Warburton and Hurd have introduced a new kind of criticism, in which they discover views and purposes the authors never had, and they themselves never believed they had, but consider them as the refinements of their own delicate conceptions, only taking hints from these authors, to show how much higher they themselves would have carried the same ideas. Warburton's discovering "the regularity" of Pope's Essay on Criticism, and "the whole scheme" of his Essay on Man, I happen to know to be mere absurd refinement in creating conformities, and that from Pope himself, though he thought fit to adopt them afterwards. By this method of overlooking the plain and simple meaning which presents itself at first sight (as that of good authors always does, only that there is no credit to be gained in discovering what any one else could discover) it might clearly be shown that Pope's Art of Criticism, is, indeed, an Essay on Man, and his Essay on Man was really designed by the deep author for an Art of Criticism. I know that these would not be more false than the assertion and sophistry in proving "the regularity" of his Art of Criticism, since he, when often speaking of it, before he so much as knew Warburton, spoke of it always, as an "irregular collection of thoughts thrown together as they offered themselves, as Horace's Art of Poetry was, and written in imitation of that irregularity," which he even admired, and said was beautiful. As for his Essay on Man, as I was witness to the whole conduct of it in writing, and actually have his original MSS. for it from the first scratches of the four books, to the several finished copies, all which, with the MS. of his Essay on Criticism, and several of his other works, he gave me himself for the pains I took in collating the whole with the printed editions, at his request, on my having proposed to him the "making an edition of his works in the manner of Boileau's,"--as to this noblest of his works, I know that he never dreamed of the scheme he afterwards adopted, perhaps for good reasons, for he had taken terror about the clergy, and Warburton himself, at the general alarm of its fatalism, and deistical tendency, of which however we talked with him (my father and I) frequently at Twickenham, without his appearing to understand it otherwise, or ever thinking to alter those passages, which we suggested as what might seem the most exceptionable.[720]--RICHARDSON.