5,000l. apiece to Warburton and his wife. Mrs. Warburton was also to have 3,000l. a year upon the death of Mrs. Allen, which took place two years later. Warburton afterwards wrote a few sermons, but his vigour was beginning to decline. He mentions various symptoms of illness in 1767. In 1768 he gave 500l. to found a lecture to be given at Lincoln's Inn upon the proof of Christianity from the prophecies. In 1769 he gave up Prior Park and settled at Gloucester. In 1770 he had a bad accident by a fall in his library. In 1771 Hurd told Mrs. Warburton that her husband, apparently as the result of his advice, would write no more (Letters, pp. 460, 462). He seems afterwards to have failed rapidly. Horace Walpole saw him in 1774, and says that his memory was failing. He was sufficiently conscious to be greatly depressed by the loss in 1775 of his only child, a young man (b. 6 April 1756), who was intended for the bar, and died of consumption on 18 July 1775. He then became almost imbecile, but shortly before his death revived enough to say ‘Is my son really dead?’ He died in his palace at Gloucester on 7 June 1779, and was buried in the cathedral. His widow erected a marble monument, with an inscription by Hurd over a medallion portrait. The phrase that he had always supported ‘what he firmly believed, the Christian religion,’ was taken to be ambiguous by those who read it without the comma (see Cradock, iv. 205). Mrs. Warburton took for a second husband the Rev. Martin Stafford Smith, who was presented by Hurd to the rectory of Fladbury, Worcestershire. Mrs. Warburton appears to have been a lively lady. Walpole speaks of Thomas Potter as her gallant (George III, i. 313), a bit of scandal supported by, or perhaps derived from, Churchill's statement in the ‘Duellist’ (see Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. iv. 41). Cradock says that Mrs. Warburton always spoke ‘with peculiar satisfaction’ of her husband's excellence. She died on 1 Sept. 1796.
Warburton seems to have been thoroughly good to his family. He was always affectionate to his mother, who survived till 1749 (see his letter to Doddridge in June 1749; Nichols, Illustrations, ii. 834). He had three sisters. The youngest, Frances, remained unmarried; the eldest, Mary, married a tradesman who became bankrupt, when Warburton gave generous support (ib. ii. 831); the third, Elizabeth, married an attorney, named Twells, son of Warburton's first schoolmaster. This marriage appears also to have been unfortunate (Letters, p. 247). He helped some of their children.
Bishop Newton says that Warburton was a ‘tall, robust, large-boned’ man. An engraving from a portrait by William Hoare [q. v.], in Gloucester Palace, is prefixed to his ‘Works.’ A painting by Charles Phillips is in the National Portrait Gallery, London; both have been frequently engraved (Bromley, p. 356). Hurd bought most of his books, and placed them in the library of his palace, Hartlebury Castle.
Warburton, said Johnson (Boswell, Johnson, ed. Hill, iv. 49), ‘is perhaps the last man who has written with a mind full of reading and reflection.’ To his admirers he represented the last worthy successor of the learned divines of the preceding century. His wide reading and rough intellectual vigour are undeniable. Unfortunately he was neither a scholar nor a philosopher. Though he wrote upon the Old Testament, his knowledge of Hebrew was, as Lowth told him, quite superficial; and his blunders in Latin proved that he was no Bentley. His philosophical weakness appears not only in his metaphysical disquisitions, but in the whole conception of his book. The theological system presupposed in the ‘Divine Legation’ is grotesque, and is the most curious example of the results of applying purely legal conceptions to such problems. Warburton, as Lowth pointed out, retained the habits of thought of a sharp attorney, and constantly mistakes wrangling for reasoning. He was ingenious enough to persuade himself that he had proved his point when he had upset an antagonist by accepting the most paradoxical conclusions. Freethinkers such as Walpole and Voltaire thought him a hypocritical ally; and no one, except such personal friends as Hurd and Towne, has ever seriously accepted his position. He flourished in a period in which divines, with the exception of Butler, were becoming indifferent to philosophical speculation. For that reason he found no competent opponent, though his pugnacity and personal force made many enemies and conquered a few humble followers. Hurd tries to prove that he had distinguished friends among men of learning. His instances are John Towne [q. v.] and Thomas Balguy [q. v.], neither of them a very shining light. Hurd was himself the chief disciple, and he also had friendly relations with John Brown (1715–1766) [q. v.] of the ‘Estimate,’ who in that book calls Warburton the Colossus who bestrides the world, and who afterwards defended him against Lowth; with Mason, the poet; with Jonathan Toup [q. v.], the editor of Longinus and a warm admirer of Warbur-
