Serene-to sow the seeds of peace, When God had calmed the world. Strong-in the Lord, who could defy And hell, and horror, and despair To his undaunted might. Constant-in love to God, the Truth, His endless fame attend. Pleasant-and various as the year; Wise-in recovery from his fall, O David, scholar of the Lord! O strength, O sweetness, lasting ripe ! There is but One who ne'er rebelled, By pleasures unenticed; He from himself his semblance sent, 'Tell them, I Am,' Jehovah said At once above, beneath, around, THOMAS AND JOSEPH WARTON. The Wartons, like the Beaumonts, were a poetical race. As literary antiquaries, they were also honourably distinguished. Thomas, the historian of English poetry, was the second son of Dr. Warton of Magdalen College, Oxford, who was twice chosen Professor of Poetry by his university, and who wrote some pleasing verses, half scholastic and half sentimental. A sonnet by the elder Warton is worthy being transcribed, for its strong family likeness: Written after seeing Windsor Castle. From beauteous Windsor's high and storied halls, Sips the warm fragrance of the greenhouse bowers, At length returning to the wonted comb, The poetry-professor died in 1745, aged fifty-eight. His tastes, his love of poetry, and of the university, were continued by his son Thomas (1728-1790). At sixteen, Thomas Warton was entered of Trinity College. He began early to write verses, and his 'Pleasures of Melancholy,' published when he was nineteen, gave a promise of excellence which his riper productions did not fulfil. · Having taken his degree, Warton obtained a fellowship, and in 1757 was appointed Professor of Poetry. He was also curate of Woodstock, and rector of Kiddington, a small living near Oxford. The even tenor of his life was only varied by his occasional publications, one of which was an elaborate Essay on Spenser's Faery Queen.' He also edited the minor poems of Milton, an edition which Leigh Hunt says is a wilderness of sweets, and is the only one in which a true lover of the original can pardon an exuberance of annotation. Some of the notes are highly poetical, while others display Warton's taste for antiquities, for architecture, superstition, and his intimate acquaintance with the old Elizabethan writers. A still more important work, the History of English Poetry (1774–1778) forms the basis of his reputation. In this history, Warton poured out the treasures of a full mind. His antiquarian lore, his love of antique manners, and his chivalrous feelings, found appropriate exercise in tracing the stream of our poetry from its first fountain-springs, down to the luxuriant reign of Elizabeth, which he justly styled 'the most poetical age of our annals.' Pope and Gray had planned schemes of a history of English poetry, in which the authors were to be arranged according to their style and merits. Warton adopted the chronological arrangement, as giving freer exertion for research, and as enabling him to exhibit, without transposition, the gradual improvement in our poetry, and the progression of our language. The untiring industry and learning of the poet-historian accumulated a mass of materials equally valuable and curious. His work is a vast storehouse of facts connected with our early literature; and if he sometimes wanders from his subject, or overlays it with extraneous details, it should be remembered, as his latest editor, Mr. Price, remarks, that new matter was constantly arising, and that Warton' was the first adventurer in the extensive region through which he journeyed, and into which the usual pioneers of literature had scarcely penetrated.' It is to be regretted that Warton's plan excluded the drama, which forms so rich a source of our early imaginative literature; but this defect has been partly supplied by Mr. Collier's 'Annals of the Stage.' On the death of Whitehead in 1785, Warton was appointed poetlaureate. His learning gave dignity to an office usually held in small esteem, and which in our day has been wisely converted into a sinecure. The same year he was made Camden Professor of History. While pursuing his antiquarian and literary researches, Warton was attacked with gout, and his enfeebled health yielded to a stroke of paralysis in 1790. Notwithstanding the classic stiffness of his poetry, and his full-blown academical honours, Warton appears to have been an easy companionable man, who delighted to unbend in common society, and especially with boys. 'During his visits to his brother, Dr. J. Warton-master of Winchester School-the reverend professor became an associate and confidant in all the sports of the school-boys. 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.'* If there was little dignity in this, there was something better-a kindliness of disposition and freshness of feeling which all would wish to retain. The poetry of Warton is deficient in natural expression and general interest, but some of his longer pieces, by their martial spirit and Gothic fancy, are calculated to awaken a stirring and romantic enthusiasm. Hazlitt considered some of his sonnets the finest in the language, and they seem to have caught the fancy of Coleridge and Bowles. The following are picturesque and graceful: Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon. Deem not devoid of elegance the sage, By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled Of painful pedantry, the poring child, Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, On Revisiting the River Loddon. When first my muse to lisp her notes begun! While pensive memory traces back the round Which fills the varied interval between; Much pleasure, more of sorrow marks the scene. Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure, No more return to cheer my evening road! Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature, Joseph, the elder brother of Thomas Warton, closely resembled him in character and attainments. He was born in 1722, and was the school-fellow of Collins at Winchester. He was afterwards a com *Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets. moner of Oriel College, Oxford, and ordained on his father's curacy at Basingstoke. He was also rector of Tamworth. In 1766 he was appointed head-master of Winchester School, to which were subsequently added a prebend of St. Paul's and of Winchester. He survived his brother ten years, dying in 1800. Dr. Joseph Warton early appeared as a poet, but is considered inferior to his brother in the graphic and romantic style of composition at which he aimed. His ode To Fancy' seems, however, to be equal to all but a few pieces of Thomas Warton's. He published an Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (vol. i. in 1756, vol. ii. 1782), and edited an edition of Pope's works (1797), which was the most complete then published. Warton was long intimate with Johnson, and a member of his literary club. From the Ode to Fancy. O parent of each lovely muse! Where nature seemed to sit alone, Tell me the path, sweet wanderer, tell, When young-eyed Spring profusely From her green lap the pink and rose; Thy solemn whispers, Fancy, hear! THOMAS BLACKLOCK. A blind descriptive poet seems such an anomaly in nature, that the case of DR. BLACKLOCK (1721-1791) has engaged the attention of the learned and curious in no ordinary degree. We read all concerning him with strong interest, except his poetry, for this is generally tame, languid, and commonplace. He was an amiable and excellent man, son of a Cumberland bricklayer, who had settled in the town of Annan, Dumfriesshire. When a child about six months old, he was totally deprived of sight by the small-pox; but his worthy father, assisted by his neighbours, amused his solitary boyhood by reading to him; and before he had reached the age of twenty, he was familiar with Spenser, Milton, Pope, and Addison. He was enthusiastically fond of poetry, particularly of the works of Thomson and Allan Ramsay. From these he must, in a great degree, have derived his images and impressions of nature and natural objects; but in after-life the classic poets were added to his store of intellectual enjoyment. His father was accidentally killed when the poet was about the age of nineteen; but some of his attempts at verse having been seen by Dr. Stevenson, Edinburgh, that benevolent gentleman took their blind author to the Scottish metropolis, where he was enrolled as a student of divinity. In 1746, he published a volume of his poems, which was reprinted with additions in 1754 and 1756. He was licensed in 1759, and through the patronage of the Earl of Selkirk, was appointed minister of Kirkcudbright. The parishioners, however, were opposed both to church patronage in the abstract, and to this exercise of it in favour of a blind man, and the poet relinquished the appointment on receiving in lieu of it a moderate annuity. He now resided in Edinburgh, and took boarders into his house. His family was a scene of peace and happiness. To his literary pursuits Blacklock added a taste for music, and played on the flute and flageolet. Latterly, he suffered from depression of spirits, and supposed that his imaginative powers were failing him; yet the generous ardour he evinced in 1786, in the case of Burns, shews no diminution of sensibility or taste. Besides his poems, Blacklock wrote some sermons and theological treatises, an article on Blindness for the Encyclopædia Britannica, and two dissertations, entitled Paraclesis; or Consolations deduced from Natural and Revealed Religion,' one of them original, and the other translated from a work ascribed to Cicero. ་ Apart from the circumstances under which they were produced, the poems of Blacklock offer little room for or temptation to criticism. He has no new imagery, no commanding power of sentiment, reflection, or imagination. Still, he was a fluent and correct versifier, and his familiarity with the visible objects of nature-with trees, streams, the rocks, and sky, and even with different orders of flowers and plants is a wonderful phenomenon in one blind from infancy. He could distinguish colours by touch; but this could only apply to objects at hand, not to the features of a landscape, or to the appearances of storm or sunshine, sunrise or sunset, or the variation in the seasons, all of which he has described. Images of this kind he had at will. Thus, he exclaims; Ye vales, which to the raptured eye |