A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

by Henry A. Beers

"O'er Cornwall's cliffs the tempest roared:
High the screaming sea-mew soared:
In Tintaggel's topmost tower
Darkness fell the sleety shower:
Round the rough castle shrilly sung
The whirling blast, and wildly flung
On each tall rampart's thundering side
The surges of the tumbling tide,
When Arthur ranged his red-cross ranks
On conscious Camlan's crimsoned banks:
By Mordred's faithless guile decreed
Beneath a Saxon spear to bleed.
Yet in vain a Paynim foe
Armed with fate the mightly blow;
For when he fell, an elfin queen,
All in secret and unseen,
O'er the fainting hero threw
Her mantle of ambrosial blue,
And bade her spirits bear him far,
In Merlin's agate-axled car,
To her green isle's enameled steep
Far in the navel of the deep."

Other poems of Thomas Warton touching upon his favorite studies are the "Ode Sent to Mr. Upton, on his Edition of the Faery Queene," the "Monody Written near Stratford-upon-Avon," the sonnets, "Written at Stonehenge," "To Mr. Gray," and "On King Arthur's Round Table," and the humorous epistle which he attributes to Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, denouncing the bishops for their recent order that fast-prayers should be printed in modern type instead of black letter, and pronouncing a curse upon the author of "The Companion to the Oxford Guide Book" for his disrespectful remarks about antiquaries.

"May'st thou pore in vain
For dubious doorways! May revengeful moths
Thy ledgers eat! May chronologic spouts
Retain no cipher legible! May crypts
Lurk undiscovered! Nor may'st thou spell the names
Of saints in storied windows, nor the dates
Of bells discover, nor the genuine site
Of abbots' pantries!"

Warton was a classical scholar and, like most of the forerunners of the romantic school, was a trifle shame-faced over his Gothic heresies. Sir Joshua Reynolds had supplied a painted window of classical design for New College, Oxford; and Warton, in some complimentary verses, professes that those "portraitures of Attic art" have won him back to the true taste;[9] and prophesies that henceforth angels, apostles, saints, miracles, martyrdoms, and tales of legendary lore shall—

"No more the sacred window's round disgrace,
But yield to Grecian groups the shining space. . .
Thy powerful hand has broke the Gothic chain,
And brought my bosom back to truth again. . .
For long, enamoured of a barbarous age,
A faithless truant to the classic page—
Long have I loved to catch the simple chime
Of minstrel harps, and spell the fabling rime;
To view the festive rites, the knightly play,
That decked heroic Albion's elder day;
To mark the mouldering halls of barons bold,
And the rough castle, cast in giant mould;
With Gothic manners, Gothic arts explore,
And muse on the magnificence of yore.
But chief, enraptured have I loved to roam,
A lingering votary, the vaulted dome,
Where the tall shafts, that mount in massy pride,
Their mingling branches shoot from side to side;
Where elfin sculptors, with fantastic clew,
O'er the long roof their wild embroidery drew;
Where Superstition, with capricious hand,
In many a maze, the wreathëd window planned,
With hues romantic tinged the gorgeous pane,
To fill with holy light the wondrous fane."[10]

The application of the word "romantic," in this passage, to the mediaeval art of glass-staining is significant. The revival of the art in our own day is due to the influence of the latest English school of romantic poetry and painting, and especially to William Morris. Warton's biographers track his passion for antiquity to the impression left upon his mind by a visit to Windsor Castle, when he was a boy. He used to spend his summers in wandering through abbeys and cathedrals. He kept notes of his observations and is known to have begun a work on Gothic architecture, no trace of which, however, was found among his manuscripts. The Bodleian Library was one of his haunts, and he was frequently seen "surveying with quiet and rapt earnestness the ancient gateway of Magdalen College." He delighted in illuminated manuscripts and black-letter folios. In his "Observations on the Faëry Queene"[11] he introduces a digression of twenty pages on Gothic architecture, and speaks lovingly of a "very curious and beautiful folio manuscript of the history of Arthur and his knights in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, written on vellum, with illuminated initials and head-pieces, in which we see the fashion of ancient armour, building, manner of tilting and other particulars."

Another very characteristic poem of Warton's is the "Ode Written at Vale-Royal Abbey in Cheshire," a monastery of Cistercian monks, founded by Edward I. This piece is saturated with romantic feeling and written in the stanza and manner of Gray's "Elegy," as will appear from a pair of stanzas, taken at random:

"By the slow clock, in stately-measured chime,
That from the messy tower tremendous tolled,
No more the plowman counts the tedious time,
Nor distant shepherd pens the twilight fold.

"High o'er the trackless heath at midnight seen,
No more the windows, ranged in array
(Where the tall shaft and fretted nook between
Thick ivy twines), the tapered rites betray."

It is a note of Warton's period that, though Fancy and the Muse survey the ruins of the abbey with pensive regret, "severer Reason"—the real eighteenth-century divinity—"scans the scene with philosophic ken," and—being a Protestant—reflects that, after all, the monastic houses were "Superstition's shrine" and their demolition was a good thing for Science and Religion.