defended by Dyson; Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the
end of his dedication to the Freethinkers. The result of all the
arguments which have been produced in a long and eager discussion of
this idle question may easily be collected. If ridicule be applied
to any position as the test of truth it will then become a question
whether such ridicule be just; and this can only be decided by the
application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men fearing, one
a real, and the other a fancied danger, will be for a while equally
exposed to the inevitable consequences of cowardice, contemptuous
censure, and ludicrous representation; and the true state of both
cases must be known before it can be decided whose terror is
rational and whose is ridiculous; who is to be pitied, and who to be
despised. Both are for a while equally exposed to laughter, but
both are not therefore equally contemptible. In the revisal of his
poem, though he died before he had finished it, he omitted the lines
which had given occasion to Warburton's objections. He published,
soon after his return from Leyden (1745), his first collection of
odes; and was impelled by his rage of patriotism to write a very
acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he stigmatises, under the name
of Curio, as the betrayer of his country. Being now to live by his
profession, he first commenced physician at Northampton, where Dr.
Stonehouse then practised, with such reputation and success, that a
stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him. Akenside tried the
contest a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for
liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than two years,
and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of
accomplishments like his. At London he was known as a poet, but was
still to make his way as a physician; and would perhaps have been
reduced to great exigencies but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of
friendship that has not many examples, allowed him three hundred