FOOTNOTES:
[1] "I own the late encroachments upon my constitution made me willing to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest for the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by the Father of all mercy; and for the other (though indeed a trifle, yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every short-sighted and malevolent critic, or inadvertent and censorious reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light," &c.—Let. cxx. to Mr. W.—Warburton.
[2] "I also give and bequeath to the said Mr. Warburton, the property of all such of my works already printed as he hath written or shall write commentaries or notes upon, and which I have not otherwise disposed of or alienated; and as he shall publish without future alterations."—His Last Will and Testament.—Warburton.
[3] A subscription would have been simply a petition from Warburton to the public, soliciting them to increase the value of the legacy bequeathed him by Pope.
[4] The engravings were execrable; the type and paper good, but not extraordinary. The outlay upon the edition, for which Warburton takes credit as for a munificent act, was a common-place commercial transaction, with the certainty of a large return.
[5] The corrections are few and trivial. The account which Warburton gives of the novelties in his edition is from first to last exaggerated.
[6] The only restored lines which improve the orthodoxy of the Essay on Man relate to a future state.
[7] Either Warburton had never heard of Madame de Sévigné's letters, or what is more likely, he was unable to taste their charm. Their delicate graces, and native liveliness, would have been lost upon the man who thought that Pope's artificial epistles were "true models of familiar" letters.
[8] The assertion that the copies had not been published is unaccountable. Every line of them had been published twice over by Pope in his lifetime, and all but two or three pages, had been published again and again.
A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod,
An honest man's the noblest work of God.—Warburton.
[10] It will be printed in the same form with this, and every future edition of his works, so as to make a part of them.—Warburton.
The Life which Warburton promised with such solemn pomp was never written and he was content to assist Ruffhead in his feeble compilation.
[11] Warburton intimates that Pope's only faults grew out of his credulous belief in "the specious appearance of virtue," which was a sarcasm directed against those friends of Pope who were the enemies of Warburton.
[12] The demand of Warburton was not for a truce on the day of Pope's funeral, which took place seven years before. He insisted that because Pope was dead no one should ever again question his title to be called "good." Neither Pope nor Warburton was accustomed to spare dead men, and the claim for exemption was specially inconsistent in the preface to works which were full of bitter attacks upon both living and dead. Warburton was to go on circulating Pope's venom, and any victim who retaliated was to be pronounced "sacrilegious," "a scandal even to barbarians," and worthy to be "rewarded with execration and a gibbet."
[13] 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.