The “Quarterly Review,” vol. vii. p. 383.—So masterly a piece of criticism has rarely surprised the public in the leaves of a periodical publication. It comes, indeed, with the feelings of another age, and the reminiscences of the old and vigorous school. I cannot implicitly adopt all the sentiments of the critic, but it exhibits a highly-finished portrait, enamelled by the love of the artist.—This article was written by the late Dr. Whitaker, the historian of Craven, &c.
When Warburton, sore at having been refused academical honours at Oxford, which were offered to Pope, then his fellow-traveller, and who, in consequence of this refusal, did himself not accept them—in his controversy with Lowth (then the Oxford Professor), gave way to his angry spirit, and struck at the University itself, for its political jesuitism, being a place where men “were taught to distinguish between de facto and de jure,” caustic was the retort. Lowth, by singular felicity of application, touched on Warburton’s original designation, in a character he hit on in Clarendon. After remonstrating with spirit and dignity on this petulant attack, which was not merely personal, Lowth continues:—“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; though one might justly plead, in excuse for it, a natural curiosity to know where and how such a phenomenon was produced. It is commonly said that 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 (on whom you have, therefore, with a wonderful happiness of allusion, justness of application, and elegance of expression, conferred ‘the unrivalled title of the Chancellor of Human Nature’), that it peculiarly disposes men to be proud, insolent, and pragmatical.” Lowth, in a note, inserts Clarendon’s character of Colonel Harrison: “He 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 (Lowth continues), 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.”—Lowth’s Letter to the Author of the D. L. p. 63.
Was ever weapon more polished and keen? This Attic style of controversy finely contrasts with the tasteless and fierce invective of the Warburtonians, although one of them is well known to have managed too adroitly the cutting instrument of irony; but the frigid malignancy of Hurd diminishes the pleasure we might find in his skill. Warburton ill concealed his vexation in the contempt he vented in a letter to Hurd on this occasion. “All you say about Lowth’s pamphlet breathes the purest spirit of friendship. His wit and his reasoning, God knows, and I also, (as a certain critic said once in a matter of the like great importance), are much below the qualities that deserve those names.”—He writes too of “this man’s boldness in publishing his letters.”—“If he expects an answer, he will certainly find himself disappointed; though I believe I could make as good sport with this devil of a vice, for the public diversion, as ever was made with him in the old Moralities.”—But Warburton did reply! Had he ever possessed one feeling of taste, never would he have figured the elegant Lowth as this grotesque personage. He was, however, at that moment sharply stung!
This circumstance of Attorneyship was not passed over in Mallet’s “Familiar Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living.” Comparing, in the Spirit of “familiarity,” Arnall, an impudent scribbling attorney and political scribe, with Warburton, he says, “You have been an attorney as well as he, but a little more impudent than he was; for Arnall never presumed to conceal his turpitude under the gown and the scarf.” But this is mere invective!
I have given a tempered opinion of his motive for this sudden conversion from Attorneyship to Divinity; for it must not be concealed, in our inquiry into Warburton’s character, that he has frequently been accused of a more worldly one. He was so fierce an advocate for some important causes he undertook, that his sincerity has been liable to suspicion; the pleader, in some points, certainly acting the part of a sophist. Were we to decide by the early appearances of his conduct, by the rapid change of his profession, by his obsequious servility to his country squire, and by what have been termed the hazardous “fooleries in criticism, and outrages in controversy,” which he systematically pursued, he looks like one not in earnest; and more zealous to maintain the character of his own genius, than the cause he had espoused. Leland once exclaimed, “What are we to think of the writer and his intentions? Is he really sincere in his reasonings?” Certain it is, his paradoxes often alarmed his friends, to repeat the words of a great critic, by “the absurdity of his criticism, the heterodoxy of his tenets, and the brutality of his invectives.” Our Juvenal, who, whatever might be the vehemence of his declamation, reflected always those opinions which floated about him, has drawn a full-length figure. He accounts for Warburton’s early motive in taking the cassock, as being
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“——————thereto drawn By some faint omens of the Lawn, And on the truly Christian plan, To make himself a gentleman: A title, in which Form arrayed him, Tho’ Fate ne’er thought of when she made him. To make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote: So long he wrote, and long about it, That e’en believers ’gan to doubt it. He wrote too of the Holy Ghost; Of whom, no more than doth a post, He knew; nor, should an angel show him, Would he or know, or choose to know him.” Churchill’s “Duellist.” |
I would not insinuate that Warburton is to be ranked among the class he so loudly denounced, that of “Free-thinkers;” his mind, warm with imagination, seemed often tinged with credulity. But from his want of sober-mindedness, we cannot always prove his earnestness in the cause he advocated. He often sports with his fancies; he breaks out into the most familiar levity; and maintains, too broadly, subtile and refined principles, which evince more of the political than the primitive Christian. It is certain his infidelity was greatly suspected; and Hurd, to pass over the stigma of Warburton’s sudden conversion to the Church, insinuates that “an early seriousness of mind determined him to the ecclesiastical profession.”—“It may be so,” says the critic in the “Quarterly Review,” no languid admirer of this great man; “but the symptoms of that seriousness were very equivocal afterwards; and the certainty of an early provision, from a generous patron in the country, may perhaps be considered by those who are disposed to assign human conduct to ordinary motives, as quite adequate to the effect.”