D'Arblay's Diary (ii. 377):--'THE KING. "I believe there is no constraint to be put upon real genius; nothing but inclination can set it to work. Miss Burney, however, knows best." And then hastily returning to me he cried; "What? what?" "No, sir, I--I--believe not, certainly," quoth I, very awkwardly, for I seemed taking a violent compliment only as my due; but I knew not how to put him off as I would another person.'
[101] In one part of the character of Pope (Works, viii. 319), Johnson seems to be describing himself:--'He certainly was in his early life a man of great literary curiosity; and when he wrote his Essay on Criticism had for his age a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the living world, it seems to have happened to him as to many others, that he was less attentive to dead masters; he studied in the academy of Paracelsus, and made the universe his favourite volume.... His frequent references to history, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it.' See ante, i. 57.
[102] Johnson thus describes Warburton (Works, viii. 288):--'About this time [1732] Warburton began to make his appearance in the first ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited enquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge.' Cradock (Memoirs, i. 188) says that 'Bishop Kurd always wondered where it was possible for Warburton to meet with certain anecdotes with which not only his conversation, but likewise his writings, abounded. "I could have readily informed him," said Mrs. Warburton, "for, when we passed our winters in London, he would often, after his long and severe studies, send out for a whole basketful of books from the circulating libraries; and at times I have gone into his study, and found him laughing, though alone."' Lord Macaulay was, in this respect, the Warburton of our age.
[103] The Rev. Mr. Strahan clearly recollects having been told by Johnson, that the King observed that Pope made Warburton a Bishop. 'True, Sir, (said Johnson,) but Warburton did more for Pope; he made him a Christian:' alluding, no doubt, to his ingenious Comments on the Essay on Man. BOSWELL. The statements both of the King and Johnson are supported by two passages in Johnson's Life of Pope, (Works, viii. 289, 290). He says of Warburton's Comments:--'Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full meaning, could by any mode of interpretation be made to mean well.... From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator, and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to Mr. Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln's Inn; and to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and by consequence a bishoprick.' See also the account given by Johnson, in Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, 1773. Bishop Law in his Revised Preface to Archbishop King's Origin of Evil (1781), p. xvii, writes:--'I had now the satisfaction of seeing that those very principles which had been maintained by Archbishop King were adopted by Mr. Pope in his Essay on Man; this I used to recollect, and sometimes relate, with pleasure, conceiving that such an account did no less honour to the poet than to our philosopher; but was soon made to understand that anything of that kind was taken highly amiss by one [Warburton] who had once held the doctrine of that same Essay to be rank atheism, but afterwards turned a warm advocate for it, and thought proper to deny the account above-mentioned, with heavy menaces against those who presumed to insinuate that Pope borrowed anything from any man whatsoever.' See post, Oct. 10, 1779.
[104] In Gibbon's Memoirs, a fine passage is quoted from Lowth's Defence of the University of Oxford, against Warburton's reproaches. 'I transcribe with pleasure this eloquent passage,' writes Gibbon, 'without inquiring whether in this angry controversy the spirit of Lowth himself is purified from the intolerant zeal which Warburton had ascribed to the genius of the place.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 47. See BOSWELL'S Hebrides, Aug. 28, 1773.
[105] See post, April 15, 1773, where Johnson says that Lyttelton 'in his History wrote the most vulgar Whiggism,' and April 10, 1776. Gibbon, who had reviewed it this year, says in his Memoirs (Misc. Works, i. 207): 'The public has ratified my judgment of that voluminous work, in which sense and learning are not illuminated by a ray of genius.'
[106] Hawkins says of him (Life, p. 211):--'He obtained from one of those universities which would scarce refuse a degree to an apothecary's horse a diploma for that of doctor of physic.' He became a great compiler and in one year earned L1500.