Note 154 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

This letter was written in 1726, and first found by Dr. Knight in 1750, in fitting up a house where Concanen had probably lodged. It was suppressed, till Akenside, in 1766, printed it in a sixpenny pamphlet, entitled “An Ode to Mr. Edwards.” He preserved the curiosity, with “all its peculiarities of grammar, spelling, and punctuation.” The insulted poet took a deep revenge for the contemptuous treatment he had received from the modern Stagirite. The “peculiarities” betray most evident marks of the self-taught lawyer; the orthography and the double letters were minted in the office. [Thus he speaks of Addison as this “exact Mr. of propriety,” and of his own studies of the English poets “to trace them to their sources; and observe what oar, as well as what slime and gravel they brought down with them.”] When I looked for the letter in Akenside’s Works, I discovered that it had been silently dropped. Some interest, doubtless, had been made to suppress it, for Warburton was humbled when reminded of it. Malone, fortunately, has preserved it in his Shakspeare, where it may be found, in a place not likely to be looked into for it, at the close of Julius Cæsar: this literary curiosity had otherwise been lost for posterity; its whole history is a series of wonderful escapes.

By this document we became acquainted with the astonishing fact, that Warburton, early in life, was himself one of those very dunces whom he has so unmercifully registered in their Doomsday-book; one who admired the genius of his brothers, and spoke of Pope with the utmost contempt! [Thus he says, “Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for want of genius!”]