he would have still enriched its stores. But he had other
more supple and more serviceable qualifications. Most adroit was he in
all the archery of controversy: he had the subtlety that can evade the
aim of the assailant, and the slender dexterity, substituted for
vigour, that struck when least expected. The subaltern genius of Hurd
required to be animated by the heroic energy of Warburton; and the
careless courage of the chief wanted one who could maintain the
unguarded passages he left behind him in his progress.

Such, then, was WARBURTON, and such the quarrels of this great author.
He was, through his literary life, an adventurer, guided by that
secret principle which opened an immediate road to fame. By opposing
the common sentiments of mankind, he awed and he commanded them; and
by giving a new face to all things, he surprised, by the appearances
of discoveries. All this, so pleasing to his egotism, was not,
however, fortunate for his ambition. To sustain an authority which he
had usurped; to substitute for the taste he wanted a curious and
dazzling erudition; and to maintain those reckless decisions which so
often plunged him into perils, Warburton adopted his _system of
Literary Quarrels_. These were the illegitimate means which raised a
sudden celebrity, and which genius kept alive, as long as that genius
lasted; but Warburton suffered that literary calamity, too protracted
a period of human life: he outlived himself and his fame. This great
and original mind sacrificed all his genius to that secret principle
we have endeavoured to develope--it was a self-immolation!

The learned SELDEN, in the curious little volume of his "Table-Talk,"
has delivered to posterity a precept for the learned, which they ought
to wear, like the Jewish phylacteries, as "a frontlet between their
eyes." _No man is the wiser for his learning: it may administer matter
to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with
a man._ Sir THOMAS HANMER, who was well acquainted with Warburton,
during their correspondence about Shakspeare, often said of him:--"The
only use he could find in Mr. Warburton was _starting the game_; he
was not to be trusted in _running it down_." A just discrimination!
His fervid curiosity was absolutely creative; but his taste and his
judgment, perpetually stretched out by his system, could not save him
from even inglorious absurdities!

Warburton, it is probable, was not really the character he