Gibbon called Oxford the headquarters of "port and prejudice," and Thomas Warton, who made it his home, imbibed, it is to be feared, a considerable quantity of both. Free thought disturbed him, and the lax opinions uttered by Milton on ecclesiastical questions ruffled the serene calm of his orthodoxy. Possibly the extreme temperance of the Puritan poet was equally hateful to him. A poet who needed neither wine nor ale to stimulate his inspiration was scarcely after Warton's heart. There is indeed no proof that he ever drank to excess, but he was a lover of conviviality, and there are intimations which show pretty clearly that his habits were to say the least rather loose and undignified. He was a modest man, or, as a friend once described him, "the most under-bearing man existing," and was averse to the society of strangers, "particularly those of a literary turn." It is stated also that he was fond of drinking his ale and smoking his pipe with persons of mean rank and education. And here it may not be amiss to mention another curious trait in his character. George Selwyn, as Rogers tells us, never missed "being in at a death at Tyburn," so delighted was he in seeing executions. Thomas Warton had the same taste, and it is said that at a time when he did not wish to be discovered he went to an execution disguised as a carter. He was also fond of military spectacles, and, in common with his brother, enjoyed the society of soldiers.

Warton held the Poetry Professorship for the usual term of ten years, and is said to have delivered lectures remarkable for eloquence of diction and justness of observation. Later on in life he was elected Camden Professor of History, but, after giving an inaugural address, appears to have thought he had sufficiently fulfilled the duties of the office. The truth seems to be that Warton, although capable of working hard at times, liked to work in his own way. He had long fits of comparative idleness, and, like Coleridge, his promises far exceeded his performance. Lord Eldon, remembering him as a college lecturer, exclaimed: "Poor Tom Warton! at the beginning of every term he used to send to his pupils to know if they would wish to attend lectures." He projected a translation of Apollonius Rhodius, a volume of criticism on Spenser's minor poems, and other books of comment or translation. Such projects, if fulfilled, would probably have had little interest for the modern reader; but every one must lament that Warton's great work, the only work of his which still retains a place in literature, the History of English Poetry, was never brought to a conclusion.

Pope and Gray, it will be remembered, thought of writing such a history, and both these poets made plans of the projected work. There is a friendly letter from Gray on the subject in which he relates his scheme and puts it at Warton's disposal. The method suggested, which was based on that of Pope, is to range the poets under different schools; but Warton found this plan impracticable, and elected to pursue his work chronologically. The student of poetry will find in it much to interest him and much also to cause disappointment. Southey praises the His

tory highly, but not perhaps extravagantly, when he writes: "Two works which appeared in the interval between Churchill and Cowper promoted beyond any others this growth of a better taste than had prevailed for the hundred years preceding. These were Warton's History of English Poetry and Percy's Reliques, the publication of which must form an epoch in the continuation of that history." On the other hand, the book is marked by no artistic quality. It is full of errors; the narrative, in the judgment of one of Warton's editors, is eminently slipshod; materials are to be found in abundance, but there is no arrangement, no proportion; and the author, notwithstanding great labour and extensive research, has therefore failed to produce a work which we read with willingness and pleasure.

The reader who takes up the latest and most elaborate edition of Warton's History, namely, that produced by Mr. Hazlitt, will be amused or irritated to observe how often the text is contradicted by the notes variorum. Warton opens his first volume with a dissertation "On the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe;" and before commencing it the reader will learn from Mr. Wright that Warton's theories are "founded on a confusion of ideas as well as on the absence of a large knowledge of the subject." Ritson, whose abstinence from animal food cannot be said to have improved his temper, attacked Warton at all times with his accustomed sharpness and irascibility, and commences his comments on the essay by contradicting Warton's first sentence. Another critic, less likely to be influenced by prejudice, observes that the whole of the dissertation is extremely illogical and unsatisfactory, that the author's leading position respecting the influence of Arabic literature in Europe is unsound, and that most of the proofs which he alleges are matters which require proving themselves. All this may be perused before the reader has finished a single page of the text; and indeed he may be inclined to ask whether, supposing these judgments be correct, it is worth his while to read the essay at all. Let him take courage. In spite of errors, some of which may be imputed to the state of learning in Warton's day, and some to his consummate laziness-for it will be found that he often failed even to verify his quotations-the remarks on Romantic Fiction contain a good deal of information that is interesting and suggestive. Higher praise, perhaps, may be given to the third essay, "On the Introduction of Learning into England," which abounds in instructive statements. If many of them are familiar to the well-educated reader, he will remember that they were not generally familiar to Warton's contemporaries; and this remark should be borne in mind throughout the perusal of the History. Unfortunately, it is but the fragment of what might have been a really great work, and the portion of it that might be expected to have proved most interesting never saw the light. In one respect, as Mr. Stopford Brooke has pointed out, the book expressed a feeling which was unknown to the school of Pope. With that school the present was so powerful that it filled all the view.

"Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry

was but the beginning of that vivid delight in what our forefathers did, to which Chatterton afterwards gave a fresher life, and which runs through all the minor poets of the time."

The wearisome and by no means wholly satisfactory labour bestowed by Thomas Warton on Spenser and Milton has been expended on his own poems by Bishop Mant. In his edition of the poetical works almost every couplet is annotated; and so copious are the notes and illustrations that very frequently thirty or forty lines of closely-printed letter-press follow three or four lines of text. Such ponderous toil is thrown away upon a small poet like Warton. Who cares to know whether or not some poetical fancy expressed by him has been previously expressed by an earlier and greater writer? A poet like Milton, if he use the thoughts of other men, transforms them and ennobles them, so that they become as it were a part of himself. Warton's verses recall in every page passages from the Greek and Roman classics, and from our own poets; but Warton is an imitator, and cannot make them his own by the transmuting power of genius. His taste is, for the most part, correct, his feeling sincere, his knowledge extensive, his skill in the manipulation of verses considerable. Add to these merits a genuine love of natural objects, which is all the more worthy of note since the poets of highest repute in his day rarely looked out of doors, and we have given Warton all the praise to which he is entitled as a poet.

His descriptive passages-witness the "Lines written in Whichwood Forest," and the "Ode on the Approach of Summer"—are good, and would deserve higher praise were it not that they resemble so closely the early poems of Milton. When he attempts a subject demanding pathos or passion he does not rise above the mediocrity of the versemaker--witness his ode entitled the "Suicide," which, however, we are bound to say has received the highest praise from his biographer. In this piece, which Dr. Mant calls the most popular of Warton's poems (alas! for popularity, we wonder how many of our readers have ever heard of it), we are told that an appeal is made to the heart as well as to the fancy, and that "the most striking poetical imagery is not only clothed with the most expressive diction, but heightened by the tenderest sentiments." After a careful and repeated perusal of the poem we confess that the "striking poetical imagery" does not strike us, and that the " expressive diction appears to us laboured and conventional. One of the best specimens of Warton's work as a lyric poet is an ode called the "Grave of King Arthur." It is written in the octo-syllabic metre which Scott made so famous thirty years later, and there are passages in the poem which may even remind us of the "Ariosto of the North." Take, for instance, the following lines. Henry II. on his road through Wales to suppress a rebellion in Ireland is entertained with the songs of the Welsh bards.

Illumining the vaulted roof

A thousand torches flamed aloof;
From massy cups, with golden gleam
Sparkled the red metheglin's stream;

To grace the gorgeous festival
Along the lofty windowed hall
The storied tapestry was hung;
With minstrelsy the rafters rung
Of harps that with reflected light
From the proud gallery glittered bright ;
While gifted bards, a rival throng,
From distant Mona, nurse of song,

From Teivi fringed with umbrage brown,

From Elvy's vale and Cader's crown,

From many a shaggy precipice
That shades Ierne's hoarse abyss,

And many a sunless solitude

Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude;

To crown the banquet's solemn close
Themes of British glory chose.

Between the minds of Warton and Scott it may be possible to trace a likeness. In one department, says his biographer, Warton is not only unequalled, but original and unprecedented—namely, "in applying to modern poetry the embellishment of Gothic manners and Gothic art; the tournaments, and festivals, the poetry, music, painting, and architecture of elder days." In this respect, therefore, he to some extent anticipated Scott; but Scott took possession of a region of which Warton knew comparatively little, and upon which, indeed, he did scarcely more than set his foot.

It is not much praise to say of Thomas Warton that in his Laureate odes he succeeded better than many of his predecessors, or than his immediate successor, than Tate or Cibber, than Whitehead or Pye; but it is a dreary task to read them, and it is amusing to contrast his earnest asseverations that the flattery of kings is distasteful to him with the glowing panegyrics which he heaps upon his "sacred sovereign" George III. Nothing could well be more false than the following lines, since this highly respectable monarch, as all the world knows, cared as little for the arts, and did as little to promote them, as William III. :

"Tis his to bid neglected genius glow,

And teach the royal bounty how to flow.
His tutelary sceptre's sway

The vindicated arts obey,

And hail their patron king.

With equal absurdity he declares, as if with a noble love of independence, that he spurns Dryden's "panegyric strings," and then adds, that if Dryden had lived in his day-that is to say, under the blessed sway of George III.-flattery would have been impossible :

The tuneful Dryden had not flattered here;

His lyre had blameless been, his tribute all sincere.

This, however, was the style of the day; and of Warton it may be said. that, in his capacity of Laureate, he did tolerably what nobody could do well. When Warton died, Lady Hesketh wished to get the Laureateship

for Cowper, but the Olney poet declined the offer. "Heaven guard my brains," he wrote, "from the wreath you mention, whatever wreath beside may hereafter adorn them. It would be a leaden extinguisher clapped on all the fire of my genius, and I should never more produce a line worth reading." Cowper's words, true enough in his day, and especially true as coming from a man of his sensitive disposition, will not apply now. Thomas Warton is considered by Hallam a very competent judge of Latin poetry. His Latin poems are written with elegance, and the like praise may be fairly given to his English poems; but elegance is the result of culture and scholarship rather than of genius. During the time that Warton was winning reputation as a man of letters and as a poet, there lived a peasant in Scotland, unknown or uncared for apparently by the Oxford Professor, who gave higher proofs of poetical genius in a single song than Warton in all the verse he ever produced. The fruit of high culture may be found in the poetry of Thomas Warton; the fruit, how far more delightful and refreshing we need not say, of genuine poetical inspiration is given to us in the poetry of Burns.

The Sonnet was not in favour among the poetical critics of the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson was incapable of seeing any beauty in the noble sonnets of Milton; George Steevens, who took high rank in the last century among the commentators of Shakspeare, declared that nobody would ever read Shakspeare's sonnets unless forced to do so by Act of Parliament. Bishop Mant was the contemporary of Johnson and Steevens, and it is not therefore surprising that he should show a like contempt for this species of poetry, which, he observes, is foreign to the genius of the English language. Of Warton's sonnets, he remarks that they are as good as sonnets generally are, by which he implies of course that they are not good for much. The truth is, however, that if Warton's memory as a poet be preserved at all, it will be due to two or three of the sonnets his biographer and critic despises. One of them, written on a blank leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon, has been termed by Charles Lamb of first-rate excellence, and of others Coleridge has spoken in warm commendation.

Warton lived at Oxford the idle-busy life of a literary dilettante, and the chief variations from the smooth tenor of his University career appear to have been little country excursions and visits to his brother at Winchester. To judge from the following anecdote he was ever a boy at heart, and had none of the "buckram" which he detected and disliked so much in the poet Mason :

"During his residence at Winchester he was fond of associating with his brother's scholars; indeed, he entered so heartily into their sports and employments as to have been occasionally involved in rather ludicrous incidents. Being engaged with them in some culinary occupation, and alarmed by the sudden approach of Dr. Warton, he has been known to conceal himself in some dark corner, and has been drawn out of his