sake, by those who never read his writings; or, if they did,
could neither taste nor comprehend them; while every little
aspiring or despairing scribbler eyes him as Cassius did
Caesar: and whispers to his fellow--

'Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.'

No wonder, then, if the malice of the Lilliputian tribe be
bent against this dreaded GULLIVER; if they attack him with
poisoned arrows, whom they cannot subdue by strength."

On this Lowth observes, that "this Lord Paramount in his
pretensions _doth bestride the narrow world_ of literature,
and has cast out his shoe over all the regions of science."
This leads to a ludicrous comparison of Warburton, with King
Pichrochole and his three ministers, who, in URQUHART'S
admirable version of the French wit, are Count Merdaille,
the Duke of Smalltrash, and the Earl Swashbuckler, who set up
for universal monarchy, and made an imaginary expedition
through all the quarters of the world, as Rabelais records,
and the bishop facetiously quotes. Dr. Brown afterwards
seemed to repent his panegyric, and contrives to make his
gigantic hero shrink into a moderate size. "I believe
still, every little aspiring fellow continues thus to eye
him. For myself, I have ever considered him as _a man_,
yet considerable among his species, as the following part of
the paragraph _clearly demonstrates_. I speak of him here
as _a Gulliver_ indeed; yet still of _no more than human
size_, and only apprehended to be of _colossal magnitude_ by
certain of his Lilliputian enemies." Thus subtilely would poor
Dr. Brown save appearances! It must be confessed that, in a
dilemma, never was a giant got rid of so easily!--The plain
truth, however, was, that Brown was then on the point of
quarrelling with Warburton; for he laments, in a letter to
a friend, that "he had not avoided all personal panegyric. I
had thus saved myself the trouble of setting right a
character which I far over-painted." A part of this letter
is quoted in the "Biographia Britannica."

[146] "Tracts by Warburton