Dr. Warburton, Bishop of
Gloucester, it has been reprinted as an appendix to the work,"
it consisted in the suppression of one of Hanmer's letters.]
He did not choose to attack Dr. Middleton in form, during his
lifetime, but reserved his blow when his antagonist was no
more. I find in Cole's MSS. this curious passage:--"It was
thought, at Cambridge, that Dr. Middleton and Dr. Warburton
did not cordially esteem one another; yet both being keen and
thorough sportsmen, they were mutually afraid to engage to
each other, for fear of a fall. If that was the case, the
bishop judged prudently, however fairly it may be looked upon,
to stay till it was out of the power of his adversary to make
any reply, before he gave his answer." Warburton only replied
to Middleton's "Letter from Rome," in his fourth edition of
the "Divine Legation," 1765.--When Dyson firmly defended his
friend Akenside from the rude attacks of Warburton, it is
observed, that he bore them with "prudent patience:" he never
replied!

[175] These critical _extravaganzas_ are scarcely to be paralleled by
"Bentley's Notes on Milton." How Warburton turned "an
allegorical mermaid" into "the Queen of Scots;"--showed how
Shakspeare, in one word, and with one epithet "the majestic
world," described the _Orbis Romanus_, alluded to the Olympic
Games, &c.; yet, after all this discovery, seems rather to
allude to a story about Alexander, which Warburton happened to
recollect at that moment;--and how he illustrated Octavia's
idea of the fatal consequences of a civil war between Caesar
and Antony, who said it would "cleave the world," by the story
of Curtius leaping into the chasm;--how he rejected
"_allowed_, with absolute power," as not English, and read
"_hallowed_," on the authority of the Roman Tribuneship being
called _Sacro-sancta Potestas_; how his emendations often rose
from puns; as for instance, when, in _Romeo and Juliet_, it is
said of the Friar, that "the city is much obliged to _him_,"
our new critic consents to the sound of the word, but not to
the spelling, and reads _hymn_; that is, to laud, to praise!
These, and more extraordinary instances of perverting
ingenuity and abu