hopes of further promotion, when, under not very creditable circumstances, he went abroad in 1751 with the Duke of Bolton and his mistress, Lavinia Fenton, prepared to marry them after the hourly expected death of the then Duchess. The latter, however, rallied, and Warton missed the preferment, which would doubtless have otherwise been the reward of his services. On his return to England he published in 1753 an edition of Virgil, to which were appended Essays on Pastoral, Didactic, and Epic Poetry, and in the same year he contributed to The World, an essay on "Simplicity in Taste," which defined more precisely the æsthetic principles he was endeavouring to propagate. In 1755 he became second Master of Winchester, and in 1757 published his most noteworthy work, the Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope. He was advanced in 1766 to the Headmastership of Winchester, which he held to the end of his life, managing to combine with it a good deal of ecclesiastical preferment; since in 1782 he was made Prebendary of London; in 1783, Vicar of Chorley in Hertfordshire; Prebendary of Winchester in 1788; Vicar of Wickham in Hampshire, which living he held with that of Easton to which he was appointed in 1790. This he soon exchanged for Upham in Hampshire, and continued to hold the latter together with Wickham, till his death on the 23rd of February 1800. He was buried in Winchester Cathedral. His edition of Pope's Works, his last literary labour, was published in 1797.

Thomas Warton was born at Basingstoke on the 9th of January 1727-8. After being educated by his father, he was entered at Trinity College, Oxford, on the 16th of March 1743-4, and took his B.A. degree in 1747 and his M.A. in 1750, becoming Fellow of his College in 1751. His first poetical work was The Pleasures of Melancholy, written in 1745, in which he developed the elegiac theory defined by Shenstone. In 1749 appeared his Triumph of Isis, an answer to Mason's Elegy Isis, in which the Cambridge poet had reflected on the Tory

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His romantic

sympathies of the sister University. tendencies were further disclosed by his Observations on the Faery Queen of Spenser, published in 1754; but his tastes in this direction were almost balanced by his feeling for classical literature. During his tenure of the Poetry Chair at Oxford, from 1757 to 1767 he seems to have produced little, but at the close of his term he published his edition of Theocritus (1770), and the first volume of his History of English Poetry (1774). The second volume of this work appeared in 1778, and in 1881 the third, beyond which point indolence did not allow Warton to proceed. His appointment to the office of Poet Laureate in 1785 perhaps diverted some of his attention; but he found time in that year to publish an edition of Milton's early poems. He died at Oxford on the 21st of May

1790.

Thomas, if his mind was less critically energetic than that of his brother, had a more versatile fancy and a finer taste. Joseph could feel the necessity of enthusiasm in poetry, but his lyric verse is of the tamest character. On the other hand, Thomas, whose early taste had doubtless been directed by the elder Warton's influence, was able to embody his emotions in concrete imagery. In The Pleasures of Melancholy, written when he was only seventeen, the following lines are notable:

Beneath yon ruined abbey's moss-grown piles
Oft let me sit at twilight hour of eve,

When thro' some western window the pale moon
Pours her long levelled rule of streaming light;

While sullen sacred silence reigns around,

And the lone screech-owl's note, who builds his bower
Amid the mouldering caverns, dark and damp,

On the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves,

Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green

Invests some wasted tower.

From a taste for mediæval ruins his imagination, nourished on the study of the Faery Queen and the early poems of Milton, was diverted into the paths trodden before by Leland, Camden, and Selden; and his love of

antiquities is well illustrated by his fine sonnet on Stonehenge :

Thou noblest monument of Albion's isle !
Whether by Merlin's aid from Scythia's shore,
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
T'entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile;
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught mid thy mighty maze their mystic lore;
Or Danish chiefs, enriched with savage spoil,
To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine
Reared the rude heap; or in thy hallowed round
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line;

Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned:
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,

We muse on many an ancient tale renowned.

From the critical point of view, however, the most interesting verses that Thomas Warton ever wrote are those On Sir Joshua Reynold's Painted Window at New College, Oxford. In these the historian of English Poetry makes a kind of recantation of his romanticism. Beginning with a reproach to the great painter for dispelling his dreams, he continues:

For long enamoured of a barbarous age,
A faithless truant to the classic page,
Long have I loved to catch the simple chime
Of minstrel harps and spell the fabling rime;
To view the festive rites, the knightly play,
That decked heroic Albion's elder day;

To mark the mouldering halls of barons bold,
And the rough castle cast in giant mould,
With Gothic manners Gothic arts explore,

And muse on the magnificence of yore.

After describing his delight in Gothic architecture, he proceeds to show his appreciation of the qualities of classic perfection :

Such was a pensive bard's mistaken strain
But oh! of ravished pleasures why complain?
No more the matchless skill I call unkind,
That strives to disenchant my cheated mind.
For when again I view thy chaste design;
The just proportion and the genuine line;

Those native portraitures of Attic art,
That from the lucid surface seem to start;
Those tints that steal no glories from the day,
Nor ask the sun to lend his streaming ray!
The doubtful radiance of contending dyes,
That faintly mingle yet distinctly rise ;
'Twixt light and shade the transitory strife
The feature blooming with immortal life ;
The stole in casual foldings taught to flow,
Not with ambitious ornaments to glow;
The tread majestic and the beaming eye,
That, lifted, speaks its commerce with the sky ;
Heaven's golden emanation, gleaming mild,
O'er the mean cradle of the Virgin's Child :
Sudden the sombrous imagery is fled,
Which late my visionary rapture fed :

Thy powerful hand has broke the Gothic chain,
And brought my bosom back to Truth again ;
To truth to no peculiar taste confined
Whose universal pattern strikes mankind;

To Truth, whose bold and unresisted aim

Checks frail caprice and fashion's fickle claim;
To Truth, whose charms deception's magic quell,
And bind coy Fancy in a stronger spell.

It is Sir Joshua's gift, he says, to be able to unite the classic and romantic styles :

Reynolds! 'tis thine from the broad window's height

To add new lustre to religious light :

Not of its pomp to strip this ancient shrine,

But bid that pomp with purer radiance shine,
With arts unknown before to reconcile

The willing Graces to the Gothic pile.

Viewed on the whole, the two Wartons may be regarded as the conscious and critical pioneers of the Romantic Movement in English Poetry. Joseph was the first to raise a protest on behalf of lyrical poetry against the prevailing ethical and didactic tendencies of his age. Thomas, by an elaborate note in his Observations on the Faery Queen, gave the signal for the revival of Gothic Architecture, and indicated the study of national antiquities as the richest source of lyric enthusiasm; while in his Grave of Arthur he anticipated, both in respect of matter and style, the romantic metrical narratives of Walter Scott.

But neither of these brothers was possessed of native poetical genius, and the enchanted horn which they had discovered, hung before the Castle of Romance, remained to be sounded by two poets of more powerful inspiration.

There is much difference of opinion between critics as to the respective claims to supremacy, among the English lyric poets in the eighteenth century, of William Collins and Thomas Gray. My own admiration is so equally suspended between their rival qualities that I think the genius of each may be best illustrated by a comparison of their work, but, before making this attempt, it will be well to give a brief account of their lives, of which one was as short as the other was uneventful.

William Collins was baptized in the Church of St. Peter the Great, Chichester, on the 1st of January 1721 being the son of William Collins, a prominent citizen, then mayor of the town, and Elizabeth Martin, his wife. He was admitted in 1733 as a scholar of Winchester, and in 1740 stood first in succession to New College, Joseph Warton being second on the roll; but as there was no vacancy he was entered at Queen's College, Oxford, and continued there till July 1741, when he was elected demy of Magdalen. He carried on his Winchester friendship with Joseph Warton during his Oxford life, and it appears from the evidence of Thomas Warton that Collins was so far influenced by the active intelligence of his schoolfellow as to avail himself in his Odes of several hints which Joseph had given in his own boyish exercises. During his residence at Oxford he published, anonymously in 1743, his Persian Eclogues and his Verses to Sir Thomas Hanmer on his edition of Shakespeare's Works. Before taking his degree he came to London, Johnson says in 1744, Langhorne in 1743, hoping to obtain literary employment. He issued proposals for He issued proposals for a History of the Revival of Learning, of which it is evident from his odes that he had formed a very clear conception, but he did not proceed with the work. He also undertook a translation of Aristotles Poetics for a bookseller, who on this

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