hion. Thus he writes in 1777:--"Brown is here; I think
rather faster than ordinary, but no wiser. You cannot imagine
the tenderness they all have of his tender places, and with
how unfeeling a hand I probe them."--ED.

[189] Towne is so far "unknown to fame" that his career is unrecorded
by our biographers; he was content to work for, and under the
guidance of Warburton, as a literary drudge.--ED.

[190] Warburton, indeed, was always looking about for fresh recruits:
a circumstance which appears in the curious Memoirs of the
late Dr. Heathcote, written by himself. Heathcote, when young,
published anonymously a pamphlet in the Middletonian
controversy. By the desire of Warburton, the bookseller
transmitted his compliments to the anonymous author. "I was
greatly surprised," says Heathcote, "but soon after perceived
that Warburton's state of authorship being a state of war, _it
was his custom to be particularly attentive to all young
authors, in hopes of enlisting them into his service_.
Warburton was more than civil, when necessary, on these
occasions, and would procure such adventurers some slight
patronage."--NICHOLS'S "Literary Anecdotes," vol. v. p. 536.

[191] We are astonished at the boldness of the minor critic, when,
even after the fatal edition of Warburton's Shakspeare, he
should still venture, in the life of his great friend, to
assert that "this fine edition must ever be highly valued by
men of sense and taste; a spirit congenial to that of the
author breathing throughout!"

Is it possible that the man who wrote this should ever have
read the "Canons of Criticism?" Yet is it to be supposed that
he who took so lively an interest in the literary fortunes of
his friend should _not_ have read them? The Warburtonians
appear to have adopted one of the principles of the Jesuits in
their controversies, which was to repeat arguments which had
been confuted over and over again; to insinuate that they had
not been so! But this was not too much to risk by him who, in
his dedication of "Horace's Epistle to Augustus," with a
Commentary, had hardily and solemnly declared that "Warburton,
in his _enlarged view of things_, had not only revived the two