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JOSEPH WARTON.

JOSEPH WARTON, D. D., born in 1722, was the | Pope." Scarcely any work of the kind has afforded

more entertainment, from the vivacity of its remarks, the taste displayed in its criticisms, and the various anecdotes of which it became the vehicle; though some of the last were of a freer cast than perfectly became his character. This reason, perhaps, caused the second volume to be kept back till twenty-six years after. In 1766 he was advanced to the post of head-master of Winchester school, on which occasion he visited Oxford, and took the degrees of bachelor and doctor of divinity.

eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Warton, poetry-professor at Oxford, and Vicar of Basingstoke. He received his early education under his father, and at the age of fourteen was admitted on the foundation at Winchester school. He was afterwards entered of Oriel college, Oxford, where he assiduously cultivated his literary taste, and composed some pieces of poetry, which were afterwards printed. Having taken the degree of B. D. he became curate to his father at Basingstoke; and in 1746 removed to a similar employment at Chelsea. In 1748 he was The remainder of his life was chiefly occupied by presented by the Duke of Bolton to the rectory schemes of publications, and by new preferments, of Winslade, soon after which he married. He ac- of the last of which he obtained a good share, though companied his patron in 1751 on a tour to the of moderate rank. In 1793 he closed his long lasouth of France; and after his return he completed bours at Winchester by a resignation of the master→ an edition of Virgil, in Latin and English; of ship, upon which he retired to his rectory of Wickwhich the Eclogues and Georgics were his own ham. Still fond of literary employment, he accomposition, the Eneid was the version of Pitt. cepted a proposal of the booksellers to superintend Warton also contributed notes on the whole, and an edition of Pope's works, which was completed, added three preliminary essays, on pastoral, didac-in 1797, in nine vols. 8vo. Other engagements still tic, and epic poetry. When the Adventurer was undertaken by Dr. Hawksworth, Warton, through the medium of Dr. Johnson, was invited to become a contributor, and his compliance with this request produced twenty-four papers, of which the greater part were essays on critical topics.

In 1755 he was elected second master of Winchester school, with the accompanying advantage of a boarding-house. In the following year there appeared, but without his naine, the first volume, 8vo., of his "Essay on the Writings and Genius of

pursued him, till his death, in his 78th year, February, 1800. The Wiccamists attested their regard to his memory, by erecting an elegant monument over his tomb in Winchester cathedral.

The poems of Dr. Warton consist of miscellaneous and occasional pieces, displaying a cultivated taste, and an exercised imagination, but without any claim to originality. His " Ode to Fancy," first published in Dodsley's collection, is perhaps that which has been the most admired.

ODE TO FANCY.

PARENT of each lovely Muse,
Thy spirit o'er my soul diffuse,
O'er all my artless songs preside,
My footsteps to thy temple guide,
To offer at thy turf-built shrine,
In golden cups no costly wine,
No murder'd fatling of the flock,
But flowers and honey from the rock.
O nymph with loosely-flowing hair,
With buskin'd leg, and bosom bare,
Thy waist with myrtle-girdle bound,
Thy brows with Indian feathers crown'd,
Waving in thy snowy hand
An all-commanding magic wand,
Of pow'r to bid fresh gardens blow,
'Mid cheerless Lapland's barren snow,
Whose rapid wings thy flight convey
Thro' air, and over earth and sea,
While the vast various landscape lies
Conspicuous to thy piercing eyes.
O lover of the desert, hail!

Say, in what deep and pathless vale,
Or on what hoary mountain's side,
'Mid fall of waters, you reside,
'Mid broken rocks, a rugged scene,
With green and grassy dales between,
'Mid forests dark of aged oak,
Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke,
Where never human art appear'd,
Nor ev'n one straw-roof'd cot was rear'd,
Where Nature seems to sit alone,
Majestic on a craggy throne;
Tell me the path, sweet wand'rer, tell,
To thy unknown sequester'd cell,
Where woodbines cluster round the door,
Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor,
And on whose top an hawthorn blows,
Amid whose thickly-woven boughs
Some nightingale still builds her nest,
Each evening warbling thee to rest :
Then lay me by the haunted stream,
Rapt in some wild, poetic dream,
In converse while methinks I rove
With Spenser through a fairy grove;
Till, suddenly awak'd, I hear
Strange whisper'd music in my ear,
And my glad soul in bliss is drown'd
By the sweetly-soothing sound!
Me, goddess, by the right hand lead
Sometimes through the yellow mead,
Where Joy and white-rob'd Peace resort,
And Venus keeps her festive court,
Where Mirth and Youth each evening meet,
And lightly trip with nimble feet,
Nodding their lily-crowned heads,
Where Laughter rose-lipp'd Hebe leads,
Where Echo walks steep hills among,
List'ning to the shepherd's song:
Yet not these flowery fields of joy
Can long my pensive mind employ.
Haste, Fancy, from the scenes of folly,
To meet the matron Melancholy,
Goddess of the tearful eye,

That loves to fold her arms, and sigh;
Let us with silent footsteps go
To charnels and the house of woe,

To Gothic churches, vaults, and tombs,
Where each sad night some virgin comes,
With throbbing breast, and faded cheek,
Her promis'd bridegroom's urn to seek;
Or to some abbey's mould'ring tow'rs,
Where, to avoid cold wintry show'rs,
The naked beggar shivering lies,
While whistling tempests round her rise,
And trembles lest the tottering wall
Should on her sleeping infants fall.
Now let us louder strike the lyre,
For my heart glows with martial fire,

I feel, I feel, with sudden heat,
My big tumultuous bosom beat;
The trumpet's clangours pierce my ear,
A thousand widows' shrieks I hear;
Give me another horse, I cry,
Lo! the base Gallic squadrons fly;
Whence is this rage?—what spirit, say,
To battle hurries me away?

'T is Fancy, in her fiery car,
Transports me to the thickest war,
There whirls me o'er the hills of slain,
Where Tumult and Destruction reign;
Where mad with pain, the wounded steed
Tramples the dying and the dead;
Where giant Terrour stalks around,
With sullen joy surveys the ground,
And, pointing to th' ensanguin'd field,
Shakes his dreadful gorgon shield!
O guide me from this horrid scene,
To high-arch'd walks and alleys green,
Which lovely Laura seeks, to shun
The fervours of the mid-day sun;
The pangs of absence, O remove!
For thou canst place me near my love,
Canst fold in visionary bliss,
And let me think I steal a kiss,
While her ruby lips dispense
Luscious nectar's quintessence!

When young-eyed Spring profusely throws
From her green lap the pink and rose,
When the soft turtle of the dale
To Summer tells her tender tale,
When Autumn cooling caverns seeks,
And stains with wine his jolly cheeks;
When Winter, like poor pilgrim old,
Shakes his silver beard with cold;
At every season let my ear
Thy solemn whispers, Fancy, hear.
O warm, enthusiastic maid,
Without thy powerful, vital aid,
That breathes an energy divine,
That gives a soul to every line,
Ne'er may I strive with lips profane
To utter an unhallow'd strain,
Nor dare to touch the sacred string,
Save when with smiles thou bidd'st me sing.
O hear our prayer, O hither come
From thy lamented Shakspeare's tomb,
On which thou lov'st to sit at eve,
Musing o'er thy darling's grave;

O
queen of numbers, once again
Animate some chosen swain,
Who, filled with unexhausted fire,
May boldly smite the sounding lyre,
Who with some new unequall'd song,
May rise above the rhyming throng,
O'er all our list'ning passions reign,
O'erwhelm our souls with joy and pain,

With terrour shake, and pity move,
Rouse with revenge, or melt with love;
O deign t' attend his evening walk,
With him in groves and grottoes talk;
Teach him to scorn with frigid art
Feebly to touch th' unraptur'd heart;
Like lightning, let his mighty verse
The bosom's inmost foldings pierce;
With native beauties win applause
Beyond cold critics' studied laws;
O let each Muse's fame increase,
O bid Britannia rival Greece!

VERSES:

WRITTEN AT MONTAUBAN IN FRANCE, 1750.
TARN, how delightful wind thy willow'd waves,
But ah! they fructify a land of slaves!
In vain thy bare-foot, sun-burnt peasants hide
With luscious grapes yon hill's romantic side;
No cups nectareous shall their toil repay,

The priest's, the soldier's, and the fermier's prey :
Vain glows this Sun, in cloudless glory drest,
That strikes fresh vigour through the pining breast;

Give me, beneath a colder, changeful sky,
My soul's best, only pleasure, Liberty!
What millions perish'd near thy mournful flood *,
When the red papal tyrant cry'd out" Blood!"
Less fierce the Saracen, and quiver'd Moor,
That dash'd thy infants 'gainst the stones of yore.
Be warn'd, ye nations round; and trembling see
Dire superstition quench humanity!

By all the chiefs in freedom's battles lost,
By wise and virtuous Alfred's aweful ghost;
By old Galgacus' scythed, iron car,

That, swiftly whirling through the walks of war, Dash'd Roman blood, and crush'd the foreign throngs;

By holy Druids' courage-breathing songs;
By fierce Bonduca's shield and foaming steeds;
By the bold Peers that met on Thames's meads;
By the fifth Henry's helm and lightning spear;
O Liberty, my warm petition hear;

Be Albion still thy joy! with her remain,
Long as the surge shall lash her oak-crown'd plain!

• Alluding to the persecutions of the Protestants, and the wars of the Saracens, carried on in the southern provinces of France.

THOMAS WARTON.

T

HOMAS WARTON, younger brother of the preceding, a distinguished poet, and a historian of poetry, was born at Basingstoke in 1728. He was educated under his father till 1743, when he was admitted a commoner of Trinity college, Oxford. Here he exercised his poetical talent to so much advantage, that, on the appearance of Mason's Elegy of Isis, which severely reflected on the disloyalty of Oxford at that period, he was encouraged by Dr. Huddesford, president of his college, to vindicate the cause of his university. This task he performed with great applause, by writing, in his twenty-first year, "The Triumph of Isis," a piece of much spirit and fancy, in which he retaliated upon the bard of Cam, by satirising the courtly venality then supposed to distinguish the rival university. His "Progress of Discontent," published in 1750, exhibited to great advantage his powers in the familiar style, and his talent for humour, with a knowledge of human life, extraordinary at his early age, especially if composed, as it is said, for a college exercise in 1746. In 1750 he took the degree of M. A., and in the following year became a fellow of his college.

His spirited satire, entitled "Newmarket," and pointed against the ruinous passion for the turf; his "Ode for Music;" and his " Verses on the Death of the Prince of Wales," were written about this time; and, in 1753, he was the editor of a small collection of poems, under the title of "The Union," which was printed at Edinburgh, and contained several of his own performances. In 1754 he made himself known by Observations on Spenser's Faery Queen, in one volume, afterwards enlarged to two; a work well received by the public, and which made a considerable addition to his literary reputation. So high was his character in the University, that in 1757 he was elected to the office of its poetry professor, which he held for the usual period of ten years, and rendered respectable by the erudition and taste displayed in his lectures.

It does not appear necessary in this place to particularize all the prose compositions which, whether grave or humorous, fell at this time from his pen; but it may be mentioned that verse continued occasionally to occupy his thoughts, and that having

lamented the death of George II., in some lines addressed to Mr. Pitt, he continued the courtly strain in poems on the marriage of George III., and on the birth of the Prince of Wales, both printed in the university collection. In 1770 he gave an edition, in two volumes 4to., of the Greek poet Theocritus, which gave him celebrity in other countries besides his own. At what time he first employed himself with the his tory of English poetry, we are not informed, but in 1774 he had so far proceeded in the work as to pub. lish the first volume in 4to. He afterwards printed a second in 1778, and a third in 1781; but his labour now became tiresome to himself, and the great compass which he had allotted to his plan was so irksome, that an unfinished fourth volume was all that he added to it.

The place of Camden professor of history, vacant by the resignation of Sir William Scott, was the close of his professional exertions; but soon after another engagement required his attention. By His Majesty's express desire, the post of poet laureat was offered to him, and accepted, and he determined to use his best endeavours for rendering it respectable. Varying the monotony of anniversary court compliment by topics better adapted to poetical description, he improved the style of the laureate odes, though his lyric strains underwent some ridicule on that account.

His concluding publication was an edition of the juvenile poems of Milton, of which the first volume made its appearance in 1785, and the second in 1790, a short time before his death. His constitution now began to give way. In his sixty-second year an attack of the gout shattered his frame, and was succeeded in May, 1790, by a paralytic seizure, which carried him off, at his lodgings in Oxford. His remains were interred, with every academical honour, in the chapel of Trinity college.

The pieces of Thomas Warton are very various in subject, and none of them long, whence he must only rank among the minor pocts; but scarcely one of that tribe has noted with finer observation the minute circumstances in rural nature that afford pleasure in description, or has derived from the regions of fiction more animated and picturesque scenery.

ODE TO THE FIRST OF APRIL.

WITH dalliance rude young Zephyr wooes
Coy May. Full oft with kind excuse
The boisterous boy the fair denies,
Or with a scornful smile complies.
Mindful of disaster past,

And shrinking at the northern blast,
The sleety storm returning still,
The morning hoar, and evening chill;
Reluctant comes the timid Spring.
Scarce a bee, with airy ring,
Murmurs the blossom'd boughs around,
That clothe the garden's southern bound:
Scarce a sickly straggling flower,
Decks the rough castle's rifted tower :
Scarce the hardy primrose peeps
From the dark dell's entangled steeps;
O'er the fields of waving broom
Slowly shoots the golden bloom :
And, but by fits, the furze-clad dale
Tinctures the transitory gale.

While from the shrubbery's naked maze,
Where the vegetable blaze

Of Flora's brightest 'broidery shone,
Every chequer'd charm is flown;
Save that the lilac hangs to view
Its bursting gems in clusters blue.

Scant along the ridgy land

The beans their new-born ranks expand:
The fresh-turn'd soil with tender blades
Thinly the sprouting barley shades:
Fringing the forest's devious edge,
Half rob'd appears the hawthorn hedge;
Or to the distant eye displays
Weakly green its budding sprays.

The swallow, for a moment seen,
Skims in haste the village green;
From the gray moor, on feeble wing,
The screaming plovers idly spring:
The butterfly, gay-painted soon,
Explores awhile the tepid noon :
And fondly trusts its tender dyes
To fickle suns, and flattering skies.
Fraught with a transient, frozen shower,
If a cloud should haply lower,
Sailing o'er the landscape dark,
Mute on a sudden is the lark;
But when gleams the Sun again
O'er the pearl-besprinkled plain,
And from behind his watery vail
Looks through the thin descending hail;
She mounts, and, lessening to the sight,
Salutes the blithe return of light,
And high her tuneful track pursues
Mid the dim rainbow's scatter'd hues.
Where in venerable rows
Widely waving oaks enclose
The mote of yonder antique hall,
Swarm the rooks with clamorous call;
And to the toils of nature true,
Wreath their capacious nests anew.

Musing through the lawny park,
The lonely poet loves to mark
How various greens in faint degrees
Tinge the tall groupes of various trees;
While, careless of the changing year,
The pine cerulean, never sere,

town.

Towers distinguish'd from the rest, And proudly vaunts her winter vest.

Within some whispering osier isle, Where Glym's low banks neglected smile; And each trim meadow still retains The wintry torrent's oozy stains: Beneath a willow, long forsook, The fisher seeks his custom'd nook; And bursting through the crackling sedge, That crowns the current's cavern'd edge, He startles from the bordering wood The bashful wild-duck's early brood.

O'er the broad downs, a novel race, Frisk the lambs with faultering pace, And with eager bleatings fill

The foss that skirts the beacon'd hill.

His free-born vigour yet unbroke
To lordly man's usurping yoke,
The bounding colt forgets to play,
Basking beneath the noon-tide ray,
And stretch'd among the daisies pied
Of a green dingle's sloping side:
While far beneath, where Nature spreads
Her boundless length of level meads,
In loose luxuriance taught to stray
A thousand tumbling rills inlay
With silver veins the vale, or pass
Redundant through the sparkling grass.
Yet, in these presages rude,
Midst her pensive solitude,
Fancy, with prophetic glance,
Sees the teeming months advance;
The field, the forest, green and gay,
The dappled slope, the tedded hay;
Sees the reddening orchard blow,
The harvest wave, the vintage flow;
Sees June unfold his glossy robe
Of thousand hues o'er all the globe;
Sees Ceres grasp her crown of corn,
And plenty load her ample horn.

ODE.

THE CRUSADE.

BOUND for holy Palestine,
Nimbly we brush'd the level brine,
All in azure steel array'd;
O'er the wave our weapons play'd,
And made the dancing billows glow;
High upon the trophied prow,
Many a warrior-minstrel swung
His sounding harp, and boldly sung :
"Syrian virgins, wail and weep,
English Richard plows the deep!
Tremble, watchmen, as ye spy
From distant towers, with anxious eye,

The Glym is a small river in Oxfordshire, flowing through Warton's parish of Kiddington, or Cuddington, and dividing it into upper and lower It is described by himself in his account of Cuddington, as a deep but narrow stream, winding through willowed ineadows, and abounding in trouts, pikes, and wild-fowl. It gives name to the village of Glymton, which adjoins to Kiddington.

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