the
disguise of a Commentary on the most classical of our Poets, to be
concerned with all his literary quarrels, and have his libels and
lampoons perpetually before them; all the foul waters of his anger
were deposited here as in a common reservoir.[186]

Fanciful as was the genius of Warburton, it delighted too much in its
eccentric motions, and in its own solitary greatness, amid abstract
and recondite topics, to have strongly attracted the public attention,
had not a party been formed around him, at the head of which stood
the active and subtle Hurd; and amid the gradations of the votive
brotherhood, the profound BALGUY,[187] the spirited BROWN,[188] till
we descend--

To his tame jackal, parson TOWNE.[189]
_Verses on Warburton's late Edition._

This Warburtonian party reminds one of an old custom among our elder
poets, who formed a kind of freemasonry among themselves, by adopting
younger poets by the title of their _sons_.--But that was a domestic
society of poets; this, a revival of the Jesuitic order instituted by
its founder, that--

By him supported with a proper pride,
They might hold all mankind as fools beside.
Might, like himself, teach each adopted son,
'Gainst all the world, to quote a Warburton.[190]
CHURCHILL'S "Fragment of a Dedication."

The character of a literary sycophant was never more perfectly
exhibited than in Hurd. A Whig in principle, yet he had all a
courtier's arts for Warburton; to him he devoted all his genius,
though that, indeed, was moderate; aided him with all his ingenuity,
which was exquisite; and lent his cause a certain delicacy of taste
and cultivated elegance, which, although too prim and artificial, was
a vein of gold running through his mass of erudition; it was Hurd who
aided the usurpation of Warburton in the province of criticism above
Aristotle and Longinus.[191] Hurd is justly characterised by Warton,
in his Spenser, vol. ii. p. 36, as "the _most sensible_ and
_ingenious_ of modern critics."--He was a lover of his studies; and he
probably was sincere, when he once told a friend of the literary
antiquary Cole, that he would have chosen not to quit the university,
for he loved retirement; and on that principle Cowley was his
favourite poet, which he afterwards showed by his singular edition of
that poet. He was called from the cloistered shades to assume the
honourable dignity of a Royal Tutor. Had he devoted his days to
literature,