With terror shake, and pity move, VERSES: WRITTEN AT MONTAUBAN IN FRANCE, 1750. TARN, how delightful wind thy willow'd waves. But ah! they fructify a land of slaves! In vain thy bare-foot, sun-burnt peasants hide With luscious grapes yon hill's romantic side; No cups nectareous shall their toil repay, The priest's, the soldier's, and the fermier's prey: Vain glows this Sun, in cloudless glory drest, That strikes fresh vigor through the pining breast; Give me, beneath a colder, changeful sky, By all the chiefs in freedom's battles lost, That, swiftly whirling through the walks of war, Dash'd Roman blood, and crush'd the foreign throngs; By holy Druids' courage-breathing songs; Be Albion still thy joy! with her remain, *Alluding to the persecutions of the Protestants, and the wars of the Saracens, carried on in the southern prov inces of France. THOMAS WARTON. THOMAS WARTON, younger brother of the pre-lamented the death of George II., in some lines adceding, a distinguished poet, and an historian of dressed to Mr. Pitt, he continued the courtly strain poetry, was born at Basingstoke in 1728. He was in poems on the marriage of George III, and on the educated under his father till 1743, when he was birth of the Prince of Wales, both printed in the admitted a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford. University collection. In 1770 he gave an edition, Here he exercised his poetical talent to so much ad- in two volumes 4to, of the Greek poet Theocritus, vantage, that, on the appearance of Mason's Elegy which gave him celebrity in other countries besides of Isis, which severely reflected on the disloyalty his own. At what time he first employed himself of Oxford at that period, he was encouraged by Dr. with the History of English Poetry, we are not inHaddesford, President of his College, to vindicate formed; but in 1774 he had so far proceeded in the the cause of his University. This task he performed work as to publish the first volume in 4to. He after with great applause, by writing, in his twenty-first wards printed a second in 1778, and a third in 1781; year, The Triumph of Isis," a piece of much but his labor now became tiresome to himself, and spirit and fancy, in which he retaliated upon the the great compass which he had allotted to his plan bard of Cam, by satirizing the courtly venality then was so irksome, that an unfinished fourth volume supposed to distinguish the rival University. His was all that he added to it. "Progress of Discontent," published in 1750, exhibited to great advantage his powers in the familiar style, and his talent for humor, with a knowledge of human life, extraordinary at his early age, especially if composed, as it is said, for a college exercise in 1746. In 1750 he took the degree of M. A., and in the following year became a fellow of his College. The place of Camden professor of history, vacant by the resignation of Sir William Scott, was the close of his professional exertions; but soon after another engagement required his attention. By His Majesty's express desire, the post of poetlaureate was offered to him, and accepted, and he determined to use his best endeavors for rendering it respectable. Varying the monotony of anniversary court compliment by topics better adapted to poetical description, he improved the style of the laureate odes, though his lyric strains underwent some ridicule on that account. His spirited satire, entitled "Newmarket," and pointed against the ruinous passion for the turf; his "Ode for Music;" and his " Verses on the Death of the Prince of Wales," were written about this time; and, in 1753, he was the editor of a small His concluding publication was an edition of the collection of poems, under the title of "The juvenile poems of Milton, of which the first volume Union," which was printed at Edinburgh, and con- made its appearance in 1785, and the second in tained several of his own performances. In 1754 1790, a short time before his death. His constitu he made himself known by Observations on tion now began to give way. In his sixty-second Spenser's Faery Queen, in one volume, afterwards year an attack of the gout shattered his frame, and enlarged to two; a work well received by the pub-was succeeded in May, 1790, by a paralytic seizure, lic, and which made a considerable addition to his which carried him off, at his lodgings in Oxford. literary reputation. So high was his character in His remains were interred, with every academical the University, that in 1757 he was elected to the honor, in the chapel of Trinity College. office of its poetry-professor, which he held for the The pieces of Thomas Warton are very various usual period of ten years, and rendered respectable in subject, and none of them long, whence he must by the erudition and taste displayed in his lectures. only rank among the minor poets; but scarcely one It does not appear necessary in this place to par- of that tribe has noted with finer observation the ticularize all the prose compositions which, whether minute circumstances in rural nature that afford grave or humorous, fell at this time from his pen; pleasure in description, or has derived from the but it may be mentioned that verse continued occa- regions of fiction more animated and picturesque sionally to occupy his thoughts and that having scenery. ODE TO THE FIRST OF APRIL. WITH dalliance rude young Zephyr wooes Mindful of disaster past, And shrinking at the northern blast, From the dark dell's entangled steeps; While from the shrubbery's naked maze, Of Flora's brightest 'broidery shone, Scant along the ridgy land The beans their new-born ranks expand: The swallow, for a moment seen, Fraught with a transient, frozen shower, Mute on a sudden is the lark; Towers distinguish'd from the rest, O'er the broad downs, a novel race, His free-born vigor yet unbroke A thousand tumbling rills inlay ODE. THE CRUSADE. BOUND for holy Palestine, The Glym is a small river in Oxfordshire, flowing through Warton's parish of Kiddington, or Cuddington, and dividing it into upper and lower town. It is described by himself in his account of Cuddington, as a deep but narrow stream, winding through willowed meadows and abounding in trouts, pikes, and wild-fowl. It gives name to the village of Glymton, which adjoins to Kiddington. |