Here we have, before the end of the seventeenth century, the essence of historical comparative criticism of literature; and admiration for a kind of poetry as remote as possible from the standards of the eighteenth century. Temple handed on the torch to the elder Thomas Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford in his day, who himself translated from the Latin, as "a Runic ode," two stanzas of the Death Song of Regnar Lodbrog.[1]
One of Warton's sons, Thomas (born 1728), was Professor of Poetry, at Oxford (1757-1767), and, from 1774 onwards (he died in 1790), published a History of English Poetry, which may be unsystematic, but is both interesting and erudite. Warton had to read the earlier and later mediaeval poets, French and English, in the manuscripts, and he quoted profusely from sources then scarcely known. "Partly through the store of new matter that is provided for 'the reading public,' partly through the zest and enthusiasm of its students—the spirit of adventure which is the same in Warton as in Scott"—his book "did more than any theory to correct the narrow culture, the starved elegance, of the preceding age". The elder brother of Thomas, Joseph Warton, born 1722, was a schoolfellow of Collins, and published "Odes" in the same year as he (1746). In his preface he boldly said that "the fashion of moralizing in verse has been carried too far," and "he looks upon invention and imagination to be the chief faculties of a poet". He preached what Collins practised; he wrote good criticism in Dr. Johnson's paper, "The Adventurer"; in his essay on Pope he tried "to impress on the reader that a clear head and acute understanding are not sufficient alone to make a Poet," "that it is a creative and glowing imagination... and that alone, that can stamp a writer with this exalted and very uncommon character...." These were to be the watchwords of the Romantic movement, into which Warton, dying in 1800, did not live to enter.
John Dyer.
Of John Dyer we know from his most famous poem, "Grongar Hill," that, on a certain occasion, he
Sate upon a flowery bed
With my hand beneath my head.
If he had lain upon a flowery bed the posture would have been more poetical. In blank verse, deserting Grongar Hill, he found
Lo, the resistless theme, imperial Rome.
His "Ruins of Rome" are less impressive than Spenser's sonnets translated from Du Bellay. His "Fleece," an instructive epic of the wool trade, though praised by the illustrious Akenside, proved no golden fleece to its publisher. The prose summaries are pleasing. "Disputes between France and England on the coast of Coromandel, censured".
Dyer, at his best, is less successful than Thomson. He was born in 1700, son of an eminent solicitor of Carmarthen, was educated at Westminster, attempted the painter's art, visited Italy, took holy orders, published "The Fleece," in 1757, and died in 1758.
Briefer notes must suffice for the Rev. Mr. Blair of Athelstaneford (1699-1746) who wrote "The Grave," later recommended to amateurs by Blake's illustrations; and Matthew Green, who wrote "The Spleen" (1696-1737), a somewhat lively subsatirical effort.