Note 173 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

Of Theobald he was once the companion, and to Sir Thomas Hanmer he offered his notes for his edition. [Hanmer’s Shakspeare was given in 1742 to the University of Oxford, for its benefit, and was printed at the University Press, under the management of Dr. Smith and Dr. Shippon. Sir Thomas paid the expenses of the engravings by Gravelot prefixed to each play. The edition was published in 4to. in 1744, it was printed on the “finest royal paper,” and does not warrant the severity of Pope, whose editing was equally faulty.] Sir Thomas says he found Warburton’s notes “sometimes just, but mostly wild and out of the way.” Warburton paid a visit to Sir Thomas for a week, which he conceived was to assist him in perfecting his darling text; but hints were now dropped by Warburton, that he might publish the work corrected, by which a greater sum of money might be got than could be by that plaything of Sir Thomas, which shines in all its splendour in the Dunciad; but this project did not suit Hanmer, whose life seemed greatly to depend on the magnificent Oxford edition, which “was not to go into the hands of booksellers.” On this, Warburton, we are told by Hanmer, “flew into a great rage, and there is an end of the story.” With what haughtiness he treats these two friends, for once they were such! Had the Dey of Algiers been the editor of Shakspeare, he could not have issued his orders more peremptorily for the decapitation of his rivals. Of Theobald and Hanmer he says, “the one was recommended to me as a poor man, the other as a poor critic: and to each of them at different times I communicated a great number of observations, which they managed, as they saw fit, to the relief of their several distresses. Mr. Theobald was naturally turned to industry and labour. What he read he could transcribe; but as to what he thought, if ever he did think, he could but ill express, so he read on: and by that means got a character of learning, without risking to every observer the imputation of wanting a better talent.”—See what it is to enjoy too close an intimacy with a man of wit! “As for the Oxford Editor, he wanted nothing (alluding to Theobald’s want of money) but what he might very well be without, the reputation of a critic,” &c. &c.—Warburton’s Preface to Shakspeare.

His conduct to Dr. Grey, the editor of Hudibras, cannot be accounted for by any known fact. I have already noticed their quarrels in the “Calamities of Authors.” Warburton cheerfully supplied Grey with various notes on Hudibras, though he said he had thought of an edition himself, and they were gratefully acknowledged in Grey’s Preface; but behold! shortly afterwards they are saluted by Warburton as “an execrable heap of nonsense;” further, he insulted Dr. Grey for the number of his publications! Poor Dr. Grey and his “Coadjutors,” as Warburton sneeringly called others of his friends, resented this by “A Free and Familiar Letter to that Great Preserver of Pope and Shakspeare, the Rev. Mr. William Warburton.” The doctor insisted that Warburton had had sufficient share in those very notes to be considered as one of the “Coadjutors.” “I may venture to say, that whoever was the fool of the company before he entered (or the fool of the piece, in his own diction) he was certainly so after he engaged in that work; for, as Ben Jonson observes, ‘he that thinks himself the Master-Wit is commonly the Master-Fool.’”