torpid fulness, stretched out in all its giant length on the ground. This difference in the perception and application of knowledge, was distinguishable in every production of these great men; it is perceptible from their earlier works to their latest, and being occasioned by the peculiar construction and formation of their mental faculties, it formed the character of their minds; and, therefore, continued, without receiving alteration, from their first years of authorship to their last. In Johnson, therefore, learning, when received, might more properly be called knowledge; it was stripped of its superfluous and unnecessary parts-it was winnowed of its chaff, and deposited in the receptacles of thought, while, in Warburton, it was like clay thrown into a mould ready prepared for it, for the purpose of forming materials for building up to their measureless height the countless edifices of his fancy. In that practical knowledge of, and insight into human nature, which forms the chief qualification for the moralist, and the writer on men and manners, Johnson was greatly superior to Warburton. The former had acquired his knowledge in the tutoring school of adversity; and the long and dreary probation he had to serve before he attained to competence and success, had given him a sound and piercing view into life and human nature, while the haughtiness of the latter formed a kind of circle about him, which prevented his mingling with the crowd, and deriving, by universal converse and acquaintance, an universal and comprehensive knowledge of man. He was also a more prejudiced and less unbiassed spectator of mankind, continually referring their causes of action, not to the acknowledged principles of experience, but to some pre-conceived and readyfashioned theory of his own, with which he made every deduction to square in and quadrate, and to whose decision he referred the settlement of all the various anomalies and phenomena which distract the inquirer into human nature. Otherwise was the knowledge of Johnson formed. He was no speculatist in his views of mankind; what he had learned, he learned from practical experience; commented upon with extraordinary acuteness and penetration of discern ment; and what he had once learned, his judgment was too sound to per mit him to warp, and his love of truth too great to allow him to conceal. In private life, the character of Warburton was distinguished by the same kind of bold openness and unshrinking cordiality; the same livid warmth in his enmities and friendships; and the same impatient haughtiness and dogmatical resolution which stood forth displayed in his writings. No one communicated to his productions more of his own personal character, or drew his own full length so admirably in his works. After a perusal of what he has written, his character lies in all its native colours before our eyes, and we hardly want the intimacy of a personal acquaintance to be fully and thoroughly masters of his peculiarities. What he thought, he dauntlessly and fearlessly expressed. Disguise he hated, and subterfuge he despised. He who was the enemy of Warburton, was sure of bold, honest, and manly hostility; he who was his friend was equally certain of the full participation of all the benefits of assistance and protection. It was one of his maxims, both in his public and private character, "He who is not with me is against me." He hated a neutral worse even than an enemy; to him indifference was worse than decided dislike; imperturbable placidity more disagreeable than a storm. Pass over his opinions or his productions without giving any decided opinion as to their justice or their merits, and he would immediately number you amongst the list of his foes, and let loose upon you all the torrent of his mingled scurrility and wit. This fervid warmth of temper frequently overpowered the cooler dictates of his reason, and to this we may perhaps ascribe that high and overstrained excess of praise which he showered down upon the productions of his friends; for of flattery we cannot justly accuse him: he would have disdained what he conceived implied fear. One exception, however, must be made to this remark, and that is, the case of Bishop Sherlock, whom, during his life, War burton extravagantly praised, and, af ter the death of that prelate, not only expunged from his writings every syllable of commendation, but paragraphed him in the Dunciad of his Divine Legation with the utmost conumely and contempt. For neglect f his clerical duties, Warburton has een lashed by the unsparing hand of relentless satirist, whose pictures are ften less of true resemblances than hideous caricatures; but the suffrages f many must overpower the testimony f one; and it has been almost universally agreed, that in the discharge of the social relations of life, his conluct was equally faultless and exemlary. The character of Johnson has been so often pourtrayed, and, through he admirable delineations of his biographers, is now so well known, that it would be useless to attempt to describe it. He had certainly more habitual reverence for what he conceived to be truth; was more rigid in his morality, more fervid in his piety, than Warburton. He had not less perhaps of pride and haughtiness, but his pride was more lofty, his haughtiness more independent. He could not bend to greatness, nor stoop to rise as Warburton certainly could do, and sometimes did. His character, while it was much more dignified than that of Warburton, had not the same mixture of impetuosity and warmth, and thus he was prevented from falling into those excesses which the former could hardly avoid. Both had a certain portion of intolerance in their dispositions, but in Johnson that intolerance was exerted against the oppugners of that creed he had received from others, while in Warburton it was directed against the questioners of theories of his own. In the one, it was prejudice unmixed-in the other, it was always prejudice co-operating with vanity. Upon the whole, perhaps, the character of Warburton, notwithstanding its dictating and dogmatical insolence, was the most attracting of the two. There is, notwithstanding all its effervescences and excesses, a generous fervour, a kindliness of soul, an enthusiastic warmth about it, which induces us to like him in spite of ourselves, and to which we can forgive whatever is disgusting in his scurrility or revolting in his pride. To bring my observations on the characters of these great men to a close, -in Warburton, the distinguishing faculty was a fiery and ungovernable vigour of intellect, a restless and irrepressible vehemence of mind, an upquenchable and never-dormant princi VOL. VIII. ple of action, which required continually some fresh matter to work on-some fresh subject to exercise its power-some new and untried space to perambulate and to pass through: it was an ever-working and operating faculty, an ever-moving and resisting principle, which it was impossible to tire or tame. There was nothing like rest or slumber about it: it could not stagnate; it could not stop: it was impossible to weaken its energies, or to contract their operation. No matter was too tough for its force, no metal too unmalleable for its strokes. Such was the elasticity of its constitution, that it could not be broken; such was its innate and surpassing resistibility of temperament, that it could not be overwhelmed. Entangle it with subtleties, and it immediately snapt asunder its bonds, as Sampson burst the encompassing cords of the Philistine. Bury it with learning, and it immediately mounted up with the brilliancy and rapidity of a sky-rocket, and scattered about it sparks and scintillations, which lightened the whole atmosphere of literature. It was this volatility of spirit, this forcible and indomitable action of mind, this never-tiring and never-weakening intellectual energy, this bounding and unceasing mental elasticity, which serves to distinguish Warburton not only from Dr Johnson, but also from all the characters who have ever appeared in literature; and it is to the self-corroding effect of these qualities, that his alienation of mind at the latter period of his life is undoubtedly to be attributed. The mind of Johnson, on the contrary, was utterly devoid of all that intellectual activity and elasticity which Warburton possessed. There was about it an habitual and dogged sluggishness, an inert and listless torpor, a reluctance to call forth its energies and exercise its powers; it slumbered, but its slumbers were those of a giant. With more of positive force when called into action, it had not the same principle of motion, the same continual beat, the same sleepless inquietude and feverish excitement. It lay there like the leviathan, reposing amidst the depths of the ocean, till necessity drove it out to display the magnitude of his strength. The one waited quietly in its den for food, while the other 21 BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. XLV. DECEMBER 1820. VOL. VIII. ON THE LITERARY CHARACTERS OF BISHOP WARBURTON AND DR JOHNSON. THE two greatest men of the last century in our national literature, the greatest in comprehensiveness of mind and variety of talent, were undoubtedly Bishop Warburton and Dr Johnson. For a long period of time, they exercised a kind of joint domination over the republic of letters-a dominion which, in the former, chiefly arose fram the hardy and unshrinking defiance of public opinion he exhibited, backed by extraordinary intellectual force and vigour; and, in the latter, had its origin in the universal awe and veneration his genius and character had excited. In the one, it was a tribute which fear of an immediate consequent castigation compelled all to pay; in the other, it was an homage voluntary, because less enforced, to powers of the highest magnitude, and virtue of the most unblemished purity. The one, accounting dissent from his favourite theories as a crime of the blackest dye, punished all nonconformists to the idol he had set up with a most merciless measure of pains and penalties; while the latter, possess ing, indeed, not less of haughtiness and irritability, but more of prudence, had the good sense to leave to public opinion his justification against the attacks of his enemies. This joint and equal literary supremacy, notwith standing that it was occasionally disturbed by frequent murmurings of jealousy in the former, and growlings more of fearless opposition in the latter, continued, without being shaken by intestine division, till the former had lost, in inanity and dotage, his great mental acuteness and strength,—and thus the latter had, by the departure of his rival, become the sole literary potentate of his country. Time, however, which as frequently consigns to neglect the meritorious productions of literature, as it showers down an increase of fame on the compositions of deserving genius, has long since quieted the bustle which the pen of Warburton always excited in his lifetime; and his name, once numbered amongst the mighty of the earth, has been for sometime subjected to a partial if not total neglect. As the Roman Catholic church treated the bones of Wickliffe with contumely, whom, living, they could not overcome; so the public seem determined to revenge upon Warburton, when dead, the contempt they experienced from his haughtiness, and the unwillingly-paid devotion which he enforced to his powers when living. And in the length of time which has elapsed from the period of his decease to the present day, many a kick has been inflicted on the dead lion by animals who could not have dared to approach him while capable of defending and revenging himself.* Popular hostility, as well as private, ought, however, to give place to candid examination Amongst these, see one Watkins, the author of a book called Anecdotes of distinguished Characters; who, in a note to the work, would fain persuade us that. Warburton was merely a man of great and extensive reading, without intellect, acuteness, or wit. VOL. VIII. 2 H and allowance; and when exercised against a deserving subject, will only, in the end, reflect disgrace upon itself for an unworthy exercise of power. The fame of Warburton must, therefore, at length experience a renewal of its brightness; and though perhaps shorn of some of its beams, will receive its merited due at the hands of posterity. A very different effect has time had over the fame of his great competitor: its only influence has been in showering down additional lustre on the name of Samuel Johnson, and giving to it that fixed and permanent basis and foundation which it is only for posterity to bestow. The best proof which can be given of the extensive circulation of his writings, is the visible effect which they have had over literature and criticism; and the incontestible assistance they have afforded to the great march of the human mind while the works of Warburton stand unnumbered amongst the standard productions in theology and criticism; and his great work, the Divine Legation, remains, to use the words of Gibbon, "a monument crumbling in the dust of the vigour and weakness of the human mind." As there is, I believe, no writing extant in which the merits of these extraordinary men have been made the subject of comparative criticism, though certainly the most alike in the peculiarities of their inental character of any of the literary worthies of their age, the most equal in force of intellect and universality of power, an examination and inquiry into their respective talents and characters may not be without its particular benefit. It will, at least, be of use in displaying how far it is possible for abilities the most splendid to seduce their possessor to extravagance in the search for originality; and how transient and momentary is the fame of paradoxical ingenuity, when compared with that which rests on the immobility of established truth! To the peculiar education of Warburton, may be ascribed most of the peculiarities of his character. Himself, at first, an obscure provincial attorney, undisciplined in the regular course of academical study; and refused, when he had even risen to celebrity, a common academical honour; owing none of the varied exuberance of his knowledge to professors or professorships, to universities or colleges; he naturally cherished a secret dislike to the regular disciplinarians of learning; and it was, at once, his delight and his pride to confound the followers of the beaten path in study, by recondite and variously sparkling erudition -to oppose himself to whole cohorts of the standard corps of literature, in the confidence of his own individual power; to strike out new paths in learning, and open new vistas in knowledge, with the rapidity of an enchanter; to demolish the old and stationary structures of theology and literature, and overturn them from their foundations, for the purpose of erecting his own novelties in their stead, which supplied what they wanted of solidity, by speciousness and splendour; and to dazzle and astound the supporters of established principles and maxims, by combating them with a force of reason, and strength of logic, which was, perhaps, as unexampled as it was audacious. His learning and his mental powers were equally established without assistance, and his haughtiness loved to shew how his inbred mental vigour had triumphed over difficulties. From the same source arose both the excellencies and defects of his character. No pruning hand had ever been exerted to remove the excrescencies which had been generated in his mind, and to tame and sober the wildness and extravagance with which it was so often overshadowed. Thus his intellect rose up in rough and unshorn mightiness, and with it the pullulating seeds of sophistical ingenuity which grew with its growth, and strengthened with its strength, till at last he became an inveterate and radicated system-monger, and his mind a repositary, where every subject in theology, criticism, or literature, had an hypothesis ready prepared for it. Nor less powerful in its influence, on his character, was the first reception he met with in literature,-in the universal war, which seemed, at his first rise, to be proclaimed against him. That his innovating and paradoxical spirit should procure him many adversaries, was hardly to be doubted, but, as if the hypotheses he advanced were matters of established belief, he resented every departure from them, as a departure from truth itself; and his ungovernable haughtiness, and impatience of contradiction, flamed out in angry defiance against his opposers, L |