had not oppreffed his imagination, nor clouded his perfpicacity. To every work he brought a memory full fraught with a fancy fertile of original combinations, and at once exerted. the powers of the fcholar, the reafoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits were too eager to be always cautious. His abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he difdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience of oppofition difpofed him to treat his adverfaries with fuch contemptuous fuperiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against him the wishes of fome who favoured his caufe. He feems to have adopted the Roman

L3

Roman Emperor's determination, oderint dum mctuant; he ufed no allure-ments of gentle language, but wifhed to compel rather than perfuade.

His ftyle is copious without selection, and forcible without neatnefs; he took the words that prefented themfelves: his diction is coarfe and impure, and his fentences are unmeafured.

He had, in the early part of his life, pleafed himself with the notice of inferior wits, and correfponded with the enemies of Pope. A Letter was produced, when he had perhaps himself forgotten it, in which he tells Concanen, that Milton borrowed by affectation, Dryden by idleness, and Pope by neceffity. And when Theobald published Shake

fpeare,

speare, in oppofition to Pope, the best* notes were fupplied by Warburton.

But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion, and Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed fo much to the exaltation of his rival.

The arrogance of Warburton excited againft him every artifice of offence, and therefore it may be fuppofed that his union with Pope was cenfured as hypocritical inconftancy; but furely to think differently, at different times, of poetical merit, may be eafily allowed.. Such opinions are often admitted, and difimiffed, without nice examination.. Who is there that has not found reafon

for changing his mind about questions of greater importance?

Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without folicitation, to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from month to month continued a vindication of the Effay on Man, in the literary journal of that time called the Republick of Letters.

Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad that the pofitions, of which he perceived himfelf not to know the full meaning, could by any mode of interpretation be made to mean well. How much he was pleafed with his

gratuitous de

fender,

fender, the following Letter evidently

fhews:

"SIR,

March 24, 1743.

"I have juft received from Mr. R.. "two more of your Letters. It is in "the greatest hurry imaginable that I "write this; but I cannot help thank

ing you in particular for your third "Letter, which is fo extremely clear, "fhort, and full, that I think Mr. "Croufaz ought never to have another "anfwer, and deferved not fo good an I can only fay, you do him too "much honour, and me too much right, "fo odd as the expreffion fecms; for 66 you have made my fyftem as clear as "I ought to have done, and could not. "It is indeed the fame fyftem as mine,

❝one.

" but