the time depreciatory, although it comes pretty near the truth. He
says, "It seems to me above the middling, and now and then for a
little while rises even to the best, particularly in description. It
is often obscure and even unintelligible. In short, its great fault
is, that it was published at least nine years too early." Gray,
however, had not as yet himself emerged as a poet, and his word had
chiefly weight with his friends. Warburton was a more formidable
opponent. This divine acted then a good deal in the style of a
gigantic Church-bully, and seemed disposed to knock down all and
sundry who differed from him either on great or small theological
matters; and Humes, Churchills, Jortins, Middletons, Lowths,
Shaftesburys, Wesleys, Whitefields, and Akensides all felt the fury
of his onset, and the force of the "punishment" inflicted by his
strong fists. Akenside, in his poem, and in one of his notes, had
defended Shaftesbury's ridiculous notion that ridicule is the test
of truth, and for this Warburton assailed him in the preface to
"Remarks in Answer to Dr. Middleton." In this, while indirectly
disparaging the poem, he accuses the poet of infidelity, atheism,
and insulting the clergy. The preface appeared in March 1744, and in
the following May (Akenside being then in Holland) came forth a reply,
in "An Epistle to the Rev. Mr. Warburton, occasioned by his
Treatment of the Author of the Pleasures of Imagination," which had
been concocted between Dyson and our poet. This pamphlet was written
with considerable spirit; and although it left the question where it
found it, it augured no little courage on the part of the young
physician and the young lawyer mating themselves against the matured
author of the "Divine Legation of Moses." As to the question in
dispute, Johnson disposes of it satisfactorily in a single sentence.
"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