Fanciful as was the genius of Warburton, it delighted too much in its eccentric motions, and in its own solitary greatness, amid abstract and recondite topics, to have strongly attracted the public attention, had not a party been formed 273 around him, at the head of which stood the active and subtle Hurd; and amid the gradations of the votive brotherhood, the profound Balguy,[187] the spirited Brown,[188] till we descend—

274

To his tame jackal, parson Towne.[189]
Verses on Warburton’s late Edition.

This Warburtonian party reminds one of an old custom among our elder poets, who formed a kind of freemasonry among themselves, by adopting younger poets by the title of their sons.—But that was a domestic society of poets; this, a revival of the Jesuitic order instituted by its founder, that—

By him supported with a proper pride,
They might hold all mankind as fools beside.
Might, like himself, teach each adopted son,
’Gainst all the world, to quote a Warburton.[190]
Churchill’s “Fragment of a Dedication.”

The character of a literary sycophant was never more perfectly exhibited than in Hurd. A Whig in principle, yet he had all a courtier’s arts for Warburton; to him he devoted all his genius, though that, indeed, was moderate; aided him with all his ingenuity, which was exquisite; and lent his cause a certain delicacy of taste and cultivated elegance, which, although too prim and artificial, was a vein of gold running through his mass of erudition; it was Hurd who aided the usurpation of Warburton in the province of criticism above 275 Aristotle and Longinus.[191] Hurd is justly characterised by Warton, in his Spenser, vol. ii. p. 36, as “the most sensible and ingenious of modern critics.”—He was a lover of his studies; and he probably was sincere, when he once told a friend of the literary antiquary Cole, that he would have 276 chosen not to quit the university, for he loved retirement; and on that principle Cowley was his favourite poet, which he afterwards showed by his singular edition of that poet. He was called from the cloistered shades to assume the honourable dignity of a Royal Tutor. Had he devoted his days to literature, he would have still enriched its stores. But he had other more supple and more serviceable qualifications. Most adroit was he in all the archery of controversy: he had the subtlety that can evade the aim of the assailant, and the slender dexterity, substituted for vigour, that struck when least expected. The subaltern genius of Hurd required to be animated by the heroic energy of Warburton; and the careless courage of the chief wanted one who could maintain the unguarded passages he left behind him in his progress.

Such, then, was Warburton, and such the quarrels of this great author. He was, through his literary life, an adventurer, guided by that secret principle which opened an immediate road to fame. By opposing the common sentiments of mankind, he awed and he commanded them; and by giving a new face to all things, he surprised, by the appearances of discoveries. All this, so pleasing to his egotism, was not, however, fortunate for his ambition. To sustain an authority which he had usurped; to substitute for the taste he wanted a curious and dazzling erudition; and to maintain those reckless decisions which so often plunged him into perils, Warburton adopted his system of Literary Quarrels. These were the illegitimate means which raised a sudden celebrity, and which genius kept alive, as long as that genius lasted; but Warburton suffered that literary calamity, too protracted a period of human life: he outlived himself and his fame. This great and original mind sacrificed all his genius to that secret principle we have endeavoured to develope—it was a self-immolation!

The learned Selden, in the curious little volume of his “Table-Talk,” has delivered to posterity a precept for the learned, which they ought to wear, like the Jewish phylacteries, as “a frontlet between their eyes.” No man is the wiser for his learning: it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man. Sir Thomas Hanmer, who was well acquainted with Warburton, during their correspondence about Shakspeare, often said of him:—“The only use he could find in Mr. Warburton was starting the game; he was not to be trusted in 277 running it down.” A just discrimination! His fervid curiosity was absolutely creative; but his taste and his judgment, perpetually stretched out by his system, could not save him from even inglorious absurdities!

Warburton, it is probable, was not really the character he appears. It mortifies the lovers of genius to discover how a natural character may be thrown into a convulsed unnatural state by some adopted system: it is this system, which, carrying it, as it were, beyond itself, communicates a more than natural, but a self-destroying energy. All then becomes reversed! The arrogant and vituperative Warburton was only such in his assumed character; for in still domestic life he was the creature of benevolence, touched by generous passions. But in public life the artificial or the acquired character prevails over the one which nature designed for us; and by that all public men, as well as authors, are usually judged by posterity.