Critical Observations on Shakespeare. By John Upton, Prebendary of Rochester. London, 1746. Second edition, with a preface replying to Warburton, 1748.
An Essay upon English Tragedy. With Remarks upon the Abbé de Blanc's Observations on the English Stage. By William Guthrie, Esq. [1747.]
The last of these may not have appeared, however, till after Warburton's edition.
Johnson is said by Boswell to have ever entertained a grateful remembrance of this allusion to him “at a time when praise was of value.” But though the criticism is merited, is it too sinister a suggestion that it was prompted partly by the reference in Johnson's pamphlet to “the learned Mr. Warburton”? When Johnson's edition appeared in 1765, Warburton expressed a very different opinion (see Nichols, Anecdotes, v., p. 595).
[101-105]. whole Compass of Criticism. Cf. Theobald's account of the “Science of Criticism,” pp. 81, etc., which Warburton appears to have suggested.
[101]. Canons of literal Criticism. This phrase suggested the title of the ablest and most damaging attack on Warburton's edition,—The Canons of Criticism, and Glossary, being a Supplement to Mr. Warburton's Edition of Shakespear. The author was Thomas Edwards (1699-1757), a “gentleman of Lincoln's Inn,” who accordingly figures in the notes to the Dunciad, iv. 568. When the book first appeared in 1748 it was called A Supplement, etc.... Being the Canons of Criticism. It reached a seventh edition in 1765.
[103]. Rymer, Short View of Tragedy (1693), pp. 95, 6.
[105]. as Mr. Pope hath observed. Preface, p. 47.
Dacier, Bossu. See notes, pp. [18] and [86].
René Rapin (1621-1687). His fame as a critic rests on his Réflexions sur la Poétique d' Aristote et sur les Ouvrages des Poètes anciens et modernes (1674), which was Englished by Rymer immediately on its publication. His treatise De Carmine Pastorali, of which a translation is included in Creech's Idylliums of Theocritus (1684), was used by Pope for the preface to his Pastorals. An edition of The Whole Critical Works of Monsieur Rapin ... newly translated into English by several Hands, 2 vols., appeared in 1706; it is not, however, complete.