Joseph Warton

“ But this could only be a matter of diction, of revision, and we are bound to accept the definite and repeated statement of Joseph, that they were essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a fact, "The Enthusiast" is seen to be a document of extraordinary importance. I do not speak of the positive merit of the poem, which it would be easy to exaggerate. Gray, in a phrase which has been much discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had "no choice at all." ”

“ To assert this was not merely to offend against the undoubted supremacy of Pope, but it was to flout the claims of all those others to whom the age gave allegiance. Joseph Warton does not shrink from doing this, and he gives reason for abating the claims of all the classic favourites—Cowley, Waller, Dryden, Addison. When it was advanced against him that he showed arrogance in placing his opinion against that of a multitude of highly trained judges, he replied [Pg 83] that a real "relish and enjoyment of poetry" is a rare quality, and "a creative and glowing imagination" possessed by few. ”

“ JOSEPH WARTON. This accomplished critic and poet was born in 1722. He was son to the Vicar of Basingstoke, and brother to Thomas Warton. (See a former volume for his life.) Joseph was educated at Winchester College, and became intimate there with William Collins. He wrote when quite young some poetry in the Gentleman's Magazine. He was in due time removed to Oriel College, where he composed two poems, entitled 'The Enthusiast,' and 'The Dying Indian.' In 1744, he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Oxford, and was ordained to his father's curacy at Basingstoke. ”

“ We must not, however, confine ourselves to a consideration of "The Enthusiast" of 1740 and the preface to the Odes of 1746. Certain of the expressions, indeed, already quoted, are taken from the two very important critical works which the brothers published while they were still quite young. We must now turn particularly to Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope of 1756, and to Thomas Warton's Observations on the Faerie Queene of 1754. ”

“ His elder and only brother, Joseph, head master of Winchester School, with whom he had generally spent the long vacation, hastened to Oxford, but arrived too late to witness the closing scene. He was buried on the 27th, with the highest academical pomp, the Vice-Chancellor, the Heads of Houses, and the Proctors, at their own request, attending his funeral.
The influence of Warton upon English literature has been great; greater than at the first glance we should imagine ”

“ The poor ghosts do it, knowing that they condemn themselves. Here the mirth of the poet makes the Dull glorify themselves by recounting each misdeed under its proper appellation.
Joseph Warton mistakes the whole matter as much as Lord Kames. "Just criticism," says he, "calls on us also to point out some of the passages that appear exceptionable in the Dunciad. Such is the hero's first speech, in which, contrary to all decorum and probability, he addresses the goddess Dulness, without disguising her as a despicable being, and even calls himself fool and blockhead. ”

“ Altogether the essay on Catherine Trotter is an admirable example of Mr. Gosse in a playful mood.
The study of Joseph and Thomas Warton as “two pioneers of romanticism” is more serious in purpose, and is a scholarly attempt to discover the first symptoms of romanticism in eighteenth-century literature. Mr. Gosse finds in The Enthusiast, written by Joseph Warton at the age of eighteen, “the earliest expression of full revolt against the classical attitude which had been sovereign in all European literature for nearly a century.” ”

“ This was the charming Lavinia Fenton, the original Polly of the Beggars' Opera, between whom and the Duke the disagreement anticipated by the amiable Swift never took place. Twenty-three years after the elopement, the Duke's wife died, and Lavinia then became the Duchess of Bolton. She was, according to the account given of her by Dr. Joseph Warton, "a very accomplished and most agreeable companion; had much wit, good strong sense, and a just taste in polite literature.
Her person was agreeable and well made," continues Dr. Warton, "though I think she never could be called a beauty. ”

“ Joseph Warton, mounted on his little grey pony, formed a conspicuous object in the procession. Twenty years before, “Domum” was sung at the Wharf, round the tree, and at the College gates, on the evening before the Whitsuntide holidays. In 1804, Huddesford wrote the following lines “on a threat to destroy the tree at Winchester round which the scholars at breaking-up sing the celebrated song called ‘Dulce Domum:’”
Then hail! ”

“ A collection which certainly did not need to avoid censure was Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella; and for Warton's total neglect of Sidney's sonnets it seems difficult to account, for in this section on the sonnet Sidney as a poet would have been most aptly discussed. The Astrophel and Stella was easily available in eighteenth-century editions of Sidney's works, and Warton admired the author. Both Thomas and Joseph Warton, however, venerated Sidney mainly for his Arcadia and his Apology for Poetry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thomas and Joseph Warton came before me, one of his Majesty’s
Justices of the Peace for the said county, and did solemnly make
oath to the truth of the above case.
His
Sworn before me, JOHN + WEYLAND.
Mark.
[1] It cannot fail to attract the Reader’s particular attention to this very curious piece, to inform him, that Signor Delpini’s decision, in favour of Mr. Warton, was chiefly grounded on the new and extraordinary style of writing herein attested.
LAUREAT ELECTION. On the demise of the late excellent Bard, William Whitehead, Esq. ”

“ There is no instance in this country of two brothers having been equally celebrated for their skill in poetry with Joseph and Thomas Warton. What has been already told of the parentage of the one renders it unnecessary to say more in this respect of the other. ”

“ When Thomas Warton, in the Appendix to the Life of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, and also the founder of the family of Pope, Earls of Downe, with whom [Pg 17] Pope claimed kindred, enters on the consideration of this question, he admits the probability that such a relationship existed, but professes his utter inability to ascend beyond the father, in pursuit of the Poet’s ancestors. The attempt to do so has been made by others, who have brought far less of antiquarianism into literary history than Warton. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 146. The Benedictines are scarcely fair towards Abelard (xii. 147) , whose style, as far as I have seen, which is not much, seems equal to that of his contemporaries.
[161] Warton has done some justice to the Anglo Latin poets of this century, who have lately been published at Paris. The Trojan War and Antiocheis of Joseph Iscanus, he calls a miracle in this age of classical composition. The style, he says, is a mixture of Ovid, Statius, and Claudian. ”

“ In a poem written in 1745 he shows the delight in Gothic churches and ruined castles which inspired so much of his subsequent work in romantic revival. Most of Warton's poetry, humorous and serious—and the humorous mock heroic was better within his powers than serious verse—was written before the age of twenty-three, when he took his M.A. degree and became a fellow of his college (Trinity, Oxford) . He did not altogether abandon verse; his sonnets, especially, which are the best of his poems, were written later. But his main energies were given to omnivorous poetical reading and criticism. ”

“ Fortunate thus in time, Warton was equally fortunate in politics. He was an Oxford Tory, a firm believer in divine right and passive obedience, and a warm supporter of the new ministers. To the King, it may be added, no nomination could have given greater satisfaction. The official odes of Warton evince all the elegant traits which characterize his other writings. Their refined taste and exquisite modulation are admirable; while the matter is far less sycophantic than was to be expected from so devout a monarchist. ”

“ In person, Warton was at one time short, slim, and handsome; but, as he advanced in years, attained that rotundity of figure, which was the prevailing type of a resident fellow in the past century, and of which a few scattered specimens remain to shame the more wearied workers of a different age. Though silent and shy in company, he was all mirth and hilarity among his associates an inveterate punster, when such word-bandying gave the reputation of wit; the life of the common room ”

“ Even the mediæval expert of the present day, who finds that much of Warton's information is superannuated and that many of his generalisations have been disproved by later discoveries, realises that nowhere else has he at his command so well furnished an armoury of facts and dates about obscure writers; while for the student of sixteenth-century literature, Warton's results have been at many points developed, but have not as a whole been superseded. His style is unaffected and invariably clear. He never forgot that he was the historian and not the critic of the literature of which he treated. ”

“ In 1773 Warton was elected a member of the Literary Club. In 1776 he signed the round-robin asking Johnson to rewrite in English his Latin epitaph on Goldsmith (Boswell, iii. 83) . Johnson, on seeing Warton's signature, declared his wonder that 'Joe Warton, a scholar by profession, should be such a fool' (ib. p. 84 n.) But by humbler men of letters Warton's opinion was highly valued. Cowper was overwhelmed by his approbation. 'The poet,' he wrote, 'who pleases a man like that has nothing left to wish for.'
Some clerical preferment was conferred on Warton while he was still at Winchester. ”

“ But the apologetic air which antiquarian scholars assumed, when venturing to recommend their favorite studies to the attention of a classically minded public, is not absent from Warton's commentary. He writes as if he felt the pressure of an unsympathetic atmosphere all about him. "We who live in the days of writing by rule are apt to try every composition by those laws which we have been taught to think the sole criterion of excellence. ”

“ We feel quite satisfied therefore that Warton hit quite correctly upon the year 1514 as that in which these poems first saw the light, though the ground (the allusion to the Henries) upon which he went was insufficient, and his identification of the hero of the elegy contradicted his supposition. Had he been aware of the importance of fixing the date correctly, he would probably have taken more care than to fall into the blunder of confounding the father with the son, and adorning the former with the dearly earned laurels of the latter. ”

“ Other livings dropped in upon him, and in 1793 he resigned the mastership of Winchester, and went to reside at Wickham. Here he employed himself in preparing an edition of Pope, which he published in 1797. In 1800 he died.
Warton, like his brother, did good service in resisting the literary despotism of Pope, and in directing the attention of the public to the forgotten treasures of old English poetry. He was a man of extensive learning, a very fair and candid, as well as acute critic, and his 'Ode to Fancy' proves him to have possessed no ordinary genius. ”

“ The last of Warton's odes was written in his last illness, and performed three days after his death. Appositely enough, it was an invocation to Health, meriting more than ordinary praise for eloquent fervor. Warton died May 21st, 1790. The laurel was vacant for a month, when Henry James Pye was gazetted. There was hardly a hungry placeman in London who had not as just pretensions to the honor. What poetical gifts he had displayed had been in school or college exercises. His real claims consisted in having spent a fortune in electioneering for ministers ”

“ After an interval of twenty-eight years, his rival, Mason, was probably sincere in the opinion he gave,—that Warton had much excelled him both "in poetical imagery, and in the correct flow of his versification."
He now became a contributor to a monthly miscellany called The Student; in which, besides his Progress of Discontent, were inserted A Panegyric on Oxford Ale, a professed imitation of the Splendid Shilling; The Author confined to College; and A Version of the twenty-ninth chapter of Job. ”