he edition of his poems published at Oxford, is drawn from sources
so authentic, and detailed with so much exactness, that little remains
to be added to the circumstances which it relates.

Thomas Warton was descended from a very respectable family in Yorkshire.
His grandfather, Anthony Warton, was rector of a village in Hampshire;
and his father was a fellow of Magdalen College, and Poetry Professor in
the University of Oxford. His mother, daughter of Joseph Richardson, who
was also a clergyman, gave birth to three children:--Joseph, of whom
some account will hereafter be given, Thomas, and Jane. Thomas was born
at Basingstoke, in 1728; and very early in life afforded promise of his
future excellence. A letter, addressed to his sister from school when he
was about nine years of age, containing an epigram on Leander, was
preserved with affectionate regard by their brother, Dr. Warton. What
school it was, that may claim the honour of contributing to the
instruction of one who was afterwards so distinguished as a scholar, has
not been recorded.

On the 16th of March, 1743, he was admitted a commoner of Trinity
College, Oxford; and about two years after lost his father,--a volume of
whose poems was, soon after his death, printed by subscription, by his
eldest son Joseph, with two elegiac poems to his memory, one by the
editor, the other by his daughter above-mentioned. The latter of these
tributes is termed by Mr. Crowe, in a note to one of his eloquent
Crewian Orations,--"Ode tenera, simplex, venusta,"--"tender, simple, and
beautiful."

In 1745 he published his Pastoral Eclogues, which Mr. Chalmers has added
to the collection of his poems; and in the same year he published,
without his name, the Pleasures of Melancholy; having, perhaps, been
influenced in the choice of a subject, thus sombre, by the loss of his
parent. In this poem, his imitations of Milton are so frequent and
palpable, as to discover the timid flight of a young writer not daring
to quit the track of his guide. Yet by some (as appears from the letters
between Mrs. Carter and Miss Talbot) it was ascribed to Akenside. In
1746 was produced his Progress of Discontent,--paraphrase on one of his
own exercises, made at the desire of Dr. Huddesford, the head of his
college.

His next effort attracted more general notice. In consequence of some
disgrace which the University had incurred with Government, by its
supposed attachment to the Stuart family, Mason ha