Calamities And Quarrels Of Authors Part 28

WARBURTON, AND HIS QUARRELS;

INCLUDING AN ILl.u.s.tRATION 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 Attorneys.h.i.+p--motives 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 hara.s.sed state of his mind--attacked by Infidels and Christians--his SECRET PRINCIPLE turns the poetical narrative of aeneas 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 n.o.ble 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 attacks--the 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, ill.u.s.trated 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,[141] thus it continues, and thus it will be with posterity!

The cause may be worth our inquiry. Nor is there, in the whole compa.s.s 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;[142]--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;[143] 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.[144] 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 wors.h.i.+p looks indeed of colossal magnitude, in the glare thrown about that hallowed 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:[145] even literary enthusiasm, delightful to all generous tempers, may be too prodigal of its splendours, wasting itself while it s.h.i.+nes; 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 anonymous criticisms--in one, all that the most splendid eloquence can bring to bear against this chief and his adherents;[146] and in the other, all that taste, warmed by a spark of Warburtonian fire, can discriminate in an impartial decision.[147] 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.

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 circ.u.mstances 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,[148] and then an unsuccessful practising one. He seems, too, once to have figured as "a wine-merchant in the Borough," and rose into notice as "the orator of a disputing club;"

but, in all his shapes, still keen in literary pursuits, without literary connexions; struggling with all the defects of a desultory and self-taught education, but of a bold aspiring character, he rejected, either in pride or in despair, his little trades, and took Deacon's orders--to exchange a profession, unfavourable to continuity of study, for another more propitious to its indulgence.[149] In a word, he set off as a literary adventurer, who was to win his way by earning it from patronage.

His first mischances were not of a nature to call forth that intrepidity which afterwards hardened into the leading feature of his character. Few great authors have begun their race with less auspicious omens, though an extraordinary event in the life of an author happened to Warburton--he had secured a patron before he was an author.

The first publication of his which we know, was his "Translations in Prose and Verse from Roman Poets, Orators, and Historians." 1724. He was then about twenty-five years of age. The fine forms of cla.s.sic beauty could never be cast in so rough a mould as his prose; and his turgid unmusical verses betrayed qualities of mind incompatible with the delicacy of poetry. Four years afterwards he repeated another bolder attempt, in his "Critical and Philosophical Inquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles." After this publication, I wonder Warburton was ever suspected of infidelity or even scepticism.[150] So radically deficient in Warburton was that fine internal feeling which we call taste, that through his early writings he acquired not one solitary charm of diction,[151] and scarcely betrayed, amid his impurity of taste, that nerve and spirit which afterwards crushed all rival force. His translations _in imitation of Milton's style_ betray his utter want of ear and imagination. He attempted to suppress both these works during his lifetime.

When these unlucky productions were republished by Dr. Parr, the _Dedications_ were not forgotten; they were both addressed to the same opulent baronet, not omitting "the virtues" of his lady the Countess of Sunderland, whose marriage he calls "so divine a union." Warburton had shown no want of judgment in the choice of his patrons; for they had more than one living in their gift--and perhaps, knowing his patrons, none in the dedications themselves. They had, however, this absurdity, that in freely exposing the servile practices of dedicators, the writer was himself indulging in that luxurious sin, which he so forcibly terms "Public Prost.i.tution." This early management betrays no equivocal symptoms of that traffic in _Dedications_, of which he has been so severely accused,[152] and of that paradoxical turn and hardy effrontery which distinguished his after-life. These dedications led to preferment, and thus hardily was laid the foundation-stone of his aspiring fortunes.

Till his thirtieth year, Warburton evinced a depraved taste, but a craving appet.i.te for knowledge. His mind was const.i.tuted to be more struck by the Monstrous than the Beautiful, much like that Sicilian prince who furnished his villa with the most hideous figures imaginable:[153] the delight resulting from harmonious and delicate forms raised emotions of too weak a nature to move his obliquity of taste; roused, however, by the surprise excited by colossal ugliness.

The discovery of his intellectual tastes, at this obscure period of his life, besides in those works we have noticed, is confirmed by one of the most untoward accidents which ever happened to a literary man; it was the chance-discovery of a letter he had written to one of the heroes of the Dunciad, forty years before. At the time that letter was written, his literary connexions were formed with second-rate authors; he was in strict intimacy with Concanen and Theobald, and other "ingenious gentlemen who made up our last night's conversation,"

as he expresses himself.[154] This letter is full of the heresies of taste: one of the most anomalous is the comment on that well-known pa.s.sage in Shakspeare, on "the genius and the mortal instruments;"

Warburton's is a miraculous specimen of fantastical sagacity and critical delirium, or the art of discovering meanings never meant, and of ill.u.s.trations the author could never have known. Warburton declares to "the ingenious gentlemen," (whom afterwards with a Pharaoh's heart he hanged by dozens to posterity in the "Dunciad,") that "Pope borrowed for want of genius;" that poet, who, when the day arrived, he was to comment on as the first of poets! His insulting criticisms on the popular writings of Addison,--his contempt for what Young calls "sweet elegant Virgilian prose,"--show how utterly insensible he was to that cla.s.sical taste in which Addison had constructed his materials. But he who could not taste the delicacy of Addison, it may be imagined might be in raptures with the rant of Lee. There is an unerring principle in the false sublime: it seems to be governed by laws, though they are not ours; and we know what it will like, that is, we know what it will mistake for what ought not to be liked, as surely as we can antic.i.p.ate what will delight correct taste. Warburton has p.r.o.nounced one of the raving pa.s.sages of poor Nat "to contain not only the most sublime, but the most judicious imagery that poetry could conceive or paint." JOSEPH WARTON, who indignantly rejects it from his edition of Pope, a.s.serts that "we have not in our language a more striking example of true turgid expression, and genuine fustian and bombast."[155] Yet such was the man whom ill-fortune (for the public at least) had chosen to become the commentator of our greater poets! Again Churchill throws light on our character:--

He, with an all-sufficient air Places himself in the critic's chair, And wrote, to advance his Maker's praise, Comments on rhymes, and notes on plays-- A judge of genius, though, confest, With not one spark of genius blest: Among the first of critics placed, Though free from every taint of taste.

Not encouraged by the reception his first literary efforts received, but having obtained some preferment from his patron, we now come to a critical point in his life. He retreated from the world, and, during a seclusion of near twenty years, persevered in uninterrupted studies.

The force of his character placed him in the first order of thinking beings. This resolution no more to court the world for literary favours, but to command it by hardy preparation for mighty labours, displays a n.o.ble retention of the appet.i.te for fame; Warburton scorned to be a scribbler!

Had this great man journalised his readings, as Gibbon has done, we should perhaps be more astonished at his miscellaneous pursuits. He read everything, and, I suspect, with little distinction, and equal delight.[156] Curiosity, even to its delirium, was his first pa.s.sion; which produced those new systems of hypothetical reasoning by which he startled the world; and his efforts to save his most ingenious theories from absurdity resembled, to use his own emphatic words applied to the philosophy of Leibnitz, "a contrivance against Fatalism," for though his genius has given a value to the wildest paradoxes, paradoxes they remain.

But if Warburton read so much, it was not to enforce opinions already furnished to his hands, or with cold scepticism to reject them, leaving the reader in despair. He read that he might write what no one else had written, and which at least required to be refuted before it was condemned. He hit upon a SECRET PRINCIPLE, which prevails through all his works, and this was INVENTION; a talent, indeed, somewhat dangerous to introduce in researches where Truth, and not Fancy, was to be addressed. But even with all this originality he was not free from imitation, and has even been accused of borrowing largely without hinting at his obligations. He had certainly one favourite model before him: Warburton has delineated the portrait of a certain author with inimitable minuteness, while he caught its general effect; we feel that the artist, in tracing the resemblance of another, is inspired by all the flattery of a self-painter--he perceived the kindred features, and he loved them!

This author was BAYLE! And I am unfolding the character of Warburton, in copying the very original portrait:--

"Mr. Bayle is of a quite different character from these Italian sophists: a writer, whose strength and clearness of _reasoning_ can be equalled only by the gaiety, easiness, and delicacy of his _wit_; _who, pervading human nature with a glance, STRUCK INTO THE PROVINCE OF PARADOX, as an exercise for the restless vigour of his mind_: who, with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks of fortune, and a heart practised to the best philosophy, had _not yet enough of real greatness to overcome that last foible of superior geniuses_, the temptation of honour, which the ACADEMIC EXERCISE OF WIT is conceived to bring to its professors."[157]

Here, then, we discover the SECRET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton through all his works, although of the most opposite natures. I do not give this as an opinion to be discussed, but as a fact to be demonstrated.

The faculties so eminent in Bayle were equally so in Warburton. In his early studies he had particularly applied himself to logic; and was not only a vigorous reasoner, but one practised in all the _finesse_ of dialectics. He had wit, fertile indeed, rather than delicate; and a vast body of erudition, collected in the uninterrupted studies of twenty years. But it was the SECRET PRINCIPLE, or, as he calls it, "_the Academic exercise of Wit_," on an enlarged system, which carried him so far in the new world of INVENTION he was creating.

This was a new characteristic of investigation; it led him on to pursue his profounder inquiries beyond the clouds of antiquity; for what he could not _discover_, he CONJECTURED and a.s.sERTED. Objects, which in the hands of other men were merely matters resting on authentic researches, now received the stamp and l.u.s.tre of original invention. Nothing was to be seen in the state in which others had viewed it; the hardiest paradoxes served his purpose best, and this licentious principle produced unlooked-for discoveries. He humoured his taste, always wild and unchastised, in search of the monstrous and the extravagant; and, being a wit, he delighted in finding resemblances in objects which to more regulated minds had no similarity whatever. _Wit_ may exercise its ingenuity as much in combining _things_ unconnected with each other, as in its odd a.s.semblage of _ideas_; and Warburton, as a literary antiquary, proved to be as witty in his combinations as BUTLER and CONGREVE in their comic images. As this principle took full possession of the mind of this man of genius, the practice became so familiar, that it is possible he might at times have been credulous enough to have confided in his own reveries. As he forcibly expressed himself on one of his adversaries, Dr. STEBBING, "Thus it is to have to do with a head whose _sense is all run to system_." "His Academic Wit" now sported amid whimsical theories, pursued bold but inconclusive arguments, marked out subtile distinctions, and discovered incongruous resemblances; but they were maintained by an imposing air of conviction, furnished with the most prodigal erudition, and they struck out many ingenious combinations. The importance or the curiosity of the topics awed or delighted his readers; the principle, however licentious, by the surprise it raised, seduced the lovers of novelties. Father HARDOUIN had studied as hard as Warburton, rose as early, and retired to rest as late, and the obliquity of his intellect resembled that of Warburton--but he was a far inferior genius; he only discovered that the cla.s.sical works of antiquity, the finest compositions of the human mind, in ages of its utmost refinement, had been composed by the droning monks of the middle ages; a discovery which only surprised by its tasteless absurdity--but the absurdities of Warburton had more dignity, were more delightful, and more dangerous: they existed, as it were, in a state of illusion, but illusion which required as much genius and learning as his own to dissipate. His spells were to be disturbed only by a magician, great as himself. Conducted by this solitary principle, Warburton undertook, as it were, a magical voyage into antiquity. He pa.s.sed over the ocean of time, sailing amid rocks, and half lost on quicksands; but he never failed to raise up some _terra incognita_; or point at some scene of the _Fata Morgana_, some earthly spot, painted in the heaven one knows not how.

In this secret principle of resolving to _invent_ what no other had before conceived, by means of _conjecture_ and _a.s.sertion_, and of maintaining his theories with all the pride of a sophist, and all the fierceness of an inquisitor, we have the key to all the contests by which this great mind so long supported his literary usurpations.

The first step the giant took showed the mightiness of his stride. His first great work was the famous "Alliance between Church and State."

It surprised the world, who saw the most important subject depending on a mere _curious_ argument, which, like all political theories, was liable to be overthrown by writers of opposite principles.[158] The term "Alliance" seemed to the dissenters to infer that the _Church_ was an independent power, forming a contract with the _State_, and not acknowledging that it is only an integral part, like that of the _army_ or the _navy_.[159] Warburton had not probably decided, at that time, on the principle of ecclesiastical power: whether it was paramount by its divine origin, as one party a.s.serted; or whether, as the new philosophers, Hobbes, Selden, and others, insisted, the spiritual was secondary to the civil power.[160]

The intrepidity of this vast genius appears in the plan of his greater work. The omission of a future state of reward and punishment, in the Mosaic writings, was perpetually urged as a proof that the mission was not of divine origin: the ablest defenders strained at obscure or figurative pa.s.sages, to force unsatisfactory inferences; but they were looking after what could not be found. Warburton at once boldly acknowledged it was not there; at once adopted all the objections of the infidels: and roused the curiosity of both parties by the hardy a.s.sertion, that this very _omission_ was a _demonstration_ of its divine origin.[161]

The first idea of this new project was bold and delightful, and the plan magnificent. Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity, the three great religions of mankind, were to be marshalled in all their pomp, and their awe, and their mystery. But the procession changed to a battle!

To maintain one great paradox, he was branching out into innumerable ones. This great work was never concluded: the author wearied himself, without, however, wearying his readers; and, as his volumes appeared, he was still referring to his argument, "as far as it is yet advanced." The _demonstration_ appeared in great danger of ending in a _conjecture_; and this work, always beginning and never ending, proved to be the glory and misery of his life.[162] In perpetual conflict with those numerous adversaries it roused, Warburton often s.h.i.+fted his ground, and broke into so many divisions, that when he cried out, Victory! his scattered forces seemed rather to be in flight than in pursuit.[163]

The same SECRET PRINCIPLE led him to turn the poetical narrative of aeneas in the infernal regions, an episode evidently imitated by Virgil from his Grecian master, into a minute description of the initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. A notion so perfectly new was at least worth a commonplace truth. Was it not delightful to have so many particulars detailed of a secret transaction, which even its contemporaries of two thousand years ago did not presume to know anything about? Father Hardouin seems to have opened the way for Warburton, since he had discovered that the whole aeneid was an allegorical voyage of St. Peter to Rome! When Jortin, in one of his "Six Dissertations," modestly ill.u.s.trated Virgil by an interpretation inconsistent with Warburton's strange discovery, it produced a memorable quarrel. Then Hurd, the future s.h.i.+eld, scarcely the sword, of Warburton, made his first sally; a dapper, subtle, and cold-blooded champion, who could dexterously turn about the polished weapon of irony.[164] So much our _Railleur_ admired the volume of Jortin, that he favoured him with "A Seventh Dissertation, addressed to the Author of the Sixth, on the Delicacy of Friends.h.i.+p," one of the most malicious, but the keenest pieces of irony. It served as the foundation of a new School of Criticism, in which the arrogance of the master was to be supported by the pupil's contempt of men often his superiors. To interpret Virgil differently from the modern Stagirite, was, by the aggravating art of the ridiculer, to be considered as the violation of a moral feeling.[165] Jortin bore the slow torture and the teasing of Hurd's dissecting-knife in dignified silence.

At length a rising genius demonstrated how Virgil could not have described the Eleusinian Mysteries in the sixth book of the aeneid. One blow from the arm of Gibbon s.h.i.+vered the allegorical fairy palace into glittering fragments.[166]

When the sceptical Middleton, in his "Essay on the Gift of Tongues,"

pretended to think that "an inspired language would be perfect in its kind, with all the purity of Plato and the eloquence of Cicero," and then a.s.serted that "the style of the New Testament was utterly rude and barbarous, and abounding with every fault that can possibly deform a language," Warburton, as was his custom, instantly acquiesced; but hardily maintained that "_this very barbarism was one certain mark of a divine original_."[167]--The curious may follow his subtile argument in his "Doctrine of Grace;" but, in delivering this paradox, he struck at the fundamental principles of eloquence: he dilated on all the abuses of that human art. It was precisely his utter want of taste which afforded him so copious an argument; for he a.s.serted that the principles of eloquence were arbitrary and chimerical, and its various modes "mostly fantastical;" and that, consequently, there was no such thing as a good taste,[168] except what the _consent of the learned_ had made; an expression borrowed from Quintilian. A plausible and a consolatory argument for the greater part of mankind! It, however, roused the indignation of Leland, the eloquent translator of Demosthenes, and the rhetorical professor at Trinity College, in Dublin, who has n.o.bly defended the cause of cla.s.sical taste and feeling by profounder principles. His cla.s.sic anger produced his "Dissertation on the Principles of Human Eloquence;" a volume so much esteemed that it is still reprinted. Leland refuted the whimsical paradox, yet complimented Warburton, who, "with the spirit and energy of an ancient orator, was writing against eloquence," while he showed that the style of the New Testament was defensible on surer grounds.

Hurd, who had fleshed his polished weapon on poor Jortin, and had been received into the arms of the hero under whom he now fought, adventured to cast his javelin at Leland: it was dipped in the cold poison of contempt and petulance. It struck, but did not canker, leaves that were immortal.[169] Leland, with the native warmth of his soil, could not resist the gratification of a reply; but the n.o.bler part of the triumph was, the a.s.sistance he lent to the circulation of Hurd's letter, by reprinting it with his own reply, to accompany a new edition of his "Dissertation on Eloquence."[170]

We now pursue the SECRET PRINCIPLE, operating on lighter topics; when, turning commentator, with the same originality as when an author, his character as a literary adventurer is still more prominent, extorting double senses, discovering the most fantastical allusions, and making men of genius but of confined reading, learned, with all the lumber of his own unwieldy erudition.

When the German professor CROUSAZ published a rigid examen of the doctrines in POPE'S "Essay on Man," Warburton volunteered a defence of Pope. Some years before, it appears that Warburton himself, in a literary club at Newark, had produced a dissertation against those very doctrines! where he a.s.serted that "the Essay was collected from the worst pa.s.sages of the worst authors." This probably occurred at the time he declared that Pope had no genius! BOLINGBROKE really WROTE the "Essay on Man," which Pope _versified_.[171] His principles may be often objectionable; but those who only read this fine philosophical poem for its condensed verse, its imagery, and its generous sentiments, will run no danger from a metaphysical system they will not care to comprehend.

But this serves not as an apology for Warburton, who now undertook an elaborate defence of what he had himself condemned, and for which purpose he has most unjustly depressed Crousaz--an able logician, and a writer ardent in the cause of religion. This commentary on the "Essay on Man," then, looks much like the work of a sophist and an adventurer! Pope, who was now alarmed at the tendency of some of those principles he had so innocently versified, received Warburton as his tutelary genius. A mere poet was soon dazzled by the sorcery of erudition; and he himself, having nothing of that kind of learning, believed Warburton to be the Scaliger of the age, for his grat.i.tude far exceeded his knowledge.[172] The poet died in this delusion: he consigned his immortal works to the mercy of a ridiculous commentary and a tasteless commentator, whose labours have cost so much pains to subsequent editors to remove. Yet from this moment we date the worldly fortunes of Warburton.--Pope presented him with the entire property of his works; introduced him to a blind and obedient patron, who bestowed on him a rich wife, by whom he secured a fine mansion; till at length, the mitre crowned his last ambition. Such was the large chapter of accidents in Warburton's life!

There appears in Warburton's conduct respecting the editions of the great poets which he afterwards published, something systematic; he treated the several editors of those very poets, THEOBALD, HANMER, and GREY, who were his friends, with the same odd sort of kindness: when he was unknown to the world, he cheerfully contributed to all their labours, and afterwards abused them with the liveliest severity.[173] It is probable that he had himself projected these editions as a source of profit, but had contributed to the more advanced labours of his rival editors, merely as specimens of his talent, that the public might hereafter be thus prepared for his own more perfect commentaries.

Warburton employed no little art[174] to excite the public curiosity respecting his future Shakspeare: he liberally presented Dr. BIRCH with his MS. notes for that great work the "General Dictionary," no doubt as the prelude of his after-celebrated edition. Birch was here only a dupe: he escaped, unlike Theobald, Hanmer, and Grey, from being overwhelmed with ridicule and contempt. When these extraordinary specimens of emendatory and ill.u.s.trative criticism appeared in the "General Dictionary," with general readers they excited all the astonishment of perfect novelty. It must have occurred to them, that no one as yet had understood Shakspeare; and, indeed, that it required no less erudition than that of the new luminary now rising in the critical horizon to display the amazing erudition of this most recondite poet. Conjectural criticism not only changed the words but the thoughts of the author; perverse interpretations of plain matters.

Many a striking pa.s.sage was wrested into a new meaning: plain words were subtilised to remove conceits; here one line was rejected, and there an interpolation, inspired alone by critical sagacity, pretended to restore a lost one; and finally, a source of knowledge was opened in the notes, on subjects which no other critic suspected could, by any ingenuity, stand connected with Shakspeare's text.

At length the memorable edition appeared: all the world knows its chimeras.[175] One of its most remarkable results was the production of that work, which annihilated the whimsical labours of Warburton, Edwards's "Canons of Criticism," one of those successful facetious criticisms which enliven our literary history. Johnson, awed by the learning of Warburton, and warmed by a personal feeling for a great genius who had condescended to encourage his first critical labour, grudgingly bestows a moderated praise on this exquisite satire, which he characterises for "its airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy." He compared this attack "to a fly, which may sting and tease a horse, but yet the horse is the n.o.bler animal."[176] Among the prejudices of criticism, is one which hinders us from relis.h.i.+ng a masterly performance, when it ridicules a favourite author; but to us, mere historians, truth will always prevail over literary favouritism. The work of Edwards effected its purpose, that of "laughing down Warburton to his proper rank and character."[177]

Warburton designates himself as "a critic by profession;" and tells us, he gave this edition "to deter the _unlearned writer_ from wantonly trifling with an art he is a stranger to, at the expense of the integrity of the text of established authors." Edwards has placed a N.B. on this declaration:--"A writer may properly be called _unlearned_, who, notwithstanding all his other knowledge, does not understand the subject which he writes upon." But the most dogmatical absurdity was Warburton's declaration, that it was once his design to have given "a body of canons for criticism, drawn out in form, with a glossary;" and further he informs the reader, that though this has not been done by him, if the reader will take the trouble, he may supply himself, as these canons of criticism lie scattered in the course of the notes. This idea was seized on with infinite humour by Edwards, who, from these very notes, has framed a set of "Canons of Criticism,"

as ridiculous as possible, but every one ill.u.s.trated by authentic examples, drawn from the labours of our new Stagirite.[178]

At length, when the public had decided on the fact of Warburton's edition, it was confessed that the editor's design had never been to explain Shakspeare! and that he was even conscious he had frequently imputed to the poet meanings which he never thought! Our critic's great object was to display his own learning! Warburton wrote for Warburton, and not for Shakspeare! and the literary imposture almost rivals the confessions of Lander or Psalmanazar!

The same SECRET PRINCIPLE was pursued in his absurd edition of Pope.

He formed an unbroken Commentary on the "Essay on Criticism," to show that that admirable collection of precepts had been constructed by a systematical method, which it is well known the poet never designed; and the same instruments of torture were here used as in the "Essay on Man," to reconcile a system of fatalism to the doctrines of Revelation.[179] Warton had to remove the inc.u.mbrance of his Commentaries on Pope, while a most laborious confederacy zealously performed the same task to relieve Shakspeare. Thus Warburton pursued ONE SECRET PRINCIPLE in all his labours; thus he raised edifices which could not be securely inhabited, and were only impediments in the roadway; and these works are now known by the labours of those who have exerted their skill in laying them in ruins.

Warburton was probably aware that the SECRET PRINCIPLE which regulated his public opinions might lay him open, at numerous points, to the strokes of ridicule. It is a weapon which every one is willing to use, but which seems to terrify every one when it is pointed against themselves. There is no party or sect which have not employed it in their most serious controversies: the grave part of mankind protest against it, often at the moment they have been directing it for their own purpose. And the inquiry, whether ridicule be a test of truth, is one of the large controversies in our own literature. It was opened by Lord Shaftesbury, and zealously maintained by his school. Akenside, in a note to his celebrated poem, a.s.serts the efficacy of ridicule as a test of truth: Lord Kaimes had just done the same. Warburton levelled his piece at the lord in the bush-fighting of a note; but came down in the open field with a full discharge of his artillery on the luckless bard.[180]