Thomas Warton

Warton was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, the son of poet Thomas Warton, the Elder, and younger brother of Joseph Warton and Jane Warton. As a youngster, Warton demonstrated a strong predilection toward writing poetry, a skill he would continue to develop all of his life.[http://caxton.stockton.edu/pom/stories/storyReader$8 Life of Thomas Warton, the Younger] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060314170930/http://caxton.stockton.edu/pom/stories/storyReader$8 |date=14 March 2006 }}

In fact, Warton translated one of Martial's epigrams at nine and wrote The Pleasures of Melancholy at seventeen.

His early education was given to him by his father at home. In March 1744, aged 16, he entered Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated from Oxford in 1747, where he subsequently became a Fellow. Warton was selected as Poet Laureate of Oxford in 1747 and again in 1748. His duty in this post was to write a poem about a selected patroness of the university, which would be read to her on a specially appointed day.

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Warton was appointed Professor of Poetry at the university in 1757, a post that he held for ten years."He was ordained and eventually served as professor of poetry at Oxford from 1757 to 1767." [http://www.bartleby.com/65/wa/Warton-T2.html Warton, Thomas, 1728–90, English poet and literary historian], Bartleby.com. Accessed 9 December 2022.

In 1771, he was appointed rector of Kiddington in Oxfordshire, a post he held until his death. In 1785, he was appointed Camden Professor of History, as well as the eighth Poet Laureate.

Among other important contributions, Warton, along with his brother, was among the first to argue that Sir Thopas, by Geoffrey Chaucer, was a parody. Warton contributed to the general project of the ballad revival. He was a general supporter of the poetry of Thomas Gray—a fact that Johnson satirized in his parody "Hermit hoar, in solemn cell." Among his minor works were an edition of Theocritus, a selection of Latin and Greek inscriptions, the humorous Oxford Companion to the Guide and Guide to the Companion (1762); lives of Sir Thomas Pope and Ralph Bathurst; and an Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Warton, Thomas (1728-1790)|display=Warton, Thomas|volume=28|page=337}}

Warton gave little attention to his clerical duties, and Oxford always remained his home. He was known as a very easy and convivial as well as a very learned don, with a taste for taverns and crowds as well as dim aisles and romances.

In a poem written in 1745 he shows the delight in Gothic churches and ruined castles which inspired much of his subsequent work in romantic revival. Most of Warton's poetry was written before the age of twenty-three, when he took his M.A. degree.

In 1749, he penned The Triumph of Isis, a poem in praise of Oxford and the many students who had received their education there. Published anonymously, The Triumph of Isis rebutted William Mason's Isis, an Elegy published the previous year, which was anything but flattering to Oxford.

Following the success of The Triumph of Isis, Warton wrote Newmarket, a Satire, which was followed by a collection of verses. His complete poetical works were included in an anthology that was published in 1853.{{cite book |title=The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray, Thomas Parnell, William Collins, Matthew Green, and Thomas Warton |date=1853 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |editor-last=Willmott|editor-first=Robert Aris | editor-link=Robert Aris Willmott}}

Although he continued to write poetry, Warton's main energies were turned to poetical reading and criticism. His first major academic work was Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, published in 1754. He is, however, best known for the three-volume The History of English Poetry (1774–81), which covered the poetry of the 11th through the 16th centuries. Although the work was criticised for its many inaccuracies, it is nonetheless considered a highly important and influential historical tome.{{cn|date=December 2022}}

In 1782, he wrote The History and Antiquities of Kiddington, an early example of English local history.Warton, T. The History and Antiquities of Kiddington. 3rd edition (1815) in [https://books.google.com/books?id=oFdbAAAAQAAJ Google Books]. Accessed 9 December 2022.

• {{Cite book |title=The Pleasures of Melancholy |url=http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/projects/pom/pom.html }}
• {{Cite book |title=Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser |year=1754 }}
• {{Cite book |title=The Oxford Sausage |year=1764 }} – an anthology of verse and Oxford wit
• {{Cite book |title=Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Rowley Poems |year=1770 }}
• {{Cite book |title=History of English Poetry |date=1774–1781 }}
• {{Cite book |title=The History and Antiquities of Kiddington |year=1782 }}

In 1910, Frida Mond endowed the British Academy with a fund to establish an annual Shakespeare oration or lecture, as well as an annual lecture on English poetry to be called the Warton Lecture, as a tribute to the memory of Thomas Warton as a historian of English poetry. The inaugural lectures in these series were delivered in 1911 and 1910, respectively.{{Cite web|title=Frida Mond: A good friend to the British Academy|url=https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publishing/review/25/frida-mond-good-friend-british-academy/|website=The British Academy|language=en}}{{cite web|title=Warton Lectures on English Poetry|website=The British Academy|url=https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/lectures/listings/warton-lectures-english-poetry/}}

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• {{cite DNB |wstitle=Warton, Thomas (1728-1790)|last=Lee|first=Sidney |author-link=Sidney Lee|volume=59|pages=432–436}}
• [http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00053.shtml Thomas Warton] at the [http://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/ Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (ECPA)]
• {{Gutenberg author | id=36522}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Thomas Warton}}
• {{Librivox author |id=8273}}

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{{s-bef|before=William Whitehead}}

{{s-ttl|title=British Poet Laureate|years=1785–1790}}

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{{Poets Laureate of the United Kingdom}}

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Category:1728 births

Category:1790 deaths

Category:People educated at Winchester College

Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Oxford

Category:18th-century English poets

Category:English literary critics

Category:British Poets Laureate

Category:English medievalists

Category:People from Basingstoke

Category:18th-century English writers

Category:18th-century English male writers

Category:Oxford Professors of Poetry

Category:Camden Professors of Ancient History

Category:English male poets

Category:English male non-fiction writers