we are, therefore, almost entirely indebted to Bathurst, seven of the papers mentioned above being included in that portion of the work. The second, third, and fourth volumes, though displaying much elegant criticism, and great powers of imagination, would have presented a yet greater variety had he been spared to assist those who were afterwards associated in the prosecution of the plan. To the fancy of Hawkesworth, the morality of Johnson, and the criticism of Warton, had the sportive satire of Bathurst been added, the Adventurer, beautiful and interesting as it is, would have made a nearer approach to perfection.

JOSEPH WARTON, D. D., the son of Thomas Warton, B. D, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Poetry-Professor in that University, was born at Dunsfold, in the county of Surry, and baptized there on the 22d of April, 1722.

Until his fourteenth year he was, with the exception of a short period spent at New College School, educated under the care of his father, a man of elegant classical learning, and the author of a volume of poems published in the year 1745.

On the 2d of August, 1736, young Warton was admitted on the foundation of Winchester Col

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LANO!

TILDEN FOUND

lege, and during a residence of near four years in
this school gave evident indications of his future
eminence in literature. It was here that he
formed an intimacy, of the most durable and
congenial kind, with that great, but unfortunate,
poet, Collins; and they, together with another
boy of the name of Tomkins, sent, during this
period, three poems to the Gentleman's Maga-
zine,* of such value as to draw forth an encomium
from Johnson. Mr. Wooll has published these
small pieces in his Memoirs of our author; they
certainly, as juvenile effusions, deserve much
praise; but the Sonnet by Collins, under the sig
nature of Delicatulus, is in a strain greatly supe-
rior to its companions. As it is very short, a
literary curiosity, and worthy of the matured age
of the poet, its transcription in this place will
not, I trust, prove unacceptable to my readers.
When Phoebe form'd a wanton smile,
My soul! it reach'd not here!

Strange, that thy peace, thou trembler, flies
Before a rising tear!

From 'midst the drops, my Love is born,

That o'er those eyelids rove:

Thus issu'd from a teeming wave

The fabled queen of Love.

In September, 1740, Mr. Warton, who had been admitted the preceding January a member of Oriel College, Oxford, left Winchester to reThey are the first three entire articles in vol. ix, p. 545. VOL. V.

I

side in the University, where he soon distinguished himself as a genuine disciple of the Muses. During his first vacation, indeed, and at the age of only eighteen, he composed a sketch for some intended verses on the Passions, which displays uncommon power of imagination, and which, it is probable, might give rise to Collins's exquisite Ode on the same subject. In the same year also, 1740, he composed his "Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature," a poem in blank verse, and which, preceded by an "Ode on reading West's Pindar," and followed by some shorter pieces, was published in 1744.

The Enthusiast, though written at such an early period of life, is the longest original poem that our author has produced. It evinces a lively imagination, and an ardent admiration of. the charms of Nature; but is inferior in richness and boldness of conception to the "Pleasures of Melancholy," composed in the same species of verse, by his brother Thomas in 1745. The picture of Shakspeare nursed by Fancy, and the following description, of which the last three lines convey a most striking and poetic idea, are however highly conceived, and as correctly finished.

Ev'n when wild tempests swallow up the plains,
And Boreas' blasts, big hail, and rains combine