No rational admirer of Pope, we may venture to affirm, (and no other was worth refuting,) could expect a more favourable verdict than was established by this decision. Who, indeed, before the commencement of Mr. Warton's criticism, thought of estimating the poetical genius of Pope higher than that of Shakspeare and Milton? many, it is true, preferred him to Dryden, and has not our author pursued the same path? Hence the discrepancy so visible between the purport of the criticism in the first part, which attempts to prove that Pope was rather a man of wit, and a moralist, than a great poet; and the final inference, which allows him poetic genius but just inferior to what Milton possessed. Consistency would have led our critic to have sunk Pope some steps, though we shall not contend for the propriety of such an allotment, below his master Dryden.

Whatever may be thought as to the resolution of the question, the Essay itself must be pronounced one of the most elegant and interesting productions in the department of criticism. It abounds with literary anecdote and collateral disquisition, is written in a style of great ease and purity, and exhibits a taste refined, yet chaste, and classical; it is, in short, a work which, however often perused, affords fresh de

light, and may be considered as one of the books best adapted to excite a love of litera

ture.

On the 23d of June, 1759, the University of Oxford conferred upon Mr. Warton, by diploma, the degree of Master of Arts, and, in the spring of 1766, he was further honoured, on the resignation of Dr. Burton, by an appointment to the Headmastership of Winchester school; a promotion which, on January the 15th, 1768, was succeeded by his taking at Oxford the degrees of Batchelor and Doctor in Divinity.

Dr. Warton now enjoyed the comforts of an elegant competency, the blessings of domestic affection, and the gratification of seeing a family rising around him; a measure of happiness, however, which was not continued to him for any length of time; for on October the 5th, 1772, he was deprived of his wife by a disease which had made a very rapid and unexpected progress, and which left him a widower with six children.

With such a family, however, and in a house filled with pupils, and which, therefore, more particularly required female superintendence, Dr. Warton found it essential for his own comfort, and for the welfare of those entrusted to his care, to form a second matrimonial connection. He accordingly married, in December, 1773, Miss

A

Nicholas, daughter of Robert Nicholas, Esq. a lady endowed with an excellent heart and amiable manners. A short time before his second marriage our author had become a member of the Literary Club; he had been long intimate, indeed, with several of the most celebrated of its individuals, particularly with Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Burke, &c. and his introduction was, therefore, rendered an object to him of peculiar gratification.

The College of Winchester had the high honour, in the year 1778, of receiving a visit from their Majesties, who had been reviewing a neighbouring encampment. They were addressed in an appropriate Latin oration, composed by Dr. Warton, and spoken by Mr. Chamberlayne, who, with two other scholars, had, as the seniors of the school, the compliment paid them by the King of a purse of one hundred guineas. "Dr. Warton's house at this period,” relates Mr. Wooll, 66 was filled with men of high and acknowledged talents: amongst whom was Lord Palmerston, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Messrs. Stanley, Warton, and Garrick. To the latter a very whimsical accident occurred. The horse which carried him to the review, on his casually alighting, by some means got loose and ran away. In this

dilemma, assuming the attitude of Richard, he exclaimed, amidst the astonished soldiers,

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"

which having reached the King's ears, he immediately asserted, "Those must be the tones of Garrick; see if he is on the ground." Mr. G. was consequently found, and presented to his Majesty, who, in addition to many other compliments, assured him that his delivery of Shakspeare could never pass undiscovered."

Preferment in the Church, which had hitherto been almost entirely withheld from the Doctor, at length rewarded the labours and the talents of the preceptor, the poet, and the critic. In 1782 a prebendal stall in St.Paul's was given him by the truly learned Dr. Lowth, Bishop of Lon-` don, who, the year ensuing, greatly enhanced the obligation by a presentation to the living of Chorley, in Hertfordshire, which was shortly afterwards exchanged by our author for Wickham, in Hampshire.

The domestic happiness of Dr. Warton continued uninterrupted until the year 1786, when he suffered an irreparable loss by the death of his second son, the Rev. Thomas Warton, a man of uncommon talents and genius, and who,

* Wooll's Memoirs of Warton, p. 54.

after suffering the pressure of a lingering disease, died suddenly while sitting in his chair after dinner. Scarcely had he recovered from this afflicting stroke when the hand of death deprived him of his brother, the late poet laureate; a brother" to whom from his childhood he had been invariably attached, and for whose genius and fame he had ever felt the most pure and liberal admiration. It is indeed but justice to the memory of both to declare, that they never for a moment knew the narrow passions of jealousy and envy; on the contrary, their most anxious efforts were used to distinguish each other, and it was their truest happiness to find those efforts successful. To their several publications the most active and ready assistance had been mutually afforded. Mr. Warton was sedulously employed in the edition of Virgil, and his brother in return furnished many valuable materials for the History of English Poetry: no means were at any time left untried by either party to bring forward and place in a prominent view the merit of the other. Severe, therefore, to the survivor must have been the separation. It was indeed the loss of a second self."

Towards the close of Dr. Warton's life, when he was approaching to seventy, his emoluments

* Wooll's Memoirs of Warton, p. 75.