He formed an unbroken Commentary on the "Essay on Criticism," to show
that that admirable collection of precepts had been constructed by a
systematical method, which it is well known the poet never designed;
and the same instruments of torture were here used as in the "Essay on
Man," to reconcile a system of fatalism to the doctrines of
Revelation.[179] Warton had to remove the incumbrance of his
Commentaries on Pope, while a most laborious confederacy zealously
performed the same task to relieve Shakspeare. Thus Warburton pursued
ONE SECRET PRINCIPLE in all his labours; thus he raised edifices which
could not be securely inhabited, and were only impediments in the
roadway; and these works are now known by the labours of those who
have exerted their skill in laying them in ruins.

Warburton was probably aware that the SECRET PRINCIPLE which regulated
his public opinions might lay him open, at numerous points, to the
strokes of ridicule. It is a weapon which every one is willing to use,
but which seems to terrify every one when it is pointed against
themselves. There is no party or sect which have not employed it in
their most serious controversies: the grave part of mankind protest
against it, often at the moment they have been directing it for their
own purpose. And the inquiry, whether ridicule be a test of truth, is
one of the large controversies in our own literature. It was opened by
Lord Shaftesbury, and zealously maintained by his school. Akenside, in
a note to his celebrated poem, asserts the efficacy of ridicule as a
test of truth: Lord Kaimes had just done the same. Warburton levelled
his piece at the lord in the bush-fighting of a note; but came down in
the open field with a full discharge of his artillery on the luckless
bard.[180]

Warburton designates Akenside under the sneering appellative of "The
Poet," and alluding to his "sublime account" of the use of ridicule,
insultingly reminds him of "his Master," Shaftesbury, and of that
school which made morality an object of taste, shrewdly hinting that
Akenside was "a man of taste;" a new term, as we are to infer from
Warburton, for "a Deist;" or, as Akenside had alluded to Spinoza, he
might be something worse. The great critic loudly protested against
the practice of ridicule; but, in attacking its advocate, he is
himself an evidence of its efficacy, by keenly ridiculing "the Poet"
and his opinions. Dyson, the patron of Akenside, nobly stepped
forwards to