Warburton himself were it not for his
association with Pope. Allusion has been already made to Crousaz's
hostile criticism of the _Essay on Man_ (1737) on the ground that it led
to fatalism, and was destructive of the foundations of natural religion.
Warburton, who had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did so in Pope's
judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment of the critic's labours.
'I know I meant just what you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain
my own meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself,
but you express me better than I could express myself.'

Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton had done for Pope is
more accurate: 'You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's
principles,' he says, 'but, like the old commentators on his _Homer_,
will be thought, perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
him that he himself never dreamt of.'[67]

The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740, and the
bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview, was astonished at
the compliments which Pope lavished on his apologist. Henceforth,
until the poet's death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his counsellor and
supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus,
to the confusion of the _Dunciad_. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he
produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to
make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship
of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and
Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on Warburton
that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on the part of the university
having occurred with regard to the latter, Pope wrote to his friend
saying, 'As for mine I will die before I receive one, in an art I am
ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
on you, in a science of which you are so great a master. In short I will
be doctored with you, or not at all.'

Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy
style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since
he could not convince by argum