hendecasyllables he has left, have more of the vigour of Catullus than
those by Flaminio; but Flaminio excels him in delicacy. The Mons
Catharinae contains nearly the same images as Gray's Ode on a Prospect
of Eton College. In the word "cedrinae," which occurs in the verses on
Trinity College Chapel, he has, we believe, erroneously made the
penultimate long. Dr. Mant has observed another mistake in his use of
the word "Tempe" as a feminine noun, in the lines translated from
Akenside. When in his sports with his brother's scholars at Winchester
he made their exercises for them, he used to ask the boy how many faults
he would have:--one such would have been sufficient for a lad near the
head of the school.
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.
FOOTNOTES
[1] There is a little memoir of James St. Amand, in the preface, that
will interest some readers. He was of Lincoln College, Oxford, about
1705, where he had scarcely remained a year, before his ardour for
Greek literature induced him to visit Italy, chiefly with a view of
searching MSS. that might serve for an edition of Theocritus. In
Italy, before he had reached his twentieth year, he was well known
to the learned world, and had engaged the esteem of many eminent
men; among others, of Vincenzo Gravina, Niccolo Valletto, Fontanini,
Quirino, Anton Maria Salvini, and Henry Newton, the English
Ambassador to the Duke of Tuscany. Their letters to him are
preserved in the Bodleian. By his researches into the MSS. of
Italian libraries, he assisted his learned friends, Kuster, Le
Clerc, Potter, Hudson, and Kennet, and other literary characters of
that time, in their several pursuits. He then returned to England by
way of Geneva and Paris, well laden with treasures derived from the
foreign libraries, all which, with a large collection of valuable
books, he bequeathed to the Bodleian. He died about 1750. He
desisted from his intention of publishing Theocritus, either from
ill health, or weariness of his work, or some fear about its
success. His preparations for this edition, together with some notes
on Pindar (an edition of which he also meditated), Aristophanes, the
Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius, Demosthenes, and others, remain
in the Bodleian.
Dr. Shaw, in his edition of Apollonius Rhodius, has since made use
of his notes on that poet, and pays a tribute to his critical
abilities in the preface.
[2] Warton's distinction between them is well imagined.
"Sinillis est Theocritus amplo cuidam pascuo per se satis foecundo,
herbis pluribus frugiferis floribusque pulchris abundanti, dulcibus
etiam fluviis uvido: similis Virgilius horto distincto nitentibus
areolis; ubi larga floruni copia, sed qui studiose dispositi,
curaque meliore nutriti, atque exculti diligenter, olim hue a pascuo
illo majore transferebantur."
* * * * *
JOSEPH WARTON.
The Memoirs of Joseph Warton, by Dr. Wooll, the present Head-master of
Rugby school, is a book which, although it contains a faithful
representation of his life and character by one who had been his pupil,
and though it is enriched with a collection of letters between some of
the men most distinguished in literature during his time, is yet so much
less known than it deserves, that in speaking of it to Mr. Hayley, who
had been intimate with Warton, and to whom some of the letters are
addressed, I found him ignorant of its contents. It will supply me with
much of what I have to relate concerning the subject of it.
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. He was born at Dunsfold, in
Surrey, under the roof of his maternal grandfather, in the beginning of
1722. Like his brother, he experienced the care of an affectionate
parent, who did the utmost his scanty means would allow to educate them
both as scholars; but with this difference, that Joseph being three-and
-twenty years old at the time of Mr. 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.
Having been some time at New College school, but principally taught by
his father till he was fourteen years old, Joseph was then admitted on
the foundation of Winchester, under Dr. Sandby. Here, together with two
of his school-fellows, of whom Collins was one, he became a contributor
to the Gentleman's Magazine. Johnson, who then assisted in editing that
miscellany, had sagacity enough to distinguish, from the rest, a few
lines that were sent by Collins, which, though not remarkable for
excellence, ought now to take their place among his other poems.
In 1740, Warton being superannuated at Winchester, was entered of Oriel
College, Oxford; and taking his bachelor's degree, in 1744, was ordained
to his father's curacy at Basingstoke. Having lost his father about a
year after, he removed to the curacy of Chelsea, in February, 1746. Near
this time, I suppose a letter, that is without date of time or place, to
have been written to his brother. As it informs us of some particulars
relating to Collins, of whom it is to be wished that more were known, I
am tempted to transcribe it.
Dear Tom,--You will wonder to see my name in an advertisement next
week, so I thought I would apprize you of it. The case was this.
Collins met me in Surrey, at Guildford races, when I wrote out for him
my Odes, and he likewise communicated some of his to me: and being
both in very high spirits, we took courage, resolved to join our
forces, and to publish them immediately. I flatter myself, that I
shall lose no honour by this publication, because I believe these
Odes, as they now stand, are infinitely the best things I ever wrote.
You will see a very pretty one of Collins's, on the Death of Colonel
Ross before Tournay. It is addressed to a lady who was Ross's intimate
acquaintance, and who, by the way, is Miss Bett Goddard. Collins is
not to publish the Odes unless he gets ten guineas for them.
I returned from Milford last night, where I left Collins with my
mother and sister, and he sets out to-day for London. I must now tell
you, that I have sent him your imitation of Horace's Blandusian
Fountain, to be printed amongst ours, and which you shall own or not
as you think proper. I would not have done this without your consent,
but because I think it very poetically and correctly done, and will
get you honour.
* * * * *
You will let me know what the Oxford critics say. Adieu, dear Tom.
I am your most affectionate brother,
J. WARTON.
On this Dr. Wooll founds a conjecture, that Warton published a volume
of poems conjointly with his brother and Collins; but adds, that after a
diligent search he had not been able to discover it. I think it more
likely that the design was abandoned. However this may be, it is certain
that he himself published a volume of Odes in 1746, of which, as I learn
from a note to the present Bishop of Killaloe's verses to his memory, a
second edition appeared in the following year. To complete his recovery
from the small-pox, which he had taken at Chelsea, he went, in May 1746,
to Chobham; and then, after officiating for a few months at Chawton and
Droxford, returned to his first curacy of Basingstoke. In the next year
he was presented by the Duke of Bolton to the rectory of Wynslade, by
which preferment he was enabled immediately to marry a young lady in
that neighbourhood, of the name of Daman, to whom he had been long
attached. 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. Warton
set out reluctantly, but with the hope that he might benefit his family
by compliance. He had not been away five months, when the impatience for
home came on him so strongly, that he quitted Montauban, where the Duke
was residing, and made his way towards England by such conveyances as he
could meet with; at one time in a courier's cart; at another, in the
company of carriers who were travelling in Britanny. Thus he scrambled
on to Bourdeaux, and till he reached St. Malo's, where he took ship and
landed at Southampton. When he had been returned a month the Duchess
died. He then asked permission to go back, and perform the marriage
ceremony; but the chaplain of the embassy at Turin was already on his
way for that purpose.
He was now once more at Wynslade, restored to a domestic life, and the
uninterrupted pursuit of his studies. Before going abroad, he had
published (in 1749) his Ode on West's translation of Pindar; and after
his return, employed himself in writing papers, chiefly on subjects of
criticism, for the Adventurer, and in preparing for the press an edition
of Virgil, which (in 1753) he published, together with Pitt's
translation of the Aeneid, his own of the Eclogues and Georgies, his
notes on the whole, and several essays. The book has been found useful
for schools; and was thought at the time to do him so much credit, that
it obtained for him the degree of Master of Arts by diploma from the
University of Oxford, and no doubt was instrumental in recommending him
to the place of second master of Winchester School, to which he was
appointed in 1755. In the meantime he had been presented by the Jervoise
family to the rectory of Tunworth, and resided for a short time at that
place.
In 1756, appeared the first volume of his Essay on the genius and
writings of Pope, dedicated to Young. The name of the author was to have
been concealed, but he does not seem to have kept his own secret very
carefully, for it was immediately spoken of as his by Akenside, Johnson,
and Dr. Birch. The second volume did not follow till after an interval
of twenty-six years. The information contained in this essay, which is
better known than his other writings, is such as the recollection of a
scholar, conversant in polite literature, might easily have supplied. He
does not, like his brother, ransack the stores of antiquity for what has
been forgotten, but deserves to be recalled; nor, like Hurd, exercise,
on common materials, a refinement that gives the air of novelty to that
with which we have been long familiar. He relaxes, as Johnson said of
him, the brow of criticism into a smile. Though no longer in his desk
and gown, he is still the benevolent and condescending instructor of
youth; a writer, more capable of amusing and tempting onwards, by some
pleasant anticipations, one who is a novice in letters, than of
satisfying the demands of those already initiated. He deserves some
praise for having been one of the first who attempted to moderate the
extravagant admiration for Pope, whom he considered as the poet of
reason rather than of fancy; and to disengage us from the trammels of
the French school. Some of those who followed have ventured much
further, with success; but it was something to have broken the ice. I do
not know that he published anything else while he remained at
Winchester, except[2] an edition of Sir Philip Sydney's Defence of
Poesy, and Observations on Eloquence and Poetry from the Discoveries of
Ben Jonson, in 1787. His literary exertions, and the attention he paid
to the duties of his school, did not go unrewarded. In 1766 he was
advanced to the Head-mastership of Winchester, and took his two degrees
in divinity; in 1782, Bishop Lowth gave him a prebend of St. Paul's, and
the rectory of Chorley, which he was allowed to exchange for Wickham, in
Hants. In 1788, through the intervention of Lord Shannon with Mr. Pitt,
he obtained a prebend of Winchester; and soon after, at the solicitation
of Lord Malmesbury, was presented by the Bishop of that diocese to the
rectory of Easton, which, in the course of a twelve-month, he exchanged
for Upham.
In his domestic relations, he enjoyed as much happiness as prudence and
affection could ensure him, but not unembittered by those disastrous
accidents to which every father of a family is exposed. Some years after
his marriage (1763) his letters to his brother discover him struggling
under his anguish for the loss of a favourite daughter, who had died
under inoculation, but striving to conceal his feelings for the sake of
a wife whom he tenderly loved. In 1772, this wife was also taken from
him, leaving him with six children. His second son, Thomas, fellow of
New College, a man on whom the poetic spirit of the Wartons had
descended, was found by him, one day when he returned from the college
prayers, sitting in the chair in which he had left him after dinner,
without life. It was the termination of a disease under which he had
long laboured. This happened in 1786; and before he had space to recover
the blow, in four years after, his brother died. In 1773, he had solaced
himself by a second marriage with Miss Nicholas, the daughter of Robert
Nicholas, Esq. In both his matrimonial connexions, his sister described
him as having been eminently fortunate.
The latter part of his life was spent in retirement and tranquillity. In
1793, he resigned the mastership of Winchester, and settled himself on
his living of Wickham. He had intended to finish his brother's History
of English Poetry, which wanted another volume to complete it; and might
now have found time enough to accomplish the task. But an obstacle
presented itself, by which it is likely that he was discouraged from
proceeding. The description given by Daniel Prince, a respectable old
bookseller at Oxford, of the state in which his brother's rooms were
found at his decease, and of the fate that befell his manuscripts and
his property, may be edifying to some future fellow of a college, who
shall employ himself in similar pursuits.[3] "Poor Thomas Warton's
papers were in a sad litter, and his brother Joe has made matters worse
by confusedly cramming all together, sending them to Winchester, &c. Mr.
Warton could not give so much as his old clothes; his very shoes,
stockings, and wigs, laid about in abundance. Where could his money go?
It must lay in paper among his papers, or be laid in a book; he could
not, nor did not spend it; and his brother, on that score, is greatly
disappointed."
A republication of Pope's works, with notes, offered him an easier
occupation than the digesting of those scattered materials for the
History of Poetry which he had thus assisted in disarranging. He was
probably glad to escape from inaction, and set himself to parcel out his
Essay into comments for this edition; which, in 1797, was published in
nine volumes. His indiscretion, in adding to it some of Pope's
productions which had been before excluded, has been most bitterly
censured. That it would have been better to let them remain where they
were can scarcely be questioned. But I should be more willing to regard
the insertion of them as proof of his own simplicity, in suspecting no
harm from what he had himself found to be harmless, than of any design
to communicate injury to others. A long life, passed without blame, and
in the faithful discharge of arduous duties, ought to have secured him
from this misconstruction at its close. After all, the pieces objected
to are such as are more offensive to good manners than dangerous to
morality. There are some other of Pope's writings, more likely to
inflame the passions, which yet no one scruples to read; and Dr. Wooll
has suggested that it was inconsistent to set up the writer as a teacher
of virtue, and in the same breath to condemn his editor as a pander to
vice.
He bestowed on his censurers no more consideration than they deserved,
and went on to prepare an edition of Dry den for the press. Two volumes,
with his notes, were completed, when his labours were finally broken off
by a painful disease. His malady was an affection of the kidneys, which
continued to harass him for some months, and ended in a fatal paralysis
on the twenty-third of February, 1800, in the seventy-eighth year of his
age.
He was interred in the cathedral at Winchester, where, by the
contributions of his former scholars, a monument, executed by Mr.
Flaxman, was raised to his memory, of a design so elegant, as the tomb
of a poet has not often been honoured with. It is inscribed with the
following epitaph--
H.S.E.
Josephus Warton, S.T.P.
Hujus Ecclesiae
Prebendarius:
Scolae Wintoniensis
Per annos fere triginta
Informator:
Poeta fervidus, facilis, expolitus.
Criticus eruditus, perspicax, elegans:
Obiit XXIII'o. Feb. M.D.CCC.
Aetat. LXXVIII.
Hoc qualecunque
Pietatis monumentum
Praeceptori optimo,
Desideratissimo,
Wiccamici sui
P.C.
In the frankness of his disposition he appears to have resembled his
brother, but with more liveliness and more love of general society. I
have heard, that in the carelessness of colloquial freedom, he was apt
to commit himself by hasty and undigested observations. As he did not
aim at being very oracular himself, so he was unusually tolerant of
ignorance in others. Of this, a diverting instance is recorded by Dr.
Wooll: meeting in company with a lady who was a kinswoman of Pope's, he
eagerly availed himself of the occasion offered for learning some new
particulars concerning one by whom so much of his time and thoughts had
been engaged. "Pray, Sir," began the lady, "did not you write a book
about my cousin Pope?" "Yes, Madam;" was the reply. "They tell me 'twas
vastly clever. He wrote a great many plays, did not he?" was the next
question. "I never heard but of one attempt, Madam;" said Warton,
beginning perhaps to expect some discovery, when his hopes were suddenly
crushed by an "Oh! no," from the lady, "I beg your pardon, Sir. That was
Mr. Shakspeare. I always confound them." He had the good breeding to
conceal his disappointment, and to take a courteous leave of the
kinswoman of Pope.
He was regarded with great affection by those whom he had educated. The
opinions of a man so long experienced in the characters of children, and
in the best methods of instruction, are on these subjects entitled to
much notice. "He knew," says his biographer and pupil, "that the human
mind developed itself progressively, but not always in the same
consistent degrees, or at periods uniformly similar." He conjectured,
therefore, that the most probable method of ensuring some valuable
improvement to the generality of boys was not to exact what the
generality are incapable of performing. As a remedy for inaccurate
construction, arising either from apparent idleness or inability, he
highly approved, and sedulously imposed, translation. Modesty, timidity,
or many other constitutional impediments, may prevent a boy from
displaying before his master, and in the front of his class, those
talents of which privacy, and a relief from these embarrassments, will
often give proof. These sentiments were confirmed by that most
infallible test, experience; as he declared (within a few years of his
death) that "the best scholars he had sent into the world were those
whom, whilst second master, he had thus habituated to translation, and
given a capacity of comparing and associating the idiom of the dead
languages with their own."
It is pleasant to observe the impression which men, who have engrossed
to themselves the attention of posterity, have made on one another, when
chance has brought them together. Of Mason, whom he fell in with at
York, he tells his brother, that "he is the most easy, best natured,
agreeable man he ever met with." In the next year, he met with
Goldsmith, and observed of him, "that of all solemn coxcombs, he was the
first, yet sensible; and that he affected to use Johnson's hard words in
conversation."
Soon after the first volume of his Essay on Pope had been published,
Lyttleton, then newly raised to the peerage, gave him his scarf, and
submitted some of his writings, before they were printed, to his
inspection.
Harris, the author of Hermes, and Lowth, were others in whose friendship
he might justly have prided himself.
He was one of the few that did not shrink from a collision with Johnson;
who could so ill endure a shock of this kind, that on one occasion he
cried out impatiently, "Sir, I am not used to contradiction."
"It would be better for yourself and your friends, Sir, if you were;"
was the natural retort. Their common friends interfered, to prevent a
ruder altercation.
Like Johnson, he delighted in London, where he regularly indulged
himself by passing the holidays at Christmas. His fondness for
everything relating to a military life was a propensity that he shared
with his brother; and while the one might have been seen following a
drum and fife at Oxford, the other, by the sprightliness of his
conversation, had drawn a circle of red coats about him at the St.
James's Coffee House, where he frequently breakfasted. Both of them were
members of the Literary Club, set on foot by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
This gaiety of temper did not hinder him from discharging his clerical
office in a becoming manner. "His style of preaching," we are told by
Mr. Wooll, "was unaffectedly earnest and impressive; and the dignified
solemnity with which he read the Liturgy, particularly the Communion
Service, was remarkably awful."
His reputation as a critic and a scholar has preserved his poetry from
neglect. Of his Odes, that to Fancy, written when he was very young, is
one that least disappoints us by a want of poetic feeling. Yet if we
compare it with that by Collins, on the Poetical Character, we shall see
of how much higher beauty the same subject was capable. In the Ode to
Evening, he has again tried his strength with Collins. There are some
images of rural life in it that have the appearance of being drawn from
nature, and which therefore please.
Hail, meek-eyed maiden, clad in sober grey,
Whose soft approach the weary woodman loves,
As homeward bent to kiss his prattling babes,
He jocund whistles through the twilight groves.
* * * * *
* * * * *
To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair,
Light skims the swallow o'er the watery scene,
And from the sheep-cotes, and fresh-furrow'd field,
Stout ploughmen meet to wrestle on the green.
The swain that artless sings on yonder rock,
His nibbling sheep and lengthening shadow spies;
Pleased with the cool, the calm, refreshful hour,
And the hoarse hummings of unnumber'd flies.
But these pretty stanzas are interrupted by the mention of Phoebus, the
Dryads, old Sylvan, and Pan. The Ode to Content is in the same metre as
his school-fellow's Ode to Evening; but in the numbers, it is very
inferior both to that and to Mrs. Barbauld's Ode to Spring.
In his Dying Indian, he has produced a few lines of extraordinary force
and pathos. The rest of his poems, in blank verse, are for the most part
of an indifferent structure.
In his Translations from Virgil, he will probably be found to excel
Dryden as much in correctness, as he falls short of him in animation and
harmony.