XXV. THOMAS WARTON. It has been said of THOMAS WARTON (1), (the brother of Joseph), that « all his poems are cast in the mould of some gifted predecessor ». This appears to me a most unjust censure. It is hypercriticism to deny him such a portion of originality and imagination, as constitutes great genius. The judgement of Campbell, it must be admitted, tends to this more unfavourable character. « His imitation of manner, says the critic, « is not confined to Milton. His style often exhibits a very composite order of poetical architecture »>. « From a large proportion of his works an unprejudied reader would pronounce him a florid unaffecting describer, whose images are plentifully scattered, but without selection or relief », This is very severe. I cannot in my most fastidious moments perceive that it has even the appearance of truth. Į exclude from the examination the Laureate Odes, which were written as tasks. Campbell himself commends the Hamlet; the Crusade; the Grave of King Arthur; and the Verses to Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is pretty well, out of the few poems the author wrote; and he might be content to rest his fame on them. It is the part of candour to judge of a writer by his best works; and not by his worst. (1) Ob. 1790, æt. 62, ? But the Critic forgets, or overlooks, the Suicide ; the First of April; the Inscription for an Hermitage; and the Sonnets. There may be some affected diction in the Suicide especially at the beginning; but the whole is the concep tion of a vigorous and poetical mind; and the language in many parts is well-suited to the description and the sentiment. The following stanza always delighted me; Full oft, unknowing and unknown, He wore his endless noons alone, Oft was he wont in hasty fit Abrupt the social board to quit, And gaze with eager glance upon the tumbling flood. If it had been said that the author had more fancy than passion, and more imagery than sentiment, this remark could not have been controverted. He is commonly more beautiful than grand : but if he is magnificent, it is the magnificence of description; not of emotion. This only proves that his excellence did not embrace all the varieties of genius. It is not common to be at once descriptive and sentimental; although the union increases the charm. His fancy seems to have been drawn from original sources, and not suggested by books, though it may have been somewhat coloured by them ; and his combinations are his own, though perhaps a little influenced in their form by artificial models. Campbell speaks of his << minute intimacy of imagination with the gorgeous residences and imposing spectacles of chivalry ». This is properly expressed; but it proves, not want of originality, but a due mixture of the materials, of which, on such a subject, poetical creation ought to consist; a due and characteristic mode of arranging them into ideal structures. 1 That his fancy and imagination had something of technical about them, arose from the subjects to which he chose to apply them. The feudal times were full of peculiarities, the effects of accident, not the results of our general nature it demanded long study, and industry to become familiar with them and this may have given a form of art and toil to all Warton's compositions, which superficial and indiscriminate critics mistake for want of originality. Genius is generally impetuous; and disdainful of ceremonies and minutiæ but all genius is not of one stamp. If the production has the charm of genius, it matters not whether the time taken in producing it was much or little. But then it may be urged that this poet dealt in artificial ingredients; and that when the materials are bad, the structure cannot be good. But what is the narrowness of principle, which confines the representations of poetry to the works of Nature unimproved by Man? Or that allows no merit to the association, even when the materials are not interesting and dignified in themselves? The truth is, that much of Warton's poems requires the reader to come prepared with far more historical and literary information than the generality of those who delight in poetry possess; and they therefore ascribe their own deficiency of cultivation to his supposed want of genius. It seems to be a strange assumption, that because an anthor has learning, he cannot copy forms from nature. Johnson has imputed this to Milton; and, in my opinion with glaring injustice. Milton's « images and descriptions of the scenes or operations of nature,» says the great but prejudiced Biographer, « do not seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness, raciness, and energy of immediate observation he saw nature, as Dryden expresses it, through the spectacles of books; and : on most occasions calls learning to his aid. This charge has also been made against Warton and made, as I feel confident, with entire absence of truth. Every thing bears witness that he was a minute and attentive observer of the scenes of nature which he describes :- the internal evidence of his compositions, the habits of his life, both witness it! To put him in a class with Milton is indeed to be very indiscriminate. The extent of Milton's invention; the unapproachable sublimity of his subject; the grandeur of his intellectual conceptions; and the mild and heavenly pathos of his softer sentiments, leave the ingenious and even brilliant describer of a few detached scenes of inanimate nature, or of a few gorgeous pictures of Gothic manners, at a distance not to be counted. But it is too degrading to say with Campbell, that Warton is « the heir of Milton's phraseology, rather than of his spirit; » because, on the subjects which he treats in common with his predecessor, he inherits his spirit as well as his phraseology. I consider the poems of Thomas Warton, though not of the first or second class, to have merit of their own • for which, if they were lost, there would at present exist no substitute in English poetry. His History of English poetry is one of the Works which I esteem to be among the primary ornaments of our National Literature. It unites so many various claims to praise, that it is difficult in speaking of it to do it justice. To all the arts of composition it joins so much original research under the guidance of such exquisite and highly-cultivated taste on a subject of which he not only perfectly understood the theory, but was himself a poetical and successful artist; that it at once delights by the charms of genius, and gratifies endless curiosity by its inexhaustible mass of rich materials. No other work occurs to me, in which these opposite qualities are combined in any eminent degree. Here they are united in the very highest degree, on one of the most interesting and instructive of human subjects. The Scotch complain that it is not sufficiently philoso phical. Are they not apt to introduce philosophy a little too much into matters of taste; and to reason where they ought to feel? This celebrated History has a character of criticism very distinct from the Essay on the genius and Writings of Pope by his brother JOSEPH ; which is cursory, light, lively, full of quick taste and simple sensibility, and wanders, with all the airiness of a winged Muse, over the whole expanse of Polite Letters ancient and modern, while the graver Professor dives into researches more profound, and writes in a style more studied and with deeper reflection, what it requires an erudition of far more laborious acquirement, and of much greater maturity of intellectual attention, to. relish. XXVI. RARITY OF GOOD POETS. If any one wishes to ascertain by the test of experience the rarity of such poetical genius, as has combined all the powers and all the circumstances, which have produ→ ced good fruit, he need only turn to any large Collection of the best national poetry. Of 82 authors, of whom specimens are given in the 5.th and 6.th volumes of Campbell's British Poets, not more |