Thomas Warton

“ Thus, in the absence of any evidence concerning a 1599 edition of the Sonnets and in the light of Thorpe's claim in 1609 that they were "Never before Imprinted," it seems probable that what Warton was vaguely recalling was actually a copy of Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim. This book, printed for Jaggard in 1599, my have misled Warton by its separate title page, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Musicke. Such a volume as Warton describes was, it seems evident from surviving copies, frequently bound up to contain The Passionate Pilgrim, Venus and Adonis, and other small collections of poetry. ”

“ Considered under the idea which their title suggests, undoubtedly these pieces are too classical, abstracted, and even philosophical. But they have many strokes of imagination and invention, a strength of expression, and a stream of versification, not unworthy of the genius of the author of the Faerie Queene. [19] On the whole however, with the same metaphysical flame which Petrarch felt for the accomplished Laura, with more panegyric [Pg 7] than passion, Spenser in his sonnets seldom appeals to the heart, and too frequently shews more of the poet and the scholar than of the lover. ”

“ To talk of love throughout the livelong day:
And that each fair might be as well content
As I in truth believe our hearts would be. [5]
We have before seen, that the Sonnet was imported from Italy into English poetry, by lord Surrey and Wyat, about the middle of the sixteenth century. But it does not seem to have flourished in its legitimate form, till towards the close of the reign of queen Elisabeth. What I call the legitimate form, in which it now appeared, was not always free from licentious innovations in the rythmical arrangement. ”

“ About the same time, Thomas Watson published his Hecatompathia, Or the passionate century of love, a hundred sonnets. [12] I have not been able to discover the date of this publication: [13] but his First set of Italian Madrigals appeared at London, in 1590. [14] I have called them sonnets: but they often wander beyond the limits, nor do they always preserve the conformation [or] constraint, [15] of the just Italian Sonetto. [16] Watson is more brilliant than Daniel: but he is encumbered with conceit and the trappings of affectation. ”

“ For Joseph Warton, Sidney was the prime English exhibit of great writers who have not, he thought, "been able to express themselves with beauty and propriety in the fetters of verse." [1] And Thomas Warton quoted evidently only once from Sidney's verse, [1] and then only by way of England's Helicon. [2] The omission of Sidney, then, is the glaring defect; of the dozen or so other Elizabethan sonnet collections which escaped Warton, most were absolutely or practically unknown, and none seem to have been available to him in the Bodleian or the British Museum. ”

“ Critically appraised, Warton's treatment of the Elizabethan sonnet seems skimpy. To dismiss the sonnet in one third the amount of space devoted to Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum seems to betray a want of proportion. Perhaps even more damaging may seem the fact that Warton failed to mention more sonnet collections than he discussed. About twenty years later, in 1802, Joseph Ritson listed in his Bibliographia Poetica the sonnet collections of Barnaby Barnes, Thomas Lodge, William Percy, and John Soowthern—all evidently unknown to Warton. ”

“ The bibliographer, for example, will be intrigued by a statement of Thomas Warton that he had examined a copy of the Sonnets published in 1599—a decade before the accepted date of the first edition. The literary historian will be interested in, inter alia, unpublished information concerning the university career of Samuel Daniel and in the theory that Shakespeare's sonnets should be interpreted as if addressed by a woman to her lover. ”

“ But that they were undoubtedly written by Shakespeare, the frequent intermixture of thoughts and expressions which now appear in his plays, and, what is more, the general complexion of their phraseology & sentiment, abundantly demonstrate, Shakespeare cannot be concealed. Their late ingenious editor is of opinion, that Daniel was Shakespeare's model. [33]
I have before incidentally mentioned Barnefield's Sonnets, [34] which, like Shakespeare's, are adressed [sic] to a boy. They are flowery and easy. Meres recites Barnefelde among the pastoral writers. ”

“ And in a few others, where the expressions literally shew the writer to be a man. [Warton of course wanted to preserve Shakespeare's sonnets from the charge of homosexuality. In the eighteenth century the distaste for conceits and an acute sensitivity to [Pg 20] the suspicion of homosexuality made the Sonnets so unpopular that they were omitted from the editions of Shakespeare by, among others, Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Warburton, Capell, and Johnson.] ”

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All correspondence concerning subscriptions in the United States and Canada should be addressed to the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2205 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles 18, California. ”

“ This continuation, discovered by the editor among the Warton papers in the Moberly Library at Winchester College, is here published with the kind permission of the Right Honorable Harold T. Baker and Sir George Henry Gates, retired and present Wardens of Winchester College, and of the Fellows of the College. The editor is indebted also to the Reverend Mr. J. d'E. Firth, Assistant Master and Chaplain; and Mr. C. E. R. Claribut and Mr. J. M. G. Blakiston, past and present Assistant Fellows' Librarians. The Richmond Area University Center contributed a generous grant-in-aid. ”

“ Warton's notes, which in the manuscript are designated by letters or symbols, have been numbered. Brackets enclose all the editor's corrections, expansions, and comments. The parentheses are Warton's. ”

“ F. i. F. ij. He thinks it of consequence to remember, that Smith gave a Globe, mira arte politum, to Queens College Library at Cambridge. Ibid, Sign. E. iij. [E4 verso.] He praises Lodovice Dolci's odes, and Ronsard. Cant. ii. Sign. C. i. His iambics are celebrated by his cotemporaries. See Meres, Wits Tr. fol. 280. 282. [283 verso.] (See supr. ii [i] . [401, n] .) Nothing can be more unclassical than Harvey's Latin verse. He is Hobbinol in Spenser's Pastorals. Under that name, he has prefixed two recommendatory poems to the first and second parts of the Faerie queene. ”

“ M. G. Robinson and Leah Dennis [Baton Rouge, 1951] , pp. 135, 137.) It is unfortunate that the matter was not cleared up in discussion with Malone, whom at some time during the 1780's Warton furnished with a copy of the 1596 Venus and Adonis and with whom he corresponded around 1785 concerning sonnets in general and Shakespeare in particular. (William Shakespeare, Plays and Poems, ed. Edmond Malone [London, 1790] X, 13, n. 1; and James Prior, The Life of Edmond Malone [London, 1860] , pp. 122-123.) ]
[31] Wits Tr. fol. 281. b. [The brackets in the text are Warton's.] ”

“ Some of his sonnets are prefixed to Sydney's Apology for Poetry. The initials H. C. often occur in Englands Helicon. I take this opportunity of saying that some pieces of Chettle were among Mr. Beauclerc's books. (See supr. iii. [291-292, n.?] ) [Indeed the annotations in the Harvard Library copy of the Bibliotheca Beauclerkiana (p. 102) suggest that either Thomas Warton or, more probably, his brother may have purchased the copy of Chettle's Englands Mourning Garment owned by Thomas Warton's former [Pg 24] student. ”

“ Charles Macklin's The Man of the World (1792) .
27. Frances Reynolds' An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty, etc. (1785) .
28. John Evelyn's An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659) ; and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) .
29. Daniel Defoe's A Vindication of the Press (1718) .
30. Essays on Taste from John Gilbert Cooper's Letters Concerning Taste, 3rd edition (1757) , & John Armstrong's Miscellanies (1770) .
Sixth Year (1951-1952)
31. ”