I agreed with that elegant writer, that a fine piece of essay-writing, such as his own “Life,” required notes no more than his novels and his comedies, among which it may be classed. I observed that the ancients had no literary history; this was the result of the discovery of printing, the institution of national libraries, the general literary intercourse of Europe, and some other causes which are the growth almost of our own times. The ancients have written history without producing authorities.
Mr. Cumberland was then occupied on a review of Fox’s History; and of Clarendon, which lay open before him,—he had been complaining, with all the irritable feelings of a dramatist, of the frequent suspensions, and the tedious minuteness of his story.
I observed that notes had not then been discovered. Had Lord Clarendon known their use, he had preserved the unity of design in his text. His Lordship has unskilfully filled it with all that historical furniture his diligence had collected, and with those minute discussions which his anxiety for truth, and his lawyer-like mode of scrutinising into facts and substantiating evidence, amassed. Had these been cast into notes, and were it now possible to pass them over in the present text, how would the story of the noble historian clear up! 232 The greatness of his genius will appear when disencumbered of its unwieldy and misplaced accompaniments.
If this observation be just, it will apply with greater force to literary history itself, which, being often the mere history of the human mind, has to record opinions as well as events—to discuss as well as to narrate—to show how accepted truths become suspicious—or to confirm what has hitherto rested in obscure uncertainty, and to balance contending opinions and opposite facts with critical nicety. The multiplied means of our knowledge now opened to us, have only rendered our curiosity more urgent in its claims, and raised up the most diversified objects. These, though accessories to the leading one of our inquiries, can never melt together in the continuity of a text. It is to prevent all this disorder, and to enjoy all the usefulness and the pleasure of this various knowledge, which has produced the invention of notes in literary history. All this forms a sort of knowledge peculiar to the present more enlarged state of literature. Writers who delight in curious and rare extracts, and in the discovery of new facts and new views of things, warmed by a fervour of research which brings everything nearer to our eye and close to our touch, study to throw contemporary feelings in their page. Such rare extracts and such new facts Bayle eagerly sought, and they delighted Johnson; but all this luxury of literature can only be produced to the public eye in the variegated forms of notes.
WARBURTON, AND HIS QUARRELS;
INCLUDING AN ILLUSTRATION OF
HIS LITERARY CHARACTER
The name of Warburton more familiar to us than his Works—declared to be “a Colossus” by a Warburtonian, who afterwards shrinks the image into “a human size”—Lowth’s caustic retort on his Attorneyship—motives for the change to Divinity—his first literary mischances—Warburton and his Welsh Prophet—his Dedications—his mean flatteries—his taste more struck by the monstrous than the beautiful—the effects of his opposite studies—the Secret Principle which conducted Warburton through all his Works—the curious argument of his Alliance between Church and State—the bold paradox of his Divine Legation—the demonstration ends in a conjecture—Warburton lost in the labyrinth he had ingeniously constructed—confesses the harassed state of his mind—attacked by Infidels and Christians—his Secret Principle turns the poetical narrative of Æneas into the Eleusinian Mysteries—Hurd attacks Jortin; his Attic irony translated into plain English—Warburton’s paradox on Eloquence; his levity of ideas renders his sincerity suspected—Leland refutes the whimsical paradox—Hurd attacks Leland—Leland’s noble triumph—Warburton’s Secret Principle operating in Modern Literature: on Pope’s Essay on Man—Lord Bolingbroke the author of the Essay—Pope received Warburton as his tutelary genius—Warburton’s systematic treatment of his friends and rival editors—his literary artifices and little intrigues—his Shakspeare—the whimsical labours of Warburton on Shakspeare annihilated by Edwards’s “Canons of Criticism”—Warburton and Johnson—Edwards and Warburton’s mutual attacks—the concealed motive of his edition of Shakspeare avowed in his justification—his Secret Principle further displayed in Pope’s Works—attacks Akenside; Dyson’s generous defence—correct Ridicule is a test of Truth, illustrated by a well-known case—Warburton a literary revolutionist; aimed to be a perpetual dictator—the ambiguous tendency of his speculations—the Warburtonian School supported by the most licentious principles—specimens of its peculiar style—the use to which Warburton applied the Dunciad—his party: attentive to raise recruits—the active and subtle Hurd—his extreme sycophancy—Warburton, to maintain his usurped authority, adopted his system of literary quarrels.
The name of Warburton is more familiar to us than his works: thus was it early,[141] thus it continues, and thus it will 234 be with posterity! The cause may be worth our inquiry. Nor is there, in the whole compass of our literary history, a character more instructive for its greatness and its failures; none more adapted to excite our curiosity, and which can more completely gratify it.