contemptible tricks--tricks, however, in which he was true to his
nature--_that_ being a curious compound of the woman and the wit, the
monkey and the genius[1].

In 1737, four of his Imitations of Horace were published, and in the
next year appeared two Dialogues, each entitled "1738," which now form
the Epilogue to the Satires. One of them was issued on the same day with
Johnson's "London." In that year, too, he published his "Universal
Prayer,"--a singular specimen of latitudinarian thought, expressed in a
loose simplicity of language, quite unusual with its author. The next
year he had intended to signalise by a third Dialogue, which he
commenced in a vigorous style, but which he did not finish, owing to the
dread of a prosecution before the Lords; and with the exception of
letters (one of them interesting, as his last to Swift), his pen was
altogether idle. In 1740, he did nothing but edit an edition of select
Italian Poets. This year, Crousaz, a Swiss professor of note, having
attacked (we think most justly) the "Essay on Man" as a mere Pagan
prolusion--a thin philosophical smile cast on the Gordian knot of the
mystery of the universe, instead of a _sword_ cutting, or trying to cut,
it in sunder--Warburton, a man of much talent and learning, but of more
astuteness and anxiety to exalt himself, came forward to the rescue,
and, with a mixture of casuistical cunning and real ingenuity, tried, as
some one has it, "to make Pope a Christian," although, even in
Warburton's hands, like the dying Donald Bane in "Waverley," he "makes
but a queer Christian after all;" and his system, essentially
Pantheistic, contrives to ignore the grand Scripture principles of a
Fall, of a Divine Redeemer, of a Future World, and the glorious light or
darkness which these and other Christian doctrines cast upon the Mystery
of Man. If, however, Warburton, with all his scholastic subtlety, failed
to make Pope a Christian, he made him a warm friend; Allen, Pope's