Generale delle Strade Ferrate dello Stato. Torino: 2. Rapport adressé à la Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Nord de l'Espagne sur les Travaux de 3. Notice Historique sur la Percée du Mont Cenis et les Nouvelles Machines de MM. Sommeiller, Grandis et Grattoni. Par M. Bonjean. Chambéry: 1863, 123 VI. Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain. By 4. Report on Railroads in China. By Sir Macdonald VIII-Atalanta in Calydon: a Tragedy. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: 1865, ART. I.-Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss III.-1. The Rock-cut Temples of India, illustrated by Seventy-four Photographs taken on the spot by Major Gill. Described by James Fergusson, F.R.S., 2. Life in Ancient India. By Mrs. Speir. London: 3. Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. XIV. January, 1851. Vol. VI., IV.-1. Carl Maria von Weber: ein Lebensbild. Von Max Maria von Weber. Leipzig: 1865. 2. Carl Maria von Weber: the Life of an Artist. From the German of his Son, Baron Max Maria von Weber. By J. Palgrave Simpson, M.A. London : 1865, V.-1. Frost and Fire. Natural Engines, Tool-marks, and Chips, with Sketches taken at Home and Abroad, by a Traveller. By J. F. Campbell. Two volumes, 8vo. Edinburgh: 1865. 2. Ice Caves of France and Switzerland, a Narrative of Subterranean Exploration. By the Rev. G. F. Browne, M.A., Fellow and Assistant Tutor of St. Catherine's College, Cambridge; Member of the VI-Euvres Complètes d'Alexis de Tocqueville. Tomes. VII. et VIII. Correspondance, Mélanges, Frag- ments Historiques et Notes sur l'Ancien Régime la 396 VII.-Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862-63). By William Gifford Palgrave, late of the Eighth Regiment Bombay Native Infantry. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1865, 482 IX.-An Excursion in the Peloponnesus in the Year 1858. By the late Right Hon. Sir Thomas Wyse, K.C.B., H.M.'s Minister Plenipotentiary at.Athens from 1849 to 1862. Edited by his Niece, Winifrede M. Wyse. With numerous Illustrations. 2 vols. X.-1: The Principles of Nature: her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind. By and through Andrew Jackson Davis. Fourth Edition. 8vo. New York: 2. The Great Harmonia; being a Philosophical Reve- lation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Uni- verse. By Andrew Jackson Davis. Fifth Edition. 8vo. 5 vols. Boston (U.S.): 1858-60. 3. Spiritualism. By John Worth Edmonds and George T. Dexter, M.D. With an Appendix by N. P. Tall- THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1865. No. CCXLIX. ART. I. The Life of William Warburton, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester from 1760 to 1779; with Remarks on his Works. By the Rev. JOHN SELBY WATSON, M.A., M.R.S.L. 8vo. London: 1863. THE HE name of William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, stands high on the list of the curiosities of reputation. Many writers, famous in their day, are now forgotten, because the objects of their studies and their works lie stranded on some shoal of time, long left dry by the shifting currents of men's interests and speculations. Many others retain a barren name only because they had the good fortune to meet with opponents whose names posterity has not let die. We re member Cartwright and Travers because they engaged in controversy with Hooker; Salmasius, because he was scourged by Milton; and John Dennis, because he was pilloried by Pope. The Dunciad' and the Rosciad' alike have conferred this sort of immortality. Yet we have no reason to think that the names which survive because they have been branded were therefore the names of either blockheads or knaves. Cartwright we know to have been a learned divine; Salmasius, to have been a deeply-read scholar; Dennis, as his remarks on Addison's 'Cato show, a shrewd and sensible critic, after the critical fashions of his day. But Warburton's reputation does not properly come under any one of these heads. He was not a profound theologian nor an accurate scholar, nor a sensible, though he was at times a shrewd critic. As a divine he is no more to be compared to Lowth than as a scholar or critic he is to be compared to Bentley. In matters of taste none but Warburtonians admitted his canons at the moment, and of Warburtonians we suspect few if any survive at the VOL. CXXII. NO. CCXLIX. B present hour. Even in his lifetime, his name was better known than his writings. A name, however, he has left, and it may be worth while to inquire why that has survived, while the quartos and octavos which earned it are seldom taken down from the shelves. Where there is smoke there must be fire; where place and precedency have been attained even for a few brief years, there must have been a cause for them. What, then, was the cause for William Warburton's having once attracted the attention of his own countrymen, and in a degree also that of the learned throughout Europe? 6 A Life of Warburton has long been a desideratum in English biography, partly because he was so generally abused, and partly because he has been so extravagantly and at the same time so feebly praised by Whitaker of Manchester and Bishop Hurd. Hitherto by far the best account of him is that by the late Mr. D'Israeli in his Quarrels of Authors.' That, however, though instructive and entertaining, is little more than a sketch of great Gloucester,' and it is sometimes paulo iniquior to his real merits. Mr. Watson has performed his task with diligence and impartiality. He admires his subject enough to decline no labour in illustrating it; but he is too sensible of the imperfections of his subject to be its apologist. His analysis of Warburton's various works is the more useful, because the works themselves are not likely to be again consulted by either foes or friends. The theme, too, is better suited to Mr. Watson's powers than the Life of Porson was; for the great Greek scholar demanded more animation than his biographer possesses: whereas the great Ishmaelite of the eighteenth century, whose hand was against all men, and who was himself the butt of nearly every archer of the time, demands only diligence and discrimination, and of these qualities Mr. Watson has a due proportion. William Warburton was neither merely a scholar nor merely a divine; but like a far greater man in all respects, like Richard Bentley, he embarked fearlessly on the sea of controversy, and though his course was devious, he planted his flagstaff on more than one shore which had been missed by former navigators. In his Divine Legation,' as in his Julian,' he threw out suggestions that wiser scholars than himself have since engrafted on fruitful stocks; and in his 'first work of importance,' as Mr. Watson terms it, but which he might have more justly called his most important work, he indicated, if he did not exactly follow, the path that has led tortuously yet finally to the comparative theological liberty of the present age. Of his scholarship and theology |