arton published, in 1756, the first volume of his
_Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_, an elaborate review of
Pope's writings _seriatim_, doing him certainly full justice, but
ranking him below Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton. "Wit and satire,"
wrote Warton, "are transitory and perishable, but nature and passion
are eternal. . . . He stuck to {201} describing modern manners; but
those manners, because they are familiar, artificial, and polished,
are, in their very nature, unfit for any lofty effort of the Muse.
Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually possessed he withheld and
stifled. Surely it is no narrow and niggardly encomium to say, he is
the great Poet of Reason, the first of Ethical authors in verse."
Warton illustrated his critical positions by quoting freely not only
from Spenser and Milton, but from recent poets, like Thomson, Gray,
Collins, and Dyer. He testified that the Seasons had "been very
instrumental in diffusing a general taste for the beauties of nature
and landscape." It was symptomatic of the change in literary taste
that the natural or English school of landscape gardening now began to
displace the French and Dutch fashion of clipped hedges, regular
parterres, etc., and that Gothic architecture came into repute. Horace
Walpole was a virtuoso in Gothic art, and in his castle, at Strawberry
Hill, he made a collection of ancient armor, illuminated MSS., and
bric-a-brac of all kinds. Gray had been Walpole's traveling companion
in France and Italy, and the two had quarreled and separated, but were
afterward reconciled. From Walpole's private printing-press, at
Strawberry Hill, Gray's two "sister odes," the _Bard_ and the _Progress
of Poesy_, were first printed, in 1757. Both Gray and Walpole were
good correspondents, and their printed letters are among the most
delightful literature of the kind.

{202} The central figure among the English men of letters of that
generation was Samuel Johnson (1709-84), whose memory has been
preserved less by his own writings than by James Boswell's famous _Life
of Johnson_, published in 1791. Boswell was a Scotch laird and
advocate, who first met Johnson in London, when the latter was
fifty-four years old. Boswell was not a very wise or witty person, but
he reverenced the worth and intellect which shone through his subject's
uncouth exterior. He followed him about, note-book in hand, bore all
his snubbings patiently, and made the best biography ever