Note 164 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

Hurd was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and was placed by him at Rugely, from whence he was removed to Emmanuel College, Cambridge. At the age of twenty-six he published a pamphlet entitled “Remarks on a late Book entitled ‘An Inquiry into the Rejection of the Christian Miracles by the Heathens, by William Weston,’” which met with considerable attention. In 1749, on the occasion of publishing a commentary on Horace’s “Ars Poetica,” he complimented Warburton so strongly as to ensure his favour. Warburton returned it by a puff for Hurd in his edition of Pope, and the two became fast friends. It was a profitable connexion to Hurd, for by the intercession of Warburton he was appointed one of the Whitehall preachers, a preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, and Archdeacon of Gloucester. He repaid Warburton by constant praises in print, and so far succeeded with that vain man, that when he read the dedication he made to him of his “Commentary on the Epistle to Augustus,” he wrote to him with mock humility—“I will confess to you how much satisfaction the groundless part of it, that which relates to myself, gave me.” When Dr. Jortin very properly spoke of Warburton with less of subserviency than the overbearing bishop desired, Hurd at once came forward to fight for Warburton in print, in a satirical treatise on “The Delicacy of Friendship,” which highly delighted his patron, who at once wrote to Dr. Lowth, stating him to be “a man of very superior talents, of genius, learning, and virtue; indeed, a principal ornament of the age he lives in.” Hurd was made Bishop of Lichfield in 1775, and of Winchester in 1779. He died in the year 1808.—Ed.