Bishop of Gloucester
and his party maintained a discreet silence, my critical disquisition
was soon lost among the pamphlets of the day; but the public coldness
was overbalanced to my feelings by the weighty approbation of the last
and best editor of Virgil, Professor Heyne of Gottingen, who acquiesces
in my confutation, and styles the unknown author, doctus - - - et
elegantissimus Britannus. But I cannot resist the temptation of
transcribing the favourable judgment of Mr. Hayley, himself a poet and a
scholar "An intricate hypothesis, twisted into a long and laboured chain
of quotation and argument, the Dissertation on the Sixth Book of
Virgil, remained some time unrefuted. - - - At length, a superior, but
anonymous, critic arose, who, in one of the most judicious and spirited
essays that our nation has produced, on a point of classical literature,
completely overturned this ill-founded edifice, and exposed the
arrogance and futility of its assuming architect." He even condescends
to justify an acrimony of style, which had been gently blamed by the
more unbiassed German; "Paullo acrius quam velis - - -,perstrinxit." But
I cannot forgive myself the contemptuous treatment of a span who, with
all his faults, was entitled to my esteem; [Note: The Divine Legation
of Moses is a monument, already crumbling in the dust, of the vigour and
weakness of the human mind. If Warburton's new argument proved anything,
it would be a demonstration against the legislator, who left his people
without the knowledge of a future state. But some episodes of the work,
on the Greek philosophy, the hieroglyphics of Egypt, &c. are entitled
to the praise of learning, imagination, and discernment.] and I can less
forgive, in a personal attack, the cowardly concealment of my name and
character.

In the fifteen years between my Essay on the Study of Literature and
the first volume of the Decline and Fall, (1761-1776,) this criticism on
Warburton, and some articles in the journal, were my sole publications.
It is more especially incumbent on me to mark the employment, or to
confess the waste of time, from my travels to my father's death, an
interval in which I was not diverted by any professional duties from the
labours and pleasures of a studious life. 1. As soon as I was released
from the fruitless task of the Swiss revolutions, (1768,) I began
gradually to advance from the wish to the hope, from the hope to the
design, from the design to the executi