it was not to enforce opinions already
furnished to his hands, or with cold scepticism to reject them,
leaving the reader in despair. He read that he might write what no one
else had written, and which at least required to be refuted before it
was condemned. He hit upon a SECRET PRINCIPLE, which prevails through
all his works, and this was INVENTION; a talent, indeed, somewhat
dangerous to introduce in researches where Truth, and not Fancy, was
to be addressed. But even with all this originality he was not free
from imitation, and has even been accused of borrowing largely without
hinting at his obligations. He had certainly one favourite model
before him: Warburton has delineated the portrait of a certain author
with inimitable minuteness, while he caught its general effect; we
feel that the artist, in tracing the resemblance of another, is
inspired by all the flattery of a self-painter--he perceived the
kindred features, and he loved them!

This author was BAYLE! And I am unfolding the character of Warburton,
in copying the very original portrait:--

"Mr. Bayle is of a quite different character from these Italian
sophists: a writer, whose strength and clearness of _reasoning_ can be
equalled only by the gaiety, easiness, and delicacy of his _wit_;
_who, pervading human nature with a glance, STRUCK INTO THE PROVINCE
OF PARADOX, as an exercise for the restless vigour of his mind_: who,
with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks of fortune, and a heart
practised to the best philosophy, had _not yet enough of real
greatness to overcome that last foible of superior geniuses_, the
temptation of honour, which the ACADEMIC EXERCISE OF WIT is conceived
to bring to its professors."[157]

Here, then, we discover the SECRET PRINCIPLE which conducted Warburton
through all his works, although of the most opposite natures. I do not
give this as an opinion to be discussed, but as a fact to be
demonstrated.

The faculties so eminent in Bayle were equally so in Warburton. In his
early studies he had particularly applied himself to logic; and was
not only a vigorous reasoner, but one practised in all the _finesse_
of dialectics. He had wit, fertile indeed, rather than delicate; and a
vast body of erudition, collected in the uninterrupted studies of
twenty years. But it was the SECRET PRINCIPLE, or, as he calls it,
"_the Academic exercise of Wit_," on an enlarged system, which carried
him so far in the new world of INVENTION he w