Note 168 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

Warburton, in this work (the “Doctrine of Grace,”) has a curious passage, too long to quote, where he observes, that “The Indian and Asiatic eloquence was esteemed hyperbolic and puerile by the more phlegmatic inhabitants of Rome and Athens: and the Western eloquence, in its turn, frigid or insipid, to the hardy and inflamed imaginations of the East. The same expression, which in one place had the utmost simplicity, had in another the utmost sublime.” The jackal, too, echoes the roar of the lion; for the polished Hurd, whose taste was far more decided than Warburton’s, was bold enough to add, in his Letter to Leland, “That which is thought supremely elegant in one country, passes in another for finical; while what in this country is accepted under the idea of sublimity, is derided in that other as no better than bombast.” So unsettled were the no-taste of Warburton, and the prim-taste of Hurd!