Warburton and Hurd frequently concerted together on the manner of attack and defence. In one of these letters of Hurd’s it is very amusing to read—“Taylor is a more creditable dunce than Webster. What do you think to do with the Appendix against Tillard and Sykes? Why might not Taylor rank with them,” &c. The Warburtonians had also a system of espionage. When Dr. Taylor was accused by one of them of having said that Warburton was no scholar, the learned Grecian replied that he did not recollect ever saying that Dr. Warburton was no scholar, but that indeed he had always thought so. Hence a tremendous quarrel! Hurd, the Mercury of our Jupiter, cast the first light shaft against the doctor, then Chancellor of Lincoln, by alluding to the Preface of his work on Civil Law as “a certain thing prefatory to a learned work, intituled ‘The Elements of Civil Law:’” but at length Jove himself rolled his thunder on the hapless chancellor. The doctor had said in his work, that “the Roman emperors persecuted the first Christians, not so much from a dislike of their tenets as from a jealousy of their nocturnal assemblies.” Warburton’s doctrine was, that “they held nocturnal assemblies because of the persecution of their enemies.” One was the fact, and the other the consequence. But the Chancellor of Lincoln was to be outrageously degraded among the dunces! that was the real motive; the “nocturnal assemblies” only the ostensible one. A pamphleteer, in defence of the chancellor, in reply, thought that in “this literary persecution” it might be dangerous “if Dr. Taylor should be provoked to prove in print what he only dropped in conversation.” How innocent was this gentleman of the arts and stratagems of logomachy, or book-wars! The proof would not have altered the cause: Hurd would have disputed it tooth and nail; Warburton was running greater risks, every day of his life, than any he was likely to receive from this flourish in the air. The great purpose was to make the Chancellor of Lincoln the butt of his sarcastic pleasantry; and this object was secured by Warburton’s forty pages of preface, in which the chancellor stands to be buffeted like an ancient quintain, “a mere lifeless block.” All this came upon him for only thinking that Warburton was no scholar!
See what I have said at the close of the note, pp. [262-3]. In a collection entitled “Verses occasioned by Mr. Warburton’s late Edition of Mr. Pope’s Works,” 1751, are numerous epigrams, parodies, and similes on it. I give one:—
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“As on the margin of Thames’ silver flood Stand little necessary piles of wood, So Pope’s fair page appears with notes disgraced: Put down the nuisances, ye men of taste!” |
Lowth has noticed the use Warburton made of his patent for vending Pope. “I thought you might possibly whip me at the cart’s-tail in a note to the ‘Divine Legation,’ the ordinary place of your literary executions; or pillory me in the Dunciad, another engine which, as legal proprietor, you have very ingeniously and judiciously applied to the same purpose; or, perhaps, have ordered me a kind of Bridewell correction, by one of your beadles, in a pamphlet.”—Lowth’s “Letter to Warburton,” p. 4.
Warburton carried the licentiousness of the pen in all these notes to the Dunciad to a height which can only be paralleled in the gross logomachies of Schioppius, Gronovius, and Scaliger, and the rest of that snarling crew. But his wit exceeded even his grossness. He was accused of not sparing—
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“Round-house wit and Wapping choler.” [Verses occasioned by Mr. W.’s late Edition of Pope.] |
And one of his most furious assailants thus salutes him:—“Whether you are a wrangling Wapping attorney, a pedantic pretender to criticism, an impudent paradoxical priest, or an animal yet stranger, an heterogeneous medley of all three, as your farraginous style seems to confess.”—An Epistle to the Author of a Libel entitled “A Letter to the Editor of Bolingbroke’s Works,” &c.—See Nichols, vol. v. p. 651.
I have ascertained that Mallet was the author of this furious epistle. He would not acknowledge what he dared not deny. Warburton treated Mallet, in this instance, as he often did his superiors—he never replied! The silence seems to have stung this irascible and evil spirit: he returned again to the charge, with another poisoned weapon. His rage produced “A Familiar Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living,” 1749. The style of this second letter has been characterised as “bad enough to disgrace even gaols and garrets.” Its virulence could not well exceed its predecessor. The oddness of its title has made this worthless thing often inquired after. It is merely personal. It is curious to observe Mallet, in this pamphlet, treat Pope as an object of pity, and call him “this poor man.” [David Mallet was the son of an innkeeper, who, by means of the party he wrote for, obtained lucrative appointments under Government, and died rich. He was unscrupulous in his career, and ready as a writer to do the most unworthy things. The death of Admiral Byng was hastened by the unscrupulous denunciations of Mallet, who was pensioned in consequence.] Orator Henley took some pains, on the first appearance of this catching title, to assure his friends that it did not refer to him. The title proved contagious; which shows the abuse of Warburton was very agreeable. Dr. Z. Grey, under the title of “A Country Curate,” published “A Free and Familiar Letter to the Great Refiner of Pope and Shakspeare,” 1750; and in 1753, young Cibber tried also at “A Familiar Epistle to Mr. William Warburton, from Mr. Theophilus Cibber,” prefixed to the “Life of Barton Booth.” Dr. Z. Grey’s “freedom and familiarity” are designed to show Warburton that he has no wit; but unluckily, the doctor having none himself, his arguments against Warburton’s are not decisive. “The familiarity” of Mallet is that of a scoundrel, and the younger Cibber’s that of an idiot: the genius of Warburton was secure. Mallet overcharged his gun with the fellest intentions, but found his piece, in bursting, annihilated himself. The popgun of the little Theophilus could never have been heard!
[Warburton never lost a chance of giving a strong opinion against Mallet; and Dr. Johnson says, “When Mallet undertook to write the ‘Life of Marlborough,’ Warburton remarked that he might perhaps forget that Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher.”]