A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation Part 1

A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation.

by Thomas Warton.

INTRODUCTION

Among the unpublished papers of Thomas and Joseph Warton at Winchester College the most interesting and important item is undoubtedly a continuation of Thomas Warton's _History of English Poetry_. This continuation completes briefly the a.n.a.lysis of Elizabethan satire and discusses the Elizabethan sonnet. The discussion offers material of interest particularly for the bibliographer and the literary historian.

The bibliographer, for example, will be intrigued by a statement of Thomas Warton that he had examined a copy of the _Sonnets_ published in 1599--a decade before the accepted date of the first edition. The literary historian will be interested in, inter alia, unpublished information concerning the university career of Samuel Daniel and in the theory that Shakespeare's sonnets should be interpreted as if addressed by a woman to her lover.

Critically appraised, Warton's treatment of the Elizabethan sonnet seems skimpy. To dismiss the sonnet in one third the amount of s.p.a.ce devoted to Joseph Hall's _Virgidemiarum_ seems to betray a want of proportion.

Perhaps even more damaging may seem the fact that Warton failed to mention more sonnet collections than he discussed. About twenty years later, in 1802, Joseph Ritson listed in his _Bibliographia Poetica_ the sonnet collections of Barnaby Barnes, Thomas Lodge, William Percy, and John Soowthern--all evidently unknown to Warton. But Warton was not particularly slipshod in his researches. In his immediately preceding section, on Elizabethan satire, he had stopped at 1600; and in the continuation he deliberately omitted the sonnet collections published after that date. Thus, though he had earlier in the _History_ (III, 264, n.) promised a discussion of Drayton, he omitted him here because his sonnets were continually being augmented until 1619. Two sixteenth century collections which Warton had mentioned earlier in the _History_ (III, 402, n.) he failed to discuss here, William Smith's _Chloris_ (1596) and Henry Lock's _Sundry Christian Pa.s.sions, contayned in two hundred Sonnets_ (1593). Concerning Lock he had quoted significantly (IV, 8-9) from _The Return from Parna.s.sus_: "'Locke and Hudson, sleep you quiet shavers among the shavings of the press, and let your books lie in some old nook amongst old boots and shoes, so you may avoid my censure.'" A collection which certainly did not need to avoid censure was Sir Philip Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_; and for Warton's total neglect of Sidney's sonnets it seems difficult to account, for in this section on the sonnet Sidney as a poet would have been most aptly discussed. The _Astrophel and Stella_ was easily available in eighteenth-century editions of Sidney's works, and Warton admired the author. Both Thomas and Joseph Warton, however, venerated Sidney mainly for his _Arcadia_ and his _Apology for Poetry_. For Joseph Warton, Sidney was the prime English exhibit of great writers who have not, he thought, "been able to express themselves with beauty and propriety in the fetters of verse."[1] And Thomas Warton quoted evidently only once from Sidney's verse,[1] and then only by way of _England's Helicon_.[2] The omission of Sidney, then, is the glaring defect; of the dozen or so other Elizabethan sonnet collections which escaped Warton, most were absolutely or practically unknown, and none seem to have been available to him in the Bodleian or the British Museum.

At the time of his death, on 21 May 1790, there were in print only eleven sheets,[3] or eighty-eight pages, of the fourth and final volume, which was scheduled to bring the history of English poetry down to the close of the seventeenth century. For four years after the publication of the third volume in 1781 Warton repeatedly promised to complete the work,[4] and a notice at the end of his edition of Milton's _Minor Poems_ advertised in 1785 the "speedy publication" of the fourth volume.

But to his printer Warton evidently sent nothing beyond Section XLVIII.

The present continuation was probably written during or shortly after 1782: it contains no reference to any publication after William Hayley's _Essay on Epic Poetry_, which appeared in 1782; and according to Thomas Caldecott, Warton for the last seven years of his life discontinued work upon the _History_.[5]

The notes which Thomas Warton had made for the completion of the _History_ were upon his death commandeered by his brother, Joseph, at that time headmaster of Winchester College. Joseph Warton made some halfhearted efforts to get on with the volume,[6] but neither Winchester nor Wickham, whither he retired in 1793, was a proper place in which to carry on the necessary research. Moreover he was much more interested in editing Pope and Dryden; and securing advantageous contracts to edit these poets whom he knew well, he let the _History_ slide.

Joseph Warton appears, however, to have touched up the present continuation, for a few expansions seem to be in his script rather than in his brother's. It is difficult to be positive in the discrimination of hands here, as Thomas Warton's hand in this ma.n.u.script is quite irregular. Pens of varying thicknesses were used; black ink was used for the text and red ink for footnotes, and one note (16) was pencilled.

Moreover, certain pa.s.sages appear to have been written during periods of marked infirmity or haste and are legible only with difficulty if at all. In any case, those additions which were presumably made by Joseph Warton merely expand the original version; they do not alter or modify any of Thomas Warton's statements.

In the text of the present edition the expansions which appear to be in Joseph Warton's hand are placed within parentheses, which were not used for punctuation in the text of the ma.n.u.script itself. Because of the difficulties of reproduction, all small capitals have been translated into lover case italics.

This continuation, discovered by the editor among the Warton papers in the Moberly Library at Winchester College, is here published with the kind permission of the Right Honorable Harold T. Baker and Sir George Henry Gates, retired and present Wardens of Winchester College, and of the Fellows of the College. The editor is indebted also to the Reverend Mr. J. d'E. Firth, a.s.sistant Master and Chaplain; and Mr. C. E. R.

Claribut and Mr. J. M. G. Blakiston, past and present a.s.sistant Fellows'

Librarians. The Richmond Area University Center contributed a generous grant-in-aid.

Rodney M. Baine

The University of Richmond

Richmond, Virginia

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] Joseph Warton, _An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope_ (London, 1756-1782), I, 270-271.

[2] John Milton, _Poems upon Several Occasions_ (London, 1785), ed.

Thomas Warton, p. 331, n.

[3] Nineteenth-century editions of the _History_ give the false impression that the eight sheets were prepared from ma.n.u.script material left at Thomas Warton's death, but these sheets were certainly printed before Thomas died, and probably in the early 1780's. See John Nichols, _Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century_ (London, 1812-1816), III, 702-703. They contain no reference postdating that to Isaac Reed's revised edition of Robert Dodsley's _Collection of Old Plays_, published in 1780.

[4] Thomas Warton to Richard Price, 13 October 1781, in Thomas Warton, _Poetical Works_, ed. Richard Mant (Oxford, 1802), I, lxxviii; Daniel Prince to Richard Gough, 4 August 1783, in Nichols, _Literary Anecdotes_, III, 702.

[5] Thomas Caldecott to Bishop Percy, 21 March 1803, in Nichols, _Ill.u.s.trations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century_ (London, 1817-1858), VIII, 372.

[6] Joseph Warton to William Hayley, 12 March 1792, in John Wooll, _Biographical Memoirs of the late Revd. Joseph Warton_ (London, 1806), p. 404.

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY: AN UNPUBLISHED CONTINUATION

(In enumerating so many of these petty Epigrammatists, I may have been perhaps too prolix,--but I did it to shew the taste & turn of writing at this time; & now proceed to observe, that, in the year, 1614,)[1] the vogue which satire had acquired from Hall and Marston, probably encouraged Barten Holiday of Christ-Church in Oxford, to translate Persius, when he was scarcely twenty years of age. The first edition is dated 1616. This version had four editions from its publication to the year 1673 inclusive, notwithstanding the versification is uncommonly scabrous. The success of his Persius induced Holiday to translate Juvenal, a clearer & more translatable satirist. But both versions, as Dryden has justly observed,[2] were written for scholars, and not for the world: and by treading on the heels of his originals, he seems to have hurt them by too near an approach. He seized the meaning but not the spirit of his authors. Holiday, however, who was afterwards graduated in divinity and promoted to an archdeaconry, wrote a comedy called the _Marriage of the Arts_, acted before the court at Woodstock-palace, which was even too grave and scholastic for king James the first.

I close my prolix review of these pieces by remarking, that as our old plays have been a.s.sembled and exhibited to the public in one uniform view,[3] so a collection of our old satires and epigrams would be a curious and useful publication. Even the dull and inelegant productions, of a remote period which have real Life for their theme, become valuable and important by preserving authentic pictures of antient popular manners: by delineating the gradations of vice and folly, they furnish new speculation to the moral historian, and at least contribute to the ill.u.s.tration of writers of greater consequence.

_Sect._ XLIX.

The _Sonnet_, together with the _Ottava Rima_, seems to have been the invention of the Provincial bards, but to have been reduced to its present rhythmical prosody by some of the earliest Italian poets. It is a short monody, or Ode of one stanza containing fourteen lines, with uncommonly frequent returns of rhymes more or less combined. But the disposition of the rhymes has been sometimes varied according to the caprice or the convenience of the writer. There is a sonnet of the regular construction in the Provincial dialect, written by Guglielmo de gli Amalricchi, on Robert king of Naples who died in 1321.[4] But the Italian language affords earlier examples. (The mult.i.tude of identical cadences renders it a more easy and proper metre to use in Italian than in English verse.)

No species of verse appears to have been more eagerly and universally cultivated by the Italian poets, from the fourteenth century to the present times. Even the gravest of their epic and tragic writers have occasionally sported In these lighter bays. (A long list of them is given in the beginning of the fourth Volume of Quadrios History of Italian Poetry.) But perhaps the most elegant Italian sonnets are yet to be found in Dante. Petrarch's sonnets are too learned (metaphysical) and refined. Of Dante's compositions in this style I cannot give a better idea, than in (the ingenious) Mr. Hayley's happy translation of Dante's beautiful sonnet to his friend Guido Calvacanti [sic], written in his youth, and probably before the year 1300.

Henry! I wish that you, and Charles, and I, By some sweet spell within a bark were plac'd, A gallant bark with magic virtue grac'd, Swift at our will with every wind to fly:

So that no changes of the s.h.i.+fting sky No stormy terrors of the watery waste, Might bar our course, but heighten still our taste Of sprightly joy, and of our social tie:

Then, that my Lucy, Lucy fair and free, With those soft nymphs on whom your souls are bent, The kind magician might to us convey,

To talk of love throughout the livelong day: And that each fair might be as well content As I in truth believe our hearts would be.[5]

We have before seen, that the _Sonnet_ was imported from Italy into English poetry, by lord Surrey and Wyat, about the middle of the sixteenth century. But it does not seem to have flourished in its legitimate form, till towards the close of the reign of queen Elisabeth.

What I call the legitimate form, in which it now appeared, was not always free from licentious innovations in the rythmical arrangement.

To omit Googe, Tuberville [sic], Gascoigne, and some other petty writers who have interspersed their miscellanies with a few sonnets, and who will be considered under another cla.s.s, our first professed author in this mode of composition, after Surrey and Wyat, is Samuel Daniel. His _Sonnets_ called _Delia_, together with his _Complaint of Rosamond_, were printed for Simon Waterson, in 1591.[6] It was hence that the name of Delia, suggested to Daniel by Tibullus, has been perpetuated in the song of the lover as the name of a mistress. These pieces are dedicated to Sir Philip Sydney's sister, the general patroness, Mary countess of Pembroke. But Daniel had been her preceptor.[7] It is not said in Daniel's Life, that he travelled. His forty-eighth sonnet is said to have been "made at the authors being in Italie."[8] Delia does not appear to have been transcendently cruel, nor were his sufferings attended with any very violent paroxysms of despair. His style and his expressions have a coldness proportioned to his pa.s.sion. Yet as he does not weep seas of tears, nor utter sighs of fire, he has the merit of avoiding the affected allusions and hyperbolical exaggerations of his brethren. I cannot in the mean time, with all these concessions in his favour, give him the praise of elegant sentiment, true tenderness, and natural pathos. He has, however, a vigour of diction, and a volubility of verse, which cover many defects, and are not often equalled by his contemporaries. I suspect his sonnets were popular. They are commended, by the author of the _Return from Parna.s.sus_, in a high strain of panegyric.

Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage War with the proudest big _Italian_ That melts his heart in sugar'd sonnetting.[9]

But I do not think they are either very sweet, or much tinctured with the Italian manner. The following is one of the best; which I the rather chuse to recite, as it exemplifies his mode of compliment, and contains the writer's opinion of Spenser's use of obsolete words.

Let others sing of knights & Paladines, In aged accents, and untimely words, Paint shadowes in imaginarie lines, Which well the reach of their high wit records;

But I must sing of thee, and those faire eyes Autentique shall my verse in time to come, When yet th' vnborne shall say "Loe, where she lyes, Whose beauty made Him speak that els was dombe."

These are the arkes, the trophies I erect, That fortifie thy name against old age, And these thy sacred vertues must protect Against the Darke, & Times consuming rage.

Though th' errour of my youth they shall discouer, Suffise, they shew I liu'd, and was thy louer.[10]

But, to say nothing more, whatever wisdom there may be in allowing that love was the errour of his youth, there was no great gallantry in telling this melancholy truth to the lady.

Daniel is a multifarious writer, and will be mentioned again. I shall add nothing more of him here than the following anecdote. When he was a young student at Magdalen-Hall in Oxford, about the year 1580, notwithstanding the disproportion of his years, and his professed aversion to the severer acadamical [sic] studies, the Dean and Canons of Christchurch, by a public capitular act now remaining, gave Daniel a general invitation to their table at dinner, merely on account of the liveliness of his conversation.[11]

About the same time, Thomas Watson published his _Hecatompathia, Or the pa.s.sionate century of love_, a hundred sonnets.[12] I have not been able to discover the date of this publication:[13] but his _First set of Italian Madrigals_ appeared at London, in 1590.[14] I have called them _sonnets_: but they often wander beyond the limits, nor do they always preserve the conformation [or] constraint,[15] of the just Italian _Sonetto_.[16] Watson is more brilliant than Daniel: but he is enc.u.mbered with conceit and the trappings of affectation. In the love-songs of this age, a lady with all her load of panegyric, resembles one of the unnatural fact.i.tious figures which we sometimes see among the female portraits at full length of the same age, consisting only of pearls, gems, necklaces, earings, embroidery, point-lace, farthingale, fur, and feathers. The blooming nymph is lost in her decorations.