SOURCE: MacClintock, William Darnall. “The Essay on Pope: Origin, Significance, Reception.” In his Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope: A History of the Five Editions, pp. 3-33. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1933.

[In the following excerpt, MacClintock provides an extensive examination of Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, discussing its composition, the process of its publication, and its reception by and significance to contemporary literary studies and popular literary tastes.]

THE ESSAY IN RELATION TO CONTEMPORARY TASTE

Historians of culture agree that an actual revolution in taste took place when pleasure in the polished, moralizing couplets of Dryden, Pope, and Johnson gave place to enthusiasm for the freedom, individuality, strong emotion, and imagination of the romantic poets. To realize the contributions of both the classical and the romantic schools to the education of taste is to obtain a complete view of eighteenth-century poetry. Particularly important is the thorough study of the transition writers of the middle of the century, observing when they gradually break with the older order and begin feeling their way to new artistic principles. If students must choose among the many critics of the second and third quarters of the century, they should certainly select as guides Gray, Hurd, Lowth, and the Warton brothers.¹

Among the critical studies that cannot be neglected is Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope. It seems to me that this Essay, more completely than any other single piece of writing, expresses the period's consciousness of the faults in the writings of the Age of Queen Anne and the merits of the new work then appearing. Much of the Essay is in praise of Pope; much of it is timid and commonplace; but it must not be forgotten that so good a student of Pope as Mark Pattison affirms (in 1872) that Warton's notes on Pope's poems are still the best literary comment on them.² Of course Pattison is here thinking of Warton's edition of Pope's works in 1797, but he adds that the Essay is filled with those new notions concerning the imagination, nature, the sublime and pathetic, and exact imagery which he regards as so important in eighteenth-century criticism.

When the Essay appeared in 1756, it made a decided impression—indeed, it almost created a sensation. It challenged the supremacy of Pope, whose reputation was still high. We shall see elsewhere that it was widely read and that the second volume was eagerly awaited. It carried Warton's reputation forward to 1797 and helped to make a success of his edition of Pope's works.

When the Romantic Movement declined, however, the Essay began to lose influence. It seemed to the new age that finding fault with Pope was too much like beating a dead lion. In the first systematic history of English criticism³ it is not even mentioned, the whole period from Pope to Wordsworth being given to Johnson. Saintsbury was the first unequivocally to give Warton the place he now holds.⁴ So capable a critic as Professor Ker failed to appreciate Warton. Ker says concerning Dryden, “In a time when literature was pestered and cramped with formulas he found it impossible to write otherwise than freely. He is skeptical, tentative, disengaged, where most of his contemporaries, and most of his successors for a hundred years, are pledged to certain dogmas and principles.”⁵ But Gray and the Wartons, within the “hundred years” after Dryden, were not, apparently, “pledged to certain dogmas and principles.”

This is not the place for an exposition of Warton's critical views and services, though it would be helpful if we had a complete and orderly survey of him in his own words. His ideas are scattered through the two volumes of the Essay, but a summary of them would occupy only a small space. Most of his voluminous notes were written to give sources, illustrations, and explanations of Pope's lines. His illuminating critical passages are those giving reasons for condemning Pope's work, those approving contemporary verse, and those containing the occasional speculations and freer “sports” of his own mind.

ORIGINS OF THE ESSAY

Mark Pattison perpetuated the widespread gossip of the eighteenth century that Warton's notes on Pope were called forth by Warburton's “polemical commentary” on Pope, not to answer it, but to show the proper way of annotating a classic.⁶ Pattison is here speaking of Warton's edition of Pope's works in 1797, and not of the Essay, but we must bear in mind that all the valuable parts of the Essay were incorporated in the notes on Pope, which therefore look back to the origin of the Essay. This use of his Essay by Warton led, as we shall see, to the charge by current reviewers of his edition of Pope, that he was guilty of lazy and shabby work.⁷

That Warton was convinced of Warburton's errors as an editor may be seen in the Advertisement to his Pope,⁸ but the Essay itself had its origin in the conviction formed by Warton before 1750 that Pope was not one of the greatest English poets. Perhaps the germ of the Essay may be found in published form in Warton's Ranelagh House (1744).⁹ This is a satire imitating Le Sage's Le Diable Boiteux (1707).¹⁰ Ranelagh House is “the temple of Luxury, the theatre of Madness, the habitation of Folly.”¹¹ Paraphrasing the poem, Wooll says, “the familiar spirit communicates to Philomides … that ‘Mr. Pope had taken his place in the Elysian fields, not amongst the poets, but the philosophers; and that he was more fond of Socrates' company than Homer's.’”¹² Wooll therefore thinks that Warton's central idea as to the genius and place of Pope came to him very early. It will be recalled that Warton was only twenty-two years old when Pope died and this satire was published.

Further light is thrown on the origins of the Essay by Warton's Advertisement to his first published work, his Odes on Various Subjects (1746). Here he writes:

The public has been so much accustomed of late to Didactic Poetry alone and Essays on moral subjects that any work where the Imagination is much indulged will perhaps not be relished or regarded. The author therefore of these pieces is in some pain lest certain austere critics should think these too fanciful and descriptive. But he is convinced that the fashion of moralizing in verse has been carried too far, and, as he looks upon Invention and Imagination to be the chief faculties of a Poet, so he will be happy if the following Odes may be looked upon as an attempt to bring back Poetry into its right channel.¹³

It should be recalled here, too, that in 1748 Warton and his sister published their father's poems, in which there was some poetry of a forward-looking character. This, together with his father's opinions, must have made a deep impression on the young critic's ideas. Then in 1754 his brother Thomas issued the Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, written from the new “historical” point of view.¹⁴ Joseph was deeply interested in Thomas's books, for the two brothers were close intellectual companions. Wooll says that Thomas helped with Joseph's edition of Virgil and in return was furnished with “many valuable materials for the History of English poetry.”¹⁵ After Thomas died in 1790, Joseph was employed by the publishers to finish the last volume of the History left by his brother but not quite complete, “though the ground I am to go over is so beaten.”¹⁶ Many passages in the Essay reflect the century's passion for Spenser and more than one author's awareness of “historical criticism.”¹⁷

Another factor in the formation of Warton's critical views was his work on Virgil, mentioned above. On March 7, 1749/50, Warton agreed with Robert Dodsley to translate and edit the poems of Virgil, to furnish the copy within fifteen months, and to receive for his labor £200 and a few perquisites; he gave a receipt on November 15, 1752, for £221.¹⁸ The work appeared in four volumes in June, 1753.¹⁹ This undertaking forced him to determine closely his ideas as to pastoral, didactic, and epic poetry, on which themes he wrote introductory essays.

But the most convincing evidence of Warton's attitude toward Pope and of the critical views that produced the Essay is to be found in his Dedicatory Letter to Edward Young, in the first edition. He says:

No love of singularity, no affectation of paradoxical opinions, gave rise to the following Work. I revere the memory of Pope, I respect and honour his abilities; but I do not think him at the head of his profession. In other words, in the species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all mankind: and I only say, that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art. We do not, it would seem, sufficiently attend to the difference there is, betwixt a man of wit, a man of sense, and a true poet. Donne and Swift, were undoubtedly men of wit and men of sense: but what traces have they left of pure poetry?²⁰

Warton probably owed this distinction between a man of sense in art and a true poet to Dryden, who, in his dedication to Eleanora first said that Donne was a man of wit but not the best of poets.²¹ Pope had said practically the same thing, that “Donne had no imagination, but as much wit, I think, as any writer can possibly have.”²²

Warton continues:

Fontenelle and La Motte are entitled to the former character; but what can they urge to gain the latter? Which of these characters is the most valuable and useful, is entirely out of the question; all I plead for, is, to have their several provinces kept distinct from each other; and to impress on the reader, that a clear head, and acute understanding, are not sufficient, alone, to make a poet; that the most solid observations on human life, expressed with the utmost elegance and brevity, are morality, and not poetry; that the epistles of Boileau in rhyme, are no more poetical, than the characters of Bruyère in prose; and that it is a creative and glowing imagination, “acer spiritus ac vis,” and that alone, that can stamp a writer with this exalted and very uncommon character, which so few possess, and of which so few can properly judge.²³

So much for the remoter origins of the Essay. Its more immediate inspiration may be found, I think, in Warton's relation with Joseph Spence (1699-1768). It is well known that Warton was greatly indebted to Spence for anecdotes and personal impressions of Pope; it should be equally clear that he owed to him much of his philosophy of poetry, or, if he did not actually owe Spence this debt, that the two critics were pursuing the same lines of thought.

In 1726 and 1727 Spence published An Essay on Pope's Odyssey, which is, on the whole, a fulsome eulogy but which contains also many notes on Pope's weaknesses and some new general ideas as to poetry and taste. One particular passage in this essay influenced Warton greatly. Spence says, “With Poets and in History, there may be some Fraud in saying only the bare truth. In either, 'tis not sufficient to tell us, that such a City, for Instance, was taken and ravag'd with a great deal of Inhumanity: There is a Poetical Falsity, if a strong Idea of each particular be not imprinted on the mind; and an Historical, if some things are passed over only with a general mark of Infamy or Dislike.”²⁴ Spence adds, “It was in Quintilian I first met with this Observation,” and cites the De institutione oratoria, Lib. viii. cap. 3.

In 1726 also Spence began collecting the famous Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men, continuing them till 1744 and adding later supplements from his notes and memoranda books up to 1758. Though many critics and biographers of the eighteenth century had the use of this collection, it was not published until 1820, when Malone and Singer brought it out almost simultaneously. In 1728 Spence succeeded Warton's father as professor of poetry at Oxford.

In the Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1782, a reviewer says that Pope would have approved of Warton's Essay and that it “owes much of its embellishment also to the manuscript remarks of Mr. Spence, communicated to the author on a visit at Byfleet in 1752.”²⁵ It would appear either that there was more than one visit about this time, or that the date 1752 is wrong. Otherwise Wooll could not have remarked that Warton had praised the moderns as he had already done the ancients,²⁶ for Warton's edition of Virgil appeared in 1753.

We recall that Warburton's first edition of Pope appeared in quarto form in 1743, and his second in octavo in 1752, with notes full of highly controversial theological matter.²⁷ Warton, it seems certain, wished to produce, in his Essay, a book of strictly literary comment, as well as to express his conviction, formed earlier as I have shown, that Pope was not one of our greatest poets. Everything points to the fact that it was Warburton's editions of Pope that set Warton to work on his Essay. As to the visits to Spence, one is dated by Warton himself. In Volume II of the Essay (1782), he says that he is indebted to Mr. Spence “for most of the anecdotes relating to Pope … which he gave me when I was making him a visit at Byfleet, in the year 1754.”²⁸ On November 2, 1754, Spence wrote to Thomas Warton, Jr., “As my summer has been so much taken up, if this place [Byfleet] should lie at all in the way of you or your brother, or rather both, it would be a kind and charitable thing to look in upon one in the winter.”²⁹

Whatever the dates of these visits, Wooll is justified in saying that it was under Spence's roof that Warton “laid the foundation of those critical disquisitions which proved his competency of deciding on the merits of modern, as his Virgil had done on those of ancient poetry.”³⁰

MATTERS AFFECTING THE PUBLICATION OF THE ESSAY

The Publishers.—The famous publishers Robert and James Dodsley were close friends of Joseph Warton; he corresponded with Robert regularly and visited him when in town. But when the first edition of the Essay appeared in 1756, no publisher was given. The only information given is that it was “Printed for M. Cooper, at the Globe in Pater-noster Row.” “M. Cooper,” Mary Cooper, was the widow of Thomas Cooper,³¹ a publisher who printed books for Dodsley and who sold or circulated them from his own shops. Most of Dodsley's books were printed by John Hughs,³² who was another of these printer-publishers; it was from his press, Timperley tells us, that “almost the whole of the numerous and valuable publications of the Dodsley's” were issued.³³

But though Mrs. Cooper appears as the ostensible publisher, Robert Dodsley actually supervised closely its appearance. His name was omitted from the title-page for a reason given by him in a letter to Warton, April 8, 1756.³⁴ This reason was, in general, that he could push the sale of the book more vigorously and comment on it more freely if his name were not attached to it. Mrs. Cooper, who continued her husband's business after his death in 1743, died in 1761, and the Dodsley name appears for the first time on the title-page of Warton's Essay in its second edition late in 1762. There is nothing unusual in Dodsley's name's having been omitted from the first edition, for the practice of using some other name as a shield was a common one among the publishers of the eighteenth century.

Circulation of the Essay.—It is clear from the book catalogues issued from 1762 to 1811,³⁵ as well as from the advertising sections of the chief magazines of the day, that Warton's Essay was well advertised. The size of the volumes was regularly octavo and the price five or six shillings a volume except for one handsome edition in 1811, after Warton's death.

Compensation to the Author.—In 1774, when the agitation against perpetual copyright was intense,³⁶ the publishers laid before Parliament two lists. One was to show printed books with abundant copies in stock, giving the prices and the number of years they had been on sale. This was to show that there was no monopoly causing shortage of books. The other list was to show that the authors were paid liberally for their work especially for revisions and new editions. For example, Johnson was paid £300 for his third edition of Dryden's Works. Edition of Shakespeare were paid for as follows: Pope, £217; Theobald, £652; Warburton, £500; Capell, £300; and Johnson, £475. I have not found what Warton was paid for the editions of his Essay, but for his edition of Virgil in 1753 he received £221,³⁷ and for his edition of Pope's Works, £500.³⁸

Piracies.—Piracies of English books were frequent in Ireland and occasional in Scotland. In a letter to Edward Mills, August 7, 1758, Goldsmith says, “Every work published here [London] the printers in Ireland republish there, without giving the author the least consideration for his copy.”³⁹ Ireland did not come under the copyright law until the Act of Union, January 1, 1801. A Dublin reprint of Warton's Essay appeared in 1764, published by Peter Wilson, Dame Street. It is boldly called on the title-page the “Third Edition.” This of course is false. The legitimate third edition appeared in London in 1772.

As to these piracies, Pollard thinks the act of 1709 was essentially successful and that “pirated reprints did not appear in book-seller's shops” in London, though they may have been for sale in the streets or in the country.⁴⁰ He traces the history of the piracies as due to the increased prices in 1711 of print paper and of unfinished books. Irish printers, he says, because of the lower duties in Ireland, reprinted English books and sent them to England.

Prices.—Between 1700 and 1756, according to Knight,⁴¹ the price of octavo volumes, in which size Warton's Essay was published through every edition, was five or six shillings. I find no notice of more or less costly issues. Knight adds that by 1800 this price was increased 50 to 100 per cent, and that new books were issued for an “exclusive market,” that is, for a select group of readers. The popular market was supplied by cheap issues of old books and by circulating libraries.

Size of Editions.—I have found no statement by Warton or his publishers as to the size of the editions of the Essay. The following notes are, I hope, pertinent. Of Thomas Warton's Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser (1754), a book very like his brother's Essay on Pope and published by the same publishers, five hundred copies were first issued.⁴² Hume thought fifteen hundred copies large for an edition of his “philosophic pieces.”⁴³ Gibbon said of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, “So moderate were our hopes, that the original impression had been stinted to five hundred, till the number was doubled by the prophetic taste of Mr. Strahan.”⁴⁴ On May 25, 1777, Strahan wrote as to the first edition, “The [second] impression is to be fifteen hundred and no more, which is of all others the most proper number.”⁴⁵ So a thousand copies were printed of the first edition and fifteen hundred of the second, which, according to Gibbon, were “moving off with decent speed,” and a third edition was threatened for the next year.⁴⁶ Each of the ten editions of the Rambler during Johnson's lifetime, says Hill, following Hawkins, was of twelve hundred and fifty copies.⁴⁷

Estimating cautiously from these figures, I judge that between four and five thousand copies of the Essay must have been printed during Warton's lifetime.

THE TITLE OF THE ESSAY

The first edition of the first volume of the Essay has the title thus: An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope. All the other editions of either Volume I or Volume II change the title to An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope. except that the first printing of Volume II in 1782, part of which is said to have been printed before 1762, has the original order in the running head. This shows that the printed sheets so long withheld from publication were used in the first issue early in 1782.⁴⁸

THE DEDICATION TO EDWARD YOUNG

In a dedicatory letter⁴⁹ to Dr. Edward Young, rector of Welwyn, partly personal but chiefly critical and even polemical, Warton really writes a preface to his Essay. This dedication, together with Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), shows that the two critics had the same opinions as to Pope, especially as to his being a man of wit rather than a true poet. The core or thesis of the Essay is the principle that if a writer has the natural gift of moral or satirical poetry, he “will never succeed, with equal merit, in the higher branches of his art.”⁵⁰ Young and Warton must have exchanged opinions for years, and since the former was much the older man (born in 1683), he may have been the originator of many of the ideas they shared.

At the end of the dedication Warton gives a classification of English poets, making four groups:⁵¹

1. “Sublime and pathetic poets: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton; and then, at proper intervals, Otway and Lee.”
2. “Such as possessed the true poetical genius, in a more moderate degree, but had noble talents for moral and ethical poesy. At the head of these are Dryden, Donne, Denham, Cowley, Congreve.”
3. Here are placed “men of wit, of elegant taste, and some fancy in describing familiar life.” Warton mentions here Prior, Waller, Parnell, Swift, and Fenton.
4. The fourth class includes “mere versifiers,” such as Pitt, Sandys, Fairfax, Broome, Buckingham, and Lansdowne. He concludes, “in which of these classes Pope deserves to be placed, the following Work is intended to determine.”

In the second edition of the Essay (1762), this classification is much altered. Otway and Lee are dropped entirely from their dizzy height, Addison is added to the second class, and several are raised to it from the original third class. To the third are added one (Donne) from above, and several from the wide world. The fourth class remains unchanged. Evidently Warton had heard from his friends and enemies and hastened to save himself. He apologizes by saying, “This enumeration is not intended as a complete catalogue, … but only to mark out briefly the different species of our celebrated authors.”⁵² As an influential document in the history of the Romantic Movement, this dedication deserves the attention scholars have long given it. Students who may be interested in this classification and ordering of our poets, attempted by many eighteenth-century critics, may profitably consult The Literary Review for January, 1758,⁵³ where an anonymous writer not only lists all English poets, but gives the “points” on which he classifies them. One is glad to see that Chaucer is here well placed, though below Pope and Cowley, while Pope is placed at the head.

WARTON'S DELAY IN PROCEEDING WITH VOLUME II

It is clear that after the publication of Volume I in 1756, Warton actively worked at Volume II. While we have little direct evidence of these activities, indirectly we know much. At the time he was working on Volume II, he tells us later, there was no translation of Sophocles in English.⁵⁴ He must have meant no translation in verse, for G. Adams had published his Tragedies of Sophocles translated [in prose] from the Greek, in 1729. Now Thomas Francklin published his Tragedies of Sophocles translated [in verse] from the Greek, in 1759. This particular passage, then, was written before 1759. Section VII of the Essay, in which this note appears, was, early in 1782, at the beginning of the second volume (first edition of Volume II), but was moved back to Volume I, for the sake of uniform size, when the whole Essay was reprinted later in the same year. The passage to which this note is appended is on page 30 of the first edition of Volume II, and hence belongs to that part of the book printed “above twenty years ago,” as Warton says in the Advertisement to the first edition of this volume.⁵⁵ Again, he mentions Mason's Caractacus as “recent.”⁵⁶ This appeared in 1759 and helps to date the writing of Volume II.

That he would proceed with Volume II was expected by his close friends. For instance, on April 6, 1769, after the appearance of Ruffhead's Life of Pope, Dr. Thomas Balguy writes to Warton urging him to ignore “this wretched biographer” and saying that all he deserves is thanks “for the occasion he gives you of printing your second volume.”⁵⁷ On April 19, 1759, Dr. Lowth writes, “I was very glad to see that you were fairly engaged in the 2d volume; and hope you will go on with it with alacrity and expedition.”⁵⁸

The question, then, as to why Warton did not proceed with the publication of the second volume of the Essay is a very interesting one.⁵⁹ We have little direct information. The delay was long supposed to be due to Warton's “fear” of the wrath of Warburton, who had edited Pope's works in 1751 and was jealous of any attack on Pope. Warburton was a close friend of Warton's brother Thomas. He had furnished Ruffhead the materials for his lumbering Life of Pope (1769), which was a kind of reply to Warton's Essay.⁶⁰ Johnson mentioned the two works in a conversation (March 31, 1772) worth quoting here in full:

He censured Ruffhead's Life of Pope;⁶¹ and said, “he knew nothing of Pope, and nothing of poetry.” He praised Dr. Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope; but said, he supposed we should have no more of it, as the author had not been able to persuade the world to think of Pope as he did. Boswell. “Why, Sir, should that prevent him from continuing his work? He is an ingenious Counsel, who has made the most of his cause: he is not obliged to gain it.” Johnson. “But, Sir, there is a difference when the cause is of a man's own making.”⁶²

The foregoing quotations show that during the sixteen years following the publication of the Essay, there was talk among Warton's friends of his continuing it. Singer says that Warburton had taken all the valuable things in Ruffhead's Life from Spence, and without any acknowledgment; and that it was probably for this reason that Ruffhead's Life of Pope was not published until after Spence's death in 1768.⁶³ Chalmers suggests that Warton was partly afraid of Warburton and partly deferential toward him and was only waiting for Warburton's death to continue his second volume.⁶⁴ This opinion seems confirmed by the fact (which Chalmers mentions) that it was not until after Warburton died, in 1779, that Warton issued, in 1782, the long delayed second volume—which had been left half printed twenty years before. This viw of Chalmers, as was pointed out above, was current in Warton's lifetime and has persisted since. Wooll merely says that Warton's delay was due to “motives of a most delicate and laudable nature.”⁶⁵ As late as 1915 Gosse said that the Essay “was so shocking to the prejudices of the hour that it was received with universal disfavor, and twenty-six years passed before the author had the moral courage to pursue it to a conclusion.”⁶⁶ My notes on the reviews of the Essay show this opinion to be largely erroneous.⁶⁷

It seems to me that this theory of Warton's fearing Warburton's wrath is only partly true. In 1762 he issued a second, revised and strengthened, edition of Volume I, which contained his most radical assertions, and in 1772, a third and further strengthened edition. Evidently Warton was for two decades not “afraid” of offending the powerful and ill-natured bishop. I am convinced that the reasons for the delay must be found in his absorption in school work, in his natural sluggishness, and especially in his lack of interest in the poems of Pope to be treated in this volume. These were the poems which required the largest amount of illustrative material from the classics, and for whose treatment there was need of extensive reading. It was also the part of Pope's poetry less easily illustrated from recent literary and critical work. It is possible that Warton wrote all of the matter for Volume II before 1762, though I think it unlikely. He did print two hundred pages of it and then stopped. Later, when this portion was reissued, in 1782, he made two hundred and thirty-one changes in it.

TRANSLATION INTO GERMAN

The translation of the Essay into German is found in Sammlung vermischter Schriften zur Beförderung der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste. Des sechsten Bandes, erstes und zweites Stück, Berlin, Friedrich Nicolai, 1763. Publication of this miscellany of books and articles was begun in 1759. There are in the British Museum six numbers, dated respectively 1759 (two numbers), 1760, 1761, 1762, and 1763. They are now bound in two volumes. There is no indication of editor or translator. The translation of Warton's Essay occupies all of the sixth number, of three hundred pages, and is in two parts or sections. All passages from Pope are translated. Number II, now Volume I, pages 206-219, contains Edward Young's Abhändlung über die Lyrische Dichtkunst. (Aus dem Englischen übersetzt.)

THE APPENDICES

To the fourth edition in 1782 Warton added two appendices, one on the Alma of Prior,⁶⁸ and one giving a “Summary of the Arguments of each Scene and Act, in L'Adamo of G. B. Andreini.”⁶⁹

On February 6, 1792, he writes to his friend, John Wilkes, “If I had seen you before I left town, I would have informed you that I am sending up to the press an Appendix to my Essay on Pope, a pamphlet of about 130 pages.⁷⁰ I trust you may see in it some entertaining particulars. I find myself obliged frequently to contradict Johnson, as well as Warburton.”⁷¹ This would show that Warton planned another edition of the Essay for 1792. No such edition came out, and Wooll does not refer to this manuscript for another appendix.

REVIEWS OF THE ESSAY

The most important reviewing magazines in England between 1750 and 1780 were, in the order of their beginnings:

Gentleman's Magazine; or, Monthly Intelligencer, 1731.

London Magazine; or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, 1732.

Monthly Review, 1749.

Critical Review; or, Annals of Literature, 1756.

Literary Magazine, or, Universal Review, 1756.

Warton's Essay, Volume I, was announced as published in the Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1756. It was reviewed in the Critical Review in April, under the caption, “Art. V. An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope. 8°. Pr. 5s. M. Cooper.”⁷²

It is, on the whole, a sympathetic and sufficiently laudatory paper, though it does not get at Warton's main points, and it takes strong issue with Warton on many detailed matters. It quotes many pages and concludes that the Essay is “a work of taste and learning, animated with many strokes of manly criticism, replete with knowledge, and diversified with a number of amusing incidents and observations.”⁷³ The review is unsigned, and Warton's name is not mentioned.

In the April-May, 1756, number of the Literary Magazine, Dr. Johnson reviewed the Essay, giving four pages of extract, exposition, and comment. The review is moderate, unenthusiastic, appreciative, and cleverly critical and level-headed. Johnson's comments are about equally divided between agreement with and praise of Warton, on the one hand, and disagreement or objection, on the other. While some of his sentences have keen point, for the most part he merely quibbles or insists on a common-sense view of Pope's lines. Warton objects to Windsor Forest as filled with images not peculiar to the place but “equally applicable to any place whatsoever.” Johnson says we must first “inquire whether Windsor Forest has in reality something peculiar.” This misses Warton's point entirely. Again, Warton says that unvaried rhymes disgust a reader who has a good ear. Johnson objects that it is “surely not the ear but the mind that is offended, the fault rising from the use of common rhymes is that in reading the first line the second may be guessed and half the composition loses the grace of writing.” This seems like pure quibbling. On Warton's remarks as to The Rape of the Lock, Johnson says, “There is in his remarks on this work no discovery of any latent beauty, nor anything subtle or striking. Warton is indeed commonly right but has discussed no difficult question.” Here the modern student feels that Johnson strikes home. Warton says of one of Pope's similes, “It is sufficiently obvious.” Johnson remarks, “I do not remember that it is obvious—which is very easy to say and easy to deny. Many things are obvious when they are taught.” Of Warton's criticisms of the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, Johnson writes that Warton “disposes many agreeable particulars and incidental relations, but there is not much profundity of criticism.” This is sound and just.

In conclusion, Johnson says that he intends “to kindle, not to extinguish curiosity, by this slight sketch of a work abounding with various quotations and pleasing disquisitions,” and that “most men find in it many things that they did not know before, and the learned may read the book as a just specimen of literary moderation.” On the whole, the review is a cramped, mild, and rather cold approval by Johnson, with several distinct “digs” that could not have been pleasing to Warton. But so large a space given to the book, and even grudging praise from the great Johnson, were distinct gains for Warton's venture.

The volume was also reviewed in 1756 in the June and July numbers of the Monthly Review.⁷⁴ On the whole, the judgment is favorable, and the reviewer hopes the author will “continue his Observations,”⁷⁵ a suggestion that may have a bearing on what Warton actually did. In the London Magazine's monthly catalogue of books for March and April, 1756, occurs the following: “41. An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, pr. 5 s. Cooper.”⁷⁶ This magazine did not further notice the Essay.

An “Epitome” of the Essay, given in some detail, appears in the “List of Books Published, with Remarks,” in the May and June numbers of the Gentleman's Magazine of 1756.⁷⁷ The “remarks” are generally favorable and conclude with the paragraph:

Upon the whole, this Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope is a most entertaining and useful miscellany of literary knowledge and candid criticism, containing censure without acrimony, and praise without flattery; and abounding with incidents little known, relating to celebrated writers, and instructive remarks upon their characters and works.

I find no mention of the second edition of Volume I in 1762, or of the third edition in 1772, in either the Gentleman's Magazine or the Monthly Review, where especially we might have expected it. The Critical Review for May, 1782, has a short notice of an anonymous work, An Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Living Authors of Great Britain,⁷⁸ and in this notice the reviewer scorns the author for omitting to mention “some of the best writers of the age … ; such as Mr. Mallet, the two Wartons, Mr. Paul Whitehead, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Melmoth, Mr. Home, Dr. Robertson, Dr. Campbell, Mr. Guthrie, and many others.”⁷⁹

Volume II of the Essay, which appeared in 1782, was reviewed in the Gentleman's Magazine for May.⁸⁰ The review is mostly a mere running account of Warton's work, with many quotations. The Essay is a “liberal and elegant piece of criticism,” says the reviewer. “The IId [volume] has been impatiently expected; and some anachronisms in it are accounted for from the first 200 pages (there are 495 in all) having been ‘printed above twenty years ago’”⁸¹—this last taken from Warton's Advertisement. In his summary the reviewer says that Warton has “Something to blame and something to commend” (quoting Pope), and that “almost every criticism is supported by scientific reasons.”⁸² The reviewer also says that the Essay gives a review of most of the literary characters of the time, and that Pope would, no doubt, have approved of Warton's Essay as he did of that of Spence on his Odyssey.

The volume was also reviewed in the Critical Review, February, 1782.⁸³ The reviewer begins, “This work has long been expected, and even called for, by the public.” We recall that the first volume was reviewed in this journal in 1756, and observations were made on it in an account of Ruffhead's Life of Pope.⁸⁴ The review of the second volume, however, is only an account and paraphrase of Warton's work, mostly made of direct quotations, with occasional appreciations, such as “interesting,” “uncommon,” “entertaining,” “amusing,” “enriched,” “enlivened.” A reference to Volume II as “just published” occurs also in the June, 1782, number of the Gentleman's Magazine.⁸⁵ As a matter of fact, it had been published before February of that year, since it was reviewed in the Critical Review of that month.

In 1778, the Essay was violently attacked by Percival Stockdale in An Enquiry into the Nature and Genuine Laws of Poetry.

WARTON'S EDITION OF POPE'S WORKS

Warton's edition of Pope would not concern us here except for its close relation to the Essay and the criticism that Warton received for using so much of the Essay in making the notes for the edition of Pope. It seems well, therefore, to give a short account of this, Warton's last and largest labor. As to the task of properly annotating—hunting up obscure references and not depending on biographical dictionaries and professional helps but rather reading widely in older as well as in contemporary literature—see some bright sentences in Mark Pattison's review of Elwin's edition of Pope.⁸⁶ Pattison thinks that Warton's notes were brought together from a desire to replace Warburton's argumentative commentary, and in accordance with what Warton believed to be a just and appropriate method of annotating a classic.⁸⁷

Warton writes on February 6, 1792, to his friend John Wilkes, who, at a dinner in his house had publicly proposed that Warton and he should make a new, complete edition of Pope, that he is flattered and that the prospect is “pleasant and profitable.” He adds that he will not lose sight of it, and that he should be happy to have Wilkes as a fellow-laborer. Then he asks about the relations of a new editor to the present proprietors of the copy, saying that probably the “right, by this time, must be extinguished.”⁸⁸ After the completion of the edition,⁸⁹ Warton writes Wilkes from Wickham, July 17, 1797, saying, “It would be a gross affectation in me to deny that I am made very happy indeed by your friendly approval of my Pope, a work which it will be very easy for every common reader to carp at and censure, whose cavils I am prepared to expect and despise.”⁹⁰ He adds that one approval by Wilkes outweighs a thousand such attacks.

Regarding a review of his work, Warton writes to Wilkes from Wickham, September 30, 1797: “Do you see, or is it worth your while to see, how I have been attacked in the last Monthly Review. Principally because I, a grave Doctor, should have dared to insert in my edition of Pope the ‘Sober Advice from Horace,’ and the admirable Pleading of Scriblerus concerning ‘The Double Mistress,’ both which Pope himself had inserted in an Edition published by his friend Dodsley. I cannot but smile at such an impotent attack. Nisi moveat cimex Pantilius. … The same good critic is also angry that I should have interwoven what I had before said in my Essay on Pope:—to do which, was one of the principal motives for my undertaking the edition. You may be assured I laid my account and expected to be attacked, and therefore bear such a bombardment with patience and insensibility.”⁹¹

The same reviewer of whom Warton speaks above points out that Pope is of the class of poets whose text needs illustrations and elucidations because of his treatment of local and temporary topics, with allusions to persons and events. Warburton's edition is censured because the Bishop expatiated on the subject-matter of Pope's works, mistaking his meaning and paying off his own enemies or opponents. Notes of the type of Warton's, he adds, are needed, being exact illustrations of Pope's meaning and allusions.

But he claims that Warton had appropriated most of the unexceptionable of Warburton's notes and had merely digested, under the appropriate pages, the greater part of his own Essay on Pope, totidem verbis. He adds that Warton gives a few notes from other editors, but only from well known books, and that there is “some original matter.”

Warton's summary of the literary character of Pope is given in full by this reviewer, with only a few qualifications suggested. He then selects a few of the items that strike him as new or worthy of remark, matters that throw light on Pope rather than Warton. His summary of the edition is excellent. He says that it is an improvement over Warburton, that it is rather careless work, that it is too much a transcript of the editor's previous work, especially as this was less mature in taste and judgment and not “always in harmony with later opinions,” that even Warton's transcription of his own words is careless and repetitious, that more should have been done in tracing Pope's imitations and resemblances to other poets, and that the whole seems hastily done. Wooll declares the “plagiarism (if the stealing from himself merits the title) inevitable” and “unavoidable.”⁹²

Concerning this review, Warton wrote to John Nichols, September 13, 1797, “I have a little inclination to know, and perhaps you may be able to inform me, who is the writer of a peevish, feeble, and therefore contemptible criticism, on the edition of Pope, published in the last Monthly Review. The good man seems to be principally angry at my inserting the observations formerly made in my Essay on Pope, which it would have been absurd, and improper, and impossible, and contrary to the very design of undertaking the Edition, not to have done; and if they had been omitted, then I should have been called on for such an unexpected omission. I am too callous a veteran to regard such sort of objections, etc.”⁹³ He says the same thing on September 30, 1797, to John Wilkes.⁹⁴

Concerning this edition, George Steevens wrote to Bishop Percy, September 9, 1797, after referring to this review, “I wish our venerable friend had not undertaken this work at so late a period of his life. But though it will add little to his reputation, for his trouble he received no less a sum than five hundred pounds.”⁹⁵

One other review of this edition is mentioned by Warton in his letter to Wilkes on September 30, 1797. He says, “But I have been only this morning informed, that I have been unmercifully scourged in the last Edition of ‘The Pursuits of Literature,’⁹⁶ which I have not seen. I much wish you could hear, and would let me know, who is the Author of that strange work. Surely the verse part of it is the most harsh, crabbed, and obscure, that has been produced since the days of Persius, and evidently written for the sake of long pedantic notes. One shall hardly see such Drawcansir-work. Every body is censured and abused. The Satirist defies discovery, saying it will be impossible to find him out. Yet I am of the opinion we shall at last drag out into the light of day this literary cacus … incendia vana vomentem. … All I say relates to the first edition, not having seen the last. Give me a line on the subject.”⁹⁷

Notes

1. T. Warton, Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, 1754; J. Warton, Essay on Pope, 1756; Richard Hurd, Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 1762; Bishop Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry …, 1765; Thomas Gray's poems, letters, and criticism, from 1742 to 1775; Bishop Robert Lowth, De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum, Praelectiones Academicae Oxonii Habitae …, 1753; T. Warton, A History of English Poetry, 1774-1781.

2. Mark Pattison, Essays (ed. Henry Nettleship. 2 vols., Oxford, 1889), II, 368 ff.

3. English Literary Criticism (ed. Charles Edwyn Vaughan, “The Warwick Library,” London and New York, [1896]).

4. George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism (3 vols., New York, Edinburgh, and London, 1904), III, 66 ff.

5. John Dryden, Essays (ed. William Paton Ker, 2 vols., Oxford, 1900), I, xv.

6. Essays, II, 368.

7. See below, pp. 29-33.

8. (9 vols., London, 1797), I, v. See John Wooll, Biographical Memoirs of the Late Rev. Joseph Warton, D.D. … (London, 1806), pp. 80 f.

9. Reprinted by Wooll, ibid., pp. 174-90.

10. Ibid., pp. 174, 176.

11. Ibid., p. 177.

12. Ibid., p. 35. The passage from Warton which Wooll gives here in direct quotation is also to be found with certain variations in his copy of the satire, p. 178 of the Memoirs.

13. Preface to Warton's Odes on Various Subjects (1746), p. i.

14. C. Rinaker, Thomas Warton, a Biographical and Critical Study (University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, II [1916], 1-241.

15. Wooll, Memoirs, p. 75.

16. Ibid., p. 404.

17. See 1 (1st ed.), pp. 32 ff., 247 n. See also below, pp. 35, 64, 66. Warton was a close friend of James Harris (1709-1780), who wrote three important books dealing with the principles and history of criticism. They were all published by his son James in 1801, though they had all appeared earlier—the first in 1744, the second in 1751, and the third in 1781. Warton cites the Discourse on Music, Painting, etc., in his first edition (1756), p. 178, as “the genuine method of criticising,” and refers to it four times in his 4th ed. (1782): I, 179; II, 80, 86, 92. Harris's Hermes he quotes at length in 1756 (Essay, p. 120 n. The Philological Enquiries (three parts, 1781) he does not use, but since it was worked up from a sketch made in 1752, he must have known its author's very significant ideas as to the history and types of criticism. The section on “Historical Criticism,” with its long list of critics for examples, influenced Warton greatly me judice.

18. Ralph Straus, Robert Dodsley (London and New York, [1910]), p. 346 Straus gives full text of agreement.

19. The Works of Virgil in Latin and English (London). Wooll, p. 20.

20. I (1756), iii ff.

21. Dryden's Works (Edinburgh, 1882-93), XI, 123.

22. Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men … (ed. Samuel Weller Singer, London and Edinburgh, 1820), p. 136.

23. Essay on Pope (1756), I, iii ff.

24. (London and Oxford, 1726-27), Part II (1727), 121 f.

25. Gentleman's Magazine: and Historical Chronicle, LII, 240.

26. Wooll, p. 30. See p. 12 below.

27. In his first edition of 1756, p. 136, commenting on ll. 150 f., of Pope's Essay on Criticism, Warton says, “Here is evidently a blameable mixture of metaphors; where the attributes of the horse and the writer are confounded.” But a certain “Adurfi,” in a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine, August 1, 1781 (LI, 366), points out that it was Warburton who made the mixture by shuffling Pope's lines and cites the earlier edition for proof. Then the next year, in his much corrected and final fourth edition of the Essay, Warton makes a note on p. 136, vol. I, saying, “These lines were thus printed in Dr. Warburton's quarto edition, 1743; pg. 16: and again in the octavo edition made use of in this work, 1752.” But on the next page he continues the charge, evidently not using some of the explanation in the Gentleman's Magazine of the year before.

28. II (4th ed.), 239.

29. Wooll, pp. 226 f.

30. Ibid., p. 30.

31. “Yesterday died Thomas Cooper, publisher, 2 Pater-noster Row …”—London Evening Post, Feb. 10, 1743.

32. John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (9 vols., London, 1812-15), VIII (1814), 403.

33. Charles Henry Timperley, A Dictionary of Printers and Printing, … (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, and Manchester, 1839), p. 726.

34. Wooll, p. 237. See pp. 36-37 below.

35. A list of the more important catalogues follows:

    1. 1762.—A list of books published by Dodsley, given in Straus's Robert Dodsley, p. 376. Here for the first time, Jan. 22, 1762, occurs a notice of the Essay in the book catalogues.
    2. 1764.—Catalogue … of books … published these sixty years past. The Essay is not listed under Warton, whose name did not appear on the title-page till 1782, but merely as An Essay, etc.
    3. 1766.—A Complete Catalogue of Modern Books, 1700-1766.
    4. 1767.—A New and Corrected Catalogue of All English Books from 1706 …
    5. 1775.—The London Catalogue of Books since 1700.
    6. 1779.—A General Catalogue of Books … 1700 to the Present Time.
    7. 1786.—A General Catalogue of Books in All Languages, Arts, and Sciences, printed in Great Britain and published in London from the year MDCC to MDCCLXXXVI. This gives both the Vol. I and the Vols. I and II issued 1756 and 1782.
    8. 1788.—A Modern Catalogue of Books.
    9. 1791.—The London Catalogue of Books. This was No. 7, selected and enlarged.
    10. 1811.—The London Catalogue of Books …, corrected to August, 1811.

36. See W. A. Copinger, On the Law of Copyright … (ed. James, London, 1927), pp. 9 f.; A. S. Collins, Authorship in the Days of Johnson (London, 1927), pp. 8 f., 64-68, 71, 101; A. W. Pollard, “Notes on the History of Copyright in England, 1662-1774,” The Library, Fourth Series, III (Sept., 1922), 97-114 (Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Second Series, Vol. III (1922).

37. See p. 7 above.

38. See pp. 29-33 below.

39. Works (ed. Peter Cunningham, New York, 1881), IV, 485. Cf. ibid., p. 491. See also Goldsmith, Collected Letters (ed. Katherine C. Balderston, Cambridge, 1928), p. 34.

40. Op. cit., p. 111.

41. Charles Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers (London, 1865), pp. 311-13.

42. Wooll, p. 220.

43. David Hume to his publisher, William Strahan, 25 March, 1774.—Letters of David Hume (ed. G. B. Hill, 1888).

44. Quoted from Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers, p. 226.

45. A. S. Collins, Authorship in the Days of Johnson (London, 1927), p. 198.

46. Knight, op. cit., p. 227.

47. Boswell's Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I, 246, n. 2. Hill cites Hawkins' Life of Johnson, p. 269.

48. See p. 21 below.

49. This was not signed in any edition during Warton's life and was not dated until the third edition of 1772.

50. See I (5th ed.), 65.

51. I (1st ed.), xi f.

52. I (2nd ed.), xii.

53. III, 6.

54. I (4th ed.), 379 n.—“When this was written the tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, had not been translated.”

55. II (1st ed.), i.

56. I (4th ed.), 69 n.

57. Wooll, pp. 343 ff.

58. Ibid., p. 261.

59. That he was at work at it is shown in a footnote (II [1st ed.], 256), where he says, “The chapel of New College in Oxford will soon receive a singular and invaluable ornament: A window, the glass of which is stained by Mr. Jervis, from that exquisite picture of the Nativity by Sir Joshua Reynolds.” The window was installed in 1777, and Thomas Warton in 1782 published “Verses on Sir Joshua Reynolds's Painted Window at New-College, Oxford.”

60. See Alexander Chalmers, “The Life of Dr. Joseph Warton,” in The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper …, ed. Chalmers, (London, Cambridge, and York, 1810), XVIII, 151.

61. Johnson said of Ruffhead (I am quoting from G. B. Hill's edition of Boswell, II, 166 f., n. 4): “‘Mr. Ruffhead says of fine passages, that they are fine, and of feeble passages, that they are feeble; but recommending poetical beauty, is like remarking the splendour of sunshine; to those who can see, it is unnecessary, and to those who are blind, absurd.’ Gent. Mag., Vol. XXXIX, May, 1769, p. 255. The review in which this passage occurs, is perhaps in part Johnson's.”

62. Boswell's Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II, 166 f.

63. Spence, Anecdotes (ed. S. W. Singer), pp. ix f.

64. Op. cit., XVIII, 151.

65. P. 55.

66. Edmund Gosse, Two Pioneers of Romanticism: Joseph and Thomas Warton, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1915-1916, p. 157.

67. See below, pp. 24-29.

68. Referred to, II, 126.

69. Referred to, II, 183.

70. So in MS; 130 is impossible, and 13 was probably intended. Nichols (see following note), reads 13.

71. John Wilkes, “Select Correspondence,” XI (1754-1797), British Museum, Add. MSS. 30877, fol. 116. See also Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, IX (1815), 474.

72. I, 226-40. See p. 36.

73. Ibid., p. 240.

74. XIV (1756), 528-54; XV (1756), 52-78.

75. Ibid., XV, 78.

76. The London Magazine; or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, XXV (1756), 199; the monthly catalogue (when published) was generally given for two months at a time. It was omitted from the March number; the citation is to the May number.

77. XXVI (1756), 249-51, 305-6.

78. XIII, 441.

79. Ibid., p. 442.

80. LII, 236-40.

81. Ibid., p. 236.

82. LII, 239 f.

83. LIII, 97-108.

84. XXVII (1769), 280-89.

85. LII, 289.

86. British Quarterly Review, LV (1872), 413-46. Reprinted as “Pope and His Editors,” in Pattison's Essays, II, 350-95.

87. In a letter to Hayley, December 29, 1795, Warton says, “I have been forced to give hard blows to the marvellous absurdities of Warburton.”—Wooll, Memoirs, p. 405.

88. John Wilkes, “Select Correspondence,” XI (1754-1797), British Museum, Add. MSS. 30877, fol. 116.

89. December 29, 1795, he writes Hayley that he has finished his labors on Pope for the Press and “We have begun to print.” Wooll, Memoirs, p. 405.

90. Cf. Wilkes, “Select Correspondence,” as above, fol. 139.

91. Ibid., fol. 143. See also Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, IX (1815), 475; and the Monthly Review, XXIII (Second Series, August, 1797), 361-71. Cf. also Edith J. Morley, “Joseph Warton: a Comparison of His Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope with His Edition of Pope's Works,” in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, IX (1924), 98 ff.

92. P. 81.

93. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, VI, 174 n.

94. See above, p. 30.

95. Nichols, op. cit., VII, 30.

96. By T. J. Mathias (1754?-1835), English satirist and Italian scholar.

97. Wilkes, op. cit., fol. 143. See also Nichols, op. cit., IX (1815), 475.