A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century Part 16

In Thomas Warton's "Pleasures of Melancholy," Contemplation is fabled to have been discovered, when a babe, by a Druid

"Far in a hollow glade of Mona's woods,"

and borne by him to his oaken bower, where she

"--loved to lie Oft deeply listening to the rapid roar Of wood-hung Menai, stream of druids old."

Mason's "Caractacus" (1759) was a dramatic poem on the Greek model, with a chorus of British bards, and a princ.i.p.al Druid for choragus. The scene is the sacred grove in Mona. Mason got up with much care the description of druidic rites, such as the preparation of the adder-stone and the cutting of the mistletoe with a gold sickle, from Latin authorities like Pliny, Tacitus, Lucan, Strabo, and Suetonius. Joseph Warton commends highly the chorus on "Death" in this piece, as well as the chorus of bards at the end of West's "Inst.i.tution of the Garter." For the materials of his "Bard" Gray had to go no farther than historians and chroniclers such as Camden, Higden, and Matthew of Westminster, to all of whom he refers. Following a now discredited tradition, he represents the last survivor of the Welsh poetic guild, seated, harp in hand, upon a crag on the side of Snowdon, and denouncing judgment on Edward I, for the murder of his brothers in song.

But in 1764 Gray was incited, by the publication of Dr. Evans'

"Specimens,"[5] to attempt a few translations from the Welsh. The most considerable of these was "The Triumphs of Owen," published among Gray's collected poems in 1768. This celebrates the victory over the confederate fleets of Ireland, Denmark, and Normandy, won about 1160 by a prince of North Wales, Owen Ap Griffin, "the dragon son on Mona." The other fragments are brief but spirited versions of bardic songs in praise of fallen heroes: "Caradoc," "Conan," and "The Death of Hoel." They were printed posthumously, though doubtless composed in 1764.

The scholarship of the day was not always accurate in discriminating between ancient systems of religion, and Gray, in his letters to Mason in 1758, when "Caractacus" was still in the works, takes him to task for mixing the Gothic and Celtic mythologies. He instructs him that Woden and his Valhalla belong to "the doctrine of the Scalds, not of the Bards"; but admits that, "in that scarcity of Celtic ideas we labor under," it might be permissible to borrow from the Edda, "dropping, however, all mention of Woden and his Valkyrian virgins," and "without entering too minutely on particulars"; or "still better, to graft any wild picturesque fable, absolutely of one's own invention, upon the Druid stock." But Gray had not scrupled to mix mythologies in "The Bard,"

thereby incurring Dr. Johnson's censure. "The weaving of the winding sheet he borrowed, as he owns, from the northern bards; but their texture, however, was very properly the work of female powers, as the art of spinning the thread of life in another mythology. Theft is always dangerous: Gray has made weavers of the slaughtered bards, by a fiction outrageous and incongruous."[6] Indeed Mallet himself had a very confused notion of the relation of the Celtic to the Teutonic race. He speaks constantly of the old Scandinavians as Celts. Percy points out the difference, in the preface to his translation, and makes the necessary correction in the text, where the word Celtic occurs--usually by subst.i.tuting "Gothic and Celtic" for the "Celtic" of the original.

Mason made his contribution to Runic literature, "Song of Harold the Valiant," a rather insipid versification of a pa.s.sage from the "Knytlinga Saga," which had been rendered by Bartholin into Latin, from him into French by Mallet, and from Mallet into English prose by Percy. Mason designed it for insertion in the introduction to Gray's abortive history of English poetry.

The true pioneers of the mediaeval revival were the Warton brothers.

"The school of Warton" was a term employed, not without disparaging implications, by critics who had no liking for antique minstrelsy.

Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of Thomas Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, who had been a fellow of Magdalen and Professor of Poetry at Oxford; which latter position was afterward filled by the younger of his two sons. It is interesting to note that a volume of verse by Thomas Warton, Sr., posthumously printed in 1748, includes a Spenserian imitation and translations of two pa.s.sages from the "Song of Ragner Lodbrog," an eleventh-century Viking, after the Latin version quoted by Sir Wm. Temple in his essay "Of Heroic Virtue";[7] so that the romantic leanings of the Warton brothers seem to be an instance of heredity.

Joseph was educated at Winchester,--where Collins was his schoolfellow--and both of the brothers at Oxford. Joseph afterward became headmaster of Winchester, and lived till 1800, surviving his younger brother ten years. Thomas was always identified with Oxford, where he resided for forty-seven years. He was appointed, in 1785, Camden Professor of History in the university, but gave no lectures. In the same year he was chosen to succeed Whitehead, as Poet Laureate. Both brothers were men of a genial, social temper. Joseph was a man of some elegance; he was fond of the company of young ladies, went into general society, and had a certain renown as a drawing-room wit and diner-out.

He used to spend his Christmas vacations in London, where he was a member of Johnson's literary club. Thomas, on the contrary, who waxed fat and indolent in college cloisters, until Johnson compared him to a turkey c.o.c.k, was careless in his personal habits and averse to polite society.

He was the life of a common room at Oxford, romped with the schoolboys when he visited Dr. Warton at Winchester, and was said to have a hankering after pipes and ale and the broad mirth of the taproom. Both Wartons had an odd pa.s.sion for military parades; and Thomas--who was a believer in ghosts--used secretly to attend hangings. They were also remarkably harmonious in their tastes and intellectual pursuits, eager students of old English poetry, Gothic architecture, and British antiquities. So far as enthusiasm, fine critical taste, and elegant scholarship can make men poets, the Wartons were poets. But their work was quite unoriginal. Many of their poems can be taken to pieces and a.s.signed, almost line by line and phrase by phrase, to Milton, Thomson, Spenser, Shakspere, Gray. They had all of our romantic poet Longfellow's dangerous gifts of sympathy and receptivity, without a tenth part of his technical skill, or any of his real originality as an artist. Like Longfellow, they loved the rich and mellow atmosphere of the historic past:

"Tales that have the rime of age, And chronicles of eld."

The closing lines of Thomas Warton's sonnet "Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon"[8]--a favorite with Charles Lamb--might have been written by Longfellow:

"Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways Of h.o.a.r Antiquity, but strewn with flowers."

Joseph Warton's pretensions, as a poet, are much less than his younger brother's. Much of Thomas Warton's poetry, such as his _facetiae_ in the "Oxford Sausage" and his "Triumph of Isis," had an academic flavor.

These we may pa.s.s over, as foreign to our present inquiries. So, too, with most of his annual laureate odes, "On his Majesty's Birthday," etc.

Yet even these official and rather perfunctory performances testify to his fondness for what Scott calls "the memorials of our forefathers'

piety or splendor." Thus, in the birthday odes for 1787-88, and the New Year ode for 1787, he pays a tribute to the ancient minstrels and to early laureates like Chaucer and Spenser, and celebrates "the Druid harp"

sounding "through the gloom profound of forests h.o.a.r"; the fanes and castles built by the Normans; and the

"--bright hall where Odin's Gothic throne With the broad blaze of brandished falchions shone."

But the most purely romantic of Thomas Warton's poems are "The Crusade"

and "The Grave of King Arthur." The former is the song which

"The lion heart Plantagenet Sang, looking through his prison-bars,"

when the minstrel Blondel came wandering in search of his captive king.

The latter describes how Henry II., on his way to Ireland, was feasted at Cilgarran Castle, where the Welsh bards sang to him of the death of Arthur and his burial in Glas...o...b..ry Abbey. The following pa.s.sage antic.i.p.ates Scott:

"Illumining the vaulted roof, A thousand torches flamed aloof; From many cups, with golden gleam, Sparkled the red metheglin's stream: To grace the gorgeous festival, Along the lofty-windowed hall The storied tapestry was hung; With minstrelsy the rafters rung Of harps that with reflected light From the proud gallery glittered bright: While gifted bards, a rival throng, From distant Mona, nurse of song, From Teivi fringed with umbrage brown, From Elvy's vale and Cader's crown, From many a s.h.a.ggy precipice That shades Ierne's hoa.r.s.e abyss, And many a sunless solitude Of Radnor's inmost mountains rude, To crown the banquet's solemn close Themes of British glory chose."

Here is much of Scott's skill in the poetic manipulation of place-names, _e.g._,

"Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone"--

names which leave a far-resounding romantic rumble behind them. Another pa.s.sage in Warton's poem brings us a long way on toward Tennyson's "Wild Tintagel by the Cornish sea" and his "island valley of Avilion."

"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 p.r.o.nouncing 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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 s.p.a.ce. . .

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 cla.s.sic 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 ma.s.sy 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 Superst.i.tion, with capricious hand, In many a maze, the wreathed 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 pa.s.sage, to the mediaeval art of gla.s.s-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 pa.s.sion 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 ma.n.u.scripts. 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 ma.n.u.scripts and black-letter folios. In his "Observations on the Faery Queene"[11]

he introduces a digression of twenty pages on Gothic architecture, and speaks lovingly of a "very curious and beautiful folio ma.n.u.script 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 "Superst.i.tion's shrine" and their demolition was a good thing for Science and Religion.

The greatest service, however, that Thomas Warton rendered to the studies that he loved was his "History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth Century." This was in three volumes, published respectively in 1774, 1777, and 1781. The fragment of a fourth volume was issued in 1790. A revised edition in four volumes was published in 1824, under the editorship of Richard Price, corrected, augmented, and annotated by Ritson, Douce, Park, Ashby, and the editor himself. In 1871 appeared a new revision (also in four volumes) edited by W. Carew Hazlitt, with many additions, by the editor and by well-known English scholars like Madden, Skeat, Furnivall, Morris, and Thomas and Aldis Wright. It should never be forgotten, in estimating the value of Warton's work, that he was a forerunner in this field. Much of his learning is out of date, and the modern editors of his history--Price and Hazlitt--seem to the discouraged reader to be chiefly engaged, in their footnotes and bracketed interpellations, in taking back statements that Warton had made in the text. The leading position, _e.g._, of his preliminary dissertation, "Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe"--deriving it from the Spanish Arabs--has long since been discredited. But Warton's learning was wide, if not exact; and it was not dry learning, but quickened by the spirit of a genuine man of letters. Therefore, in spite of its obsoleteness in matters of fact, his history remains readable, as a body of descriptive criticism, or a continuous literary essay. The best way to read it is to read it as it was written--in the original edition--disregarding the apparatus of notes, which modern scholars have acc.u.mulated about it, but remembering that it is no longer an authority and probably needs correcting on every page. Read thus, it is a thoroughly delightful book, "a cla.s.sic in its way," as Lowell has said. Southey, too, affirmed that its publication formed an epoch in literary history; and that, with Percy's "Reliques,"

it had promoted, beyond any other work, the "growth of a better taste than had prevailed for the hundred years preceding."

Gray had schemed a history of English poetry, but relinquished the design to Warton, to whom he communicated an outline of his own plan. The "Observations on English Metre" and the essay on the poet Lydgate, among Gray's prose remains, are apparently portions of this projected work.

Lowell, furthermore, p.r.o.nounces Joseph Warton's "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope" (1756) "the earliest public official declaration of war against the reigning mode." The new school had its critics, as well as its poets, and the Wartons were more effective in the former capacity.

The war thus opened was by no means as internecine as that waged by the French cla.s.sicists and romanticists of 1830. It has never been possible to get up a very serious conflict in England, upon merely aesthetic grounds. Yet the same opposition existed. Warton's biographer tells us that the strictures made upon his essay were "powerful enough to damp the ardor of the essayist, who left his work in an imperfect state for the long s.p.a.ce of twenty-six years," _i.e._, till 1782, when he published the second volume.

Both Wartons were personal friends of Dr. Johnson; they were members of the Literary Club and contributors to the _Idler_ and the _Adventurer_.

Thomas interested himself to get Johnson the Master's degree from Oxford, where the doctor made him a visit. Some correspondence between them is given in Boswell. Johnson maintained in public a respectful att.i.tude toward the critical and historical work of the Wartons; but he had no sympathy with their antiquarian enthusiasm or their liking for old English poetry. In private he ridiculed Thomas' verses, and summed them up in the manner ensuing:

"Whereso'er I turn my view, All is strange yet nothing new; Endless labor all along, Endless labor to be wrong; Phrase that time has flung away, Uncouth words in disarray, Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode and elegy and sonnet."

And although he added, "Remember that I love the fellow dearly, for all I laugh at him," this saving clause failed to soothe the poet's indignant breast, when he heard that the doctor had ridiculed his lines. An estrangement resulted which Johnson is said to have spoken of even with tears, saying "that Tom Warton was the only man of genius he ever knew who wanted a heart."

Goldsmith, too, belonged to the conservative party, though Mr. Perry[12]

detects romantic touches in "The Deserted Village," such as the line,