Note 191 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS;

We are astonished at the boldness of the minor critic, when, even after the fatal edition of Warburton’s Shakspeare, he should still venture, in the life of his great friend, to assert that “this fine edition must ever be highly valued by men of sense and taste; a spirit congenial to that of the author breathing throughout!”

Is it possible that the man who wrote this should ever have read the “Canons of Criticism?” Yet is it to be supposed that he who took so lively an interest in the literary fortunes of his friend should not have read them? The Warburtonians appear to have adopted one of the principles of the Jesuits in their controversies, which was to repeat arguments which had been confuted over and over again; to insinuate that they had not been so! But this was not too much to risk by him who, in his dedication of “Horace’s Epistle to Augustus,” with a Commentary, had hardily and solemnly declared that “Warburton, in his enlarged view of things, had not only revived the two models of Aristotle and Longinus, but had rather struck out a new original plan of criticism, which should unite the virtues of each of them. This experiment was made on the two greatest of our own poets—Shakspeare and Pope. Still (he adds, addressing Warburton) you went farther, by joining to those powers a perfect insight into human nature; and so ennobling the exercise of literary by the justest moral censure, you have now, at length, advanced criticism to its full glory.”

A perpetual intercourse of mutual adulation animated the sovereign and his viceroy, and, by mutual support, each obtained the same reward: two mitres crowned the greater and the minor critic. This intercourse was humorously detected by the lively author of “Confusion Worse Confounded.”—“When the late Duke of R.,” says he, “kept wild beasts, it was a common diversion to make two of his bears drunk (not metaphorically with flattery, but literally with strong ale), and then daub them over with honey. It was excellent sport to see how lovingly (like a couple of critics) they would lick and claw one another.” It is almost amazing to observe how Hurd, who naturally was of the most frigid temperament, and the most subdued feelings, warmed, heated, and blazed in the progressive stages “of that pageantry of praise spread over the Rev. Mr. Warburton, when the latter was advancing fast towards a bishoprick,” to use the words of Dr. Parr, a sagacious observer of man. However, notwithstanding the despotic mandates of our Pichrocole and his dapper minister, there were who did not fear to meet the greater bear of the two so facetiously described above. And the author of “Confusion Worse Confounded” tells a familiar story, which will enliven the history of our great critic. “One of the bears mentioned above happened to get loose, and was running along the street in which a tinker was gravely walking. The people all cried, ‘Tinker! tinker! beware of the bear!’ Upon this Magnano faced about with great composure; and raising his staff, knocked down Bruin, then setting his arms a-kimbo, walked off very sedately; only saying, ‘Let the bear beware of the tinker,’ which is now become a proverb in those parts.”—“Confusion Worse Confounded,” p. 75.