Punishments," in which were some
objections to Warburton's theory:--"I shall, therefore, but do
what indeed would be justly reckoned the cruellest of all
things, _tell my reader the name of this miserable_; which we
find to be J. TILLARD." "Mr. Tillard was first condemned (says
the author of 'Confusion Worse Confounded,') as a ruffian that
stabs a man in the dark, because he did _not_ put his name to
his book against the 'Divine Legation;' and afterwards
condemned as lost to shame, both as a man and a writer,
because he _did_ put his name to it." Would not one imagine
this person to be one of the lowest of miscreants? He was a
man of fortune and literature. Of this person Warburton says
in a letter, "This is a man of fortune, and it is well he is
so, for I have spoiled his trade as a writer; and as he was
very abusive, free-thinking, and anonymous, I have not spared
to expose his ignorance and ill faith." But afterwards, having
discovered that he was a particular friend to Dr. Oliver, he
makes awkward apologies, and declares he would not have _gone
so far_ had he known this! He was often so vehement in his
abuse that I find he confessed it himself, for, in preparing a
new edition of the "Divine Legation," he tells Dr. Birch that
he has made "several omissions of passages which were thought
_vain_, _insolent_, and _ill-natured_."

It is amusing enough to observe how he designates men as great
as himself. When he mentions the learned Hyde, he places him
"at the head of a rabble of lying orientalists." When he
alludes to Peters, a very learned and ingenious clergyman, he
passes by him as "The Cornish Critic." A friend of Peters
observed that "he had given Warburton 'a Cornish hug,' of
which he might be sore as long as he lived." Dr. Taylor, the
learned editor of Demosthenes, he selects from "his fellows,"
that is, other dunces: a delicacy of expression which offended
scholars. He threatens Dr. Stebbing, who had preserved an
anonymous character, "to catch this Eel of Controversy, since
he hides his head by the tail, the only part that sticks out
of the mud, more dirty indeed than slippery, and still more
weak than dirty, as passing through a