C33 



WARTON, THOMAS. 



WARWICK, GUY, EARL OF. 



534 



highest kind of poetry, the book gave great offence to the generality 

 of Pope's admirers ; and its reception on the whole does not appear 

 to have been encouraging. Its conclusion, in a second volume, did 

 not appear till 1782. It has however since made its way in public 

 favour, and is now admitted, even by many who do not go all the 

 length of the author's distinction between what he called the poetry 

 of fancy nd the poetry of reason, and of his exaltation of the former 

 pver the latter, to have at least called attention to some important 

 views in regard to this matter which had been too much forgotten, 

 and in that way to have had a decidedly favourable effect upon our 

 poetical literature. 



In 1766 Warton became head master of Winchester school, upon 

 which occasion he visited Oxford, and took his degrees of Bachelor 

 and Doctor of Divinity. In 1772 he lost his wife ; but in about a 

 year married Miss Nicholas, daughter of Robert N icholas, Esq. In 

 1782 his friend Dr. Lowth, then bishop of London, gave him a prebend 

 of St. Paul's, and the living of Thorley, in Hertfordshire, which he 

 afterwards exchanged for Wickham. In 1788, through Lord Shannon, 

 he obtained a prebend in Winchester cathedral, and, through Lord 

 Malmcsbury, the rectory of Easton, which he was soon after permitted 

 to exchange for Clapham. In 1793 he resigned the mastership of 

 Winchester school. After this he undertook an edition of Pope's 

 works with notes, which he completed in 9 volumes, Svo, in 1797. It 

 was followed by the commencement of a similar edition of Dryden, of 

 which he lived only to publish two volumes. He died 23rd of 

 February 1800, leaving a son and three daughters, the youngest by his 

 second wife, who survived till 1806. A Biographical Memoir of Dr. 

 Joseph Warton, with a selection from his poetry and literary corre- 

 spondence, was published in 1806 by the Rev. John Wooll, master of 

 the school of Midhurst in Sussex. The poetry of Joseph Warton has 

 little merit beyond that of an agreeable vein of common-place fancy, 

 and gome elegance and tunefulness of expression. 



WARTON, THOMAS, was the younger brother of Dr. Joseph 

 Warton, and was born at Basingstoke, in 1728. Like his brother, he 

 was mostly educated at home by his father, till he was admitted a 

 commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, in March 1743. He was soon 

 after elected a scholar, took his degree of M.A. in 1750, succeeded to a 

 fellowship in 1751, and spent the rest of his life in his college, employ- 

 ing his time partly as a tutor, partly in literary occupations. 



The first of his compositions that were printed were a song and a 

 prize essay, which he communicated in 1745 to Dodsley's ' Museum.' 

 Soon after he published by itself his poem entitled ' The Pleasures of 

 Melancholy.' The first production however that brought him into 

 much notice was his ' Triumph of Isis,' published in 1749, in reply to 

 Mason's poem of ' Isis,' which was a satire upon the loyalty of Oxford. 

 In 1750 he contributed a few pieces to ' The Student, or Oxford and 

 Cambridge Miscellany,' amongst which was his ' Progress of Discon- 

 tent,' one of the happiest of 'his humorous effusions. The next year 

 he published his satire entitled 'Newmarket,' and some other pieces 

 in verse. In 1753 he edited, without putting his name to it, a small 

 volume, which appeared in Edinburgh, with the title of ' The Union, 

 or select Scots and English Poems,' among which were several of his 

 own, some previously published, some new. In 1754 he published, 

 in an Svo volume, his ' Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser,' 

 n work which at once established his reputation both for true poetical 

 taste and for extensive and varied learning. It was extended to two 

 volumes in a second edition, which appeared in 1762. 



In 1757 Warton was elected professor of poetry ; and in the course 

 of the lectures which he delivered while he held that office he intro- 

 duced his translations of pieces in the Greek Anthology now printed 

 among his collected poems, and also his Dissertation on the Bucolic 

 Poetry of the Greeks, which he afterwards prefixed, in Latin, to his 

 splendid edition of Theocritus, published, in 2 vols. 4 to, in 1770. In 

 1758 he published, in 4to, a tract now become rare, entitled 'In- 

 scriptionum Romanarum Metricarum Delectus,' a selection of Roman 

 epigrams or inscriptions, with the addition of some modern ones, among 

 which are a few of his own. In this and the following year also he 

 contributed several papers to his friend Dr. Johnson's periodical pub- 

 lication, 'The Idler.' In 1760 he published anonymously, in 12mo, 

 ' A Description of the City, College, and Cathedral of Winchester.' 

 This was followed the same year by a piece of drollery, entitled 'A 

 Companion to the Guide, and a Guide to the Companion, being a com- 

 plete supplement to all the Accounts of Oxford hitherto published,' 

 which presently went through three editions. Soon after this he 

 wrote for the ' Biographia Britannica ' the life of Sir Thomas Pope, 

 which he republished by itself, in Svo, in 1772, and again in 1780, 

 with considerable alterations and addition?. In 1761 he produced, in 

 an Svo volume, his ' Life and Literary Remains of Dr. [Ralph] 

 Bathurst ' (celebrated for his Latin poetry). His next separate pub- 

 lication was the ' jeu d'esprifc ' entitled ' The Oxford Sausage, or Select 

 Pieces written by the most celebrated Wits of the University of 

 Oxford,' which came out anonymously in 1764. From this date he 

 appears to have printed nothing till 1766, when he superintended an 

 edition from the Clarendon press of the Greek Anthology of Constan- 

 tinus Cephalas, to which he prefixed a learned preface. 



He took his degree of B.D. in 1767, and in 1771 he was instituted 

 to the small living of Kiddington in Oxfordshire, on the presentation 

 of the Earl of Lichfield, then chancellor of the university. This, and 



the donative of Hill Farrance in Somersetshire, to which lie was pre- 

 sented by his college in 1782, were Warton's only ecclesiastical 

 preferments, although, as has been remarked, the number of persons of 

 rank to whom he had been tutor (among them the son of Lord North) 

 might have fairly led him to expect a much larger share of patronage. 

 He would no doubt have obtained something more if he had cared 

 very much about it ; but, besides that his modest and unambitious 

 nature kept him from asking, he had no taste either for theological 

 studies or professional duties. It is related that in preaching he used 

 to confine himself mostly to two sermons, one of which was an old 

 one of his father's the other a printed one, here and there curiously 

 abridged with the pen. 



In 1774 he published the first volume, in 4to, of his great work, 

 ' The History of English Poetry.' A second volume appeared in 1778, 

 and a third in 1781. Into this elaborate performance Warton poured 

 the accumulated stores of a lifetime of reading and reflection ; and 

 the survey he has given us of his subject is accordingly both eminently 

 comprehensive in its scope and rich and varied in its details. The 

 work is indeed too discursive and too much encumbered by minute 

 learning to have anything of the character of a classical composition; 

 but it is a repository of information respecting our early national 

 literature unapproached in extent and abundance by any other single 

 work of the same kind in the language. Warton's just taste and true 

 poetic feeling give at the same time a sunshine to his pages which 

 raises the book far above a mere compilation. It remains however 

 unfinished : of the fourth volume only about ten sheets were found 

 to be printed at his death, bringing down the history very little 

 beyond the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth. There have 

 been two recent editions of it in Svo, with the addition of much new 

 matter in the form of annotation, but without any continuation of 

 the narrative : one in 4 vols., by Mr. Richard Price, London, 1824 ; 

 the other in 3 vols., forming a reprint of Mr. Price's edition, with 

 additional notes, which was brought out under the care of Mr. Richard 

 Taylor in 1840. 



Warton made a collection of those of hia poems which he thought 

 worthy of preservation, and published it in 1777; and other editions 

 followed in 1778, 1779, and 1789. He was made poet-luureate on the 

 death of William Whitehead ; and the same year he was elected 

 Camdeu Professor of History at Oxford, on the resignation of Dr. 

 William Scott (the late Lord Stowell). In 1785 also he published an 

 edition of Milton's Juvenile or Minor Poems, copiously illustrated 

 with learned and curious notes, of which a re-impression, prepared 

 before his death, appeared in 1791. He died suddenly, on the 21st of 

 May 1790. A Life of Warton was prefixed to a new edition of his 

 Poems, by Mr. Mant, in 1802. 



Thomas Warton, having produced no poetical performance of any 

 considerable length, can only be reckoned as one of our minor poets ; 

 but among these he occupies a high place not in the first rank, Avith 

 Collins and Gray, but perhaps in that next to them. His poetry, 

 without including his Pindaric odes (which, although they are also 

 superior to many, may be dispensed with in the estimate of his claims), 

 embraces three very distinct departments the descriptive, the roman- 

 tic, and the humorous ; and in each of these kinds of writing he has 

 shown much more than mere taste and imitative power. He had at 

 least both the ear and eye, if not much of the " fine frenzy " of a 

 poet, and wrote always from genuine although not perhaps the most 

 passionate impulses. There are not many things of the kind in the 

 language, except in Prior and Swift, better than his ' Progress of Dis- 

 content ;' his lines ' To the First of April,' without the same richness 

 of glow, have much of the picturesqueness, as well as true national 

 feeling, of Milton's 'L' Allegro' and 'II Penseroso;' and his tale, or 

 ode, as he calls it, entitled ' The Crusade,' is perhaps superior to any 

 preceding attempt to re-awaken the echoes of our ancient romantic 

 minstrelsy. 



WARWICK, GUY, EARL OF. Several of our mediaeval chroni- 

 clers speak of this famous personage as having without doubt actually 

 existed : Henry Knighton, for instance, who wrote about the end of 

 the 14th century, gives a full abstract of his story in his ' Chronica de 

 Eventibus Augliae ' (printed in Twysden's ' Scriptores Decem,' 

 pp. 2311-2743); and even in modern times several writers have been 

 inclined to hold that his exploits had probably a basis of reality. 

 Dugdale does not admit him into his Baronage ; but in his ' Warwick- 

 shire,' although he acknowledges that the monks have sounded out 

 his praises too hyperbolically, he considers his story to be not wholly 

 legendary or apocryphal, and even takes pains to fix the date of one of 

 his achievements his combat with the Danish champion, " Colbrand, 

 the giant, that same mighty man," as he is called in ' King John,' by 

 Shakspere, who has also another allusion to the same matter in his 

 'Henry VIII.' (act. v., sc. 3), to the year 926, when Guy, as he con- 

 ceives, was in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Much more recently, 

 Mr. George Ellis (in his 'Specimens of Early English Metrical 

 Romances ') has suggested that possibly Egil, an Icelandic warrior, 

 who contributed very materially to the important victory gained by 

 the Saxon king Athelstau over the Danes and their allies at Brunan- 

 burgh, " becoming the hero of one of the many odes composed on the 

 occasion of that much celebrated battle, may have been transformed 

 by some Norman monk into the pious and amorous Guy of Warwick." 

 " This," observes Mr. Price, the late editor of Warton's ' History of 



