licacy of Addison, it may
be imagined might be in raptures with the rant of Lee. There is an
unerring principle in the false sublime: it seems to be governed by
laws, though they are not ours; and we know what it will like, that
is, we know what it will mistake for what ought not to be liked, as
surely as we can anticipate what will delight correct taste. Warburton
has pronounced one of the raving passages of poor Nat "to contain not
only the most sublime, but the most judicious imagery that poetry
could conceive or paint." JOSEPH WARTON, who indignantly rejects it
from his edition of Pope, asserts that "we have not in our language a
more striking example of true turgid expression, and genuine fustian
and bombast."[155] Yet such was the man whom ill-fortune (for the
public at least) had chosen to become the commentator of our greater
poets! Again Churchill throws light on our character:--

He, with an all-sufficient air
Places himself in the critic's chair,
And wrote, to advance his Maker's praise,
Comments on rhymes, and notes on plays--
A judge of genius, though, confest,
With not one spark of genius blest:
Among the first of critics placed,
Though free from every taint of taste.

Not encouraged by the reception his first literary efforts received,
but having obtained some preferment from his patron, we now come to a
critical point in his life. He retreated from the world, and, during a
seclusion of near twenty years, persevered in uninterrupted studies.
The force of his character placed him in the first order of thinking
beings. This resolution no more to court the world for literary
favours, but to command it by hardy preparation for mighty labours,
displays a noble retention of the appetite for fame; Warburton scorned
to be a scribbler!

Had this great man journalised his readings, as Gibbon has done, we
should perhaps be more astonished at his miscellaneous pursuits. He
read everything, and, I suspect, with little distinction, and equal
delight.[156] Curiosity, even to its delirium, was his first passion;
which produced those new systems of hypothetical reasoning by which he
startled the world; and his efforts to save his most ingenious
theories from absurdity resembled, to use his own emphatic words
applied to the philosophy of Leibnitz, "a contrivance against
Fatalism," for though his genius has given a value to the wildest
paradoxes, paradoxes they remain.

But if Warburton read so much,