1 that undeniable authority and weight, which nothing can question or with stand. Had he been, perhaps, a little less prejudiced, and a little more largely gifted with that fine feeling, which is gas necessary to form a great critic as a great poet, he would certainly have G been entitled to take a higher place in the province of criticism than any man i who went before, or shall hereafter succeed him. Of this true taste, in Warburton there was a most lamentable deficiency: with an equal lack of the more delicate and imaginative qualifications for critical judgment, he possessed none of that sound discriminative power, and unerring rectitude of tact, which so eminently distinguished Johnson. The bias of his mind in criticism seems totally perverted and warped, and the obliquity of his critical judgment is often as unaccountable as it is amazing. A great part of this is owing to the bigotted adherence which he placed in the systems of the French critics, so popular in England in the beginning of the last century; and a much greater, to his own unconquerable propensity for adjusting and fashioning every thing according to the decrees of some standard hypothesis which had taken possession of his mind, and on which, like the bed of Procrustes, he racked and tortured every unfortunate subject, till he had reduced it, by a process of dislocation, into some conformity with his theories. His fondness for Dr Bentley, and Dr Bentley's style of criticism, was also another draw back in his qualifications: from him he derived that inextinguishable rage for emendation, which has descended, like the prophet's mantle, from critic to critic in succession; and, indeed, what Bentley has performed upon Milton, Warburton has no less scrupulously performed upon Shakspeare, though perhaps, with much more acuteness and ingenuity, in the exercise of his editorial capacity. For wanting this emendatory ardour-or, as he would call it, this critical voushe despised Dr Johnson; though, for his superabundance of it, Dr Johnson might much more justly have despised him. To Warburton, criticism was little else than ingenuity in inventing fresh varieties of the text, and dexterity and plausibility in their explanation. An author, chosen for the subject of critical illustration, was to him nothing else than a lamb led out to the slaughter, for the purpose of trying the sharpness of his knife; or an anvil, by frequently striking which his commentator might elicit scintillations and sparkles of his own. If he ever shines, it is always at the expense of his author. He seems utterly incapable of entering into the spirit of his text-of identifying himself with his subject-of losing his own individuality and consequence in his author and his author's beauties. He had none of that true and refreshing spirit of criticism, which pours down a fresh radiance on the withering beauties of antiquity, and discloses new graces wherever its illuminating resplendences are thrown, and which, like the skilful varnisher of some ancient painting, renews and renovates, in the subject, its brilliancy and richness of colouring, without altering the character of its loveliness, or impairing the symmetry of its proportions. It With the power of wit, both were almost equally gifted; and the precise nature and description of that wit was in both pretty nearly the same. was not that delicately gentle and refined species which distinguished Addison, and which gave an almost evanescent air to the humour of his pages but that coarse and forcible strength of wit, or rather humour, which it is impossible to withstand, and which breaks upon an adversary as a torrent impetuous and overwhelming-absolutely stunning and confounding with its vehemence, its energy, and its force. Those who wish to see this species of wit in its highest perfection, cannot be better referred than to the controversial writings of Warburton, or of Dr Bentley, from whom Warburton adopted his style in controversy. It was this overflowing and vigorous possession of wit which rendered Johnson so powerful in conversation, and enabled Warburton in controversy to defy the hosts of enemies who assailed him. Of those enemies, many were more exactly learned as to the point in question than himself-many equally sound reasoners-and, what is of no small advantage in reasoning, had a much better cause to defend, but they were all in the end worsted, defeated, and put to flight, by the auxiliary sallies of his wit, which came forth in vollies as unexpected as they were irresistible. That this species of wit should fre quently be coupled with scurrility, was what might readily be anticipated -it was totally destitute of delicacy, and had no refinement or polish. It perhaps cannot better be described, than by comparing it with the wit of Addison, to which it was, in all its shapes, totally dissimilar. The one was a weapon infinitely more powerful-though the other required much more of dexterity and science in its application. The former was much more the instrument of a barbarianthe latter of a civilized combatant. The one was more fitted for the lighter skirmishes of intellectual warfare, and softened courtliness of social intercourse- -the other more adapted for those contests, where no quarter is given, and no indulgence is expected. In the one, wit was so highly polished, as frequently to lose its effect-in the other, it was often so coarse and personal, as to defeat its very purpose. In the one, it is the arch smile of contemptuous scorn-in the other, the loud horse-laugh of ferocious defiance. The one was more fitted for the castigation of manners-the other better adapted for the concussion of minds. The wit of the former was, like the missile of the Israelite, often overcoming, from the skill with which it was thrown-and that of the latter, the ponderous stone of Ajax laid hold of with extraordinary strength, and propelled with extraordinary fury. In short, the wit of Addison, when compared with that of Warburton and Johnson, was what the polished sharpness of the rapier is to the ponderous weight of the battle-axe, or as the innocuous brilliancy of the lightning, to the overpowering crash of the thunderbolt. In poetical genius and capability, it would perhaps be unfair to compare them. What Warburton has written in verse, was merely the first juvenile trying of his pen, and therefore hardly could hope to rival the mature and laboured poetical compositions of Johnson; yet we may doubt whether, if Warburton had written more of poetry, he would have written better, or ever risen above mediocrity in the efforts of poetical talent. Of those higher qualifications of imagination and sensibility, which every true poet must possess, he was, as well as Johnson, utterly destitute; but he had not, like Johnson, a mind stored with a rich fund of poetical images, or a nice perception of harmony in sound, or melody in versification. His translations are merely the productions of a school-boy, and such productions as many a school-boy would be ashamed to own. He seems to have possessed no ear attuned to the harmony of numbers-no fondness for the music of rhyme, or the march of periods. In this department of genius, therefore, he was utterly inferior to Johnson, who, if he did not possess the fine eye and highest exaltation of a poet, could clothe every subject he descanted upon with sonorous grandeur of verse, and gorgeous accompaniments of fancy. In the beauty of style, and the ornaments of language, Johnson, it is well known, was most immeasurably superior. His writings have given an increase of correctness and purity, a transfusion of dignity and strength to our language, which is unexampled in the annals of literature, and which corrected, in their influence on our dialect, the diffused tameness of Addison, and the colloquialism of Swift. Whatever nearer approaches have been made to perfection in our language, have all been established on the foundation of his writings; and, perhaps, it would not be exceeding the bounds of justice to affirm, that more is due to him in the refinement of the English tongue, than to any man in any language or in any country, with the single exception of Cicero. If his own style itself is not the best model in our language, it is from it certainly that the best model must be formed; and, whoever shall in the end attain that summit of perfection, it will be from the copious fountain of Johnson that his materials must be supplied. Of the graces and elegancies of diction, Warburton, on the contrary, had no conception: his thoughts were turned out in the dress which lay nearest to his hand; and often their multiplicity was too great to allow him time to find for each a proper and suitable covering of expression. To harmony in the structure of cadences, or splendour in the finishing of sentences, he was utterly void of pretension, and was, moreover, totally destitute of the power of selection or choice of words. Yet, he cannot justly be accused of neglect or contempt of the beauties of style, for no one altered more incessantly, or altered to less purpose, than Warbur C ton. In one of his letters, he acknow- E form its shapeless offspring: but, with sentence. In both, the style doubtless took its tincture from the peculiar complexion of their minds; and while in the one it swelled into majestic elegance and dignified strength, in the other, it broke out into uncouth harshness, and uncultivated force. In extent of learning, in profundity and depth of erudition, Warburton may justly claim the superiority. Nothing more illustrates the different characters of these great men, than the different manner in which their reading was applied. In Johnson, acquired learning became immediately transmuted into mind-it immediately was consubstantiated with its receiver; it did not remain dormant, like a dull and inert mass in the intellect, unaltered and unalterable, but entered, if I may use the expression, into the very core and marrow of the mind, and became a quality and adjunct of the digestive power; it was instantaneously concocted into intellectual chyle- his mind had more the quality of a grinding engine, than a receiver; every particle it absorbed became instinct with vital life-like the power of flame it consumed all approximating substances. In Warburton, the power of digestion was certainly disproportioned to the insatiability of appetite :what he could not retain, he was therefore obliged immediately again to eject, and he did again eject it, but not in its received and original state, but altered in its outward form and semblance, and mouldered up into some glittering and fantastical hypothesis, some original and more alluring shape, as different from its first condition as is from the crawling caterpillar the butterfly which expands its golden wings in the air. The defects of his digestive faculty, were amply supplied by his power of assimilation, which, spiderlike, had the faculty of weaving innumerable webs and phantasms out of the matter which was presented to it, and disguising and recasting into some other outward appearance those morsels which were too hard to retain, and too ponderous to swallow. Such indeed was the voracity of his appetite, that he refused nothing which offered itself; and the wide gulf of his intellectual appetite, often reminds us of the Boa Constrictor, after it has swallowed the Rhinoceros, as it lies in gorged and torpid fulness, stretched out in all its giant length on the ground. This difference in the perception and application of knowledge, was distinguish able in every production of these great men; it is perceptible from their earlier works to their latest, and being occasioned by the peculiar construction and formation of their mental faculties, it formed the character of their minds; and, therefore, continued, without receiving alteration, from their first years of authorship to their last. In Johnson, therefore, learning, when received, might more properly be called knowledge; it was stripped of its superfluous and unnecessary parts-it was winnowed of its chaff, and deposited in the receptacles of thought, while, in Warburton, it was like clay thrown into a mould ready prepared for it, for the purpose of forming materials for building up to their measureless height the countless edifices of his fancy. In that practical knowledge of, and insight into human nature, which forms the chief qualification for the moralist, and the writer on men and manners, Johnson was greatly superior to Warburton. The former had acquired his knowledge in the tutoring school of adversity; and the long and dreary probation he had to serve before he attained to competence and success, had given him a sound and piercing view into life and human nature, while the haughtiness of the latter formed a kind of circle about him, which prevented his mingling with the crowd, and deriving, by universal converse and acquaintance, an universal and comprehensive knowledge of man. He was also a more prejudiced and less unbiassed spectator of mankind, continually referring their causes of action, not to the acknowledged principles of experience, but to some pre-conceived and readyfashioned theory of his own, with which he made every deduction to square in and quadrate, and to whose decision he referred the settlement of all the various anomalies and phenomena which distract the inquirer into human nature. Otherwise was the knowledge of Johnson formed. He was no speculatist in his views of mankind; what he had learned, he learned from practical experience; commented upon with extraordinary acuteness and penetration of discern ment; and what he had once learned, his judgment was too sound to permit him to warp, and his love of truth too great to allow him to conceal. In private life, the character of Warburton was distinguished by the same kind of bold openness and unshrinking cordiality; the same livid warmth in his enmities and friendships; and the same impatient haughtiness and dogmatical resolution which stood forth displayed in his writings. No one communicated to his productions more of his own personal character, or drew his own full length so admi rably in his works. After a perusal of what he has written, his character lies in all its native colours before our eyes, and we hardly want the intimacy of a personal acquaintance to be fully and thoroughly masters of his peculiarities. What he thought, he dauntlessly and fearlessly expressed. Disguise he hated, and subterfuge he despised. He who was the enemy of Warburton, was sure of bold, honest, and manly hostility; he who was his friend was equally certain of the full participation of all the benefits of assistance and protection. It was one of his maxims, both in his public and private character, "He who is not with me is against me.' He hated a neutral worse even than an enemy; to him indifference was worse than decided dislike; imperturbable placidity more disagreeable than a storm. Pass over his opinions or his productions without giving any decided opinion as to their justice or their merits, and he would immediately number you amongst the list of his foes, and let loose upon you all the torrent of his mingled scurrility and wit. This fervid warmth of temper frequently overpowered the cooler dictates of his reason, and to this we may perhaps ascribe that high and overstrained excess of praise which he showered down upon the productions of his friends; for of flattery we cannot justly accuse him: he would have disdained what he conceived implied fear. One exception, however, must be made to this re mark, and that is, the case of Bishop Sherlock, whom, during his life, War burton extravagantly praised, and, after the death of that prelate, not only expunged from his writings every syllable of commendation, but paragraphed him in the Dunciad of his Divine Legation with the utmost contumely and contempt. For neglect of his clerical duties, Warburton has been lashed by the unsparing hand of a relentless satirist, whose pictures are often less of true resemblances than hideous caricatures; but the suffrages of many must overpower the testimony of one; and it has been almost universally agreed, that in the discharge of the social relations of life, his conduct was equally faultless and exemplary. The character of Johnson has been so often pourtrayed, and, through the admirable delineations of his biographers, is now so well known, that it would be useless to attempt to describe it. He had certainly more ha bitual reverence for what he conceived to be truth; was more rigid in his morality, more fervid in his piety, than Warburton. He had not less perhaps of pride and haughtiness, but his pride was more lofty, his haughtiness more independent. He could not bend to greatness, nor stoop to rise as Warburton certainly could do, and sometimes did. His character, while it was much more dignified than that of Warburton, had not the same mix ture of impetuosity and warmth, and thus he was prevented from falling into those excesses which the former could hardly avoid. Both had a certain portion of intolerance in their dispositions, but in Johnson that intolerance was exerted against the oppugners of that creed he had received from others, while in Warburton it was directed against the questioners of theories of In the one, it was prejudice unmixed-in the other, it was always prejudice co-operating with vanity. Upon the whole, perhaps, the character of Warburton, notwithstanding its dictating and dogmatical insolence, was the most attracting of the two, There is, notwithstanding all its effervescences and excesses, a generous fervour, a kindliness of soul, an enthusiastic warmth about it, which induces us to like him in spite of ourselves, and to which we can forgive whatever is disgusting in his scurrility or revolting in his pride. his own. To bring my observations on the characters of these great men to a close, -in Warburton, the distinguishing faculty was a fiery and ungovernable vigour of intellect, a restless and irrepressible vehemence of mind, an unquenchable and never-dormant princi VOL. VIII. ple of action, which required continually some fresh matter to work on-some fresh subject to exercise its power-some new and untried space. to perambulate and to pass through: it was an ever-working and operating faculty, an ever-moving and resisting principle, which it was impossible to tire or tame. There was nothing like rest or slumber about it: it could not stagnate; it could not stop: it was impossible to weaken its energies, or to contract their operation. No matter was too tough for its force, no metal too unmalleable for its strokes. It Such was the elasticity of its constitution, that it could not be broken; such was its innate and surpassing resistibility of temperament, that it could not be overwhelmed. Entangle it with subtleties, and it immediately snapt asunder its bonds, as Sampson burst the encompassing cords of the Philistine. Bury it with learning, and it immediately mounted up with the brilliancy and rapidity of a sky-rocket, and scattered about it sparks and scintillations, which lightened the whole atmosphere of literature. was this volatility of spirit, this forcible and indomitable action of mind, this never-tiring and never-weakening intellectual energy, this bounding and unceasing mental elasticity, which serves to distinguish Warburton not only from Dr Johnson, but also from all the characters who have ever appeared in literature; and it is to the self-corroding effect of these qualities, that his alienation of mind at the latter period of his life is undoubtedly to be attributed. The mind of Johnson, on the contrary, was utterly devoid of all that intellectual activity and elasticity which Warburton possessed. There was about it an habitual and dogged sluggishness, an inert and listless torpor, a reluctance to call forth its energies and exercise its powers; it slumbered, but its slumbers were those of a giant. With more of positive force when called into action, it had not the same principle of motion, the same continual beat, the same sleepless inquietude and feverish excitement. It lay there like the leviathan, reposing amidst the depths of the ocean, till necessity drove it out to display the magnitude of his strength. The one waited quietly in its den for food, while the other 21 |