sanguine; easily swayed both in his commendation and censures of others,
by the reigning humour of the moment, yet warm, and (when not influenced
by the baneful spirit of faction) steady in his attachments. On his
independence he particularly prided himself. But that this was sometimes
in danger from slight causes is apparent, from an anecdote related by
Dr. Wooll, in his Life of Joseph Warton. When Huggins [4] had finished
his translation of Ariosto, he sent a fat buck to Smollett, who at that
time managed the Critical Review; consequently the work was highly
applauded; but the history of the venison becoming public, Smollett was
much abused, and in a future number of the Review retracted his
applause. Perpetual employment of his pen left him little time for
reflection or study. Hence, though he acquired a greater readiness in
the use of words, his judgment was not proportionably improved; nor did
his manhood bear fruits that fully answered to the vigorous promise of
his youth. Yet it may he questioned whether any other writer of English
prose had before his time produced so great a number of works of
invention. When, in addition to his novels, we consider his various
productions, his histories, his travels, his two dramatic pieces, his
poems, his translations, his critical labours, and other occasional
publications, we are surprised that so much should have been done in a
life of no longer continuance.
Excepting Congreve, I do not remember that any of the poets, whose lives
have been written by Johnson, is said to have produced anything in the
shape of a novel. Of the Incognita of Congreve, that biographer
observes, not very satisfactorily, that he would rather praise it than
read it. In the present series, Goldsmith, Smollett, and Johnson
himself, if his Rasselas entitle him to rank in the number, are among
the most distinguished in this species of writing, of whom modern Europe
can boast. To these, if there be added the names of De Foe, Richardson,
Fielding, and Sterne, not to mention living authors, we may produce such
a phalanx as scarcely any other nation can equal. Indeed no other could
afford a writer so wide a field for the exercise of this talent as ours,
where the fullest scope and encouragement are given to the human mind to
expand itself in every direction, and assume every shape and hue, by the
freedom of the government, and by the complexity of civil and commercial
interests. No one has portrayed the whimsical varieties of character,
particularly in lower life, with a happier vein of burlesque than
Smollett. He delights, indeed, chiefly by his strong delineation of
ludicrous incidents and grotesque manners derived from this source. He
does not hold our curiosity entangled by the involution of his story,
nor suspend it by any artful protraction of the main event. He turns
aside for no digression that may serve to display his own ingenuity or
learning. From the beginning to the end, one adventure commonly rises up
and follows upon another, like so many waves of the sea, which cease
only because they have reached the shore.
The billows float in order to the shore,
The wave behind rolls on the wave before.
Admirable as the art of the novelist is, we ought not to confound it
with that of the poet; nor to conclude, because the characters of Parson
Adams, Colonel Bath, and Squire Western in Fielding; and of Strap,
Morgan, and Pipes, in Smollett, impress themselves as strongly on the
memory, and seem to be as really individuals whom we have seen and
conversed with, as many of those which are the most decidedly marked in
Shakspeare himself; that therefore the powers requisite for producing
such descriptions are as rare and extraordinary in one instance as in
the other. For the poet has this peculiar to himself; that he
communicates something from his own mind, which, at the same time that
it does not prevent his personages from being kept equally distinct from
one another, raises them all above the level of our common nature.
Shakspeare, whom we appear not only to know, personally, but to admire
and love as one superior to the cast of his kind,--
Sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child,
has left some trick of his own lineaments and features discoverable in
the whole brood.
Igneus est ollis vigor et coelestis origo
Seminibus.
It is this which makes us willing to have our remembrance of his
characters refreshed by constant repetition, which gives us such a
pleasure in summoning them before us, as "age cannot wither, nor custom
stale." This is a quality which we do not find in Fielding, with all
that consummate skill which he employs in developing his story; nor in
Smollett, with all that vivacity and heartiness of purpose with which he
carries on his narrative.
Of Smollett's poems much does not remain to be said. The Regicide is
such a tragedy as might be expected from a clever youth of eighteen. The
language is declamatory, the thoughts inflated, and the limits of nature
and verisimilitude transgressed in describing the characters and
passions. Yet there are passages not wanting in poetical vigour.
His two satires have so much of the rough flavour of Juvenal, as to
retain some relish, now that the occasion which produced them has passed
away.
The Ode to Independence, which was not published till after his decease,
amid much of common place, has some very nervous lines. The
personification itself is but an awkward one. The term is scarcely
abstract and general enough to be invested with the attributes of an
ideal being.
In the Tears of Scotland, patriotism has made him eloquent and pathetic;
and the Ode to Leven Water is sweet and natural. None of the other
pieces, except the Ode to Mirth, which has some sprightliness of fancy,
deserve to be particularly noticed.
FOOTNOTES
[1] He first settled at Bath.--_MS. addition_. ED.
[2] Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 398.
[3] In a Letter in Dr. Anderson's Edition of his Works, vol. i. p. 179.
[4] From a letter of Granger's (the author of the Biographical History
of England,) to Dr. Ducarel (see Nichols's Illustrations of the
Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 601,) it
appears that Huggins made also a translation of Dante, which was
never printed. He was son of that cruel keeper of the Fleet prison
who was punished for the ill treatment of his prisoners.--(Ibid.)
* * * * *
THOMAS WARTON.
The life of Thomas Warton, by Dr. 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. His mother, daughter of Joseph Richardson, who
was also a clergyman, gave birth to three children:--Joseph, of whom
some account will hereafter be given, Thomas, and Jane. Thomas was born
at Basingstoke, in 1728; and very early in life afforded promise of his
future excellence. A letter, addressed to his sister from school when he
was about nine years of age, containing an epigram on Leander, was
preserved with affectionate regard by their brother, Dr. Warton. What
school it was, that may claim the honour of contributing to the
instruction of one who was afterwards so distinguished as a scholar, has
not been recorded.
On the 16th of March, 1743, he was admitted a commoner of Trinity
College, Oxford; and about two years after lost his father,--a volume of
whose poems was, soon after his death, printed by subscription, by his
eldest son Joseph, with two elegiac poems to his memory, one by the
editor, the other by his daughter above-mentioned. The latter of these
tributes is termed by Mr. Crowe, in a note to one of his eloquent
Crewian Orations,--"Ode tenera, simplex, venusta,"--"tender, simple, and
beautiful."
In 1745 he published his Pastoral Eclogues, which Mr. Chalmers has added
to the collection of his poems; and in the same year he published,
without his name, the Pleasures of Melancholy; having, perhaps, been
influenced in the choice of a subject, thus sombre, by the loss of his
parent. In this poem, his imitations of Milton are so frequent and
palpable, as to discover the timid flight of a young writer not daring
to quit the track of his guide. Yet by some (as appears from the letters
between Mrs. Carter and Miss Talbot) it was ascribed to Akenside. In
1746 was produced his Progress of Discontent,--paraphrase on one of his
own exercises, made at the desire of Dr. Huddesford, the head of his
college.
His next effort attracted more general notice. In consequence of some
disgrace which the University had incurred with Government, by its
supposed attachment to the Stuart family, Mason had written his Isis, an
Elegy; and in 1749, Warton was encouraged by Dr. Huddesford to publish
an answer to it, with the title of the Triumph of Isis. It may naturally
be supposed, that so spirited a defence of Oxford against the aspersions
of her antagonist would be welcomed with ardour; and among other
testimonies of approbation which it received, Dr. King, whose character
is eulogized in the poem, coming into the bookseller's shop, and
inquiring whether five guineas would be acceptable to the author, left
for him an order for that sum. 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.
His two degrees having been taken at about the usual intervals, in 1751
he succeeded to a fellowship of his college, where he found a peaceful
and unenvied retreat for the remainder of his days, without betraying
any ambition of those dignities,--which, to the indignation of Bishop
Warburton, were not conferred upon him.
At this time appeared his Newmarket, a Satire; An Ode written for Music,
performed in the University Theatre; and two copies of verses, one in
Latin, the other in English, on the Death of Frederic, Prince of Wales.
In 1753, his Ode on the approach of Summer,--The Pastoral, in the Manner
of Spenser--(which has not much resemblance to that writer), and Verses
inscribed on a beautiful Grotto,--were printed in the Union, a poetical
miscellany, selected by him, and edited at Edinburgh.
The next year we find him employed in drawing up a body of statutes for
the Radcliffe Library, by the desire of Dr. Huddesford, then Vice
Chancellor; in assisting Colman and Thornton in the Connoisseur; and in
publishing his Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, which he
afterwards enlarged from one to two volumes. Johnson complimented him
"for having shewn to all, who should hereafter attempt the study of our
ancient authors, the way to success, by directing them to the perusal of
the books which their author had read;" a method of illustration which
since, certainly, has not wanted imitators. Much of his time must have
been now diverted from his favourite pursuits, by his engagement in the
instruction of college pupils. During his excursions in the summer
vacations, to different parts of England, he appears to have occupied
himself in making remarks on such specimens of Gothic and Saxon
architecture as came in his way. His manuscript on this subject was in
the possession of his brother, since whose decease, unfortunately, it
has not been discovered. Some incidental observations on our ancient
buildings, introduced into his book on the Faerie Queene, are enough to
make us regret the loss. The poetical reader would have been better
pleased if he had fulfilled an intention he had of translating the
Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.
Though it was not the lot of Warton to attain distinction in his
clerical profession, yet literary honours, more congenial to his taste
and habits, awaited him. In 1756, he was elected Professor of Poetry at
Oxford, and faithfully performed the duties of his office, by
recommending the purest models of antiquity in lectures which are said
to have been "remarkable for elegance of diction, and justness of
observation," and interspersed with translations from the Greek
epigrammatists.
To Johnson he had already rendered a material service by his exertions
to procure him the degree of Master of Arts, by diploma; and he
increased the obligation, by contributing some notes to his edition of
Shakspeare, and three papers to The Idler. The imputation cast on one,
from whom such kindness had been received, of his "being the only man of
genius without a heart," must have been rather the effect of spleen in
Johnson, than the result of just observation; and if either these words,
or the verses in ridicule of his poems--
Endless labour all along,
Endless labour to be wrong;
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet;
had been officiously repeated to Warton, we cannot much wonder at what
is told, of his passing Johnson in a bookseller's shop without speaking,
or at the tears which Johnson is related to have shed at that mark of
alienation in his former friend.
A Description of Winchester, and a Burlesque on the Oxford Guides, or
books professing to give an account of the University, both anonymous,
are among the next publications attributed to his pen.
In 1758, he made a selection of Latin inscriptions in verse; and printed
it, together with notes, under the title of Inscriptionum Romanarum
Metricarum Delectus; and then first undertook, at the suggestion it is
said of Judge Blackstone, the splendid edition of Theocritus, which made
its appearance twelve years after. The papers left by Mr. St. Amand,[1]
formed the basis of this work: to them were added some valuable
criticisms by Toup; and though the arrangement of the whole may be
justly charged with a want of clearness and order, and Dr. Gaisford has
since employed much greater exactness and diligence in his edition of
the same author, yet the praise of a most entertaining and delightful
variety cannot be denied to the notes of Warton. In a dissertation on
the Bucolic poetry of the Greeks, he shews that species of composition
to have been derived from the ancient comedy; and exposes the dream of a
golden age.
La bella eta dell' or unqua non venne,
Nacque da nostre menti
Entro il vago pensiero,
E nel nostro desio chiaro divenne.
_Guidi_.
The characters in Theocritus, are shewn to be distinguished into three
classes,--herdsmen, shepherds, and goatherds; the first of which was
superior to the next, as that in its turn was to the third; and this
distinction is proved to have been accurately observed, as to allusions
and images. The discrimination seems to have been overlooked by Virgil:
in which instance, no less than in all the genuine graces of pastoral
poetry, he is inferior to the Sicilian.[2] The contempt with which
Warton speaks of those eminent and unfortunate Greek scholars, who
diffused the learning of their country over Europe, after the capture of
Constantinople, and whom he has here termed "Graeculi famelici," is
surely reprehensible. But for their labours, Britain might never have
required an editor of Theocritus.
In 1760, he contributed to the Biographia Britannica a Life of Sir
Thomas Pope, twice, subsequently published, in a separate form, with
considerable enlargements: in the two following years he wrote a Life of
Dr. Bathurst, and in his capacity of Poetry Professor, composed Verses
on the Death of George II., the Marriage of his Successor, and the Birth
of the Heir Apparent, which, together with his Complaint of Cherwell,
made a part of the Oxford Collections. Several of his humorous pieces
were soon after (in 1764) published in the Oxford Sausage, the preface
to which he also wrote; and in 1766, he edited the Greek Anthology of
Cephalas. In 1767, he took the degree of Bachelor in Divinity; and in
1771, was chosen a Fellow of the Antiquarian Society; and on the
nomination of the Earl of Lichfield, Chancellor of the University, was
collated to the Rectory of Kiddington, Oxfordshire, a benefice of small
value. Ten years after, he drew up a History of his Parish, and
published it as a specimen of a Parochial History of Oxfordshire.
Meanwhile, he was engaged in an undertaking, of higher interest to the
national antiquities and literature.
In illustrating the origin, and tracing the progress of our vernacular
poetry, we had not kept pace with the industry of our continental
neighbours. To supply this deficiency, a work had been projected by
Pope, and was now contemplated, and indeed entered on, by Gray and
Mason, in conjunction. We cannot but regret, that Gray relinquished the
undertaking, as he did, on hearing into whose hands it had fallen, since
he would (as the late publication of his papers by Mr. Mathias has
shewn) have brought to the task a more accurate and extensive
acquaintance with those foreign sources from whence our early writers
derived much of their learning, and would, probably, have adopted a
better method, and more precision in the general disposition of his
materials. Yet there is no reason to complain of the way in which Warton
has acquitted himself, as far as he has gone. His History of English
Poetry is a rich mine, in which, if we have some trouble in separating
the ore from the dross, there is much precious metal to reward our
pains. The first volume of this laborious work was published in 1774;
two others followed, in 1778, and in 1781; and some progress had been
made at his decease in printing the fourth. In 1777, he increased the
poetical treasure of his country by a volume of his own poems, of which
there was a demand for three other editions before his death. In 1782,
we find him presented by his college to the donative of Hill Farrance,
in Somersetshire, and employed in publishing an Inquiry into the
Authenticity of the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley, and Verses on Sir
Joshua Reynolds's painted window at New College: about the same time,
probably, he was chosen a member of the Literary Club.
In 1785, he edited Milton's minor poems, with very copious
illustrations; and in the year following, was elected to the Camden
Professorship of History, and was appointed to succeed Whitehead, as
Poet Laureate. In his inaugural speech as Camden Professor, subjoined to
the edition of his poetical works by Dr. Mant, he has shewn that the
public duties required at the first foundation of the Professorship,
owing to the improvement in the course of academical studies, are
rendered no longer necessary. From one who had already voluntarily done
so much, it would have been ungracious to exact the performance of
public labours not indispensably requisite. In the discharge of his
function as Laureate, he still continued, as he had long ago professed
himself to be,--
Too free in servile courtly phrase to fawn;
and had the wish been gratified,--expressed by himself before his
appointment, or by Gibbon after it,--that the annual tribute might be
dispensed with, we should have lost some of his best lyric effusions.
Till his sixty-second year, he had experienced no interruption to a
vigorous state of health. Then a seizure of the gout compelled him to
seek relief from the use of the Bath waters; and he returned from that
place to college, with the hope of a recovery from his complaint. But on
the 20th of May, 1790, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, as he
was sitting in the common room with two of the college fellows, and in
higher spirits than usual, a paralytic affection deprived him of his
speech. Some indistinct sounds only, in which it was thought the name of
his friend, Mr. Price, the librarian of the Bodleian, was heard, escaped
him, and he expired on the day but one after. His funeral was honoured
by the attendance of the Vice-Chancellor, and a numerous train of
followers, to the ante-chapel of his college, where he is interred, with
a very plain inscription to his memory.
His person was short and thick, though in the earlier part of his life
he had been thought handsome. His face, latterly, became somewhat
rubicund, and his utterance so confused, that Johnson compared it to the
gobbling of a turkey. The portrait of him by Reynolds, besides the
resemblance of the features, is particularly characterized by the manner
in which the hand is drawn, so as to give it a great air of truth. He
was negligent in his dress; and so little studious of appearances, that
having despatched his labours, while others were yet in bed, he might
have been found, at the usual hours of study, loitering on the banks of
his beloved Cherwell, or in the streets, following the drum and fife, a
sound which was known to have irresistible attraction for his ears,--a
spectator at a military parade, or even one amongst a crowd at a public
execution. He retained to old age the amiable simplicity and
unsuspecting frankness of boyhood: his affection for his brother, to
whose society at Winchester he latterly retired from college, during the
vacations in summer, does not seem ever to have suffered any abatement;
and his manners were tranquil and unassuming. The same amenity and
candour of disposition, which marked him in private life, pervade his
writings, except on some few occasions, when his mind is too much under
the influence of party feelings. This bias inclined him, not only to
treat the character of Milton with a most undue asperity, but even to
extenuate the atrocities committed under the government of Mary, and
somewhat to depreciate the worth of those divines, whose attachment to
the reformed religion led them to suffer death in her reign.
The writer of this paper has been told by an Italian, who was acquainted
with Warton, that his favourite book in the Italian language (of which
his knowledge was far from exact) was the Gerusalemme Liberata. Both the
stately phrase, and the theme of that poem, were well suited to him.
Among the poets of the second class, he deserves a distinguished place.
He is almost equally pleasing in his gayer, and in his more exalted
moods. His mirth is without malice or indecency, and his seriousness
without gloom.
In his lyrical pieces, if we seek in vain for the variety and music of
Dryden, the tender and moral sublime of Gray, or the enthusiasm of
Collins, yet we recognize an attention ever awake to the appearances of
nature, and a mind stored with the images of classical and Gothic
antiquity. Though his diction is rugged, it is like the cup in Pindar,
which Telamon stretches out to Alcides, [Greek: chruso pephrkuan], rough
with gold, and embost with curious imagery. A lover of the ancients
would, perhaps, be offended, if the birth-day ode, beginning
Within what fountain's craggy cell
Delights the goddess Health to dwell?
were compared, as to its subject, with that of the Theban bard, on the
illness of Hiero, which opens with a wish that Chiron were yet living,
in order that the poet might consult him on the case of the Syracusan
monarch; and in its form, with that in which he asks of his native city,
in whom of all her heroes she most delighted.
Among the odes, some of which might more properly be termed idylliums,
The Hamlet is of uncommon beauty; the landscape is truly English, and
has the truth and tenderness of Gainsborough's pencil. Those To a Friend
on his leaving a Village in Hampshire, and the First of April, are
entitled to similar praise. The Crusade, The Grave of King Arthur, and
most of the odes composed for the court, are in a higher strain. In the
Ode written at Vale Royal Abbey, is a striking image, borrowed from some
lent verses, written by Archbishop Markham, and printed in the second
volume of that collection.
High o'er the trackless heath, at midnight seen,
No more the windows ranged in long array
(Where the tall shaft and fretted arch between
Thick ivy twines) the taper'd rites betray.
_Prodidit areanas arcta fenestra faces_.
His sonnets have been highly and deservedly commended by no less
competent a judge than Mr. Coleridge. They are alone sufficient to prove
(if any proof were wanting) that this form of composition is not
unsuited to our language. One of our longest, as it is one of our most
beautiful poems, the Faerie Queene, is written in a stanza which demands
the continual recurrence of an equal number of rhymes; and the chief
objection to our adopting the sonnet is the paucity of our rhymes.
The lines to Sir Joshua Reynolds are marked by the happy turn of the
compliment, and by the strength and harmony of the versification, at
least as far as the formal couplet measure will admit of those
qualities. They need not fear a comparison with the verses addressed by
Dryden to Kneller, or by Pope to Jervas.