We have already said that it is impossible to account for the anomalies of taste; otherwise the selection of Hurd for the confidential friend of Warburton might reasonably have excited wonder. In the genius of the two men there was certainly little resemblance; in the temper, none. The one was ardent, impetuous, dogmatical, and choleric, the other cool, circumspect, and timid. But Hurd, as it appears, smitten with sincere and disinterested admiration of the genius of his future friend, made the first advances, and Warburton, who resembled Cromwell in a disposition to receive all who made their addresses to him, with grace and frankness met his young and humble panegyrist with open arms. When the friendship was once formed, it is much less difficult to account for its uninterrupted continuance. Under the predominant and overbearing influence of a superior mind, Hurd, in addition to an affection as warm as his constitution was capable of, is understood to have been uniformly supple and obsequious. With all their discrepancies, one centre of union between the two minds had always existed, a spirit of critical refinement. In all the extravagances of his wildest hypotheses, assailed by the contradiction of scholars, and the laughter of wits, Warburton had one kindred bosom on which he could repose, one understanding which never questioned the legitimacy of his reasonings, or failed to perceive the validity of his conclusions. Besides, it is not always true, in fact, that unequal friendships (we mean those of unequal minds) are quite as frail as they have been represented. Great men, especially in the decline of life, often grow indolent conversers: they love to dictate rather than dispute; they decline the irritating and laborious collision of equal intellects; and an humble friend just able to understand, and very willing to applaud, is a more acceptable companion than an equal, who dares to contradict, and who may chance to confute. Could Warburton have been encountered by another phenomenon resembling himself, the first congress might have been amicable and delightful; but it is more than probable, that ere long, the pride, the positiveness, and the conscious equality of the parties would have produced a conflict resembling the shock of two uri in the Lithuanian forests, and they would have parted in sullen disgust. Over the mind of Pope himself in his declining years, the friend and commentator, who well might supplant Bolingbroke, enjoyed an ascendant unperceived, it may be, by the bard himself. In his intercourse with Murray and York his ferocity was blunted, not by timid assent, but by the impenetrable and unassailable polish of high breeding. Over the partizans of his own school, with the exception, perhaps, of Balguy, who respected himself, he domineered without resistance. Still, if Warburton were a tyrant, he was a magnanimous tyrant, and, the

point of unconditional submission once secured, a warm and generous friend.

As a diocesan, it is acknowledged by his biographer that he did nothing, and for a very singular and unfortunate reason, because he knew that nothing was to be done. Yet his own metropolitan was Secker; and the prelate who made this strange admission sat on the same bench with Porteus. Did they do nothing? But thus the cold, the timid, and the indolent drop opiates on their own, consciences under the disguise of apologies for their friends. Still the Bishop of Worcester is right in his opinion, that however necessary a considerable portion of talent and learning may be to support the weight and dignity of the episcopal character, a genius of the high order of Warburton is better placed in the shade of private life. But we go farther.-Without any claim to indulgence from exuberant genius, habits of pertinacious industry and learned refinement, acquired and confirmed in those situations through which eminent clergymen are usually conducted to the highest rank of their profession, have a tendency to render them solitary and inactive. It is remarked of Pearson by Burnet, that although an admirable divine, he was a very indifferent bishop; and instances on the other hand might easily be adduced, in which the absence of those qualifications, which certainly adorn the episcopal character, has evidently rendered it more actively and indefatigably useful. But entering upon their exalted stations, as is too often the case, late in life, and with shattered constitutions, learned divines are too apt to consider their advancement as a retreat for old age rather than an introduction into a new scene of duty and exertion. So thought and acted the subject of this article; so, we believe, did his biographer-raised to the mitre about the same age, and that an advanced one, the first pursued his theological studies till his gigantic understanding sunk into second childishness and mere obliviou; the other, with little interruption from business or duty, enjoyed his elegant retirement of Hartlebury till the eve of his translation to another state.

We are now to consider this mighty man more distinctly in his works.

Of these the most illustrious, and alone sufficient to confer immortality on any name, is the Divine Legation of Moses, a work so original in its conception, so vigorous in its execution, enlivened by so many sallies of an exuberant imagination, and diversified by so many entertaining episodes and excursions, that after having struggled through the first impediments of prejudice and detraction, it took its place at the head, we do not say of English theology only, but almost of English literature.

To the composition of this prodigious performance, Hooker and Stillingfleet

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Stillingfleet could have contributed the erudition, Chillingworth and Locke the acuteness, Taylor an imagination even more wild and copious, Swift, and perhaps Eachard, the sarcastic vein of wit: but what power of understanding, excepting that of Warburton, could first have amassed all these materials, and then compacted them into a bulky and elaborate work so consistent and harmonious?

The principle of the work was no less bold and original than the execution. That the doctrine of a future state of reward and pu nishment was omitted in the books of Moses, had been insolently urged by infidels against the truth of his mission, while divines were feebly occupied in seeking what was certainly not to be found there, otherwise than by inference and implication. But Warbur ton, with an intrepidity unheard of before, threw open the gates of his camp, admitted the host of the enemy within his works, and beat them on a ground which was now become both his and theirs. In short, he admitted the proposition in its fullest extent, and proceeded to demonstrate from that very omission, which in all instances of legislation, merely human, had been industriously avoided, that a system which could dispense with a doctrine, the very bond and cement of human society, must have come from God, and that the people to whom it was given must have been placed under his immediate superintendence.

In the hands of such a champion, the warfare so conducted might be safe; yet the experiment was perilous, and the combatant a stranger; hence the timid were alarmed, the formal disconcerted; even the veteran leaders of his own party were scandalized by the irregular act of heroism; and long and loud was the outcry of treason and perfidy within the camp. Nor is it to be dissembled, that in chusing this new and narrow ground of defence, how ever adapted to his own daring and adventurous spirit, Warbur ton gave some cause of alarm, and even of dissatisfaction, to the friends of revelation. They foresaw, and deplored a consequence, which we believe has in some instances actually followed; namely, that this hardy and inventive champion has been either misconceived or misrepresented, as having chosen the only firm ground on which the divine authority of the Jewish legislator could be maintained; whereas that great truth should be understood to rest on a much wider and firmer basis: for could the hypothesis of Warburton be demonstrated to be inconclusive; had it even been discovered (which, from the universal knowledge of the history of nations at present is impossible) that a system of legislation, confessedly human, had actually been instituted and obeyed without any reference to a future state, still the divine origin and authority of the Jewish polity would stand pre-eminent

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and alone. Instituted in a barbarous age, and in the midst of universal idolatry, a system which taught the proper unity of the godhead; denominated his person by a sublime and metaphysical name, evidently implying self-existence; which, in the midst of fanatical bloodshed and lust, excluded from its ritual every thing libidinous or cruel, (for the permission to offer up beasts in sacrifice is no more objectionable than that of their slaughter for human food, and both are positively humane,) the refusal in the midst of a general intercommunity of gods, to admit the association of any of them with Jehovah :-all these particulars, together with the purity and sanctity of the moral law, amount to a moral-demonstration that the religion came from God.

Warburton's Divine Legation is one of the few theological and still fewer controversial works, which scholars perfectly indifferent to such subjects will ever read with delight. The novelty of the hypothesis, the masterly conduct of the argument, the hard blows which this champion of faith and orthodoxy is ever dealing about him against the enemies of both, the scorn with which he represses shallow petulance, and the inimitable acuteness with which he exposes dishonest sophistry, the compass of literature which he displays, his widely extended views of ancient polity and religion, but, above all, that irradiation of unfailing and indefectible genius which, like the rich sunshine of an Italian landscape, illuminates the whole, -all these excellences will rivet alike the attention of taste, and reason, and erudition, as long as English literature shall exist; while many a standard work, perhaps equally learned and more convincing, is permitted to repose upon the shelf. But it is in his episodes and digressions that Warburton's powers of reason and brilliancy of fancy, are most conspicuous., They resemble the wanton movements of some powerful and half-broken quadruped, who, disdaining to pace along the highway under a burden which would subdue any other animal of his species, starts aside at every turn to exercise the native elasticity of his muscles, and throw off the waste exuberance of his strength and spirits. Of these the most remarkable are his Hypothesis concerning the Origin and late Antiquity of the Book of Job, his elaborate Disquisition on Hieroglyphics and Picture-writing, and his profound and original Investigation of the Mysteries.

Warburton had a constitutional delight in paradox. He read, as it would appear, among other reasons, for the purpose of ascertaining what had been written on a subject; not that he might adopt, or reject, at his discretion, the opinions of others, but that he might be sure of producing what had never been said or thought before. He was like an adventurer projecting a voyage of discovery, who should sit down to study the charts and journals of all

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his predecessors, neither for direction nor security, but that having been instructed in every route already explored by man, he might penetrate into the unfathomed depths of unknown seas, aud ransack the wealth of countries hitherto without a name. Such a spirit, aided by a constitution however strong, and a hand however skilful, while it might occasionally reward the discoverer, and eurich his country with unexpected wealth, would sometimes drive bim upon unknown rocks, and sometimes entangle him in inextricable quicksands, where his rashness would at once be regarded as his calamity and his reproach. Such was his ill-starred dissertation on the book of Job, which, besides having incidentally drawn upon him the vengeance of Lowth, missed that praise which Warburton courted more ardently than either utility or truth, that of fortunate boldness, or ingenious and well supported error. His disgraceful failure on this subject was, however, more thau compensated by his wonderful dissertation on hieroglyphical and picture-writing; one of those felicities which seem to be occasionally and extrinsically bestowed upon great genius, and are beyond all power of ordinary effort and meditation. In profundity of research, clearness of deduction, and happiness of illustration, we know of no analysis which will bear a comparison with it. Had Warburton written nothing but the fourth section of the fourth book of the Divine Legation, it would have rendered his name immortal.

For the immense erudition which he has brought to bear on the obscure subject of the Mysteries, our author was indebted to Meursius, and he has frankly acknowledged the obligation: but it was the raw material only which he borrowed; the arrangement and distribution of the subject, the argument and application, the dexterity in parrying objections, and the inventive expansion of his authorities, where they were either deficient or inconclusive, being purely and properly his own.

That in contradistinction to the popular and polytheistic_worship which prevailed among the first civilized nations of antiquity, their great legislators established an obscure and mysterious system, to the secrets of which a favoured few alone were admitted, and those by successive steps and tremendous rites of initiation, and that the

• In his Eleusinia. It is due to Warburton's integrity to produce the passage, because a doubt has been expressed on the subject by a writer whose general accuracy would, we should have supposed, have prevented him from overlooking it. To him (Meursius) I am much indebted, for abridging my labour in search of those passages of antiquity which make mention of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and for bringing the greater part of them into one view, This will be overlooked by the indolence and inexactness of desultory readers, while the following insinuation, in a popular work, which does more honour to the head than the heart of the writer, will probably be received as an intimation that he makes no such acknowledgment. I forget whether the bishop makes a direct acknowledgment of his obligations to this diligent, learned, and judicious collector (Meursius).'-Tracts by Warburton and a Warburtonian, p. 189, note 2.

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