by an Italian, who was acquainted
with Warton, that his favourite book in the Italian language (of which
his knowledge was far from exact) was the Gerusalemme Liberata. Both the
stately phrase, and the theme of that poem, were well suited to him.

Among the poets of the second class, he deserves a distinguished place.
He is almost equally pleasing in his gayer, and in his more exalted
moods. His mirth is without malice or indecency, and his seriousness
without gloom.

In his lyrical pieces, if we seek in vain for the variety and music of
Dryden, the tender and moral sublime of Gray, or the enthusiasm of
Collins, yet we recognize an attention ever awake to the appearances of
nature, and a mind stored with the images of classical and Gothic
antiquity. Though his diction is rugged, it is like the cup in Pindar,
which Telamon stretches out to Alcides, [Greek: chruso pephrkuan], rough
with gold, and embost with curious imagery. A lover of the ancients
would, perhaps, be offended, if the birth-day ode, beginning

  Within what fountain's craggy cell
  Delights the goddess Health to dwell?

were compared, as to its subject, with that of the Theban bard, on the
illness of Hiero, which opens with a wish that Chiron were yet living,
in order that the poet might consult him on the case of the Syracusan
monarch; and in its form, with that in which he asks of his native city,
in whom of all her heroes she most delighted.

Among the odes, some of which might more properly be termed idylliums,
The Hamlet is of uncommon beauty; the landscape is truly English, and
has the truth and tenderness of Gainsborough's pencil. Those To a Friend
on his leaving a Village in Hampshire, and the First of April, are
entitled to similar praise. The Crusade, The Grave of King Arthur, and
most of the odes composed for the court, are in a higher strain. In the
Ode written at Vale Royal Abbey, is a striking image, borrowed from some
lent verses, written by Archbishop Markham, and printed in the second
volume of that collection.

  High o'er the trackless heath, at midnight seen,
  No more the windows ranged in long array
  (Where the tall shaft and fretted arch between
  Thick ivy twines) the taper'd rites betray.

  _Prodidit areanas arcta fenestra faces_.

His sonnets have been highly and deservedly commended by no less
competent a judge than Mr. Coleridge. They are alone sufficient to prove
(if any proof were wanting) that this form of composition is not
unsuited to our language. One of our longest, as it is one of our most
beautiful poems, the Faerie Queene, is written in a stanza which demands
the continual recurrence of an equal number of rhymes; and the chief
objection to our adopting the sonnet is the paucity of our rhymes.

The lines to Sir Joshua Reynolds are marked by the happy turn of the
compliment, and by the strength and harmony of the versification, at
least as far as the formal couplet measure will admit of those
qualities. They need not fear a comparison with the verses addressed by
Dryden to Kneller, or by Pope to Jervas.

His Latin compositions are nearly as excellent as his English. The few
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