fortunately, it is but the fragment of what should have been a really great work, and the portion of it that might be expected to have proved most interesting never saw the light. In one respect, as Mr. Stopford Brooke has pointed out, the book expressed a feeling which was unknown to the school of Pope. With that school the present was so powerful that it filled all the view. "Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry' was but the beginning of that vivid delight in what our forefathers did, to which Chatterton afterwards gave a fresher life, and which runs through all the minor poets of the time."

The wearisome and by no means wholly satisfactory labour bestowed by Thomas Warton on Spenser and Milton has been expended on his own poems by Bishop Mant.* In his edition of the

It is but fair to Warton's memory to give the estimate formed of his critical labours by Professor Masson. Writing of Milton's minor poems, he terms Warton the "commentator-in-chief," and adds:

"This well-known scholar, critic, and poet, remembered now chiefly by his History of English Poetry,' made a special study of Milton's Minor Poems, and published an edition of them in 1785, 'with Notes, critical and explanatory, and other Illustrations,' which may be said for the first time to have given them their true place among Milton's writings, and shown their abundant and minute interest in connection with his Biography. It is, indeed, with all deduction on account of the want of sympathy with some parts of Milton's mind and life natural in a critic in Warton's circumstances, one of the best books of comment in the English language.

poetical works almost every couplet is annotated; and so copious are the notes and illustrations that very frequently thirty or forty lines of closelyprinted letter-press follow three or four lines of text. Such ponderous toil is thrown away upon a small poet like Warton. Who cares to know whether or not some poetical fancy expressed by him has been previously expressed by an earlier and greater writer? A poet like Milton, if he use the thoughts of other men, transforms them and ennobles them, so that they become as it were a part of himself. Warton's verses recall in every page passages from the Greek and Roman classics, and from our own poets; but Warton is an imitator, and cannot make them his own by the transmuting power of genius. His taste is, for the most part, correct, his feeling sincere, his knowledge extensive, his skill in the manipulation of verses considerable. Add to these merits a genuine love of natural objects, which is all the more worthy of note since the poets of highest repute in his day rarely looked out of doors, and we have given Warton all the praise to which he is entitled as a poet.

Warton's Notes to these Poems in fact have been the stock from which all subsequent editors, and also all biographers of Milton, from Todd, to the present day, have derived a good deal of their material."

His descriptive passages-witness the 'Lines written in Whichwood Forest,' and the Ode on the Approach of Summer'-are good, and would deserve higher praise were it not that they resemble so closely the early poems of Milton. When he attempts a subject demanding pathos or passion he does not rise above the mediocrity of the versemaker witness his ode entitled the Suicide,'

which, however, we are bound to say has received the highest praise from his biographer. In this piece, which Dr. Mant calls the most popular of Warton's poems (alas! for popularity, we wonder how many of our readers have ever heard of it), we are told that an appeal is made to the heart as well as to the fancy, and that "the most striking poetical imagery is not only clothed with the most expressive diction, but heightened by the tenderest sentiments." After a careful and repeated perusal of the poem we confess that the "striking poetical imagery" does not strike us, and that the "expressive diction" appears to us laboured and conventional. One of the best specimens of Warton's work as a lyric poet is an ode called the 'Grave of King Arthur.' It is written in the octo-syllabic metre which Scott made so famous thirty years later, and there are passages in the poem which may even remind us of the "Ariosto of the North." Take, for instance, the

following lines. Henry II. on his road through Wales to suppress a rebellion in Ireland is entertained with the songs of the Welsh bards.

"Illumining the vaulted roof

A thousand torches flamed aloof;
From massy cups, with golden gleam
Sparkled the red metheglin's stream;
Το grace the gorgeous festival
Along the lofty-windowed hall
The storied tapestry was hung;
With minstrelsy the rafters rung
Of harps that with reflected light
From the proud gallery glittered bright;
While gifted bards, a rival throng,
From distant Mona, nurse of song,
From Teivi fringed with umbrage brown,
From Elvy's vale and Cader's crown,
From many a shaggy precipice
That shades Ierne's hoarse abyss,
And many a sunless solitude
Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude;
To crown the banquet's solemn close
Themes of British glory chose."

be

Between the minds of Warton and Scott it may possible to trace a likeness. In one department, says his biographer, Warton is not only unequalled, but original and unprecedented-namely, "in applying to modern poetry the embellishment of Gothic manners and Gothic art; the tournaments, and festivals, the poetry, music, painting, and architecture of elder days." In this respect, therefore, he

to some extent anticipated Scott; but Scott took possession of a region of which Warton knew comparatively little, and upon which, indeed, he did scarcely more than set his foot.

It is not much praise to say of Thomas Warton that in his Laureate odes he succeeded better than many of his predecessors, or than his immediate successor, than Tate or Cibber, than Whitehead or Pye; but it is a dreary task to read them, and it is amusing to contrast his earnest asseverations that the flattery of Kings is distasteful to him, with the glowing panegyrics which he heaps upon his "sacred sovereign," George III. Nothing could well be more false than the following lines, since this highly respectable monarch, as all the world knows, cared as little for the arts, and did as little to promote them, as William III.:

""Tis his to bid neglected genius glow,
And teach the royal bounty how to flow.
His tutelary's sceptre's sway

The vindicated arts obey,
And hail their patron king."

With equal absurdity he declares, as if with a noble love of independence, that he spurns Dryden's "panegyric strings," and then adds, that if Dryden had lived in his day-that is to say, under the