Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/310

Warburton revelation. He afterwards again attacked Webster, who had written other letters, in an appendix to a sermon; and in the preface to the second volume of the ‘Divine Legation’ hung Webster and his fellows ‘as they do vermin in a warren, and left them to posterity to stink and blacken in the wind’ (, Lit. Illustr. ii. 115). To a ‘Brief Examination’ of the ‘Divine Legation’ by a ‘Society of Gentlemen,’ accusing him of virtually supporting the freethinkers whom he had abused, he made no reply. His next victim was John Tillard, who in 1742 had published a book to prove that the ancient philosophers believed in a future life. Warburton treated him with great contempt in a pamphlet of ‘Remarks.’ It was well, as he told Doddridge, that Tillard was a man of fortune, ‘for I have spoiled his trade as a writer.’ He replied to a variety of other assailants in ‘Remarks on several occasional Reflections,’ two parts of which appeared in 1744 and 1745. The preface attacked Akenside, who in the ‘Pleasures of the Imagination’ had defended Shaftesbury's doctrine that ridicule is a test of truth, and added a note which Warburton took to be directed against himself. The book then opened with an attack upon Middleton, whom he accused of inferring (in the ‘Letter from Rome’) that catholicism was derived from paganism. This attack, though civil for Warburton, and a difference of opinion as to Cicero's belief in a future life, led to the complete alienation of the friends. Warburton next attacked Richard Pococke [q. v.], the traveller, for differing from an assertion in the ‘Divine Legation’ that the Egyptian hieroglyphics stood for things and not words. He attacked Nicholas Mann [q. v.] for supporting Sir Isaac Newton's identification of Sesostris and Osiris; and Richard Grey [q. v.] for arguing that the Book of Job was written, not, as Warburton had maintained, by Ezra, but by Moses. The second part of the ‘Remarks on occasional Reflections’ is devoted to the demolition of Henry Stebbing (1687–1763) [q. v.], who, in an ‘Examination of Mr. Warburton's Second Proposition,’ had argued against Warburton's explanation of the command to Abraham to offer up his son; and of Arthur Ashley Sykes [q. v.], who, in an ‘Examination of Mr. Warburton's Account of the Conduct of the Ancient Legislators,’ &c., had, like John Spencer (1630–1693) [q. v.] in his ‘De Legibus Hebræorum,’ confounded the ‘theocracy’ with the ‘extraordinary providence’ which existed under it. Warburton becomes more arrogant in the second than in the first part of these remarks; and takes the opportunity of incidentally insulting various minor writers. He ends by declaring that he had been civil to Middleton and Mann, and had passed ‘without chastisement such’ impotent railers as ‘Dr. Richard Grey and one Bate’ (Julius Bate [q. v.]), ‘a zany to a mountebank,’ but was forced to hunt down like wolves the ‘pestilent herd of libertine scribblers with which the island is overrun.’ In executing this scheme he naturally made enemies on all sides. Gibbon's famous attack upon the interpretation of the sixth book of the ‘Æneid’ did not appear till 1770, when Warburton had ceased to write. The failure to finish the book may be ascribed to his difficulty in constructing any plausible argument for its main topic—the à priori necessity of the peculiar providential dispensation which he asserted—or to his occupation with a variety of other matters. Hurd says that he was disgusted at the violent opposition of the clergy, for whose ‘ease and profit’ he took himself to be working. This, says Hurd, was his ‘greatest weakness’ (Life, p. 81). In fact the clergy were not only offended by his personalities, but had very natural doubts as to the tendency of his argument.

Among other antagonists was William Romaine [q. v.], whom Warburton attacked for writing an apparently friendly letter and making unfair use of his answer. The correspondence was printed in the ‘Works of the Learned’ in 1739 (see Selections, pp. 85, 122). He also attacked Henry Coventry (d. 1752) [q. v.] for his stealing in a similar way some of his theories about hieroglyphics. He co-operated with one of his jackals, John Towne, in attacking John Jackson (1686–1763) [q. v.], who in several pamphlets disputed his theories as to the knowledge of a future life among both Jews and philosophers (1745 &c.), and afterwards, in his ‘Chronological Antiquities’ (1752), plagiarised from his account of hieroglyphics and mysteries. Jackson also helped his friend John Gilbert Cooper [q. v.] to carry on the war in his ‘Life of Socrates’ (1749), when Warburton insulted Cooper in a note to Pope's ‘Essay on Criticism.’ In a preface to the second part of the ‘Divine Legation’ (edition of 1758) Warburton savagely attacked John Taylor (1704–1766) [q. v.], editor of Demosthenes, who, in his ‘Elements of the Civil Laws,’ had disputed Warburton's views about the persecutions of Christians. Taylor was also reported to have admitted that he always thought Warburton no scholar, though he did not remember to have said so. It is, however, impossible to exhaust the list of Warburton's controversies. Warburton's