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Updated: June 9, 2025
Warton's knowledge of it was then imperfect, but his manner lively and elegant . Johnson said, "It appears to me, that Huggins has ball without powder, and Warton powder without ball."
For my part, I had myself a very slender acquaintance with this chapter of our literature; and what little I had was generally, at that period of my life, as, with most men, it continues to be to the end of life, a reflex knowledge, acquired through those pleasant miscellanies, half gossip, half criticism such as Warton's Essay on Pope, Boswell's Johnson, Mathias' Pursuits of Literature, and many scores beside of the same indeterminate class; a class, however, which do a real service to literature, by diffusing an indirect knowledge of fine writers in their most effective passages, where else, in a direct shape, it would often never extend.
Warton's conjecture is that Shakespeare heard of this, or perhaps was himself in the crowd that watched the boys as they came whirling out in their weird dance, and that then and there was conceived what was to become so mighty a product of the human brain, Macbeth. King James, however, received it all coldly. The University, kindled by the traditions of Elizabeth's visit, did its best.
According to Warton's account, it is by accident that these two precious volumes have been preserved in the Bodleian. In 1720 a number of books, whether as being duplicates or as being thought useless, were weeded out of the Library and thrown aside, and a Mr.
Fenton received 300L, Broome 500L. Such at least is Warton's account, and more probable than that of Ruffhead, who not only varies the proportions, but increases the whole sum given to the assistants by 100L. Thus far we had followed the guidance of mere probabilities, as they lie upon the face of the transaction.
These were the three men of the day who, since Warton's death, knew most of early English poetry, and though Percy was too old to help, the others were not.
His real claims consisted in having spent a fortune in electioneering for ministers; and these claims being pressed with unusual urgency at the moment of Warton's death, he was offered the Laureateship as satisfaction in part. He eagerly accepted it, and received the balance two years later in the shape of a commission as Police Magistrate of Middlesex.
In his review of Dr. Warton's Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, Johnson has given the following salutary caution upon this subject: 'Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself.
Shaw, in his edition of Apollonius Rhodius, has since made use of his notes on that poet, and pays a tribute to his critical abilities in the preface. Warton's distinction between them is well imagined.
"Because," replied the camel driver, "this bird assured me that a company of people is coming this way, and that you are the chief of them." While he was speaking, Athejaj's attendants arrived. Warton's History of Poetry, Vol. II, p. 182. Next morning the princes met the emperor again, who called and asked them, while they were yet afar off, if they had remembered to speak to their sister.
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