William Warburton had been Bishop of Gloucester for nineteen years when he died in 1779 at the age of eighty-one. Usually thought of now primarily as an editor of Shakespeare (8 vols., 1747) and Pope (9 vols., 1751), and not very successful with either, he deserves higher recognition. He was Pope's friend and literary executor. No less a person than Edward Gibbon called him “the dictator and the tyrant of literature.” Samuel Johnson said that “Dr. Warburton … excelled in critical perspicacity,” that he had “great power of mind,” that “hardly any man brings greater variety of learning to bear upon his point,” and that “he knew how to make the most of … [his learning]; but I do not find by any dishonest means.” At another time Johnson said, “Warburton is perhaps the last man who has written with a mind full of reading and reflection.” In Johnson's famous interview with George III, he replied to the King's remark that Johnson must have read a great deal by saying that “he had not been able to read much, compared with others: for instance, he said he had not read much compared with Dr. Warburton.” Then the King observed that he had heard excellent things of Dr. Warburton's knowledge.¹

There are many other indications of his eminence. A surprisingly large number of the years from 1724 to 1769 saw published new writing by him, and often there were reprints, sometimes with revisions and additions. He was author of the famous and bulky theological treatise The Divine Legation of Moses. He wrote the preface to Richardson's Clarissa. Coleridge owed something to his theory of the relations between Church and State. In several directions he showed himself a broad-minded and independent thinker, well in advance of his times. Having had as his only teacher the master of a country grammar school, he became one of the most learned men of his day. A. W. Evans, author of a careful book about him, points to prejudice and inaccuracy in the well-known accounts of him by J. S. Watson and Sir Leslie Stephen, and shows him to have been indeed underestimated since his death. Evans declares approvingly that Warburton “almost epitomizes the mid-eighteenth century”; and though he admits the faults of arrogance, pedantry, and frequent lack of delicacy in Warburton's writings, he agrees with Robert Southey in calling Warburton “a powerful man—so powerful that when he is most in the wrong, he makes you respect him,” and he shows that Warburton was far from being always in the wrong.²

In his own and subsequent times, however much he may have been overestimated and underestimated, Warburton has been steadily famed as a controversialist. Studies of English literature of the eighteenth century have given considerable attention to the interest shown during that time in discussions concerning such phases of esthetic interest as the beautiful, the sublime, and the picturesque. But the historians of literary criticism and esthetics have given little heed to a discussion over the contention that ridicule is a feeling or sense, similar to the sense of beauty, and can be used similarly to detect flaws. Warburton, beginning long before he became a bishop, played a strong part in this literary discussion. The present article does not undertake to show that the controversy over the use of ridicule is of great importance to the literary historian, and does not try to summarize the full substance of the arguments. But it seeks to set forth a more nearly complete and accurate indication than his hitherto been given of the battle and its participants.

Isaac D'Israeli, writing “some memoirs for our literary history,” states that the discussion of whether ridicule be a test of truth is “one of the large controversies in our own Literature.” He suggests clearly that there had been in the mid-eighteenth century some thought given to the moral uses of esthetic elements, and that certain persons had considered ridicule to be a feeling or emotion. One sentence reads:

The advocates for the use of Ridicule maintain that it is a natural sense or feeling, bestowed on us for wise purposes by the Supreme Being, as are the other feelings of beauty and of sublimity;—the sense of beauty to detect the deformity, as the sense of ridicule the absurdity of an object: and they further maintain, that no real virtues, such as wisdom, honesty, bravery, or generosity, can be ridiculed.³

Dr. Johnson, in his biography of the poet Mark Akenside, spoke of the participation by Akenside in what was to be “a long and eager” discussion over “the efficacy of ridicule for the discovery of truth.”⁴ Both D'Israeli and Johnson indicate sketchily and inaccurately the scope of the controversy.⁵ Most historians and critics, as I have said, seem to have made no mention of it.⁶ It stemmed from what was generally understood, by “the interpretation of friend and foe alike,” as the contention of Lord Shaftesbury, in 1708 and 1709, in his Essay on Enthusiasm and Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (reprinted in his Characteristics, 1711, and numerous later editions), that ridicule is a test of truth.⁷

In 1729 an anonymous booklet by Anthony Collins entered into an argument, among predominantly religious writers. At one point the author speaks of a certain statement as one that “will stand the Test of Ridicule,” and in a footnote refers to Shaftesbury; he concludes that although he has tried to defend the use of ridicule and irony, yet “such Irony and Ridicule only as is fit for polite Persons to use.”⁸ In 1732 George Berkeley had one speaker in a dialogue declare that “… for Men of Rank and Politeness we have the finest and wittiest Railleurs in the World, whose Ridicule is the sure Test of Truth”; then after an exchange of comments, had another speaker announce: “It shou'd seem, therefore, that Ridicule is no such sovereign Touchstone and Test of Truth, as you Gentlemen imagine.” It is further stated that “our ingenious … Authors laugh Men out of their Religion, as Horace did out of their Vices.”⁹

Warburton, in 1738, opposed the contention, stemming from Shaftesbury, that ridicule is a test of truth.¹⁰ Akenside may have been stimulated, at least in part, to compose his The Pleasures of Imagination because of Warburton's attack on Shaftesbury, whom Akenside venerated. He referred irritatedly to Warburton in a personal letter of July 30, 1743, that dealt largely with ridicule as “Shaftesbury's Test of Truth.”¹¹ He defended Shaftesbury in his published poem in 1744, and stigmatized certain of the clergy (rather clearly, Warburton, or any other reader, could assume that the attack was upon Warburton). He declared in part:

… Since it is beyond all contradiction evident that we have a natural sense or feeling of the ridiculous, and since so good a reason may be assign'd to justify the supreme being for bestowing it; one cannot without astonishment reflect on the conduct of those men who imagine it is for the service of true religion to vilify and blacken it without distinction, and endeavour to persuade us that it is never applied but in a bad cause.¹²

In the same year Warburton retorted, in the preface to the first part of his Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections. … His answer aroused Akenside, and either he or Dyson, or both,¹³ published promptly, also in 1744, the thirty-page anonymous booklet An Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Warburton, occasioned by his Treatment of the Author of The Pleasures of Imagination, expressing rather excessive indignation. “Warburton never replied,” states D'Israeli.¹⁴

Yet now we have evidence that Warburton did not let the matter rest. He wrote near the end of 1746 to the Rev. John Brown of Carlisle, in Cumberland:

Sir,

It is not long since y^t. by accident I met with a Poem intit: An Essay on Satire occasioned by M^r. Pope's death. I own I was much surprized at y^e. Performance. To say it is the only piece of poetry that has appeared since his Death w^d. be giving it a very low & invidious comendation. For I think it a masterpiece. The long note on Ridicule is admirable. I am preparing a compleat & very fine Edⁿ. of all M^r. Pope's works, & w^d. by y^r. leave, & if it be agreeable to y^r. inclinations, place it before his works, & discard those insipid pieces wrote in his comendation, to give it room. Had poor M^r. Pope been alive I know how much he w^d. have esteem'd such a poem & y^e. author of it. & in this I sh^d. be glad to supply his place, & take any opportunity of shewing how much I am,

Sir,

Y^r. most faithfull humble Serv^t

W. Warburton¹⁵

Bedford Row Dec(r). 24
1746.

Several things in this letter are to be noted: one is that it was “by accident” that Warburton saw Brown's poem, and another is the date of the letter. Dr. Kippis, author of the account of Brown in the Biographia Britannica in 1780, stated that after his poem “Honour,” Mr. Brown's “next poetical production, though not immediately published, was his Essay on Satire … addressed to Dr. Warburton, to whom it was so acceptable, that he took our Author into his friendship”; and that the essay was “given to the world in the second volume of Dr. Warburton's edition of Pope's Works, with which it still continues to be printed, as well as in Dodsley's Collection.”¹⁶ He thus indicates 1751 as the year of the first printed appearance of Brown's essay on satire. To be sure, it did appear then in Warburton's edition of Pope's works (in the third volume) for the first time, and it also appeared in Dodsley's A Collection of Poems by Several Hands—but this was the third edition, in 1751, of that Collection. Evans has the following sentences pertinent to our consideration:

… Dodsley's Collection of Poems by Several Hands which appeared in January, 1748, contained an anonymous Essay on Satire, occasioned by the Death of Mr. Pope, in which there were some lines complimenting Warburton. He at once wrote to Dodsley praising “so excellent a piece of poetry” and asking, if it were not secret, to be told the author's name. [Footnote: “Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, V, p. 587.”] The author proved to be Dr. John Brown, afterwards famous for his Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, between whom and Warburton friendly relations were soon established. … It was at Warburton's suggestion and under his superintendence that Brown wrote his first successful work, the Essays on the Characteristics of the Earl of Shaftesbury. …¹⁷

The first comment that must be made on Evans' remarks is concerned with his use of Nichols' statement. When we turn directly to Nichols we find that in a footnote to the mention of the death of Pope, Nichols does say that “On the publication of Dr. Brown's ‘Essay on Satire’, Mr. Warburton addressed the following Letter to Mr. Robert Dodsley.” We find, however, that in the letter itself Warburton tells Dodsley that he saw the poem by accident (this is the same phrase noted above in his letter to Brown); mentions it as if he regarded it as an independent publication, not a part of one of the volumes in Dodsley's Collection; and, after praising it, says clearly: “I find it has been published some time.” After indicating that he wished to know the author's name, he asserts: “If I have leisure, I shall give some account of it for the literary news of your Museum. It will be a better ornament to it than the dull book of Travels in the Second Number.”¹⁸

Brown's poem had indeed been published independently and in 1745, by Dodsley. I have seen one copy of this rare anonymous item; and Straus reports that Dodsley's records show it to have been published on April 24, 1745.¹⁹ Warburton is praised in the poem, but he had received no copy by the time of his letter to Dodsley asking the author's name. It now appears that the time of his writing to Dodsley was in April, 1746, or not very long afterward. The date on his letter to Brown is still in that year, and he writes to Dodsley as if the second number of Dodsley's periodical The Museum, that was issued about the middle of April of that year,²⁰ had been a recent if not the latest number to appear. The date of Warburton's letter to Dodsley is thus seen to accord with the date of the true first publication of Brown's essay.

The cause of Warburton's seeking out of the anonymous author of the accidentally-met Essay on Satire has generally been assumed to be his interest in its notice of and praise of Alexander Pope. Such interest, and nothing more, is indicated by Warburton's letter to Dodsley and by the manner in which Nichols introduces his printing of it. Now, however, the interest of the versatile and vigorous Warburton is seen to have been much more complex. The letter to Brown helps make this clear.

The date of the letter to Brown, together with the reconsideration of the letter to Dodsley and the date I have consequently attributed to it, shows that Warburton was writing to the Brown of 1746, and hence to a far less noted young man than the Brown of 1748, after the appearance of the widely-read Collection of Poems by Several Hands, would have been. We see that Warburton was reaching out to draw more firmly to him a bright young man who had shown a favorable awareness of Warburton. That Warburton had just such an element of interest is confirmed from several sources. D'Israeli in 1814 states that “Warburton, indeed, was always looking for fresh recruits”; and cites an instance of Warburton's treatment of the young Heathcote, as given in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes—Heathcote is said to have asserted in his Memoirs, 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.”²¹ And the Rev. William Gilpin, in a letter to Samuel Rogers on January 23, 1801, mentioned “Bishop Warburton (whose practice, I have heard, it was, to write civil letters, and do civil things, to ingenious young men to 'list them into his service).”²² That Warburton was successful with the young Brown is made apparent in a statement from another letter of Gilpin, who had known Brown intimately: “The notice which Dr. Warburton took of him filled his head with ambitious thoughts. …”²³ The flattering tone of Warburton's letter to the young unknown is not surprising: consider the following comment made by the Rev. Richard Warner:

… Warburton, it should seem, was not more indebted for his success with Mr. Allen to Pope's recommendation, than to his own knowledge of the human character. Delicate flattery, he knew, would be gratifying even to the best-regulated mind; and therefore duly poured into the ear of his friend a just and regular proportion of it. Sometimes, indeed, he went a little beyond the mark in adulation; but it was erring on the right side; a venial fault, and easily forgiven.²⁴

The letter to Brown does, of course, indicate an interest in Brown's work (regardless of the youth and relative obscurity of its author, and Warburton's desire to gather personal supporters), interest in it as work that would help make for the fame of Pope—and also, we may fairly remember, make for public interest in the edition of Pope's works which he was preparing and from which he stood to profit. Warburton's interest in Brown may have influenced Dodsley somewhat into printing this poem, and an earlier one, “Honour,” in the first (1748) and subsequent editions of the Collection. Warburton himself, furthermore, printed the “Essay on Satire” in his edition (1751) of Pope: the third volume, containing Pope's “Essay on Man” and “Moral Essays,” has inserted, as preface—it is not listed in the table of contents—this poem, headed “An Essay on Satire, Occasioned by the Death of Mr. Pope. Inscribed to Mr. Warburton. By J. Brown, A. M.” It covers pages i-xxx. That Warburton had taken a sustained interest in its appearance is clear from part of a long note by Nichols. After stating that “The extreme care which was taken of this edition [the Works of Pope, in nine volumes, 1751], with its progress through the press, will appear from the following curious and expostulatory letters of the learned Editor to his Printer,” he quotes as part of Warburton's letter of December 12, 1748: “Mr. Knapton tells me he has given Mr. Bowyer Brown's Poem on Satire. Why is it not yet printed? It is to be put at the head of that volume in which the Essay on Man is. …”²⁵

A third phase of Warburton's interest in writing to Brown is revealed by a simple little remark, within the letter, easy to pass over without much thought: “The long note on Ridicule is admirable.” Here we return to the controversy over the use of ridicule, and remember the contemporary remark that Warburton's state of authorship was “a state of war.” Warburton found a poem that vigorously and plainly supported him, by name, in his opposition to Shaftesbury on the use of ridicule:

Let Satire then her proper object know,
And ere she strike, be sure she strike a foe.
Nor fondly deem the real foe confest,
Because blind Ridicule conceives a jest:
Before whose altar Virtue oft hath bled,
And oft a destin'd Victim shall be led:
Lo, Shaftsb'ry rears her high on Reason's throne,
And loads the Slave with honours not her own:
…
Truth in her gloomy Cave why fondly seek?
Lo, gay she sits in Laughter's dimpled cheek:
Contemns each surly Academic foe,
And courts the spruce Freethinker and the Beau.
Daedalian arguments but few can trace,
But all can read the language of grimace.
Hence mighty Ridicule's all-conqu'ring hand
Shall work Herculean wonders thro' the Land:
Bound in the magic of her cobweb chain,
You, mighty Warburton, shall rage in vain,
In vain the trackless maze of Truth You scan,
And lend th' informing Clue to erring Man:
No more shall Reason boast her pow'r divine,
Her Base eternal shook by Folly's mine!
Truth's sacred Fort th' exploded laugh shall win. …

Brown, having shown what sad results come or might come from following Shaftesbury's idea of using ridicule to test what is true, looks for better practice and leadership from Warburton:

But you, more sage, reject th' inverted rule,
That truth is e'er explor'd by Ridicule. …(26)

This must have pleased Warburton, for under the justifiable guise of reprinting a poem in praise of Pope he could reprint a poem in praise of himself and also in praise of his own stand on a controverted topic. Print it he did, and it continued to be printed in his edition of Pope, even after his death.²⁷ The long note on ridicule he did not reprint; it was, indeed, not essential to the force of the lines quoted above.

Dodsley's reprinting of Brown's poem, from 1748 on, did, however, give the long note. It was presented as a footnote to the line “Lo, Shaftsb'ry rears …,” and consists of eight paragraphs in small type, covering much of three pages. A few sentences may be extracted in order to show how pertinent this long note is to Warburton's concerns:

… By the general tenor of his essays on Enthusiasm, and the freedom of wit and humour, it appears that his [Shaftesbury's] principal design was to recommend the way of ridicule, (as he calls it) for the investigation of truth, and detection of falsehood, not only in moral but religious subjects.

… apparent or seeming falsehoods &c. are the objects of contempt; but it is the work of reason only, to determine whether the supposed falsehood be real or fictitious. But it is said, “The sense of ridicule can never be mistaken.”—Why, no more can the sense of danger, or the sense of injury.—“What, do men never fear or resent without reason?”—Yes, very commonly: but they as often despise and laugh without reason. Thus before any thing can be determined in either case, reason, and reason only, must examine circumstances, separate ideas, decide upon, restrain, and correct the passion.

Hence it follows, that the way of ridicule, of late so much celebrated, is in fact no more than a species of eloquence. …

As this seems to be the real nature of ridicule, it hath been generally discouraged by philosophers and divines, together with every other mode of eloquence, when applied to controverted opinions. This discouragement, from what is said above, appears to have been rational and just: therefore the charge laid against divines with regard to this affair by a zealous admirer of Lord Shaftsbury (see a note on the Pleasures of Imagination, Book III.) seems entirely groundless. …²⁸

It is small wonder that Warburton sought out the author, or that he praised the work to Dodsley glowingly. Through his calling attention to it, and through its being reprinted, he would in effect be replying to Akenside and Dyson.

Warburton did not, however, rest content with this. Brown was too good a man not to be employed further in the cause. Warburton showed him gracious and helpful attention. One suggestion that he made to his ambitious satellite was that he write a poem upon the plan formed by Pope, shortly before his death, of an epic: “The subject was Brute.”²⁹ Warburton's statement to this effect is corroborated, amplified, and clarified by the Rev. William Gilpin in a letter to Samuel Rogers:

… Warburton … put into Brown's hands an epic poem, which had been planned by Pope. The story, I think was the discovery of Britain by one of the heroes who had escaped from Troy. Brown finished three or four books. He was very intimate with my father, though but an unpleasant man to live with; and I remember he showed me his first book, when I was a lad at Oxford. At the pillars of Hercules his hero makes a pause on entering the great ocean. But alas! there his muse, like yours, forsook him. So that, it seems, the Atlantic is the gulph of epic poetry. …³⁰

Warburton told Hurd that Brown had written the first book, and that he had discouraged Brown from carrying on the project, saying that it “was to be the work of years, and mature age, if ever it was done.” In the meantime, so ran Warburton's advice, Brown should undertake something in prose that might be useful to a young clergyman. Specifically it was this: an examination of all Lord Shaftesbury had written against religion. “It had been recommended to me by Mr. Pope,” wrote Warburton. “Mr. Pope told me, that, to his knowledge, the characteristics had done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the works of infidelity put together. Mr. Brown is now busy upon this work.”³¹ That Warburton had indeed previously thought of undertaking this anti-Shaftesbury work himself, is testified to by the concluding sentence of his 1744 printed refutation of Akenside's attack upon him in The Pleasures of Imagination. Having finished his reply to Akenside, follower of Shaftesbury, for his attitude concerning ridicule, Warburton says: “And I may find Time to call the Great Man of Tast [sic] himself to account, for his so frequent and ill employed Raillery against Religion.”³² Here, then, we see Warburton, through Brown, taking up arms again in the controversy over the use of ridicule; and, furthermore, we see him seizing the chance to extend the scope of battle by having Brown attack all of Shaftesbury's work that had been directed against religion. A year or so later, in 1751, Brown published Essays on the Characteristics of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Warburton had continued his interest, read the manuscript, made suggestions, and shown proper concern while it was going through the press.³³ The work, says Kippis, “was received by the public with a high degree of applause”; and applause well deserved, “for it is certainly written with elegance and spirit, with candour and politeness. While justice is done to Lord Shaftesbury's excellencies, many of his erroneous positions are unanswerably refuted,” even though Brown is not perfect.³⁴ I point out that the first of the three essays by Brown is “On Ridicule, considered as a Test of Truth.” Section X (pp. 88-99) of this is devoted to refutation of Akenside's defense of Shaftesbury on ridicule as a test of truth. Although Brown refers to Akenside as simply “the Gentleman,” or one of Shaftesbury's “most zealous Followers,” he cites The Pleasures of Imagination by name. Further evidence of Brown's engaging consciously in controversy appears in Section VII (p. 72), where he replies to “a much coarser Advocate in the Cause of Ridicule,” who is, he says, “supposed to be Mr. Collins.”

This further entry by Brown, as Warburton's disciple, into the controversy over ridicule, itself drew fire. As Brown's biographer Kippis points out:

It was not likely that an attack upon so celebrated and so admired a writer, as the Earl of Shaftesbury, should pass unnoticed and uncensured: and accordingly, Mr. Charles Bulkley, an ingenious and learned dissenting minister, published two pamphlets upon the occasion. The first was intitled, “A Vindication of Lord Shaftesbury, on the Subject of Ridicule.” …³⁵

And an anonymous pamphlet by another writer also appeared within a year, says Kippis, with the title Animadversions on Mr. Brown's three Essays on the Characteristics.

It may be that Warburton or Brown never replied directly to these. But Brown obviously had a later word, for as Kippis declares: “… whatever merit there might be in these answers to Mr. Brown, or however just might be some of the remarks contained in them, they did not hinder the general reputation and success of his work; a fifth edition of which was published in 1764.”

Brown's earlier Essay on Satire, furthermore, which in 1746 had caught Warburton's eye by accident, continued to praise Warburton and attack Shaftesbury's ideas on the use of ridicule while it continued to be printed as praise of Pope. In 1847, more than a century after Warburton's letter to Brown, it is reprinted, as Warburton had reprinted it in 1751, but now applied to other compositions of Pope, by William Roscoe, with such introductory comment as this:

… To the character of Dr. Brown, both moral and intellectual, the following piece does great credit; and in the situation where it is now placed, it may serve as no unsuitable introduction to the Satires of Pope, as it contains sound principles and correct critical opinions, and is upon the whole one of the best imitations of the style and manner of Pope that have hitherto appeared.³⁶

In 1753 appeared An Essay on Ridicule, by Allan Ramsay, the younger, presenting in reply to Brown's Essays a vindication of Shaftesbury. Aldridge declared that “Even Shaftesbury portrays ridicule in less glowing terms than this.”³⁷

The year 1754 saw further comment: Arthur Murphy would not admit ridicule to be a test for truth:

The Dispute that subsisted among the Learned for a considerable Time, and is perhaps not yet determined, viz. Whether Ridicule is a Test for Truth, is, in my humble Opinion, extremely idle and frivolous; the Faculty of Reason, which compares our Ideas, and sustains or rejects the various Affirmations concerning them, being the sole Judge of Truth. …³⁸

Yet on the next page he praised Akenside's pro-Shaftesbury poem and cited it as giving in a note “the best and most accurate Definition I have ever met with of the Ridiculous.”

Elements of Criticism, by Henry Home, Lord Kames, published in three volumes with a dedication to the King in 1762, noted emphatically the controversy on the use of ridicule and entered into it. The first volume touches in several places on the subject of ridicule as an emotion; and the entire Chapter XII, appearing in the second volume, is devoted to “Ridicule.” The opening sentence of the chapter reads: “This subject has puzzled and vexed all the critics.” Kames refers briefly to Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Scarron, Tassoni, Boileau, Pope, Addison, Shakespeare, Swift, and other English and French writers. He points out, then, that the dispute concerning ridicule “has produced a celebrated question, Whether ridicule be or be not a test of truth? I give this question a place here,” he continues, “because it tends to illustrate the nature of ridicule.” He proceeds to enter into the dispute, briefly; and he finally takes a stand indicated by the following assertions:

We had best leave Nature to her own operations. The most valuable talents may be abused, and so may that of ridicule. Let us bring it under proper culture if we can, without endeavouring to pull it up by the root. Were we destitute of this test of truth, I know not what might be the consequences: I see not what rule would be left us to prevent splendid trifles passing for matters of importance, show and form for substance, and superstition or enthusiasm for pure religion.³⁹

Thus Kames ends his chapter with an allusion to religion that might have been taken personally by Warburton. That the Bishop chose so to take it appears from his 1766 edition of The Divine Legation of Moses, in three places: in a new paragraph inserted into the text of the “Dedication to the Free-Thinkers” reprinted from the first edition, of 1738, in a new four-paragraph footnote for this part, and also in the “Postscript to the Dedication to the Free-Thinkers.” The Postscript begins with the remark that “A Poet and a Critic, of equal eminence, have concurred, though they did not start together, to censure what was occasionally said in this Dedication (as if it had been addressed to them) of the use and abuse of Ridicule.” Warburton provides a footnote: “See Pleasures of Imagination, and Elements of Criticism.” He proceeds in his text:

The Poet was a follower of Lord Shaftesbury's fancies; the Critic a follower of his own. Both Men of Taste, and equally anxious for the well doing of Ridicule. I have given some account of the latter in a note of the Dedication. The other was too full of the subject, and of himself, to be dispatched with so little ceremony: he must therefore undergo an examination apart.⁴⁰

Thereafter follows a lengthy analysis and refutation of Akenside. These comments are reprinted, almost without any change, in the form in which Warburton had published them in 1744, in the fourteen-page preface to his Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections. His new blast, in the note he alludes to, directed against Kames, commences bluntly, “The author of a late book called Elements of Criticism …,” and moves on to quote and refute specific passages.⁴¹

Ogilvie published a bulky volume in 1783 that from the point of view of a doctor of divinity repeatedly and with a good deal of elaboration (including use of Voltaire and Fielding) treated the topic of ridicule. He warned that free-thinkers will avail themselves of “the way of raillery or ridicule.” He called Dr. Brown “an elegant writer,” and quoted with approval from his Essays. He warned against “the touch-stone of ridicule”; and though he allowed that ridicule, a “test of real excellence, … may be rendered favourable to the friends of religion, as well as to her adversaries,” he insisted that “the fantastic colours of ridicule are employed as often to disfigure just and beautiful objects, as to distinguish real from seeming excellence,” he asserted flatly:

… ridicule, whatever Lord S——— may say in behalf of it, cannot be monopolised by any party; and when it is unsupported by serious representation, must fail of effectuating any purpose of importance.⁴²

I find that when William Preston presented, in two parts, in December, 1788, and January, 1789, before the Royal Irish Academy, an “Essay on Ridicule, Wit and Humour,” he made considerable use of Dr. John Brown on ridicule.⁴³ He declared that Brown, in his essays on Shaftesbury, had shown that ridicule cannot be the test of truth, and that “his reasoning is conclusive.” He said that fewer words, however, could be used to demonstrate this point, and to do so “with a mathematical strictness.” Then he proceeded to show in his own way that ridicule cannot be the test of truth.

Vicesimus Knox printed an essay in 1791, in his Essays Moral and Literary, entitled: “On the Ill Effects of Ridicule When Employed as a Test of Truth in Private and Common Life.” He commenced with allusion to the controversy:

Horace once happened to say with an air of levity, that ridicule was more efficacious in deciding disputes of importance, than all the severity of argument. Shaftesbury caught the idea, improved upon it, and advanced the doctrine, that ridicule is the test of truth. All those who possessed one characteristic of man in great perfection, Risibility, but who were slenderly furnished with the other, rationality, adopted the opinion with eagerness; for though to reason was difficult, to laugh was easy.⁴⁴

Though he did not mention Warburton or Brown, their influence is obvious.

The controversy over ridicule was as vigorously carried on in Germany as in England, asserted Edward V. Brewer; among his statements he pointed out that “Lessing's notebook shows him sufficiently interested in the subject to record a recent defence of Shaftesbury against the attack of Brown.” Furthermore, Brewer quoted from a 1925 article of his own, on “Unpublished Aphorisms of George Meredith,” giving this remark of Meredith's: “If you are sometimes in doubt as to the truth of a thing, see whether it borders on the ridiculous.” He then proceeded to declare:

Mr. Meredith here calls to mind, though perhaps unwittingly, the great controversy which centered around one of Shaftesbury's obiter dicta proposing that ridicule be made the test of truth … echoes of the argumentation are found even down to the present day, as the above citation bears witness.⁴⁵

To the student of the literary history of the eighteenth century John Brown's “Essay on Satire” may well hereafter not only stand as an imitation of Pope and an expression of praise for Pope but also serve as a reminder of Warburton's methods and vigor and influence, and of a long-lasting eighteenth-century critical controversy over the use of ridicule as a test of truth—a battle largely initiated and continued with well-sustained force by Warburton. In one manner and another, by his own writing and by the work of one disciple or another, such as Brown, whom he stimulated, this man of religion and of literature exerted a remarkable influence in his own day. D'Israeli⁴⁶ insists that Warburton always worked on a principle of “invention,” reading so “that he might write what no one else had written, and which at least required to be refuted before it was condemned,” and striving merely for such achievement and honor as might be gained by “the academic exercise of wit.” He implies that Warburton was reprehensibly clever. To whatever degree such a charge may be proper, Warburton seems to have fought shrewdly in the controversy over ridicule. It was not he, but his opponents, who contended for the validity of what Dr. Johnson called “Shaftesbury's foolish assertion”; and having attacked Shaftesbury, he refused to allow himself to be talked down.

Notes

1. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (Oxford, 1905), III, 233; Boswell's Life of Johnson …, ed. George Birkbeck Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934-50), V, 81; IV, 49; II, 36-37.

2. See A. W. Evans, Warburton and the Warburtonians … (London, 1932), especially pp. v, 1-3, 281-93; also Ronald S. Crane, “Richardson, Warburton, and French Fiction,” Mod. Lang. Rev., XVII (1922), 17-23. All these impressive things, and more, are true of Warburton without invalidating Oliver Elton's statement that interest in Warburton, “though real, is principally historical” (A Survey of English Literature 1730-1780 [London, 1928], II, 201).

3. Isaac D'Israeli, Quarrels of Authors; or, Some Memoirs for Our Literary History … (London, 1814), I, 100; the slightly revised version here quoted appears in his Miscellanies of Literature, rev. ed. (New York, 1841), II, 40—except that I have corrected one slight typographical error, on authority of the 1814 ed.

4. Lives, III, 413.

5. D'Israeli (Quarrels, I, 96-105; see especially p. 97) says it was opened by Shaftesbury, who was followed by Kames and Akenside; that Warburton attacked Shaftesbury and Akenside; and that, finally, Dyson defended Akenside and attacked Warburton. Johnson (Lives, III, 413) says that Akenside “adopted Shaftesbury's foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended by Dyson: Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his dedication to the Freethinkers.” (In the following paragraph Johnson sets forth the result, as he sees it, “of all the arguments which have been produced in a long and eager discussion of this idle question,” stating firmly and tersely: “If ridicule be applied to any position as the test of truth, it will then become a question whether such ridicule be just; and this can only be decided by the application of truth as the test of ridicule.” The preparation of his life of Akenside may have been the basis for his comment in 1779: “Why, Sir, the sense of ridicule is given us, and may be lawfully used.” [Boswell's Life of Johnson, III, 379-80.] Hill quotes as footnote to this comment a pertinent passage from Pope's Satires, referring to ridicule as the “sacred weapon! left for truth's defence, Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence!”) Both Johnson and D'Israeli seem to be following the account of the controversy given in the biography of Akenside in Andrew Kippis' Biographia Britannica …, 2nd ed., rev. and enl., I (London, 1778), 104. Incidentally, a footnote by Kippis announces: “We do not here mean to enter into the debate; as an historical view of the controversy, whether ridicule be a test of truth, and whether it ought to be applied to religious matters, will more suitably apply in some other place; most probably under the article of the Noble Author of the Characteristics”—but the revised edition of the Biographia Britannica was left incomplete long before a volume could be published that would have included Shaftesbury.

6. B. Sprague Allen, in his Tides of English Taste (1619-1800) (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), I, 84-96, has a section on “Shaftesbury and the Censors of Laughter,” but this is not concerned with what Johnson, D'Israeli, and the present article are referring to. Leslie Stephen touches on it in his History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 3rd ed. (New York, [1927]), II, 21, 45. J. W. H. Atkins, in his English Literary Criticism: 17th and 18th Centuries (London, 1951), makes no mention of this controversy, though he puts on the page facing his titlepage a generally pertinent statement: “The eighteenth century was a century of experiments in a new aesthetics.—Anon.” James Sully, in his anonymous “Ridicule and Truth” (Cornhill Magazine, XXXV [1877], 580-595), gives an account of the controversy, but mentions only Shaftesbury, Warburton, Kames, Akenside, and Johnson as participants. The best accounts I have seen hitherto given are those in Evans, Warburton, pp. 122-24; and in Alfred Owen Aldridge, “Shaftesbury and the Test of Truth,” PMLA, LX (1945), 129-56—Aldridge's article “is not intended to perpetuate this mighty controversy, but merely to clarify Shaftesbury's meaning and show how the controversy developed.” Vol. III of the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (1941) helpfully lists numerous items in its section on “Aesthetic and Literary Theory.”

7. See Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics …, ed. John M. Robertson (London, 1900), I, xxii, 10-11, 44. Aldridge, on p. 155 of his article, contends that “in spite of the interpretation of friend and foe alike, Shaftesbury did not actually advance the theory of ridicule as a test of truth.”

8. A Discourse concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing, in a Letter to the Reverend Dr. Nathaniel Marshall (London, 1729), pp. 10, 77.

9. See his anonymous Alciphron: or, the Minute Philosopher. In Seven Dialogues. Containing an Apology for the Christian Religion, against those who are called Freethinkers (London, 1732), I, 198-99 (Dial. III, Sect. XV).

10. In his “Dedication to the Free-Thinkers,” prefacing his Divine Legation of Moses … (London, 1738). Following this appeared William Whitehead's poem An Essay on Ridicule (London, 1743), in 415 lines of heroic couplets. I find no allusions to Warburton or other opponents of Shaftesbury, but I mention it because on the “Contents” page Whitehead indicated “The present Age extremely addicted to it [ridicule]. Those most so who have no great Talents of their own. Ill effects of it, in Religion, in common Life. The Pretence on which our Fondness for Ridicule is founded, i.e. its being the Test of Truth. It is not the Test of Truth. There is nothing but what may be so disguised as to appear ridiculous. … Affectation the allowed Object of Ridicule. …” Moreover, in the poem (p. 7), he speaks of Shaftesbury as telling us that “Mirth's the Test of Sense … which Fraud and Falshood fear” but which Truth does not fear. Whitehead declares at once that he does not agree.

11. Charles Theodore Houpt (Mark Akenside [Philadelphia, 1944], p. 55n.) calls this allusion “the beginning of Akenside's difference with that eminent divine.” The letter was first printed in Johnson's Lives, ed. Peter Cunningham (London, 1854), III, Pt. II, 387-88. An earlier letter tells of his “pretty bold undertaking” in his poem: namely, the treatment of ridicule (see Vol. III, Pt. II, p. 384). Mrs. Barbauld, in a critical essay in 1795, points out that the groundwork of the poem is to be found in Addison's essays on the same subject, “except in the book which treats on Ridicule”; in the third book, she says, which treats “the pleasures of Ridicule,” Akenside follows the system of Shaftesbury (see Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination [London, 1795], pp. vi-vii, xxi).

12. Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination (London, 1744), p. 105n. This poem defends Shaftesbury in the text as well as in the notes; pp. 94-107 discuss favorably the use of ridicule.

13. D'Israeli (Miscellanies, II, 34, 39; Quarrels, I, 82, 98) says that Jeremiah Dyson, friend and patron of Akenside, was the author of this last-named work, and indicates that Dyson attacked Warburton and his methods as well as his contention. D'Israeli seems to be following the statement in Biographia Britannica, 2nd ed., I, 104n. Alexander Dyce (see The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside [London, 1866], p. xiv) considers that “the greater part of it was composed by Akenside.”

14. D'Israeli, Miscellanies, II, 40n.; Quarrels, I, 83n. Dyce, who had read D'Israeli's account, echoes him—see Akenside's Poetical Works (London, 1866), pp. xiii, xvi. The year 1744 saw the appearance also of [Corbyn Morris,] An Essay Towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule …; but this has no allusions to Shaftesbury, or Warburton, or Akenside, and seems unrelated to the controversy on ridicule as a test of truth. It was reprinted by the Augustan Reprint Society, Nov., 1947 (introd. by James L. Clifford). I have also examined an original copy, with the unreprinted 32-page dedication, in the Huntington Library.

15. The original of this letter has been made available to me with gracious kindness by the late Mr. W. Lockwood M. Benson, great-great-grandson of the Rev. William Gilpin (1724-1804), and by his son Mr. W. L. Benson, of Berkhamsted, Herts. It is among a large collection of letters written by or to Gilpin. In an endeavor to account for its being there, I find that Andrew Kippis, in his life of Dr. John Brown in the Biographia Britannica (2nd ed., II [London, 1780], 653-74), quotes part of a letter from “Mrs. Gilpin of Carlisle”; and he earlier states that Brown, “when the rebellion happened in 1745 … acted as a volunteer at the siege of Carlisle, during which he behaved with great intrepidity. After the defeat of the rebels, when several of them were tried, at the Assizes held at Carlisle, in the Summer of 1746, he preached at the cathedral church of that city two excellent discourses. …” Now Captain John Bernard Gilpin, father of the Rev. William, was commander of the defending forces at Carlisle. Moreover, he was greatly interested in religion, music, and painting, and his home was a center for artistic and literary persons, including Brown. (See William D. Templeman, The Life and Work of William Gilpin (1724-1804), Master of the Picturesque … [University of Illinois Press, 1939], pp. 20-26. Kippis points out that Brown, “besides his being so elegant a prose writer in various kinds of composition, … was a poet, a musician, and a painter.”

    The Rev. William Gilpin, in a letter of March 9, 1793 (to the Rev. William Green, printed in 1819 in The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LXXXIX, Suppl. to Pt. II, p. 606), reminiscing somewhat of early days in Carlisle, said that a near relative of his—a clergyman of Carlisle of the name of Farish—and Brown had been “extremely intimate; and though they were some 10 or 12 years older than I, we were all on a very friendly footing.”

16. Biographia Britannica, 2nd ed., II, 655.

17. Evans, pp. 199-200.

18. John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, V (London, 1812), 587n. Ralph Straus, in his Robert Dodsley: Poet, Publisher & Playwright (New York, 1910), p. 84, declares that Warburton seems not to have sent in the proposed contribution, “and from that time onwards his relations with Dodsley seem to have been strained.” It strikes me as possible that Warburton may have discovered that the anonymous editor of The Museum (its numbers appeared fortnightly) was none other than Mark Akenside (see Straus, pp. 82-83), his antagonist in controversy over the use of ridicule; and that therefore he did not write the suggested account, for his purpose was, at least in part, to praise the very contentions in Brown's work that he knew Akenside was opposed to, and he might expect that Akenside would not print an account of which he, the editor, did not approve. Or we may conjecture that he sent a contribution to Dodsley, and then that editor Akenside would not print it.

19. Straus, pp. 84, 329.

20. Straus, pp. 82, 331.

21. D'Israeli, Quarrels, I, 126.

22. P. W. Clayden, The Early Life of Samuel Rogers (London, 1887), p. 416.

23. To the Rev. William Green. See The Gentleman's Magazine, LXXXIX (1819), Suppl. to Pt. II, 606.

24. New Guide through Bath and Its Environs, as quoted by Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, IX (1815), 802.

25. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, II (1812), 228.

26. [Warburton, ed.,] The Works of Alexander Pope Esq. Volume III: Containing his Moral Essays (London, 1751), pp. xiv-xv.

27. E.g., in the second volume of the four-volume works of Pope, 1787-88, printed under the direction of J. Bell; in William Lisle Bowles's ed. of Pope, 10 vols. (London, 1806), III, Appendix, 369-93; in The Works of Pope with notes and illustrations by Joseph Warton, D.D., and others, new ed., 9 vols. (London, 1822), III, Appendix, 305-27.

    Kippis, in 1780, says of the Essay on Satire merely that “In the third part of the Essay, in which the Author celebrates the most eminent Satirists, he hath drawn Mr. Pope's poetical character to great advantage.”—Biographia Britannica, 2nd ed., II, 655.

28. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands (London: For J. Dodsley, 1766), III, 325n.-327n. In the 3rd ed., 1751, see III, 323n.-325n.

29. Letter by Warburton to Hurd, Jan. 30, 1749-50. See Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate to One of His Friends (Kidderminster, [1808]), p. 27.

30. Dated Jan. 23, 1801. See Clayden, Early Life of Rogers, pp. 416-17. For Gilpin, Brown, and Oxford in 1747-48, see Templeman, Gilpin, pp. 33-35.

31. Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, p. 27.

32. Warburton, Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections … (London, 1744), p. xvi.

33. Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, p. 53 (letter dated Dec. 23, 1750). In 1750 (Glasgow) appeared Francis Hutcheson's Reflections upon Laughter and Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees. Aldridge, p. 148n., says that this “does not enter … into the discussion of whether ridicule is a test of truth,” though it touches on the subject of the possible abuse of ridicule.

34. For this and the following references to Kippis, see Biographia Britannica, 2nd ed., II, 655.

35. The British Museum has a copy, dated 1751; it is anonymous, is attributed to Bulkley, and bears as title A Vindication of my Lord Shaftesbury, on the subject of Ridicule. Being remarks upon a book, intitled Essays on the Characteristics.

36. The Works of Alexander Pope … and Occasional Remarks by William Roscoe. New ed., 8 vols. (London, 1847), IV, 295.

37. This essay was printed in The Investigator, 48 (1753); see Aldridge, pp. 136n., 149-52. The CBEL lists a 1762 reprint.

38. The Gray's-Inn Journal (London, 1756), II, 278. (A reprint of No. 96, for Aug. 17, 1754.)

39. Henry Homes, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism (Edinburgh, 1762), II, 40-57.

40. See The Works of the Right Reverend William Warburton, Lord Bishop of Gloucester. 7 vols. Vol. I (London, 1788), p. xxxv.

41. Works, I, xvii-xviii.

42. John Ogilvie, D.D., An Inquiry into the Causes of the Infidelity and Scepticism of the Times: with Occasional Observations on … Shaftesbury … &c. (London, 1783), pp. 158, 280, 379, 445, 393, 290.

43. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. M.DCC.LXXXVIII (Dublin, n.d.), Pt. II, pp. 89-90.

44. I quote from the 12th ed. (London, 1791), I, 189-95; the 1st ed. had appeared in 1782. Aldridge cites an edition of 1827.

45. Edward V. Brewer, “Lessing and ‘The Corrective Virtue in Comedy,’” Jour. of Engl. and Germ. Philol., XXVI (1927), 7, 1; see also 23. A consideration of the possible influence of this controversy upon Meredith's writings, including his 1877 “On the Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit,” lies beyond the scope of the present article.

46. D'Israeli, Miscellanies, II, 20-21; Quarrels, I, 43-47.