es of poetry. If the laurel implied
the premiership of living poets, Warton certainly deserved it. He was
a head and shoulders taller than his actual contemporaries.[16] He
stood in the gap between the old school and the new, between the dead
and the coming. Goldsmith and Johnson were no more; Cowper did not
print his "Task" until the autumn of 1785; Burns made his _debut_
about the same moment; Rogers published his "Ode to Superstition" the
next year; the famous "Fourteen Sonnets" of Bowles came two years
later; while Wordsworth and Landor made their first appearance in
1793. Fortunate thus in time, Warton was equally fortunate in
politics. He was an Oxford Tory, a firm believer in divine right and
passive obedience, and a warm supporter of the new ministers. To the
King, it may be added, no nomination could have given greater
satisfaction. The official odes of Warton evince all the elegant
traits which characterize his other writings. Their refined taste and
exquisite modulation are admirable; while the matter is far less
sycophantic than was to be expected from so devout a monarchist. The
tender of the laurel certainly gratified him:--

"Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure
Nor useless all my vacant days have flowed,
From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature,
Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestowed."[17]

And, like Southey, he was not indisposed to enhance the dignity of the
wreath by classing Chaucer and Spenser, as we have seen, among its
wearers. The genuine claims of Warton to respect probably saved him
from the customary attacks. Bating a few bungling thrusts amid the
doggerel of "Peter Pindar," he escaped scathless,--gaining, on the
other hand, a far more than ordinary proportion of poetical panegyric.

"Affection and applause alike he shared;
All loved the man, all venerate the bard:
E'en Prejudice his fate afflicted hears,
And lettered Envy sheds reluctant tears.
Such worth the laurel could alone repay,
Profaned by Cibber, and contemned by Gray;
Yet hence its Breath shall new distinction claim,
And, though it gave not, take from Warton fame."[18]

The last of Warton's odes was written in his last illness, and
performed three days after his death. Appositely enough, it was an
invocation to Health, meriting more than ordinary praise for eloquent
fervor. Warton died May 21st, 1790. The laurel was vacant for a month,
when Henry James Pye was gazetted. There was hardly a h