty, his
impatient and ill-judging friends will be hkely to take
offence at it. The public itself, as bttle biased as it seems
to be in his favour, may be even scandalised at an attempt
of this nature, to which no important interests of rehgion
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 literary freedom, and the offices of
sacred friendsfiip, 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 cab 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 debcately that his work is of
importance enough to be opposed ; thirdly, for glancing
at his arguments without naming him, since this is a
delicate display of hterary address ; fourthly, for objecting
to his principles without refuting his reasonings, since such
tenderness can belong only to thedehcacyof true friendship ;
fifthly, for suggesting what he thought better reasonings

440 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIV.
than his, since this is a debcate indication of readiness to
support him ; sixthly, for quoting from him with qualified
approbation, since this is a delicate avoidance of fulsome
flattery; seventhly, for insinuating comphments which
can hardly give satisfaction to their object, since by such
debcate 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
crimination. The piece is then concluded with a Greek quotation,
conveying a sneer at Jortin as being a mere grammarian
or sophist.
This Dissertation of Hurd's was cleverly attacked in a
pamphlet entitled ' Bemarks on Dr. Warburton's Account
of the Sentiments of the early Jews concerning the Soul,'
published in 1757, the writer of which says that if Hurd's
paragraphs be translated out of Attic irony into plain Eng
lish, we shall have the following rules prescribing the
proper demeanour of all men towards the great sovereign
in the republic 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
require 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 OPINION CONCERNING HURD. 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 abow them their full
proportion of elegance, learning, &c. ; for you ought to
know that this capital genius never proposed anything to
the judgment of the pubbc (though ever so new and
uncommon) with diffidence, in his life.'
The general feeling of tfie public, with regard to the
author of the ' Delicacy of Friendship,' and the object of
his satire, was, even at the time of its pubhcation, when
Warburton and Hurd were alive 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 bttle 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 Hurd's pubhcation 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
bshed, I would have whispered this one criticism in his
ear : " I think," my friend, " you are in danger of hurting
Br. W. as well as yourself, by the intemperance of your
* Lowth's Letter to Warburton, 1756.

442 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 censures 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 slight provocation. 'J
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
sentiments. 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 pohteness, and
the delicacy, he thought, could come but from one hand),
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 will 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 Lowth, 1766 ; Tracts by Warburton and a
Warburtonian, p. 200.
X Misc. Works, vol. i. p. 209. J Life of Hurd, p. 54.

1755.] WARBURTON 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 " Julian" to refute this calumny ; and at the conclu
sion of it it is that I refer the determination to Jortin in
the compliment 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 Marcellinus, that Juhan was killed
by a dart, one of a large shower hurled against the
Eomans from a body of retreating Bersians. Jortin him
self, too, it may be added, had given, in his ' Bemarks 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 qualities, Brovidence 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, Dec. 21, 1755.
t Vol. ii. p. 326.

444 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 dirty 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
truth 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 will forgive him. The profusion of compliment
in the " Dissertation " is so great, that he must be very
malignant who can suppose I gave it to myself ; and, at
the same time, so warm, that he must be 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 opportunity to say all 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 what 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
either 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.] JORTIN'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 likely that he would altogether for
bear from reference, in his subsequent writings, to the
pubbshed 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 vices, not of corrupted
human nature, but of particular persons, are exposed to
public view. J£ 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
then censures as interest, partiahty, 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 neighbour'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 men the most odious are those who
shoot their arrows from the dark ; who wear a mask, not
out of modesty, but of fear and self-preservation ; who
themselves write 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 Hurd, p. 53.
+ Serm. xii. vol. iv. p. 238.

446 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 :
'Eifxdi wpog ^>i7^0(r6<povg Igti <£>i/Ua* Trpog fi.ev roi (rotpKTT&g, ij
ypait-ixoLTirrTag, rj toiouto yivog erspov avQpdrjrwv xaxotiou-
[/.ovcov, ours vuv ecm <$>jAj<x, [/.yjts bo~rspov ttots yivoiro.
' My friendship I bestow upon philosophers ; as to
sophists, little grammarians, and such sort of scoundrels
and cacodosmons, 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 Greek ?
An extraordinary person, I assure you ; a projector, a
visionaire,. a bnguist 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 Bope :
' Erasmus, in the earlier part of Iris life, carefully
studied the Greek and Latin grammars, read lectures upon
* Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 604. f Ib. p. 599.

1755.] MISTRANSLATION OF ' PRINCEPS.' 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, fobow 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
ridiculing 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 tells us that Aleander, after he was exalted to
high stations, had wranglers under him, whom be 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 wrangbng geniuses would
copy from the examples of Faber and Erasmus, and con
sider a little how all men of sense and manners applaud
such moderation, and how they abhor and despise those
who, having begun 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 Blato, qui princeps de republicd conscripsit, he
translated the words, ' who wrote best of a republic! with
this note : ' I read here, with Turnebus, qui princeps de
* Disney's Life of Jortin, p. 223. | De LeSS- "• 6-

448 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIV.
republicd conscripsit. Lambin objects to this reading,
because we gather from Aristotle that Plato was not the
first who torote of a republic, he supposing princeps signi
fied primus, whereas it means optimus. This was Tully's
opinion of Blato, as may be gathered from many other
places in his writings. And in this sense Turnebus,
without doubt, understood the word ; a sense familiar to
his author, as in Verr. 1. iv. c. 49, in qud [patria] multis
virtutibus et beneficiis 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
primus than that which he had drawn from Virgil. But
it will be proper to give Jortin's note entire, as it will
show how determined 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,
Tu igitur, qui Germanis tuis princeps hanc literarum
facem prostulisti.
' There is nothing particular in this use of the word
princeps for first ; 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 gravissimus philoso-
phorum omnium, qui princeps de republicd conscripsit,
idemque separatim de legibus ejus.
'Here is the misinterpretation: "Plato, — who wrote
best of a republic."

1755.] JORTIN ON 'PRINCEPS.' 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 republicd conscripsit.
' This, I think, will 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. Pri?icipem Platonem de
republicd disseruisse, testatur noster infra. It is in in. 6 :
Nam veteres verbo tenus, acute Mi quidem, sed non ad hunc
usum popularem atque civilem, de republicd disserebant
Ab hac familid magis ista mandrunt Platone principe. —
P6st Aristoteles, &c.
'Blato, 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 in another
treatise :
' Atque his libris annumerandi sunt sex de Republicd,
quos tunc scripsimus : — magnus locus philosophiasque
proprius, a Platone, Aristotele, Theophrasto, totaque Beri-
pateticorum fainilia tractatus uberrime. — De Divin. il 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 hmc tractavit — De Orat.
154. Gorgias princeps ex omnibus ausus est, <fyc. —
Acad. 44. G G

450 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIV.
' These citations I take as I find them in Nizolius,
Lucret. I. 94 : —
' Nee miserce prodesse in tali tempore quibat,
Quod patrio princeps dondrat nomine regem.
' Horat. Carm. in. 17 :
' Qui Formiarum mania dicitur
Princeps, et innantem Maricm
Littoribus tenuisse Lirim.
' Lambin knew that princeps conscripsit could only mean
writing^/jT^ ; and therefore he proposed to alter the place,
because, said he, Blato did not write first concerning a
republic. Falsum est Platonem principem, id est, primum
de Republicd scripsisse. But this was not a sufficient
cause for attempting an emendation, as Lambin might
have seen, if he had considered the case a little better.
Horace says of himself, Carm. hi. 30 :
' Princeps uEolium carmen ad Italos
Deduxisse modos.
He meant that he was the first. And yet here it might
be objected that, strictly speaking, he was not the first,
since Catullus, before him, had composed some Sapphic
odes. But either Horace did not recollect it, or he might
think that Catullus 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
princeps, so likewise primus is used for best or chief',
which he gravely proves from Virgil, iEn. I. 27 :
1 Veterisque memor Saturnia belli,
Prima quod ad Trojam pro caris gesserat Argis.
' There is a passage in Terence which would suit him
better : Eunuch, n. 11, 17 :
' Est genus hominum qui esse primos se omnium rerum volunt,
Nee sunt.

1755.] LETTER TO JORTIN.

451

Where primus certainly and undeniably means mmmus,
prmcipuus.'* ¦ Dr. Salter, the Master of the Charterhouse, showed
these passages, and some others, 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 tarn indoctas nsenias evulgant bbris, miro super-
cilio objurgant, miro fastu insultant et tantum non tri
umphant, rectius facturi, si discerent interim Graecaa
Latinasque 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 inscitia toties gravem calumniam
intendit proximo, toties non intelfigit auctores qui Latine
scripserunt, ut de Graecis 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 bis 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 like it
* Life of Erasmus, vol. i. p. 552.
f Disnev's Life of Jortin, p. 221.
g g 2

452 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIV.
as well, as I do not doubt they will, you will find your
account in it.
' I perceive myself indebted to him here and there, as
particularly in note d, 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 application 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 observing 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
pains of purgatory, 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 hving, 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.] JORTIN'S REPLY. 453
' Thus much I thought proper to say, and I hope Dr.
Jortin will not be so mean and so vain to imagine I had
any other purpose in it than to hold him up a faithful
picture 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. Jortim's and yours, unless he wills
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 complain ; 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 believe you ; and I do bebeve
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 sufficeth with me, and I thank
you for it.
* Kilvert's- Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 218.

454 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIV.
' As to the passage in Cicero, which I ought in civility
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 replied that
Bishop Hare had once said the same thing to you.
' As to Bembus, you know that our Enghsh word hell,
if not in the vulgar way of speaking, yet in its original
sense, hath a lax signification, and may answer well
enough to inferi. But your version is more accurate than
mine ; and (unless you should forbid it) I would wilhngly
take occasion to mention it' in the next volume, with
respect, and with thanks.
' Sit simultatis depositor et nunquam resumendo3 pignus
et monumentum 1
' If I should live to publish the volume, I intend that
there shall be nothing in it, or in anything else that comes
from me, to give you even the slightest offence.
' I ought to return you thanks for the very candid
judgment which you pass upon the account which 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. Jortin.'*
Jortin kept his word about apud inferos posna, 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 Enghsh 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.] HURD SUPPORTS WARBURTON. 455
accurate than mine, and take this opportunity to return
him my thanks, and to repay civility 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, with perverse subtilty, to excogitate
a vindication of Warburton's sense of princeps, 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 bis translations were full of mis
takes, and that this was a gross one, for a man to under
take the bfe of Erasmus, while he was ignorant of the
nature and application 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 WARBURTON. [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.] HURD'S LIFE AND CHARACTER, 457

CHAPTEK XXV.
HURD. PARR. TRACTS BT WARBURTON AND A
WARBURTONIAN.
HURD'S LIFE AND CHARACTER  HIS RESERVE  VISITED BY WAR
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 WARBURTON 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
WARBURTON'S PUBLISHER  HONOURABLE CONDUCT OF WARBURTON.
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 hi the
world ; and, hke Bope and Warburton, did not forget to
honour bis parents in the days of his elevation ; a merit
in 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 Bfrmingham trade. The third was the only
one that married ; and, as he died in the prime of bfe,
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
bility of character ends. Berhaps, indeed, his care for

458 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 like. The ' terse, neat,
little, 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 life.
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
was ' not at all admired by those who did not estimate
him in a literary 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 Mr. 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 while
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 bis 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.] CHARACTER AND HABITS OF HURD. 459
While Hurd was at Thurcaston, he was more than once
visited by Warburton. On one occasion, after Warburton
had become a bishop, 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 all 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 cordiality.
" 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 will 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 bttle
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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXV.
his thoughts 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
like none so well as Twining's hyson at seventeen shillings
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 liveries.* 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 bking for stateliness 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 bfe, it is equally, if not more, conspicuous
u .. * Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 200.

1755.] HURD'S LITERARY CONCEIT.

461

in his hterary 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 supercilious 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 ' out
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.
X 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.
Alluding 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 scribbling
coxcomb.'* Briestley, as may be expected, is dubbed 'a
wretched coxcomb ;' this, he says, he knows, though he
has not been curious enough to read humf 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 ' superciliousness ' and ' self-complacency '
with which he allows himself to speak of many men of
eminence. Bobertson's ' History of America,' he tells Br.
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 little 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 infidelity,
are the portion of the rest.'|| Of Gibbon he says, in a
lordly strain, ' The author of the " History of the Decline,"
&c, appears to have possessed a considerable share of
sense, ingenuity, and knowledge of his subject, together with
great industry ;' | 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-
X lb. p. 115. § lb. p. 45. || Ib. pp. 132, 133.
i Ib. p. 250. ** Ib. p. 254.

1755.] PEDANTRY. 463
/3a(ri\.rjaQ iivit aro\x iyuv ayopevet,
Kcu (T(piy ovcifita . . . irpixpipei.
Of pedantry he might have been slow to accuse John
son,- being himself much more of a pedant. Towards
the close of his bfe, Mainwaring, Lady Margaret's pro
fessor of divinity, paid him a visit, and speaking, during
dinner, of some French people that he had seen passing
through Worcester, he called them ' emigrants.' Hurd
laid down his knife and fork, and exclaimed, w Have I
lived to hear the Lady Margaret's professor of Cam
bridge say emigrant ? ' The company were struck with
astonishment, and the professor replied, ' My lord, I am
certainly aware that the i in the Latin ernlgro 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 mlgro is always long, did
¦ the bishop always adhere to Latin quantities in his Eng
hsh, and always say senator, orator, executor, and always
speak of the indicative, imperative, infinitive moods ?
Another anecdote, or another version of the same anec
dote, in Johnstone's Memoirs of Barr,f makes the bishop
himself call the French fugitives emigrants.
The ' Dissertation on the Dehcacy of Friendship,' and
the ' Letter to Leland,' with Warburton's early ' Miscel
laneous Translations ' and ' Inquiry into Brodigies and
Miracles,' were republished, 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 Breface, gives
certain reasons for the proceeding ; but it is universally
* Cradock's ' Memoirs,' vol. iv. t p- 324-

464 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Warburton, 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 Warburton
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 unparalleled vigour of his native genius.' ' If the
bishop,' he adds in a note, ' imposed any prohibition' on
the republication 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 fight 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 liberty taken. The motives for the
republication of the two 'Tracts by a Warburtonian,'
the ' Delicacy 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 JORTIN. 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 them back to a
tribunal, from which they are supposed to shrink, I shall
endeavour to rescue them from the oblivion 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 Bhilip of Macedon, and the author
of " Bemarks 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 repubh
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.' %
To these reasons for the republication, other remarks in
its justification are added in a Breface :
'By the writer of these pamphlets, the characters of
two very learned and worthy men were attacked with
most unprovoked and unprecedented virulence. The
attempt to stifle them is, however, a very obscure and
equivocal mark of repentance in the offender. Bubhc
* Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 145.
| Lb. p. 162. X Ib- P- 165-
H H

466

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXV.

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 tran
quillity of their minds. Yet, while they were living, no
balm was poured into their 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 still 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 worst 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.

1755.] ON PARR'S HOSTILITY TO HURD. 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 meekness
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 pubbshed openly. It may
lessen, and certainly it is intended to lessen, the 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 Barr. 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. Bersonal reasons are out of the
question.' f Berhaps there may have been more incen
tives than one. Three or four occurrences are related,
from each of which may have arisen in Barr dislike or
ill feehng towards Hurd.
One account is, that when Barr 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 n 2

468 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Hurd's
character, appears not at all incredible ; and Mr. Kilvert
allows its probabibty. But Mr. Kilvert attempts, at the
same time, to apologise for Hurd's conduct, by observing
that, though it may well seem inexcusable to have re
ceived a man of Barr'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 Barr had placed himself in opposition to the
court, Hurd, who had received his appointments from the
sovereign, might have thought it reasonable to signify his
antagonism to Barr's pobtical views by affording him no
very warm reception.
Another story is, that when Barr, on the same occasion,
laid his papers before Hurd, Hurd objected to one of the
signatures. Barr, glowing with rage, took up the paper,
and exclaimed, ' That gentleman's name is as respectable
as your own, Dr. Hurd.' How they afterwards settled
the matter, the story does not tell.
By Dr. Watkins, in his ' Life of the Duke of York,' f
Barr's enmity to Hurd is attributed to his disappointment,
through Hurd's influence, of obtaining the post of sub-
preceptor to the Brinces, which, when Barr applied for
it, was given to Dr. Arnald. To something of this kind
Barr unmistakably alludes in his Dedication to Hurd.
Contrasting Warburton's character with that of Hurd, 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. | Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 156.

1755.] PARR'S LONG VERNACULAR SERMON. 469
Another cause of offence, which 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 bked it, Hurd replied he did
not much hke ' Dr. Barr's long vernacular sermon.'
He prints a sermon ; Hurd, with judging eye,
Reads, 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. Barr, and to long Latin annotations from Bhilip
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 ' Barr,' observes Dis-
raeh, '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 fife, 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 applied 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 be 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXV.
paragraphs not naturally following each other, and con
tain a strange mixture of vehement and exaggerated
praise and censure.
The following irony is very strong and significant :
' I am not apprehensive of any contradiction, even from
your lordship, when 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 your lordship's estimation, was in
the highest degree honourable. It was to deliver 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 public that Warburton was
an infallible reasoner, Leland a superficial trifler, and
Jortin a most dastardly, a most insidious, and a most ma
lignant calumniator.' *
One of the best paragraphs is that which 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 affectation, 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 famifiarity
which, without leading to perspicuity, borders upon 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 ¦i/rjyy.aroL xa) apaiw^ara*
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 invigorated by the full
and vivid representation which he sometimes holds up,
both of common and uncommon objects, while you, my
lord, contrive to cramp and to cripple them by all the
tedious formalities 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 by myself. 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 Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 149. X ^b- P- 1^2.
§ An expression from the Letter to Leland.

472 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 literary 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. Bouth, if he were desired to point out some
of the finest sentences in English prose, he would quote
Barr's Preface and Dedication of the Warburtonian
Tracts.^ And, indeed, with all their faults, their ver
bosity and ampulla?, 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. Kilvert blames Parr for attacking Hurd with such
virulence when he was sixty-nine years old, in delicate
health, and seeking 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
* Hurd's Comm. on Hor. A. P. ver. 404.
X Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 166.
X Johnstone's Life of Parr, p. 325.

1755.] PAMPHLET OF DR. LUCAS. 473
strife not belonging to them. But the truth is, that Hurd
was not so far sunk in imbecility 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 Barr, which appeared before the close of the
year in which the ' Tracts ' were published, entitled ' A
Letter to the Eev. Dr. Parr, occasioned by his Bepublica-
tion of the Tracts of Warburton,' &c, is not, it appears,
true, for he told Dr. Balguy that he had ' no degree of
guidance ab 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 Bipple, near
Tewkesbury, who had married one of Hurd's nieces.*
Before we conclude the record of the year 1755, we
ought to notice that, during the course of it, Baul Knap-
ton the publisher, whom Bope 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 affairs, till 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 apocryphal,
may, by my never contradicting them, in time become
Holy Writ, as the poet says.' *
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 196.

1756-1 BIRTH OF A SON.

475

CHAPTEK XXVI.
HUME. DR. JOHN TAYLOR.
WARBURTON'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 HURD  HUME'S CHARACTER
OF THE ' REMARKS '  WARBURTON'S GROSSNESS OF STYLE  UNFAIR
NESS OF HIS REASONING  HIS VISIT TO HURD'S MOTHER — DEDICA
TION OF THE SECOND PART OF ' THE DIVINE 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 the year 1756, was the birth of a son, the
only child he ever had, to whom he gave Mr. Allen'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 Allen with Bitt, whom he
* Prior's Life of Malone, p. 445.

476 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVI.
had assisted to become Member of Barliament for Bath, and
that of Bitt 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 Warburton, supposing it would be acceptable
to both on account of its nearness to Brior Bark. But ' if
it comes,' said Warburton, ' as Falstaff says of honour, it
comes unlooked 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 clay 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 tell.
But I am very indifferent of obligations from that quarter;
so I stay here with much tranquillity and unconcern,
instead of posting to his levee.' But nine days afterwards
he had the pleasure of hearing that Bitt 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 Mowing
Sunday. With this condition he complied. But, in
consequence of this irregularity, it has been questioned
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 154. f ^°- P- 25^,

1757.] hume's '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 published ' Bemarks 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 Hurd, '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 be 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 "Bhi-
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 Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 66.

478 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVI.
made various remarks in the margin, or, when 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 publication, 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 will give yourself the trouble, we may perhaps
between us do a little good, which I dare say we shall
both think will 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 will 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 will make no more than a pamphlet ;
but you shall take your own time, and make it your
summer's amusement, if you will. I propose it bear some
thing like this title : " Bemarks on Mr. Hume's late Essay
called ' The Natural History of Eeligion,' by a Gentleman
of Cambridge, in a Letter to the Eev. 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 Bhilosophy, 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 the 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 bis " Own
Life ; " in which he has thought fit to honour me with
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 ' Bemarks ' 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 WARBURTON. [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 unwilling
to hurl even on Tom Baine. It may seem strange that
Hurd, who was to give the pamphlet against Hume
' elegance of form and splendour of polish,' should have
left it full of the most offensive and rude phraseology
that can well be conceived, of which a very little trouble
would have cle'ared 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 Hurd's pubbshed compositions.
To Hume's philosophy we need pay no more attention
than we paid to Bolingbroke's, the one being as well
known as the other ; but we may, perhaps, not unreason
ably bestow a little attention on the phraseology in which
Warburton set himself to batter it. To give a notion of
the tone of affected superiority pervading the ' Bemarks,'
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.'* ' Our philosopher
and his gang, with their pedlar's ware.''}- ' Bunning his
usual philosophic courses from knavery to nonsense.' 'An
essay devoid of all manly sense, and even plausibility of
reasoning.'^ '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. | Ib. p. 344.
X 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 unex
amined, notwithstanding it looks so asquint both to the
right and left.'f ' This wretched man.'J ' His last
effort is to defend Ms 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 religious 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." Eor the fact
from which he deduces this proposition is this, that after
the commission of crimes, there arise remorses and secret
horrors, which make men have recourse to expiatory rites.
These remorses, by 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 Ib- P- 37°- § Ib- P- 376- II Ib- P- 3U-
I I

482 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 HI., is re
presented by Sir Joshua as trampling on certain demons
of infidelity, with faces greatly resembling those of Hume,
Gibbon, and Voltaire. But these authors have mot 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 literature does Hume
now hold than Warburton !
A more pleasing subject of contemplation presents
itself in the account of a journey 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 Hurd 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 Brovidence 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 bes 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.] HURD'S MOTHER. 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 replied, ' 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 hved in Bfrmingham. 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 know
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 tell 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 !b- P- 25°-
I I 2

484 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 filial piety in my
mind to be mistaken in thinking she is all you so kindly
conceive of her. My poor father was just such another :
the same simplicity 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 hue, 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 pubbshed 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
would 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. Warburton 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 rum, tfie loss of the bold of rehgion
on the minds of the people ; a state of things which had
its origin in the days of King William, 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 effectually, that they deprived her
in reality 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.
f Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 7.

1758.] DEDICATION TO LORD MANSFIELD. 485
rebel, whereas true pobcy 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 'Alliance,' 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 pobcy, 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 k 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, affixing on
the work the charge of being paradoxical, a charge, how
ever, which did not prevent them, or the public 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 belief of the
ancient lawgivers in the use of rehgion to society ; and, if
he expatiated on the Egyptian hieroglyphics, 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 little respect winch 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 WARBURTON. [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 hfe, 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
natural to think that, in general, they will chiefly be dis
posed to cultivate those qualities 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 calling 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
ing 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.] THE REV. JOSEPH JANE. 487
men more than the praise of God, when 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?) "lie very remote from what
enable men to figure " (in heaven, I am sure ; yea, or truly,
you say well) "in a successful defence of revelation."3
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 all 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, will, ' far from making
a King's Bench matter of this free-spoken, honest, friendly
letter,' thank the person who has ventured 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 libellers,
never yet called one to account in a court of justice.' He
then alludes to the different occupations of labourers in
the religious vineyard, 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVI.
' The general body of the clergy have been, and, I am
afraid, always will be, very intent 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 bfe, 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 qualities
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
how 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
obligingly,' and lamented that a severe illness disabled
him from expressing his feelings 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.] DR. JOHN TAYLOR. 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 communication to Hurd. ' One Mr. 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
lised that a minister of Christ should be supposed busied
in 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 in 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 assemblies 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
Warburton's Papers, pp. 164-177.
f Book ii. sect. 6.

490

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVI.

' Elements of Civil Law,' denied that such was the right
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 really said those words. Dr. Taylor, as
the story is told, answered that he did not remember
ever having 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
slightingly of Taylor's scholarship in a letter to Birch : ' I
have a very poor opinion both of Markland and Taylor's
critical abilities, 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 assemblies 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
Borne, 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 Ib. vol. ii. p. 96.

1758.] WARBURTON'S DISRESPECT TO TAYLOR. 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
philologic 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 strolling Bacchanals ; ' and that ' he seems much
better fitted, whether as critic or civilian, to manage the
intrigues of the Greek and Eoman alphabets than to de
velop the policy of empires or adjust the rights of civil
and religious societies.' And happening to say, rather
unluckily, ' Antiquity, in its civil capacity, was generally
indulgent to all who dissented from the established wor
ship,' 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 Borne, 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 Dehcacy 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 WARBURTON. [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
disabused 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 all, keep
me but the old preface in some shape or other, and I will
have no dispute with you about the place.' j
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 Cibber supplied the place of Tibbald, so shall
Taylor take place of Webster, though (I will tell you my
mind sincerely) I do not think 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 Warb. and a Warburtonian, p. 223.
X Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 213, 216.
X lb. p. 225.

1758.] REMARKS 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 pubbshed anonymously
a pamphlet, entitled ' Impartial Bemarks on Dr. Warbur
ton's Breface ; ' * but this was a weak performance, the
author having neither learning nor abibty 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 published 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 Continent, both in French
and Latin; but with more decency than here at home
in Billingsgate and English.' f His assailant in French
was Bouiller, who propounded objections against his
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
Divine 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.
1 Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 250.

494 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVT.
far from thinking myself unconcerned in this mischief;
for by a foobsh 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 Sabaeans
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 Billingsgate. Most of them were
professedly written against me, but all, in reahty, 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 delicious
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
still 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 Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 42.

1759.] ELEVATED TO THE BENCH. 495

CHAPTEE XXVII.
SERMONS. STERNE. LITERARY AFFAIRS.
WARBURTON MADE BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER ; BT 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 WAR
BURTON  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 Bope from the talons of Crousaz.'
Pope, filled with gratitude, introduced him to Murray,
who procured him the preachership of Lincoln's Bm, and
afterwards a prebend at Durham ; and to Allen, who,
having made Bitt, by bis 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 his consecration
sermon. In one passage of the sermon Warburton is thus
commended : ' When divines, eminent for literature, 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 useful arts.'

49G

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 willing
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 rehgion his trade, and the other
trade his religion. 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 hvely 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 hving 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.] WARBURTON AS A BISHOP. 497
to Warburton's merits, cannot forbear intimating some
regret that he was raised to that dignity. Mr. Bitt 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 abilities hke bis 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 Brovidence, now and then
in a course of ages, to correct, as Dr. Middleton observed,
the sentiments and manners of mankind. 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 bis 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 wished. 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVII.
On the 30th of January foUowing he was called upon to
preach before the House of Lords the customary sermon
on that anniversary. His sermon, in Hurd'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 I,
and told Hurd that there was scarcely a memoir or a
pamphlet pubbshed 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 line 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 policy 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 Buritanism was struggling
for toleration, but Charles, detesting the Buritans as the
enemies of prelacy ,.which he regarded, not like his father,
* Kurd's Life of Warburton, p. 73.

1760.] HIS CHARACTER 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 abke disposed to resist bis authority. He
attempted to govern without the help of parhaments, but,
being forced by circumstances to recur 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 Buritans, and out-fought the
cavaliers, overturned and desolated all before them in
their extreme haste to set up the fifth monarchy of Eing
Jesus.' The character which he draws of the king is one of his
best literary 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 high
station) were so excessive as to render him a slave to all
his kin ; 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 bis more ignorant ministers,
and his courage to the irresolution of his less adventurous
generals. ' In a word, his princely quahties were neither great

500

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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
Mm), 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 be, nor to
be 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 blind corner.' f
c I shall be obliged,' he writes to Hurd, in February,
' to print my 30 th 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 replies,
' 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.' \
In the early part of this year a rumour was spread that
Sterne, who had, in the preceding year, published the first
two volumes of his ' Tristram Shandy,' and, shortly after
wards, two 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 bke a cut across
* Warburton's Works, vol. x. p. 30 ; Serm. xix.
X Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 302. f Ib. pp. 300, 303.

1760.] REPORT CONCERNING STERNE. 501
my finger with 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 healing 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
pain 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 little 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 misappbed science in the Christian
world, to make a tutor of for my Tristram? Ex quovis
ligno non fit. 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 feeling for the figure he is to make in story,
that I should choose a preceptor to rob him of ah the im
mortality I intended him ? Oh ! dear Mr. Garrick, mahce
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 WARBURTON. [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. Bray 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 shown the world I owe
so great a man.
' Whilst I am talking of owing, I wish, my dear sir,
anybody would tell 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. Sterne.'
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 obliged 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
ing letter, in which Warburton acknowledges the receipt

1760.] LETTER FROM WARBURTON 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. Eilvert, ' 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.' 1 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 all 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 pubbc is
sure to be annoyed by that pest of the public, 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. Whoever was the author, he appears to be
a monster of impiety and lewdness. Yet, such is the
malignity of the scribblers, some have given them to
your friend Hall ; 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 ligfit. But
this might arise from a tale, equally groundless and ma
lignant, 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 bkefiest means of dis
crediting the calumny.
' About this time another, under the mask of friend-

504 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVII.
ship, pretended to draw your character, which was first
published in a Female Magazine (for Dulness, 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),sna.d from thence it was transferred into a Chronicle.
Bray 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 public 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 follies 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 honour 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 will
give no offence to any mortal by anything which I think
can look like 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 STERNE 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 fight, 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 rebef 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 wretcfies
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, cuffs, and bastinadoes I openly get on all
sides of me, are beginning to make me sick of this foohsh

506 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVII.
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 Banza did of his in follow
ing his evil genius of a Don Quixote through thick and
thin ; but as the poor fellow apologised for it, so must I :
" It was my ill 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 2001. 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 in 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 all 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. Sterne.'
The correspondence terminated with the following
rejoinder from the bishop :
' Prior Park, June 26, 1760.
' Eev. Sir, — I have the favour of your obliging letter of
the 19th. It gives me real pleasure (and I could not but
trouble you with these two or three fines to tell you so)
that you are resolved to do justice to your genius, and to

1760.] WARBURTON'S OPINION OF STERNE. 507
borrow no aids to support it, but what are of the party
of honour, virtue, and rehgion.
' 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 pubbshed his fifth and sixth volumes in
1761, Warburton spoke of him, in a letter to Hurd, thus :
'Sterne has pubbshed 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 pubbc, 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.
f Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 335.

508 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVII.
afterwards quarrefied, 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,
entitling 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 published a tract, from
which Warburton took the title of his sermon, called
' A Blain 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 Bapists, 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 Brotestants
consider them only as representing. Between these ex
tremes, Warburton takes a middle position ; maintaining
that the ceremony of the Eucharist, like 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 sbghted 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. Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 204.

1761.] SERMON 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 kind, 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, this 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 demobshed both
Hoadly and Bossuet ; for
'Tis the same rope at either end they twist.
The archbishop did not say this, but Mr. Bope. How
ever, the archbishop says, what you are hkely enough to
say after him, that the people, for whom I intend this
edition, are not likely to profit much by iff
Mr. Nichols, dipping into the manuscripts of the Eev.
John Jones, whom we have previously noticed as curate
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.
X Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 319.

510 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 Bight Beverend went out, to the
surprise 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.

1761.] 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 generafity of his clergy
likely to prove careless or refractory, for the efficiency of
all ' will 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 literary subjects. Dr. Joseph
Warton, by some remarks about Bope 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 Bope,' as to the ground
lessness and futility of many of Warburton's annotations.
The booksellers, contemplating a new edition of ' Bope,'
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 repbes, ' will determine me to strike out the
note ; the reasons you give have sufficient weight.' J
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.
X Letters from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 335, 339.

512 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVH.
Browne Willis, in his ' Anecdotes of Fainting.' * He
accordingly wrote to Garrick,f 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 Halifax of
Bowe — I mean the gallipots and washes of his toilet ; for
I know he has a fribble-tutor at his elbow as sicklied o'er
with affectation as himself Garrick in 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 Bainting," and that he intended to abuse
me in the new edition of Mr. Bope'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
Bhcenicians ; but having read very few of his works, it
was impossible for me to teb where to find it. As I would
not disoblige even a coxcomb unprovoked, and know how
silly a literary controversy is, in which the world only
laughs at both sides, I desired Dr. Charles Lyttelton,
Bishop of Carlisle, 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 believe it possible that
* Vol. i. pp. 106, 107. f Feb. 17, 1762. % April 22, 1762.

1761.] ASSISTS RUFFHEAD.

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 fines, 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 inchned to comply with their solicitations.
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 Buffhead, whose book, after ab
the aid that it received, gave ample cause for Johnson's
remark that the writer ' knew nothing of Bope 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 Buffhead,
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. hariii.,
Cunningham's edition. L L

514 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVII.
any of their kind gibbeted or nailed up as terrible examples.'
A coarse simile, which Warburton has used elsewhere.
But if he did not write the Life of Bope, he compounded
an inscription for a monument to him, which, during this
year, seventeen years after Bope's death, the Bishop of
Gloucester thought proper to attach to the wall of Twick
enham Church. The inscription, beneath a medallion
portrait of the poet, is this :
Alexandro Pope
M.H.
Gulielmus Episcopus Glocestriensis
Amicitire 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 want of judgment, and of what was due
to his friend's memory, to select for his monument these
fight 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
himself had signified in his will a desire that nothing should
be written over him but a single fine recording the time
of his death, subjoined to the following inscription winch
he had put up to his parents :
D. o. M.
Alexandro Pope, viro innocuo, probro, pio,
Qui vixit annos lxxv. ob. mdcc xvii.
Et Edithse conjugi inculpabili, pientissima?,
Quas vixit annos xciii. ob. m dcc xxxiii.
Parentibus bene merentibus Filius fecit.

1761.] HIS MONUMENT TO POPE. 515
The hne 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 Bope, the one being on the north wall,
and the other on the east.

516 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
'DOCTRINE OF GRACE.' WESLEY AND WHITFIELD.
PUBLICATION 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 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 pubhcation 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
inspiration 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 Eeligion against the Attacks
of either Barty.'
Warburton had previously published a sermon on the

l762-l 'THE DOCTRINE 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
folly, 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 clay of Bentecost, 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 qualification, 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 Blato and the elo
quence of Cicero.'
That the gift of tongues was merely temporary, War
burton stoutly denies, because St. Baul 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVIH.
But, as to the other 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 maintain its
inspiration suppose that the several writers of it were
inspired, 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 fives, it is improbable that they were left unaided in
writing what was to remain permanent after their deaths.
What sort of aid, then, did they experience ! How were
they inspired? 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 then
own knowledge ; secondly, if it had been afforded, there
must have been the most perfect agreement among the
four evangelists, 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 particulars which were necessary for the instruction
of the Church, and which, from ignorance or incapacity,
they would have represented imperfectly, partially, or

1762.] MIDDLETON ON INSPIRATION. 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. Beter,
speaking of the Epistles of St. Baul, expresses himself in
very temperate phrase concerning their inspiration : He
hath written to you according to the wisdom given unto him.
And St. Baul himself, on one occasion, speaks with doubt
of his own inspiration ; he first gives his own judgment,
and then adds, and I 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 ? While all we
want to know is, that every sentence of Scripture, which
but remotely concerns either faith or practice, is infallibly
true, it is of little consequence to us to be instructed how
or in what manner that truth came to be secured ; whether
by direct inspiration, or by that virtual superintendence
of the Spirit, which preserved the writers of it from error.
Scripture 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 delivery of the truths,
he adds, does not affect the origin of the truths th em-
selves, f
After thus settling the question as to the degree in
* Doctrine of Grace, b. i. c. 6, 7. f Ib- °- 7-

520 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVHI.
which 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
apostolic 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 hberal and pobte ; it being utterly
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 then
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 ELOQUENCE. 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 tongue, 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 Bente-
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 qualities 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
hyperbolic, abrupt, and puerile, to the more phlegmatic
inhabitants of Borne 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, implies 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII.
there 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 ! aU as much decried by a different genus, and
each as much disliked 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 all ? Doubtless there are. Why
then should not these have been employed in the apostolic
language? Because eloquence 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 feelings
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.
Breaching was not to be with enticing words. Clearness
* Doctrine of Grace, b. i. c. 9.

1762.] THE METHODISTS. 523
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 subhme 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 Whitfield had long
been objects of attention to Warburton. He had been a
diligent 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 dehciously 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
religion if this humour would lay hold generally of our
over-heated bigots, and send them to cool themselves in

524 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVLTI.
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, like the Bagan priests of Hercules of old :
Jamque sacerdotes, primusque Potitius, ibant,
Pellibus in morem cincti, 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, travelling
into this neighbourhood (that of Brant-Broughton) on
foot, took up their lodging with a clergyman of their
acquaintance. The master of the house going into their
chamber in the morning to salute them, perceived ' a
certain vessel ' full of blood, and on asking the occasion,
was told it was their method, when the blood grew
rebellious, 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 Collier, 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 more 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 all were set on flame
with unreasoning enthusiasm.
This design he now partly executed, but confined his at
tention chiefly to the Journals of Wesley and the accounts
* Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. p. 65. f Ib. 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 Bule of Faith were in being, or as if it were
so imperfect as to require new 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
religious world from the journals of modern fanatics, we
should be tempted still to think ourselves in a land of
Bagans, 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 inclined 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII.

intreated, 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 Berfection '
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 the 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 Bantheism, and whose practice was exempt from all
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 impurity, 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
Bantheism. Mr. Wesley, though he does not adopt this
doctrine, yet is so deeply infected with the folly 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 quabty by which it
was distinguished from the various forms of Bagan
worship, arising from the raptures of their prophets or the
superstition of their priests. There is httle wonder, then,
that such a man, who discards reason from religion, should

1762.] JOHN WESLEY'S EXTRAVAGANCES. 527
admit the reahty of the miracles said to have been
wrought at the tomb of the Abbe Baris, since, in his
opinion, errors in faith can offer no impediment 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 illiterate
among his followers. - He had made,' says Warburton,
' a proselyte of Mr. D-  , vicar of B  . And to show
he was no discredit to bis 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 phsenomenon : " 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 religion, 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
and 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII.
they were harmless as doves, wise 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
practice. ' God dehver me,' he says, ' and all that seek
Him in sincerity, from what the world calls 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 world 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 Boman satirist pretended,' says
Warburton, following the corrupt reading,
 ' nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia,'
Where prudence governs, no God is wanting to keep the
world in order. We may say, with more sobriety and
truth, that when imprudence 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 established
discipline, by invading the province of the parochial min
ister ; by assembling 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 of fanaticism, as fanaticism is
.the bane of peace. Sectaries must either kick or be
kicked. They must either persecute, or they must pro
voke persecution. To be in this turbulent state is hving
in their proper element. '*
' The next mark of celestial wisdom,' proceeds War-
* Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 9.

1762.] Wesley's extravagances. 529
burton, ' is its being gentle and, easy to be 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 Mr. Wesley's gentleness we
have examples in the titles which he bestows upon Ms
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
replied, 'We believe it much better to discourse out of
the newspapers than to chatter about holy things to no
purpose.' Wesley rejoined, ' Berhaps 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!
'Nay,' 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
him 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 fit 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. Bart of
Sunday my brother and I then used to spend in walking
in the meadows and singing Bsalms. But one day, just as
we were beginning to sing, he burst out into a loud laughter.
M M

530 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 line." '*
Warburton concludes his remarks on this head with
some very happy similes, illustrating the difference of
spirit apparent in St. Baul and Mr. Wesley. ' The genial
Spirit of God,' operating in St. Baul, ' 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 quality is, that it is full of mercy and good fruits.
What mercy, then, is in Methodism, may be seen by its
readiness 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, c 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 serm,on against the Methodists! Of certain persons
* Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 4, 10.

1762.] WESLEY'S NOTION OF TRUE RELIGION. 531
who 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 them had been for some
days in strong pain, and had many times sent to desire
our prayers. A third came to me himself, and confessed
he was hired that night, and made drunk on puipose ;
but when be came to the door, he knew not what was the
matter, he could 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 journals 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 all of these
three things, the living harmless, using the means of grace,
and doing much good ; a man may do all 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) and 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,hu.t using 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 will 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 arid reigning in
the soul, soon makes way for a happier madness; the
M M 2

532 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII.
jaws of hell begin to close, the gates of heaven to open.
But what the overlaboured imagination suffered 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 all 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 fire 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 httle 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,
insomuch 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,
Beter Shaw, then nineteen or twenty years old, by hear
ing a sermon of Mr. Wh — 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. Wh — 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." Who this Mr. Wh — 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVIII.
The last qualities specified in the wisdom from above
are, that it is without partiality 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 Brovidence to attain some great end, for the
sake of which he was sent out. This makes him diligent
in his work ; impatient under any let or obstruction, and
attentive to every method for removing it. Bersuaded
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 morabty ; which, in the cant of those times when
fanaticism had its full play, was called the being above
ordinances. In the first application 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. Bartiality may be
regarded as the assumption of too much to ourselves,
* Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 12.

1762.] WESLEY'S FANCIES. 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 when he pretends that a miracle is wrought in
his favour, 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 abounds. 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 malice
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. Hobhn 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 WARBURTON. [Cn. XXVHI.
these his two persecutors, to everlasting infamy; while,
by the most unregenerate mahce in the world, he dips
his curses in the gall 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, 'H 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 abomination 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 hnes 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 written 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
be absolutely above conviction, he asked Mr. G. to meet
* Doctrine of Grace, b. ii. c. 10.

1762.] WESLEY'S ALLEGED HYPOCRISY. 537
him half way, offering never to preach pubhcly 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, in Georgia,
he had the finest opportunity of submitting to be buffeted,
he retired 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. Williamson, 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 wrong was. Mr. Wesley
declined, alleging that many ill consequences might arise
from such declaration. 'What 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXVLTI.
marriage to her, and been as frequently rejected. The
grand jury declared that he ought to be tried, not only
for repelling 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
public 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 found 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 judicious conciliation and correct example.
' This discourse,' says Hurd, ' will, hke Bascal'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 OF ' THE DOCTRINE OF GRACE.' 539
immortality in this discourse.' This prophecy is rather
too confident ; but 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX.

CHAPTER XXIX.
DR. THOMAS LELAND. WILKES.
Wesley's reply to warburton ; its temperance — the rev. 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
observations on eloquence  hurd's uncourteous reply to
leland — a broken arm  wilkes's 'essay on woman'  warbur
ton's speech on it in the house of lords  wilkes's duel —
a second speech of warburton's  displays little eloquence.
THE work drew pamphlets, in answer, from both
Wesley and Whitfield, as well 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
Bapists,' 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 feeling 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
preaching 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 Brovidence 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 in 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 Spirit.
In doing this, I have used great plainness of speech, and
yet, I hope, without rudeness. H anything of that kind
has slipped from me, I desire to retract it. I desire, on
* A Letter to the Right Rev. 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 whom 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 be more serious. [Warbur
ton had said, in the Breface to the " Doctrine of Grace,"
that " to employ buffoonery in the service of rehgion 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
fain 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.

1763.] THE REV. JOHN ANDREWS.

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 warlike front to Warburton.
Before the pubhcation of this volume, Mr. Andrews
had given offence to Warburton 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.
Bnless I have satisfaction on these two particulars,
more especially tfie former, I shall revoke your licence by
process in 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 Batron,
L W. Gloucester.'
Mr. Andrews replied to this letter by saying, as to the

544 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 delicate fiealth, to officiate at Stincficombe
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 Eent.
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 Bayne, 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
discourses 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 all to refute his arguments. To confute Law's
arguments indeed, if arguments they could be called,
Warburton was very wise 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.

1763.] DR. LELAND ON ELOQUENCE. 545
Warburton'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 Johnson
thought of his reasoning, whatever Gibbon, to whose
father he had been tutor, says of his scholarship and
ability, 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 subhme. 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, relieving 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 OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 sublime,
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 subhmity, 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 inspiration of the Apostolic
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 quality, which, even in the ordinary affairs 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 Brincipia, 'not in
his own neat Latinity,' but in a style less correct and
accurate, what should we think of the man who, though
* Leland's Dissertation, p. 43.

1763.] HUED'S SARCASTIC 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 disliked 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
lists 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 willing 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 writer of
such distinguished eminence as Warburton. Hurd's
pamphlet, which Barr republished, we have occasion to
notice elsewhere.
* Leland's Dissertation, pp. 41, 42, 50, 68, 76, 89, 92, 93, 98.
u n 2

548 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX.
During this year Warburton had a shght illness, caus
ing some alarm at Brior Bark ; 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 intention 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 all 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 Barhament assembled.
Lord Halifax 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.
•j- Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 266, 267.
X Nichols's Lit. Illustr. vol. ii. pp. 56-58, 143 ; Letters from an
Eminent Prelate, pp. 340-347.
§ Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 346.

1763.] WILKES'S SLANDERS.

549

about a week after he had come to town for the purpose,
Lord Sandwich came to him from Lord Halifax, to show
him Wilkes's parodies on Bope's ' Universal Brayer,' on
the Veni Creator, and above all, on Bope's 'Essay on
Man,' which was travestied into an Essay on Woman,
accompanied with ' Notes and a Commentary,' in the form
of those on Bope's works, and professedly written 'by
Br. Warburton. ' Lord Sandwich desired to know whether
he would wish to have Wilkes prosecuted for a breach of
privilege. Warburton replied that, though he was dia-
bofically treated, in fiaving 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
his 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 well arranged, and brought forward in
a very full house. Lord Sandwich (who was himself, it
may be observed, no example of morality, and had parti
cipated in the orgies of Medmenham 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, affecting 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 delivered 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 culpd, 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 public and private fife, have appeared not unwil
ling, as opportunity offered, to soften the edge of justice
on this occasion. Their arguments I shall leave with all
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 religion, 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
mixture 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 mankind, 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 know that it was wrested from the
Crown by a factious, turbulent, 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 Borne overturned on the virtuous prin
ciple, the vindication of the rights of mankind ? Do we
not all know 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 till pure
virtue set reformers on work, we must wait for the return
of that Blatonic 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
fell 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 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX.
' 2. Again, Servetus had, unhappily, entertained some
theologic 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 think 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 httle State of Geneva, but
in every country on the globe (where a God and Brovi
dence is confessed), from Calais to Japan. And this is all
the likeness 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 will 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. In this my private resentments had no share.
Yet for this I have been further calumniated and outraged
in the most villanous and diabolic manner.
' As to enemies of a better rank (if this prosecution has
raised up any such against me), virtue whispers me, tu
contra audentior ito ; and as to the natural movements to

1763.] PROCEEDINGS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 553
revenge and vengeance for the calumnies and villanies of
cut-throat libellers, I offer- them all up at the sacred shrine
of rehgion.'
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 Barliament 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 tfie
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 be 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
delight) ; 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,
till 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 wretch, therefore, as Warburton calls
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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX.
it would be regular to vote till Wilkes had been heard 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 Barliament, 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
chaUenged him to fight on the following morning. When
they met, Wilkes was so severely wounded as to be incap
able of appearing in Barliament. 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 the debates in the
House of Commons, when No. 45 of the 'North Briton'
was voted a seditious libel, a vote in which the House of
Lords concurred, Bitt, 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 fife and health which Brovidence has
been graciously pleased to bestow upon me have been all
employed (and, I hope, neither unfruitfully nor inglo-
* Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 224-232.

1763.] SECOND SPEECH AGAINST WILKES. 555
riously) in the service of rehgion ; in defending revelation,
and the Established Church of this land, against the rude
attacks of ribald writers of aU denominations, atheists,
deists, libertines, free-thinkers, bigots, and fanatics, and,
what is the accumulation of all that is execrable in one,
pohtical scribblers of aU 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 bfe (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 apphed
to pubhc 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 rehgion ; 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 misappbed in support of
religion 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 nature.
' 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX.
still find himself infinitely short of the 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 inhabitant 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
Atterbury in the new Bishop of Gloucester. But all such
were egregiously mistaken. Alas ! he had neither talents
nor inclination for parliamentary intrigue or parliamentary
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 Cumberland, 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 Boyal Highness shall hear me speak
* Kilvert's Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 281.
X Hurd'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 like 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 Militia. ' 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.'\ 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 WARBURTON. [Cb. 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 quality to
his verses ; and when Wilkes, as he well deserved, was
reprobated by Warburton in the House of Lords, Churchill
was ready to lift his pen in his defence. To this end he
produced the vehement and coarse satire on Warburton
in the third book of the ' Duefiist,' which I have no inten
tion to transfer from Churchill's pages to these. Churchill
was a powerful satirist, but so ready to satirise everybody,
and so unwilbng 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 this 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 frustrate 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,
Who once, like Satan, raised to heaven her sight,
But turn'd abhorrent from 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 in
the House of Lords, a part ' which,' he says, ' was only
ridiculous,' and ' was heightened,' he adds, ' by its being
known that Botter, his wife's gallant, had had the chief
hand in the composition of the verses.' *
There was indeed a report that Thomas Botter, the
profligate member of Barliament, son of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, an intimate associate of Wilkes, and a fre
quent visitor at Brior Bark,f had paid extraordinary atten-
* Walpole's Letters, i. 312.
X Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vol. iv. p>. 41.

560 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXIX.
tion to Mrs. Warburton ; and scandal went even so far as
to insinuate that Balph Allen Warburton, her only child,
was the son, not of the Bishop, but of Botter.* Mr.
Cradock, who knew Mrs. Warburton weU, and wcs 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 frivolity, 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 peculiar satisfaction,' both during
his bfe and after his death,' in recounting his many ex
cellences.' f
That Botter had some concern in the composition of the
' Essay on Woman,' may be inferred from the hne 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 Botter was the author of the whole, and that Wilkes
was guilty only of the printing. J But Wilkes himself
seems to have shown no anxiety to clear himself of the
authorship, and none need be sohcitous to do for him
what he cared not to do for himself. J£ 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.
X Cradock's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. i. p. 188; iv. p. 205.
X Notes and Queries, 2nd S. vol. iv. pp. 1, 21, 41 ; v. 77.

1764.] DEATH OF ALLEN. 561

CHAPTER XXX.
CONTROVERSY WITH LOWTH.
death op ralph allen  his bequests to warburton  war-
bueton'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
warburton and lowth  lowth's long letter to warburton;
extracts from it  difference in early education between
warburton and lowth  whitaker  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, Balph 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 will 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 fife 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.
0 O

562 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX.
purposes of charity. To Warburton and his wife he
bequeathed b,000l. each ; and the reversion of Erior Bark
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
Hebrosorum, 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 Israelites ;
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
being 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.] LOWTH'S FIRST DISPUTE WITH WARBURTON. 563
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 litigious 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 tell you how highly I shall
prize it ; your friend, the author of the " Dissertation on
the Delicacy 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 little
effect in propitiating Warburton. He persisted in point
ing out passages which he says must have been intended
o o 2

564 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX.
against him. One of these is as follows : Hoc autem ut
concedamus, vix erit satis ; sunt qui majus quiddam pos-
tulare videntur. Loquuntur enim de rerum constitutione,
de catastrophe dramatis, &ehv o\ir6 fji^aurjg induci dicunt —
iisdem certe vocibus 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 vocibus utuntur! Lowth, in
his reply, refers Warburton to a passage of Calmet's ' Bre
face sur Job,' in which exactly the same expression is used:
' II s'est trouve plusieurs ecrivains qui ont doute de la
verite de l'histoire qu'il contient. lis traitent de paraboles
et d' allegories tout ce qui y est raconte. Hs veulent que
Job, «&c, soient de noms feints et empruntes ; que tout ce
recit soit fait a 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 a une tragedie ? ' ' 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 his situation. But no man need be afraid of him
he has not injured. And I am very ready to believe 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 exphcitly, 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 pubbshed 'Commentaries on the Brophets,' and
other theological works, had written also 'Notes on
Josephus and the Ecclesiastical Historians,' of which
Beading had copied some into his edition. 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 Marcelfinus. Against this charge
Lowth strongly remonstrated, and remarked also that, as
his father had previously applied 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 rephed that he had never had
the least suspicion that the Lowth who had written the
' Notes on the Ecclesiastical Historians,' was Dr. Lowth's

5C6

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 in 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 " Juhan," 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 delicate. I will venture to boast
that I beheve no author was ever more averse to take to
himself what belonged to another.' ' To your filial 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,
till he had first defended fiimself ; that in those portions
of his ' Lectures ' which had given offence to Warburton,
he would, though they were written, as he could prove,
before ' Julian ' was published, 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 was
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 CRITICISM 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, pubbshed 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 famihes and imder 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 all 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 all 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 preelection ;' 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 public 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 Boling
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 anonymous 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
peculiar 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 Breface to the
second part of ' The Divine Legation,' pubbshed 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 WARBURTON. [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 delighted, Lowth did
not fail to turn to good account. 'After all, 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 cordd 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 beheve, when it ascribed the Breface to you),
and while httle 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 s.ervices, some time since, preferred to the honour
able office of being your literary scavenger ; whose
patent stands upon record at the end of the second
Breface to the second part of "The Divine Legation."
I applaud your choice ; you could not easily have found

1765.] SPECIMENS OF 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 all 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.'
La 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 Dominic; exacting their
opinions to the standard of your infallibility, 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 civility 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 fiis 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
scuffle ; 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 pubhc road, without
being liable to meet, at any time, a sturdy bravo to
dispute their passage ; that Warburton, in quality
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
Baramount 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.] WARBURTON'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 ' Dehcacy 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 Bope, at Oxford, ventured, in his
Appendix, to speak thus disrespectfully of the University,
and of one whom it regarded among its greatest ornaments :
' The learned Brofessor 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.'
£ Bray, 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?. . . Tohavemadeaproper
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

574 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX.
that this inquisition concerning my education is quite
beside the purpose. Had I not your Lordship's example
to justify me, I should think it a piece of extreme imper
tinence to enquire where YOU were bred; though one
might justly plead in excuse for it a natural curiosity to
know where and how. such a phenomenon was produced.
It is commonly said that your Lordship's education was
of that particular kind concerning which it is a remark of
that great judge of men and manners, Lord Clarendon,
(on whom you have therefore with a wonderful happiness
of allusion, justness of 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, inclines 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 all 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 all claim to such
merit. On the contrary, it is well 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.
X 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 aU 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 liberal 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
Chilfingworths, 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 hberal
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 reproacfi 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 this 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 WARBURTON. [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 affirm
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 Bentateuch.* .... 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 Comrnentatorship, 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 praslections 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 little better, and
* Lowth's Letter to Warburton, p. 74. + lb. p. 89.

1765.] JOHNSON'S REMARK 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 demolished 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 applications
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 IU., 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 all 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
publish 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 wasi
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. f Ib. 1773.
P P

578 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX.
written in 1756, an act of which Warburton affected to com
plain. ' The strangest thing of aB,' says he, ' is this man's
publishing my letters without my leave or knowledge.
... Is not this universally esteemed dishonourable con
duct, to publish 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 knows,
and I also, (as a certain critic said once in a matter of the
like great importance,) are much below the quahties 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
public diversion, as ever was made with him in the old
Morahties.'f The majority of the pubhc, 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 from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 369, 371. \ Ibid.

1765.] HURD'S DEPRECIATION OF LOWTH. 579
estabhshed 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 his controversial writings, he could not well help.
For it may, I beheve, be as truly said of him 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 chiefly on his Hebrew literature, as dis
played in those two works, his Latin Lectures on Hebrew
Boetry, and his Enghsh Version of the Brophet Isaiah.
The former is well and elegantly composed, but in a vein
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 important that has
been undertaken and accomplished since the revival of
letters,) and from a new translation of the Bible for public
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 likely 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. 79.
p p 2

580 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX.
and the sarcastic touch 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 Beviewers, it may be worth while to add,
were delighted with Lowth's pamphlet. ' When a person
of gentle and amiable manners, of unblemished character,
and eminent abilities, 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 republican in literature, will 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 Review, vol. vii. p. 386.
X Monthly Review, vol. xxxiii. p. 388.

^65.] PAMPHLETS AGAINST HURD.

581

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 life and studies had not qualified him
to decide on such a work as that of " The Divine Lega-
tion." Even in the narrow walk of literature 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. Balph Churton, Archdeacon of Oxford, and
another, in 1797, by the Eev. Thomas Wintle, Bector of
Brightwell, who had been Fellow of Bembroke College,
Oxford. Archdeacon Churton asks, very pertinently, ' If
Seeker, Hebrew scholar as he was, was unqualified to
judge of Warburton's "Divine Legation," how could
Hurd, who was no Hebrew scholar, think himself so
well qualified 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 disqualified 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 fiis 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXX.
perspicacity. Bishop Borteus, 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 publication, in connexion with the dis
pute, that need be noticed, is one of Cumberland's,
addressed to Lowth, in vindication of the literary cha
racter of his grandfather, Dr. Bentley. Warburton had
spoken of ' the incomparable Bentley, 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 V 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
father against Warburton, and suppose that no relative
of Bentley would rise in his defence against himself ?
Cumberland, before he wrote his pamphlet, applied
to his uncle, Bichard 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
* Cumberland's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 456 ; Letter to the Rt. Rev, the
Lord Bp. of O  d.

1765.] LOWTH AND CUMBERLAND. 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXI.

CHAPTEK XXXI.
STUKELEY. BIRCH. BROWN. SERMONS AND CHARGES.
DEATH OF DR. STUKELEY ; 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 public only as an
antiquary, but distinguished in private bfe, 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
Bhysicians, 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, BIRCH, 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.
Birch, 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 little known,
of ' Barbarossa ' and ' Athelstan,' and of the ' Estimate
of the Manners and Brinciples of the Times,' a book
which made a noise in its day, by telling the nation, in
an imposing and dictatorial tone, that the nobility were
universally corrupted by luxury ; and which, being pub
lished 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 Eent,
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 358.
X Nichols's Lit. 111. vol. ii. pp. 827, 845, 851.

586 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 him, 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 politely 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 quarrel 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 Balph, 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.
X Davies's Life of Garrick, vol. i. p. 242.

1766.] PLAN OF ' THE DIVINE LEGATION.'

587

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
thinkers,' reflecting on Akenside and Lord Eames ; 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 shrunk from the work disheartened and
disgusted. The plan of 'The Divine Legation' required three
books in addition to the six already pubbshed, in order,
as the author said, ' to remove afi 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 lasf 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 young 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXI.
/ given in his six books, there is Httle wonder that some of
( the clergy should have thought the work unnecessary,
j and that others should have found other grounds of ob-
I 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
suffered 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 pubbshed volumes of ' The Divine Legation '
be so weak or so mischievous as they suppose, I will 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
trine 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 in
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 ' iminor-
* 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
Baradise, he was placed under the revealed will of God,
and received the free gift of immortality ; and when he
transgressed God's command in Baradise, he became again
mortal, having violated the condition on which immor
tality was given him, and was expelled from Baradise,
lest, by eating of the tree of bfe, 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
light of natural reason, Cain and Abel, the first that
offered sacrifice, being wholly under the government
of natural rehgion ; and ' besides, the defects of language,
in its early rudiments, necessarily occasioned this mode
of intercourse between man and his Maker.' f
It is no wonder that in what he thus produced 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 believed) that St. Baul 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.
f Ib. p. 279.

590, LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Divine 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. Eeter'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, especially 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 maintains, 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 follows 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 1767 he pubbshed a third volume of Sermons, dedi
cated, in a very quiet style, to Lady Mansfield. The first
and second volumes had been published 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 Eropagation 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 fife
prebminary and instrumental to the introduction of reli
gious doctrines, and commends them as an example to all
who would propagate the Christian religion with success.
* Towne'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 religion, 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 Eropagation 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. Tfie Lord Mayor told me that "the Common
Council were much obhged 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 rehgion 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 dullest 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. 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 Lordship 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 fiis 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 sublime,
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 CHARGE.

593

The ' celebrated Triennial Charge ' was one dehvered
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
plicity of old times, when the clergy first met their bishop,
it was thought incumbent on him to give them some
intimation how he was hfted 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 be 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
QQ

594 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXI.
himself in mathematical investigations will disqualify
himself for considering the moral evidence on which the
interests of his clients 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 ka 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 Bope.
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 cipwd
in upon you from all quarters. And, just as on man's
entrance into bfe, 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.
Baul's Churchyard, open wide their hospitable arms to
receive you to their daily, their weekly, and their monthly
lectures. What shining collections of pohte literature,
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 hes 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, oux
alo-Qofiivcav rr\g socutcvv apot.6{ag, 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 worthy 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
Stultitia 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 a 2

596 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 rehgion ;' 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 little acquainted with the subject
under discussion, ' would be like breaking a butterfly upon
a wheel I' %
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 ventured 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 I, there
would be room for all honest men." This brought the
man to himself. When the Eing 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 from an Eminent Prelate, pp. 375, 376.
X Selections from Warburton's Papers, p. 347.
X Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 105.

1167.1 TOUP'S ' EPISTOLA CRlTICA.' 597
House in which I could be of service to His Majesty.
He repbed, 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. | In the following
summer he complained again of fever and rheumatism,
and was obhged to decline 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, published
his Episiola Critica ad Celeberrimum 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 opuscufi est, tibi consecratum esse
volumus, prasstantissime Warburtone, prassul doctissime ;
nam et nostra hbenter legis, et hasc ^(n^pia. optime
intelligis ; quippe qui utrasque bteras, turn sacras, turn
profanas, ita conjunxisti, ut uberrimos fructus inde retu-
leris. Quod omnes norunt, qui tua scripta norunt; k
quibus nunquam profectd nisi doctiores discedimus :
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 392.
f lb. p. 406. X Ib- P- 413- § Ib- P- 434-

598 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXI.
Tola yap apfjuv 'i<pr]vaQ, & r ov irapoQ avtptq \ojizr,
'Apcj>i re aQavarovQ, a/i^i re fifxidtovg.'
And thus at the conclusion :
' Sed tandem jam desino. Neque enim diutius tua
tempora morabor, prassul eruditissime. Berge vero, ut
facis, de hteris, de ecclesia, de republica, optime mereri.
Bumpantur Codri, Bavfi, Masvii. 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 his 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 Eeppel, 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. lv. p. 185.

1768.] LECTURE AT LINCOLN'S INN. 599

CHAPTEK XXXII.
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 WILL 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 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 5007. in the four per
cent, annuities, for the foundation of a lecture, in the
form of a course of sermons, at Lincoln's Inn, for the
purpose of ' proving the 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 Bapal Borne.' The money was given
in trust to Lord Mansfield, Sir Eardley Wilmot, and Mr.
Charles Yorke. 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXII.
for the lecturer was too much 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 prophecies at large ; that, being limited
to the prophecies relating to the Christian Church, espe
cially to the apostasy of Bapal Borne, the subject must,
in the course of some years, be quite exhausted ; httle 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, and 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 Brofessorship of Modern
History at Oxford for Thomas Warton, which Gray
had held as a sinecure, but which it was now resolved
to make an effective appointment. He received a civil
refusal from the Duke, and the office 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.

!768.] ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE.

601

Archbishop Cornwallis ; but superior merit was again ex
cluded in favour of a Dr. Nowel, Brincipal of St. Mary
Hall. Warburton was annoyed, and Warton was left to
console himself with the consciousness of having deserved
the success which neither he nor his friends could com
mand.* Eosterity are apt to wonder at the fortune of
men so undistinguished over men universally known ; but
interest and envy have had their influence at all 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.
' Sir, — 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 filial piety to so dis
tinguished a person will 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. Gloucester.'!
He began to be sensible of the declension of his
faculties. L You talk,' said he to Hurd, ' of your golden
age of study long past. For myself, I can only say I
* Wooll's Life of Dr. Joseph Warton. Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vol. v.
p. 655.f Biog. Brit., Art. ' Hawkins Browne.'

602 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 replies, ' your kind letter of advice, and shall, 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 fife
and vigour to my mental faculties. The light mists, or,
as Milton 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.'% * Letters from an Eminent Prelate, Feb. 24, 1768.
f Ib. Mar. 31. J lb. Sept. 4, 1769.

1769.] DEAN TUCKER.

603

In August 1769, he removed from Brior Bark, 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 imputation. 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 from an Eminent Prelate, p. 438. f lb. 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 all periods of life, 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 senecta.
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 Buffhead for his ' Life of
Bope.' |
When Granger's ' Biographical History of England,'
* Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 446.
t Ib. p. 448. X lb- P- 458. § lb. p. 451.
|| Ib. p. 454 ; Hurd's Life of Warburton, p. 85.
4 Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. v. p. 633.

!770.J GIBBON AND HURD.

605

which appeared this year, was pubbshed, Warburton
bought it, and told Tom Davies, the pubhsher, that it
was an odd book. 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 iEneid.' 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 hypothesis.' The Bishop and his party made no
reply, and the ' Critical Observations ' soon fell 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, with
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 Barr 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. Anec. vol. 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 Bope],
and by reflecting aU the lights 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 ennobling the
exercise of literary 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
derful, he told Hurd, 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 s-Ksty-third year, that he
would write no more. Mrs. Warburton, aware of her
husband's condition, and pleased at Hurd'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 smile. 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 he 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, like 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 obj ect in which he now felt more interest than in any
other. But he became incapable of continued 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. Halfifax, 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 life-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.
f Gent. Mag. for 1771, p. 266.
j Letters from an Eminent Prelate, p. 388.
§ Letter to Cole, Aug. 15, 1774.

608 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Cn. XXXII.
made another in favour of his wife, whose interests he
especially recommended to Hurd'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 mt 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 wife ; 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 with 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
Hurd's ' Memoir ; ' for nowhere else is there any history
of his declining 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 WARBURTON. 609
afterwards he took occasion to say some pertinent and
obliging things, which showed, not only his usual friend
liness of temper, hut the command he had of his attention.
Nor was this all. 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 bfe. 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 continued 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 really 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
* Cradock's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 205.
R R

610 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXH.
exception of a short article in the ' Westminster 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 medallion portrait :
To the Memory of
William Warburton, 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 Establishment of it,
the Church of England.
He was born 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 ' believed.' 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 Bev. John Stafford Smith, Warburton's
chaplain, who, by the presentation of Hurd, became Eector
* Cradock's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 205.

Ch. XXXH.] 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, which
were at Gloucester, to be sold for the benefit of the
Gloucester Infirmary. Hurd purchased them, and depo
sited them in the library at Hartlebury Castle. Those
that were in Grosvenor Square his wife secured, 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 Bayne, the bookseller.* Some that
were sold in London were characterised as not choice, but
an awkward farrago in middling condition.f
He had inherited Bope's copies of the quarto editions
of ' Shakspeare,' but had valued them so little as to sell
them himself to Bayne in 1766, who immediately put them
into the sale of Mallet's books, among which they were
sold for three guineas. £
His published works were not collected till 1788, nine
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
published, 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
Buritans,' with some correspondence of Warbmton 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 Barr 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. Illustr. vol. vi. p. 352. X Prior, ib.
B R 2

612 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [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 Breface, 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, till
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 Barr 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 living, 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 furnish 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. Eilvert, in 1841, added a
thirteenth, consisting of ' Selections from Warburton's
Unpublished Bapers.'
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.
f Kilvert's Life of Hurd, p. 147.
j Tracts by Warb. and a Warburtonian, pp. 189, 191.

Ch. XXXII.] WARBURTON'S LETTERS. 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.' Hurd 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 believed, 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. All these he thought proper to print during his
lifetime, in a quarto volume, and to leave for publication
after his death, with the following advertisement :
' These letters give so true a picture 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 partiality of his friendship
in many more,) that, in honour of his memory, I would
have them published 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. Cadell are said to have purchased them for
iOQL, which sum was applied 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
lishing 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 WARBURTON. [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 publication migfit 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, literary 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 Barr,
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 Jonson with Drummond, in which
Ben does not speak well of a single individual. Hurd's
bberal use of the word ' coxcomb,' approved by Warbur
ton, we have already noticed. Both the correspondents,
but Warburton especially, have plenty of other terms at
command of a similarly vituperative character. Warbur
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
Butherforth, the author of the ' Essay on Virtue,' is ' the
meanest pedant of the age.' % 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.
X Let. cxxix. X Let. xxii. § Let. xiv. || Let. cxxv.

Ch. XXXII.] WARBURTON'S REMARKS ON MEN OF MERIT. 615
' think much alike,' and whose remarks on Warburton's
Shakspeare are ' full of insolence and malignant reflec
tions,' but ' having in them as much folly as malignity.'3
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. 'b Dean Tucker has ' a flow of transcendent non
sense.'0 Jackson, author of ' Ancient Chronology,' is 'a
wretch ' who ' spent his days in the repubhc of letters in
one unvaried course of begging, raihng, and stealing.' d
Demosthenes Taylor 'has less understanding than the
dunce Webster.0 Eriestley is ' a wretched fellow,' and
Voltaire ' a scoundrel' f Harris, of the ' Hermes,' 'leans
now to sense, now to nonsense,' as antiquity inclines him.g
Garrick's Ode ' is below any of Cibber's ; Cibber 's non
sense was something like sense ; but this man's sense,
whenever he deviates into it, is much more like nonsense.'11
Ln 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 Cam ; ' > and that ' the Goths and
Vandals, return when they will, cannot hurt Cambridge ; 'k
that the Court is 'an earthly pandemonium;'1 that 'the
Church is bestrid by some lumpish minister of state,
who turns and winds it at his pleasure ; ' m 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 :
a Let. clxxv. b Lets. Ixxxviii. xc. cxxi, c Let. ccxxi.
4 Let. xlvii. e Let. xcv. f Let. cexxxiv.
e Let. xxxviii. h Let. cxxix. i Let. ccviii.
j Let. Ixix. k Let. xlvii. l Let. vii.
m Let. xlvii. n Let. cexxxi.

616 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXH.
Sic iterat voces, et verba cadentia tollit,
Ut credas — — partes mimum tractare secundas.
Hurd has been more censured for publishing 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 malicious delibera
tion, in his lifetime, 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 railings of his friend to the world, he determined
to withhold them till he himself should be insensible to
the indignant clamour which they would be certain to
excite.

Ch. XXXIII.] PERSONAL APPEARANCE.

617

CHAPTEE XXXIII.
CHARACTER OF WARBURTON.
WARBURTON'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE — HIS TEMPERANCE  HIS LITE
RARY COURAGE  HIS CONVERSATION  DR. CUMING'S ACCOUNT OP
HIM  INTERVIEW WITH JOHNSON  HIS WANT OF TASTE IN LITERA
TURE — PRETENDED COMPARISON OF HIM AND JOHNSON — SPECIMENS
OF HIS COARSENESS OF STTLE  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 bfe : ' He was rather a tall,
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
lowliving.' * He himself observes that he was ' a slender
* Bp. Newton's Life by Himself, p. 155.

618 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXIII.
supper-man,' and speaks of himself, when he was only in
his fifty-ninth year, as being obliged 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
Bope, 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 publi
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-
siafist in print, was very easy and good-humoured in
company, and sometimes entertaining.' -j-
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.
X Prior's Life of Malone, p. 370.

Ch. XXXHL] CONVERSATION.

619

conversation than very exact breeding is thought to
allow. Yet few, I beheve, 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 usefid companion in
the world. You saw to the very bottom of his mind
on any subject of discourse ; and his various literature,
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, I was
so fond of his 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.' j-
Charles Yorke, who met him at his first visit to Bope,
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.
X Kippis's Biog. Brit. vol. v. p. 304.

620 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXLIL
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 Balph Allen, of Brior Bark, 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 little, and to weigh well what I said. We were left
alone ; it was an hour to dinner ; he soon engaged me on
some literary subject, in the course of which he gave me
the etymology of some word or phrase in the French
* Harris's Life of Lord Hardwicke, vol. i. p. 477.

Ch. XXXTJI.] 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 replied, " Upon
my word I believe 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 on 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 bis hand to one on
the opposite side. My fit immediately returned ; I ex
pected to be catechised and examined; but it was of
short duration. 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 bis
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 life. 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
rationale 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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXLU.
spicuous in his writings. He always received me with
great good humour; I conversed with him easily and
familiarly. On aU subjects he showed an attention and
deference to the opinion of others. He Bad 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 all bis 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.' Batting, and tapping
on the shoulder, seem to have been among his habits.!
Dr. Monsey, however, the humorous physician of Chel
sea Hospital, who was old enough to have seen Warburton
in his best days, used to teU an anecdote of him that
shows him in a less favourable light. 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 your usual freedom, but let us be a little
serious.' 'Oh!' said Brown, 'you may be sure Dr.
Monsey will restrain his humour before Dr. Warburton,
* Nichols's Lit. 111. vol. ii. p. 839.
X Miss Hawkins : Croker's Johnsoniana, vol. i. p. 134.

Ch. XXXLTI.] WARBURTON IN 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 disliked 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 Warburton to have been a proud man, for she
had often met him at Allen'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.*
Berhaps 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 WARBURTON. [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 like such vul
garism ? His French, too, I suppose, is equal to his wit
and his piety.' *
For the higher branches of literature he was dis
qualified by want of taste and want of imagination.
Of power to approach the sublime 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 originality 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 ' Hurd's Life of Warburton,' in
which it is said that when Mason published his monody
on the death of Bope, 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
' With open arms received one poet more.'
The pages of literature 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 affected 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.

Ch. XXXTIL] READING AND TASTE. 625
and love of victory over adversaries ; but any general
comparison between the author of 'Basselas3 and the
author of the ' Doctrine of Grace,' between one whose
compositions have refined and modulated our language,
and one wfio 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 HI., was modest
enough to tell the Eing that he had not read so much as
Dr. Warburton. Johnson, however, notwithstanding his
bad eyesight, his ill health, and his unsettled life, had
roamed over many volumes, and, with his tenacious
memory, had retained much of then contents ; but he
might, perhaps, have cast his eye on fewer pages than
Warburton in his calm retirement at Brant-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 bis.
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.

626 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXIII.
it to the priest as a certainty, ' and so the murder came
out.'* 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 sterhng, while that from mine comes out clipped,
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
Eesurrection ; 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, stuffed full of systems,' and admonished
' to keep his advice for those whom it concerns.' § In
reflecting on Tillard, he observes that he is doubtless a
very good member of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, for, ' finding tfie 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. \j. He calls God's
moral government ' the bugbear to impiety.'** And as to
the coarse names which he applies to his adversaries,
' whoever dares to write or think without Justice Overdo's
warrant, he is a gentleman of the Dunciad, a mushroom, a
* Div. Leg. book ii. sect. 4.
f 'Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections;' pt. i. sect. 4;
Works, vol. xi. p. 271. } lb. p. 306.
§ Ib. pp. 331, 349. || ib. p. 427.
| Div. Leg. book ii. sect. 4. »* Julian, book ii. c. 6.

Ch. XXXIH.] STYLE.

627

gentleman of the last edition, a Grub Street critic, a miser
able, lost to shame as a man and as a icriter, 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 ; bis diction is coarse and im
pure, and bis sentences are unmeasured.' What 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 Blato's great year to purge and
purify, had I time, and nothing else to do but attend to
them. I beheve there are some thousand alterations in
the language only in the second edition of Juhan ; and
the first volume of " The Divine Legation," now in the
press, is so transmogrified that you will hardly know it
again. Nor 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 debcate :
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 bis 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 aB 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,
' sthT more than in the matter of your book, that struck
* Confusion worse Confounded, p. 10.
s s 2

628 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXHI-
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. ' Ln 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.'*
w 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 carefufiy 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 In regard to
languages, his want of exact knowledge, yet venturesome-
ness of experiment, is often sadly apparent. He could
not be said, indeed, to have just perspicacity or judgment
in any language whatever. His deficiency in Hebrew
* Croker's Boswell, vol. viii. p. 17.
X Kilvert, Selections from Warburton's Papers, pp. 262, 332.

Ch. XXXIIL] DEPENDENCE ON TRANSLATORS. 629
exposed him 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 Lathi led him into
mistakes to be corrected by Jortin, and suffered him to
attempt emendations of Velleius Baterculus which scholars
could but regard with amazement.
Upton made merry with bis quotation from Homer
begimiing 3' k'vSuj'E ^iTwi'a
Ka\6v—— .*
observing that as vuv and xa) begin sentences, so might Si,
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
' BhoenissEe ' of Euripides,
'Eyw yap ovliv, jxarep, airoicpitpaQ IptZ'
"Acrrpiav aviXdoip.' i]Xiov irpbg avroXag,
Kat yfjg ivepde, Svvaroe £>v Zpaaai ra.de,
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 ici mes sentimens, Madame : j'escalerois le ciel^ etje
* Note on Jul. Cses. act iii. sc. 2.
+ Note on Macbeth, act i. sc. 2;
t P. 53. § Tom. ii. p. 406.

630 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXLTL
descendrois aux entrails de la terre ; si a ce prix je pou-
vois conquerir la plus briBante des couronnes.'
Yet his grasp and penetration of mind often enabled him
to form admirable general views of matters in the minutice
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 HebrewBible, 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 pubhc 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
follow, sometimes not. But what is the genuine public
taste, and properly their own, is the most wretched ima
ginable. 'f 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 httle general ability, and minds
sadly narrowed by confinement to one study. J
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. J lb. p. 41. .

Ch. XXXIII.] 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 ' Alliance 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
laro-er 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 rehgion appeared to the French so

632 LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXIII.
extremely liberal, that they asked people who came from
England whether he Avas 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 httle, 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 complimentary
letters from Warburton bearing 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. 'No,' 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 ' Blain 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
withdraw the ' Enquiry into Brodigies and Miracles ' from
circulation was, that it was supposed to have the same
tendency as Middleton's ' Letter from Borne,' or, in
the words of Ben Jonson, was designed to show that
' Nature once known, no prodigies remain.' His friends
* Rev. J. Jones's MSS. cited in Nichols's Lit. An. vol. iii. p. 141.

Ch. XXXin.] GENERAL KNOWLEDGE. 633
were at first very anxious to buy up the book, but after a
while they 'became mdifferent, 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 miracles 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 Barr,f that War
burton had been, and, as some said, continued always to
be, inclined or attached to infidelity ; but Barr declared
that he saw no ground for such a behef. But his hght
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 disappointed of it, took occasion, in a
sermon at court, to remark that afi preferments were
bestowed on the most illiterate and worthless objects,
and, as he said this, turned about and stared full at
Bishop Terrick, who had been recently appointed to
that see.|
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 Leland. § 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-
* Cradock's Lit. and Misc. Memoirs, vol. iv. p. 20.
+ Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian, p. 186.
t Grav'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 WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXLLT.
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 bfe,
often impelled him to seek refuge from the uneasiness of
thought in wild and desultory reading. But his habitual
melancholy, according to Hurd, 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 reading ; which, however,
was not without its advantage ; for, while it repaired 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,' replied 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 libraries, 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.

Ch. XXXLTL] 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, Hooke entertained us with a
number of ridiculous stories of the coxcombical vanity of
the Chevaher Bamsay ; 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 ' Bomance of
Cyrus,' and to translate it so finely into English ? " " As
for that matter," said I, " Mr. Hooke acted with the dis
cernment and fidelity of Sancho Eanza, 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 bfe 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.
f Kilvert, p. 341. X Prior's Life of Af alone, p. 443.
§ Quart. Rev. vol. xxxi.

636

LIFE OF BISHOP WARBURTON. [Ch. XXXIII.

He has the 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 tfie 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
"writings, he may appear arrogant, haughty, and self-
sufficient ; but in the intercourse of fife nothing could be
more placid, gentle, and ready to oblige.' *
Bope's saying, that Warburton could see into all the
possibilities 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 like 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. XXXLTL] GENERAL CHARACTER. 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 himself 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
tfiinkers, some share of attention and regard. As to
style, he is Horridus in jaculis, et pelle Libystidis ursas ;
yet men of taste are not repelled by his language from
giving attention to his matter. J£ 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 bterature ; and his
vigorous pages are still read by many who, though they
may care httle for the subjects of which he treats, desire
to see how a mind of such force and dexterity discusses
them.

638

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
Rev. GULLELMI WARBURTON, A.M.
Joannis superst. sancti senis fil.
ex agro Cestriensi
generosa stirpe atque antiquissimS
profecti.
Ore trilingui, ac animo omnis capaci
antiquis Hteris consignatas sapientiaB,
plurimum pollebat ;
Criticus sine fastu,
sine pertinacia Theologus.
Sed apage nsenias,
apage vos prostibulas
justitise, prudentia?, castimonia?, etc.
super omnem tumulum quotidie construpatas,
magnificas voces :
virtutem tain sinceram inimico,
tam absolutam, immo etiam temerario amico,
enarrandam
ausim relinquere.
Hujus amphtudinis, si quaaras,
quahs data est merces ?
Pudet dicere : sileo.
Si tandem quasras,
qualem merebat ilia ?
Dicam
Tempora fehciora.
Vix. ann. xli. Ob. ad. mccxxix.

NOTES. 639

Note on Page 180.
The opinions advanced by Sykes on the Gospel 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, offering 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 Grace.'
The several disquisitions on this subject, all full of argument,
illustrate the old lines on the Scripture,
' Plic liber est in quo quserit sua dogmata quisque,
Itivenit et quaarens dogmata quisque sua.'

INDEX.

ADD
ADDISON, his ' Battle of the Pygmies
and Cranes,' translated by "War
burton, 8 ; said by Warburton to have
borrowed out of modesty, 1 5
iEmilius Parisanus attacks Harvey respect
ing the circulation of the blood, 290
iEneas, "Warburton's supposition that he was
initiated into the Mysteries, 113, seqq.
Akenside 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, seqj. His Ode to Ed
wards, 335, 396
Allen, Kalph, 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 Jerusalem, 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 Evans, 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, 96  99
Atwell, Dr. Warburton's physician, 548
BALAAM, an observation respecting, 85
Balguy, Dr., ' his estimate of War
burton's ' Enquiry into Prodigies and
Miracles,' 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 Bolingbroke
assisted Pope in the ' Essay on Man,' 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 VelL
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
Shakspeare, 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 Theobald with
Shakspeare, 38
Blair, Dr. Hugh, his testimony that Boling
broke furnished matter for the ' Essay on
Man,' 166
Blakey, designer of the frontispiece to
Warburton's ' Pope,' 401
Blomfield, Bishop, adopted some of Theo
bald's emendations of jEsehylus, 41
Bolingbroke, Lord, how far he assisted Pope
in the ' Essay on Man,' 166 — 173. Pro
bably deceived Pope as to his tenets, 171.
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
Bouiller, 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. Ridicule 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, 4 15. His
character, 416

CiESAR, 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
Cbalmers, 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. Hurd'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, Rev. Ralph, defends Abp. Seeker,
581
Cibber, his pamphlet against Pope and
Warburton, 229. Left unanswered, 231
Cicero, translation from, 8. Remarks on
• his character, 25. His opinion of the
study of mathematics, 386
Clarendon, Lord, merits of his History, 1 8,
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 'Discourse on Free-
thinking ' and ' Grounds of the Christian
Religion,' 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 Rev.
Henry Taylor, 109, 221
Constantine 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 'Dunciad,' 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, Rev. 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, seqq
Crousaz, his examination of Pope's ' Essay
on Man,' 152. 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, Richard, his pamphlet in de
fence of Bentley against Lowth, 582
Cuming, Dr., his intercourse with Warbur
ton, 620
Curll, 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, ordains Warburton
deacon, 7
Dennis, John, meets Warburton, 14
Des Maizeaux inserts specimens of Warbur
ton's emendations of Paterculus in the
Bibliotheque Britannique, 59
Diagoras the 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 Warburton,
340. Saw some proof sheets of War
burton's edition of the ' Dunciad,' 396.
Remark 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.
Reviews it, 195
Dodsley, the bookseller, a 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 Resnel, 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

ECCLESIASTICAL 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 of

T T 2

644

INDEX.

Criticism,' 323. Abused by Warburton
in the notes on the ' Dunciad,' 324. Re
taliation of Edwards, 325 — 327. Speci
mens of his book, 327, seqq. Abused
again by Warburton, 334. Retaliates,
325. A friend of Richardson, 347.
His joke 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 —
523. Leland's, 545, 546
' Enquiry into Prodigies and Miracles,' by
Warburton, 17. Alleged tendency of
tho work, 632
Enthusiasm, meaning of it, 415. -Illustra
tion of, 534
Episcopius saw only temporal sanctions in
the law of Moses, 7 1
' 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
F.uhemerus 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

I^ABER, Tanaquih 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 Constantine the
Great, 378
' Familiar 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 Hurd, 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 perverted 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 leading
Jews, 197

GALEN, his allusion to the Mysteries,
111
Garrick, letter to him from Sterne 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, seqq.
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

GYL
Gyles, Warburton's publisher, 144, 189,
194. His death and unsettled affairs,
206. Warburton's arrangement with
his executors, ib.

HALL, Stevenson, his ' Odes to Sterne,'
503, 505
Hanmer, Sir Thomas, visited by Warburton
in reference to ' Shakspeare,' 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 Warburton'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
Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor, gives Warbur
ton a prebend at Gloucester, 416. A
portion of the ' Divine Legation ' dedicated
to him, 417, 431
Hare, 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
remarks on Warburton's notion of moral
obligation, 102. His satisfaction with
[ the 'Divine Legation,' 127, 128, 131,
180. Attacked by Gordon, the trans
lator of Tacitus, 129. His death, and
remarks on his character, 181. Thought
that Bentley stole from Vizzanius, 227.
Letter from him to Warburton respecting
Hanmer, 314. His opinion of the Book
of Joh, 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 'Revisal 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

Herring, Archbishop, confers a doctor's
degree on Warburton, 425
Heyne, his commendation of Gibbon's ' Ob
servations ' on Warburton, 119. His
remarks about iEneas'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
Hill, Dr., called editor of the ' Female
Magazine,' 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, Richard, his notions of Chureji-and
State, 49
Horsley, Bishop, his approbation of War
burton's ' Alliance,' 57
Hume, his ' Natural History of Religion '
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 into 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 character contrasted with that of
Warburton, ib. Revised ' 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 pamphlet of ' Remarks,'
440. Opinions of the public respecting
it, 441. Gratifies Warburton, 442.
Foolishly attempts to justify Warburton's
mistranslation of ' princeps,' 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.

Hurd, 464, 467. His sneer at Parr's
long vernacular sermon, 469. Compared
with Warburton 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 his 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
' Innocency of Error,' a tract by Dr. Sykes,
281. Censured, 282
Inspiration, opinions on, 518
Irenaeus, his character given by Middleton,
370, 372

JACKSON, Rev. John, 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 Whiston'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

JOS
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, 62 7. 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 he 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,' 44%, 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
Josephus, remarks on the passage in his
works relating to Christ, 351. Probably
an interpolation, 353

INDEX.

347

JUS
Justin Martyr, characterised by Middleton,
371, 372

KAMES, Lord, his opinion of ridicule as a
test of truth, 255
Kilvert, Rev. 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
Christianity 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, his 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 Clerc 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, seqq. His examination of Warbur
ton's opinions on eloquence, 545
' Letter to a Member of Parliament on Lite-
fc/ rary Property,' 34^

' 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 Lncke'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 Hurd, 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. William, 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

C48

INDEX.

Mason, Warburton's ridiculous commenda
tion of him, 624
Mathematics and mathematicians, remarks
on, 384, seqq. Effects of the study on
the mind, 386—390
Mead, Dr., assisted Theobald with 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. Conyers, 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, 258,
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 the 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, ib.
Moore, James, meets Warburton, 14
Moravians, their 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
Muller, 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, 108,sejj. Whence they originated,
109. Greater and Lesser, 110. What
taught in them, 111, 112

"VTASH, master of the ceremonies at
il 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 Egypt
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 with War
burton's ' Julian,' 383

OBLIGATION, Moral, 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 Doric, ib.

INDEX.

649

OPT
Optimism, remarks on, 159
Origin of books of chivalry, Warburton's
dissertation on confuted by Tyrwhitt,
209, 210
Orosius silent concerning Julian's attempt to
rebuild tho Temple, 382
Orrery, Lord, his ' Letters on Swift' abused
by Warburton, 428
Osiris, not the samo with Sesostris, 264,
seqq.

PALEVS foolish definition of virtuo,
105
Pnlingonius, simile borrowed from him by
l\>ra\ 160
Papists justly debarred from civil offices, 55
Parr, Dr., publishes ' Trusts by Warburton
and a Warburtonian,' 14. Thought tho
passage in Josephus concerning Christ an
interpolation, 353. Why ho republished
' Traots by Warburton and a Warbur
tonian,' 463, seqq. Possible causes of his
dislike of Hurd, 467
Taul, St., how inspired, 519
Payne, John, a follower of Law, writes
against Warburton, 544
Poarce, Bishop, sent Jortin a dissertation on
the destruction of Jerusalem, 434
Peck, tho antiquary, noticed, 13
Peter, St., how inspired, 519
'1'hilomon to Hydaspes,' a work by Henry
Coventry, 193
Philo-Jiulams, a remark of his, 83
Philosophers, ancient, various opinions of,
64, 65
Pitt, Lord Chatham, rejoices in having
made Warburton a bishop, 497. His de
testation of Wilkes, 554
Plato, his estimate of mathematical studies,
3SS
Pococke, Dr., the traveller, Warburton's dis
agreement with him, 264
Polycarp disclaimed tho power of working
miraolos, 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, 1S9. 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
mooting with Warburton, 185. Loiters
to Warburton, 183. 184, 1S6. His
desiie to have the ' Essay on Man' trans
lated into Latin verso, or prose, 1S7.
Endeavours to pmeuro Warburton a

living near London, 188. Revises tho
letters on Crousaz, 209. His desire to
bring Warburton nearer to London, 221.
Effects a meeting between Warburton
and Bolingbroke, 22,3. ' 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
bo mixed with his own, 817. 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, ib. Warburton
leaves the task of writing his life to
Ruff head, 513. Warburton's tablet to
his memory, 514
Person, his pre-eminence in verbal criti
cism, 337
l\it tor, 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
rrudontius, his silence concerning Julian's
attempt to rebuild the Temple, 382
Puritans, their notions of Church and State,
49

QUAKERS justly debarred from civil
offices, 55. Admit- the necessity of
a church polity, ib.
Quin, his remark on Warburton's ' Shak
speare,' 344. Anecdotes of him and
Warburton, 411
Quintilian, a remark of his, 99

1~) ALEIGH, Sir Walter, merit of his His-
11 tory, IS
• 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 tho
fatalism in tho ' 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 ho in
curred Warburton's displeasure, 347

650

INDEX

Ridicule, whether a test of truth, remarks
on the question. 248, 255
Robertson's ' History of America,' Hurd
finds 'prate' in it, 462
Roderick, Richard, assists Edwards in the
' Canons of Criticism,' 324
Romaine, his discreditable affair with War
burton, 174 — 179
Buffhead assisted by Warburton in his ' Life
of Pope,' 513, 604. Johnson's remark
on hiin, ib.
Butherforth, 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

C ACRIFICE, origin of, 589
kj Sallust, Warburton's translation from,
and an acute remark on an omission of
his, 19
Salter, Dr., his contradiction of Warburton
respecting Timseus, 228
Sanchoniatho, a fragment of his, 112
Sandwich, Lord, promotes Warburton's at
tack on Wilkes, 549
Seeker, Archbishop, unjustly depreciated by
Hurd, 5S0. Defended by Churton and
Wintle, 581. Praised by Lowth, t6.
Vindicated by Bishop Porteus, 5S2
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 -Eneas's descent
into hell, 121
Sesostris, not the same with Osiris, 264,
seqq.
Shaftesbury, Lord, his opinion of ridicule as
a test of truth, 24S, 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 Haumer, 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 Re
ply to Crousaz, 163
Silvestre de Sacy, his notion regarding the
Mysteries, 1 1 2
Smith, Dr. Joseph, letter of Haumer to him,
305, 312

Smollett, Warburton's sneer at him, 614
Society of Antiquaries, 49 1
Spence, his testimony that Bolingbroke fur
nished matter for the ' Essay on Man,'
168. Warburton's rejnark on, 614
Spencer, de Legibus, Hebrsorum, oensured
by Warburton, 2S6
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, to. 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, Dngald, his opinion of the effect
of mathematical studies on the mind,
3S9
Stnkeler, Dr., Warburton's friend, 13, 57,
63. Warburton's remarks to him on
marriage, 276. His death and character,
5S4, 5S5
Sutton, Sir Robert, Warburton's patron, 7.
Gives him the living of Greaseley, 14.
Dedications of Warburton's early publica
tions to him, ?, 17. Procures Warburton
the degree of M.A., 33. Presents War
burton with the living of Brant-Brough
ton, 34. 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,
2S2. Some account of hiin, 280. His
' Enquiry into the Demoniacs,' 640

TANCHUM, Babbi, 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, 4S9.
What he thought of Warburton's scholar-

INDEX.

651

ship, 490. Wrong in the argument, ib.
Warburton's abuse of him, 491, 615
Taylor, Dr. Robert, a friend of Warburton,
278
Temple, Sir William, alludes to explosive
compounds of the Egyptians, 381
Test law, propriety of, 53
Theobald, Lewis, becomes acquainted with
Warburton, 14. Solicits from him notes for
'Shakspeare,' 15. His correspondence on
' Shakspeare' with Warburton, 1 6, seqq.
Concanen's praise of his notes on ' Shak
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 by Johnson, 303
Theodoras the Atheist, 99
Thirlby, Dr. Styan, assisted Theobald with
'Shakspeare,' 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
Timaeus, 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 Patercnlus, 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, his object in writing the ^Jneid, ac
cording to Warburton, 114. Whether he
was initiated into the Eleusinian Mys
teries, 117. Why he dismisses iEneas
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 remark 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

WALPOLE, Horace, his opinion of
Pope's printing the ' Idea of a
Patriot King,' 362. His 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
affair, 512. Hostile to Warburton, 559.
His remarks on Brown and Warburton,
586. 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

652

INDEX.

WAR
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
father, 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 Eleusis, 108, seqq.
Took his notion of the Mysteries from
Le Clerc, 112. Opinions on ' The Divine
Legation,' 126, seqq. Attacked by Dr.

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, 151, seqq. Pope pleased
with it, 162, 184. His affair 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
Coventry, 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. Visit* 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
1 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 Bentley,
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 Mrs. 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. Offered the
chaplaincy to Lord Chesterfield as Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland, 274. Dedicates
an edition of the 'Alliance 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.
Stebbing and Sykes, 280, seqq. His edi
tion of Shakspeare, and connexion with

INDEX.

653

WAR
Hanmer, 297, seqq. Specimens of the
edition published in Birch's ' General
Dictionary,' 299. His abuse of Hanmer
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, 32 S. seqq. Hurd's defence of War
burton as a critic, 337. Heath's ' Re-
visal.' 337, 33S. Zachary Grey, 33S—
342. Upton, 342. Merits of Warburton's
' Shakspeare,' 343 — 345. His ' Letter
to a Member of Parliament concerning
Literary Property.' 346. His preface to
Richardson's ' Clarissa,' 346. Disagree
ment with Bichardson. 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, ib. Presented by Dr.
Nathaniel Foster with his tract on Jose
phus, 350. Bemarks on it, and on the
passage of Josephus concerning Christ,
350 — 354. Commences ' Julian,' 355.
Beginning of his acquaintance with Hurd,
to. Why Hurd desired it, 357. His
character contrasted with Hurd's. 35S.
Procures Hurd a preachership at White
hall, 360. Vindicates Pope against
Bolintrbroke. 360. Answered in a
¦ Familiar Epistle to the Most Impudent
Man Living,' 363. Contributes to
Bishop Newton's ' MiltoD,' 367. His
just estimate of Lauder's book, 367.
His little esteem for Milton, 36S. Pub
lishes Julian ; occasion of its production,
369. Mideleton and Warburton'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. Beception of 'Julian' by
the pubhc, 383. Warburton's opinion of
mathematics and mathematical studies,
384 — 3S6- His observations on Mid
dleton's infidelity, 392. Recommends
Sir Eobert Sutton's son to Hurd, 394.
Publishes Pope's works, 395. Charac
ter of the edition, ib. Bemarks on the
frontispiece to it, 400. Ridicules John
Gilbert Cooper. 397, 400. Satirised in
'A New Book of the Dunciad,' 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 Bolirgbroke'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, 42.5. 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,' 42 S. 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 Jortin made, 444, seqq.
Mistranslation 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
— 4S2. His relatives, 4S2. Visits
Hurd's mother, 4S3. Dedicates a portion
of the ' Divine Legation ' to Lord Mans
field, 484. His correspondence with the
Rev. Joseph Jane, 4S6, 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
ChaTles I., 498, 499. Bumour 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

654

INDEX.

assists Buffhead 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 Bev. 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, seqq. 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 Tucker, 603. Attacked by Gibbon,
605, 606. Death of his son, 607. His
declining years, 608. His death, 609. His
death little noticed, ib. His library, 611.
His works collected, ib. Hurd'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, ib. His
apparent religious laxity, 632. His witti
cisms, 635. His mental power, 637.
Warburton, Thomas, Archdeacon of Nor
folk, 3
Warburton, Rev. William, Warburton's cou
sin and instructor, 3, 5, 7, 14. Epitaph
on him, 630
W-arton, Dr., his praise of Concanen, 29.

YOR
Of Theobald's ' Shakspeare,' 37. Offends
Warburton, 511
Warton, Thomas, his opinicn 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 be suit
able for him, 524
'Weekly Miscellany,' Webster's, 130
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 Mr. 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, his commenda
tion of Warburton's ' Alliance,' 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
Wortbington, 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

YORKE, the Hon. Charles, his friendship
for Warburton, 33. Letter from him
to Warburton on the ' Divine Legation,'

INDEX.

655

YOU

ZIN

207. Reminds 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 Balph 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 byWar-
burton, 225, 227
Zinzendorf, Count, rocked the cradle of
Methodism, 526

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