even then, sedulously addicted himself. Every page suggests to us the disciple of Spenser and Milton, yet without servile imitation; for, though the language and style of imagery whisper whence they were drawn, many of the pictures in this poem are so bold and highly coloured, as justly to claim no small share of originality. On the genius of Warton, as a Poet, an adequate value has not yet been placed; for in consequence of a sedulous imitation of the diction of our elder bards, especially of Spenser and Milton, originality of conception has been very unjustly denied him. To his brother Joseph, with whom he has been commonly ranked, he is greatly superior, both in vigour and fertility of imagination, though, perhaps, less sweet and polished in his versification. In the rhymed pentameter, indeed, and in blank verse, in point of versification, to Dryden, Pope, and Milton; but in the eight-syllable metre, to which he was particularly partial, he has exhibited, almost uniformly, great harmony and sweetness. The mixture of trochaics of seven syllables, and iambics of eight, which has been objected to him as a fault, in this species of verse, I am so far from considering as a defect, that, as in Milton and Gray, I esteem it productive of much beauty and much interesting variety.-DRAKE, NATHAN, 1810, Essays, Illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler, vol. II, pp. 169, 174.

In the best of Warton's there is a stiffness, which too often gives them the appearance of imitations from the Greek.COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1817, Biographia Literaria, ch. 1.

Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious with ease, learned without affectation. He had a happiness which some have been prouder of than he, who deserved it lesshe was a poet-laureat.

"And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead,

That laurel garland, crown'd his living head." But he bore his honours meekly, and performed his half-yearly task regularly. I should not have mentioned him for this distinction alone (the highest which a poet can receive from the state), but for another circumstance; I mean his being the author of some of the finest sonnets in the language--at least so they appear to me; and as this species of composition

has the necessary advantage of being short (though it is sometimes both "tedious and brief''), I will here repeat two or three of them, as treating pleasing subjects in a pleasing and philosophical way.-HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1818, Lectures on the English Poets, Lecture VI.

Every Englishman who values the literature of his country, must feel himself obliged to Warton as a poetical antiquary. Asa poet, he is ranked by his brother Joseph in the school of Spenser and Milton; but this classification can only be admitted with a full understanding of the immense distance between him and his great masters. He had, indeed, "spelt the fabled rhyme;" he abounds in allusions to the romantic subjects of Spenser, and he is a sedulous imitator of the rich lyrical manner of Milton: but of the tenderness and peculiar harmony of Spenser he has caught nothing; and in his resemblance to Milton, he is the heir of his phraseology more than of his spirit. His imitation of manner, however, is not confined to Milton. If we judge of him by the character of the majority of his pieces, I believe that fifty out of sixty of them are such, that we should not be anxious to give them a second perusal. From that proportion of his works, I conceive that an unprejudiced reader would pronounce him. a florid, unaffecting describer, whose images are plentifully scattered, but

His

without selection of relief. To confine our view, however, to some seven or eight of his happier pieces, we shall find, in these, a considerable degree of graphic power, of fancy, and animation. "Verses to Sir Joshua Reynolds" are splendid and spirited. There is also a softness and sweetness in his ode entitled "The Hamlet," which is the more welcome, for being rare in his productions; and his "Crusade," and "Grave of Arthur," have a genuine air of martial and minstrel enthusiasm. . . The spirit of chivalry, he may indeed be said. to have revived in the poetry of modern times. His memory was richly stored with all the materials for description that can be got from books: and he seems not to have been without an original enthusiasm for those objects which excite strong associations of regard and wonder. Whether he would have looked with interest on a shepherds' cottage, if he had not

found it described by Virgil or Theocritus, may be fairly doubted; but objects of terror, splendour and magnificence, are evidently congenial to his fancy.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

His style in prose, though marked by a character of magnificence, is at times stiff and encumbered. He is too fond of alliteration in prose as well as in verse; and the cadence of his sentences is too evidently laboured.-CARY, HENRY FRANCIS, 1821-24-45, Lives of the English Poets. p. 162.

Tom Warton was one of the finest fellows that ever breathed-and the gods had made him poetical, but not a poet.-WILSON, JOHN, 1831, An Hour's Talk about Poetry, Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 30, p. 483.

Thomas Warton, although not one of our greatest, is still a most respectable literary name. He was an elegant scholar, if not a Bentley; a refined and genial critic, if not a Johnson; a tender and true poet, if not a Milton. If we may substitute comparison for contrast, he may be called, as a poet, a diffuser Gray, or even a weaker and less versatile Scott.

Altogether, looking at his poems in the light of effusions poured out in the intervals of laborious research and critical discussion, they are worthy of all acceptation; and we feel justified in binding the Poetical Works of Warton in the same volume with those of Goldsmith and Collins. They are certainly three among the truest and most refined of our minor poets. -GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1854, The Poetical Works of Goldsmith, Collins and T. Warton, pp. 152, 154.

That robust scholar and genial poet.LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1858-64-90, Library of Old Authors; Prose Works, Riverside ed., vol. I, p. 320.

Some of them express real feelings with an elegance so scholarly, so simple, and so full of faith, that no universalist in the love of poetry who has once read them chooses to part with them.-HUNT, LEIGH, 1859?-67, An Essay on the Sonnet, ed. Lee.

The scholia [Ed. Theocritus] are not conveniently disposed for the purpose of reference; and, in the opinion of Harles, as well as Brunck, the editor has not to the

full extent availed himself of all the valuable materials that were within his reach. -IRVING, DAVID, 1860, Life of Warton, Encyclopædia Britannica, Eighth ed.

Warton's numerous sonnets cover a wide range; but are particularly noteworthy for the increased attention they give to natural objects, and for the transition in the application of the sonnet to poetical subjects of a descriptive kind which this increase denotes. Instead of being confined, as the sonnet had been very generally, to amatory, elegiac, or complimentary subjects, or to the sublimation of some abstract sentiment or idea, his sonnets largely celebrate historical or familiar scenes and places, chosen by him for the picturesqueness of their environments, or for the interesting associations that were clustered around them. Many of the local descriptions in these brief poems are very attractive; and, indeed, there is scarcely one of his sonnets, whatever their theme, but will reward us by the gracefulness and delicacy of its sentiments, and the correctness of its diction and structure. It is true they make no great pretensions, but the level plain on which they travel reveals so many inviting bits of retired loveliness, and affords so many charming glimpses of quiet beauty, that we wonder his poems are so little known and prized. Probably, however, the neglect into which they have fallen is due to an excess of correctness of finish and an over-refinement of taste, which impart to them an air of stiffness and effeminacy that a closer inspection would measurably dissipate. To my mind, the transcripts of English sights and scenes in Warton's sonnets are extremely pleasing, and will bear close scrutiny.-DESHLER, CHARLES D., 1879, Afternoons with the Poets, p. 178.

Thomas Warton is in his poetry chiefly imitative, as was natural in so laborious a student of our early poetical literature. The edition of his poems which was published by his admirer and his brother's devoted pupil, Richard Mant, offers a curious example of a poet "killed with kindness;" for the apparatus of parallel passages from Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and others, is enough to ruin any little claim to originality which might have been put forward for him. . . . There are reasons why his genial figure should

not be altogether excluded from a representative English anthology. It has often been said that his "History of English Poetry," with Percy's "Reliques," turned the course of our letters into a fresh channel; but what is more noticeable here is that his own poetry-or much of it, for he is not always free from the taint of psuedo-classicalism-instinctively deals. with materials like those on which the older writers had drawn. In reaction against the didactic and critical temper of the earlier half of his century, he is a student of nature; he is even an "enthusiast," in Whitehead's sense.-WARD, THOMAS HUMPHRY, 1880, English Poets, vol. III, p. 382.

Warton's style has no very special characteristics, and he does not conform to any marked convention in the structure of his sentences. But it is at all times forcible, clear, and free from pedantry; and he unquestionably added something to the recourses of English prose, in being the first to treat literary questions from the historical point of view.-CRAIK, HENRY, 1895, English Prose, vol. IV, p. 331.

Of all the laureates, with the exception of Rowe, Warton suffered the least from satirical attacks. His unmistakable claim to greatness seemed to impress the small buzzing gnats that usually swarmed about. the poets of the day. Warton's first official ode was composed in haste and was not at all equal to the poetry he has been writing for many years, and it excited more or less ridicule; but after that, his official work was done with such genuine power that even the famous Wolcot, who under the name of Peter Pindar, produced such biting, brilliant, and unmerciful satires, contented himself with a few harmless thrusts. Warton was too great a poet and too amiable a man to treat such attacks with anything but composure and dignity. HoWLAND, FRANCES LOUISE (KENYON WEST), 1895, The Laureates of England, p. 124.

Fourth-rate men like the two Wartons.

--BROOKE, STOPFORD A., 1896, English Literature, p. 220.

His books furnish ample evidence of that extraordinary industry in the discovery and examination of manuscript authorities which characterizes the antiquaries of the period; and though the accuracy of his learning was severely impugned by Ritson in 1782, in the anonymous "Observations on the History of English Poetry, in a Familiar Letter to the Author," yet the majority of the mistakes acridly corrected in the pamphlet are far from inexcusable. in a work compiled from notes taken under all sorts of difficulties, and Ritson's attack was considered merely malignant. Warton's notebooks and papers, a box full of which is in the library of Trinity College, though often elaborate, are generally very slovenly and illegible, and the want of method which they display would sufficiently account for many errata. But while one is bound to make every allowance for accidental mistakes and immaterial inaccuracies, the interests of historical truth demand that one should expose without hesitation misstatements which appear to be intentional; and, unpleasant as the task is, it is a duty to call public attention to some facts which must seriously impair the confidence so long reposed in the trustworthiness of Warton's historical work.BLAKISTON, HERBERT E. D., 1896, Thomas Warton and Machyn's Diary, English Historical Review, vol. 11, p. 282.

He had also an appreciation of wild nature, as we see from the descriptions in "The Grave of King Arthur." Warton's work is of interest because of the many attractive details scattered through his poems, but there is little unity of effect. The general impression is that he saw nature first through Milton's eyes, and that when he afterwards made many charming discoveries for himself he tried to express them in the Il Penseroso manner. - REYNOLDS, MYRA, 1896, The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry, p. 128.