Note 167 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

It is curious enough to observe that Warburton himself, acknowledging this to be a paradox, exultingly exclaims, “Which, like so many others I have had the ODD FORTUNE to advance, will be seen to be only another name for Truth.” This has all the levity of a sophist’s language! Hence we must infer that some of the most important subjects could not be understood and defended, but by Warburton’s “odd fortune!” It was this levity of ideas that raised a suspicion that he was not always sincere. He writes, in a letter, of “living in mere spite, to rub another volume of the ‘Divine Legation’ in the noses of bigots and zealots.” He employs the most ludicrous images, and the coarsest phrases, on the most solemn subjects. In one of his most unlucky paradoxes with Lowth, on the age and style of the writings of Job, he accuses that elegant scholar of deficient discernment; and, in respect to style, as not “distinguishing partridge from horseflesh;” and in quoting some of the poetical passages, of “paying with an old song,” and “giving rhyme for reason.” Alluding to some one of his adversaries, whom he calls “the weakest, as well as the wickedest of all mankind,” he employs a striking image—“I shall hang him and his fellows, as they do vermin in a warren, and leave them to posterity, to stink and blacken in the wind.”