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 remonstrance 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 t 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 arrov, did VOL. V.

not

1

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

not miss its aim, and justice universally decided for me. burton 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 another, 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 Ód, 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."

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 etters without my leave or knowledge. I remember, several lo ng 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 but that would increase the wonder; for what relates to i's, I believe, the last thing I should forget.—In a word, you a e right. If he expected an answer, he will certainly find

you

you

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 some masterly strokes of genuine tions (amongst which are 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

S$2

cently

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 Glouces ter 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.ĠLoucester."

"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

Jewish Law and History; but relinquished the design, by the advice of a judicious Friend *.

In 1768 he transferred 500l. to Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, Mr. Justice Wilmot, and Mr. Charles Yorke, upon trust, "for the purpose of reading a Lecture at Lincoln's Inn, in the Form of a Course of Sermons, to prove the Truth of Revealed Religion in general, and of the Christian in parti

told his antagonist, Freron, that l'ir erat acerrimi ingenii ac paucarum literarum;' and Bp. Warburton says of him, with no less pleasantry than truth, that he writes indifferently well upon every thing.'- Bp. Warburton had intended to have written against Voltaire; and it is a pity that he was dissuaded from doing that which he would have done eminently well, as he had wit and talents equal to those of Voltaire, and was considerably his superior in Learning. The loss, however, of the antidote of the Bishop to the poison of this lively though dangerous Writer, is in some degree supplied by Les Lettres de quelques Juifs à M. de Voltaire." Seward's Anecdotes of distinguished Persons, vol. IV. pp. 356. 358.

* "Your conviction always convinces me. I had a preface to the collection, which may serve for some other occasion: in which I take notice how our Philosophers had of late shifted their ground, and removed into more fashionable quarters. They had long intrenched themselves in, and attacked us from, the fastnesses of Philosophy and Theology; in which their dullness had so far got the upper hand of their impiety, that they had tired out even their Allies, the Great; to whom, besides, Philosophy was too crabbed, and Theology too unconcerning. Their learning lay in History, extracts of which, under the names of Summaries and General Histories, are the most entertaining, as well as most efficacious vehicle of Impiety: for the miseries and disorders of human life, seen in their utmost malignity in civil transactions, aid these Philosophers in supplying those prejudices against Revelation, which their malice long sought, and their reasonings much wanted. Their readers had heard that the Founder of Christianity promised peace on earth, and good-will to mankind; and they saw the same train of miseries triumphant after, as before the publication of the faith. And Divines of all denominations preaching this reform of morals as the great end of Christianity, and they seeing this end not obtained, they became an easy prey to these philosophical historians. Had Divines taught them the true and proper and peculiar end of this Revelation, they would then have seen that universal history afforded the most legitimate prejudice in favour of Christianity; and this new cookery had been the very worst vehicle for these public poisoners, &c. But they received many other advantages in thus changing their method of attack, &c. &c." Letter to Dr. Hurd, Dec. 10, 1767.

cular,