Born at Newark, 24 Dec. 1698. At school at Newark, and at Oakham Grammar School, till 1714. Articled to an attorney, 23 April 1714, for five years. Before long gave up legal profession, and was ordained Deacon, 1723; Priest, 1727. Vicar of Greaseley, 1727–28. Created M.A., Camb., April 1728. Rector of Brant-Broughton, 1728–46. Rector of Frisby, 1730–56. Chaplain to Prince of Wales, 1738. Married Gertrude Tucker, 5 Sept. 1745. Preacher to Lincoln’s Inn, 1746. Prebendary of Gloucester, 1753–55. Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the King, 1754. D.D., 1754. Prebendary of Durham, 1755–57. Dean of Bristol, 1757. Bishop of Gloucester, Dec. 1759. Founded a Lectureship at Lincoln’s Inn, 1768. Died, at Gloucester, 7 June 1779. Buried in the Cathedral. Works [exclusive of separate sermons]: “Miscellaneous Translations” (anon.), 1724; “Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles” (anon.), 1727; “The Legal Judicature in Chancery” (anon.; with S. Burroughs), 1727; “The Alliance between Church and State” (anon.), 1736; “The Divine Legation of Moses” (2 vols.), 1738–41; “A Vindication of Mr. Pope’s Essay on Man,” 1740; “Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections” (2 pts.), 1745–46; “Two Sermons,” 1746; “Apologetical Dedication to … Dr. H. Stebbing,” 1746; “Letter from an Author to an M.P.,” 1747; “Remarks upon the Principles … of Dr. Rutherford’s Essay,” 1747; “Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism” (anon.), 1749; “Letter to Viscount Bolingbroke” (anon.), 1749; “Julian,” 1750; “The Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion” (3 vols.), 1753–67; “A View of Lord Bolingbroke’s Philosophy” (anon.), 1756; “Remarks on Mr. D. Hume’s Essay on the Natural History of Religion” (anon.; with R. Hurd), 1757; “A Rational Account … of the Lord’s Supper,” 1761; “An Enquiry into the Nature … of Literary Property” (anon.), 1762; “The Doctrine of Grace,” 1763. Posthumous: “Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian,” 1789; “Letters … to one of his friends,” 1808; “Letters to the Rt. Hon. Charles Yorke” (priv. ptd.), 1812; “A Selection from his Unpublished Papers,” ed. by F. Kilvert, 1841. He edited, Pope’s “Essay on Man,” 1729; “Dunciad,” 1749; “Shakespeare’s Plays,” 1747; “Essay on Criticism,” 1751; “Works,” 1751, and “Additions to Works,” 1776. Collected Works: ed. by R. Hurd, new edn. (14 vols.), 1811–41. Life: by J. S. Watson, 1863.

Personal

  Who is Mr. Warburton? What is his birth, or whence his privilege, that the reputations of men both living and dead, of men in birth, character, station, in every instance of true worthiness, much his superiors, must lie 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?

  Rev. Sir,—I had the favour of yours, which gave me a mixture of pain and pleasure,—of pain for ever having 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; but 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 believe you. But before you informed me of it, I thought otherwise; and so did many a person besides me. 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 suffices with me, and I thank you for it.

  To have made a proper use of the advantages of a good education, is a just praise; but to have overcome the disadvantages of a bad one, is a much greater. 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. It is commonly said 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, that it particularly disposes them to be proud, insolent, and pragmatical. “Colonel Harrison was the son of a butcher, 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.” Now, my lord, 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.

  Upon which the King said, that he heard Dr. Warburton was a man of such general knowledge, that you could scarce talk with him on any subject on which he was not qualified to speak; and that his learning resembled Garrick’s acting, in its universality. His Majesty then talked of the controversy between Warburton and Lowth, which he seemed to have read, and asked Johnson what he thought of it. Johnson answered, “Warburton has most general, most scholastick learning; Lowth is the more correct scholar. I do not know which of them calls names best.” The king was pleased to say he was of the same opinion; adding, “You do not think, then, Dr. Johnson, that there was much argument in the case.” Johnson said, he did not think there was. “Why truly, (said the King), when once it comes to calling names, argument is pretty well at an end.”

  He was rather a tall, robust, large-boned man, of a frame that seemed to require 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 himself any other indulgence, and so became a singular example, 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 low living.

  Mr. Burke, who avowed he knew little of art, though he admired it and knew many of its professors, was acquainted with Blakey the artist, who made the drawing for the frontispiece to Warburton’s edition of Pope’s works. He told him it was by Warburton’s particular desire that he made him the principal figure, and Pope only secondary; and that the light, contrary to the rules of art, goes upward from Warburton to Pope. A gentleman who was present when Mr. B. mentioned this circumstance, remarked that it was observable the poet and his commentator were looking different ways.

  Churchill hated Warburton, for no apparent cause, except that he thought himself bound in friendship to take up all Wilkes’s quarrels, and the Bishop had complained in the House of Lords of a gross and flagitious insult which that profligate had offered him. Yet there were more points of resemblance between Warburton and Churchill than any other two men of their age; they resembled each other in strength of character, in vigour and activity of mind, in their contemptuous sense of superiority over all who oppose them, and in a certain coarseness of nature, which was marked in the countenance of both,… which Churchill did not fail to note in the object of his enmity,… and of which he was not unconscious in himself.

  How, indeed, could Pope have expected Bolingbroke to like Warburton? The author of the “Divine Legation” was the embodiment of all that Bolingbroke detested in divines; and his bold, paradoxical, learned, and elaborate work must have appeared to Bolingbroke one of those compilations of artificial theology which he considered it his especial mission to destroy. The two men stood in natural antagonism. Bolingbroke’s hatred was not softened by the suspicion, that whatever might be his other qualifications, his learning on those theological questions on which he pronounced so decidedly, was not to be compared with that of this proud and scornful attorney’s son, who was working his way up to the bench of bishops.

  His life was a succession of battles,—battles of the pen. All Warburton’s books, like those of St. Augustine, are written against some adversary. But instead of handling the great public themes of Divinity, natural and revealed, Warburton is always defending some peculiar notion of his own, to which no one attached any importance, himself as little as any. The zest lay in the fighting, of which, while he was young, he never could get enough. The most famous of Warburton’s battles,—and the most serious; indeed the Waterloo of his critical empire,—was that with Lowth. In this celebrated encounter, in which the whole reading public, from the king downwards, participated with the liveliest interest, the points of sacred antiquity debated are mostly of no moment. Or where they are of moment, as e. g., the date of the Book of Job, the disputants lack the requisite knowledge for throwing even the feeblest ray of light upon them.

  A Blazing Star,—A Colossus of Literature,—The Great Preserver of Pope and Shakespeare,—The Literary Bull-dog,—A Literary Revolutionist,—The Modern Stagirite,—The Most Impudent Man Living,—A Mountebank in Criticism,—The Poet’s Parasite,—A Quack in Commentatorship,—The Scaliger of the Age,—A Universal Piece-Broker.

Alliance between Church and State, 1736

  The first edition of the “Alliance” was presented to all the bishops; when nothing came of that, the second was addressed to both the Universities; and when nothing came of that, the third was dedicated to a noble earl; and nothing has yet come of that.

  His work is one of the finest specimens that are to be found, perhaps, in any language, of scientific reasoning applied to a political subject.

  His once famous book on “The Alliance between Church and State,” in which all the presumption and ambition of his nature was first made manifest.

  Of the minor works of Warburton, perhaps the most useful, at this time unquestionably the most important and interesting, is “The Alliance between Church and State.”… This acute and comprehensive work.

  The greatest intellectual defect of [the “Alliance,” &c.] appears to be the absolute and rigid form of its propositions in indeterminate subject-matter. The writer argues for his particular scheme of the support of an establishment with full toleration of dissent, and the maintenance of an exclusive test, as though it were the single and mathematically necessary result of all general arguments from the nature of the State and the Church; whereas his is, in fact, only one mode of constructing the social equation; adapted perhaps to one particular stage of the progression of religious freedom, but not distinguished by any inherent properties of truth from other modes, which may be equally suitable to the preceding or the following stages.

  Is perhaps the most really valuable of his works.

  This book has often been considered his best. He accepts in the main the principles of Locke; and from the elastic theory of a social contract deduces a justification of the existing state of things in England. The state enters into alliance with the church for political reasons, and protects it by a test law and an endowment. In return for these benefits the church abandons its rights as an independent power. The book, representing contemporary ideas and vigorously written, went through several editions. It was highly praised afterwards by Horsley (“Case of Protestant Dissenters,” 1787); by Whitaker in the “Quarterly” for 1812; and has some affinity with the doctrine of Coleridge in his “Church and State.”

Divine Legation of Moses, 1738–41

  “The table is always full, Sir. He brings things from the north, and the south, and from every quarter. In his ‘Divine Legation,’ you are always entertained. He carries you round and round, without carrying you forward to the point; but then you have no wish to be carried forward.” He said to the Reverend Mr. Straham, “Warburton is perhaps the last man who has written with a mind full of reading and reflection.”

  A work in all views, of the most transcendent merit, whether we consider the invention or the execution. A plain, simple argument, yet perfectly new, proving the divinity of the Mosaic law, and laying a sure foundation for the support of Christianity is there drawn out to great length by a chain of reasoning, so elegantly connected, that the reader is carried along it with ease and pleasure; while the matter presented to him is so striking for its own importance, so embellished by a lively fancy, and illustrated from all quarters by exquisite learning and the most ingenious disquisition, that, in the whole compass of modern and ancient theology there is nothing equal or similar to this extraordinary performance.

  His “Divine Legation of Moses,”—the most learned, most arrogant, and most absurd work, which has been produced in England for a century.

  To the composition of this prodigious performance Hooker and Stillingfleet could have contributed the erudition, Chillingworth and Locke the acuteness, Taylor an imagination even more wild and copious, Swift, and perhaps Eachard, the sarcastic vein of wit; but what power of understanding, excepting that of Warburton, could first have amassed all these materials, and then compacted them into a bulky and elaborate work so consistent and harmonious? The principle of the work was no less bold and original than the execution. That the doctrine of a future state of reward or punishment was omitted in the books of Moses, had been insolently urged by infidels against the truth of his mission, while divines were feebly occupied in seeking what was certainly not to be found there, otherwise than by inference and implication. But Warburton, with an intrepidity unheard of before, threw open the gates of his camp, admitted the host of the enemy within his works, and beat them on a ground which was now become both his and theirs. In short, he admitted the proposition in its fullest extent, and proceeded to demonstrate from that very omission, which in all instruments of legislation merely human, had been industriously avoided, that a system which could dispense with a doctrine the very bond and cement of human society, must have come from God, and that the people to whom it was given must have been placed under his immediate superintendence…. Warburton’s “Divine Legation” is one of the few theological, and still fewer controversial works, which scholars perfectly indifferent to such subjects will ever read with delight.

  Parts of his system are true, and important, and well supported; but his main principle is a fallacy: unfounded in itself, and incapable of demonstrating the Divine Legation of Moses, were it even true.

  Warburton, with all his boldness and ingenuity, was not profoundly read in the Greek philosophers: he caught at single sentences which favoured his own views, rather than fully represented the spirit and opinions of his authors. The great proof of the discernment of Warburton was his dim second-sight of the modern discoveries in hieroglyphics.

  The intrinsic merit and ingenuity of the “Divine Legation” must ultimately have won it attention; but an immediate and exaggerated éclat was conferred upon it by the cloud of insect assailants who immediately fastened upon it. The liberal section of the clergy, represented by Hare, commended, but with an evident coldness. The moderate orthodox, represented by the feeble Sherlock, timidly gave in their adhesion, rather as if they feared to alienate so much power than as heartily appropriating it. But the high-church party, standing aloof in sullen opposition, felt at once, by an instinct far surer than intelligence, that the new candidate in the field of theology, however carefully he might have avoided committing himself against them, yet was not of them. They fell upon him immediately, to bury and to stifle, with the usual arms of the party—denunciation, not argument.

  The book is remarkable for its arrogance and lack of “sweet reasonableness.” It claims no attention from the student of English literature, neither would Warburton himself were it not for his association with Pope.

  A strange feeling accompanies the modern reader on his way through the book; the mere count of years that have passed since it was written is no measure of the mental interval that separates us from the author; the whole problem has altered beyond recognition, the whole horizon of thought is changed. His curious multifarious learning, his subtile lawyer-like method in speculative matters, his almost incredible confidence in the torch of logic to light the way to truth, these are now subjects of antiquarian rather than of living interest.

  His famous “Divine Legation of Moses,” which would have been one of the most brilliant paradoxes in literature if the author had kept it down in size, and one of the most learned of works if he had attended a little more to accuracy.

Edition of Shakespeare, 1747

  Such is the felicity of his genius in restoring numberless passages to their integrity, and in explaining others which the author’s sublime conceptions, or his licentious expression, kept out of sight, that this fine edition of Shakespeare must ever be highly valued by men of sense and taste; a spirit, congenial to the author, breathing throughout, and easily atoning, with such, for the little mistakes and inadvertencies discoverable in it.

  At length, when the public had decided on the facts 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 Lauder or Psalmanazar!

  Always striving to display his own acuteness, and scorn of others, deviates more than any one else from the meaning.

  If it were not painful to associate Shakspere, the great master of practical wisdom, with a critic who delights in the most extravagant paradoxes, we might prefer the amusement of Warburton’s edition to toiling through the heaps of verbal criticism which later years saw heaped up. Warburton, of course, belonged to the school of slashing emendators.

  This prelate, not then mitred, was undeniably learned and able; but he was as undeniably assuming and arrogant in his personal demeanor, and he treated Shakespeare’s works as he probably would have treated the player himself, had he been his contemporary. He set himself not so much to correcting the text, as to amending the writings of Shakespeare. His tone is that of haughty flippancy. Does he find a passage in which the thought, or the expression of William Shakespeare is at variance with the judgment of William Warburton?—he immediately alters it to suit the taste of that distinguished scholar and divine, saying: “Without a doubt, Shakespeare wrote, or meant, thus.”

  In 1744 Theobald died, and three years afterwards appeared Warburton’s edition of Shakspeare. It is to be hoped for the honour of human nature that there are few parallels to the meanness and baseness of which Warburton stands convicted in this work. His object was two-fold. The first and most important was to build the reputation of his own edition on the ruin of his predecessor’s, and the next to insinuate that any merit which is to be found in Theobald’s edition is to be attributed not to Theobald but to himself. After observing in the Preface that Theobald “succeeded so ill that he left his author in ten times a worse condition than he found him,” he goes on to say that “it was my ill-fortune to have some accidental connection with him;” that “I contributed a great number of observations to him,” and these, “as he wanted money, I allowed him to print.”… Having thus disposed of his dead friend in the Preface, he proceeds to appropriate his labours. He adopts Theobald’s text as the basis of his own; he steals his illustrations; he incorporates, generally without a word of acknowledgment, most of Theobald’s best emendations, carefully assigning to him such as are of little importance, while in his notes he keeps up a running fire of sneers and sarcasms.

  Though a few of Warburton’s emendations have been accepted, they are generally marked by both audacious and gratuitous quibbling, and show his real incapacity for the task. Though this was less obvious at the time, a telling exposure was made by Thomas Edwards in “a Supplement” to Warburton’s edition, called in later editions “Canons of Criticism.” Johnson compared Edwards to a fly stinging a stately horse; but the sting was sharp, and the “Canons of Criticism” is perhaps the best result of Warburton’s enterprise.

Editions of Pope

  You have signalised yourself by affecting to be the bully of Mr. Pope’s memory, into whose acquaintance, at the latter end of the poor man’s life, you were introduced by your nauseous flattery; and whose admirable writings you are about to publish, with commentaries worthy of Scriblerus himself; for we may judge of them beforehand by the specimens we have already seen of your skill in criticism.

  Soon after Pope’s acquaintance with Warburton commenced, and the latter had published some of his heavy commentaries on that poet, his friend Lord Marchmont told him that he was convinced he was one of the vainest men living. “How so?” says Pope. “Because, you little rogue,” replied Lord Marchmont, “it is manifest from your close connection with your new commentator you want to show posterity what an exquisite poet you are, and what a quantity of dulness you can carry down on your back without sinking under the load.”

  Dr. Warburton, endeavouring to demonstrate, what Addison could not discover, nor what Pope himself, according to the testimony of his intimate friend, Richardson, ever thought of or intended, that this Essay was written with a methodical and systematical regularity, has accompanied the whole with a long and laboured commentary, in which he has tortured many passages to support this groundless opinion. Warburton had certainly wit, genius, and much miscellaneous learning; but was perpetually dazzled and misled, by the eager desire of seeing everything in a new light unobserved before, into perverse interpretations and forced comments. It is painful to see such abilities wasted on such unsubstantial objects. Accordingly his notes on Shakspeare have been totally demolished by Edwards and Malone; and Gibbon has torn up by the roots his fanciful and visionary interpretation of the sixth book of Virgil. And but few readers, I believe, will be found that will cordially subscribe to an opinion lately delivered, that his notes on Pope’s Works are the very best ever given on any classic whatever. For, to instance no other, surely the attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the “Essay on Man” to the doctrines of revelation, is the rashest adventure in which ever critic yet engaged. This is, in truth, to divine, rather than to explain an author’s meaning.

  Warburton had more to do with Pope’s satires as an original suggester, and not merely as a commentator, than with any other section of his works. Pope and he hunted in couples over this field: and those who know the absolute craziness of Warburton’s mind, the perfect frenzy and lymphaticus error which possessed him for leaving all high-roads of truth and simplicity, in order to trespass over hedge and ditch after coveys of shy paradoxes, cannot be surprised that Pope’s good sense should often have quitted him under such guidance…. The Doctor was latterly always the instigator to any outrage on good sense, and Pope, from mere habit of deference to the Doctor’s theology and theological wig, as well as from gratitude for the Doctor’s pugnacity in his defence (since Warburton really was as good as a bull-dog in protecting Pope’s advance or retreat), followed with docility the leading of his reverend friend into any excess of folly.

  Warburton, Pope’s first editor, had a vigorous understanding, and possessed the enormous advantage that he carried on the work in concert with the poet, and could ask the explanation of every difficulty. A diseased ambition rendered his talents and opportunities useless. Without originality he aspired to be original, and imagined that to fabricate hollow paradoxes, and torture language into undesigned meanings was the surest evidence of a fertile, penetrating genius. He employed his sagacity less to discover than to distort the ideas of his author, and seems to have thought that the more he deviated from the obvious sense the greater would be his fame for inventive power. He has left no worse specimen of his perverse propensity than the spurious fancies, and idle refinements he fathered upon Pope. They are among his baldest paradoxes, are conveyed in his heaviest style, and are supported by his feeblest sophistry. His lifeless and verbose conceits soon provoke by their falsity, and fatigue by their ponderousness.

  It will thus be seen that Warburton not only slurred over the explanation of difficult passages in Pope’s text, but that to promote his interest, or to gratify his spite, he did not scruple to misrepresent the plain intention of his author, and to introduce into his notes irrelevant sarcasms of his own. Such a perversion of his trust of course raises the further presumption that he may have tampered with the text itself, which we know differs in several important respects from all the editions published in Pope’s lifetime…. Quite enough evidence, however, remains of the untrustworthiness of Warburton’s work to make us deplore the fact that his editions should have been taken as the starting-point for all succeeding investigations.

General

  Mr. Warburton is the greatest general critic I ever knew, the most capable of seeing through all the possibilities of things.

  He joined, to a more than athletic strength of body, a prodigious memory; and to both a prodigious industry. He had read almost constantly twelve or fourteen hours a day, for five-and-twenty or thirty years; and had heaped together as much learning as could be crowded into a head. In the course of my acquaintance with him, I consulted with him once or twice,—not oftener, for I found this mass of learning of as little use to me as to the owner. The man was communicative enough, but nothing was distinct in his mind. How could it be otherwise? he had never spared time to think,—all was employed in reading. His reason had not the merit of common mechanism. When you press a watch or pull a clock, they answer your question with precision…. But when you ask this man a question, he overwhelmed you by pouring forth all that the several terms or words of your question recalled to his memory; and if he omitted anything, it was that very thing to which the sense of the whole question should have led him and confined him. To ask him a question was to wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled on with vast rapidity and confused noise, till the force of it was spent; and you went away with all the noise in your ears, stunned and uninformed, I never left him that I was not ready to say to him, “Dieu vous fassel a grace de devenir moins savant!”

  It is my misfortune, 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.

  He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his imagination nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a memory full-fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original combinations, and at once exerted the powers of the scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His abilities gave him a haughty confidence, which he disclaimed to conceal or modify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemptuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman emperor’s determination, orderint dum metuant; he used no allurements of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade. His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness; he took the words that presented themselves; his diction is coarse and impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.

  And whom we may compare, not altogether improperly, to a blazing star that has appeared in our hemisphere, obscure his origin, resplendent his light, irregular his motion, and his period quite uncertain. With such a train of quotations as he carries in his tail, and the eccentricity of the vast circuit he takes, the vulgar are alarmed, the learned puzzled. Something wonderful it certainly portends, and I wish he may go off without leaving some malignant influence at least among us, if he does not set us on fire.

  While they (Leland and Jortin) 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 crimes of slander, their triumph is to be ascribed to their own strength, and to the conscious weakness of their antagonists, rather than to his love of justice, or his love of peace.

  The learning and abilities of the author (of the Divine Legation) had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the Dictator and tyrant of the World of Literature. The real merit of Warburton was degraded by the pride and presumption with which he pronounced his infallible decrees; in his polemic writings he lashed his antagonists without mercy or moderation; and his servile flatterers (see the base and malignant Essay on the Delicacy of Friendship), exalting the master critic far above Aristotle and Longinus, assaulted every modest dissenter who refused to consult the oracle and to adore the Idol. In a land of liberty, such despotism must provoke a general opposition, and the zeal of opposition is seldom candid or impartial.

  Warburton had that eagle-eyed sagacity, which pierces through all difficulties and obscurities; and that glow of imagination which gilds and irradiates every object it touches.

  Warburton, we think, was the last of our great divines—the last, perhaps, of any profession who united profound learning with great powers of understanding, and, along with vast and varied stores of acquired knowledge, possessed energy of mind enough to wield them with ease and activity. The days of the Cudworths and Barrows—the Hookers and Taylors, are gone by…. He was not only the last of our reasoning scholars, but the last also, we think, of our powerful polemics. This breed, too, we take it, is extinct;—and we are not sorry for it…. The truth is, that this extraordinary person was a Giant in literature—with many of the vices of the Gigantic character.

  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…. Warburton was a literary Revolutionist, who, to maintain a new order of things, exercised all the despotism of a perpetual dictator. The bold unblushing energy which could lay down the most extravagant positions, was maintained by a fierce dogmatic spirit, and by a peculiar style of mordacious contempt and intolerant insolence, beating down his opponents from all quarters with an animating shout of triumph, to encourage those more serious minds, who, overcome by his genius, were yet often alarmed by the ambiguous tendency of his speculations.

  It is not a little painful to observe on the disingenuousness of petty critics, who would deny to such a man as Warburton the claim of literary abilities. I will maintain, however, that those abilities were really first-rate, whether he be considered as a religionist and a philosopher (characters which, unhappily, are not always found together), a polemic, or a writer of notes.

  Warburton’s love of paradox is well known. His levity, dogmatism, and surliness have often been exposed. His love of notoriety and of the marvellous was certainly stronger than his attachment to truth. While his talents will always be admired, his character will never be respected.

  The currents of life had drifted Warburton on divinity as his profession, but nature designed him for a satirist; and the propensity was too strong to yield even to the study of the Gospels.

  That it is possible to have all the powers of Warburton, and be greatly in the dark on the truths of the gospel, is made sufficiently evident by his “Treatise on the Doctrine of Grace.”

  A divine of almost unrivalled erudition (Jortin excepted) in his day.

  In his literary character, he was of a bold and determined English spirit, ready to resist all opponents, and willing to consider the state of authorship as a state of war. If any deduction be made from this part of his character, it must be on account of his conduct towards Pope, in his advances to whom there appears no great magnanimity, and whom he has always been suspected of defending rather from hope of possible advantage than from sincerity of settled opinion…. 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.

  We have already related some of Warburton’s more signal enmities. They are samples only of a whole career. Nay, the man himself is in this but the representative man of his age. Theological literature was a babel of loud vociferation, coarse contradiction, and mean imputation. The prize in this mêlée was to the noisiest lungs and the foulest tongue. The Warburtonians must not bear the blame alone; nor was the disease of distraction confined to divines. The progress of refinement cannot tame the passions, but has curbed the directness with which they then vented themselves in words. Even now malignant imputation, banished from higher literature, still lingers in clerical controversy. But, after every deduction made, we still find there rests upon the Warburtonian school an extraordinary opprobrium on the score of dirt-throwing. Warburton’s superiority and his generous temper ought to have exempted him from this weakness of inferior writers. Instead of that he is the worst offender…. The vigour of his thought does not concentrate itself in telling paragraphs. It is a rude—we had almost said brute—force penetrating the whole. And his English style is so slipslop, that it would be difficult to find in all the thirteen volumes of his works half a dozen passages which might be taken as fair specimens of his peculiar powers.

  Bishop Warburton wrote “Remarks on Hume’s ‘Natural History of Religion.’” They are not of much value; in fact, this is one of Warburton’s poorest performances. His words were many and strong, his arguments few and feeble. Warburton defended Christianity by throwing mud at its opponents.

  Warburton was a fortunate author. Though he published a host of paradoxical notions, his opponents, if we are to trust his repeated assertions, were always fools and knaves.

  In Warburton force predominated very much over judgment. He delighted in upholding paradoxes and hopeless causes—arguing with great ingenuity, eking out his argument with plentiful abuse, and, when violently excited, even going the length of threatening his opponent with the cudgel. His command of language, if used with greater discretion, would have given him one of the highest places in literature. His style is simple, emphatic, and racy; diversified with clever quotations and pungent sarcasm (often taking the form of irony).

  He cultivated the majestic air of a tyrant in literature; he argued, he denounced, he patronised the orthodox, and he bellowed like a bull at the recalcitrant. He was so completely certain of his own intellectual supremacy, that the modern reader feels almost guilty in being able to feel but scant interest in him and in his writings…. Warburton was very learned, but so headstrong, arrogant, and boisterous, that he stuns the reader, and those who now examine the vast pile of his writings are not likely to be gratified. What he might gain by his vigour he more than loses by his coarseness, and the student sickens of his ostentation and his paradox.

  Is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits his purpose to be so…… Warburton’s stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since he could not convince by argument. No one could call an opponent names in the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who ventured to differ from him was either a knave or a fool. “Warburton’s stock argument,” it has been said, “is a threat to cudgel anyone who disputes his opinion.” He was a laborious student, and the mass of work he accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left nothing which lives in literature or in theology. He was, however, a man of various acquisitions, and won, for that reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson.

  Is the typical controversialist of his age; strong, uncompromising, vigorous with something of the sinewy force of the athlete, direct and even brutal in manner, swollen with the self-satisfied pride of the combatant, and without anything of sentiment or feeling.

  To take by storm the Temple of Fame seems to have been the valiant resolve of the once-renowned author of “The Divine Legation of Moses.” He flung its warders a loud defiant summons to surrender, and thundered at its doors. Had violence sufficed for the achievement, so fierce and arrogant a knight of the pen would assuredly have added enduring reputation to his worldly success; but though he proved himself an effective soldier in the controversial campaigns of his own day, it was inevitable that the judgment of time should go in his disfavour. The sword and lance of Warburton’s mental equipment, however fitted to put an adversary to silence, were powerless to overawe “the incorruptible Areopagus of posterity.” Churchman as he was, and in the end prelate, the weapons of his warfare were not spiritual, nor the virtues of his character and temper the distinctive Christian graces.

  Who would care a picayune in these degenerate days what Dr. Warburton said pro or con a book? It was Warburton (then Bishop of Gloucester) who remarked of Granger’s “Biographical History of England” that it was “an odd one.” This was as high a compliment as he ever paid a book; those which he did not like he called sad books, and those which he fancied he called odd ones.

  William Warburton was a rather typical divine of the age, who, after perhaps occupying too high a position in it, has been unduly depreciated in this…. Warburton just came short of being a great theologian and a great man of letters. His controversial manners cannot be defended, but we should probably have heard a good deal less of them if he had been on the unorthodox side.

  To his admirers he represented the last worthy successor of the learned divines of the proceeding century. His wide reading and rough intellectual vigour are undeniable. Unfortunately he was neither a scholar nor a philosopher. Though he wrote upon the Old Testament, his knowledge of Hebrew was, as Lowth told him, quite superficial; and his blunders in Latin proved that he was no Bentley. His philosophical weakness appears not only in his metaphysical disquisitions, but in the whole conception of his book. The theological system presupposed in the “Divine Legation” is grotesque, and is the most curious example of the results of applying purely legal conceptions to such problems. Warburton, as Lowth pointed out, retained the habits of thought of a sharp attorney, and constantly mistakes wrangling for reasoning. He was ingenious enough to persuade himself that he had proved his point when he had upset an antagonist by accepting the most paradoxical conclusions. Freethinkers such as Walpole and Voltaire thought him a hypocritical ally; and no one, except such personal friends as Hurd and Towne, has ever seriously accepted his position. He flourished in a period in which divines, with the exception of Butler, were becoming indifferent to philosophical speculation. For that reason he found no competent opponent, though his pugnacity and personal force made many enemies and conquered a few humble followers.