papers on the subject, from Italy, having fallen into his hands. The book was universally hailed as an honour to the Clarendon Press, where it was printed, and to the university in general, from its elegant typography, careful research, correctness, and spirit.

During his career as Poetry Professor, he produced a number of small works in prose and verse-such as a “Life of Sir Thomas Pope," the founder and benefactor of his college; verses for the Oxford Collections, "On the Death of George II.;" "The Marriage of George III.;" "The Birth of the Prince of Wales ;" an ode, entitled, "The Complaint of Cherwell;" the Preface to, and some of the poems in, "The Oxford Sausage for 1764;" besides an edition of the poems of Sir William Browne, author of "Britannia's Pastorals and "The Shepherd's Pipe."

On the 7th December 1767 he took his degree of B.D.; in 1771 he was elected a Fellow of the Antiquarian Society; and, on the 22d of October, was appointed to a small living at Kiddington, in Oxfordshire. About this time he began the most important of all his undertakings, a history of English poetry, the first volume of which appeared in 1774, under the title of "History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century; to which are prefixed Two Dissertations: 1. On the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe; 2. On the Introduction of Learning into England." The second volume appeared in 1778; and the third in 1781, preceded by an additional dissertation on the "Gesta Romanorum" (Deeds of the Romans). This volume brought the history down only to the end of Queen Elizabeth's age-or, to use the language of Bishop Mant, his worthy biographer, did not conduct "out of the obscurity of Tartarus into the Elysian fields !"—i. e., out of the deep darkness, which was partially illuminated by a Shakspeare, a Spenser, and a Sydney, into the celestial day of a Parnell, an Addison, and a Pope!! The fourth volume-which would have treated of the "Augustan age!"—was repeatedly promised, but never appeared. The copyright of the first three was sold for what then seemed the enormous sum of £350, and the impression con

sisted of 1250 copies. The idea, if not originally borrowed from the Italians, had first occurred to Pope; dropped by him, had fallen into the hands of Gray, who was far better qualified by learning to have accomplished it; but it was at last resigned to Warton, who adopted, however, a different plan from that projected by the other two, and made the history chronological, instead of classing the authors, as Pope proposed, into different schools. What he thus lost in method. he has probably gained in interest. You love a single bright star more than a cluster like the Pleiades. His history, with all its defects, is still a very valuable book of reference, and contains the germ, at least, of a great project, which must, sooner or later, become more than a germ.

In 1777 he collected a few of his published poetical pieces, along with a good many others which had never before seen the light, and printed them in one volume. The work passed through several editions, and in each edition contained something new. We have the third of these editions (now scarce) lying before us. It contains seven miscellaneous poems, including his "Triumph of Isis," ten odes, and nine sonnets. He passed his term time generally at Oxford, and his vacations at Winchester, where his brother, Joseph, was headmaster. There he wrote much of his history, and some of his finest poems. His favourite haunt was a garden of his brother's, situated between two arms of the river, which water a meadow immediately below the walls of the college. His attachment to Joseph was great, and was warmly returned. In 1781 he wrote, for private circulation, a history of his parish, Kiddington. In 1782 he published a pamphlet on the Chatterton and Rowley controversy, strongly supporting the theory that the poems were modern compositions. He wrote also some highly-finished and poetical verses on Sir Joshua Reynolds' painted window at New College, which elicited a letter of lively gratitude from the painter. He was elected, the same year, a member of the famous Literary Club; and, although he seldom attended its meetings, he was on intimate terms with many of its more distinguished members-had been the tutor of Langton, was familiar with Percy and Dr Farmer, and sat to Sir Joshua Reynolds for

his portrait. He had also some intercourse, as we have seen, with poor Collins; and knew Glover, Gough, and Tyrwhitt, all three famous in their day, although now nearly forgotten.

In the year 1785, two honours were conferred on him. He was elected Camden Professor of History; and, on the death of William Whitehead, was created Laureate. This office he filled, on the whole, as well as any who had preceded him. It had fallen very low in public estimation during the reign of Cibber and Whitehead-it had been offered to, and contemptuously declined by, Gray-and required a respectable poet to redeem it from utter disgrace. Only four great poets, so far as we remember, have been laureates-Ben Jonson, Southey, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. Immediately after his appointment, a clever squib appeared, entitled, "Probationary Odes for the Laureateship," written in the style so successfully followed afterwards by the authors of the "Rejected Addresses -imitations of various poets of the time, along with Warton's own first composition. No one joined more heartily in the roar of laughter produced by these jeux d'esprit than our poet himself. His Odes are, many of them, good; and, according to Mant," he has shewn how a poet may celebrate his sovereign, not with the fulsome adoration of an Augustan courtier, or the base prostration of an Oriental slave, but with the genuine spirit and erect front of an Englishman.'

He had long contemplated an edition of Milton's works; and in 1785 he published what was meant to be the first of a series of volumes-an edition of the juvenile poems, with notes, critical and explanatory. The second volume was to have contained "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes;" but he died before it was finished, and the materials he had collected for it were lost. It is a work deserving much credit for its laborious research, and warm sympathy with Milton's genius; but he is too fond of tracing imitations where they do not exist, and his aversion to the great poet's politics is too plainly and frequently expressed.

He was employed on a new and corrected edition of his own poems, when he was suddenly arrested in his career. He had, up to his sixty-second year, enjoyed vigorous health. Attacked

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by the gout, he went to Bath; whence he returned, flattering himself that he was completely recovered. On Thursday, May 20, 1790, he passed the evening in the common-room, and was observed to be more cheerful than usual. Between ten and eleven he was seized with a paralytic stroke, struck speechless and insensible, and expired the next day, at two afternoon. His brother was sent for, but was too late to see him alive. He was buried on the 27th, with the highest academic honours, and lies in the ante-chapel of his college, where he had spent forty-seven quiet, laborious years.

Warton was the beau-idéal of an Oxford Fellow. He was at once lazy and studious, fond of luxury, and fond of books. He spent a portion of each day in reading and writing, and the rest of it in cracking jokes and perpetrating puns in the common-room. His passions were weak; and it is not quite certain if he was ever even once in the predicament of love. He was very fond of the society of boys. When visiting Winchester, he was once assisting the scholars in some culinary operation. On the unexpected entrance of his brother, he fled and hid himself in a dark corner, whence he was dragged by the doctor, who imagined it had been some great boy, and laughed heartily at the discovery. He does not seem to have paid much attention to his parish, and had no name as a preacher. His foibles were, a habit of drinking ale and smoking tobacco with persons much his inferiors; a devout belief in ghosts (if people in these rapping days will allow us to call this a foible); a liking, amounting to a passion, for popular and martial spectacles; and a strange penchant (in which, it is said, one of the most eminent ministers at present in London resembles him) for attending executions— once disguising himself, it is said, in the dress of a carter, that he might escape recognition while enjoying the spectacle. In his youth he was handsome; but ale and sedentary habits combined to swell him to a little, thick, squat, red-faced man, resembling, according to Dr Johnson, a turkey-cock, in dimensions, colour, and "gobble."

Thomas Warton, although not one of our greatest, is still a most respectable literary name. He was an elegant scholar,

if not a Bentley; a refined and genial critic, if not a Johnson; a tender and true poet, if not a Milton. If we may substitute comparison for contrast, he may be called, as a poet, a diffuser Gray, or even a weaker and less versatile Scott. The sources of his inspiration were the same as theirs. He loved the Old in architecture, in creed, in poetry, in politics—in everything. He delighted, we are told, to wander through the Bodleian Library, musing on the old faces of its volumes, and to survey, with quiet and rapt earnestness, the ancient gateway of Magdalen College. He loved Nature much, but he loved still more those proud piles by which Man has sought, as if on giant stepping-stones, to climb to Heaven, and on which Nature herself seems, in austere sympathy, compelled to smile, as she silently admits them amidst her own masterpieces. Our old poetry, too, he loved to enthusiasm. Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Milton, have found more eloquent, but never more sincere and affectionate panegyrists. He had gone further back still. That strange old world, semi-pastoral, semi-seafaring, which Theocritus and the other Greek Idyllists have represented in rude and rough but simple and powerful display-like those antique wooden bowls which were carved round with emblems and tales-was quite familiar to Warton, and has been faithfully reproduced in his translations. His own poems exhibit him rather as a cultured lover of poetry, and an elegant imitator of its magical effects, than as a great original in the art. His St Paul's and Westminster Abbey are those we see in the Coliseum at London-fine reproductions, and not native works. His "Triumph of Isis" is one of his most striking productions, and has much of Pope's terseness and compact felicity. His " Sonnets" were especial favourites with Hazlitt, and have a certain tender grace and delicacy of feeling, which remind you of those of Bowles. That "To the River Lodon" has apparently suggested Coleridge's, beginning with

"Dear native stream, wild streamlet of the west!"

if not also Wordsworth's series "On the River Duddon." His "Odes" are all very pleasing, but almost all imitative, sometimes of Milton and sometimes of Gray. That "To a