UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS STUDIES IN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Vol. II February, 1916 No. 1 Board of Editors George T. Flom William A. Oldfather Stl'art p. Sherman pubushed by the university of illinois Under the Auspices of the Graduate School Urbana Copyright, 1916 By the University of Illinois THOMAS WARTON A BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDY BY CLARISSA RINAKER UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 1916 CONTENTS Page Chapter I Ancestry. Early Life. Oxford c> Chapter II Early Poetry, Published before lyjy 24 Chapter III Criticism : The Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser. 1754-1762 36 Chapter IV .Academic Life. 1747-1774 59 Chapter V The History of English Poetry. Volume I, 1774. The Triumph of Romance 79 Chapter VI The History of English Poetry. Volume II, 1778. The Revival of Learning 92 Chapter VII The History of English Poetry. Volume III, 1781. The Dawn of the Great Poetic Age 104 Chapter VIII Critical Reception of the History of English Poetry 114 Chapter IX The Poetry of An .Antiquary. 1777-1790 127 Chapter X The .Antiquary 144 Chapter XI Last Years. 1780-1790. IS4 Chapter XII Conclusion 164 APPENDIX A Warton Genealogy 176 APPENDIX B A Bibliography of the Sources of Warton's History of Eng- lish Poetry 177 BIBLIOGRAPHY 235 riiEFACE Tin- purpost- of till- lollowing stiuly is to estimate tlu- iiitriiisiu and liistoriial importaiiee of Thomas Wartoii. To this end it discusses the relation of all his work— liis poetry, liis eritieism. his history of English poetry, his various antii|uarian works — to the literary movements of his day. This frequently underrated author was more than a small poet, worthy eritic, and dahbler in literary antiquities; he was an important eontrihutor to the literary reaction in the eighteenth century. Largely becaus*' of his enthusiastic study of the middle ages, he was able to sup- ply in every department of lit^-raturc which he entered an important quality previously lacking. To poetry he added a new theme and much picture.S(|ue imagery, and he furthered the return to nature and the son- net revival. In criticism his study of the past produced the historical method and helped greatly to enuincij^ate literary criticism from the tyraiuiN- of the rides. To literary history he contributed a fuller study of English poetry in its earlier periods than had previously been at- temi)ted. and he showed that the poetry of the neglected mediseval period was at least as important as classical literature in the development of modern English literature. To the main facts concerning Warton's life and writings, as they are given by Sir Sidney Lee in the Dictioiiarij of Xutionul Biography, it has not been jiossible to nudromise, died yoinig." Tiie tiiird, Thomas, we may presume had some slight defect of sight suttieient to give point and sting to Amhursts sobriquet of 'squinting Tom of Maudlin," but not serious enough to hinder his progress eitiier at Oxford or in the church. It is perhaps to this unfortunate inheritance that his son's, Thomas Warton's, slight impediment of speech was due." Thomas Warton the elder seems to have been a man of some inde- pc-udeuee (if thought, thougli of very moderate ability. At Oxford he was conspicuous and popular for his Jacobite sympathies, being the author of a satirical poem on George I, called The Hanover Turnip, and vers«'s on the Chevalier's picture." The extant poetry written by this Tiiomas Warton does not show that he had any great claim to the poetry professorship on account of tlie excellence of his verse, and it was prob- ably his political bent ratiier than his literary ability that led to his election to tiiat office in 1718 and his re-election five years later in spite of considerable ojiposition. llis incompetence as a professor and a ser- mon whicli 111' i)reacheil against the government were the subjects of sarcastic and vigorous exposure and attack in Auilnirst's 'fc rrcc-Filius,"' but his reputation seems not to have suffered seriously therefrom. Although a friend of Pope, the elder Warton was not altogether of his poetical faith. He was an admiring reader and imitator of ■•Foster, .-//iii/iiii Oxoiticnscs, Early Series, 1891. IV, p. 1577. 'This .Knthony Warton was not the author of the Refinement of Zion, published in 1657. ascribed to him by Wooll. •Mant, Op. cit. p. i. ■|.\nihiirstl : Tcrra-FUius: or, The Secret History of the University of Oxford: ill Sri'eral Essays, etc. London 1726, p. 48. •Johnson likened Warton's manner of speech to the gobble of a turkey-cock, and the editor of the Probationary Odes declared that when Warton was about to be ejected from the royal presence by a sturdy beef-eater, he was recognized in time to avert the catastrophe by a 'certain hasty spasmodic mumbling, together with two or three prompt quotations from \'irgil.' ( Mant, op. cit. p. cvi) , Even Daniel Prince, the Oxford book-seller, who had no motive for ridicule, testified that his organs of speech were so defective that he was not readily understood except by those who were familiar with his manner of speaking. (Nichols: Literary .liieedotes of the Eighteenth Century, etc. 9 vols. 1812-15. Ill, p. 702.) ^Terrae-Eilius: or, etc. p. 49. '"Nos. X. XV. XVI. 11] ANCESTRY 11 Spenser and Jlilton," and wrote the first imitations of runic poetry, two poetical versions of Latin translations qnoted by Sir William Temple from the song of Regnor Ladborg, a northern king.^- These odes are much more poetical than the feeble Spenserian imitation. Philander, an Imitation of Spencer, occasioned hij the death of Mr. M'illiain Levim, of M. C. College, O.ron. Nov. 1706,^^ which is significant only for its early date, though both attempts are important as showing one of the sources of the romantic tastes of his more gifted sons. The poems of Tliomas Warton conii)osed a small voliune published by his sons''' in 1748 in order to pay the small debts left by their fatlier, of whom both seem to have been extremely proud. The runic odes, which thus appeared a dozen years before Gray's'"' and Percy's'" northern poetry, nuist have fnruislied tliem witli some suggestion for expressing poetically the interest in northern mythology so keenly aroused by Mallet's Intro- duction a I'Histoire de la Dannemarc.'' It is impossible to say when the elder Warton 's poems were writ- ten, perhaps after he had retired from the poetry professorship — he had some years jireviously gone to reside regularly at his vicarage at Basingstoke — and had witlidrawn still more from Oxford .society; they were the parerga of a life busy with the successive vicarages of Fram- field, Woking and Cobham, which he held in addition to his living at Basingstoke, and with tlie Basingstoke grammar school, of which he was master. His sons did not even know of the existence of his poems until they found them among his papers after his death and after both sons had given evidence that they had already come into their real poetical patrimony. Of Elizabeth Richardson, the mother of the Wartons, it is impos- sible to discover more than tliat she was the second daughter of Josepli Richardson, rector of Dunsfold, Surrey, who was also a younger son of "Thomas Warton the younger relates an anecdote to show that his father was the means of calling Pope's attention to Milton's Minor Poems, with which he was wholly unfamiliar, and that he thus led to the sprinkling of phrases from Milton in the Eloisa to Abelard. See his edition of Milton's Poems upon Scferal Occasions. 2nd ed. London, 1791. preface p. x. '-Temple's Works, ed, 1720. I, p. 216. '2.\ manuscript copy of this poem, probably the original manuscript, dated at Mag. Coll. Oxon, Sept. 29, 1706, is in an uncatalogued manuscript in Winchester College Library. '^Joseph Warton's name alone appears on the title-page, but Thomas, who was yet an undergraduate at Trinity, was consulted. Wooll, Op. cit. pp. 214-215. '■'See Gray's Jl'orks, ed. Gosse, I, p. 60, and Walpole's Letters, ed. Toynbee, V. p. 55 and VII, p. 175. '*See Phelps's English Romantic Movement, Boston 1893, P- 142. '"Published in. 1755, and translated by Percy in 1770. 12 THOMAS \V A KTON [12 a Yiirksliire family of some means and education, the Richardsons of North Bicrley, several members of which attained some distinction in the church. Mrs. Warton died at Winchester in 1762.'* It was at the vicarage at Basingstoke, the ninth of January, 1728. the year that his father's occupancy of the poetry profcssorsiiii) termi- nated, that Thonuis Warton tiie younger, the poet and Oxford don, the critic and historian of Engli.sh poetry, was born'" in a home comfortable, but ncithir luxurious nor fa.shioiiable, where there were refinement and iutcllectual gifts above the average. His brother Joseph, the master of Winchester College, to whom he was singularly attached throughout his life, and his sister Jane were both several years older than Tliomas. As a child Thomas Warton sliowed many signs of precocity — a fondness for study, a passion for reading, and an early bent to poetry. He was no doubt greatly encouraged in these pursuits by his father, certainly a man of ready sympathy, who, without in any way losing the resjjcct of his sons, made himself their close friend and confidant.-" He hail naturally assmned the task of their education, and Thomas, at least, had no other master until he went up to Oxford, a lad of sixteen. His education was, of course, largely classical, and the elder Warton was able to communicate to his sons not only a substantial Latin style, but a genuine enthusiasm for classical studies which neitlier of tliem ever lost. It is possible that Thomas was more fortunate than otherwise in remaining so long under his father's instruction; Joseph, writing to his father from Winchester School, expressed the fear that the Latin style of composition which was there permitted to be used would not meet with his father's approval.-' No doubt a very valuable part of Thomas Warton 's early education consisted in browsing in his father's library, which must have been a fairly well-stocked one, and jirobably contained more curious old books than were usually included in the libraries of country clergymen. Spenser nuist have been read early and often to have gained so firm a hold upon Warton 's affections, and probably other early poets, perhaps even a few romances. Certainly Milton was a favourite ; perhaps the early edition of the Poctns on Several Occasions," or Fenton's edition,-^ ".Anderson's British Pods, London 1795, vol. XI, p. 1053. "'January the gth, 1727-8, Thomas, the soune of Mr. Thomas Warton, Vicar, by Elizabeth his wife was borne, and baptized the 2Sth of the same month by Mr. Hoylc. Curate.' Basingstoke Parish Register. Quoted from Baigent and .Millard's History of Basingstoke, 1889, p. 649. =»\Vooll, Op. cit. p. 10. ■^Ibid. p. g. -'1673. In A Catalogue of books, (being the libraries of ... . Thomas Warton. . . and others) to be sold by Thos. Payne, London. iSoi, this volume is listed with the note, 'MS. notes by T. W.' "1729. Ibid. 13] EARLY LIFE 13 both full of mainiscript notes"* in Wartoivs crabbed hand, were part of the father's library which passed into the son's hands. Fenton's edition, at least, is known to have belonged to Warton very soon after he had gone to Oxford.-' As an evidence of the strength of the boy's passion for reading it was related of him that he used to withdraw with his books from the family group at the fire-side, even in the excessively cold winter of 1739 and 1740^he was then but eleven years old — in order to devote himself uninterruptedly to his reading.-' Warton 's first poetical attempt was in the nature of a voluntary school exercise, a translation from Martial, On Leander's swimming over the Hellespont to Hero, which he sent in a letter to his sister. Fortunately this evidence of the precocity of a boy of nine was pre- served, though it is probably no great misfortune that other early poetical attempts have been lost. The lines, not bad for a child, are in the prevailing stilted diction of the day, — When bold Leander sought his distant Fair, (Nor could the sea a braver burthen bear) Thus to the swelling waves he spoke his woe, Drown me on my return. — but spare me. as I go.-" The letter in wliich it was sent bears evidence, too, of the love for music which was characteristic of "Warton; 'It will be my utmost ambition,' %vrote tlie boy, 'to make some verses, that you can set to your liarpsi- chord.' Warton 's boyhood days seem not to have been entirely filled, how- ever, witli study. Tliere is every reason to believe that his romantic interest in the past, his fondness for the scenes of stirring events and the varied life of earlier days was kindled at a very early age by famil- iarity with historic places, not only in the immediate vicinity of Basingstoke — the ruined Chapel of the Holy Ghost in the village itself, adjacent to the grammar school, the scanty ruins of Basing House a few miles away near the scene of a battle between the Saxons and the Danes, Odiham Castle, where King David of Scotland was imprisoned after the battle of Neville's Cross, — but also by excursions with his father and brother to more distant places of interest. It seems quite likely that Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge, whose mystery deeply interested Warton,-* were visited, and it is certain that the brothers were taken by their father to see Windsor Castle. Of this visit it was -*These notes were first incorporated in the Obserx'alioiis on the F.ierie Queen, and later amplified into an edition of the minor poems. -^Mant, Op. cit., p. xxviii. -*/6irf., p. xi. ^''Letter to Jane Warton, November 7. 1737. Ibid., p. xii. -'Stonehenge was the subject of a sonnet published in the collected edition of Warton's poems in 1777. 14 THOMAS VVARTON [14 ri'lati'tl that wliili- the fatluT and tlic older brother were exainiiiiug every detail witli eaper and volubh- attention, the younger observed what he saw with 80 quiet a regard tliat his fatlier misconstrued his silence as lack of interest and remarkeil to Joseph, 'Thomas goes on, and takes no notice of any thing he has seen.' Joseph, however, came later to realize how deei)]y impressed witli everything he saw the younger boy had k'en, and remarked, 'I believ<- my brother was more struck with what he saw, and took more notice of every object, than either of us.'=° The efTeet of this \-isit and similar experiences in his early youth probably made a i)rofounder impression than even Joseph realized; to them was partly due, no doubt, Thouuis's love of Gothic architecture and old ruins. In a reHection upon Milton he probably described his own youthful experience; 'Impressions made in earliest youth are ever afterwards most sensibly felt. Milton was probably first affected with, and often indulged the pensive i)leasure wliieli the awful solemnity of a Gothic church conveys to the mind, . . . while he was a school-boy at St. Paul's'.™ In March, 1744, when Thomas had reached the age of sixteen, he was sent to Oxford,"' tlie city of 'dreaming spires and droning dons,' where he spent the renuunder and by far tlie greater part of his life. At the same time Joseph had .just taken his first degree and entered holy orders, becoming his father's curate. It is evident from the father's letters at this time that the expense of maintaining his sons at the tuiiversity was a considerable drain upon the slender resources of the country vicar, who was, however, eager that his sons should have every opportunity within his means to develop their talents and put them in the way of securing honourable ])referment in the church. It must have been tiieii a great relief that Thomas was elected one of the twelve scholars of Trinity College in the following year, especially since his father died soon after, leaving a few debts and no resources except his poems. But Joseph hit upon the plan of publishing the latter by sub- serii)tion, depending upon tlie large circle of his father's acquaintance to ensure tiieir sale, and wrote to his brother, 'Do not doubt of being able to get some money this w-inter; if ever I have a groat, you may depend upon having twopence. '■- At Oxford Thomas Warton found a place at ouce congenial to his aesthetic and ]ioetical tastes and an atmosphere conducive to the clas- sical and antiquarian studies of which he was already fond. With habits of study already formed and with an eager thirst for knowledge -"Mant. Op. cit., p. x.\i.x. '^"Obscniilioiis on the Faerie Queen, ed. 1807. II. p. 140. •■'Foster: Atumni Oxonieuses. 1715-1886. 4 vols. O.xford, iSgi. IV. p. 1505. ^-Oct. 29. 1746. Wooll, Op. cit., p. 215. 15] OXFORD 15 he was at most ouly momentarily or rarely distracted from his studies by tile iiniversal tendency to idleness and dissipation which prevailed at Oxford throughout the eighteenth century. Wartou himself had exactly that sort of 'quick sensibility and ingenuous disposition,' that vivid sense of the reality of the past, which, he said, was able to evoke and create 'the inspiring deity,' the 'GENIUS of the placr,' at the reflection that he was 'placed under those venerable walls, where a HOOKER and a HAiDIOND, a BACON and a NEWTON, once pur- sued the same course of science, and from whence they soared to the most elevated heights of literary fame.' lie was able to feel 'that incitement which Tully, according to his own testimony, experienced at Athens, when he contemplated the porticos where Socrates sat, and the laurel-groves where Plato disputed."" Warton found in this emo- tional stimulus a substitute for the intellectual vigour that was unques- tionably lacking at Oxford during the eighteenth century. Nothing more reveals tiie man than tlie nature of his reaction to the life of the University. Testimony as to the intellectual stagnation at Oxford virtually throughout the whole eighteenth century is almost unanimous. The torpor into which the Church of England had sunk early in the century was shared by the University. The old spell of tradition and reverence for church authority was losing its potency, but without as yet being supjjlanted by any very \'igorous and general spirit of reform. With tile theological apathy that had fallen upon the universities was joined the curse of formalism and obsolete methods in education. The life of the university was expended too largely in political factions, in Jacobite sympathies, or in petty disputes over fellowships and preferments. The professors seem to have ceased to demand regular attendance at lectures which they seldom delivered, antl the interests of the fellows were dis- tracted between their fellowships and their benefices. West Mrote to Gray from Christ Church as from a 'strange coun- try, inhabited by things that call themselves doctors and masters of arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown.''* Even more emphatically Gibbon la- mented the fourteen months he had spent at Magdalen College as the most idle and unprofitable of his whole life,^' and testified that he was ' never summoned to attend even the ceremony of a lecture ; and, ex- cepting one voluntary visit to his rooms, during the eight months of his ^^Idler, no. Z3^ by Thomas Warton. Johnson's Works, Lynam ed. 1825. II, p. 484. ^*Letter to Gray, November 14, 1735. ^^Memoirs of my Life and IVritings, Miscellaneous fVorks. 5 vols. London, 1814, I, p. 47- 16 TnOSlAS WABTOK [16 titular offiw, the tutor and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other.'" The eonipany of the fellows he found no more stimu- lating. 'From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their conscience;' and instead of the 'questions of literature' which he expected them to discuss, 'their conversation stagnated in a round of eoll.ge business. Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal: their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth.'" For clever satirical descriptions of the abuse of academic privilege which was almost universal at Oxford we are indebted to "Warton him- self, wlio was. however, not averse to profiting by the leisure which the universal neglect of college exercises gave him for his own pursuits, and who doubtless enjoyed many an undignified frolic with his fellows. He has drawn two spirited pictures of the usual college fellow, for wliicli only too many of his colleagues might have sat. The first, in the Prog- ress of Discontent, recounts the history of a collegian from the time — When now mature in classic knowledge, The joyful youth is sent to college, and his father, — At Oxford bred — in ,\nna's reign, bespeaks a scholarship : — 'Sir, I'm a Glo'stershire divine. And this my eldest son of nine; My wife's ambition arid my own Was that this child should wear a gown.' Our pupil's hopes, tho' twice defeated. Are with a scholarship completed: A scholarship but half maintains, And college-rules are heavy chains : In garret dark he smokes and puns. A prey to discipline and duns; And now, intent on new designs, Sighs for a fellowship — and fines. That prize attained at length, he covets a benefice, and marries, only, at last, to long for the joys of his Oxford days again — 'When calm around the common room I putT'd my daily pipe's perfume! Rode for a stomach, and inspected, At annual bottlings, corks selected : And din'd untax'd, untroubled, under The portrait of our pious Founder !' "Ibid., p. s& "Ibid., p. 53. 17] OXFORD 17 The other, the very amusing Journal of a Senior Fcllotv, or Genuine Idler, contributed to Johnson's Idler, ^^ was undoubtedly drawn from the life and portrays the trivial employments of a majority of college fel- lows, and their absolute waste of academic leisure. Monday, Nine o'Clock. Turned off my bed-maker for waking me at eight. Weather rainy. Consulted my weather-glass. No hopes of a ride before dinner. Ditto, Ten. After breakfast, transcribed half a sermon from Dr. Hickman. N. B. Never to transcribe any more from Calamy; Mrs. Pilcocks, at my curacy, having one volume of that author lying in her parlour window. Ditto, Eleven. Went down into my cellar. Mem. My Mountain will be fit to drink in a month's time. A'. B. To remove the five-j'ear-old port into the new bin on the left hand. Ditto, Twelve. Mended a pen. Looked at my weather-glass again. Quick- silver very low. Shaved. Barber's hand shakes. Ditto, One. Dined alone in my room on a soal. iV. B. The shrimp-sauce not so good as Mr. H. of Peterhouse and I used to eat in London last winter, at the Mitre in Fleet-street. Sat down to a pint of Madeira. Mr. H. surprised me over it. We finished two bottles of port together, and were very cheerful. Mem. To dine with Mr. H. at Peterhouse next Wednesday. One of the dishes a leg of pork and peas, by my desire. Ditto, Six. Newspaper in the common room. Ditto, Seven. Returned to my room. Made a tiff of warm punch, and to bed before nine ; did not fall asleep till ten, a young fellow-commoner being very noisy over my head. Tuesday, Nine. Rose squeamish. A fine morning. Weather-glass very high. Ditto, Ten. Ordered my horse, and rode to the five-mile stone on the New- market road. Appetite gets better. A pack of hounds in full cry crossed the road, and startled my horse. Ditto, Twelve. Dressed. Found a letter on my table to be in London the 19th inst. Bespoke a new wig. Ditto, One. .^t dinner in the hall. Too much water in the soup. Dr. Dry always orders the beef to be salted too much for me. Ditto, Two. In the common-room. Dr. Dry gave us an instance of a gentle- man who kept the gout out of his stomach by drinking old Madeira. Conversation chiefly on the expeditions. Company broke up at four. Dr. Dry and myself played at back-gammon for a brace of snipes. Won. Ditto, Five. At the coffee-house. Met Mr. H. there. Could not get a sight of the Monitor. Ditto, Seven. Returned home, and stirred my fire. Went to the common- room, and supped on the snipes with Dr. Dry. Ditto, Eight. Began the evening in the common-room. Dr. Dry told several stories. Were very merry. Our new fellow, that studies physics, very talkative toward twelve. Pretends he will bring the youngest Miss to drink tea with me soon. Impertinent blockhead ! etc.^' ^'December 2, 1758. No. 33. 39Chalmers: The British Essayists; etc. London 1808, vol. XXXIH, p. 112. Ifi THOMAS WAKTON [18 Thf unclirpruduutcs' indilTereiice to everything but pleasure, the inevitable result of tlie wlf-iiululgence of their superiors, came in for itM sliure of ridicule in the CumiMinioii to tin Guide, and Guide to the Companioii,*" a satire on Oxford guide-books and antiquarian studies as well as u humorous exposure of university abuses. Here Warton pro- fi-aw-d to describe a nundjer of residence halls previously over-looked, •in other words Inns, or Tipi)ling Houses; or, as our colleges are at presi-nt. I'laa s of Entertainimnt,' the 'Libraries founded in our Coffee- Housis. for the benefit of such of the Academics as have neglected, or lost, their Latin and Greek,' in which the JIagazines, Reviews, Novels, Occasional I'wms, and Political I'ampldets were supplied. And, 'as there are here Books suited to every Taste, so there are Liquors adapted to every species of reading,' for Politics, coffee, for Divinity, Port, and 80 on. Then there were a number of schools not commonly included in the guide-books: among them 'three spacious and superb Edifices, situ- ated to the southward of the High-Street, 100 feet long, by 30 in breadth, vulgarly called Tenim Courts, where Exercise is regularly performed both morning and afternoon. Add to these, certain Schools familiarly denominated Billiard Tables, where the Laws of Motion are exemplified, and which may be considered as a necessary Supplement to our Courses of E.vperimental Philosophy. Nor must we omit the many Nine-pin and Skittle-Alleys, open and dry, for the instruction of Scholars in Geometrical Knowledge, and particularly, for proving the centripetal prinei|)le.' Among public edifices he solemnly noted the stocks, the town- pump and 'PEXNYLESS BENCH "a Place properly dedicated to the MUSES, [where] History and Tradition, report, that many eminent Poets have been Bcnchfrs,'" enumerating among them Phillips and the author of the Panecjtjric on Oxford Ale. Although Oxford was perhaps no longer a power in the intellectual world, it was still one of the few places in England where there were any considerable libraries or facilities for study, and there was always there a little group of devoted scholars and serious men who used the abundant leisure afforded by the laxity of college discipline for individ- ual research and study. A few such names redeemed the dishonour of Oxford during the eighteenth century. There have always been at Oxford a few scholars who were genuinely devoted to the classics. There were others whose interests centered in literary and historical antiiiuities, but who, because of the general contempt for such subjects and their own inability either to command respect for their work or to divert their interest to more immediately useful channels, fell under a certain obloquy as 'mere Antiquarians.' But however small were the "1-60? ^'Quotations from the second edition, London (1762?). 19 J OXFORD 19 results of their laborious studies, they kept alive ami transmitted to their successors in more favourable days an ardent interest in scholar- ship. Hickes actually made the study of Anglo-Saxon somewhat the rage among this class of students at Oxford at the beginning of the century, and his influence was perpetuated in the founding of the Raw- linson professorship by a member of his College (St. John's) about the middle of the century, an endowment which became effectual at its close wheu Anglo-Saxon scholarship was coming into its own. Trinity College, too, had its antiquarian tradition, best represented by John Aubre.y, who contributed his manuscript Minutes of Lives to Anthony a Wood's Antiquities of Oxford; Thomas Coxeter, an industrious collector of old English plays, who was still living when Thomas Warton went up to Trinity and from whom he must have gained what was more valuable than notes for his History of English Poetry, access to his collection of plays ; and Francis Wi.se, tlie archeologist and under keeper of the Bodleian, at whose home at Ellsfield Warton was a frequent and welcome guest, and who helped liim with his Life of Bathurst. In this connection Robert Lowth, 1)ishop of London, poetrj^ professor when Warton went to Oxford and one of the most distinguished Oxford men of the eighteenth century, cannot be overlooked. Warton gave him some slight assistance with his life of Wykeham,''- and perhaps received from him the suggestion for his lives of the founder and a president of his college. Sir Thomas Pope and Ralph Bathurst. Such was the state of Oxford when Warton matriculated in 1744; such it practically remained during the forty -seven years he lived there. And no one was more keenly alive than he to all its possibilities of pleasure and profit. Although most of his life was passed within the boundaries of college walls, of the 'High,' the 'Broad,' and the 'Corn,' of Cherwell and Isis and the adjacent parks and water-walks, he was master of every inch of that domain and was equally at home in his own common-room and 'Captain Jolly's,' among his fellow dons and the watermen along the river. He found at Oxford many other charms besides a favourable place to study, with ample leisure, and in an atmosphere permeated with the spirit of centuries of learning. It was to him the source of keen sesthetie pleasure. With appreciative eyes he viewed the Thames and Cherwell with their 'willow-fringed banks,' the charming water-walks bordered with fiue old trees whose protruding roots and mossy trunks afforded many a delightful place to read, while the gently-rolling meadows beyond invited to morning rambles when the fields were purpling under the rising sun and the birds were begin- ning their songs.*^ These he may well have preferred to the more arti- ^-Letter from Lowth to Warton, Oct. 20, 1757. Wooll, Op. cit., pp. 249-252. ■•^Ode, Morning. The Author confined to College. 20 THOMAS WARTON [20 ficial beauties of his own college gardens, then in their prime of eight- eenth eentury toi>iary formality, with their 'walls all round cover 'd witli Green Yew in I'annelwork' enclosing a 'wilderness extremely de- lightful with variety of mazes, in which 'tis easy for a man to lose himself.' It is pretty unlikely that Warton was often tempted to sit down and study on the benches placed 'here and there in this Laby- rinth;' he. at least, preferred the 'setlgy banks' of Cherwell to the 'neat Fountain witli Artitieial Flowers on the Surface of the Water.'" The real glory of the garden, then as now, must have been the beautiful avenue of lime trees to the north of the labyrinth, which had been planted tliirty years before Warton came to Trinity, and whose arches and knarlfd boughs probably even then resembled the wood-timbered roof of a mediieval hall. The fine old Gothic buildings of the University delighted even more. No one, perhaps, has viewed them with more enthusiastic appre- ciation than Thomas Warton. In an age that despised tlie Gothic his admiration for it grew steadily, and liis taste was no doubt stimulated by the fine old gateway of Magdalen College, on wliich he was especially fond of gazing.*' His Triumph of Isis contains a tribute to the beauties of Oxford, — Ye fretted pinnacles, ye fanes sublime, Ye towers that wear the mossy vest of time; Ye massy piles of old munificence. At once the pride of learning and defence ; Ye cloisters pale, that lengthening to the sight. To contemplation, step by step, invite ; Ye high-arch'd walks, where oft the whispers clear Of harps unseen have swept the poet's car ; Ye temples dim, where quiet duty pays Her holy hymns of ever-echoing praise; Lo ! your lov'd Isis, from the bordering vale. With all a mother's fondness bids you hail ! Especially during his first years at Oxford Warton probably did not devote himself exclusively to scholarly pursuits, but tasted the robuster pleasures and petty trials of the lighter side of Oxford life, contributing his share to an afternoon's pleasure at Wolvereote, enter- ing with zest into games of skittles, excursions on the river by wherry, or cros.s-country gallops, and finishing the day's pleasures with a 'care- less round in Iligh-street' with calls at 'Jolly's for the casual draught.'** This aspect of his college career is reflected in his early humorous "J. Pointer's Oxford Guide, 1749, quoted by H. E. D. Blakiston. friiiity Col- lege, London, 1898, p. 201. *i>Mant. Op. cit., p. c, quoting the Biografhical Dictionary. "Warton's Ode to a Grisslc Wig. 21] OXFORD 21 academic poems witli a lively realism that betrays actual experience of the joys and sorrows they describe. My sober evening let the tankard bless, With toast embrown'd, and fragrant nutmeg fraught, While the rich draught with oft-repeated whiffs Tobacco mild improves. Divine repast I Where no crude surfeit, or intemperate joys Of lawless Bacchus reign ; but o'er my soul A calm Lethean creeps ; in drowsy trance Each thought subsides, and sweet oblivion wraps My peaceful brain, as if the leaden rod Of magic Morpheus o'er mine eyes had shed Its opiate influence. What tho' sore ills Oppress, dire want of chill-dispelling coals Or cheerful candle (save the make-weight's gleam Haply remaining) heart-rejoicing ALE Cheers the sad scene, and every want supplies.'" Lines surely ' with honest love Of ALE divine inspir'd, and love of song! On the other hand the petty annoyances are no less realistically represented, — the vacant afternoons — When tatter'd stockings ask my mending hand Not unexperienc'd, and 'the tedious toil Slides unregarded' comforted by draughts of ' all-pow 'rful ALE;' the inevitable daj's of reckoning after careless joys when . . . generous Captain JOLLY ticks no more,**' Nor SHEPPARD, barbarous matron, longer gives The wonted trust.'" and Th' unpitying Bursar's cross-affixing hand Blasts all my joys, and stops my glad career,'"' and the invasion of his Eden by irate tradesmen, — the 'plaintive voice Of Laundress slirill,' the 'Barber spruce,' the 'Taylor with obsequious bow,' and the Groom 'with defying front And stern demeanour.' Warton's poetical gift at times combined with his genial spirits to enliven somewhat the tedium of college life. Among the poetasters of the Bachelor's Common Room he started an amusing organization of the bachelors, which provided for the annual election, 'on Tuesday imme- diately after Mid-Lent Sunday,' of a 'Lady Patroness' from among the "Panegyric on Oxford Ale. *'The Oxford Newsman's Verses, for the year 1767. *^P(iiiegyric on Oxford Ale. THOMAS WAKTON [22 Oxfonl 'Toasts' aii.l a 'I'(K-t Laurt-at' to sing her charms for the ainuse- iiu'iit of thi- otli.r Imcliflurs wliilc thi-y eoiisumcd a bottli' of wine 'from thi-ir publii-k Stwk.' an.l liiv.Tt.-d thi'msilvis at the expense of their Laureate, who read his 'Verses before the Court' wearing 'a Chaplet of Laurel coini)osfd by tlie Conuaon-Room JIan after the manner of the Ancients.''" Warton iiinisi-lf served in the capacity of laureate for tlie first two years of tlie club's existence, but his verses to Miss Jenny Cotes and Miss Molly Wilinot have never been thought worthy of being transferred to any edition of his poems from the red-morocco- bound quarto in which they were carefully copied by the Common- Room man.' Warton seems to have been tlie life of the club, and after he deserted tlie Bachelors' for the Fellows' Common Room, the club languished; its records became intermittent and finally ceased altogether.''^ In this atmosphere of mingled gaiety and work, in this environ- ment of obvious pleasure and obscure study, Warton spent an active but uneventful life. Immediately upon taking his first degree he entered holy orders and became a tutor. Shortly after he had proceeded Master of Arts, he succeeded to a fellowship, and he remained a tutor and fellow of Trinity all his life. In this way he escaped the struggle for a livelihood which darkened the early years of some of his con- temporaries. Warton knew nothing of the hard life of Grub Street nor tlie bitti'r disappointments against which his friend Dr. Johnson had contended. His academic and clerical preferments ensured him a com- fortable, I'ven a luxurious, living, congenial surroundings, libraries, and probably the most convenient facilities for literary work to be found anywhere in England, and a considerable amount of leisure to devote to his favourite jnirsuits. Warton seems never to have regarded him- self as a professional man of letters. His first love, his first interest, was Oxford ; his first loyalty, his first duty, was to her. And if he was '"St.itiitcs Ordered and .Agreed upon by the Members of tlic Batchellors' Com- mon Room. This book, in which the minutes of the club were kept, was deposited in Trinity College Library in November, 1820, and it was there that, through the kindness of Mr. Green, the present librarian, I examined the curious old book. "They were printed in the Gentleman's Magasine, vol. LXVI, p. 236. In one of Warton's notebooks in Trinity College Library at O.xford is a bit *f verse of a similar sort, called 'E.xtempore on a Lady with fine Eyes & bad Voice', as follows : 'Oxonia's Sons fair Arnold view At once with Love and wonder. She bears Jove's Lightening in her Eyes, But in her Voice his Thunder. Oxon. Sept. 17, 1752.' '=In 17&4. 23] OXFORD 23 somewhat remiss iu his lectures, he had every encouragement to be so; and he more than once suffered liis own work to languish while he devoted himself to his pupils. It was very natural that Warton sliould be in a certain sense indolent. Without the spur of necessity to keep him steadily at one piece of work until it was finished, without great ambition for academic or church preferment, without the incentive of conspicuous examples of important scholarship, with abundant poetical taste, but without much creative poetical genius, with great abilities and an enthusiastic interest in a wide range of subjects, it was eas.y for him to drift from one subject to another, to have his energies frequently diverted into new channels. He passed with perfect ease and unabated enthusiasm from poetry to criticism, from antiquarian to classical research, from literary history to the editing of his favourite poet. And his work has all the merits of a labour of love : enthusiasm, appreciative criticism, sympa- thetic interpretation and thoroughness in purpose, if not always in accomplishment ; it is distinguished in everj' field. CHAPTER II Earlt Poetry, Published Before 1777 Naturally enough Warton first attempted to express his genius in pot^ry, and the bulk though not the best of his poems were written while" lie was yet a young man. Then, because the age in which he lived was unfavourable to poetry, especially the new kind that he was writing, and because, as Christopher North said, 'the gods had made him poet- ical, but not a poet,'' he turned later to criticism and history where he won more immediate as well as more enduring fame. He did not, however, so completely abandon poetry as not to produce some pieces which, when compared with the work of his contemporaries, have real intrinsic value and take an important place in the development of poetry in his century. Moreover, his early verse, though largely imitative, imitates new models, the poet's favourites, Spenser and Milton, more than the pseudo-classical models, and shows a real originality in its introduction of the Gothic or mediaeval subjects in which the poet was always deeply interested, in its genuine interest in nature, and in its attempts of the sonnet form. Besides this, his verse illustrates more completely than that of any one of his contemporaries the whole change that was taking place in English poetry; it includes practically every tendency of the new movement: the repudiation of the pseudo-classical models, the Spenserian and Miltonic revivals, the return to nature, the cult of soli- tude, the melancholy of the 'grave-yard school,' the interest in the supernatural, and the Gothic revival. Although Warton lacked the lyrical sweetness and poetic insight of his friend Collins — whose quali- ties he could at least appreciate — and the poetic fire and inspiration of Gray — to whom he paid the tribute of a sonnet — these are the poeta with wliom one feels bound to compare him. If he had less poetical genius than either of them, he had at least a greater variety of interests, and he made distinguished contributions in the direction of his principal interests. Mn Hour's Talk about Poctrv, Blackivood's Edinburgh Magii:iiic, XXX, p. 483. 24 25] EARLY POETRY 25 Warton's first published poem,= printed without his name in his brother's thin quarto of Odes on Various Subjects in 1746, was, like his earlier school-boy exercise, a classical imitation. The j'ear before it appeared, when the poet was but seventeen, he had written his first long poem. The Pleasures of Melancholy, and he published it anony- mously in a quarto pamphlet in 1747. The poem shows how devoted a student of Milton the young poet was, the tone and diction being de- cidedly Miltonic although the title and the form were obviously directly suggested by Akenside's much less romantic Pleasures of Imagination. The poem follows the general plan of II Penseroso, being a description of the various pleasures which the man devoted to melancholy contem- plation ma}^ enjoy, and it is fuU of personifications of abstractions and Miltonic epithets and diction. A few typical passages will illustrate both Wartou 's command of blank verse and the influence of Milton : — the invocation, — Mother of musings. Contemplation sage, Whose grotto stands upon the topmost rock Of Teneriff; and such direct allusions as, — the dazzling spells Of wily Comus cheat th' unweeting eye With blear illusion, and persuade to drink That charmed cup, which Reason's mintage fair Unmoulds, and stamps the monster on the man ; and, — The taper'd choir, at the late hour of pray'r, Oft let me tread, while to th' according voice The many-sounding organ peals on high, The clear slow-dittied chaunt, or varied hymn, Till all my soul is bath'd in ecstasies. And lapp'd in Paradise.^ The whole poem is saturated too with the melancholy of the grave- yard school of poets, and passages can be selected which seem to have been directly inspired by various of their poems. The j'oung poet gives every evidence of having tried his hand in the style of each of them; but he combined the results into a whole with some characteristic addi- 'To a Fountain. Imitated from Horace, Ode Kill, Book III, p. 32 in War- ton's Odes. A small collection of poems. Five Pastoral Eclogues, which was published anonymously in 1745 and subsequently in Pearch's Continuation of Dodsley's Col- lection, has been attributed to Warton, but probably erroneously. At least he never acknowledged them, and his sister assured Bishop Mant that he positively disclaimed them. Mant, Op. cit., p. xiv. ^Cf. II Penseroso, lines 161-6. 26 ' THOMAS WARTON [26 tioiis of Ilis own. Among: the linos tliat show Warton's debt to the early poets of the nielaneholy scliool tiie following are obviously imita- tions of Parnell and Young, — But when the world Is clad in Midnight's raven-coloiir'd robe, 'Mid hollow charncl let me watch the flame Of taper dim. shedding a livid glare O'er the wan heaps; while airy voices talk Along the glimm'ring walls; or ghostly shape At distance seen, invites with beck'ning hand My lonesome steps, thro' the far-winding vaults. Nor undelightful is the solemn noon Of night, when haply wakeful from my couch I start : lo. all is motionless around ! Roars not the rushing wind; the sons of men And every beast in mute oblivion lie; .Ml nature's hush'd in silence and in sleep. O then how fearful is it to reflect. That thro' the still globe's awful solitude, No being wakes but me ! The description of 'fall'n Persepolis' was surely written with Dyer's Ruins of Rome fresh in memory, — Here columns heap'd on prostrate columns, torn From their firm base, increase the mould'ring mass. Far as the sight can pierce, appear the spoils Of sunk magnificence ! a blended scene Of moles, fanes, arches, domes and palaces, Where, with his brother Horror, Ruin sits. The description of the morning rain-storm, no doubt suggested by Thomson and not without echoes of Spenser, bears at the same time unmistakable evidence of Warton's close observation of rural scenes and his ability to portray them in simple but clear outlines, — Yet not ungrateful is the morn's approach, When dropping wet she comes, and clad in clouds, While thro' the damp air scowls the louring south, Blackening the landscape's face, that grove and hill In formless vapours undistinguish'd swim; Th' afflicted songsters of the sadden'd groves Hail not the sullen gloom; the waving elms That, hoar tliro' time, and rang'd in thick array. Enclose with stately row some rural hall, Are mute, nor echo with the clamors hoarse Of rooks rejoicing on their airy boughs; While to the shed the dripping poultry crowd, A mournful train: secure the village-hind Hangs o'er the crackling blaze, nor tempts the storm; Fix'd in th' unfinish'd furrow rests the plough. 27] EARLY POKTRY 27 This choice of models was not accidental even from the first ; it was part of a consistent and deliberate reaction against the prevailing mod- els and a rejection of them. His preference for Spenser rather than Pope Warton stated expressly in this first long poem and defended on the very 'romantic' ground that livelier imagination and warmer pas- sion are aroused by the artless magic of the Faerie Queene than by the artificial brilliance of the Rape of the Lock, — Thro' POPE'S soft song tho' all the Graces breathe, And happiest art adorn his Attic page ; Yet does my mind with sweeter transport glow, As at the root of mossy trunk reclin'd. In magic SPENSER'S wildly warbled song I see deserted Una wander wide Thro' wasteful solitudes, and lurid heaths, Weary, forlorn ; than when the fated fair Upon the bosom bright of silver Thames Launches in all the lustre of brocade, Amid the splendors of the laughing Sun. The gay description palls upon the sense. And coldly strikes the mind with feeble bliss.* Warton 's relation to the melancholy group of poets who drew their inspiration largely from II Pciiseroso is, moreover, not that of a mere imitator. He made positive contributions to that style of poetry by contriving to preserve a more objective tone in his own melancholy and by introducing the Gothic note'* tliat later frequently became dominant in his own verse and constituted his distinctive contribution to poetry. Of even greater importance is the fact that he may fairly be credited with having influenced pretty directly the greatest poem of the elegiac school, Gray's Elegy in a Countrtj Church-yard. The following passage gives the setting for Gray's poem too clearly for the similarity to be dismissed as altogether accidental, — Beneath yon ruin"d abbey's moss-grown piles Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, Where thro' some western window the pale moon Pours her long-levell'd rule of streaming light ; While sullen sacred silence reigns around, *This brief but happy comparison of Pope's verse with Spenser's expresses the same idea that was given fuller discussion nearly ten j'ears later by the poet's brother in his revolutionary Essay on Pope, 1756. 'The poem also gives evidence of Warton's interest in native mythology : 'Contemplation' is represented as having been found by a Druid Far in a hollow glade of Mona's woods, and carried to the 'close shelter of his oaken bow'r' where she lov'd to lie Oft deeply list'ning to the rapid roar Of wood-hung Meinai, stream of Druids old. 28 THOMAS WARTON [28 Save the lone schreech-owl's note, who builds his bow'r Amid the mould'ring caverns dark and damp, Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests some wasted tow'r. The additional fact tliat Gray took up again in the winter of 1749 — two years after The Pleasures of MeUinchohj was published— the poem he had begun several years earlier" increases the likelihood that War- ton's poem prompted and influenced the completion of his own : — Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r The mopeing owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wand'ring near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Warton's devotion to his Alma Mater inspired the Triumph of I sis, in 1749, the first poem to attract the attention of the academic world. The year before, William Mason, in Isis: an Elegy, had glanced at the Jacobite leanings of Oxford as tliey had given rise to a foolish drunken out-break which had been carried to tlie King's bench and had reflected dishonour upon the heads of some of the colleges. Warton, encouraged by Dr. Iluddesford, the president of Trinity, hastened to the defense of his university in a poem that at least surpassed Mason's. The youth- ful poet received a substantial compliment from Dr. King, whom he had especially commended, and who left five guineas with Daniel Prince, the bookseller, to be given to the author. The Triumph of Isis is not one of Warton's best poems. It is largely pseudo-classical in its tise of the heroic couplet, its artificial diction, — such as 'vernal bloom,' 'oliv'd portal,' 'pearly grot,' 'floating pile,' 'dalliance with the tuneful Nine,'^ and in its stereotyped classical allusions. It is full of Miltonic personi- fications of abstractions and places mingled with the deities and heroes of classical myth and history ; we meet with Freedom and Gratu- lation, Cam and Isis, Muse and Naiad, Tully, Cato and Eurus. But there is quite as much mediaeval colouring. Warton's characteristic love of the past appears in one of the finest passages in the poem in which his admiration for Gothic architecture is only second to his love of Oxford.' Following the appearance of these poems Warton was asked to con- tribute to the Student, or, the Oxford, and Cambridge Monthly Miscel- lany, and brought out four poems of earlier composition which were •See Gray's Works, ed. Gosse, I, p. 72. 'Quoted p. 20. 29] EARLY POETRY 29 printed over various signatures.* One, Morning. The Author confined to College, in six line stanzas, shows some influence of Milton and a personal enjoyment of natural scenes, and one is a paraphrase of Job XXXIX in heavy couplets, unlike any other of Warton's verse. Two of the poems were humorous academic verse, experiments in satire and burlesque in the taste of the Augustans. The earliest of them, the Progress of Discontent,^ written in 1746, was considered by the poet's brother, who may not have been an impartial critic, the best imitation of Swift that had ever appeared." It is a mild satire upon the career of many a young man who, with discontented indolence rather than ambi- tion, sought advancement through the university and church, and the story is told in vigorous Hudibrastic measure with considerable relish and spirit. The Panegyric on Oxford Alc^^ is probably the best of his humorous academic pieces. It is a burlesque of ililton's epic style after the manner of Phillips's Splendid Shilling. The blank verse is weU managed, and the mock dignified humour well kept up throughout the poem. The models are unmistakable ; there are direct allusions to both, and the poem concludes with comparing the imhappiness of the poet whose supply of ale is cut off with that of Adam shut out from Paradise, — a grief he professed to share in common with his master, the author of the Splendid Shilling, — Thus ADAM, exil'd from the beauteous scenes Of Eden, griev'd, no more in fragrant bow'r On fruits divine to feast, fresh shade and vale No more to visit, or vine-mantled grot ; Thus too the matchless bard, whose lay resounds The SPLENDID SHILLING'S praise, in nightly gloom Of lonesome garret, pin'd for cheerful ALE; Whose steps in verse Miltonic I pursue, Mean follower : like him with honest love Of ALE divine inspir'd, and love of song. But long may bounteous Heav'n with watchful care Avert his hapless lot ! Enough for me ^A Panegyrick on Ale, signed T. W. x. y. z., p. 65-8; Morning. An Ode, signed /. /. Trin. Coll. Cambridge, p. 234-5 1 The Progress of Discontent, signed T. W. X. y. z., p. 23S-8; Job, Chapter XXXIX, signed e, p. 278-9. O.xford, 1750, vol. I. "The poem was founded on a Latin exercise which was commended by Dr. Huddesford, and at his request thus paraphrased in English. Mant, Op. cit., II, p. 192. i°J. Warton's edition of Pope, 9 vols. London, 1797, 11, p. 302. "Quoted above p. 21. 30 TUpMAS WARTON [30 That burning with congenial flame I dar'd His guiding steps at distance to pursue. And sing his favorite theme in kindred strains. In tlu- suiiu- vcar Wartoii matle two ofluT modest ofTt-rings, both of sliglit iiniwrtanci-! Xv tlios." wlio havi- laid down Rules for the Art of Poetry.'" llll^'ll.•s"'s i.lcas of wliat slioiild constitute successfid allegory were there- fore embodied in his Kssay un AlUgorUul Poetry, by the uncertain light of which the critic hoped 'uot only to discover many Beauties in the Fdini Qurin, but likewise to excuse some of its Irregularities.'" Iliigii.-s tlid not, however, yield to the spell of 'magic Spenser's wildlv-\variiled .song." While he admitted that his fable gave 'the greatest Sco|)e to that Range of Fancy which was so remarkably his Talent ■'" and that his plan, though not well chosen, was at least well execute.l and adapted to his talent, he apologized for and excused both fable and plan on the score of the Italian models which he followed, and the remnants of the 'old Gothic Chivalry" wliicli yet survived. The only praise he could give the poem was wholly pseudo-classical, — for the moral and ditlaetic bent which the poet had contrived to give the allegory,^" and for some fine passages where the author 'rises above himself and imitates the ancients.-' In spite of his statement that the Fairy Queen was uot to be examined by the strict rules of epic poetry, he could not free himself from that bondage, and the most of his essay is taken up with a discussion of the poem in the light of the rules. Moreover Hughes was but ill-equipped for his task : he failed even to realize that a great field of literary history must be thoroughly explored before the task of elucidating Spenser could be intelligently undertaken, and that genuine enthusiasm for the poet could alone arouse much interest in him. These are the reasons why nearly forty ye'ars elapsed before the edition was reprinted, and why it failed to give a tremendous impetus to the Spenserian revival. Yet, notwithstanding its defects, it is extremely im])ortant that Hughes should have undertaken at all the editing of so neglected a poet.-- It is a straw that points the direction of the wind. The next attempt at Spenserian criticism was a small volume of Remarks on Spenser's Poems and on Milton's Paradise Regained, pub- lished anonymously in 1734, and soon recognized as the work of Dr. Jortin, a classical scholar of some repute. This is practically valueless as a piece of criticism. But Jortin was at least parth' conscious of his '''Essay on Allegorical Poetry, I, p. xxi. '^Remarks on the Fairy Queen, I, p. xlii. '»/6i(/. I. p. xliv. -"Ibid. I, p. xl. Essay on Allegorical Poetry. ^'Ibid. I, p. 1. =-The neglect of Spenser is licst shown by the few editions of either the Fairy Queen or tlie complete works which had appeared since the first three books of the former were pul)lished in 1590. Faerie Queene, 1st. ed. 4to. 1590-6: 2nd, 1596; 3rd, fol., 1609; Birch ed. 3 vols. 4to. 1751. Poetical Works, ist fol. ed. 1611; 2nd, 1617-18; 3rd. 1679. Hughes, ist ed. 1715, 2nd, 1750. 43] CRITICISM 43 failure and of a reason for it, though he was more auxious to liavc the exact text determined by a 'collation of Editions, and by comparing the Author with himself than to furnish an interpretive criticism; and he acknowledged himself unwilling to bestow the necessary~time and applica- tion for the work,-'' — a gratifying acknowledgement of the fact tliat no valuable work could be done in this field without sj)ecial preparation for it. And when Thomas Warton was able to bring this special prepara- tion for the first time to the study of the Fairy Queen, he produced a revolution in criticism. Freed from the tyranny of the rules by the perception of their limitations, he substituted untried aveimes of approach and juster standards of criticism, and revealed beauties which could never have been discovered with the old restrictions. That he should be witliout trace of pseudo-classicism is something we cannot expect; but tliat his general critical method aiui princijdes are ultimately irreconcilable with even the most generous interpretation of that term is a conclusion one cannot escape after a careful study of the Observa- tions on fhe Fairy Queen. Briefly, the causes of Warton 's superiority over all previous critics of Spenser, the reasons why he became through this piece of critical writing the founder of a new kind of criticism, are four. First, he recognized the inadequacy of the classical rules, as interpreted by Boileau and other modern commentators, as standards for judging modern literature, and declared his independence of them and his intention of following new methods based upon the belief that the author's purpose is at least as important a subject for critical study as the critic's theories and that imagination is as important a factor in creative literature as reason. Second, he introduced the modern historical method of criticism by recognizing that no work of art could be independently judged, isolated from the conditions under which it was produced, without reference to the influences which determined its character, and without considering its relation to other literatures. In taking this broad view of his subject, Warton was, of course, recognizing the necessity for a comparative study of literature. In the third place, and as a conse- quence of this independence and this greater breadth of view, Warton understood more fully than his contemporaries the true relation between classical and modern literature, understood that the English writers of the boasted Augustan age, in renouncing their heritage from the middle ages, had deprived themselves of the qualities which alone could have redeemed their desiccated pseudo-classicism. And last, Warton made a place in criticism for the reader's spontaneous delight and enthusiasm. -'Jortin's conclusion quoted in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, II, p. S3. H. E. Cory says nothing of Jortin's Remarks in his monograph, The Critics of Edmund Spenser, Univ. of California Pub. in Mod. Phil. II ; 2, pp. 71-182. 44 THOMAS WARTON [44 Few critics of tlie eighteenth century recognized any difference botwctMi th<'ir own rules and jiractipe and those of the ancients, or saw the need for niodiTn standards for judging modern poems. Just here comes the important and irreparable break between Warton and his contem- poraries. While Hughes and the rest attempted to justify Spenser by pointing out conformities to the rules=* where they existed or might be fancied, and condemned his practice when they failed to find any, Warton was at some pains to show that Hughes failed and that such critics must fail because their critical method was wrong." He pointed out that the Fairy Qiuai cannot be judged by rule, that the 'plan and conduct' of Spenser's poem 'is highly exceptionable', 'is confused and irregular', and has 'no general unity';-" it fails completely when examined by the rules. To Warton this clearly showeil the existence of another standard of criticism — not the Aristotelian, but the poet's: Spenser had not tried to write like Homer, but like Ariosto; his standard was romantic, not cla.ssical ; and he was to be judged by what he tried to do. Warton 's declaration of independence of pseudo-classical criticism was a conscious revolt; yet it was one to which he made some effort to win the as.sent of his contemporaries by conceding that Spenser's frequent extravagances" did violate the rules approved by an age that took pride in its critical taste. His desire to engage their interest, however, neither succeeded in that purpose nor persuaded him that those rules were properly applied to poems written in ignorance of them. There is no uncertainty, no coniprniiiise with pseudo-classical criticism in the flat defiance, 'it is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did not attend to.'-^ Having thus condemned the accepted standards as inadequate for a just criticism of the Fairy Qiiccn, Warton 's next purpose was to find those by which it could be properly judged: not the rules of which the poet was ignorant, but the literature with which he was familiar. He recognized quite clearly a distinction between a classical and a romantic poet, and accounted for it by a difference of circumstances. Warton 's even then extensive knowledge of the neglected periods of earlier English literature gave him a power that most of his contemporaries lacked and 2*Dryden had done the same thing in the Dedication to the Translation of Juvenal by pointing out how the character of Prince Arthur 'shines throughout the whole poem,' and Warton took issue squarely with him on the point and denied any such unity. See Observations, I, p. lo-ll. Addison used the same method in his papers on Paradise Lost. Beni was probably the originator of this sort of mis- applied criticism in his comparison of Tasso with Homer and Virgil. I, p. 3. -^Ibid. I, p. II S. '"Ibid. I, p. 17. "Ibid. I. p. 18. ''Ibid, I, p. 21. 45] CRITICISM 45 enabled him to see that Spenser's peculiarities were those of his age, that the 'knights and damsels, the tournaments and enchantments, of Spenser' were not oddities but the familiar and admired features of ro- mance, a prevailing literary form of the age, and that 'the fashion of the times' determined Spenser's purpose of becoming a 'romantic Poct.'-^ Warton determined therefore not only to judge but to praise Spen- ser as a romantic'" poet. He found that as the characteristic appeal of pseudo-classical poetry was to the iutellect, to the reason, romantic poetry addressed itself to the feelings, to the imagination. Its excel- lence, therefore, consisted not in design and proportion, but in interest and variety of detail. The poet's business was 'to engage the fancy, and interest the attention by bold and striking images, in the formation, and the disposition of. which, little labour or art was applied. The various and marvelous were the chief sources of delight '.'• Hence Spenser had ransacked 'reality and romance', 'truth and fiction' to adorn his 'fairy structure', and "Warton revelled in the result, in its very form- lessness and richness, which he thoiight preferable, in a romantic poem, to exactness. 'Exactness in his poem,' he said, 'would have been like the cornice which a painter introduced in the grotto of Calypso. Spen- ser's beauties are like the flowers in Paradise. '"- Wlien beauties thus transcend nature, delight goes beyond reason. Warton did not shrink from the logical result of giving rein to imagina- tion ; he was willing to recognize the romantic quest for beauties beyond the reach of art, to sacrifice reason and 'nature methodiz'd' in an exaltation of a higher quality which rewarded the reader with a higher kind of enjojTnent. 'If the Fairy Queen,' he said, 'be destitute of that arrangement and seconomy which epic severity requires, yet we scarcely regret the loss of these, while their place is so amply supplied by some- thing which more powerfully attracts us: something which engages the affections, the feelings of the heart, rather than the cold approbation of the head. If there be any poem whose graces please, because they are situated beyond the reach of art, and where the force and faculties of creative imagination^' delight, because they are unassisted and unre- -^Ibid. II, p. -2. ■"■"Warton used the word romantic as a derivative of romance, implying the characteristics of the medixval romances, and I have used the word frequently in this chapter with that meaning. ^'^Ibid. I, p. 22. ^-Ibid. I, p. 23. ^^Without the same precision in nomenclature but with equal clearness of idea Warton distinguished between creative and imaginative power in exactly the same way that Coleridge diiTerentiated imagination and fancy. He did not compose exact philosophical definitions of the two qualities, but in a careful contrast between the poetic faculties of Spenser and Ariosto, he made the same distinction. Spenser's 46 THOMAS WARTON [46 straiiioil by those of deliberate judgment, it is this. In reading Spenser, if the eritic is not satisfied, yet tlie reader is transported.''* When Warton thus made a phiee for transport in a critical dis- course, he had parted company witli his contemjjoraries and opened the way for the whole romantic exaltation of feeling. He had turned from Dr. Jolinson, who condemned 'all power of fancy over reason' as a "dctrrec of insanity ','' and faced toward Blake, who exalted the imagination anil called reason the only evil."" Every propriety of Queen Anne criticism had now been violated. Not satisfied with condemning all previous Spenserian criticism as all but nonsense, Warton dared to place the uncritical reailer's delight above the critic's deliberate dis- approval, and tlieii to commend that enthusiasm and the beauties that aroused it. In repudiating the pseudo-classical rules, Warton enunciated two revolutionary dicta: there are other critical standards than those of Boileau and the ancients (save the mark!) ; there are other poetical beauties than tho.se of Pope and 'nature methodiz'd.' Revolutionary as he was in his enjoyment of Spenser's fable, War- ton had not at the time he wrote the Observations freed himself from the pseudo-classical theories of versification and he agreed with his prede- ces.sors in his discussion of this subject. Altough he did not feel the nine- teenth century romanticist's entliusiasm for Spenser's versification, he was nevertiieless sufficiently the poet to appreciate and to enjoy his suc- cess with it. 'It is indeed surprising,' he said, 'that Spenser should exe- cute a poem of uncommon length, with so nuich spirit and ease, laden as he was with so many shackles, and embarrassed with so eoniplieated a bondage of riming His sense and sound are equally flowing and uninterrupted.'^' Similarly, with respect to language, we neither expect nor find enthusiasm. Warton thought Jonsou 'perhaps unrea- sonable,''" and found the origin of his language in the language of his age, as he found the origin of his design in its romances. Long acquaint- power, imagination, he described as creative, vital ; it endeavours to body forth the unsubstantial, to represent by visible and external symbols the ideal and abstracted. (II, p. 77.) Ariosto's faculty, fancy, he called imitative, lacking in inventive power. (I, p. 308; II, p. 78.) Although Warton at times applied the term imagination loosely to both, there was no confusion of ideas ; when he used both terms it was with the difference in meaning just described. In speaking of the effect of the marvels of romance upon the poetic faculty he said they 'rouse and invigorate all the powers of imagination' and 'store the fancy with . . . images.' (II, p. 323.) ^*Ibid. I, p. 24. ^'•Rassdas. Ch. XLIV. •'"'H. C. Robinson: Diary. Ed. Sadler, Boston 1870, II, p. 43. '"Ofcj. I, pp. 168-170. ^*In his opinion that 'Spenser, in affecting the ancients, writ no language*. I, p. 184. 47] CRITICISM 47 ance enabled him to read the Fairy Queen with ease; he denied that Spenser's language was either so affected or so obsolete as it was gener- ally supposed, and asserted that 'For many stanzas together we may frequently read him with as much facility as we can the same number of lines in Shakespeare."' In his approval and appreciation of Spen- ser's moral purpose Warton was, of course, nearer to his pseudo-classical predecessors than to his romantic followers ; however, without relin- quishing that prime virtue of the old school, the solidity which comes from well-establislied principles, he attained to new virtues, greater catho- licity of taste and flexibility of judgment. In seeking in the literature of and before the sixteenth century and in the manners and customs of the 'spacious times of great Elizabeth' for the explanation of Spenser's poem — so far as explanation of genius is possible — "Warton was, as has been said, laying the foundations of modern historical criticism. Some slight progress had been made in this direction before, but without important results. Warton was by no means original in recognizing Spenser's debt to the Italian romances which were so popular in his day, and to Ariosto in particular. And many critics agreed that he was 'led by the prevailing notions of his age to write an irregular and romantic poem.' They, however, regarded his age as one of barbarity and ignorance of the rules, and its literature as unworthy of study and destitute of intrinsic value. No critic before Warton had realized the importance of supplementing an absolute by an historical criticism, of reconstructing, so far as possible, a poet's environment and the conditions under which he worked, in order to judge his poetrj'. 'In reading the works of a poet who lived in a remote age,' he said, 'it is necessary that we should look back upon the customs and manners which prevailed in that age. We should endeavour to place ourselves in the writer's situation and circumstances. Hence we shall become better enabled to discover how his turn of thinking, and manner of composing, were influenced by familiar appearances and established objects, which are utterly different from those with which we are at present surrounded.'*" And, realizing that the neglect of these details was fatal to good criticism, that the 'commentator*' whose critical enqui- ^^Ibid. I, p. 185. This parallel does not greatly help the case in an age when Attertiury could write to Pope that he found 'the hardest part of Chaucer . . . more intelligible' than some parts of Shakespeare and that 'not merely through the faults of the edition, but the obscurity of the writer.' Pope's Works, Elwin-Courthope ed. IX, p. 26. *°Obs. II, p. 71. ■•^Warton ably and sharply met Pope's attack on Theobald for including in his edition of Shakespeare a sample of his sources, of ' " All such reading as never was read",' and concluded 'If Shakespeare is worth reading, he is worth explain- 48 THOMAS WARTON [48 ries are einploj-ed on Spenser, Jonson, and the rest of our elder poets, will in vain give specimens of his classical erudition, unless, at the same time, he brings to his work a mind intimately' acquainted with those books, which tliough now forgotten, were yet in common use and high repute about the time in which his authors respectively wrote, and wliicli tliey conse(|uently must have read,'*= he resolutely reformed his own practice. Warton not only perceived the necessity of the historical method of studying the older poets, but he had acquired what very few of his conteinporarics had attained, sufficient knowledge of the earlier English literature to undertake such a study of Spenser. He embarked upon the study of the Fuinj Queen, its sources and literary background, with a fund of knowledge which, however much later scholars, who have taken up large lioldings in the territory charted by that pioneer, may un- justly scorn its superficiality or inexactness, was for that time quite excejitional, and which could not fail to illuminate the poem to the point of transfiguration. Every reader of Spenser had accepted his statement that he took Ariosto as his model, but no one before Warton had re- nuirked another model, one closer in respect of matter, which tlie poet no doubt thouglit too obvious to mention, the old romances of chivalry. Warton observed that where Spenser's plan is least like Ariosto 's, it most resembles the romances; that, although he 'formed his Faerie Queene upon the fanciful plan of Ariosto', he formed the particular adventures of his knight upon the romances. 'Spenser's first book is,' he said, 'a regular and precise imitation of such a series of action as we frequently find in books of chivalry.'*^ In proof of Spenser's indebtedness to the romances Warton cited the prevalence of romances of chivalry in his day, and pointed out particular borrowings from this popular poetry. In the first place he insisted again and again not only that the 'encounters of chivalry' which appeared extraordinary to modern eyes were familiar to readers in Spenser's day,** but that the practices of chivalry were even continued ing; and the researches used for so valuable and elegant a purpose, merit the thanks of genius and candour, not the satire of prejudice and ignorance.' II, p. 319. In similar vein he rebuked such of his own critics as found his quotations from the romances 'trifling and uninteresting" : 'such readers can have no taste for Spenser.' I, p. 91. *-Ibid. II, pp. 317-18. *mid. I, p. 26. **And even later to the time of Milton. Warton found Milton's 'mind deeply tinctured with romance reading* and his imagination and poetry affected thereby. I, p. 257 and p. 350. Even Dryden wanted to write an epic about Arthur or the Black Prince but on the model of Virgil and Spenser, not Spenser and the romances. Essay on Satire. i 49] CRITICISM 49 to some extent.*^ Warton's close acquaintance with the literature of the sixteenth century and before showed him that the matter of the romances was common property and liad permeated other works than those of mediivval poets. He discovered that the story of Ai'thur, from which Spenser borrowed most, was so generally kno\vn and so great a favourite that incidents from it were made the basis for entertainment of Elizabeth at Kenilworth,*" and that Arthur and his knights were alluded to by writers so various as Caxton, Aschani, Sidney, Puttenhara, Bacon, and Jouson ;■"" that even Ariosto''* himself borrowed from the story of Arthur. At the same time his first-hand knowledge of the romances enabled him to point out among those which most directly influenced the Fairy Queen Malory's Morte Arthur, the largest contrib- utor, of course, from which such details as the story of Sir Tristram, King Ryence and the Mantle of Beards, the Holy Grail, and the Blatant Beast were drawn;** Bevis of Southampton, which furnished the inci- dent of the well of marvelous healing power j'^" the ballad of the Boy and the Mantle, from the French romance, Le Court Mantel, which sug- gested Spenser's conceit of Florimel's girdle.^' Warton also carefully discussed Spenser's fairy mythologj', which supplanted the classical mythology as his romantic adventures replaced those of antiquity, *^Obs. I, p. 27 and II, pp. 71-72. Warton cited Holinshed's Chronicles (Stowe's contin.) where is an account of a tourney for the entertainment of Queen Eliza- beth, in which Fulke Greville and Sir Philip Sidney, among others, entered the lists. Holin. Chronicles, ed. 1808. IV, p. 437 ff. *'Warton quotes Laneham's 'Letter 'wherein part of the Entertainment untoo the Queen's Majesty at KiJliineorth Casll in IVanvicksheer in this Soomer's prog- ress, 1575, is signified,' and Gascoig^e's Pleasures of Kenilworth Castle, Works, 1576. Obs. I, pp. 41. 43- <'/birf. I, pp. 50-74. *mid. I. pp. 53-57. *^Ibid. I, pp. 27-57. ^"Ibid. I, pp. 69-71. ^^Ibid. I, p. 76. Warton says an 'ingenious correspondent communicated' to him this 'old ballad or metrical romance.' Part of Le Court Mantel he found in Sainte Palaye's Memoires sur I'ancienne Chevalcrie, 1760. Other details, which could not be traced to particular romances, Warton attributed to 'a mind strongly tinctured with romantic ideas.' One of these, the custom of knights swearing on their swords, Upton had explained as derived from the custom of the Huns and Goths, related by Jornandes and Ammianus Marcellinus, but Warton pointed out that it was much more probably derived from the more familiar romances. II, p. 65. A Bodleian MS. containing Sir Degore and other romances is quoted from and described, II, pp. 5-9. 50 THOMAS WAKTON [50 ascribing its origin to romance and folk-lore of Celtic and ultimately Oriental origin.'- As in the case of medieval romance, Warton was the first critic to consider in any detail Spenser's indebtedness to Chaucer. Antiqua- rians and a few poets had been mildly interested in Chaucer, but his importance for the study of the origins of English poetry had been ignored in the prevalent delusion that the classics were the ultimate sources of poetry. Dryden, to be sure, had remarked that Spenser imitated Chaucer's language," and subsequent readers, including War- ton, concurred. But it still remained for Warton to point out that Spenser was also indebted to Chaucer for ideas, and to show the extent and nature of his debt by collecting 'specimens of Spenser's imitations from Chaucer, both of language and sentiment.'" Without, of course, attempting to exhaust the subject, Warton collected enough parallel passages to prove that Spenser was not only an 'attentive reader and professed admirer', but also an imitator of Chaucer. For example, he pointed out that the list of trees in the wood of error was more like Chaucer's in the Assevihly of Foivls than like similar passages in classical poets mentioned by Jortin;''^ that he had borrowed the magic mirror which Merlin gave Ryence from the Squire's Tale,'^^ and from the Ro- mance of tlie Rose, the conceit of Cupid dressed in flowers.^^ By a careful comparison with Chaucer's language, Warton was able to explain some doubtful passages as weU as to show Spenser's draughts from 'the well of English undefiled.' One can scarcely overestimate the importance of Warton 's evident first-hand knowledge of Chaucer in an age when he was principally known only through Dryden 's and Pope's garbled modernizations, or Milton's reference to him who 'left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold.' ^^Ibid. I, pp. 77-89. Warton often used the terms Celtic and Norse very loosely without recognizing the difference. Like Huet and Mallet and other students of romance he was misled by the absurd and fanciful ethnologies in vogue in the 17th and i8th centuries. For his theory of romance see his dissertation 'On the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe' prefixed to the first volume of his History of English Poetry, 1774. '■^Essay on Satire. Dryden frequently referred to Chaucer as Spenser's mas- ter, meaning in the matter of language. See also Dedication of the Pastorals and Preface to the Fables. "Section V 'Of Spenser's Imitations from Chaucer.' ""In his Remarks on Spenser's Poems. See Observations I, p. 190. '■"Ibid. I, p. 205. Warton showed many instances of Spenser's interest in Cambuscan, including his continuation of part of the story. See also pp. 210 ff. "Ibid. I, p. 221. 51] CRITICISM 51 Warton was not satisfied that Chaucer should be studied merely to illustrate Spenser ; he recognized his intrinsic value as well, and suffered his enthusiasm for Chaucer to interrupt the thread of his criticism of Spenser, while he lauded and recommended to his neglectful age the charms of the older poet.^' To be sure his reasons for admiring Chaucer were somewhat too romantic to convince an age that preferred regular beauties; his 'romantic arguments', 'wildness of painting', 'simplicity and antiquity of expression', though 'pleasing to the imagination' and calculated to 'transport us into some fairy region', were certainly not the qualities to attract Upton or Hughes or Dr. Johnson. Unlike the pseudo-classical admirers of Chaucer, Warton held that to read modern imitations was not to know Chaucer; that to provide such substitutes was to contribute rather to the neglect than to the popularity of the original. With characteristic soundness of scholarship he condemned the prevalence of translations because they encouraged 'indolence and illiteracy', displaced the originals and thus gradually vitiated public taste.'^ The study of Spenser's age yielded the third element which Warton introduced into Spenserian criticism — the influence of the mediseval moralities and allegorical masques. Warton 's study of Spenser's alle- gory is of quite another sort than Hughes's essay. Instead of trying to concoct a set of a priori rules for a kind of epic which should find its justification in its moral, Warton, as usual, was concerned with forms of allegory as thej' actually existed and were familiar to his poet, and with the history of allegorical poetry in England. Without denying the important influence of Ariosto, he pointed out that his predecessors had erred in thinking the Orlando Furioso a sufficient model ; he saw that the characters of Spenser's allegory much more resembled the 'emblemat- ical personages, visibly decorated with their proper attributes, and ac- tually endued with speech, motion and life',"" with which Spenser was familiar upon the stage, than the less symbolical characters of Ariosto. Warton could support his position by quoting references in the Fairy ^^Warton found opportunity to express more fully his enthusiasm for Chaucer in a detailed study comparable to this of Spenser, in his History of English Poetry twenty years later. ^^Obs. I, pp. 269-71. Warton extended his criticism to translations of classical authors as well. Of course the greatest of the classicists, Dryden and Johnson, realized the limits of translation, that it was only a makeshift. See Preface to translation of Ovid's epistle, to Sylvce and to the Fables, and Boswell's Johnson, Hill ed. Ill, p. 36. But the popularity of Dryden's translations and the large number of translations and imitations that appeared during his and succeeding generations, justified Warton's criticism. ^''Obs. II, p. 78. 52 THOMAS WARTON l^^ Queen to masques and dumb shows,"' aud by tracing somewhat the prog- ress of allegory iu English poetry before Spenser."- It is characteristic that he sliouldnot have been satisfied to observe that allegory was popu- lar in Spenser "s age, but that he should wish to explain it by a 'retro- spect of English poetry from the age of Spenser.'" Superficial and hasty as this survey is, it must have confirmed Warton's opinion that a thorougli exploration of early English poetry was needed, and so anticipated his magnum opus. And we can find little fault with its con- clusions, even when he says that this poetry 'principally consisted in visions and allegories', when he could add as a matter of information, 'there are, indeed, the writings of some English poets now remaining, who wrote before Gowcr or Chaucer.' In rejecting the conclusions of pseudo-classical criticism, in regard- ing Spenser as the heir of the middle ages, Warton did not by any means overlook the influence of the renaissance, of the classical revival, upon his poetry. His study of the classical sources from wliieh Spenser embellished his plan"^ is as careful and as suggestive as his study of the mediroval sources ; it is not only so strikingly new. His attack on Scali- ger, who subordinated a comparative method to the demonstration of o priori conclusions, shows that he was a sounder classicist than that pseudo-classical leader. Scaliger, he said, more than once 'betrayed his ignorance of the nature of ancient poetry ' f" he ' had no notion of simple and genuine beauty; nor had ever considered the manners and customs which prevailed in early times. '°° Warton was a true classicist in his admiration for Homer and Aristotle, and in his recognition of them as 'the genuine and uncorrupted sources of ancient poetry and ancient criticism ' ;*" but, as has been said, he did not make the mistake of sup- posing them the sources of modern poetry and criticism as well. "Warton shows in this essay an extraordinarily clear recognition of the relation between classical, medieval and modern literatures, and a corresponding adaptation of criticism to it. By a wide application of "/6i(/. II, pp. 78-81. 'Spenser expressly denominates his most exquisite groupe of allegorical figures, the Maske of Cupid. Thus, without recurring to conjec- ture, his own words evidently demonstrate that he sometimes had representations of this sort in his eye.' ''Ibid. II, pp. 93-103. Beginning with .Adam Davy and the author of Piers Plowman. Like Spence, Warton recognized in Sackville's Induction the nearest approach to Spenser, and a probable source of influence upon him. »»/&i"(/. II, p. 92. "•■•/fcirf. I, pp. 92-156. "•Ibid. I, p. 147. "Ibid. I, p. 133. "Ibid. I, p. I. 53] CRITICISM 53 the historical method he saw that English poetry was the joint product of two principal strains, the ancient or classical, and the mediaeval or romantic; and that the poet or critic who neglected either disclaimed half his birthright. The poetry of Spenser's age, Warton perceived, drew from both sources. Although the study of the ancient models was renewed, the 'romantic manner of poetical composition introduced and established by the Provencial bards' was not suiierseded by a 'new and more legitimate taste of writing.' And Warton as a critic accepted — as Scaliger would not — the results of his historical study : he admired and desired the characteristic merits of classical poetry, 'justness of thought and design', 'decorum', 'uniformity',"' he 'so far conformed to the reigning maxims of modern criticism, as ... to recommend clas- sical propriety';'"* but he wished them completed and adorned with the peculiar imaginative beauties of the 'dark ages', those fictions which 'rouse and in\'igorate aU the powers of imagination [and] store the fancy with those sublime and charming images, which true poetry best delights to display.''" The inevitable result of recognizing the relation between the clas- sical and romantic sources of literature was contempt for pseudo-clas- sicism, for those poets and critics who rejected the beauties of romance for the less natural perfections approved by tlie classical and French theorists, who aped the ancients withouf knowing them and despised their own romantic ancestry. The greatest English poets, Warton per- ceived, were those who combined both elements in their poetry ; those who rejected either fell short of the liighest rank. And therefore he perceived the loss to English poetry when, after the decline of romance and allegory, 'a poetry succeeded, in which imagination gave way to correctness, sublimity of description to delicacy of sentiment, and majes- tic imagery to conceit and epigram.' Warton 's brief summary of this poetry points out its weakness. 'Poets began now to be more attentive to words, than to things and objects. The nicer beauties of happy expression were preferred to the daring strokes of great conception. Satire, that bane of the sublime, was imported from France. The muses were debauched at court ; and polite life, and familiar manners, became their only themes. The simple dignity of Milton"' was either entirely neglected, or mistaken for bombast and insipidity, by the refined readers of a dissolute age, whose taste and morals were equally vitiated.'" »8/6,rf. I, p. 2. "^Ibid. 11, pp. 324-5. ''"Ibid. II, pp. 322-3. "There is a digression on Milton in the Observations (I, pp. 335-350, the prelude to his edition of Milton, 1785 and 1791. ~--Ibid. II, pp. 106-8. 54 THOMAS WARTON [54 The culmination— perliaps tlie crowning— glory of Warton's first piece of critical writing is his keen delight in the task. Addison had praised and popularized criticism," but with reservations; and most people — even until recent times (if indeed the idea has now wholly disappeared from the earth)— would agree with Warton that the 'busi- ness of criticism is commonly laborious and dry.' Yet he affirms that his work 'has proved a most agreeable task;' that it lias 'more frequently amused than fatigued (his) attention,' and that 'much of the pleasure that Spenser experienced in composing the Fairy Queen, must, in some measure, be shared by his commentator ; and the critic, on this occasion, may speak in the words, and with the rapture, of the poet, — The wayes through which my weary steppes I guyde In this dclightfull land of faerie. Are so exceeding spacious and wyde, And sprinkled with such sweet varietie Of all that pleasant is to ear or eye, That I nigh ravisht with rare thoughts delight, My tedious travel do forgett thereby : And when I gin to feele decay of might, It strength to me supplies, and cheares my dulled spright. "Warton's real classicism and his endeavours to carry his contempo- raries with him by emphasizing wherever possible his accord with them blinded them for a time to the strongly revolutionary import of the Observations on the Fairy Queen, and the book was well received by pseudo-classical readers. Its scholarly merits and the impulse it gave to the study of literature were generously praised by Dr. Johnson,'* who could partly appreciate the merits of the historical method, but would not emulate them. This is however scarcely a fair test, for the 'watch-dog of classicism', although an indifferent scholar when com- pared with Warton, had an almost omnivorous thirst for knowledge, and althougli he despised research for its own sake, his nearest sympathy with the romantic movement was when its researches tended to increase the sum of human knowledge. "Warburton was delighted with the 06- "In his critical essays in the Spectator. "*July i6, 1754. 'I now pay you a very honest acknowledgement, for the ad- vancement of the literature of our native country. You have shewn to all, who shall hereafter attempt the study of our ancient authours, the way to success; by directing them to the perusal of the books which those authours had read. Of this method, Hughes and men much greater than Hughes, seem never to have thought. The reason why the authours, which are yet read, of the sixteenth cen- tury, are so little understood, is, that they are read alone; and no help is borrowed from those who lived with them, or before them.' Boswell's Johnson, Hill ed. I, p. 270. 55] CRITICISM 55 servations, and told "Warton so." Walpole complimented the author upon it, though he had no fondness for Spenser."* The reviewer for the Monthly Review''^ showed little critical perception. Although he dis- cussed the book section by section, he discovered notliiug extraordinary in it, nothing but the usual influence of Ariosto, defects of the language, parallel passage and learned citation ; and he reached the height of inadequacy when he thus commended Warton 's learning: 'Upon the whole, Mr. Wartoti seems to have studied his author with much atten- tion, and has obliged us with no bad prelude for the edition, of which he advises us.'^ His acquaintance with our earliest writers must have qualified him with such a relish of the Anglo-Saxon dialect, as few poets, since Prior, seem to have imbibed.' A scurrilous anonjnnous pamphlet, The Observer Observ'd, or Remarks on a certain curio^is Tract, intitl'd, Oiscrvations on the Faiere Queen of Spencer, hij Thomas Warton, A. M., etc, which appeared two years after the Observations, deserved the harsh treatment it received at the hands of the reviewers.'' The imme- diate results on the side of Spenserian criticism were not striking. Two editions of the Fairy Queen, bj' John Upton and Ralph Church, appeared in 1758. Of these, the first was accused at once of borrowing without acknowledgment from Warton 's Observations ;^° the second is described as having notes little enlightening;'^ both editors were still measuring Spenser by the ancients.'- From this time the Spenserian movement was poetical. Warton 's essay put a new seal of critical approval upon the Fairy Queen and ''Warburton's Letters, Xo. CLVII, Nov. 30, 1762. Works, London, 1809. XIII, p. 338. '"Walpole to Warton, October 30, 1767. Walpole's Letters, ed. cit. VII, p. 144. ''August, 1754, XI, pp. 112-124. "Perhaps Upton's Edition of the Fairy Qtteen, which is frequently referred to in the second edition of the Observations. There is ample evidence in Johnson's letters and Warton's comments upon them, as well as in his own manuscript notes in his copy of Spenser's JVorks that he intended a companion work of remarks on the best of Spenser's works, but this made so little progress that it cannot have been generally known. See Boswell's Johnson, I, p. 276, and Warton's copy of Spenser's Works, ed. 1617. This quarto volume, which I have examined in the British Museum, contains copious notes which subsequently formed the basis for the Observations. The notes continue partly through the shorter poems as well as the Fairy Queen. Some of them were evidently made for the second edition, for they contain references to Upton's edition. "A/OM. Rev. July, 1756, XV, p. 90. Crit. Rev. May, 1756, I, p. 374- ^°An impartial Estimate of the Rev. Mr. Upton's notes on the Fairy Queen, reviewed in Crit. Rev. VIII, p. 82 flf. "CriV. Rev. VII, p. 106. *-H. E. Cory, : Op. cit., pp. 149-50. 56 THOMAS WARTON [56 Spenser's position as the poet's poet was established with the new school. He was no longer regarded judicially as an admirable poet who imfor- tiinatcly chose inferior models for verse and fable with whicli to present his moral ; he was enthusiastically adopted as an inexhaustible source of poetic inspiration, of imagination, of charming imagerj-, of rich colour, of elusive mystery, of melodious verse. Although Warton's pseudo-classical contemporaries did not perceive the full significance of his study of Spenser, his general programme began to be accepted and followed ; and his encouragement of the study of media>val institutions and literature gave a great impetus to the new romantic movement. Ilis followers were, however, often credited with the originality of their master, and their work was apt to arouse stronger protest from the pseudo-classicists." "When Kurd's very ro- mantic Letters on Chivalry and Romance appeared, tliey were credited with liaving influenced Warton to greater tolerance of romance and chivalry.** This unjust conclusion was derived no doubt from the tone of greater confidence that Hurd was able to assume. Following both the Wartons, he sharpened the distinction between the prevailing pseudo- classical school of poetry and what he called the Gothic ; insisted upon the independence of its standards ; and even maintained the superiority s'While even Dr. Johnson had only praise for the Observations, Joseph War- ton's Essay on Pope, on the whole a less revolutionary piece of criticism, touched a more sensitive point. He found the essay instructive, and recommended it as a 'just specimen of literary moderation.' Johnson's Works, ed. 1825, V, p. 670. But as an attack on the reputation of the favourite Augustan poet, its drift was evident, and pernicious. This heresy was for him an explanation of Warton's delay in continuing it. 'I suppose he finds himself a little disappointed, in not having been able to persuade the world to be of his opinion as to Pope.' Boswell's Johnson, I, p. 448. **Cn7. Rev. XVI, p. 220. It is perfectly evident however that the debt does not lie on that side. Kurd's Letters and the second edition of the Observations appeared in the same year, which would almost conclusively preclude any borrow- ings from the first for the second. But Warton's first edition, eight years before, had enough of chivalry and romance to kindle a mind in sympathy. Hurd was a less thorough student of the old romances themselves than Warton was. He seems to have known them through a French work, probably Sainte Palaye's Meiiioircs sur I'Ancienne Chcvalerie (1750), for he said, 'Not that I shall make a merit with you in having perused these barbarous volumes myself. . . . Thanks to the curiosity of certain painful collectors, this knowledge may be obtained at a cheaper rate. And I think it sufficient to refer you to a learned and very elaborate memoir of a French writer.' Letters on Chivalry and Romance. Letter IV, Kurd's Works, ed. 181 1, IV, p. 260. Warton also knew this French work (Ste. Palaye's at least) and quoted from it, Observations, I, p. 76, and frequently in his History of English Poetry. 57] CRITICISM 57 of its subjects.*' In all this however he made no real departure from "Warton, the difference being one of emphasis ; Hurd gave an important impetus to the movement his master liad begun. But with all his mo- dernit}-, his admiration for the growing school of imaginative poets, he lacked Warton 's faith in his school ; he had no forward view, but looked back on the past with regret, and toward the future without hope.'" On the side of pure literary criticism Warton 's first and most im- portant follower was his elder brother, Joseph, whose Essay on Pope was a further application of his critical theories to the reigning favour- ite. This very remarkable book was the first extensive and serious attack upon Pope's supremacy as a poet, and it is credited with two very important contributions to the romantic movement: the overthrow of Pope and his school ; and the substitution of new models, Spenser, Shake- speare, Hilton, and the modern school;'^ it contained the first explicit statement of the new poetic theories.'* *5'May there not be something in the Gothic Romance peculiarly suited to the views of a genius, and to the ends of poetry?' Hurd, IV, p. 239. 'Under this idea then of a Gothic, not classical poem, the Fairy Queen is to be read and criticized.' IV, p. 292. 'So far as the heroic and Gothic manners are the same, the pictures of each, . . . must be equally entertaining. But I go further, and maintain that the circumstances, in which they differ, are clearly to the advantage of the Gothic designers . . .' could Homer 'have seen . . . the manners of the feudal ages, I make no doubt but he would certainly have preferred the latter,' because of ' "the improved gallantry of the Gothic Knights; and the superior solemnity of their superstitions".' IV, p. 280. *°Hurd's Letters, IV, p. 350. ^'Joseph Warton placed Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, 'our only three sublime and pathetic poets,' in the first class, at the head of English poets. The object of the essay was to determine Pope's place in the list. 'I revere the memory of Pope/ he said, 'I respect and honour his abilities ; but I do not think him at the head of his profession. In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all mankind ; and I only say, that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art.' Dedication, pp. i-ii. 'The sublime and pathetic are the two chief nerves of all genuine poetry. What is there transcend- ently sublime or pathetic in Pope.?' Ded., p. vi. After a careful examination of all Pope's works Joseph Warton assigned him the highest place in the second class, below Milton and above Dryden. He was given a place above other modern English poets because of the 'excellencies of his works in general, and taken all together; for there are parts and passages in other modern authors, in Young and in Thomson, for instance, equal to any of Pope, and he has written nothing in a strain so truly sublime, as the Bard of Gray.' II, p. 405. References are to the fifth edition, 2 vols. 1806. **The first volume of Joseph VVarton's Essay on Pope appeared in 1756, two years after the Observations. Though its iconoclasm was more apparent, the later essay made little advance in the way of new theory upon the earlier one, and there is rather more of hedging in the discussion of Pope than in that of Spenser. 58 THOMAS WARTON [58 Warton's Observations on the Faerie Queene thus wrought so great aud so salutary a change in literary criticism that it is hardly possible to exaggerate its importance. Here first the historical method was appreciated and extensively employed. Here first the pseudo-classicism of till' age of Pope was exposed. Here first is maintained a nice and difficult balance between classical and romantic criticism: without under- estimating the influence of classical literature upon the development of Englisii poetry, Warton first insisted that due attention be paid the neglected literature of the Middle Ages, which with quite independent but equally legitimate traditions contributed richly not only to the poetry of Spenser but to all great poetry since. His strength lies in the solidity and the inclusiveness of his critical principles. "Without being carried away by romantic enthusiasm to disregard the classics, he saw and ac- counted for a difference between modern and ancient poetry aud adapted his criticism to poetry as he found it instead of trying to conform poetry to rules which were foreign to it. This new criticism exposed the fatal weakness in the prevailing pseudo-classical poetry and criticism; it showed the folly of judging either single poems or national literatures as independent and detached, and the necessity of considering them in relation to the national life and literature to which they belong. Thus Warton's freedom from prejudice and preconceived standards, his inter- est in the human being who %vrites poetry, and the influences both social and literary which surround him, his — for that day — extraordinary knowledge of aU those conditions, enabled him to become the founder of a new school of criticism. CHAPTER IV Academic Life. 1747-1772 "Warton had not intended to have done wdth Spenser when he pub- lished his criticism of the Faerie Queene, but purposed to follow it with a similar treatment of the shorter poems. His own copy of Spenser's works, the wide margins of which he covered with notes of all sorts, — glosses, comparisons with other poems, references to romances, illus- trative and interpretive comments, — show that he carried out this plan for many of the poems. But tutorial duties hindered ; he permitted his interest to be diverted to other matters, and the work went no further. Dr. Johnson 's letters to him during the winter following the publication of the Oiservations show that he was urgiug him to the completion of work which he perceived was languishing. In November he wrote, 'I am glad of your hindrance in your Spenserian design,^ yet I would not have it delayed. Three hours a day stolen from sleep and amusement will produce it.'- No one knew better than Dr. Johnson the temptations to procrastinate ; therefore he wrote again with anxiety on the same subject: — 'Where hangs the new volume? Can I help? Let not the past labour be lost, for want of a little more : but snatch what time you can from the Hall, and the pupils, and the coffee-house, and the parks, and complete j'our design.'' Although Warton abandoned this project of making a complete commentary on Spenser's works, he undertook to prepare a second edition of the Observations, in which he made some additions and correc- tions, but no material changes. When Percy undertook seriously to publish a collection of old ballads, he promptly engaged Warton 's inter- est and assistance by sending him a few ballads, including the Boy and the Mantle, the source of Spenser's conceit of Florimel's girdle. Warton was delighted with Percy 's plan and with the suggestion for the improve- ment of his own work, and wrote to Percy, ' The old Ballads are extremely curious, & I heartily wish you success in your intended publication. ^" 'Of publishing a volume of observations on the best of Spenser's works. It was hindered by my taking pupils in this College.' Warton." Boswell's Johnson, ed. cit., I, p. 276, note. 2N0V. 28, 1754. Ibid. 'Feb. 4, 1754, Ibid., p. 279. 59 60 THOMAS WARTON [60 Spenser certaiuly had the Boy & the Mantle in view. I must beg leave to keep them all a little time longer as they will much enrich & illustrate a new edition of that work whieli you are pleased to place in so favour- able a Light. It is already in the Press. '^ He was careful, however, not to anticipate Percy's scheme by publishing extracts from the ballads and romances, and explained in his next letter: 'My Design is to give abstract.s only of what you have sent me." At the same time he ex- pressed his appreciation of the 'ingenious Remarks on my book, which I receive as useful hints for the improvement of my new Edition." Warton immediately busied himself helping Percy with his new plan. But at the same time he asked that Percy's and Lye's further retnarks on his own work be sent 'in a Post or two, as we go on very quickly at Press, & I can insert them in the last Section,' adding, 'In- deed I am much obliged to you for what you have already communicated, & the kind offer you make, in your last, of searching the libraries of your neighbourliood, to assist me in any future pursuit'." His next letter, written during the following summer, announced 'Spenser' as 'just ready for publication," and it immediately appeared. Somewhat earlier, perhaps even before the publication of the Obser- vations on the Faerie Qneene, "Warton was at work on a translation of Apollonius Rhodius,* but, although Johnson urged him to continue it* as he had urged him to complete the observations on Spenser, — he seems to have had both of them under way at the same time," — it met the same fate. It seems to have been regarded for some time rather as a work deferred than abandoned, for in 1770 Dr. Barnard wrote him in *Trin. Coll. Oxon. Jun. 19, 1761, Warton MSS. in Harvard College Library, fol. 2. °Jul. II, 1761, same MSS. fol. 4. ^Ibid. 'Nov. 23, 1761, same MSS. fol. 6. 'Jul. 17, 1762, same MSS. fol. 9. 'Among the Warton papers in Trinity College Library, Oxford, is a small notebook of notes upon Apollonius and a synopsis of the Argonautica. See also Mant, Op. cit., p. xxxiv. Mant's informant thought a translation of Homer was also intended. 'Thomas Warton, January 21, 1752, agreed to translate the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius for 80 pounds.' Willis's Current Notes, Nov. 1854, p. 90. See also Boswell's Johnson, I, p. 289, note. *May 13, 1755. 'How goes Apollonius? Don't let him be forgotten. Some things of this kind must be done, to keep us up.' Ibid. '"See Wooll, Op. cit., p. 225. ''Dr. Jeffrey Ekins. Evidently the reply was satisfactory, for the next year, 1771, his Loves of Medea and Jason; . . . translated from the Greek of Apollo- nius Rhodius's Argonautics was published. 61] AC.U>EMIC LIFE 61 behalf of a friend of his" to know whether or not he had definitely given up the project. After the completion of the second edition of Spenser, Warton's researches in Euglisli literature were somewhat vicarious, although no doubt his efforts in Percy's behalf were of some value to his collections for the history of poetry. His previous studies in early English poetry for the Observations made him invaluable to Percy iu tlie extensive projects which he undertook with remarkable susceptibility to the grow- ing interest of his age in the older poetry. Percy's first undertakings of this sort, the editions of Buckingham^- and of Surrey,^' — which how- ^-An edition of the Works of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, with an account of his Life . . . and a new key to the Rehearsal, was agreed upon between Percy and Tonson, June 12, 1761 and most of it then printed ; it was resumed in 179s, but never completed. (See Nichols: Lit. llliis. VI, p. 556, Lit. A)iec. Ill, p. 161, note, and Arbcr Reprints, XIII, introd.) I print all the extracts from Warton's letters to Percy relative to this undertaking as they partly show the nature and extent of Warton's help. 'The Pieces of Buckingham &c, which you mention, are not in the Bodleian ; nor is there any circumstance relating to the Duke in Aubrey's Papers.' Jun. 19, 1761 (Harv. MSS. fol. 2). 'I have looked over the Letter to Osborne [?] in the Bodleian, & find no striking marks of Buckingham ; nor, upon the whole, do I think it written by him. If I hear of those Editions of the Rehearsal you men- tion, I will let you know.' Oxon. Nov. 23, 1761 (same MSS. fol. 6). 'At my Return to 0.xford, which will be about the tenth of next October, I will carefully transcribe the MSS. you mention relating to Buckingham.' Winchester, Sept. 4, 1762 (same MSS. fol. 11). 'You shall receive a copy of the D. of Buckingham's MSS. with the rest. ... I imagine you must know, that B. . . . [?] in the Strand, lately published a Catalogue of the D. of Buckingham's Pictures; with his Life by Brian Fairfax never before printed.' What sort of a thing it is I know not' Oxon. Nov. 5, 1762, (same MSS. fol. 14). 'Next week you will receive MSS. D. Buckingham.' Oxon. Nov. 12, 1762 (same MSS. fol. 15). 'I presume you know there is a Life of Buckingham in the last new volume of the Biographia.' Oxon. Mar. 14, 1763 (same MSS. fol. 22). "The edition of Surrey was agreed upon with Tonson Mar. 24, 1763, and was printed in one volume, but was similarly delayed, and nearly the whole impression was destroyed by fire in 1808. (Lit. Iltus. VI, p. 560). Only four copies are known to have survived, but these probably do not include the copy mentioned in Warton's letter of Feb. 26, 1767, below, which Percy had sent to him, and which was sold with the rest of Warton's library. See A Catalogue of books, [being the libraries of Dr. Joseph Warton, Thomas Warton . . . and others] to be sold by Thomas Payne, London, 1801. As before I print extracts from Warton's letters to Percy referring to this work. 'I have found out . . Ld. Surrey's blank verse Translation, but fear I shall a. 17S8, with advertisement, by Horace Walpole. See ed. of The Reliearsal in the Arber Reprints, vol. XIII, and Diet. Nat. Biog. art. Villiers. G2 THOMAS WARTON [62 ever were never publislied — Wartoii encouraged and assisted as much as possible by si-nrchiiig for editions, and securing transcripts, and urging J the continuation of the work when he perceived it to be languishing. 1 He probably helped little with the proposed edition of the Spectator,^*' J although he was interested in it." His help was, of course, most val- uable in the preparation of Percy's folio manuscript of old poems for not be able to transmitt them to you while I stay in town. I will however leave • directions about it.' London, Jan. i, 1763 (Harv. MSS. as above, fol. 20). ^ 'I must beg your Patience for . . . Surrey a little longer.' London, Jan. 9, 1763 (same MSS. fol. 21). 'By Mr. Garrick's and Dr. Hoadly's Interest, I have pro- cured, and have now in my hands, Surrey's Translation into blank verse of the second & fourth books of the ^neid, for Tottel, ISS7- It is a most curious specimen of early blank verse, & will prove a valuable Restoration to Lord Surrey's Works. It belongs to a Mr. Warner of London, who is a great black-letter Critic. How shall I send it to you?' O.xon. Mar. 14, 1763 (Same MSS. fol. 22). 'If you prosecute the Edition of Surrey's Poems, I shall be happy to be employed in sending you all the assistance which our O-xford Repositories afford.' Trin. Coll. Dec. S, 1764 (Same MSS. fol. 29). 'The Edition of Surrey, 1557, I know not where to borrow.' Oxon. Jun. 15, 1765 (Same MSS. fol. 30). 'Can I be of any further assistance in the new edition of antient Songs, or of Lord Surrey? ... I beg a sight of what is printed of Surrey as soon as you conveniently can send it.' Oxon. Nov. 29, 1766 (Same MSS. fol. 28). 'I like your Text of Surrey very much : and shall be extremely glad to see your Notes and Life. I hope, they are in Forwardness. If you intend a Table of various Readings, I could gett Collections of the Bodleian Copies.' Trin. Coll. Oxon. Feb. 26, 1767 (Same MSS. fol. 31). 'I despair of finding any Editions of Surrey in the private Libraries ; but will however examine the Catalogues.' Trin. Coll. Oxon. Apr. 21, 1767 (Same MSS. fol. 32). 'I have lately had a Letter from Dr. Hoadly, by whose means I lent you an Edition of Surrey belonging to Mr. Warner. It seems Mr. Warner wants the Book, for a work he has now in hand; and would be extremely glad if you would return it to him at Woodford Row, Essex, or Will's Coffee house Lincolns inn fields. When he has done with it, he will return it to you again. He does not mean to keep it long. I think I likewise lent you a book of Dr. Hoadly's, Surry's Translation of fart of Virgil. At your Leisure you may return that to me next October at Oxford. You will excuse me for mentioning these Particulars. But Dr. Hoadly desired me to write to you on the Subject' Winton. Sept. 13, 1770 (Same MSS. fol. 38). "See letters to Tonson and agreement with him, 1764, Lit. IIlus. VI, pp. 557 ff. '"The following communication to Percy was obviously not his first upon the subject. 'I have mentioned your Scheme of the Spectators, &c. to my brother and Dr. Hoadly long since; but will remember to renew my applications, in the most effectual way, when I see them next long vacation.' Oxon. Jun. 15, 1765 (Same MSS. fol. 30). 63] ACADEMIC LIFE 63 publication. One of the first scholars to whom Percy appealed for approval and help with this project, Warton was indefatigable in his efforts to assist, ransacking the Oxford libraries,'" his own collections and those of his friends, comparing manuscript and other versions of the poems," looking up additions to the collection and to the notes," and "They however yielded little at first : 'We have nothing, as I recollect, in our Libraries which will contribute to your Scheme.' Trin. Coll. Oxon. Jun. ig, 1761 (Same MSS. fol. 2). 'Was there any thing in our public or private Libraries which would contribute to your scheme, I would transcribe & transmitt them with pleasure. But I am sorry to say that we are totally destitute of Treasures of this sort.' Jul. 11, 1761 (Same, fol. 4). "For example, for the three ballads relating to Guy of Warwick, of which Percy published only Guy & Amarant and The Legend of Sir Guy, based upon Guy & Phillis in the original, Warton furnished the following pretty correct data: 'I know of no MSS. poem of Guy. I am however of opinion, that the Piece, of which you sent me a specimen, is probably Philips's ; as the style is agreeable to his age, & the composition not bad. I have some notion that I once saw a Poem called Guy Earl of li'anvick in the Harleian Miscellany; but I can't be positive. Among Wood's Codd. impress, in Mus. Ashmol. is a Poem called "The Famoui History of Guy Earl of Warwick," by Sam : Rowlands, 1649. It is a Mighty poor thing, & certainly different from your Specimen, I know of no copy of the Harl. Miscell. here; otherwise I would consult it for you.' Oxon Jul. 17, 1762 (same, fol. 9). Warton's memory, to which he trusted for much of the next communi- cation, was somewhat at fault, for he confuses Rowland's modern version with some fragments found in the cover of an old book by Sir Thomas Phillips (See Hale's and Furnivall's ed. of the Percy Folio MSS. II, p. 510). 'When I told' you, in my Last, that the Poem on Guy is probably Phillips's, I fancy I meant a Phillips, who, as I think I told you in the same Letter, wrote a Poem in the year 1649, or thereabouts, on Guy. I think now this was my meaning; for when I wrote to you that account of Guy, I copied it from a memorandum in one of my Pocket-books. When I am at Oxford I can settle this matter. In the same Pocket book, I recollect I had likewise entered. See the Harl. Miscell. for Guy. The Pocket-book is at Oxford.' Winchester, Sept. 4, 1762 (same, fol. 11). Later he added, 'I don't think Guy & Amarant any Part of Rowland's Poem,' but exami- nation showed that Percy's 'stanzas of Guy and Amarant [were] literally taken from Rowlands's said poem.' Trin. Coll. Oxon. Nov. 5 and 12, 1762 (same, fols. 14, and is). ''For example. King Ryence's Challenge, which was not in the folio, having been referred to in the Observations on the Faerie Queene as a ballad found in Morte Arthur (ed. cit. I, p. 36), Warton was called upon to supply a copy of it, and sent the following information, most of which appears in Percy's notes (Reliques, ed. Wheatley, London, 1891, III, p. 24 ff.). 'You will find the ballad, of which I quote a Piece, in P. Enderbury's [Enderbie] Cambria Triumphans. pag. 197. It is not in my edition of Morte Arthur, which evidently is the same as your's. I presume it is in the older Editions, from whence the author quoted by 64 THOMAS WARTON [64 trying by every means to encourage the completion of an undertaking" 80 important for tlie 'revival of the study of antient English Literature.' Warton, who probably was ignorant of the liberties Percy was tak- ing with tile manuscript in his possession, made no objection to the introduction of modern imitations of old poems based upon old stories. mc, pag. 24, probably took it. . . . Enderbury [ut supra] was lent me by a clergj- nian in Hants; whither I am going in a few Days for the long vacation; & will from thence send you the Song.' Trin. Coll. Oxon. Jul. il, 1761 (^same, fol. 4). 'I have collated the Ballad in Enderbie with the MSS. inserted in the Bodleian Morte Arthur, & with the printed copy of it in the Letter describing Q. Elizabeth's Entertainment a Kenihvorth; & here send you the various Readings in Both. From the Title to the MSS Copy, it is plain that this Ballad is not very old. I should judge, with you, that the story only was taken from M. Arthur, was it not for the passage, immediately following, in the Letter. By which one would suspect, that it was printed in some editions of M. Arthur. At least we may conclude from thence, that it was not occasionally composed for the Kenihvorth festivities. My mistake in quoting it as a ballad in M. Arthur, arose from my finding it written into the Bodleian copy, in the place, as I imagined, of a Leaf torn out : for there are no pages in that Edition. This supposition was strength- ened by the mention of this ballad in the Letter.' Trin. Coll. Oxon. Nov. 23, 1761 (same, fol. 6). 'I find a copy of K. Ryence's Challenge in an old Miscellany of time of Charles I. But as you have given so correct a copy of this piece, it will be of no service, unless you chuse to mention it in your Preface.' London, Jan. li '"63 (same, fol. 20). Percy, however, paid no heed to Warton's last suggestion and says that the ballad was composed for the festivities at Kenihvorth ( Rcliqucs, ed. cit. Ill, p. 24). Two other additional poems, not found in the folio, in the preparation of which Warton had a share are King Cophetua & the Beggar Maid and King" Edward & the Tanner of Tannvorth. With reference to a copy of the first. War- ton wrote : 'The King & the Beggar which you send me (which I see is from the little l2mo Collection of Songs in 3 vols) is quite different from Johnson's in the Crovnie Garland. The Bodleyan is shut up on account of its annual visitation. It will be open on Tuesday, when I will begin the transcript.' And then he corrected himself in the same letter, T think, & am pretty sure, that your initial Stanca of the King &• Beggar in your letter, is the same as Johnson's in the Crowne-Garland. But this I shall ascertain when the Library is opened,' and later he sent the tran- script of it from that collection. Nov. 5 and 12, 1762 (fols. 14 and 15). See also Reliqucs. After promising a transcript of the ballad, Warton wrote, 'On Examination, the King & the Tanner appears to be imperfect by the last Line only, which was carelessly pared off in the Bind [ery. It (MS. torn)] is mentioned somewhere, I cannot recollect exactly where, by Hea[rn]'. Nov. 12, 1762. An extract from Hearn's Account of Some Antiquities in & about Oxford was sent in a letter of Jan. 9, 1763, but it pertained to Heywood's play. The first & second parts of King Edward the Fourth, conteining the Tanner of Tamworth, etc, 1613 and not The 65] ACADEMIC LIFE 65 He said of Percy's Valentine and Ursine, a poem suggested by The Emperour & the Childe in the original manuscript, which Percy rejected on the pretense that it was 'in a wretched corrupt state, unworthy the press':-" The 'Story is fiiie & to me perfectly new, as it is many years since I read the old History of Valentine and Orson, on which I presume it is partly founded.'-' The Birth of St. George, admittedly taken from the Seven Champions of Christendom and 'for the most part modern', won from him the praise of being 'most poetically liaudled.'-- And before the completion of the worli he explicitly approved the inclusion of specimens of rare poems of later date than the ballads: 'I perceive, by the proofs, that you give specimens of our elder Poets. This is a good Improvement of the Scheme. '^^ For this purpose he sent Gas- coigue's Ode on Ladie Bridges,-* offered a transcript of The King's Quair,-'^ and traced 'the pretty pastoral song of Fhillida & Cory don' to Merrie, pleasant, & delectable historic betweene K. Edward IV & a Tanner of Taitnvorth, etc. 1596 (also in the Bodleian), from which Warton's transcript was no doubt taken, (fol. 20). Warton's familiarity with the early poetry enabled him to send a note on the reference to Robin Hood in Piers Plowman, ' "But I can rimes of Robin Hod, and Randall of Chester", Fol xxvi b. Crowley's edit. 1550', Mar. 31, 1764 (fol. 26). '"Upon receipt of at least a partial copy of the ballads Warton wrote to Percy, 'The old Ballads are extremely curious, & I heartily wish you success in your intended publication,' (Jun. 19, 1761, fol. 2), and the following year to some notes on various poems he added, 'How goes on the Collection of ancient Ballads? I hope we shall have it in the winter.' Winchester, Sept. 4, 1762 (fol. 11). When the timid Percy sought the approval of 'men of learning and character' to 'serve as an amulet to guard him from every unfavourable censure, for having bestowed any attention on a parcel of old ballads', Warton was glad to lend his name. 'My name will receive houour in being mentioned before your elegant Work.' Winchester, Jul. 30, 1764 (fol. 27). Six months later he inquired about its progress: 'I hope your Ballads are near Publication.' Dec. 5, 1764 (fol. 29). -"Reliques, ed. cit. HI, p. 265. -'Oxon. Nov. 21, 1762, Harvard MSS., fol. 16. ^-Oxford, Trin. Coll. Octob. 20, 1762, same MSS., fol. 12. 23 Winchester, Jul. 30, 1764, fol. 27. -*It was promised in the letter of Sept. 4, 1762 (fol. 11), and in that of Nov. 21, he added the comment, 'I think you will like the little ode of Gascoigne.' 2^After a vain search for the 'Ballad of James I of Scotland' (fol. 15) for which Percy had given inaccurate references, Warton 'discovered the Poem of James I of Scotland, where you direct me in your last. It consists of near 100 pages in folio, closely written. It is a vision in long verse, in stanzas of seven Lines. Shall you want a Transcript?' (Nov. 21, 1762, fol. 16). Percy rejected this poem, however, and printed instead some shorter verses of questionable authenticity. Reliques, ed. cit. II, p. 300. 66 THOMAS WARTON [66 England's Helicon' and 'the Muses Library, 1738'.=' Percy was unsuccessful, however, in an effort to tempt "Warton to contribute to the collection a poem of his own in the old style, although he entreated for a continuation of the Squire's Tale, in the conclusion of which he knew Warton was interested," and he appealed to Warton 's often expressed desire to improve English poetry by a revival of its former imaginative power.=» In reply to Percy's flattering request, Warton admitted the attractiveness of the subject, but made no promise. 'I thank you for thinking me qualified to complete Chaucer's Squire's Tale,' he wTote. 'The Subject is so much in my own way, that I do assure you I should like to try my hand at it. You are certainly right in thinking that the Public ought to have their attention called to Poetry in new forms ; to Poetrj' endued with new manners & new Images. '"^ On receipt of a presentation copy'" of the finished work, Warton wrote enthusiastically to the editor: .\fter an excursion longer than usual, I returned to Oxford only last Night; otherwise I should have long since acknowledged the favour of your very valuable and agreeable Present. I think you have opened a new field of Poetry, and sup- plied many new and curious Materials for the history and Illustration of ancient English Literature. I have lately had a Letter from Mr. Walpole, who speaks in very high terms of your Publication. At Oxford it is a favourite Work; and, I doubt not, but it is equally popular in Town. I hope you are going on in the same Walk. I shall be happy to receive your future Commands.'^ Two months later he was urging a second edition : ' I trust, the Taste ^•Nov. 12, 1762, fol. 15. ^'See Observations on the Faerie Queene, ed. cit. L p. 211. -'In a postscript to a letter of August 26, 1762, requesting various transcripts for 'our Ancient Songs & Ballads' Percy wrote, 'Tho' I have trespassed on your patience so monstrously already, I cannot prevail on myself to close up the packet without mentioning a wish, which had long been uppermost in my heart: it is — that you would undertake to complete Chaucer's Squire's Tale. It would be a taske worthy of your genius, and such as it is every way (I am persuaded) equal to. From some hints in your book, vol. I, p. 153, I conclude that your Imagina- tion has before now amused itself in inventing expedients to bring those promised adi'entures to an issue. That pleasing cast of antiquity, which distinguished those beautiful poems of yours, in ye late Collections of Oxford Verses, & which gave them so great an advantage over all others, would be finely adapted to such an undertaking. And let me add, nothing would fix your fame upon a more solid basis, or be more likely to captivate the attention of the public, which seems to loath all the common forms of Poetry; & requires some new species to quicken its pall'd appetite.' Harv. MSS. fols. 10 and io«. ^•Winchester, Sept. 4, 1762, fol. 11. ="Which was among the books catalogued for sale by Payne in 1801. "'Trin. Coll. Oxon., Apr. 29, 1765, Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. no. 32329, fol. 28. 67] ACADEMIC LIFE 67 of the Public will call for a second Edition of yonr Ballads. Any Improvement that shall occur to me, I will gladly communicate. '^- At the same time that Percy was preparing his edition of the bal- lads, he evidently contemplated an edition of Spanish romances as an illustration to Don Quixote, but whether in conjunction with the Reliques or as a separate work, I cannot determine. At any rate "Warton was informed of the project and wrote appro\'ingly : 'I rejoyce at your col- lection of the Romances referred to in Don Quixote. It will be a most valuable & a most proper Illustration. Your Translation of the Metrical Pieces of Romances I hope you will likewise continue ; and I thank you for your admirable specimen. '^^ As soon as he learned of this project he sent Percy a rare and valuable edition of Septilveda's Cancionero de Romances^* and lamented that in the dispersal of Collins' librarj' an- other valuable book, El Vendarero Lucgo [?],'° had been lost. The most interesting point about "Warton 's connection with this project la the evidence it gives of his first-hand acquaintance with the Spanish language and with at least a small portion of its literature. "Warton was imraediateh' informed of Percj^'s next project, of pub- lishing The Household Book of the Earl of Northumberland in 1512 at his Castles of Wressle and Leconfield in Yorkshire,^^ which was under- taken at the request of his patron, the Duke of Northumberland; and he at once appreciated its value and encouraged the plan. 'Your 320xon. Jun. IS, 1765, Harv. MSS. fol. 30. Two other letters contain similar solicitations about the second edition, that of Nov. 29, 1766 (fol. 28), quoted above, and Apr. 21, 1767, 'When does the new Edition of the Ballads appear?' (fol. 32). ssSept. 4, 1762, fol. II. ^*' "Cancionero de Romances sacados de las coronicas de Espana con otros. compuestos por Lorenzo de Sepulveda. En Sevilla, 1584, l2nio." It is in the short Romance metre. It contains detached stories of the Feats of several Spanish Leaders &c. Among the rest, of the Cid, on whom Corneille formed his famous tragedy. If you have it not. I will find some method of conveying it to you after my Return to Oxford.' (Ibid.) Four years later he presented the Cancionero to Percy. (Fol. 28). The rarity of this edition is attested by the fact that a recent bibliographer doubts its existence, but without sufficient cause. He says of it, 'Encuentro citada esta edicion en la Historia de la Literatura espaiiola de Ticknor (I, 39, 4) No he logrado confirmar esta cita, que no se encuentra en ningun bibliografo . . que tengo al menos por dudosa.' See Escudero y Perosso: Tipografia HispalenS€, Madrid. 1894, art. 739. 5=Warton says of this, 'I remember my friend Collins used to look upon "El Vendarero &c" as the most curious & valuable book in his Collection. I think it was a thick quarto, in the short measure' (fol. iia). I am unable to find any work of similar title in any Spanish bibliography. ''Published in 1768. 68 THOJfAS WAKTON [68 Pacqiictt lias given me liigli Entertainment', he wrote. 'It will be a most eurious and valuable Publication. If you prefix a Preface, it wiU b«» worth while to introduce Leland's Description of the Castle of Wress- hill, which seems to have struck him in a particular manner; aud which he describes more minutely and at length, than almost any thing else in bis whole Itinerary. See Itin. Vol. 1. fol. 59, 60. I think I saw in Pend)r()ke-llall Library, at Cambridge, a copy of your manuscript. At least it was a Book of the same Kind. It was last summer; and Mr. Gray was consulting it, I suppose, for anecdotes of ancient Manners, so amusing to the Imagination. . . You may depend on the utmost se- crecy."" Warton probably made no real contributions to it, for he wrote the next year on receipt of the proof of the volume, "Your Book never reached me in the Country (by means of the Carelessness of Bedmakers) till I had been a long while from Oxford, & at a time when 1 was full of Engagements, so as not to be able to sit down with a Pen in my Hand. I am now returned to Oxford, & fear it will be now too late for any Notes that nuiy occur. Give me a Line on tliis Head.'^' It was during this period that Warton 's friendship with Dr. John- son was at its height. Their friendship seems to have begun when the Observations on the Faerie Queene commanded the admiration of the great classical critic in spite of the reactionary character of its critical tenets. During the summer following their appearance, Johnson paid his first visit to Oxford since he had left the university more than twenty years before. He lodged on this visit at Kettel-Hall adjoining Trinity College, and Warton acted as his cicerone. He showed him the libraries — which Johnson had ostensibly come to Oxford to consult'* — and the doctor preferred the old Gothic hall at Trinity to the more commodious modern libraries, saying, 'Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he iiuist study at Christ-Church and All-Souls.'*" Together they took long walks into the country about Oxford, viewed some of the ruins in the vicinity — the abbies of Oseney and Rewley — discussed Warton 's favourite hobby, Gothic architecture, and agreed in their indignation at the havoc wrought by the reformation. They frequently visited Francis Wise, the Radclivian librarian, at Ellsfield, where Johnson busied him- self with their host's library of 'books in Northern Literature,' and Wise read them his History and Chronolotjy of the fabulous Ages which he was preparing to print.*' Both Warton and Wise were interested "Trin. Coll. O.xon. Jul. 25, 1767, Harv. :MSS, fol. 33. ''Oxon. Oct. 24, 1768, same, fol. 34. '"Warton .says that he collected nothing in the libraries for his dictionary although he stayed at 0.\ford five weeks. Boswell's Johnson, I, p. 270 and note. ^''Ibid. II, pp. 67-8, note. *'See Warton's account of this visit, ibid. I, p. 271, ff. 69] ACADEMIC LIFE 69 in getting the degree of Master of Arts bestowed upon Johnson that it might appear on the title page of the dictionary and be as great an hononr to Oxford as to Jolmson.''- Althongli the lexicographer came to Oxford at the beginning of the long vacation, he was so charmed with his visit and his host that he vowed if he came to live at Oxford, he would take up his abode at Trinity." Besides mutual interest there was also a warm personal feeling between the two men ; Jolmson valued highly and eagerly sought the friendship of tlie younger man. Toward the close of the year, in one of his occasional tits of melancholy, intensi- fied by a reminder of the loss of his wife, he wrote to Warton, ' I would endeavour, by the help of you and your brotlier, to supply the want of closer union, by friendsliip. ''* Warton, however, although ready enough to serve Johnson in his work, was a negligent correspondent, and a bus.y, if not a somewhat offish, friend, and Johnson's letters are full of reproaches and complaints of his neglect: 'But wliy does my dear Mr. Warton tell me nothing of himself?'*^ 'Dear Blr. Warton, let me hear from you, and tell me some- thing, I care not what, so I hear it but from you. . . I have a great mind to come to Oxford at Easter; but you will not invite me.'" 'You might write to me now and then, if you were good for any tiling. But honores mutant mores. Professors forget tlieir fi-iends. '^" Notwithstanding the less frequent correspondence, their literary friendship eontinueil ; War- ton contributed three numbers to Johnson's Idler in 1758** and then and later collected notes for liis edition of Shakespeare,'''* while Johnson planned to interest Warton in extensive schemes for antiquarian work which was beyond his own power to execute.''" Their relations were very cordial in 1764 when Johnson again visited Oxford, and promised a longer visit 'after Xmas, when Shakespeare is comjjleted,'^' — a visit «Wooll, Op. cit. p. 228. ^^Boswell's Johnson, I, p. 272. *'>Ihid. I, p. 277. <^Feb. 4, I7S5, Boswell's Johnson, I, p. 279. ^''Mar. 20, 1755. Ibid. 1, p. 283. *'June 21, 1757. Ibid. I, p. 322. ^^Numbers 33, 93, and 96. ^^April 14, 1758, June i, 1758, and June 23, 1770, Boswell's Johnson, I, pp. 335-6, 337, and 11, pp. 114-3. ^"Oct. 27, 1757. This letter was probably never sent to Warton, Johnson's Letters, ed. Hill, I, pp. 73-4 and note. ^^Warton to Percy, Dec. 5, 1764. 'We have had the Pleasure of Sam John- son's company at Oxford, and I find he intends spending a long time with us after Xmas, when Shakespeare is completed.' (Harv. MSS. fol. 29.) Boswell has no mention of this visit to Oxford, nor have his editors noticed this letter. 70 THOMAS WARTON [70 which was no doubt deferred when the expected work was not ready till October. The friends probably met, however, at Winchester, for Dr. Johnson visited Dr. Warton there during the summer of 1765." Wlien Johnson visited O.xford in 17G9, he was exceedingly busy and far from well but eager to visit witli Warton," and in 1776 wlien he and Boswell together returned to Oxford, they spent an evening with Warton at Trinity.'* At this time, however, and always, Wartou's principal devotion was given to his university, and he refused none of her demands. On the occasions of public celebrations Warton seems to have been called upon frcfiuently to play a worthy part. For the EnciKnia of 1751 he contributed an Ode for Music, whieii was performed at the Sheldonian Tlieatre. He was very bu.sy with tlie Oxford Collection on the Royal Nuptials in 1761," to which he contributed some verses To her Majesty,'''' and he superintended the collection on the birth of the Prince of Wales'' the next year, to which he likewise contributed a poem."' At the time of the great Encaenia in honour of peace in 1763, he was extremely busy.'" Tlie celebration lasted several days with eight speak- ers a day and formal dinners in honour of the distinguished guests at the various haUs. In addition to preparing his own speech for the occasion, Warton, as major domo, had charge of the details, — 'the trou- ble I have had in preparation is infinite,' he wrote his brother, 'but hope all will be repaid if it goes off well, as I doubt not.'"" Shortly after the Observations appeared, Warton entered with char- acteristic loyalty to his college into the preparation of a life of its "'Wooll, Op. cit. p. 309. ''May 31. 1769, Boswell's Johnson, 11, p. 68 and note. '■*Ibid. II, p. 446. "^^Letter to Percy, Nov. 23, 1761, Harv. MSS. fol. 6a. =*Ofi llie Marriage of the King. To her Majesty. See Works, ed. cit. I, p. 38. "'I am much obliged to you for your good opinion of my poetical talents. Such as they are, they are at present employed on the Birth of the Prince; but this is nothing to the trouble and labour I have in overlooking & forming the whole collection.' Octob. 20, 1762, Harv. MSS. fol. 12. '^*0n the Birth of the Prince of IVales, (written after the Installation at Windsor, in the same year, 1762) ; see IVorks, I, p. 46. ^"He was also engaged with the Encaenia of the preceding summer, when 'the hurry of our Encxnia at Oxford,' was one of his excuses for delay in answer- ing a letter to Percy. London, Dec. 22, 1763, Harv. MSS. fol. 23. oowooll, Op. cit. p. 293. A good-natured but not very brilliant satire in imita- tion of earlier Terrce-Fillii, published during the Encjenia, was popularly ascribed to Warton (see Lit. Anec. VHI, 237), but it is probable that Warton, if he was connected with it at all, simply aided his friend Coleman, the real editor. See Diet. Nat. Biog. art. Coleman. 71] ACADEMIC LIFE 71 founder, Sir Thomas Pope, for the Biographia Britannica.'^'^ A second antiquarian labour of love for the college was the life of Ralph Bathurst, one of the presidents of Trinity, prefixed to a selection from his works, published in 1761.*- Both of these biographies were compiled from manuscript materials, and were enlivened, especially the first, with di- gressions upon contemporary history. In 1772 Warton published sepa- rately an enlarged edition of his Life of Sir Thomas Pope,"^ and in 1780 another edition with further additions."* The value of the life of Pope as an important source of information for the period which it covers, because of the fresh manuscript material which was added to the successive editions, has now been seriously im- pugned by the discovery that some of the documents upon which it is based are fabrications. President Blakiston has shown"^ that quotations from MSS. Cotton, Vitellius, F. 5, that is, to Machyn's Diary, to which "Warton says he gave a 'cursory Inspection '°° — sufficient to show him that some of the leaves had been burned but not that the manuscript was so nearly intact that no considerable sections could have been lost from it — and the few quotations from alleged transcripts from Machyn's Diary made by the annalist John Strype, are inaccurate. He has also proved that tlie transcriptions alleged to have been made by Francis Wise from copies of Machyn made by Strype before the fire and sent to Dr. Charlett, (designated" by Warton as MSS. Cotton, Vitellius. F. 5 MSS. Strype,) and from other manuscripts in Charlett 's collections and from the family papers of Sir Henry Pope-Blo\int (designated as MSS. F. Wise) were made from no extant manuscripts, are corroborated by no ^'^Or the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons who flourished in Great Britain and Ireland from the earliest Ages down to the present time, etc. 1747-66. John Campbell, the largest contributor, to whom Warton sent his life of Pope, replied, 'I see, Sir, you have taken a great deal of pains in that life, of which, I will take all the care imaginable. ... If you can think of any life that will be acceptable to yourself, or grateful to the University, I shall take care and hand it to the press with much satisfaction.' See Wooll, Op. cit. p. 241. Warton submitted a life of Weever, the .antiquary, but it does not appear in the Biographia. Ibid. p. 263. "-The Life and Literary Remains of Ralph Bathurst, M.D. . . President of Trinity College in Oxford. . . . London, 1761. "^The Life of Sir Thomas Pope, Founder of Trinity College, Oxford. Chiefly compiled from Original Ezndences. With an appendix of Papers never before printed. London, 1772. Percy gave slight assistance by examining the will of Sir Thomas -Dudley in the Prerogative office, London. Warton's letters to Percy, Feb. 26 and April 21, 1767, Harvard MSS. fols. 31 and 32. ''*The Second Edition, corrected and enlarged. . . London, 1780. *'H. E. D. Blakiston : Thomas JVarton and Machyn's Diary, English Histor- ical Review. XI, pp. 282-300. ""Life of Pope, Preface, ed. 1780, p. xii. 72 THOMAS WARTON [72 Other authorities, and are demonstrably false and misleading in some pre- tended facts. But Dr. Blakiston was not content with thus explaining the falirications; lie attempted to fix the blame for them upon Warton, and, as it Sfi-iiis to me, without sufficient justification. All of the positive facts of the case can be as easily ex])lained npon the theory that the bioprapiier himself was the victim of a clever but unscrupulous antiquary as ui)on the supposition that Warton was himself guilty of the fraud, for it is well known that he was habitually assisted by other antiquarians and friends whose contributions he accepted without verification. Ur. Blakis- ton. however, seems to think that when he can exonerate Wise by show- in? that the fabrications were added to the separate editions both published after his death, Warton is thereby proved guilty ; the possibility of a tliird person being involved has not been given by him the con- sideration it deserves. Most of Dr. Blakiston 's reasons for fixing upon Warton are easily disposed of. That Warton 's failure to detect the fabrications when they were offered him proves his guilt, is reasoning which almost equally con- victs every author who has accepted these statements in Warton 's his- tory. That what Dr. Blakiston supposes the only extant material for the life of Pope among Warton 's voluminous papers — a small note book — con- of Pope among Warton "s voluminous papers — a small note book — eon- tains no reference to the disputed passages,"" of course proves nothing. That the fabrications appeared gradually is, as Dr. Blakiston says, 'highly suspicious', but does not indicate whom one is to suspect. Two of his reasons"" are more soundly based upon Warton 's known faults of occasional inaccuracy of statement or quotation in some details of his extensive works. These faults would be more reprehensible even in an eighteenth century antiquary were it possible for his critics — from Rit- son to Blakiston"" — to free themselves from it, — and they show how easy a victim he would become of a malicious practical joker. Moreover, in the absence of conclusive evidence for so grave a charge, great weight must be given to the character of the accused. It must be shown that such a deception is quite in keeping with his charac- ter, that it is not only possible but probable that he was guilty of the forgery attributed to him. And such evidence is altogether wanting •'Another book of notes upon the life of Pope, at Winchester College, like- wise does not refer to the fabrications. "'That he exaggerated the damage to the Machyn manuscript and printed fabrications of letters supposed to be in Trinity College Library. To the latter of course Warton had easy access, and he entirely personally consulted them ; but it is nevertheless possible that transcripts were made by another and less veracious hand. ""For example the first separate edition of the life of Pope was published in 1772, not 1770, as he says. His most serious blunder is discussed later. 73] ACADEMIC LIFE 73 in this case. It is a striking coincidence that Dr. Blakiston has selected as a principal reason for accusing Warton, as an alleged motive or sug- gestion for the deception, a circumstance that, on the contrar}^ fur- nishes a conspicuous proof of his honesty: namely, his connection with the Rowley-Chatterton forgeries. Warton, he says, 'was himself engaged about 1778, when he must have put the finishing touches to [some of the Pope fabrications], in defending the authenticity of the Rowley poems,' and he further suggests that Warton was tempted to make a similar experiment, in whicli, from his knowledge of early English literature, he was more likely to succeed than Wise, a 'mere antiquarian'.'" As a matter of fact, in 1778, as well as in 1772 and 1782, Warton was engaged, not in defending the authenticity of the poems, but in rejecting them as spurious. Moreover his tiioroughly honest conclusion in this matter is the more commendable and significant in this connection because it not only was reached in opposition to popular opinion, but was unwel- come to himself. In spite of his own inclination to credit Chatterton's tale, Warton was the first scholar who ventured to put himself on record as denying the authenticity of the poems. His openminded and scholarly treatment of the facts in this matter, in which some deference to personal bias might have been excused, seems to make improbable to the point of impossibility any deliberate tampering with facts in an historical treatise. When he gives such conspicuous evidence of open- mindedness and candour in the treatment of this question, it is scarcely credible that he could be at the same time engaged in forging so gratu- itous and useless a deception as the Strype forgeries. From the time that Warton had taken his first degree in 1747, he had been a tutor in Trinity College, of which he became a fellow four years later, and he served his university as faithfully in this capacity as in more prominent ones. Although he did a remarkably large amount of literary and antiquarian work, he regarded himself rather as an Oxford don than as a man of letters. Although no one probably made better use of his academic leisure, he always put his collegiate duties first : the work upon Spenser was neglected and finally abandoned while '"p. 299. Dr. Blakiston's source for this mistake is the Dictionary of Na- tional Biography article on Chatterton. It is unfortunate that in an attack on the accuracy of another historian he did not verify and thereby correct that very mis- leading mention of Warton's connection with the controversy by reference to the original documents, the second volume of the Hiitory of English Poetry, 1778, (PP- 139-164, and Emendations to p. 164) and Warton's Enquiry into the Authen- ticity of the Poems attributed to Rowley, 1782, in which he reviews his connection with it, pp. 1-6. 74 THOMAS WAKTON [74 he devoted himself to his pupils;" aud at the special request of Lord North, who had been his contemporary at Trinity, he took his son under his special eiiarge from 1774 to 1777, relinquishing his other pupils during that time," and neglecting somewhat his work upon the history of poetry. As a tutor he was at least popular, forming lasting and bent-lieiai friendships with some of his pupils, with Topham Beauclerk and Benuft Langton, who came up to Oxford soon after the interruption of the Spt-nsL-rian design, and with "William Lisle Bowles, who had known Warton at Winclu-ster and selected Trinity on his account, and upon whose poetry Warton exercised some influence. As a professor Warton was more active in his earlier than in his later years. Lord Eldon, who was a member of University College from 1766 to 1773, says that 'poor Tom Warton' used to send to his pupils at the beginning of every term 'to know whether they would wish to attend lecture that term,"' but Mant lamented that in bis later years when he was professor of history, he 'suffered the "rostrum to grow cold" '.'* However, his strongest claim to the regius professorship of modern history was that he was willing to deliver the lectures which George III was aroused to demand while liis rival wished to hold the appointment as a sinecure. In 1757 Warton was elected by his university to succeed William Hawkins of Pembroke in the office which his father had formerly held, the professorship of poetry, aud he was reelected at the expiration of his first term of office in 1762. As poetry professor Warton devoted his lectures chiefly to recommending and expounding the beauties of clas- sical poetry. One of these lectures, a Latin discourse on Greek pastoral poetry, was afterwards enlarged to serve as a prefatory discourse to his edition of Theocritus." The Latin translations from Greek poems which were included in the last edition of his poetry were made and first used as illustrations of his subject in this course of lectures.'^ The most substantial outgrowth of his studies as poetry professor, however, was his editions of classical poetry. The first was a small edition of Inscrip- tioimm Romanarum Metricarum Delectus,''^ a selection of inscriptions, '^Sul>ra. A letter from his brother shows that he abandoned an important business trip to London with his brother during the long vacation in 1754 because of his duty to a pupil. See Wooll, p. 233, where the letter is misdated 1755. Joseph's removal to Tunworth, alluded to in the letter as imminent, was made in I7S4. '-Mant, Op. cit pp. Ixxiv-Ixxv. ''Boswell's Johnson, I, p. 279, note. 'it a very few antiquarians of liis day were also ignorant — so that even the slightest stuily of the subject would have almost doubled a labour that was at best little short of Herculean. To atone in some degree for the omission of the earlier periods, and to clear the way for the liistory proper, Warton thought it necessary to preface his first volume with two disser- tations in which he considered in some detail materials which, while important for the development of his subject, would have marred the unity of Ins design. The second of these dissertations, On thr Introduc- tion of Learning into England, is crammed witli valuable facts concern- ing the period before the history itself begins; facts which, presented as 85] mSTORT OF ENGLISH POETEY, VOL. I 85 Warton presented them, were more interesting to the antiquarian than to the man of taste, but which had at kast the charm of novelty. And the author's satisfaction tliat the barrenness of scholastic learning yielded place to the 'beautiful extravagancies of romantic"" fabling' is an interesting expression of his sound belief that imagination is a more important factor than reason in the production of great poetry. In the first ilissertation, On the Origin of Ronwntic Fiction in Europe, Warton was dealing with a subject which had always fascinated him, and to which he first gave the importance it deserved in the history of English literature. His theory of the origin of romance in I'']urope, however, is marred by the absurd and fanciful etlinologies advanced by the seventeenth and eighteenth century scholars upon which it was necessarily based. Without the solid foundation supplied by the re- cently developed sciences of comparative philology and anthropology, earlier scholars had recourse to vague tlieories based upon sujx'rfieial resemblances that now seem unworthy of serious attention. Tlusc prev- alent misconceptions Warton naturally accepted, so that much of his theory of romance is now antiquated, though, as usual, many details are singidarly correct and illuminating. Warton 's manner of arriving at his tlieorj- that the ir.aterial of romantic fiction was largely of ultimately oi-iental origin is far more questionable than the conclusion itself, and his happy discovery of at least a half-truth when reasoned certainty was — and perhaps still is — impossible, is remarkably like genius. His perfectly clear recognition of the importance of oral poetry as a source of written poetry,-^ his happily conjectured theory of the gradual building up of long romances by the artistic combination of previously existing sliorter narratives,-* his acceptance of Bretagne as an ancient centre of romantic story where Celtic influence combined with British, Scandinavian, and Frencli,-'' and his conclusion that various as were their sources, the earliest metrical romances were written in I'^rench,-* are theories whicli, thougli still in dispute, a modern scholar need not fear to avow, and even one of which he would be proud to father. They show also an ability to deal with comparative literature and an intimate knowledge of middle English literature far in advance of his age, and illustrate his positive genius for ^oWarton used the term romantic here as a derivative of romance, that kind of fictitious tale characteristic of mediaeval literature. In this sense he said it was 'entirely unknown to the writers of Greece and Rome.' -^Hist. Eng. Poetry, Diss. I, pp. (i), (31-2). The pages in the dissertations are not numbered in the first editions ; this numbering is, therefore, my own. --Ibid. p. (9), and vol. I, p. 38. -^Ibid. Diss. I, pp. (3-9), (48). "*Ibid. vol. I, p. 145. 86 THOMAS WARTON [86 pointing out ways by wliich subsequent scholars were to obtain valuable results. As ill his Observations on the Faerie Queen, Warton's study of romances involved also the social and religious life of an age which was as riclily inuiffinative in its romantic chivalry and its deep-seated faith in the miraculous as iu its literature. Not the least valuable part of the discussion of the earlier periods was the copious extracts from the old romances. — Richard Cwur de Leon, Sir Guy, the Squire of Low Degree, and others tliat hail long lain neglected in dusty old manuscript collec- tions. Unseholarly as the texts of those excerpts are, they stimulated interest in tlie originals and were no doubt partly responsible for the series of modernizations and editions of romances which followed.-' His study of tlie romances and other early poetry-" indicates his attempt to taite into account the elusive but none the less potent influences upon Englisli poetry even before the time of Chaucer and the generally recog- nized poets, and distinguishes him from an age of critics who, whatever thej' may have thought of the poetic genius of the first English poets, denied them their due place in the development of English poetry and entirely disregarded any influences upon them.-' Warton differs from every other critic of his age in constantlj' regarding literature as a whole, as a continual stream of progress — with eddies and whirlpools and backwaters — but also with a steady and deep current, and with numberless tributaries. Although Warton properly excluded dramatic poetry from his de- sign, he was luiable to resist the temptation to discuss its origin and early development, and his two long digressions-* constitute the first valuable study of that subject and complete his interpretation of me- dia?val life. On the basis of his reading of French memoirs on the subject,-' and his first hand acquaintance with the 'originals' in 'books ^'Tlic early editors of romances, Ritson, Ellis, and Weber, constantly refer to Warton's History. '-'"Warton has e.\tracts from many favourite medixval lyrics, Alison, Lenten is come with love to town, Sumer is icumen, etc., as well as from many such longer poems as Hule and Nightengale, Manuel de Peche, and Land of Cokayue. =''1 cannot .... help observing, that English literature and English poetry sufTcr, while so many pieces of this kind still remain concealed and forgotten in our manuscript libraries. They contain in common with the prose romances .... amusing instances of antient customs and institutions . . . and they preserve pure and unmixed, those fables of chivalry which formed the taste and awakened the imagination of our elder English classics.' I, pp. 208-9. -»Ibid. I. pp. 233-251; II, 366-406; III, 321-328. =»Du Tilliofs Memoirs four servir a I'histoire de la Fete de Faux, 1741, and Voltaire's Essais siir /iV Moeiirs et I'Esprit des Nations, 1756, and otiiers; see bibliography of sources. 87] HISTORY OP ENGUSH POEimY, VOL. I 87 and manuscripts not easily found nor often examined,'^" he discussed the religious, secular and scholastic beginnings of the drama in a way that was not only valuable for its originality at the time it appeared, but authoritative as late as the second quarter of the next century when Collier quoted it as the most valuable source of information on the subject.^' Chaucer is of course the chief figure in the first volume of the historj^ and it is by the adequacy and soundness of the criticism of his work that Warton's ability is best tested. Professor Lounsbury"s esti- mate of its value is juster than his explanation of its faults. The 'work ... is one', he says, 'which it will perhaps be always necessary to con- sult for its facts, its references, and its inferences ; and though in many points it needs to be corrected, a long time will certainly elapse before it will be superseded. . . . But while the substantial merits of the chapters on Chaucer need not be denied, they are very far from being perfectly satisfactory.' Its defects are however due rather to Warton's inevitably imperfect knowledge of middle English and of Chaucer's sources — though his knowledge at this point was approached by none of his generation save Tyrwhitt — than, as Professor Lounsbury sup- poses, to his desire 'to parade his own knowledge' rather than to throw light upon his author, or to an apologetic air that gives the 'impression that he admired Chaucer greatly, and was ashamed of himself for having been caught in the act.^-' In this Professor Lounsbury seems to have fallen somewhat into the common habit of condemning eighteenth century critics en masse without making sufficient distinctions among them. Warton's learning is never ostentatious although he is often unwise in not making a more rigid selection of material ; and he conspicuously lacks the apologetic attitude adopted by some of his contemporaries. Nothing is more certain than tliat he had more than the eighteenth cen- tury antiquary's boundless curiosity — although he had that too; he was animated by genuine love of learning and real interest in making acces- sible to others the dark places in literary and social history, and, since he would entirely fail of his purpose if he antagonized his public, he used every means to arouse in them the same enthusiasm that he himself ^"Hist. Eng. Poetry. I. p. 250. ''Collier's History of English Dramatic Poetry to the time of Shakespeare, 1831. Preface. IMalone's essay, an Historical Account of the . . English Stage, prefi.xed to his edition of Shakespeare in 1790 quotes Warton's history freely and was probably further indebted to Warton's later private study. See Warton's let- ters to Malone, printed in full with notes, in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. XIV, no. I, pp. 107-118. ^^Studies in Chaucer, 3 vols. 1892. Ill, pp. 246-7. 88 THOMAS WARTON [88 felt for those splendid periods of English poetry before tlieir own ele- gant iiikI polished age. The historical method which had been Warton's great contribution to criticism in his Observations on the Faerie Queen he applied more extensively in the History of Poetry. The first step in the study of Chauei-r was an attempt to represent his social and literary environ- ment anil antecedents in order tliat lie miglit be riphtly understood. The eigliteentii century gentleman of taste despised Chaucer because, by an anachronism that passed over four centuries of literary activity and progress as if they were nothing, they insisted upon judging him by the same standards which they applied to Pope and Waller. Warton, first realizing the fallacy of this method, studied the wide diversity in man- ners, customs, and literary ideals of the two periods and made the neces- sary allowance for the difference. It seemed to him worth while to consider Chaucer as the brilliant student, the popular and favoured courtier and diplomat, the extensive traveller, and the polished man of the world as well as the 'first English versifier who wrote poetically,'^'* since his familiarity with splendid processions and gallant carousals, with the practices and diversions of polite life, his connections with the great at home and his personal acquaintance with the vernacular poetry of foreign countries, helped to mould his poetry quite as much as his knowledge of the classical writers, and enabled him to give in the Canterbury Tales 'such an accurate picture of antient manners, as no cotemporary has transmitted to posterity."'* Warton 's study of . Chaucer 's literary antecedents shows a more thorough knowledge of the comparative field of literature during the Middle Ages than he is sometimes credited with.'''^ His discussion of Provencal literature, based largely \ipon the study of the French and Italian antiqiiaries and historians,"" and of its influence upon English poetry, especially vipon Chaucer, is much abler and fuller than any previous discussions of the subject"' and may still be read with profit. He treats briefly but suggestively such important points for the study of Cliaucer as the moral and allegorical tendency of Provencal poetry, its relation to classical poetry on the side of allegory,''* its mystical and conventional conception of love, and the nice distinction between the metaphysical delicacy of the Provencal ideal of love represented in ^■■'Johnson : Dictionary, Pref. p. i., and Hist. Eiig. Poetry. I. p. 341 ff. ^*Hist. Eng. Poetry, I, p. 435. ^'^e.g. Saintsbiiry: The Flourishing of Romance, New York, 1907. p. 139. '"See bibliography of sources. •■"Rymer: A Short View of Tragedy, 1693, pp. 67-83. Pope and Gray, plans for a history of poetry. ^"Hist. Eng. Poetry, I, p. 457. i i 89] HISTORY OP ENGLISH POETRY, VOL. I 89 Guillaume de Lorris and the conventional formality of the later method of reducing the passion of love to a system, based upon Ovid's Art of Love.^^ "Wart on also made a detailed study of Chaucer's relations to his sources that anticipated modern investigation of the subject. His dis- covery of Le Teseide as the source of the Knight's Tale was an impor- tant contribution that probably owed nothing to Thynne's similar assertion.'"' Botli Dryden and Urry had recognized Chaucer's general indebtedness to Boccaccio on his own statements, but the nature and extent of the indebtedness had not been discussed before.*' In his study of Chaucer's sources Warton was, however, even more concerned to show his originality than his mere borrowings, his heighteuings of the original fictions, tlie additions and contractions wliicli help to make his poems 'strike us with an air of originality,'*- a charin further increased b.y his 'considerable talents for the artificial construction of a story '*^ and his 'nervous' and 'flowing numbers'. His enthusiasm was keenest for his most original work, the Canterbury Tales, 'specimens of Chaucer's nar- rative genius, unassisted and unalloyed,' in which 'the figures are all British, and bear no suspicious signatures of classical, Italian, or French imitation.'** And he justified his method by showing that this great ^^Jbid. I, p. 383. ^^Francis Thynne's Animadversions, etc., 1598 (Chaucer Society, 1876, p. 43). Warton would certainly have referred to this had he known of it. A note to Tyrwhitt's Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer, 'It is so little a while since the world has been informed that the Palamon and Arcite of Chaucer was taken form the Theseida of Boccace,' seems to point to Warton as the author of the discovery. Joseph Warton, in his Essay on the Genius and il'ritings of Pope expressed surprise that Chaucer's borrowing from Boccaccio should have been so long unobserved, since Xiceron, in his Memoirs, published in 1736 — a book which he says was well-known, had given an abstract of the story of Palamon and Arcite. He added. 'G. Chaucer, I'Homere de son pays, a mis I'ouvrage de Boccace en vers Anglois.' (I. p. 335, ed. 1806.) Neither Thomas Warton nor Tyrwhitt mentions this work however. This passage in J. Warton's essay was first inserted in an appendi.x to the third edition (1772-1782) and in the body of the fourth edition in 1782. The recent discovery of the source of Palamon and Arcite to which he refers was therefore certainly his brother's. (Mr. David H. Bishop, of Columbia University, has looked up this passage for me in the various editions of J. War- ton's essay.) *'The authority and adequacy of Warton's discussion are shown by the fact that Skeat refers his readers to this section of Warton's history 'for further remarks on this Tale.' Ed. Chaucer, 1894, III, 394. *-Ibid. I, p. 357- *^Hist. Eng. Poetr\, III, p. 367. **Ihid. I, p. 435. 90 THOMAS WARTOK [90 «cl»j<>voniont w«s the rcsiilt of Chaucer's 'knowledge of the world' and 'ohs«>rvatiou on life" eombined with his literary artistrj- and his grenius. Althongh AVarton st't out to Iv the historian rather tlian the critic of Enplish i>ootry. his history is shot through with flashes of his enthu- siasm for natural and imaginative ratJier than conventional and reasoned beauties. He adminnl the Knight's Talc not for thost^ partial conformi- ties to the rules for epic pix^try that commended it to Drydeu and Urry. but in spite of its violation of the rules and because of its direct appeal to the imagination and feelings. 'It alwunds', he says, 'in those inci- dents which are calculated to strike the fancy by opening resources to sublime description, or inten^st the heart by pathetic situations. On this account, even without considering the poetical and exterior orna- ments of the piece, we an^ hardly disg\isted with tlie mixture of manners, the imnfusion of times, and the like violations of propriety-, which this IHvm. in common with jxll others of its age. presents in almost every pagyv*" His study of the House of Fame shows a similar appreciation of the essential Wauties of romantic poetry: he praised it for its 'great strvikes of Gothic imagination, yet bordering often on the most ideal and capricious extravagance.'"' and condemned Pope's mistaken attempt to 'correct it's extravagancies, by new retiuements and additions of another cast.' in the famous comparison: "An attempt to unite order and exactness of imagery witli a subject formed on principles so pro- fessedly rom.antic and anomalous, is like giving Corinthian pillars to a Gothic palace. When I read Pope's elegant imitation of this piece. I think 1 am walking among the modern raon\iments unsxiitably placed in Westminster Abbey.'** Warton's real taste for imaginative poetry as represented in the romamvs and Chaucer's poetry, made him dwell lovingly and long on that ivriod. on Chaucer as at once the flower of romance and the renais- sance and as an independent and original genius superior to his age, and lament the inevitability of tlie decay of imaginative pot^try after his death. Although he had intended to complete the history of seven centuries of English poetry in two volumes, he devoted, perhaps not altogether unwisely, the whole first vohime to the least known and least proline perioii and txirned with reluctance from that period to one in which the decay of romance was followed by a revival of learning. He recognized that the new age would have its compensations: 'As know- ledge and learning encrease. poetry begins to deal less in imagination: "/Sd. I. p. 367. **!l^. I, p. 589. *'!SJ I o J06. 91 91] HISTOBT OF EXGLISH POETBT, VOL. I and these fantastic beings give way to real manners and living charac- ters;' vet he kne-w too that a revival of imagination must precede another great poetic age. CHAPTER VI The History of English Poetry. Volume II, 1778 The Reviv^vl op Learning At tlie time the first volume of the History of Poetry was published, Wartou had in hand much of the material for the second, and expected it to follow very soon. In September following the appearance of the first volume he wrote to his friend Price, 'I have the pleasure to tell you that great part of the second volume of my History is ready for press'.' The work, however, did not go on so well as was expected, and the second volume was delayed for four years. It was just at this time that Lord North, who had been a contemporary of "Warton at Trinity, sent his son up to Oxford to be under Warton 's special charge from 1774 to 1777, during which time he relinquished his other pupils.^ The preparation of a collected edition of his poems, which appeared in 1777, must also have hindered the history somewhat. Probably the principal reason for the delay of the second volume however was the necessity the author felt of including in it a discussion of the Rowley-Chatterton poems which were then almost universally believed to be genuine fifteenth century poems. Warton had called them spurious when they were submitted to him by the Chancellor of Oxford, the Earl of Lichfield, in 1772, but they were so generally accepted as genuine, even \>y Tyrwhitt, who later helped to expose the forgery, that he reluctantly admitted them to a place in his history, at the same time denying their authenticity. Warton 's first step in this matter had been to send to William Barrett, the Bristol antiquary- surgeon, for conclusive evidence. Altliough Barrett furnished him with plenty of information,^ he was a complete victim of Chatterton's hoax, and Warton was naturally dissatisfied with his verdict. He then ap- pealed to Percy for a less biased opinion, in the following letter : — Dear Sir I should esteem it a particular favour if you could conveniently communicate to me what you know about Rowlie's poems at Bristol. I have a correspondence with 'Winton. Sept. 30, 1774. Mant, Op. cit. p. Ixxiv. -Ibid., pp. Ixxiv-lxxv. HIist. Eiig. Poetry. II, p. 142, note. References to the second and third volumes are to the first edition. 92 93] HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY, VOL. II 93 Mr. Barret of that place, but he rather embarrasses than clears the subject. He has sent me a fragment of Parchment ; on it a piece of a poem on a Mayor's feast, the ink & the Parchment seemingly antient. It is necessary that I should consider him whether spurious or not, as there has been so much noise about the Discovery, & as so many are convinced of the poems being genuine. If possible, I request the favour of your answer immediately ; & am, Dear Sir, Your very affectionate friend & servt Jul. 29, 1774 T. Warton. Winchester P. S. Please to direct at Winton.* Percy's reply is not to be found, but cannot have been convincing, for a year and a half later Warton was still trying vainly to bring himself to the popular opinion, and hurried by the demands of his printer. Dear Sir I have received the favour of yours, which is quite satisfactory. As to Chatterton, I have considered that subject pro and con, not professing to enter ininiitely into the controversy, but just as much as the general nature of my work properly required. I own I lean to the side-of the forgery: but if you could send me only one capital argument in favor of the genuineness of Rowlie's poems, I should accept it most thankfully. I would willingly come to town on purpose, but it is impossible : and at the same time I am ashamed to interrupt your Engagements. The Press is drawing near to this period. I will send you speedily the E.xtract you mention from the Selden Manuscript : and am. Dear Sir, your most affectionate humble servt. T. Warton Trin. Coll. — Jan 23 1776 To Reverend Dr. Percy at Northumberland-house London' Another letter to Percy written a month later shows the volume going on through the press and Warton busy with the rest of the volume. Dear Sir Since I wrote last, the sheet in which is a Note* about James the first, is gone to Press. I send a proof of the Note, which perhaps will give you as much Information as you want on the Subject. Otherwise, I will make a further search, & gett the poem transcribed if necessary. I throw in, Currente Prcelo, the notice