Chapter 11

In 1756, appeared the first volume of his Essay on the genius and writings of Pope, dedicated to Young. The name of the author was to have been concealed, but he does not seem to have kept his own secret very carefully, for it was immediately spoken of as his by Akenside, Johnson, and Dr. Birch. The second volume did not follow till after an interval of twenty-six years. The information contained in this essay, which is better known than his other writings, is such as the recollection of a scholar, conversant in polite literature, might easily have supplied. He does not, like his brother, ransack the stores of antiquity for what has been forgotten, but deserves to be recalled; nor, like Hurd, exercise, on common materials, a refinement that gives the air of novelty to that with which we have been long familiar. He relaxes, as Johnson said of him, the brow of criticism into a smile. Though no longer in his desk and gown, he is still the benevolent and condescending instructor of youth; a writer, more capable of amusing and tempting onwards, by some pleasant anticipations, one who is a novice in letters, than of satisfying the demands of those already initiated. He deserves some praise for having been one of the first who attempted to moderate the extravagant admiration for Pope, whom he considered as the poet of reason rather than of fancy; and to disengage us from the trammels of the French school. Some of those who followed have ventured much further, with success; but it was something to have broken the ice. I do not know that he published anything else while he remained at Winchester, except[2] an edition of Sir Philip Sydney's Defence of Poesy, and Observations on Eloquence and Poetry from the Discoveries of Ben Jonson, in 1787. His literary exertions, and the attention he paid to the duties of his school, did not go unrewarded. In 1766 he was advanced to the Head-mastership of Winchester, and took his two degrees in divinity; in 1782, Bishop Lowth gave him a prebend of St. Paul's, and the rectory of Chorley, which he was allowed to exchange for Wickham, in Hants. In 1788, through the intervention of Lord Shannon with Mr. Pitt, he obtained a prebend of Winchester; and soon after, at the solicitation of Lord Malmesbury, was presented by the Bishop of that diocese to the rectory of Easton, which, in the course of a twelve-month, he exchanged for Upham.

In his domestic relations, he enjoyed as much happiness as prudence and affection could ensure him, but not unembittered by those disastrous accidents to which every father of a family is exposed. Some years after his marriage (1763) his letters to his brother discover him struggling under his anguish for the loss of a favourite daughter, who had died under inoculation, but striving to conceal his feelings for the sake of a wife whom he tenderly loved. In 1772, this wife was also taken from him, leaving him with six children. His second son, Thomas, fellow of New College, a man on whom the poetic spirit of the Wartons had descended, was found by him, one day when he returned from the college prayers, sitting in the chair in which he had left him after dinner, without life. It was the termination of a disease under which he had long laboured. This happened in 1786; and before he had space to recover the blow, in four years after, his brother died. In 1773, he had solaced himself by a second marriage with Miss Nicholas, the daughter of Robert Nicholas, Esq. In both his matrimonial connexions, his sister described him as having been eminently fortunate.

The latter part of his life was spent in retirement and tranquillity. In 1793, he resigned the mastership of Winchester, and settled himself on his living of Wickham. He had intended to finish his brother's History of English Poetry, which wanted another volume to complete it; and might now have found time enough to accomplish the task. But an obstacle presented itself, by which it is likely that he was discouraged from proceeding. The description given by Daniel Prince, a respectable old bookseller at Oxford, of the state in which his brother's rooms were found at his decease, and of the fate that befell his manuscripts and his property, may be edifying to some future fellow of a college, who shall employ himself in similar pursuits.[3] "Poor Thomas Warton's papers were in a sad litter, and his brother Joe has made matters worse by confusedly cramming all together, sending them to Winchester, &c. Mr. Warton could not give so much as his old clothes; his very shoes, stockings, and wigs, laid about in abundance. Where could his money go? It must lay in paper among his papers, or be laid in a book; he could not, nor did not spend it; and his brother, on that score, is greatly disappointed."

A republication of Pope's works, with notes, offered him an easier occupation than the digesting of those scattered materials for the History of Poetry which he had thus assisted in disarranging. He was probably glad to escape from inaction, and set himself to parcel out his Essay into comments for this edition; which, in 1797, was published in nine volumes. His indiscretion, in adding to it some of Pope's productions which had been before excluded, has been most bitterly censured. That it would have been better to let them remain where they were can scarcely be questioned. But I should be more willing to regard the insertion of them as proof of his own simplicity, in suspecting no harm from what he had himself found to be harmless, than of any design to communicate injury to others. A long life, passed without blame, and in the faithful discharge of arduous duties, ought to have secured him from this misconstruction at its close. After all, the pieces objected to are such as are more offensive to good manners than dangerous to morality. There are some other of Pope's writings, more likely to inflame the passions, which yet no one scruples to read; and Dr. Wooll has suggested that it was inconsistent to set up the writer as a teacher of virtue, and in the same breath to condemn his editor as a pander to vice.

He bestowed on his censurers no more consideration than they deserved, and went on to prepare an edition of Dry den for the press. Two volumes, with his notes, were completed, when his labours were finally broken off by a painful disease. His malady was an affection of the kidneys, which continued to harass him for some months, and ended in a fatal paralysis on the twenty-third of February, 1800, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.

He was interred in the cathedral at Winchester, where, by the contributions of his former scholars, a monument, executed by Mr. Flaxman, was raised to his memory, of a design so elegant, as the tomb of a poet has not often been honoured with. It is inscribed with the following epitaph--

H.S.E. Josephus Warton, S.T.P. Hujus Ecclesiae Prebendarius: Scolae Wintoniensis Per annos fere triginta Informator: Poeta fervidus, facilis, expolitus. Criticus eruditus, perspicax, elegans: Obiit XXIII'o. Feb. M.D.CCC. Aetat. LXXVIII. Hoc qualecunque Pietatis monumentum Praeceptori optimo, Desideratissimo, Wiccamici sui P.C.

In the frankness of his disposition he appears to have resembled his brother, but with more liveliness and more love of general society. I have heard, that in the carelessness of colloquial freedom, he was apt to commit himself by hasty and undigested observations. As he did not aim at being very oracular himself, so he was unusually tolerant of ignorance in others. Of this, a diverting instance is recorded by Dr. Wooll: meeting in company with a lady who was a kinswoman of Pope's, he eagerly availed himself of the occasion offered for learning some new particulars concerning one by whom so much of his time and thoughts had been engaged. "Pray, Sir," began the lady, "did not you write a book about my cousin Pope?" "Yes, Madam;" was the reply. "They tell me 'twas vastly clever. He wrote a great many plays, did not he?" was the next question. "I never heard but of one attempt, Madam;" said Warton, beginning perhaps to expect some discovery, when his hopes were suddenly crushed by an "Oh! no," from the lady, "I beg your pardon, Sir. That was Mr. Shakspeare. I always confound them." He had the good breeding to conceal his disappointment, and to take a courteous leave of the kinswoman of Pope.

He was regarded with great affection by those whom he had educated. The opinions of a man so long experienced in the characters of children, and in the best methods of instruction, are on these subjects entitled to much notice. "He knew," says his biographer and pupil, "that the human mind developed itself progressively, but not always in the same consistent degrees, or at periods uniformly similar." He conjectured, therefore, that the most probable method of ensuring some valuable improvement to the generality of boys was not to exact what the generality are incapable of performing. As a remedy for inaccurate construction, arising either from apparent idleness or inability, he highly approved, and sedulously imposed, translation. Modesty, timidity, or many other constitutional impediments, may prevent a boy from displaying before his master, and in the front of his class, those talents of which privacy, and a relief from these embarrassments, will often give proof. These sentiments were confirmed by that most infallible test, experience; as he declared (within a few years of his death) that "the best scholars he had sent into the world were those whom, whilst second master, he had thus habituated to translation, and given a capacity of comparing and associating the idiom of the dead languages with their own."

It is pleasant to observe the impression which men, who have engrossed to themselves the attention of posterity, have made on one another, when chance has brought them together. Of Mason, whom he fell in with at York, he tells his brother, that "he is the most easy, best natured, agreeable man he ever met with." In the next year, he met with Goldsmith, and observed of him, "that of all solemn coxcombs, he was the first, yet sensible; and that he affected to use Johnson's hard words in conversation."

Soon after the first volume of his Essay on Pope had been published, Lyttleton, then newly raised to the peerage, gave him his scarf, and submitted some of his writings, before they were printed, to his inspection.

Harris, the author of Hermes, and Lowth, were others in whose friendship he might justly have prided himself.

He was one of the few that did not shrink from a collision with Johnson; who could so ill endure a shock of this kind, that on one occasion he cried out impatiently, "Sir, I am not used to contradiction."

"It would be better for yourself and your friends, Sir, if you were;" was the natural retort. Their common friends interfered, to prevent a ruder altercation.

Like Johnson, he delighted in London, where he regularly indulged himself by passing the holidays at Christmas. His fondness for everything relating to a military life was a propensity that he shared with his brother; and while the one might have been seen following a drum and fife at Oxford, the other, by the sprightliness of his conversation, had drawn a circle of red coats about him at the St. James's Coffee House, where he frequently breakfasted. Both of them were members of the Literary Club, set on foot by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

This gaiety of temper did not hinder him from discharging his clerical office in a becoming manner. "His style of preaching," we are told by Mr. Wooll, "was unaffectedly earnest and impressive; and the dignified solemnity with which he read the Liturgy, particularly the Communion Service, was remarkably awful."

His reputation as a critic and a scholar has preserved his poetry from neglect. Of his Odes, that to Fancy, written when he was very young, is one that least disappoints us by a want of poetic feeling. Yet if we compare it with that by Collins, on the Poetical Character, we shall see of how much higher beauty the same subject was capable. In the Ode to Evening, he has again tried his strength with Collins. There are some images of rural life in it that have the appearance of being drawn from nature, and which therefore please.

Hail, meek-eyed maiden, clad in sober grey, Whose soft approach the weary woodman loves, As homeward bent to kiss his prattling babes, He jocund whistles through the twilight groves. * * * * * * * * * * To the deep wood the clamorous rooks repair, Light skims the swallow o'er the watery scene, And from the sheep-cotes, and fresh-furrow'd field, Stout ploughmen meet to wrestle on the green.

The swain that artless sings on yonder rock, His nibbling sheep and lengthening shadow spies; Pleased with the cool, the calm, refreshful hour, And the hoarse hummings of unnumber'd flies.

But these pretty stanzas are interrupted by the mention of Phoebus, the Dryads, old Sylvan, and Pan. The Ode to Content is in the same metre as his school-fellow's Ode to Evening; but in the numbers, it is very inferior both to that and to Mrs. Barbauld's Ode to Spring.

In his Dying Indian, he has produced a few lines of extraordinary force and pathos. The rest of his poems, in blank verse, are for the most part of an indifferent structure.

In his Translations from Virgil, he will probably be found to excel Dryden as much in correctness, as he falls short of him in animation and harmony.

When his Odes were first published, Gray perceived the author to be devoid of invention, but praised him for a very poetical choice of expression, and for a good ear, and even thus perhaps a little over-rated his powers. But our lyric poetry was not then what it has since been made by Gray himself, the younger Warton, Mason, Russell, and one or two writers now living.

If he had enjoyed more leisure, it is probable that he might have written better; for he was solicitous not to lose any distinction to be acquired by his poetry; and took care to reclaim a copy of humorous verses, entitled, an Epistle from Thomas Hearne, which had been attributed by mistake to his brother, among whose poems it is still printed.

FOOTNOTES [1] Mr. Crowe, in one of his Crewian Orations. [2] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix. [3] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix.

* * * * *

CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY.

An account of Christopher Anstey, written by his second son, is prefixed to the handsome edition of his works, printed at London, in 1808. He was born on the thirty-first of October, 1724, and was the son of Doctor Anstey, rector of Brinkley, in Cambridgeshire, a living in the gift of St. John's College, Cambridge; of which the Doctor had formerly been fellow and tutor. His mother was Mary, daughter of Anthony Thompson, Esq. of Trumpington, in the same county. They had no offspring but our poet, and a daughter born some years before him.

His father was afflicted with a total deafness for so considerable a portion of his life, as never to have heard the sound of his son's voice; and was thus rendered incapable of communicating to him that instruction which he might otherwise have derived from a parent endowed with remarkable acuteness of understanding. He was, therefore, sent very early to school at Bury St. Edmunds. Here he continued, under the tuition of the Rev. Arthur Kinsman, till he was removed to Eton; on the foundation of which school he was afterwards placed.

His studies having been completed with great credit to himself, under Doctor George, the head-master of Eton, in the year 1742 he succeeded to a scholarship of King's College, Cambridge, where his classical attainments were not neglected. He was admitted in 1745 to a fellowship of his college; and, in the next year, he took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He now resided chiefly in the University, where his resistance to an innovation, attempted to be introduced into King's College, involved him in a dispute which occasioned the degree of Master to be refused him. That College had immemorially asserted for its members an exemption from the performance of those public exercises demanded of the rest of the University as a qualification for their degrees. This right was now questioned; and it was required of the Bachelor Fellows of King's, that they should compose and pronounce a Latin oration in the public schools. Such an infringement of privilege was not to be tamely endured. After some opposition made by Anstey, in common with the other junior Fellows, the exercise in dispute was at lenth exacted. But Anstey, who was the senior Bachelor of the year, and to whose lot it therefore fell first to deliver this obnoxious declamation, contrived to frame it in such a manner, as to cast a ridicule on the whole proceeding. He was accordingly interrupted in the recitation of it, and ordered to compose another; in which, at the same time that he pretended to exculpate himself from his former offence, he continued in the same vein of raillery. Though his degree was withheld in consequence of this pertinacity, yet it produced the desired effect of maintaining for the College its former freedom.

While an under-graduate, he had distinguished himself by his Latin verses, called the Tripos Verses; and, in 1748, by a poem, in the same language, on the Peace; printed in the Cambridge Collection.

His quarrel with the senior part of the University did not deprive him of his fellowship. He was still occasionally an inmate of the College, and did not cease to be a Fellow, till he came into the possession of the family estate at his mother's death, in 1754.

In two years after he married Anne, third daughter of Felix Calvert, Esq. of Albury-Hall, in Hertfordshire, and the sister of John Calvert, Esq. one of his most intimate friends, who was returned to that and many successive Parliaments, for the borough of Hertford. "By this most excellent lady," says his biographer, with the amiable warmth of filial tenderness, "who was allowed to possess every endowment of person, and qualification of mind and disposition which could render her interesting and attractive in domestic life, and whom he justly regarded as the pattern of every virtue, and the source of all his happiness, he lived in uninterrupted and undiminished esteem and affection for nearly half a century; and by her (who for the happiness of her family is still living) he had thirteen children, of whom eight only survive him."

This long period is little checquered with events. Having no taste for public business, and his circumstances being easy and independent, he passed the first fourteen years at his seat in Cambridgeshire, in an alternation of study and the recreations of rural life, in which he took much pleasure. But, at the end of that time, the loss of his sister gave a shock to his spirits, which they did not speedily recover. That she was a lady of superior talents is probable, from her having been admitted to a friendship and correspondence with Mrs. Montague, then Miss Robinson. The effect which this deprivation produced on him was such as to hasten the approach, and perhaps to aggravate the violence, of a bilious fever, for the cure of which by Doctor Heberden's advice, he visited Bath, and by the use of those waters was gradually restored to health.

In 1766 he published his Bath Guide, from the press of Cambridge; a poem, which aiming at the popular follies of the day, and being written in a very lively and uncommon style, rapidly made its way to the favour of the public. At its first appearance, Gray, who was not easily pleased, in a letter to one of his friends observed, that it was the only thing in fashion, and that it was a new and original kind of humour. Soon after the publication of the second edition, he sold the copy-right for two hundred pounds to Dodsley, and gave the profits previously accruing from the work to the General Hospital at Bath. Dodsley, about ten years after his purchase, candidly owned that the sale had been more productive to him than that of any other book in which he had before been concerned; and with much liberality restored the copy-right to the author.

In 1767 he wrote a short Elegy on the Death of the Marquis of Tavistock; and the Patriot, a Pindaric Epistle, intended to bring into discredit the practice of prize-fighting.

Not long after he was called to serve the office of high-sheriff for the county of Cambridge. In 1770 he quitted his seat there for a house which he purchased in Bath. The greater convenience of obtaining instruction for a numerous family, the education of which had hitherto been superintended by himself, was one of the motives that induced him to this change of habitation.

The Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers appearing soon after his arrival at Bath, and being by many imputed to a writer who had lately so much distinguished himself by his talent for satire, he was at considerable pains to disavow that publication; and by some lines containing a deserved compliment to his sovereign, gave a sufficient pledge for the honesty of his disclaimer.

In 1776, a poem entitled An Election Ball, founded on a theme proposed by Lady Miller, who held a sort of little poetical court at her villa at Batheaston, did not disappoint the expectations formed of the author of the Bath Guide. It was at first written in the Somersetshire dialect, but was afterwards judiciously stripped of its provincialism.

About 1786 he entertained a design of collecting his poems, and publishing them together. But the painful recollections which this task awakened, of those friends and companions of his youth who had been separated from him by death during so long a period, made him relinquish his intention. He committed, however, to the press, translations of some of Gay's Fables, which had been made into Latin, chiefly with a view to the improvement of his children; an Alcaic Ode to Doctor Jenner, on the discovery of the Cowpock; and several short poems in his own language. "His increasing years," to use the words of his son, "stole inperceptibly on the even tenor of his life, and gradually lessened the distance of his journey through it, without obscuring the serenity of the prospect. Unimpeded by sickness, and unclouded by sorrow, or any serious misfortune, his life was a life of temperance, of self-denial, and of moderation, in all things; and of great regularity. He rose early in the morning, _ante diem poscens chartas_, and was constant on horseback at his usual hour, and in all seasons. His summers were uniformly passed at Cheltenham, with his family, during the latter part of his life; and upon his return to Bath in the autumn, he fell habitually into the same unruffled scenes of domestic ease and tranquillity, rendered every day more joyous and interesting to him by the increase of his family circle, and the enlargement of his hospitable table; and by many circumstances and occurrences connected with the welfare of his children, which gave him infinite delight and satisfaction."

At the beginning of 1805, he experienced a sudden and general failure of his bodily faculties, and a correspondent depressure of mind. The little confidence he placed in the power of medicine made him reluctantly comply with the wishes of his friends, that he should take the opinion of Doctor Haygarth. Yet he was not without hope of alleviation to his complaints from change of air; and, therefore, removed from Bath to the house of his son-in-law, Mr. Bosanquet, in Wiltshire. Here having at first revived a little, he soon relapsed, and declining gradually, expired in the eighty-first year of his age, without apparent suffering, in the possession of his intellectual powers, and, according to the tender wish of Pindar for one of his patrons--

[Greek: huion, psaumi, paristamenon,]

in the midst of his children.