SOURCE: Templeman, William Darby. “Warburton and Brown Continue the Battle Over Ridicule.” Huntington Library Quarterly 17, no. 1 (November 1953): 17-36.

In the following essay, Templeman recounts Warburton's part in the eighteenth-century critical controversy concerning the use of ridicule.

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...