PART III.

ESSAY III.

RAM

SKETCHES BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL OF THE
OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTORS TO THE
BLER, ADVENTURER, AND IDLER.

IT has been already related, that, in the second

edition of the IDLER, Dr. Johnson acknowledged the contribution of twelve papers. Of the authors of those essays whose names have been disclosed, we are now, therefore, to give some account. They are, in number, three; the Rev. Thomas Warton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Bennet Langton, Esq.

THOMAS WARTON, B. D. the son of the Rev. Thomas Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, Hampshire, and brother of Dr. Joseph Warton, was born at Basingstoke, in the year 1728. Until his sixteenth year he was educated solely by his father, and then, on the 16th of March, 1743, sent to Oxford, where he was admitted a commoner, and soon after elected a scholar, of Trinity College.

The bias of Mr. Warton's mind towards poetry and elegant literature was early shewn; in his ninth year, in a letter addressed to his sister, he sends her a translation from Martial; and it has been affirmed,* that in 1745, when only in his eighteenth year, he published "Five Pastoral Eclogues," the scenes of which are laid among the shepherds of Germany, ruined by the war of 1744. The authenticity of this production has, however, been much doubted by Mr. Mant, who says, "I do not learn that they ever had the name of Warton affixed to them, and can assert, on the authority of his sister, that he absolutely disclaimed them." + Yet it cannot be denied, that a vein of description runs through these Eclogues of a kind very similar to that which Mr. Warton was afterward accustomed to indulge: the following allusion, for instance, to the chivalric combat, in Eclogue the 3d, and the subsequent picture of the convent, in Eclogue the 4th, are of this cast.

The wood, whose shades the plaintive shepherd sought,
Was dark and pathless, and by neighbouring feet

Long time untrod; for there in ancient days
Two knights of bold emprize, and high renown,
Met in fierce combat, to dispute the prize

* Anderson's Poets, and Biographical Dictionary.
+ Mant's Life of Warton, p. 14.

Of beauty bright, whose valiant arm should win
A virgin fair, whose far-emblazon'd charms
With equal love had smote their rival breasts.
The knight who fell beneath the victor's sword,
Unhears'd and restless, from that fatal day
Wanders the hated shades, a spectre pale;
And each revolving night, are heard to sound,
Far from the inmost bow'r of the deep wood,
Loud shrieks, and hollow groans, and rattling chains.

Dost thou remember at the river's side

That solitary convent, all behind

Hid by the covert of a mantling wood?
One night, when all was wrapt in darkness deep,
An armed troop, on rage and rapine bent,
Pour'd o'er the fields, and ravag'd all they met ;
Nor did that sacred pile escape their arms,
Whose walls the murd'rous band to ruin swept,
And fill'd its caverns deep with armed throngs
Greedy of spoil, and snatch'd their treasures old
From their dark seats: the shrieking sisters fled,
Dispers'd and naked, through the fields and woods,
While sable night conceal'd their wand'ring steps.
Part in my moss-grown cottage shelter sought,
Which haply scap'd their rage, in secret glade
Immersed deep.--I rose at early morn,
With fearful heart to view the ruin'd dome,
Where all was desolation; all appear'd
The seat of horror and devouring war.

The deep recesses and the gloomy nooks,

The vaulted aisles, and shrines of imag'd saints,

The caverns worn by holy knees appear'd,

Ec. 3.

And to the sun were op'd.-In musing thought
I said, as on the pile I bent my brow,-

Like that which stands fast by the piny rock;
These silent walls with ivy shall be hung,
And distant times shall view the sacred pile,
Unknowing how it fell, with pious awe!
The pilgrim here shall visit, and the swain
Returning from the field, at twilight grey,
Shall shun to pass this way, subdued by fear,
And slant his course across the adverse vale!'

Ecl. 4.

The close imitation of Milton, too, in Eclogue the 2d, the description of the Hermit's Cell in Eclogue the 5th, and various other passages, of considerable merit for the age at which they are supposed to have been written, might, not without reason, lead to the attribution of these pieces to our author.

It must, indeed, be admitted, that the first acknowledged production of Mr. Warton, "The Pleasures of Melancholy," published in 1747, but composed in 1745, is in a strain superior to the Eclogues. This beautifully romantic poem, though executed at a period so early in life, betrays almost immediately the tract of reading, and the school of poetry, to which its author had, even then, sedulously addicted himself. Every page suggests to us the disciple of Spenser

and Milton, yet without servile imitation; for, though the language and style of imagery whisper whence they were drawn, many of the pictures in this poem are so bold and highly coloured, as justly to claim no small share of originality.

The year succeeding this effusion he wrote, on the recommendation of Dr. Huddesford, President of his college," The Triumph of Isis," in reply to Mr. Mason, who had published an Elegy, under the title of "Isis," reflecting, rather harshly, on some circumstances which had lately occurred, of a political nature, in the university of Oxford. The Triumph of Isis was printed in 1749, and received with a burst of applause, as a noble and spirited vindication of the honour and reputation of his Alma Mater. It has, moreover, the merit, though written upon a temporary subject, of containing imagery and sentiment which must always please and interest. That it is superior to the poem which gave rise to it, has been, not only the opinion of the public, but of Mr. Mason himself, who, writing to Mr.Warton in 1777, for the purpose of thanking him for a present of his poems, which he had then just published, but in which, out of delicacy to his former opponent, he had omitted the Triumph of Isis, says with much candour, “I am, however, sorry to find that the "Triumph of Isis" has not found a place near