when they had retired, they saw no more of him that evening, and his sister, Mrs. Frances Warburton, told me, that he usually sate up a great part of the night." Account of Warburton's Life, p. 11.

There is something noble and animating in this enthusiastic spirit of research, which every scholar has felt: especially when we consider that it was not in Warburton, as in most of those who are self-devoted to study, limited to one favourite pursuit, but took in all the branches of the science of mind. Yet to condemn one's self to utter banishment from domestic delights, to forego the social fireside, the cheerful ramble, and all the endearing familiarities and sweet counsel, which they take together, who walk in their household as kindred and companions: this is to pay more for knowledge, however high and perfect, than it can possibly be worth, and to throw away unimproved those opportunities which are afforded for the exercise of the sweetest and most Christian qualities of the human mind. Let our affections be ever so sound at the root, they want intercourse and that constant exchange of kind offices, which is the best part of the life of love, ere they can blossom regularly and bring forth fruit in their due season: but so fostered, how genial is their influence! they diffuse the kindly refreshment and sweet fragrance of charity over all our dealings; they furnish objects at home more interesting a thousand times, and more certain to reward the interest we take in them, than the proudest hope that ever visited the solitary student, or held the eyes of genius waking: by them as instruments is graciously vouchsafed that peace, which passeth all understanding, which longs to diffuse itself, and to make all mankind as happy as it doth him who possesses it: and then he returns to his book or his pen with a new and sanctified spirit, a spirit purged of ambition and vanity: and though the issues of his labour taste of nothing new or admirable, it hurts not hist pride so much as it rejoices his conscience humbly to feel and acknowledge in them the overflowings of an honest and good heart. To him it signifies little what malignant spirits are abroad, or how the envious may trouble his literary fame: his heart is at home, among those whose good opinion he knows he shall not lose for blunders in composition, or mistakes in theory and if for the truth's sake he find it needful to enter into controversy, his shafts are discreetly dealt, and without venom: he reproves with mildness, he conciliates with dignity, or he remonstrates with fervour; how and when to do each, the little world within his own family teaches by abundant experience. What a grace and glory strong affections of kindred pour around the head of the sage and the scholar, is brightly shewn in the life and death

of

of Boyle: who in sickness, in study, in amusement, in reflec tion, whether he wrote, or prayed, or speculated, whether he searched through nature for man's temporal good, or in Scripture for his everlasting happiness, had his noble-minded and affectionate sister in all his thoughts. That Warburton posgessed such feelings we have reason to believe, from traditional accounts, and the tone in which he writes of his relations: had he given them larger room in his mind and time, he would perhaps have left a few more books unread, or unwritten, but he would, we firmly believe, have been a more amiable, and a happier man than he was.

For the rest, we do not think that Mr. D'Israeli has judged worthily of the soundness of his philosophy, or the beneficial tendency of his works. Indeed the following quotation, taken along with the reference at the bottom of it, might perhaps justify a suspicion, that the author has never read, or never understood, the treatise to which it refers,

The first step the giant took shewed the mightiness of his stride. His first great work was the famous Alliance between Church and State. It surprised the world, who (which) saw the most important subject depending on a mere curious argument, which, like all political theories, was liable to be overthrown by another set of writers. The term Alliance seemed also to infer that the Church was an independent power, forming a contract with the State, not acknowledging that it is only an integral part, like that of the Army or the Navy *. Warburton, who had studied Hobbes, had not probably decided, at that time, on the principle of ecclesiastical power; whether it was paramount by its divine origin, as one party asserted; or, as the new philosophers, Hobbes, Selden, and others, insisted, that the spiritual was secondary to the civil power." P. 51.

We do not know what is meant by Warburton's " not having decided on the principles of ecclesiastical power," which he has, clearly enough to our understanding, referred to the will of God as made known by Nature and by Revelation: nor how the difference between soul and body, on which his whole theory is grounded, can be considered as "a mere curious argument." On second thoughts, it would not perhaps be wonderful if the same process of intellectual levelling, which discovered that all political theories are alike false, and that the Church, the Army and Navy are alike "only integral parts of the State," should have aided our author in his metaphysical studies also, and taught him the extreme futility of that nice, subtle, scholastic

Monthly Review, vol. xvi. p. 324.

distinc

distinction, which some reasoners are for making, between mind and matter. For ourselves, our regret at not being able to follow these sublime flights of thought is in some sort abated, by finding that this same "curious" argument had imposed on Horsley also, who has pronounced the Alliance of Church and State to be " one of the finest specimens, that are to be found perhaps in any language, of scientific reasoning applied to a political subject."

In passing from Warburton to Pope, from theological to critical controversy, Mr. D'Israeli enters into his proper region, that of anecdote, and becomes a pleasanter and more edifying companion. That most irritable of the genus irritabile stands him in great stead, furnishing no less than five sections of his book: which profess to relate respectively his " Miscellaneous Quarrels" (quaint enough) his disputes with Curll and Cibber, his breach with Addison, and his "Posthumous Quarrel" with Bolingbroke about the Patriot King. This part of the book may be regarded as an appendix to Johnson's Life of Pope: it contains not many new facts, but amplifies and illustrates what we knew before. Strong circumstantial evidence is adduced in confirmation of Johnson's opinion, that the surreptitious edition of the Poet's letters was a trick of his own for fame. No new light, that we are aware of, is thrown on the dispute with Addison. But the character of Colley Cibber is warmly and in some respects plausibly advocated. The sneers on his dullness indeed are abundantly refuted by the Careless Husband, a play which to dexterous machinery and easy humour, adds higher merits, and less to be looked for in that age of witty ribaldry: it sends us away interested on the side of the domestic virtues. His vanity and effrontery seem to have been exaggerated. In his old age he published a character of himself, of which Mr. D'Israeli gives some amusing specimens.

"This boy of seventy odd, (for such he was when he wrote the Egotist,) unfolds his character by many lively personal touches. He declares he could not have given the world so finished a coxcomb as Lord Foppington, if he had not found a good deal of the same stuff in himself to make him with.' He addresses' A Postscript, to those unfortunate readers and writers who may not have more sense than the author; and he closes, in all the fullness of his spirit, with a piece of consolation for those who are so cruelly attacked by superior genius.

"Let us then, Gentlemen, who have the misfortune to lie thus. at the mercy of those whose natural parts happen to be stronger than our own; let us, I say, make the most of our sterility! Let us double and treble the ranks of our thickness, that we may form an impregnable phalanx and stand every way in front to the

enemy;

enemy; or, would you still be liable to less hazard, lay but your selves down, as I do, flat and quiet upon your faces, when Pride, Malice, Envy, Wit, or Prejudice, let fly their formidable shot at you, what odds is it they don't all whistle over your head?—Who knows but by this our supine, or rather prone serenity, their disappointed valour may become their own vexation? Or let us yet, at worst, but solidly stand our ground, like so many defensive stone posts, and we may defy the proudest Jehu of them all to drive over us. Thus, gentlemen, you see that insensibility is not without its comforts, and as I give you no worse advice than I have taken myself, and found my account in, I hope you will have the hardness to follow it, for your own good and the glory of Your impenetrable humble servant,

C. C."

Whatever we may judge of the dignity of" Cibberian forehead,” its smoothness under insult is certainly most enviable: and, it may be, the triumphant satirist would have been no loser in temper and comfort, if he had taken a few lessons in the difficult art of being laughed at from the good-humoured object of his invective. In the note to p. 270, we have some interesting matter concerning Bolingbroke's quarrel with the memory of Pope.

"The Essay on Man had been reformed by the subtile aid of Warburton, in opposition to the objectionable principles which Bolingbroke had infused into Pope's system of philosophy: this, no doubt, had vexed Bolingbroke. But another circumstance occurred of a more mortifying nature. When Pope, one day, shewed Warburton Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History, printed, but not published, and concealing the name of the author, Warburton not only made several very free strictures on that work, but particularly attacked a digression concerning the authenticity of the Old Testament. Pope requested him to write his remarks down as they had occurred, which he instantly did, and Pope was so satisfied with them, that he crossed out the digression in the printed book, and sent the animadversions to Lord Bolingbroke, then at Paris. The style of the great dogmatist, thrown out in heat, must no doubt have contained many fiery particles, all which fell into the most inflammable of minds: Pope soon discovered (that) his officiousness was received with indignation. Yet when Bolingbroke afterwards met Warburton, he dissimulated: he used the language of compliment, but in a tone which claimed homage. The two most arrogant geniuses who ever lived, in vain exacted submission from each other: they could allow of no divided empire, and they were born to hate each other. Bolingbroke suppressed his sore feelings, for at that very time he was employed in collecting matter to refute the objections: treasuring up his secret vengeance against Pope and Warburton, which he threw out immediately on the death of Pope. I collect these particulars from Ruffhead, who wrote under the eye of Warburton;

burton: so that whenever, in that volume, Warburton's name is introduced, it must be considered as coming from himself.

"The reasonings of Bolingbroke appear, at times, to have disturbed the religious faith of our poet, and he owed much to Warburton, in having that faith confirmed.-On the belief of a future state, Pope seems often to have meditated with great anxiety; and an anecdote is recorded of his latest hours, which shews how strongly that important belief affected him. A day or two before his death, he was at times delirious; and about four o'clock in the morning he rose from bed, and went to the library, where a friend, who was watching him, found him busily writing. He persuaded him to desist, and withdrew the paper he had written. The subject of the thoughts of the delirious poet was a new theory on the Immortality of the Soul, in which he distinguished between those material objects which tended to strengthen his conviction, and those which weakened it. The paper which contained these disordered thoughts was shewn to Warburton, and surely has been preserved."

We are next presented with some remarks on the controversies wherein the Royal Society was engaged in its infancy; chiefly, as it appears, for the sake of introducing a character. of Dr. Henry Stubbe, one of Mr. D'Israeli's neglected favourites, who wrote against the new corporation on grounds which they probably were not prepared to expect; he accused them of intending to overthrow Church and State, by drawing off people's minds from political matters to problems and theorems, and experiments with the air-pump. Some of his arguments are more rational, and may be of use even in these enlightened times to correct certain Scottish notions of utility.

"That art of reasoning by which the prudent are discriminated fools, which methodiseth and facilitates our discourses, which informs us of the validity of consequences and the probability of arguments, and manifests the fallacies of impostors; that art which gives life to solid eloquence, and which renders statesmen, divines, physicians, and lawyers, accomplished; how is this cried down and vilified, by the ignoramuses of these days! What contempt is there raised upon the disputative ethics of Aristotle and the Stoics! and those moral instructions, which have produced the Alexanders and the Ptolemies, the Pompeys and the Ciceros, are now slighted in comparison of day-labouring." Cited from Stubbe's Preface to "Legends no Histories," in vol. ii. p. 64.

The account of the famous controversy about Phalaris is candidly given, and shews due deference for the mighty name of Bentley, It is ascribed in a great measure to the jealousy of Aldrich, who could not endure the superiority of the Cambridge

9

critic.