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intercourse. In this respect there was a visible difference between him and his brother, whose manners were more careless and unpolished. In the more solid qualities of the heart, in true benevolence, kindness, hospitality, they approached very closely. Yet though their inclinations and pursuits were congenial, and each assisted the other in his undertakings, it may be questioned, whether at any time they could have exchanged occupations: with equal stores of literature, with equal refinement of taste, it may be questioned whether the author of the Essay on Pope could have pursued the history of English poetry, or whether the historian of poetry could have written the papers we find in the Adventurer.

In conversation, Dr. Warton's talents appeared to great advantage. He was mirthful, argumentative, or communicative of observation and anecdote, as he found his company lean to the one or to the other. His memory was more richly stored with literary history than perhaps any man of his time, and his range was very extensive. He knew French and Italian literature most intimately; and when conversing on more common topics, his extempore sallies and opinions bore evidence of the same delicate taste and candour which appear in his writings.

His biographer has considered his literary character under the three heads of a poet, a critic, and an instructor, but it is as a critic principally that he will be known to posterity, and as one who, in the language of Johnson, has taught " how the brow of criticism may be smoothed, and how she may be enabled, with all her severity, to attract and to delight." A book, indeed, of more delightful variety than his Essay on Pope, has not yet appeared, nor one in which there is a more happy mixture of judgment and sensibility. It did not, however, flatter the current opinions on the rank of Pope, among poets, and the author desisted from pursuing his subject for many years. Dr. Johnson said that this was owing" to his not having been able to persuade the world to be of his opinion as to Pope." This was probably the truth, but not the whole truth. Motives of a delicate nature are supposed to have had some share in inducing him to desist for a time. Warburton was yet alive, the executor of Pope and the guardian of his fame, and Warburton was no less the active and zealous friend, and correspondent of Thomas Warton: nor was it any secret that Warburton furnished Ruffhead with the materials for his life of Pope, the chief object of which was a rude and impotent attack on the Essay. Warburton died in 1779, and in 1782, Dr. Warton completed his Essay, and at length persuaded the world that he did not differ from the common opinion so much as was supposed. Still by pointing out what is not poetry, he gave unpardonable offence to those whose names appear among poets, but whom he has reduced to moralists, and versifiers.

The severe arrangement

- In all this, however, our author produced no new doctrine. of poets in his dedication to Young, which announced the principles he intended to apply to Pope and to the whole body of English poetry, was evidently taken from Phillips, the nephew of Milton. In the preface to the Theatrum of this writer, it is

6"I thank you for the friendly delicacy in which you speak of my Essay on Pope, I never thought we disagreed so much as you seem to imagine. All I said, and all I think, is comprehended in these words of your own. "He chose to be the poet of reason rather than of fancy." Letter from Dr. Warton to Mr. Hayley, published by Mr. Wooll, p. 406. C.

asserted that "wit, ingenuity and learning in verse, even elegancy itself, though that comes nearest, are one thing: true native poetry is another: in which there is a certain air and spirit, which, perhaps, the most learned and judicious in other arts do not perfectly apprehend: much less is it attainable by any art or study." On this text the whole of the Essay is founded, and whatever objections were raised to it, while that blind admiration of Pope which accompanied his long dictatorship continued in full force, it is now generally adopted as the test of poetical merit by the best critics, although the partialities which some entertain for individual poets may yet give rise to difference of opinion respecting the provinces of argument and feeling.

That Dr. Warton advanced no novel opinions is proved from Phillips's Preface; and Phillips, there is reason to suppose, may have been indebted to his uncle Milton for an idea of poetry so superior to what was entertained in his day. It has already been noticed, that the opinions of the two Wartons," the learned brothers," as they have been justly styled, were congenial on most topics of literature, but perhaps in nothing more than their ideas of poetry, which both endeavoured to exemplify in their own productions, although with different effect. Dr. Warton was certainly, in point of invention, powers of description, and variety, greatly inferior to the laureat. The Enthusiast, the Dying Indian, the Revenge of America, and one or two of his odes, are not deficient in spirit and enthusiasm, but the rest are more remarkable for a correct and faultless elegance than for any striking attribute of poetry. His Odes, which were coeval with those of Collins, must have suffered greatly by comparison. So different is taste from execution, and so strikingly are we reminded of one of his assertions, that "in no polished nation, after criticism has been much studied, and the rules of writing established, has any very extraordinary work appeared." But while we are reminded of this by his own productions, it may yet be doubted whether what may be true when applied to an individual who has lived a life of criticism, will be equally true of a nation. Even among our living poets, we may find more than one who have given proofs that extraordinary poetry may yet be produced, and that the rules of writing are not so fixed, nor criticism so studied as to impede the progress of real genius. All that can be concluded respecting Dr. Warton is, that if his genius had been equal to his taste, if he could have produced what he appreciates with such exquisite skill in others, he would have undoubtedly been in poetry what he was in erudition and criticism.

As an instructor and divine, Mr. Wooll's opinion of him may be adopted with safety.

"His professional exertions united the qualities of criticism and instruction. When the higher classes read under him the Greek tragedians, orators, or poets, they received the benefit not only of direct and appropriate information, but of a pure, elegant lecture on classical taste. The spirit with which he commented on the prosopopæia of Edipus or Electra, the genuine elegance and accuracy with which he developed the animated rules and doctrines of his favourite Longinus, the insinuating but guarded praise he bestowed, the well-judged and proportionate encouragement he uniformly held out to the first dawning of genius, and the anxious assiduity with which he pointed out the paths to literary eminence, can never, I am confident, be

forgotten by those who have hung with stedfast attention on his precepts, and enjoyed the advantage of his superior guidance. Zealous in his adherence to the church establishment, and exemplary in his attention to its ordinances and duties, he was at the same time a decided enemy to bigotry and intolerance. His style of preaching was unaffectedly earnest and impressive; and the dignified solemnity with which he read the Liturgy (particularly the Communion-Service) was remarkably awful. He had the most happy art of arresting the attention of youth on religious subjects. Every Wiccamical reader will recollect his inimitable commentaries on Grotius, on the Sunday evenings, and his discourse annually delivered in the school on Good Friday: the impressions made by them cannot be forgotten."

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