There is evidently, both in its rightgoings and its short-comings, considerable matter in this for discussion were such discussion in place. But the main heads of it, which alone would be important, must be obvious to every one. In the body of the Essay, Warton, as was hinted above, rather “hedges.” He maintains his position that Pope was not transcendently a poet; and indulges in much detailed and sometimes rather niggling criticism of his work; but readmits him after a fashion to a sort of place in Parnassus, not quite “utmost, last, provincial,” but, as far as we can make out, on the fence between Class Two and Class Three. The book, as has also been said, is a real document, showing drift, but also drifting. The Time-Spirit is carrying the man along, but he is carried half-unconsciously.
The Adventurer Essays.
Warton’s Adventurer essays are specially interesting. They were written early in 1753-54, some years before the critical period of 1760-65, and two or three before his Pope essay; and they were produced at the recommendation, if not under the direct editorship, of Johnson. Further, in the peroratorical remarks which were usual with these artificial periodicals, Warton explains that they were planned with a definite intention not merely to reintroduce Criticism among polite society, but to reinvest her with something more of exactness and scholarship than had been usual since Addison followed the French critics in talking politely about critical subjects. Warton’s own exercitations are distinguished by a touch which may be best called “gingerly.” He opens (No. 49) with a “Parallel between Ancient and Modern Learning,” which is in effect an almost violent attack on French critics, with exceptions for Fénelon, Le Bossu, and Brumoy. Then, taking the hint of Longinus’s reference to “the legislator of the Jews,” he feigns a fresh discovery of criticisms of the Bible by the author of the Περὶ Ὕψους. He anticipates his examination of Pope by some remarks (No. 63) on that poet from the plagiarism-and-parallel-passage standpoint; upholds the Odyssey (Nos. 75, 80, 83) as of equal value with the Iliad, and of perhaps greater for youthful students; insinuates some objections to Milton (No. 101); studies The Tempest (Nos. 93, 97) and Lear (Nos. 113, 116, 122) more or less elaborately.[[118]] Throughout he appears to be conditioned not merely by the facts glanced at above, by the ethical tendency of these periodicals generally, and by his own profession of schoolmaster, but also by a general transition feeling, a know-not-what-to-think-of-it. Yet his inclination is evidently towards something new—perhaps he does not quite know what—and away from something old, which we at least can perceive without much difficulty to be the Neo-Classic creed. He would probably by no means abjure that creed if it were presented to him as a test, but he would take it with no small qualifications.
Thomas Warton on Spenser.
For a combination of earliness, extension, and character no book noticed in this chapter exceeds in interest Thomas Warton’s Observations on Spenser.[[119]] To an ordinary reader, who has heard that Warton was one of the great ushers of Romanticism in England, and that Spenser was one of the greatest influences which these ushers applied, the opening of the piece, and not a very few passages later, may seem curiously half-hearted and unsympathetic. Such a reader, from another though closely connected point of view, may be disappointed by the fragmentary and annotatory character of the book, its deficiency in vues d’ensemble, its apologies, and compromises, and hesitations. But those who have taken a little trouble to inform themselves on the matter, either by their own inquiries or by following the course which has been indicated in this book, will be much better satisfied. They will see that he says what he ought to have said in the concatenation accordingly.
It is impossible to decide how much of yet not discarded orthodoxy, and how much of characteristic eighteenth-century compromise there is in the opening about “depths of Gothic ignorance and barbarity,” “ridiculous and incoherent excursions,” “old Provençal vein,” and the like. Probably there is a good deal of both;[[120]] there is certainly a good deal which requires both to excuse it. Yet before long Warton fastens a sudden petard on the main gate of the Neo-Classic stronghold by saying: “But it is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did not attend to.” Absurd, indeed! But what becomes of those antecedent laws of poetry, those rules of the kind and so forth, which for more than two hundred years had been accumulating authority? It is no good for him to go on: “We who live in the days of writing by rule.... Critical taste is universally diffused ...” and so on. The petard goes on fizzing and sparkling at the gate, and will blow it in before long.
In the scattered annotations, which follow for a long time, the attitude of compromise is fairly kept; and even Neo-Classics, as we have seen, need not necessarily have objected to Warton’s demonstration[[121]] pièces en main, that Scaliger “had no notion of simple and genuine beauty”; while the whole of his section (iv.) on Spenser’s stanza, &c., is full of lèse-poésie, and that (vii.) on Spenser’s inaccuracies is not much better. But the very next section is an important attack on the plagiarism-and-parallel-passage mania which almost invariably develops itself in bad critics; and the defence of his author’s Allegory (§ x.), nay, the plump avowal of him as a Romantic poet, more than atones for some backslidings even here. Above all, the whole book is distinguished by a genuine if not always understanding love of the subject; secondly, by an obvious refusal—sometimes vocal, always latent—to accept a priori rules of criticism; thirdly, and most valuably of all, by recurrence to contemporary and preceding models as criteria instead of to the ancients alone. Much of the last part of the book is occupied with a sort of first draft in little of the author’s subsequent History; he is obviously full of knowledge (if sometimes flawed) and of study (if sometimes misdirected) of early English literature. And this is what was wanted. “Nullum numen abest si sit conscientia” (putting the verse aside) might almost be the critic’s sole motto if it were not that he certainly cannot do without Prudentia itself. But Prudentia without her sister is almost useless: she can at best give inklings, and murmur, “If you are not conscious of what has actually been done in literature you can never decide what ought and ought not to have been done.”