he slow torture and
the teasing of Hurd's dissecting-knife in dignified silence.

At length a rising genius demonstrated how Virgil could not have
described the Eleusinian Mysteries in the sixth book of the AEneid. One
blow from the arm of Gibbon shivered the allegorical fairy palace into
glittering fragments.[166]

When the sceptical Middleton, in his "Essay on the Gift of Tongues,"
pretended to think that "an inspired language would be perfect in its
kind, with all the purity of Plato and the eloquence of Cicero," and
then asserted that "the style of the New Testament was utterly rude
and barbarous, and abounding with every fault that can possibly deform
a language," Warburton, as was his custom, instantly acquiesced; but
hardily maintained that "_this very barbarism was one certain mark of
a divine original_."[167]--The curious may follow his subtile argument
in his "Doctrine of Grace;" but, in delivering this paradox, he struck
at the fundamental principles of eloquence: he dilated on all the
abuses of that human art. It was precisely his utter want of taste
which afforded him so copious an argument; for he asserted that the
principles of eloquence were arbitrary and chimerical, and its various
modes "mostly fantastical;" and that, consequently, there was no such
thing as a good taste,[168] except what the _consent of the learned_
had made; an expression borrowed from Quintilian. A plausible and a
consolatory argument for the greater part of mankind! It, however,
roused the indignation of Leland, the eloquent translator of
Demosthenes, and the rhetorical professor at Trinity College, in
Dublin, who has nobly defended the cause of classical taste and
feeling by profounder principles. His classic anger produced his
"Dissertation on the Principles of Human Eloquence;" a volume so much
esteemed that it is still reprinted. Leland refuted the whimsical
paradox, yet complimented Warburton, who, "with the spirit and energy
of an ancient orator, was writing against eloquence," while he showed
that the style of the New Testament was defensible on surer grounds.
Hurd, who had fleshed his polished weapon on poor Jortin, and had been
received into the arms of the hero under whom he now fought,
adventured to cast his javelin at Leland: it was dipped in the cold
poison of contempt and petulance. It struck, but did not canker,
leaves that were immortal.[169] Leland, with the native warmth of his
soil, could not resist the gratifi