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governor of some wealthy pupil; but every vacancy provoked so many eager candidates, that for a long time I struggled without success; nor was it till after much application that I could even place him as a clerk in the office of the secretary of state. In a residence of several years he never acquired the just pronunciation and familiar use of the English tongue,

but he read our most difficult authors with ease and taste: his critical knowledge of our language and poetry was such as few foreigners have possessed; and few of our countrymen could enjoy the theatre of Shakspeare and Garrick with more exquisite feeling and discernment. The consciousness of his own strength, and the assurance of my aid, emboldened him to imitate the example of Dr Maty, whose 'Journal Brittannique' was esteemed and regretted; and to improve his model by uniting with the transactions of literature a philosophical view of the arts and manners of the British nation. Our journal for the year 1767, under the title of 'Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne,' was soon finished and sent to the press. For the first article, lord Lyttelton's History of Henry II, I must own myself responsible; but the public has ratified my judgment of that voluminous work, in which sense and learning are not illuminated by a ray of genius. The next specimen was the choice of my friend, the 'Bath Guide,' a light and whimsical performance, of local, and even verbal, pleasantry. I started at the attempt: he smiled at my fears: his courage was justified by success; and a master of both languages will applaud the curious felicity with which he has transfused into French prose the spirit, and even the humour, of the English verse. It is not my wish to deny how deeply I was interested in the Mémoires, of which I need not surely be ashamed; but at the distance of more than twenty years, it would be impossible for me to ascertain the respective shares of the two associates. A long and intimate communication of ideas had cast

our sentiments and style in the same mould. In our social labours we composed and corrected by turns; and the praise which I might honestly bestow would fall perhaps on some article or passage most properly A second volume (for the year 1768) was my own. published of these Mémoires. I will presume to say, but that their merit was superior to their reputation; it is not less true, that they were productive of more reputation than emolument. They introduced my friend to the protection, and myself to the acquaintance, of the earl of Chesterfield, whose age and infirmities secluded him from the world; and of Mr David Hume, who was under-secretary to the office in which Deyverdun was more humbly employed. The former accepted a dedication, (April 12th, 1769,) and reserved the author for the future education of his successor: the latter enriched the Journal with a reply to Mr Walpole's Historical Doubts, which he afterwards shaped into the form of a note. The materials of the third volume were almost completed, when I recommended Deyverdun as governor to sir Richard Worsley, a youth, the son of my old lieutenantcolonel, who was lately deceased. They set forward on their travels; nor did they return to England till some time after my father's death.

My next publication was an accidental sally of love and resentment; of my reverence for modest genius, and my aversion for insolent pedantry. The sixth book of the Æneid is the most pleasing and perfect composition of Latin poetry. The descent of Æneas and the Sybil to the infernal regions, to the world of spirits, expands an awful and boundless prospect, from the nocturnal gloom of the Cumæan grot,

Ibant obscuri solâ sub nocte per umbram, to the meridian brightness of the Elysian fields; Largior hic campos æther et lumine vestit

Purpureo

from the dreams of simple nature, to the dreams,

alas! of Egyptian theology, and the philosophy of the Greeks. But the final dismission of the hero through the ivory gate, whence

Falsa ad cœlum mittunt insomnia manes,

seems to dissolve the whole enchantment, and leaves the reader in a state of cold and anxious scepticism. This most lame and impotent conclusion has been variously imputed to the taste or irreligion of Virgil; but, according to the more elaborate interpretation of bishop Warburton, the descent to hell is not a false but a mimic scene, which represents the initiation of Æneas, in the character of a law-giver, to the Eleusinian mysteries. This hypothesis, a singular chapter in the Divine Legation of Moses, had been admitted by many as true; it was praised by all as ingenious; nor had it been exposed, in a space of thirty years, to a fair and critical discussion. The learning and the abilities of the author had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the dictator and the tyrant of the world of literature. The real merit of Warburton was degraded by the pride and presumption with which he pronounced his infallible decrees; in his polemic writings he lashed his antagonists without mercy or moderation; and his servile flatterers (see the base and malignant essay on the "Delicacy of Friendship,") exalting the assaulted master-critic far above Aristotle and Longinus, assaulted every modest dissenter who refused to consult the oracle, and to adore the idol. In a land of liberty such despotism must provoke a general opposition, and the zeal of opposition is seldom candid or impartial. A late professor of Oxford (Dr Louth) in a pointed and polished epistle (August 31, 1745) defended himself, and attacked the bishop; and, whatsoever might be the merits of an insignificant controversy, his victory was clearly established by the silent confusion of Warburton and his slaves. I too, without any private

*By Hurd, afterwards bishop of Worcester

press.

offence, was ambitious of breaking a lance against the giant's shield; and in the beginning of the year 1770, my "Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Eneid" were sent, without my name, to the In this short essay, my first English publication, I aimed my strokes against the person and the hypothesis of bishop Warburton. I proved, at least to my own satisfaction, that the ancient law-givers did not invent the mysteries, and that Æneas was never invested with the office of lawgiver: that there is not any argument, any circumstance, which can melt a fable into allegory, or remove the scene from the lake Avernus to the Temple of Ceres: that such a wild supposition is equally injurious to the poet and the man that if Virgil was not initiated, he could not, if he were, he would not, reveal the secrets of the initiation that the anathema of Horace (vetabo qui Cereris sacrum vulgarit, &c.) at once attests his own ignorance and the innocence of his friend. As the bishop of Gloucester and his party maintained a discreet silence, my critical disquisition was soon lost among the pamphlets of the day; but the public coldness was overbalanced to my feelings by the weighty approbation of the last and best editor of Virgil, professor Heyne of Gottingen, who acquiesces in my confutation, and styles the unknown author, doctus et elegantissimus Britannus. But I cannot resist the temptation of transcribing the favourable judgment of Mr Hayley, himself a poet and a scholar :—“ Än intricate hypothesis, twisted into a long and laboured chain of quotation and argument, the Dissertation on the Sixth Book of Virgil, remained some time unrefuted. At length, a superior, but anonymous, critic arose, who, in one of the most judicious and spirited essays that our nation has produced on a point of classical literature, completely overturned this illfounded edifice, and exposed the arrogance and futility of its assuming architect." He even condescends to justify an acrimony of style which had been gently

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blamed by the more unbiassed German; "Paullo acrius quam velis perstrinxit." But I cannot forgive myself the contemptuous treatment of a man who, with all his faults, was entitled to my esteem; † and I can less forgive, in a personal attack, the cowardly concealment of my name and character.

In the fifteen years between my Essay on the Study of Literature and the first volume of the Decline and Fall (1761-1776) this criticism on Warburton, and some articles in the Journal, were my sole publications. It is more especially incumbent on me to mark the employment or to confess the waste of time from my travels to my father's death, an interval in which I was not diverted by any professional duties from the labours and pleasures of a studious life. 1. As soon as I was released from the fruitless task of the Swiss revolutions (1768) I began gradually to advance from the wish to the hope, from the hope to the design, from the design to the execution, of my historical work, of whose limits and extent Ì had yet a very inadequate notion. The Classics, as low as Tacitus, the younger Pliny, and Juvenal, were my old and familiar companions. I insensibly plunged into the ocean of the Augustan history; and in the descending series I investigated, with my pen almost

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The editor of the Warburtonian tracts, Dr Parr (p. 192) considers the allegorical interpretation as completely refuted in a most clear, elegant, and decisive work of criticism; which could not, indeed, derive authority from the greatest name, but to which the greatest name might with propriety have been affixed."

+ The Divine Legation of Moses is a monument, already crumbling in the dust, of the vigour and weakness of the human mind. If Warburton's new argument proved anything, it would be a demonstration against the legislator who left his people without the knowledge of a future state. But some episodes of the work, on the Greek philosophy, the hieroglyphics of Egypt, &c. are entitled to the praise of earning, imagination, and discernment.

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