Thomas Warton

Thomas Warton (January 9, 1728 – May 21, 1790) was the British Poet Laureate from 1785 until his death. The three published volumes of his uncompleted History of English Poetry pioneered the study of medieval English literature.

Thomas Warton

Quotes

• Ye fetted pinnacles, ye fanes sublime,
  Ye towers that wear the mossy vest of time;
  Ye massy piles of old munificence,
  At once the pride of learning and defence;
  Ye cloisters pale, that, lengthening to the sight,
  To contemplation, step by step, invite;
  Ye temples dim, where pious duty pays
  Her holy hymns of everlasting praise -
  Hail ! Oxford, hail !
  • "Triumph of Isis" (1749).

• O! what's a table richly spread
  Without a woman at its head!
  • "The Progress of Discontent" (1750), line 39.

• We are apt to form romantic and exaggerated notions about the moral innocence of our ancestors. Ages of ignorance and simplicity are thought to be ages of purity. The direct contrary, I believe, is the case...In the middle ages, not only the most flagrant violations of modesty were frequently practised and permitted, but the most infamous vices. Men are less ashamed as they are less polished.
  • The History of English Poetry (1774-81) vol. 1, p. 431.

• Nor rough, nor barren, are the winding ways
  Of hoar antiquity, but strown with flowers.
  • "Sonnet Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon" (1777), line 13.

• All human race, from China to Peru,
  Pleasure, howe’er disguis’d by art, pursue.
  • Universal Love of Pleasure, Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Let observation with extensive view/ Survey mankind, from China to Peru", Samuel Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, Line 1.

Quotes about Thomas Warton

• Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry was published in three volumes in 1774, 1778 and 1781. It was both a major landmark of scholarship and a decisive intervention in the cultural politics of its age: for the first time, the achievement of English poetry from Chaucer to the Elizabethans was retrieved and made accessible, and the ground was prepared for a shift in hegemonic style which the Romantics exploited.
  • J. C. D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (1994), p. 24

• All centuries of literature swam into his learned ken. His Observations on the Faërie Queene still remains the best book ever written about Spenser.
  • Herbert Ellsworth Cory, 'The Critics of Edmund Spenser', University of California Publications in Modern Philology, Volume 2, eds. Lucien Foulet, Charles M. Gayley and H. K. Schilling (1910–1912), p. 164

• The late Mr Warton, with a poetical enthusiasm which converted toil into pleasure, and gilded, to himself and his readers, the dreary subjects of antiquarian lore, and with a capacity of labour apparently inconsistent with his more brilliant powers, has produced a work of great size, and, partially speaking, of great interest, from the perusal of which we rise, our fancy delighted with beautiful imagery, and with the happy analysis of ancient tale and song, but certainly with very vague ideas of the history of English poetry... Warton's History of English Poetry has remained, and will always remain, an immense commonplace-book of memoirs to serve for such an history. No antiquary can open it, without drawing information from a mine which, though dark, is inexhaustible in its treasures; nor will he who reads merely for amusement ever shut it for lack of attaining his end; while both may probably regret the desultory excursions of an author, who wanted only system, and a more rigid attention to minute accuracy, to have perfected the great task he has left incomplete.
  • Walter Scott, 'On Ellis's Specimen of the Early English Poets', The Edinburgh Review (1804), quoted in Walter Scott, Periodical Criticism. Vol. I (1835), pp. 4-5

• A change was preparing and may be traced to Winchester, which, under Dr. Warton, had become a nursery of poets. If any man may be called the father of the present race, it is Thomas Warton, a scholar by profession, an antiquary and a poet by choice; and by nature one of the best tempered and happiest of men.
  • Robert Southey, 'Hayley's Life and Writings', The Quarterly Review, Vol. XXXI (April 1824), p. 289
  • Unsigned article attributed to Southey in The Correspondence of Thomas Warton, ed. David Fairer (1995), p. xviii