Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton had done for Pope is more accurate: 'You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles,' he says, 'but, like the old commentators on his _Homer_, will be thought, perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for him that he himself never dreamt of.'[67] The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740, and the bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview, was astonished at the compliments which Pope lavished on his apologist. Henceforth, until the poet's death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his counsellor and supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus, to the confusion of the _Dunciad_. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on Warburton that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on the part of the university having occurred with regard to the latter, Pope wrote to his friend saying, 'As for mine I will die before I receive one, in an art I am ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one on you, in a science of which you are so great a master. In short I will be doctored with you, or not at all.' Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since he could not convince by argument. No one could call an opponent names in the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who ventured to differ from him was either a knave or a fool. 'Warburton's stock argument,' it has been said, 'is a threat to cudgel anyone who disputes his opinion.' He was a laborious student, and the mass of work he accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left nothing which lives in literature or in theology. He was, however, a man of various acquisitions, and won, for that reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The table is always full, sir. He brings things from the north and the south and from every quarter. In his _Divine Legation_ you are always entertained. He carries you round and round without carrying you forward to the point, but then you have no wish to be carried forward.' Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments deserves to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man of monstrous appetite, but bad digestion.'