Bp. Warburton in "The Second Part of an Epis tolary Correspondence between the Bishop of Glou

Judge of the opinions of the Learned, and exercised it with a ferocity and a despotism without example in the republic of letters, and hardly to be par l'eled among the disciples of Dominic; exacting their opinions to the standard of his infallibility, and prosecuting with implacable hatred every one who presumes to differ from him. In the Appendix to the fifth volume of 'The Divine Legation' the Bishop of Gloucester severely attacked the learned and ingenious Dr. Lowth; who now steps forth to do himself justice, to defend his opinions and his character, and to expose the sophistry, buffoonery, and scurrility' of his antagonist. How far he has succeeded in this attempt, under all these heads, it is not for us to determine; but, on the whole, he hath acquitted himself in so masterly and satisfactory a manner, that we do not remember ever to have received equal entertainment from the perusal of any work of this kind."

Monthly Review, vol. XXXIII. pp. 388, 389. * I shall not enter farther into this unpleasant controversy than to give the titles of the publications; the first of which was, 1. "A Letter to the Right Reverend Author of The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated; in Answer to the Appendix in the Fifth Volume of that Work: with an Appendix, containing a former Literary Correspondence. By a late Professor in the University of Oxford, 1765," Svo.-This pamphlet (of which a fourth Edition appeared in 1766) had a very considerable sale, several thousands having been called for within a few months; and was followed by, 2. "A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Lowth, occasioned by his late Letter to the Right Reverend Author of the Divine Legation of Moses. By the Author of Essays on the Characteristicks, &c." 3. "A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Brown, from Dr. Lowth;" in which the Author politely rallies Dr. Brown for his groundless apprehensions with regard to the supposed attack on his moral character in certain passages of Dr. Lowth's Letter to Bp. Warburton." 4. "Remarks on Dr. Lowth's Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester. With the Bishop's Appendix, and the Second Epistolary Correspondence between his Lordship and the Doctor, annexed. 1766." [By Mr. Towne, see vol. II. p. 284.]

A part of the Appendix to Mr. Towne's Pamphlet Dr. Lowth almost immediately re-printed (75 copies only) for distribution among his friends, under the title of "The Second Part of a Literary Correspondence between the Bishop of Gloucester and a late Professor of Oxford; accurately printed from an authentic Copy. To which are added the Notes of the first Editor; with Notes upon Notes, and Remarks on the Letters."

Another pamphlet on this subject was published by Mr. Cumberland (see vol. II. p. 456); of which, at the distance of more than forty years, the Author thus speaks: "I now for the first time entered the lists of controversy, and took up the gauntlet of a renowned champion, to vindicate the insulted character of my grandfather Dr. Bentley. The offensive passage

met

cester and the late Professor of Oxford, without an Imprimatur; i. e. without a Cover to the violated met me in a pamphlet written by Bishop Lowth professedly against Warburton, acrimonious enough of all conscience, and unepiscopally intemperate in the highest degree, even if his Lordship had not gone out of his course to hurl this dirt upon the coffin of my ancestor. The Bishop is now dead, and I will not use his name irreverently; my grandfather was dead, yet he stept aside to hook him in as a mere verbal critic, who in matters of taste and elegant literature, he asserts, was contemptibly deficient; and then he resorts to his Catullus for the most disgraceful names he can give him as a scholar or a gentleman, and says he was aut caprimulgus aut fossor; terms, that in English would have been downright blackguardism. All the world knows that Warburton and Lowth had mouthed and mumbled each other till their very hands blushed, and their lawn-sleeves were bloody. I should have thought that the Prelate who had Warburton for his antagonist, would hardly have found leisure from his own self-defence to have turned aside and fixed his teeth in a bystander. Yet so it was; and it struck me that the unmanly unprovoked attack not only warranted, but demanded, a re monstrance from the descendants of Dr. Bentley. I stood only in the second degree from my uncle Richard, and as much below him in controversial ability as I was in lineal descent. I appealed, therefore, in the first place to him, as nearest in blood, and strongest in capacity. His blood, however, was not in the temper to ferment as mine did, and, with a philosophical contempt for this sparring of pens, he positively declined having any thing to do with the affair. I well remember, but I won't describe the scene he was very pleasant with me, and reminded me with great kindness how utterly unequal I ought to think myself for undertaking to hold an argument against Bishop Lowth. He was perfectly right: it was exactly so that a sensible Roman would have talked to Curtius before he took his foolish leap, or a charitable European to a Bramin widow before she devoted herself to the flames; but my obstinacy was incorrigible. At length, having warned me that I was about to draw a complete discomfiture on my cause, he prudently conditioned with me so to mark myself out, either by name or description, in the title of my pamphlet, as that he should stand excused, and out of chance of being mistaken for its author. Nothing could be more reasonable, and I promised to comply with his injunctions, and be duly careful of his safety. This I fulfilled, by describing myself under such a signature, as all but told my name, and could not possibly, as I conceived, be fathered upon him. With this he was content, and with great politeness, in which no man exceeded him, gave me his hand at parting, and wished me a good deliverance. I lost no time in addressing myself to this task. It soon grew into the size of a pamphlet: my heart was warm in the subject; and as soon as my appeal appeared, I was publicly known to be the author of it. I may venture to say, that, weak as my bow was presumed to be, the arrow did YOL, V.

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not

Laws of Honour and Society;" a controversy which terminated in a drawn battle *.

not miss its aim, and justice universally decided for me. Warburton had candidly apologized to Lowth for having unknowingly hurt his feelings, by some glances he had made at the person of a deceased relation of the Bishop of Oxford; and I now claimed from Lowth the same candour which he had experienced in the apology of Warburton. This was unanswerable; and though Bishop Lowth would not condescend to offer the atonement to me, which he had exacted and received from anather, still he had the grace to keep silence, and not attempt a justification of himself; and that which he did not do per se, he would not permit to be done per alium; for I have reason to know he refused the voluntary reply, tendered to him by a certain Clergyman of his Diocese, acknowledging that I had just reason for a retaliation, and he thought it better that the affair should pass over in silence on his part. In the mean time my pamphlet went through two full editions, and I had every reason to believe the judgment of the publick was in my favour. I entitled it, "A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Od, containing some Animadversions upon a Character given of the late Doctor Bentley, in a Letter from a late Professor in the University of Oxford to the Right Reverend Author of the Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated."-To this I subjoined, by way of motto, "Jam parce sepulto."

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The following paragraph occurs in the 9th page of this pamphlet, and is fairly pressed upon the party complained of: "Recollect, my Lord, the warmth, the piety, with which you remonstrated against Bishop Warburton's treatment of your Father in a passage of his Julian: It is not (you there say) in behalf of myself that I expostulate; but of one, for whom I am much more concerned, that is-my father. These are your Lordship's words -amiable, affecting expressions! instructive lesson of filial devotion! Alas! my Lord, that you, who were thus sensible to the least speck which fell upon the reputation of your father, should be so inveterate against the fame of one, at least as eminent, and perhaps not less dear to his family."

* Bishop Warburton himself thus speaks of it: "All you say about Lowth's Pamphlet breathes the purest spirit of friendship. His wit and his reasoning, God knows, and I also (as a certain Critic said once in a matter of the like great importance), are much below the qualities that deserve those names. But the strangest thing of all, is this man's boldness in publishing my Letters without my leave or knowledge. I remember, several long Letters passed between us; and I remember you saw the Letters. But I have so totally forgot the contents, that I am at a loss for the meaning of these words of yours-since they produced the defence of pages 117 and 118. They seem to relate to you; but that would increase the wonder; for what relates to you is, I believe, the last thing I should forget. In a word, you are right.-If he expected an answer, he will certainly find

In 1765 he published a fourth edition, corrected and enlarged, of "The Alliance between Church and State*;" and in 1766 a fifth edition of the Divine Legation, volumes I. and II. corrected and enlarged; in which a Postscript was added to the original Dedication to the Freethinkers, occasioned by Dr. Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination" and Lord Kaimes's "Elements of Criticism;" and a "Sermon preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at the Anniversary

himself disappointed: though I believe I could make as good sport with this Devil of a Vice for the public diversion, as ever was made with him in the old Moralities." Letter to Mr. Hurd, 1765.

I shall conclude this subject with the words of Bp. Warburton's very excellent Biographer: "On the subject of his [Dr. Lowth's] quarrel with the Bishop of Gloucester I could say a great deal; for I was well acquainted with the grounds and the progress of it. But, besides that I purposely avoid entering into details of this sort, I know of no good end that is likely to be answered, by exposing to public censure the weaknesses of such men."

* The principal variations between the third and fourth edi tions (amongst which are "some masterly strokes of genuine Warburtonianism") are ably pointed out in the Monthly Review, vol. XXXIV. pp. 89-99.

In the Monthly Review, vol. XXXV. pp. 226-233, the variations between the editions of 1765 and 1766 are carefully noticed-A translation of the "Divine Legation" was published at Amsterdam, in 1771, by Abr. Ar. Vander Meersch, whose dedication to Bishop Warburton is printed in Gent. Mag. 1771, p. 266.

The original offence was, a note in the third book of "The Pleasures of Imagination;" in which Dr. Akenside revived and maintained the Notion of Shaftesbury, that Religion is the test of Truth. Warburton attacked him with severity in a Preface; and Akenside was defended by his friend Mr. Dyson (see pp. 591, 603). But the breach was farther widened by "An Ode to the late Thomas Edwards, Esq. written in 1751," though not published till 1766; and containing the story of Concannen; see pp. 534, 535.

"Whatever comes from the pen of the Bishop of Gloucester has so original an air, something so peculiarly his own, that a reader of taste and genius, though he cannot always approve, can seldom fail of reading with pleasure. In the Sermon before us there are some things merely ingenious, some things whimsical, and others that appear to be sensible, striking, and useful." Monthly Review, vol. XXXV. p. 279.

"I preached my Propagation Sermon; and ten or a dozen Bishops dined with my Lord Mayor; a plain and (for this year at least) a munificent man. Whether I made them wiser than ordinary at Bow, I can't tell. I certainly made them merrier than ordinary at the Mansion-house; where we were magnifi.

Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday, Feb. 21, 1766."

Amongst Dr. Ducarel's Epistolary Correspondence in 1766, I find the letter printed below *, in answer to an enquiry respecting the Endowments of Vicarages. In 1767 he published a third volume of Sermons, dedicated to Lady Mansfield; and with this, and a single "Sermon preached at St. Lawrence Jewry, on Thursday, April 30, 1767, before his Royal Highness Edward Duke of York, President, and the Governors of the London Hospital, &c. 4to, the good Bishop may be said to have nearly closed his literary labours.

In the same year, however, he complimented Mr. Cumberland on his poem called "The Banishment of Cicero ;" and had made some progress in methodizing for public view some observations on Voltaire's ignorant and malicious censures of the

cently treated. The Lord Mayor told me, the Common Council were much obliged to me, for that this was the first time he ever heard them prayed for.' I said, 'I considered them as a body who much needed the prayers of the Church.'-But, if he told me in what I abounded, I told him in what I thought he was defective that I was greatly disappointed to see no Custard at table.' He said, that they had been so ridiculed for their Custard, that none had ventured to make its appearance for many years.' I told him, I supposed that Religion and Custard went out of fashion together." Letter to Mr. Hurd. * "SIR, Grosvenor-square, April 10, 1766. "I have the honour of your obliging letter of the 8th, with the Mem. about Parsons's papers.-When I get to Gloucester I will look over the few old papers concerning the see of Gloucester in my custody; and if I find any, the sight of which may gratify you, I will take the liberty of sending them to you. I am, Sir, Your very faithful humble servant, W. GLOUCESTER." "DEAR SIR, Grosvenor-square, May 15, 1767. "Let me thank you for the sight of a very fine Dramatic Poem. It is (like Mr. Mason's) much too good for a prostitute Stage. Yesterday I received a letter from the Primate. He was on the point of leaving Bath for Ireland; so that my letter got to him just in time. It gives me great satisfaction,' says he, that my opinion of Bishop Cumberland's grandson agrees with yours,' &c. &c. I have the honour to be, dear Sir,

Your very faithful and assured humble servant, W.GLOUCESTER."

"Voltaire's pen was fertile, and very elegant; his observations are occasionally acute, yet he often betrays great ignorance when he treats on subjects of antient learning. Dr. Johnson

told