part, and it cannot but please every candid reader to see you do justice to yourself, and yet not do it at his expense, nor say a word that either he or his friends can be offended at, or that is in the least giving up a man with whom you live in friendship. Here is courage and integrity very agreeably joined.”

The bishop here gives a very just account of the 'Vindication,' and indeed of Mr Warburton's general conduct towards Dr Middleton; as appears from the whole of his intercourse with him, which began in 1736, and was carried on, by a frequent exchange of friendly and affectionate letters, from that time to 1741, when it seems to have ceased, or to have been interrupted at least, for reasons which will be mentioned hereafter.

In the whole course of these letters, which I have in my hands, every sort of polite insinuation is employed to soften and remove his prejudices against revealed religion; by joining with him, sometimes, in his graver complaints of bigoted divines, and, sometimes, in his ridicule of their pretended orthodoxy; but in taking for granted, everywhere, his respect for revelation, and his real belief of it, and in seeming to think that, if other opinions were entertained of him, they had proceeded from an ignorance of his true character.

But the friendliness of his views will best appear from his own words. He had taken occasion to acquaint Dr Middleton with the manner in which he meant to address the freethinkers, in his dedication to them, prefixed to the first volume of the 'Divine Legation,' and with his purpose of making respectful mention of him in it. To this information Dr Middleton replies, September 22, 1737, "I am pleased with the manner of your address to the freethinkers, and obliged to you for your friendly intentions with regard to myself; and though I should be as proud to have the testimony of your judgment and good opinion, as of any man's, yet I would have you consider how far such a declaration of it may expose you to a share of that envy which has lain, and still lies, very heavy upon me."

This was handsome on his part, but was not likely to divert his friend from the measures he had taken. Accordingly in a letter, dated December 23, 1737, after telling him that his book was coming out, and that he had ordered a copy of it to be sent him, he proceeds thus, with a manifest allusion, in the concluding sentence, to Dr Middleton's letter-“I have your pardon to ask for the liberty I have taken of designing you by your character, in one place of the body of the book, as well as in the dedication to the freethinkers. For I would fain contribute to abate an unjust prejudice, that might lie in the way of those honours which wait for you, and are so much your due. And I shall reckon it for nothing, in so honest an attempt, to run the risk of sharing that prejudice with you."

And again, writing to him March 18, 1737-8, on the subject of his answer to the author of the Weekly Miscellany,' he says, "I am to thank him for the agreeable necessity of vindicating you, by a quotation in one of the defences that pass for yours, from his false accusation of denying the inspiration of Scripture; and from his imagination, which is the ground of this clamour, that you defend Revelation, not as true, but only useful; and that, as to other points, you and I can differ without breach of common humanity, friendship, and christian charity."

I have put these things together, because I would not interrupt the recital of what concerns the first appearance of those two capital works, 'The Alliance' and 'Divine Legation,' so closely connected with each other that the former, in the original design, was but a chapter of the latter; the reception they met with from the public; and the occasion they gave him of justifying an obnoxious friend, as well as explaining his own sentiments.

I must now go back a little, to mention a circumstance in his life, which does the parties concerned too much honour to be omitted by me, and which happened in the latter end of the year 1737. The Alliance' had now made the author much talked of at court; and the bishop of Chichester, on whom that work had impressed, as we have seen, the highest ideas of his merit, was willing to take that favourable opportunity of introducing him to the queen. Her majesty, it is well known, took a pleasure in the discourse of men of learning and genius; and chancing one day to ask the bishop, if he could recommend a person of that description to be about her, and to entertain her, sometimes, with his conversation, the bishop said, he could, and mentioned the author of "The Alliance between Church and State. The recommendation was graciously received, and the matter put in so good a train, that the bishop expected every day the conclusion of it, when the queen was seized with a sudden illness, which put an end to her life the 20th of November, 1737.

I find this transaction alluded to in a letter from the bishop, dated November 11, that is, nine days before that unhappy event. His lordship thanks Mr Warburton for some sheets of the first volume of the 'Legation,' which were just then sent him from the press, and, after making some remarks upon them, takes notice of a stroke of pleasantry, which, it seems, had escaped him, on Mr Wollaston's famous book on The Religion of Nature,' and which he advises him to strike out, "as it would give great offence to the admirers of that book. I have besides," continues his lordship, “a particular reason for advising you to alter that passage, which you shall know at a proper time."

And, afterwards, in the same letter-"I would advise, not only the

cancelling that leaf, but the doing it immediately, that it may not get into many hands. When I see you, I am persuaded, you will allow this is right advice from a friend."

The secret was, that he was then endeavouring to serve his friend with the queen, and was apprehensive that the freedom he had taken with that work, which she much admired, might hurt him in her majesty's opinion, and defeat his design.

This disappointment, when he came to know it, did not abate his ardour in prosecuting his studies at Brand-Broughton. After publishing the 'Vindication,' before mentioned, early in the year 1738, he applied himself with great industry to compose the second volume of his work, notwithstanding the clamours which had been raised, and now grew louder, against the first. "I go steadily on," says he in a letter to Dr Middleton, November 12, 1738, "amidst much ill treatment. If you ask, what is it that supports me, I will tell you, my excellent friend: it is the love of truth, and a clear conviction of the reality of the Jewish and Christian Revelations."

6

Animated with these principles, he went on with his great design, and seems to have spent the two or three succeeding years upon it. Only, in 1739, he drew up and published a short defence of Pope's Essay on Man,' against M. de Crousaz, who had written a book to show that it was constructed on the principles of Spinosa, and contained a dangerous system of irreligion. But though this was a slight thing, and took up little of his time, yet as it respected so eminent a person, and had great consequences with regard to himself, it will be proper to enlarge upon it.

It has been objected to Mr Warburton, that, in his earlier days, he had himself entertained a prejudice against Mr Pope, and had even expressed it in very strong terms. The offence taken had probably been occasioned by a severe reflection, in one of his satires, on Mr Warburton's friend and patron, Sir Robert Sutton. And, in that case, it is likely that he might express himself of the poet with too much warmth. For I will not conceal or disguise the infirmity of my friend. When his moral feelings were touched, he was apt to be transported into some intemperance of expression, and was not always guarded, or even just, in his censures or commendations. But a mind, naturally great, does not long retain this fervour, and, when cooled by reflection, is in haste to make amends for its former excesses. It is impossible indeed that, under any provocation, he should be blind to so much merit, as our great poet possessed; and what he saw of this sort in any man, he was not backward to declare to others. In his 'Vindication' of himself, last year, he had shown how much he admired Mr Pope, by quoting a

fine passage from him, and applying it to himself in a way, that showed an esteem of his morals, as well as poetry. Since that time, he had suffered so much abuse himself from angry zealots, and felt so strongly, in his own case, what it was for a well-meaning man to have his religious sentiments misrepresented, that this attack of M. de Crousaz would naturally find him in a disposition to resent it.

Add to all this, that he saw with concern the ill use which some were ready to make of the supposed fatalism of Mr Pope, and how hurtful it was to religion to have it imagined that so great a genius was ill inclined towards it.

These reasons, working together, seem to have determined him to take the part of the injured poet; as indeed he explains the matter himself in a letter of July 16, 1739, to Dr Middleton :-- "A certain great man is very angry with me for speaking of you in the manner I did. I make no question but another sort of those they call great men will hold themselves outraged by me in my vindication of Mr Pope, against M. de Crousaz in some letters which are going to be collected together and published. But I cannot forbear showing my esteem of merit, and my contempt of their calumniators, or thinking that it is of use to religion to prove so noble a genius is a friend to it."

These letters were much read, and gave a new lustre to Mr Warburton's reputation. They showed the elegance of his taste in polite literature, as well as his penetration into moral subjects. Mr Pope was supremely struck with them, and might now exult, as his predecessor Boileau had done, when he cried out in the face of his enemies

"Arnauld, le grand Arnauld, fait mon apologie."

From this time there was an intimate acquaintance formed between the poet and his commentator. The effects of this union will be taken notice of presently. I now only add, that it was strongly cemented by a mutual profession of esteem, and a constant interchange of letters.

Among these I find one which Mr Warburton addressed to his friend, in vindication of Sir Robert Sutton; written, as appears, with the view of prevailing with him to strike that gentleman's name out of his satires. As it sets the author in an amiable light, and seems to confirm my conjecture that his former dissatisfaction with Mr Pope had arisen from this circumstance, I shall give it in the Appendix A.

Towards the end of this year, 1739, he published a new and improved edition of the first volume of the 'Divine Legation,' and sent it to his friend Bishop Hare; who, in a kind letter of December 1, 1739, returns his thanks for it, and adds-" I hope not only posterity, but the present age, will do justice to so much merit and do assure you, it shall not be my

fault if it do not." Which I mention, to show that the envy which was then rising very fast against the author of the 'Divine Legation,' and which was supposed to have the countenance of some considerable churchmen, had made no alteration in the sentiments of that great prelate, or lessened his esteem of him. Indeed on all occasions he expressed his regard for Mr Warburton in the friendliest manner, of which the following instance must not be omitted.

Sir Thomas Hanmer, who was a man of business, and had been speaker of the house of commons in queen Anne's time, grew ambitious, in the latter part of his life, to be taken notice of as a critic on Shakspeare. He had seen some notes on his favourite poet by Mr Warburton in Mr Theobald's edition: and as he was now preparing one of his own, which he afterwards printed at the Clarendon press, he very justly conceived that the assistance of Mr Theobald's coadjutor might be of service to him in the execution of that project.

With this view he got himself introduced to Mr Warburton by the bishop of Salisbury, Dr Sherlock, and managed so well as to draw from his new acquaintance a large collection of notes and emendations, which were, in confidence, communicated to him in a series of private letters.

What followed upon this, and what use he made of those friendly communications, I need not repeat, as the account is given by Mr Warburton himself in the lively preface to his and Pope's edition of Shakspeare, of which something more will be said in its place. It is enough to say here, that he very reasonably resented this usage, and complained of it to his two friends, the bishops of Salisbury and Chichester. The former expresses his concern at this ill treatment, and the more so, he says, "as he had in some measure been the occasion of it;" i. e. by bringing Mr Warburton and Sir Thomas Hanmer together.

The latter tells him, in a letter of May 9, 1739-" Sir Thomas Hanmer's proceeding with respect to Shakspeare is very extraordinary.-I think you do very well to get your own papers out of his hands: 'tis pity they have been so long in them, since 'tis probable he has squeezed what he could out of them; which is most ungenerous treatment." He concludes with saying "I hope you will find leisure to give the world a Shakspeare yourself which the sooner 'tis made known the better."

And thus ended this trifling affair, which I should scarcely have mentioned but to do justice to the friendly temper of Bishop Hare, who interested himself so kindly in all his concerns; and to show that Mr Warburton's conduct was not directed by caprice or petulance, but was that of a man of sense and honour, and as such was approved by his most judicious friends.

Mr Warburton was so taken up with his studies, and found so much