[9] "Verses on Sir Joshua Reynolds' Painted Window." Cf. Poe, "To Helen":
"On desperate seas long wont to roam
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome."
[10] This apology should be compared with Scott's verse epistle to Wm Ereskine, prefixed to the third canto of "Marmion."
"For me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask
The classic poet's well-conned task?" etc.
Scott spoke of himself in Warton's exact language, as a "truant to the classic page."
[11] See ante, pp. 99-101_._
[12] "Eighteenth Century Literature," p. 397.
[13] Lowell mentions the publication of Dodsley's "Old Plays," (1744) as, like Percy's "Reliques," a symptom of the return of the past. Essay on "Gray."
[14] "Eighteenth Century Literature," pp. 401-03.
[15] It is curious, however, to find Warton describing Villon as "a pert and insipid ballad-monger, whose thoughts and diction were as low and illiberal as his life," Vol. II. p. 338 (Fifth Edition, 1806).