A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation

A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation
Thomas Warton

Thomas Warton

A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation

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Among the unpublished papers of Thomas and Joseph Warton at Winchester College the most interesting and important item is undoubtedly a continuation of Thomas Warton's History of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 analysis 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 The literary historian will be interested in, inter alia, unpublished information concerning the university career of Samuel Daniel and in the theory that Shakespeare's sonnets should be interpreted as if addressed by a woman to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 space 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 Passions, contayned in two hundred Sonnets (1593). Concerning Lock he had quoted significantly (IV, 8-9) from The Return from Parnassus: "'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 - Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (London, 1756-1782), I, 270-271.] And Thomas Warton quoted evidently only once from Sidney's verse,[2 - Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (London, 1756-1782), I, 270-271.] and then only by way of England's Helicon.[3 - John Milton, Poems upon Several Occasions (London, 1785), ed. Thomas Warton, p. 331, n.] 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,[4 - Nineteenth-century editions of the History give the false impression that the eight sheets were prepared from manuscript 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.] 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,[5 - 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.] 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.[6 - Thomas Caldecott to Bishop Percy, 21 March 1803, in Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1817-1858), VIII, 372.]

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,[7 - Joseph Warton to William Hayley, 12 March 1792, in John Wooll, Biographical Memoirs of the late Revd. Joseph Warton (London, 1806), p. 404.] 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 manuscript 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 passages 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 manuscript 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, Assistant Master and Chaplain; and Mr. C. E. R. Claribut and Mr. J. M. G. Blakiston, past and present Assistant Fellows' Librarians. The Richmond Area University Center contributed a generous grant-in-aid.

    Rodney M. Baine

    The University of Richmond
    Richmond, Virginia

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,)[8 - [Thomas Warton's original version began "The temporary vogue which …" The final version, here parenthesized in the text, represents, it seems fairly certain, Joseph Warton's expansion. Although this deprecatory comment seems rather abrupt coming after five sections devoted to the Elizabethan satirists, Joseph Warton is not disparaging where his brother praised. Thomas Warton had already (IV, 69) belittled the "innumerable crop of satirists, and of a set of writers differing but little more than in name, and now properly belonging to the same species, Epigrammatists."]] 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,[9 - [Warton here combined several remarks in Dryden's essay "The Original and Progress of Satire." See John Dryden, Essays, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1900), II, 111-112. There were six, not four editions of Holiday's Persius.]] 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 assembled and exhibited to the public in one uniform view,[10 - [Warton refers presumably to Isaac Reed's Collection of Old Plays (London, 1780).]] 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 illustration 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.[11 - [Jehan de] Nostredam [e]. [Les] Vies des […] Poet[es] Provens[aux]. [Lyon, 1575] n. 59. pag. 199.] But the Italian language affords earlier examples. (The multitude 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 shifting 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.[12 - [William Hayley. An] Ess[ay] on Epic Poetry. [London, 1782] Notes, Ess. iii. v. 81. p. 171.]

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 class, 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.[13 - They are entered to him, feb. 4, under that year [1591/92]. Registr. Station. B. fol. 284. a. In sixteens. I have a copy. Wh[ite] Lett[er i. e., roman]. With vignettes.] 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.[14 - [Daniel was tutor to her son William Herbert and preceptor to Ann Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, but Sidney's sister seems to have been the patroness rather than the pupil of Daniel.]] 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."[15 - His sister married John Florio, author of a famous Italian dictionary, and tutor to queen Anne, consort of James the first, in Italian, under whom Daniel was groom of the Privy-Chamber. [Anthoney a] Wood, Ath[enae]Oxon[ienses]. [London, 1691-92.] i. 379. col. 1. [Warton's mention of "Daniel's Life" refers presumably to the brief biography by Wood, here cited.]] 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 passion. 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 Parnassus, 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.[16 - A. i. Sc. i[i]. Warton was evidently quoting from the edition prepared by Thomas Hawkins and sold by his own printer, Prince—The Origin of the English Drama (Oxford, 1773), III, 213.]

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.[17 - Sonn. 50. [To show how "One of Spenser's cotemporary poets has ridiculed the obsolete language of The Fairy Queen" Warton had already quoted the first two lines of this sonnet in the second edition of his Observations on the Faerie Queene (London, 1762), I, 122, n.]]

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.[18 - From a manuscript note by bishop Tanner inserted in Wood's Athen. Oxon. i. 379. Bibl. Bodl. ["Aug. 9. Jac. 1. The Dean and Chapter of Cht. Ch. by grant under their Common Seal out of regard for the learning wit and good conversation of Sam. Daniel gent. gave him leave to eat and drink at the Canons Table whenever he thought fit to come."—Tanner's marginal note (I, col. 447) in his copy (Bodleian MS. Top. Oxon. b. 8) of the second, 1721, edition of Wood. Although Philip Bliss in his edition of Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1813) incorporated many of the marginalia inserted by Tanner in his copy of Wood, Bliss evidently overlooked this particular note. The editor is grateful to the Bodleian Library for a photostat and for permission to quote. According to Mr. W. G. Hiscock, Deputy Librarian at Christ Church, no mention of the "act" concerning Daniel is now to be found in the records under his care.]]

About the same time, Thomas Watson published his Hecatompathia, Or the passionate century of love, a hundred sonnets.[19 - See supr. iii. [433]. Warton used Greek capitals in his title.] I have not been able to discover the date of this publication:[20 - At London in quarto [1582]. There is a fine manuscript copy, at present, in the British Museum. Watson has many pieces in Englands Helicon, 1600.] but his First set of Italian Madrigals appeared at London, in 1590.[21 - In quarto.] I have called them sonnets: but they often wander beyond the limits, nor do they always preserve the conformation [or] constraint,[22 - [Above the word "conformation" Warton added "constraint." It is not clear whether he intended both to stand.]] of the just Italian Sonetto.[23 - I have discovered, says Mr Steevens, in a Letter to me, that Watson's Sonnets, which were printed without date, were entered on the books of the Stationer's Company, in 1581: under the Title of, "Watsons Passions, manifesting the true frenzy of Love". The Entry is to Gabriel Cawood, who afterwards published them. [See A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1875-1894), II, 409.] Ad Lectorem Hexasticon is prefixed "Green's Tullie's Love", & subscribed "Tho. Watson. Oxon."—[Robert Greene, Ciceronis Amor. Tullies Love (London, 1601), Sig. A3 verso.]I find in [Joseph] Ames' Typographical Antiquities. [London, 1749] page 423. Amintae Gaudiā. Authore Tho. Watsono. Londinensi. Juris studiosi [sic]. 4.

1592 [This unique pencilled annotation seems to be in Joseph Warton's hand.]] Watson is more brilliant than Daniel: but he is encumbered 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 factitious 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. Watson, however, has sometimes uncommon vigour and elegance. As in the following description.

Her yellow locks exceed the beaten gold,
Her sparkling eyes in heau'n a place deserue;
Her forehead high and faire, of comelie mould,
Her wordes are musical, of syluer sound, &c.
Her eye-browe hangs like Iris in the skies,
Her eagle's nose is straite, of stately frame;
On either cheeke a rose and lillie lyes;