WARBURTON, AND HIS QUARRELS; INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF HIS LITERARY CHARACTER. The name of Warburton more familiar to us than his Works-declared to be "a Colossus" by a Warburtonian, who afterwards shrinks the image into "a human size"-Lowth's caustic retort on his Attorneyshipmotives for the change to Divinity-his first literary mischances-Warburton and his Welsh Prophet-his Dedications-his mean flatteries—his taste more struck by the monstrous than the beautiful-the effects of his opposite studies-the SECRET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton through all his Works-the curious argument of his Alliance between Church and State-the bold paradox of his Divine Legation-the demonstration ends in a conjecture-Warburton lost in the labyrinth he had ingeniously constructed-confesses the harassed state of his mindattacked by Infidels and Christians-his SECRET PRINCIPLE turns the poetical narrative of Æneas into the Eleusinian Mysteries-Hurd attacks Jortin; his Attic irony translated into plain English-Warburton's paradox on Eloquence; his levity of ideas renders his sincerity suspected— Leland refutes the whimsical paradox-Hurd attacks Leland-Leland's noble triumph-Warburton's SECRET PRINCIPLE operating in Modern Literature: on Pope's Essay on Man-Lord Bolingbroke the author of the Essay Pope received Warburton as his tutelary genius-Warburton's systematic treatment of his friends and rival editors-his literary artifices and little intrigues-his Shakspeare-the whimsical labours of Warburton on Shakspeare annihilated by Edwards's "Canons of Criticism❞— Warburton and Johnson-Edwards and Warburton's mutual attacksthe concealed motive of his edition of Shakspeare avowed in his justification-his SECRET PRINCIPLE further displayed in Pope's Works-attacks Akenside; Dyson's generous defence-correct Ridicule is a test of Truth, illustrated by a well-known case-Warburton a literary revolutionist; aimed to be a perpetual dictator-the ambiguous tendency of his speculations-the Warburtonian School supported by the most licentious principles-specimens of its peculiar style the use to which Warburton applied the Dunciad-his party attentive to raise recruits-the active and subtle Hurd-his extreme sycophancy-Warburton, to maintain his usurped authority, adopted his system of literary quarrels. * THE name of WARBURTON is more familiar to us than his works: thus was it early, thus it continues, and thus it will * One of his lively adversaries, the author of the "Canons of Criticism," observed the difficulty of writing against an author whose reputation so be with posterity! The cause may be worth our inquiry. Nor is there, in the whole compass of our literary history, a character more instructive for its greatness and its failures; none more adapted to excite our curiosity, and which can more completely gratify it. Of great characters, whose actions are well known, and of those who, whatever claim they may have to distinction, are not so, ARISTOTLE has delivered a precept with his accustomed sagacity. If Achilles, says the Stagirite, be the subject of our inquiries, since all know what he has done, we are simply to indicate his actions, without stopping to detail; but this would not serve for Critias; for whatever relates to him must be fully told, since he is known to few ;*—a critical precept, which ought to be frequently applied in the composition of this work. The history of Warburton is now well known, the facts lie dispersed in the chronological biographer;† but the secret connexion which exists between them, if there shall be found to be any, has not yet been brought out; and it is my business to press these together; hence to demonstrate principles, or to deduce inferences. The literary fame of Warburton was a portentous meteor: it seemed unconnected with the whole planetary system through which it rolled, and it was imagined to be darting amid new creations, as the tail of each hypothesis blazed with idle. fancies. Such extraordinary natures cannot be looked on with calm admiration, nor common hostility; all is the tumult of wonder about such a man; and his adversaries, as well as his friends, though differently affected, are often overcome by the same astonishment. To a Warburtonian, the object of his worship looks indeed of colossal magnitude, in the glare thrown about that halmuch exceeded the knowledge of his works. "It is my misfortune," says EDWARDS, "in this controversy, to be engaged with a person who is better known by his name than his works; or, to speak more properly, whose works are more known than read."-Preface to the Canons of Criticism. * Aristotle's Rhetoric, B. III. c. 16. The materials for a "Life of Warburton" have been arranged by Mr. NICHOLS with his accustomed fidelity.-See his Literary Anecdotes. It is probable I may have drawn my meteor from our volcanic author himself, who had his lucid moments, even in the deliriums of his imagination. Warburton has rightly observed, in his "Divine Legation," p. 208, that "Systems, Schemes, and Hypotheses, all bred of heat, in the warm regions of Controversy, like meteors in a troubled sky, have each its turn to blaze and fly away." lowed spot; nor is the divinity of common stature; but the light which makes him appear so great, must not be suffered to conceal from us the real standard by which only his greatness can be determined:* even literary enthusiasm, delightful to all generous tempers, may be too prodigal of its splendours, wasting itself while it shines; but truth remains behind! Truth, which, like the asbestos, is still unconsumed and unaltered amidst these glowing fires. The genius of Warburton has called forth two remarkable * It seems, even by the confession of a Warburtonian, that his master was of "a human size;" for when Bishop LowTH rallies the Warburtonians for their subserviency and credulity to their master, he aimed a gentle stroke at Dr. BROWN, who, in his "Essays on the Characteristics," had poured forth the most vehement panegyric. In his "Estimate of Manners of the Times," too, after a long tirade of their badness in regard to taste and learning, he thus again eulogizes his mighty master:-" Himself is abused, and his friends insulted for his sake, by those who never read his writings; or, if they did, could neither taste nor comprehend them; while every little aspiring or despairing scribbler eyes him as Cassius did Cæsar : and whispers to his fellow 'Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.' No wonder, then, if the malice of the Lilliputian tribe be bent against this dreaded GULLIVER; if they attack him with poisoned arrows, whom they cannot subdue by strength." On this Lowth observes, that "this Lord Paramount in his pretensions doth bestride the narrow world of literature, and has cast out his shoe over all the regions of science." This leads to a ludicrous comparison of Warburton, with King Pichrochole and his three ministers, who, in URQUHART'S admirable version of the French wit, are Count Merdaille, the Duke of Smalltrash, and the Earl Swashbuckler, who set up for universal monarchy, and made an imaginary expedition through all the quarters of the world, as Rabelais records, and the bishop facetiously quotes. Dr. Brown afterwards seemed to repent his panegyric, and contrives to make his gigantic hero shrink into a moderate size. "I believe still, every little aspiring fellow continues thus to eye him. For myself, I have ever considered him as a man, yet considerable among his species, as the following part of the paragraph clearly demonstrates. I speak of him here as a Gulliver indeed; yet still of no more than human size, and only apprehended to be of colossal magnitude by certain of his Lilliputian enemies." Thus subtilely would poor Dr. Brown save appearances! It must be confessed that, in a dilemma, never was a giant got rid of so easily!-The plain truth, however, was, that Brown was then on the point of quarrelling with Warburton; for he laments, in a letter to a friend, that "he had not avoided all personal panegyric. I had thus saved myself the trouble of setting right a character which I far over-painted." A part of this letter is quoted in the "Biographia Britannica." anonymous criticisms-in one, all that the most splendid eloquence can bring to bear against this chief and his adherents; and in the other, all that taste, warmed by a spark of Warburtonian fire, can discriminate in an impartial decision. Mine is a colder and less grateful task. I am but a historian! I have to creep along in the darkness of human events, to lay my hand cautiously on truths so difficult to touch, and which either the panegyrist or the writer of an invective cover over, and throw aside into corners. "Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian, not admitted into the collections of their respective works," itself a collection which our shelves could ill spare, though maliciously republished by Dr. PARR. The dedication by Parr stands unparalleled for comparative criticism. It is the eruption of a volcano; it sparkles, it blazes, and scatters light and destruction. How deeply ought we to regret that this Nazarite suffered his strength to be shorn by the Delilahs of spurious fame. Never did this man, with his gifted strength, grasp the pillars of a temple, to shake its atoms over Philistines; but pleased the child-like simplicity of his mind by pulling down houses over the heads of their unlucky inhabitants. He consumed, in local and personal literary quarrels, a genius which might have made the next age his own. With all the stores of erudition, and all the eloquence of genius, he mortified a country parson for his politics, and a London accoucheur for certain obstetrical labours performed on Horace ; and now his collected writings lie before us, volumes unsaleable and unread. His insatiate vanity was so little delicate, as often to snatch its sweetmeat from a foul plate; it now appears, by the secret revelations in Griffith's own copy of his "Monthly Review," that the writer of a very elaborate article on the works of Dr. Parr, was no less a personage than the Doctor himself. His egotism was so declamatory, that it unnaturalized a great mind, by the distortions of Johnsonian mimicry; his fierceness, which was pushed on to brutality on the unresisting, retreated with a child's terrors when resisted; and the pomp of petty pride in table triumphs and evening circles, ill compensated for the lost century he might have made his own! Lord o'er the greatest, to the least a slave, Half-weak, half-strong, half-timid, and half-brave; MS. ANON. (said to be by the late Dr. HOMER.) The "Quarterly Review," vol. vii. p. 383.-So masterly a piece of criticism has rarely surprised the public in the leaves of a periodical publication. It comes, indeed, with the feelings of another age, and the reminiscences of the old and vigorous school. I cannot implicitly adopt all the sentiments of the critic, but it exhibits a highly-finished portrait, enamelled by the love of the artist.-This article was written by the late Dr. Whitaker, the historian of Craven, &c. Much of the moral, and something too of the physical dispositions of the man enter into the literary character; and, moreover, there are localities the place where he resides, the circumstances which arise, and the habits he contracts; to all these the excellences and the defects of some of our great literary characters may often be traced. With this clue we may thread our way through the labyrinth of Genius. Warburton long resided in an obscure provincial town, the articled clerk of a country attorney,* and then an unsuc * When Warburton, sore at having been refused academical honours at Oxford, which were offered to Pope, then his fellow-traveller, and who, in consequence of this refusal, did himself not accept them-in his controversy with Lowth (then the Oxford Professor), gave way to his angry spirit, and struck at the University itself, for its political jesuitism, being a place where men "were taught to distinguish between de facto and de jure," caustic was the retort. Lowth, by singular felicity of application, touched on Warburton's original designation, in a character he hit on in Clarendon. After remonstrating with spirit and dignity on this petulant attack, which was not merely personal, Lowth continues -"Had I not your lordship's example to justify me, I should think it a piece of extreme impertinence to inquire where you were bred; though one might justly plead, in excuse for it, a natural curiosity to know where and how such a phenomenon was produced. It is commonly said that your lordship's education was of that particular kind, concerning which it is a remark of that great judge of men and manners, Lord Clarendon (on whom you have, therefore, with a wonderful happiness of allusion, justness of application, and elegance of expres sion, conferred the unrivalled title of the Chancellor of Human Nature'), that it peculiarly disposes men to be proud, insolent, and pragmatical.' Lowth, in a note, inserts Clarendon's character of Colonel Harrison: "He had been bred up in the place of a clerk, under a lawyer of good account in those parts; which kind of education introduces men into the language and practice of business; and if it be not resisted by the great ingenuity of the person, inclines young men to more pride than any other kind of breeding, and disposes them to be pragmatical and insolent." "Now, my lord (Lowth continues), as you have in your whole behaviour, and in all your writings, remarkably distinguished yourself by your humility, lenity, meekness, forbearance, candour, humanity, civility, decency, good manners, good temper, moderation with regard to the opinions of others, and a modest diffidence of your own, this unpromising circumstance of your education is so far from being a disgrace to you, that it highly redounds to your praise."-Lowth's Letter to the Author of the D. L. p. 63. Was ever weapon more polished and keen? This Attic style of controversy finely contrasts with the tasteless and fierce invective of the Warburtonians, although one of them is well known to have managed too adroitly the cutting instrument of irony; but the frigid malignancy of Hurd diminishes the pleasure we might find in his skill. Warburton ill concealed his vexation in the contempt he vented in a letter to Hurd on this occasion. "All you say about Lowth's pamphlet breathes the purest spirit of friendship. His wit and his reasoning, God knows, and I also, (as a certain |
