Thomas Warton

“ I'm very sure they pity you,
Ye silliest of silly dogs."
The next laureate, Thomas Warton, the historian of English poetry, is too well known and appreciated to require any lengthened notice here. In 1747 and 1748 he held the appointment of laureated poet, to which he was inaugurated, according to the ancient custom, in the common-room of Trinity College, Oxford. His duty was to celebrate a lady chosen as lady patroness, and Warton performed his task crowned with a wreath of laurel. In 1757, he was elected professor of poetry, as his father had formerly been in the same university. ”

“ Queen of a people's heart, who ne'er before
Agreed—yet now with one consent adore!
One contest yet remains in this desire,
Who most shall give applause, where all admire.
THOMAS WARTON THE ELDER. The Wartons were a poetical race. The father of Thomas and Joseph, names so intimately associated with English poetry, was himself a poet. He was of Magdalene College in Oxford, vicar of Basingstoke and Cobham, and twice chosen poetry professor. He was born in 1687, and died in 1745. ”

“ Thomas Warton is especially noteworthy; probably no other eighteenth century poet, with the exception of James Thomson, has so many instances of new compound formations, and these are all the more striking in that few of them are of the mechanical type, readily formed by means of a commonplace adjective or adverb. Instances of compound substantives (Type I) are almost entirely lacking, and the same may be said of the noun plus adjective epithets (Type II) . ”

“ When all criticism has been allowed for the inaccuracies of Warton's work, and the unsatisfactory nature of his general plan, the fact remains that his book is still indispensable to the student of English poetry. Moreover, much that may seem commonplace in his criticism was entirely fresh and even revolutionary in his own day. Warton directed the attention of readers to early English literature, and, in view of the want of texts, rendered inestimable service by transcribing large extracts from early writers. ”

“ Such melancholy disappointments we know to be incident to humanity; but we do not feel them the less. Let me particularly lament the Reverend Thomas Warton, and the Reverend Dr. Adams. Mr. Warton, amidst his variety of genius and learning, was an excellent Biographer. His contributions to my Collection are highly estimable; and as he had a true relish of my Tour to the Hebrides, I trust I should now have been gratified with a larger share of his kind approbation. ”

“ Mant, now Bishop of Killaloe, prefixed to the edition of his poems published at Oxford, is drawn from sources so authentic, and detailed with so much exactness, that little remains to be added to the circumstances which it relates.
Thomas Warton was descended from a very respectable family in Yorkshire. His grandfather, Anthony Warton, was rector of a village in Hampshire; and his father was a fellow of Magdalen College, and Poetry Professor in the University of Oxford. ”

“ Of the country adjacent to Wynslade, Thomas Warton has given a very pleasing description in one of his sonnets, and in an "Ode sent to a friend, on his leaving a favourite village in Hampshire." Both were written on the occasion of his brother's absence, who had gone in the train of the Duke of Bolton to France. One motive, on which he went, would not now be thought quite creditable to a clergyman. It was that he might be at hand to join the Duke in marriage to his mistress, as soon as the Duchess, who was far gone in a dropsy, should be no more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bowles, the poet, and William Benwell [q. v.] , a man of literary taste, were also scholars, and became his friends. Thomas Warton was then a fellow of this college, and Headley, who was ‘poetical from top to toe,’ at once fell under Warton's influence. During his vacation visits from Oxford to his friends in Norfolk he fell in love with a beautiful woman, referred to in his poems as Myra, but their common friends thought the attachment indiscreet, and she was prevailed upon to marry a rival. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fertility of invention ascribed to him by Roscoe, and which he, in some degree, challenges for himself, is the last praise he can claim. Every portion of the conception which has a touch of creative power is found in Chaucer, together with the largest part of what is good [Pg 196] in the filling up. High authorities differ as to the effect of Pope's additions and variations. Thomas Warton pronounced that "the character of the poem was marred," and Bowles endorsed the criticism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ausonius, Epigram i. 12.
[537] Whitehead in 1757 succeeded Colley Cibber as poet-laureate, and dying in 1785 was followed by Thomas Warton. From Warton the line of succession is Pye, Southey, Wordsworth, Tennyson. See post, under June 13, 1763.
[538] Hawkins (Life, p. 176) likewise says that the manuscript passed through Whitehead and 'other hands' before it reached Chesterfield. Mr. Croker had seen 'a draft of the prospectus carefully written by an amanuensis, but signed in great form by Johnson's own hand. It was evidently that which was laid before Lord Chesterfield. ”

“ Literary biography owes much to the Wartons—more than the present writers in this department seem disposed to acknowledge; and it is to a Warton, not Thomas, but his brother, Dr. Joseph Warton, that we owe the hint upon which I have proceeded, and, as I believe, settled the question for ever.
Dr. Warton, we have seen, in his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 1780, vol. ii., informs us, that he learned from Dr. Bolton, Dean of Carlisle, that he had heard from a Mr. Potenger, a cousin of Pope, that Pope’s grandfather was a clergyman of the Church of England living in Hampshire. ”

“ Thomas, Oxf., 1616, and Rector of Segrave, Leicestershire, 1630. Subject to depression of spirits, he wrote as an antidote the singular book which has given him fame. The Anatomy of Melancholy, in which he appears under the name of Democritus Junior, was pub. in 1621, and had great popularity. In the words of Warton, "The author's variety of learning, his quotations from rare and curious books, his pedantry sparkling with rude wit and shapeless elegance ... have rendered it a repertory of amusement and information." ”

“ He clearly possessed the confidence of both the sisters, and was sent by Mary on 26 April 1558 to broach to Elizabeth an offer of marriage from Eric of Sweden (Cotton MS. Vitellius C. xvi. f. 334, in Burnet, l.c. No. 37; Warton, pp. 99–103) . The commonly accepted accounts of the festivities given in honour of Elizabeth, mainly ‘at the chardges of Sir Thomas Pope,’ during 1557 and 1558, rest on no trustworthy evidence. Warton says that he derived them from copies made for him by Francis Wise of Strype's alleged transcripts of the then unpublished ‘Machyn's Diary’ in the Cottonian Library. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Warton, Wharton, or Warblington, on the other. In the records of his election assent, confirmation, and consecration at St. Asaph's, his name is given as Wartton. On the other hand, the arms the bishop used were those of the Parfews or Purefoys, and there were members of that family connected in various ways with the cathedral when Warton was bishop of St. Asaph. Archdeacon Thomas concludes that the family name was Parfey or Parfew, and that the local name of Warton in various forms was adopted. Robert Warton was a Cluniac monk, and became abbot of Bermondsey. ”

“ R. was a copy of that volume, with the addition of the Maske, as printed in the same size in 1637. Such was the conclusion of Warton, and such is mine. The question at issue is, Who was Mr. R.? Warton says, "I believe Mr. R. to be John Rouse," the keeper of the Bodleian library. Is it not more probable that Mr. R. means Robert Randolph, master of arts, and student of Christchurch—a younger brother of Thomas Randolph, and the editor of his poems?
I must first dispose of the assertion that the friendship between Rouse and Milton "appears to have subsisted in 1637." ”

“ Warton's decease, whereas Thomas was but seventeen, was more capable of appreciating, as it deserved, the tenderness of such a father. To what has been before said of this estimable man, I have to add, that his poems, of which I had once a cursory view, appeared to me to merit more notice than they have obtained; and that his version of Fracastorio's pathetic lamentation on the death of his two sons particularly engaged my attention. Suavis adeo poeta ac doctus, is the testimony borne to him by one [1] who will himself have higher claims of the same kind on posterity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”