SOURCE: New, Melvyn. “Sterne, Warburton, and the Burden of Exuberant Wit.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 15, no. 3 (spring 1981-82): 245-74.

In the following essay, New assesses the relationship between Warburton and Laurence Sterne, maintaining that for Sterne, Warburton was the quintessential prude against whom his satire was primarily directed.

Victimized by our own taxonomies, we have grown accustomed to the notion that with Pope's death in 1744 and Swift's the year after, Samuel Johnson took center stage and the “Age of Johnson,” as we label it in our literary histories and course catalogues, was suddenly at hand. Thus, were we to guess whose career in the center of the century Edward Gibbon had in mind when he wrote: “the learning and abilities of the author had raised him to a just eminence; but he reigned the Dictator and tyrant of the World of Litterature,”¹ we would in all likelihood guess Johnson. But...