Theſe elevations and depreſſions of renown, and the contradictions to which all improvers of knowledge muſt for ever be expoſed, ſince they are not eſcaped by the higheſt and brighteſt of mankind, may ſurely be endured with patience by criticks and annotators, who can rank themſelves but as the ſatellites of their authors. How canſt thou beg for life, ſays Homer’s hero to his captive, when thou knoweſt that thou art now to ſuſFer only what muſt another day be ſuſſered by Achilles?
Dr. Warburton had a name ſufficient to confer celebrity on thoſe who could exalt themſelves into antagoniſts, and his notes have raiſed a clamour too loud to be diſtinct. His chief aſſailants are the authors of The canons of critciſm, and of The reviſal of Skakeſpeare’s text; of whom one ridicules his errors with airy petulance, ſuitable enough to the levity of the controverſy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to juſtice an aſſaſſin or incendiary. The one ſtings like a fly, ſucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that girls with ſpits, and boys with ſtones, ſhould ſlay him in puny battle; when the other croſſes my imagination, I remember the prodigy in Macbeth:
A falcon tow’ring in his pride of place,
Was by a mouſing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.
