Warburton, indeed, was always looking about for fresh recruits: a circumstance which appears in the curious Memoirs of the late Dr. Heathcote, written by himself. Heathcote, when young, published anonymously a pamphlet in the Middletonian controversy. By the desire of Warburton, the bookseller transmitted his compliments to the anonymous author. “I was greatly surprised,” says Heathcote, “but soon after perceived that Warburton’s state of authorship being a state of war, it was his custom to be particularly attentive to all young authors, in hopes of enlisting them into his service. Warburton was more than civil, when necessary, on these occasions, and would procure such adventurers some slight patronage.”—Nichols’s “Literary Anecdotes,” vol. v. p. 536.
We are astonished at the boldness of the minor critic, when, even after the fatal edition of Warburton’s Shakspeare, he should still venture, in the life of his great friend, to assert that “this fine edition must ever be highly valued by men of sense and taste; a spirit congenial to that of the author breathing throughout!”
Is it possible that the man who wrote this should ever have read the “Canons of Criticism?” Yet is it to be supposed that he who took so lively an interest in the literary fortunes of his friend should not have read them? The Warburtonians appear to have adopted one of the principles of the Jesuits in their controversies, which was to repeat arguments which had been confuted over and over again; to insinuate that they had not been so! But this was not too much to risk by him who, in his dedication of “Horace’s Epistle to Augustus,” with a Commentary, had hardily and solemnly declared that “Warburton, in his enlarged view of things, had not only revived the two models of Aristotle and Longinus, but had rather struck out a new original plan of criticism, which should unite the virtues of each of them. This experiment was made on the two greatest of our own poets—Shakspeare and Pope. Still (he adds, addressing Warburton) you went farther, by joining to those powers a perfect insight into human nature; and so ennobling the exercise of literary by the justest moral censure, you have now, at length, advanced criticism to its full glory.”
A perpetual intercourse of mutual adulation animated the sovereign and his viceroy, and, by mutual support, each obtained the same reward: two mitres crowned the greater and the minor critic. This intercourse was humorously detected by the lively author of “Confusion Worse Confounded.”—“When the late Duke of R.,” says he, “kept wild beasts, it was a common diversion to make two of his bears drunk (not metaphorically with flattery, but literally with strong ale), and then daub them over with honey. It was excellent sport to see how lovingly (like a couple of critics) they would lick and claw one another.” It is almost amazing to observe how Hurd, who naturally was of the most frigid temperament, and the most subdued feelings, warmed, heated, and blazed in the progressive stages “of that pageantry of praise spread over the Rev. Mr. Warburton, when the latter was advancing fast towards a bishoprick,” to use the words of Dr. Parr, a sagacious observer of man. However, notwithstanding the despotic mandates of our Pichrocole and his dapper minister, there were who did not fear to meet the greater bear of the two so facetiously described above. And the author of “Confusion Worse Confounded” tells a familiar story, which will enliven the history of our great critic. “One of the bears mentioned above happened to get loose, and was running along the street in which a tinker was gravely walking. The people all cried, ‘Tinker! tinker! beware of the bear!’ Upon this Magnano faced about with great composure; and raising his staff, knocked down Bruin, then setting his arms a-kimbo, walked off very sedately; only saying, ‘Let the bear beware of the tinker,’ which is now become a proverb in those parts.”—“Confusion Worse Confounded,” p. 75.
Pope collected these numerous literary libels with extraordinary care. He had them bound in volumes of all sizes; and a range of twelves, octavos, quartos, and folios were marshalled in portentous order on his shelves. He wrote the names of the writers, with remarks on these Anonymiana. He prefixed to them this motto, from Job: “Behold, my desire is, that mine adversary had written a book: surely I would take it upon my shoulder, and bind it as a crown to me.” xxxi. 35. Ruffhead, who wrote Pope’s Life under the eye of Warburton, who revised every sheet of the volume, and suffered this mere lawyer and singularly wretched critic to write on, with far inferior taste to his own—offered “the entire collection to any public library or museum, whose search is after curiosities, and may be desirous of enriching their common treasure with it: it will be freely at the service of that which asks first.” Did no one accept the invitation? As this was written in 1769, it is evidently pointed towards the British Museum; but there I have not heard of it. This collection must have contained much of the Secret Memoirs of Grub-street: it was always a fountain whence those “waters of bitterness,” the notes in the Dunciad, were readily supplied. It would be curious to discover by what stratagem Pope obtained all that secret intelligence about his Dunces, with which he has burthened posterity, for his own particular gratification. Arbuthnot, it is said, wrote some notes merely literary; but Savage, and still humbler agents, served him as his Espions de Police. He pensioned Savage to his last day, and never deserted him. In the account of “the phantom Moore,” Scriblerus appeals to Savage to authenticate some story. One curious instance of the fruits of Savage’s researches in this way he has himself preserved, in his memoirs of “An Author to be Let, by Iscariot Hackney.” This portrait of “a perfect Town-Author” is not deficient in spirit: the hero was one Roome, a man only celebrated in the Dunciad for his “funereal frown.” But it is uncertain whether this fellow had really so dismal a countenance; for the epithet was borrowed from his profession, being the son of an undertaker! Such is the nature of some satire! Dr. Warton is astonished, or mortified, for he knew not which, to see the pains and patience of Pope and his friends in compiling the Notes to the Dunciad, to trace out the lives and works of such paltry and forgotten scribblers. “It is like walking through the darkest alleys in the dirtiest part of St. Giles’s.” Very true! But may we not be allowed to detect the vanities of human nature at St. Giles’s as well as St. James’s? Authors, however obscure, are always an amusing race to authors. The greatest find their own passions in the least, though distorted, or cramped in too small a compass.
It is doubtless from Pope’s great anxiety for his own literary celebrity that we have been furnished with so complete a knowledge of the grotesque groups in the Dunciad. “Give me a shilling,” said Swift, facetiously, “and I will insure you that posterity shall never know one single enemy, excepting those whose memory you have preserved.” A very useful hint for a man of genius to leave his wretched assailants to dissolve away in their own weakness. But Pope, having written a Dunciad, by accompanying it with a commentary, took the only method to interest posterity. He felt that Boileau’s satires on bad authors are liked only in the degree the objects alluded to are known. But he loved too much the subject for its own sake. He abused the powers genius had conferred on him, as other imperial sovereigns have done. It is said that he kept the whole kingdom in awe of him. In “the frenzy and prodigality of vanity,” he exclaimed—
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“————Yes, I am proud to see Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me!” |
Tacitus Gordon said of him, that Pope seemed to persuade the nation that all genius and ability were confined to him and his friends.