Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/311

 whole career was changed by a new alliance. It is uncertain how far he had joined Pope's enemies on his first introduction to literary circles. He was reported to have said in a club at Newark that Pope's ‘Essay on Man’ was ‘collected from the worst passages of the worst authors’ (, Life of Pope, p. xlv;, Malone, p. 430). He changed his opinions, if this story be trustworthy; and in December 1738 published, in the ‘Works of the Learned,’ a letter replying to Crousaz's examination of Pope's ‘Essay on Man.’ Five letters followed during 1739, and the whole was published as a ‘Vindication’ of Pope's essay in the same year. Pope wrote to Warburton thanking him warmly, and soon afterwards said, ‘You understand my work better than I do myself’ (, Works, ix. 211). The best reply to Crousaz would, in fact, have been that Pope did not understand the obvious bearing of his own doctrines; though Warburton ingeniously tried to read an orthodox meaning into the teaching which Pope had adopted from Bolingbroke. He admitted to Birch that he found the defence of Pope's last epistle to be very difficult (, Lit. Illustr. ii. 113). In 1740 Warburton visited Pope at Twickenham, and was received by him, as Warton reports, with compliments which astonished Dodsley the bookseller, who was present at the meeting. Pope soon employed Warburton in various literary matters. Warburton procured for him a translator of the ‘Essay on Man’ into Latin, and soon afterwards became the authorised commentator upon his works. He especially stimulated Pope to write the fourth book of the ‘Dunciad,’ which appeared in 1742. He wrote many of the notes and the prefatory discourse of ‘Ricardus Aristarchus,’ intended as a travesty of Bentley's ‘Milton.’ The ridicule of Bentley in the text and notes was partly due to Pope's connection with Bentley's old enemies at Christ Church. Bentley was also reported to have said that Warburton was a man of monstrous appetite and very bad digestion. Warburton may have heard of this, and, at any rate, seems to have regarded the great critic with a mixture of admiration and envy (see Warburton, p. 228, and  Bentley, 1833, ii. 409–10). Warburton saw Pope constantly during the remainder of the poet's life. They were at Oxford together in 1741 (, Works, ed. Courthope, ix. 216), when Pope refused to accept the degree of D.C.L. because he heard that a proposal to confer the degree of D.D. upon Warburton at the same time would be rejected.

In November 1741 Ralph Allen [q. v.], with whom Pope was staying at Prior Park, near Bath, joined Pope in an invitation to Warburton to visit them. The acquaintance which followed ultimately made Warburton's fortune. On 5 Sept. 1745 he married Allen's favourite niece, Gertrude Tucker. He ceased after this to live at Brant Broughton, though he continued to hold the living, probably till he became a bishop. Pope meanwhile had become strongly attached to his mentor, and was innocently desirous to bring him into friendly relations with his older mentor, Bolingbroke. About 1742 he showed to Warburton Bolingbroke's ‘Letters on the Study of History.’ Warburton at once wrote some remarks upon a passage in which the authority of the Old Testament is impugned. Pope sent these remarks to Bolingbroke, who was then abroad, and, according to Warburton, wrote an angry reply, which was finally suppressed (, Works, xii. 338; and Letters to Hurd, p. 95). Pope, shortly before his death (30 May 1744), got Bolingbroke and Warburton to meet at a dinner at the house of Murray (Lord Mansfield). The result was an altercation which left bitter resentment on both sides (, Pope, p. 220). Pope, dying in 1744, left to Warburton the properties of all the printed works upon which he had written or should write commentaries, only providing against alterations in the text.

Warburton's relations to the most famous contemporary author no doubt helped to raise his own position in the literary world. It brought further quarrels with Bolingbroke. He must have consented to the suppression of the edition of the ‘Moral Essays’ demanded by Bolingbroke directly after Pope's death [see under, (1688–1744)]. When in 1749 Bolingbroke published his ‘Letters’ on the ‘Idea of a Patriot King,’ with a preface by the editor (Mallett), attacking Pope for having printed them privately, Warburton remonstrated in an indignant ‘Letter to the Editor of the Letters.’ An angry reply was made in ‘A Familiar Epistle to the most Impudent Man living’ [see under ]. Warburton brought out an edition of the ‘Dunciad’ directly after Pope's death, and a general edition of Pope's works in 1751, to a later reprint of which (in 1769) was added a ‘life’ nominally by Owen Ruffhead [q. v.], but inspired and probably written to a great degree by Warburton himself. Warburton also added many notes in his various editions of Pope's ‘Works.’ As Lowth said in their later controversy, notes to the ‘Dunciad’ or the ‘Divine Lega-