f piety disposed him to look
with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes
of virtue and happiness purely rational; and, therefore, it was not long
before he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated,
for the most part, in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind
away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality; and it is undeniable,
that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions
not very favourable to morals, or to liberty.

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first
ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and
vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry, with wonderful
extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his
imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a
memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original
combinations, and, at once, exerted the powers of the scholar, the
reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be
always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His
abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal
or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his
adversaries with such contemptuous superiority, as made his readers
commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of
some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman
emperour's determination, "oderint dum metuant;" he used no allurements
of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.

His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness;
he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and
impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.

He had, in the early part of his life, pleased himself with the notice
of inferiour wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. A
letter[133] as produced, when he had, perhaps, himself forgotten it, in
which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of
leisure, and Pope for want of genius; Milton out of pride, and Addison
out of modesty." And when Theobald published Shakespeare, in opposition
to Pope, the best notes were supplied by Warburton.

But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion; and
Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed so much to