6 lished in his edition of "Theocritus.' In 1758 he assisted Dr. Johnson in The Idler,' with Nos. 33, 93, and 96. About the same time he published, without name or date, 'A Description of the City, College, and Cathedral of Winchester;' and a humorous account of Oxford, intended to burlesque the popular description of that place, entitled A Companion to the Guide, or a Guide to the Companion.' He also published anonymously, in 1758, 'A Selection of Latin Metrical Inscriptions.' Warton's clerical profession forms no very prominent part of his history. He had an indistinct and hurried articulation, which was peculiarly unfavourable to his pulpit oratory. His ambition was directed to other objects than preferment in the church, and he was above solicitation. After having served the curacy of Woodstock for nine years as well as his avocations would permit, he was appointed in 1744 to the small living of Kiddington, in Oxfordshire, and in 1785 to the donative of Hill Farrance, in Somersetshire, by his own college. The great work to which the studies of his life were subservient was his 'History of English Poetry,' an undertaking which had been successively projected by Pope and Gray. Those writers had suggested the imposing plan of arranging the British poets, not by their chronological succession, but by their different schools. Warton deliberately relinquished this scheme, because he felt that it was impracticable, except in a very vague and general manner. Poetry is of too spiritual a nature to admit of its authors being exactly grouped by a Linnæan system of classification. Striking resemblances and distinctions will, no doubt, be found among poets; but the shades of variety and gradation are so infinite, that to bring every composer within a given line of resemblance would require a new language in the philosophy of taste. Warton therefore adopted the simpler idea of tracing our poetry by its chronological progress. The work is certainly provokingly digressive in many places, and those who have subsequently examined the same subject have often complained of its inaccuracies; but the chief cause of those inaccuracies was that boldness and extent of research which makes the work so useful and entertaining. Those who detected his mistakes have been, in no small degree, indebted to him for their power of detecting them. The first volume of his 'History' appeared in 1774, the second in 1778, and the third in 1781. Of the fourth volume only a few sheets were printed; and the account of our poetry, which he meant to have extended to the last century, was continued only to the reign of Elizabeth. In the year 1785 he was appointed to the Camden Professorship of History, in which situation he delivered only one inaugural dissertation. In the same year, upon the death of Whitehead, he received the laureateship. His odes were subjected to the ridicule of 'The Rolliad ;' but his head filled the laurel with more learning than it had encompassed for a hundred years. In his sixty-second year, after a life of uninterrupted good health, he was attacked by the gout, went to Bath for a cure, and returned, as he imagined, perfectly recovered; but his appearance betrayed that his constitution had received a fatal shock. At the close of an evening which he had spent with more than ordinary cheerfulness, in the common-hall of his college, he was seized with a paralytic stroke, and expired on the following day. Some amusing eccentricities of his character are mentioned by the writer of his life (Dr. Mant), which the last editor of 'The British Poetsblames that biographer for introducing. I am far from joining in this censure. It is a miserable system of biography that would never allow us to smile at the foibles and peculiarities of its subject. The historian of English poetry would sometimes forget his own dignity so far as to drink ale and smoke tobacco with men of vulgar condition; either wishing, as some have gravely alleged, to study undisguised and unlettered human nature, or, which is more probable, to enjoy a heartier laugh and broader humour than could be found in polite society. He was also passionately fond (not of critical, but) of military reviews, and delighted in martial music. The same strength of association which made him enjoy the sound of "the spirit-stirring drum” led him to be a constant and curious explorer of the architectural monuments of chivalrous times; and during his summer excursions into the country he always committed to paper the remarks which he had made on ancient buildings. During his visits to his brother, Dr. J. Warton, the reverend professor became an associate * [The late Alexander Chalmers. Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Campbell were to have edited this collection, which fell, as many a noble project has done, into the hands of a mere hack in literature, not destitute of knowledge, but without the means of using it properly, and without taste.-See Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. ii. p. 240, 2nd ed.] and confidant in all the sports of the schoolboys. When engaged with them in some culinary occupation, and when alarmed by the sudden approach of the master, he has been known to hide himself in a dark corner of the kitchen, and has been dragged from thence by the doctor, who had taken him for some great boy. He also used to help the boys in their exercises, generally putting in as many faults as would disguise the assistance. Every Englishman who values the literature of his country must feel himself obliged to Warton as a poetical antiquary. As a poet, he is ranked by his brother Joseph in the school of Spenser and Milton; but this classification can only be admitted with a full understanding of the immense distance between him and his great masters. He had, indeed, "spelt the fabled rhyme;" he abounds in allusions to the romantic subjects of Spenser, and he is a sedulous imitator of the rich lyrical manner of Milton: but of the tenderness and peculiar harmony of Spenser he has caught nothing; and in his resemblance to Milton he is the heir of his phraseology more than his spirit. His imitation of manner, however, is not confined to Milton. His style often exhibits a very composite order of poetical architecture. In his Verses to Sir Joshua Reynolds,' for instance, he blends the point and succinctness of Pope with the richness of the elder and more fanciful school. It is one of his happiest compositions; and in this case the intermixture of styles has no unpleasing effect. In others he often tastelessly and elaborately unites his affectation of antiquity with the case-hardened graces of modern polish. If we judge of him by the character of the majority of his pieces, I believe that fifty out of sixty of them are such that we should not be anxious to give them a second perusal. From that proportion of his works I conceive that an unprejudiced reader would pronounce him a florid, unaffecting describer, whose images are plentifully scattered, but without selection or relief. To confine our view, however, to some seven or eight of his happier pieces, we shall find in these a considerable degree of graphic power, of fancy, and animation. His Verses to Sir Joshua Reynolds' are splendid and spirited. There is also a softness and sweetness in his ode entitled 'The Hamlet,' which is the more welcome for being rare in his productions; and his ‘Crusade' and 'Grave of Arthur' have a genuine air of martial and minstrel enthusiasm. Those pieces exhibit, to the best advan tage, the most striking feature of his poetical character, which was a fondness for the recollections of chivalry, and a minute intimacy of imagination with its gorgeous residences and imposing spectacles. The spirit of chivalry he may indeed be said to have revived in the poetry of modern times. His memory was richly stored with all the materials for description that can be got from books; and he seems not to have been without an original enthusiasm for those objects which excite strong associations of regard and wonder. Whether he would have ever looked with interest on a shepherd's cottage if he had not found it described by Virgil or Theocritus may be fairly doubted; but objects of terror, splendour, and magnificence are evidently congenial to his fancy. He is very impressive in sketching the appearance of an ancient Gothic castle in the following lines: 66 High o'er the trackless heath, at midnight seen, His memory was stored with an uncommon portion of that knowledge which supplies materials for picturesque description; and his universal acquaintance with our poets supplied him with expression, so as to answer the full demand of his original ideas. Of his poetic invention in the fair sense of the word, of his depth of sensibility, or of his powers of reflection, it is not so easy to say anything favourable.* THOMAS BLACKLOCK. [Born, 1721. Died, 1791.] THOMAS BLACKLOCK was born at Annan, in Dumfriesshire, where his father was a bricklayer. Before he was six months old he was totally deprived of sight by the small-pox. From an early age he discovered a fondness for listening to books, especially to those in poetry; and by the kindness of his friends and relations he acquired a slight acquaintance with the Latin tongue, and with some of the popular English classics. He began also, when very young, to compose verses; and some of these having * [In the best of Warton's poems there is a stiffness which too often gives them the appearance of imitations from the Greek.-Coleridge. Thomas Warton has sent me his Inscriptions,' which are rather too simple for my taste.-Shenstone.] been shown to Dr. Stevenson, an eminent physician of the Scottish capital, the doctor benevolently took him to Edinburgh, where Blacklock improved his knowledge of Latin, and completed his studies at the university. The publication of his poems excited a general interest in his favour, and Professor Spence, of Oxford, having prefixed to them an account of his life and character, a second edition of them was liberally encouraged in London. In 1759 he was licensed as a preacher of the Scottish church. He soon afterwards married a Miss Johnston, a very worthy but homely woman; whose beauty, however, he was accustomed to extol with an ecstacy that made his friends regard his blindness as, in one instance, no misfortune. By the patronage of the Earl of Selkirk he was presented to the living of Kirkcudbright; but in consequence of the violent objections that were made by the parishioners to having a blind man for their clergyman, he resigned the living, and accepted of a small annuity in its stead. With this slender provision he returned to Edinburgh, and subsisted for the rest of his life by taking young gentlemen as boarders in his house, whom he occasionally assisted in their studies. He published an interesting article on Blindness in the Encyclopædia Britannica,' and a work entitled Paraclesis, or Consolations of Religion,' in two dissertations, the one original, the other translated from a work which has been sometimes ascribed to Cicero, but which is more generally believed to have been written by Vigonius of Padua. He died of a nervous fever, at the age of seventy. Blacklock was a gentle and social being, but prone to melancholy; probably more from constitution than from the circumstance of his blindness, which he so often and so deeply deplores. From this despondent disposition he sought refuge in conversation and music. He was a tolerable performer on the flute, and used to carry a flageolet in his pocket, on which he was not displeased to be solicited for a tune. His verses are extraordinary for a man blind from his infancy; but Mr. Henry Mackenzie, in his elegant biographical account of him, has certainly overrated his genius: and when Mr. Spence, of Oxford, submitted Blacklock's descriptive powers as a problem for metaphysicians to resolve, he attributed to his writings a degree of descriptive strength which they do not possess. De |