- Birds of Aristophanes [translated], by a Graduate of Oxford,’ 1830.
- ‘Teaching of the Prayer-book,’ 1845.
- ‘The last of the Old Squires: a Sketch by Cedric Oldacre,’ 1854; 2nd ed. by Rev. J. W. Warter, 1861.
- ‘An Old Shropshire Oak,’ edited by Dr. Richard Garnett, LL.D., vols. i. ii. 1886, vols. iii. iv. 1891. Although the published work represented only selections from Warter's manuscript, it contained great stores of information on Shropshire and on the general history of England.
Warter edited volumes vi. and vii. of Southey's ‘Doctor’ and an edition in one volume of the whole work (London, 1848). There was published by him in vol. xxii. of the ‘Traveller's Library’ a fragment from it which was entitled ‘A Love Story: History of the Courtship and Marriage of Dr. Dove,’ 1853. He also edited the four series of Southey's ‘Commonplace Book,’ 1849–51, and four volumes of ‘Selections from Southey's Letters,’ 1856. A fierce review of the latter work was inserted in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ March 1856, pp. 456–501. It was probably provoked by his statement that he could draw up ‘a most remarkable history’ of that periodical. Mrs. Warter began in 1824 and continued for some time a collection of ‘Wise Saws and Modern Instances: Pithy Sentences in many Languages.’ It was taken up by her husband on 1 May 1850, and finished on 4 Nov., but not published until 1861. Warter also contributed to the ‘English Review.’
[Men of the Time, 9th ed.; Burke's Landed Gentry, 9th ed.; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Southey's Life and Corresp. vi. 229–55; Knight's Coleorton Letters, ii. 274–9; Lang's Lockhart, ii. 2–4.]
WARTON, JOSEPH (1722–1800), critic, elder son of Thomas Warton the elder [q. v.], was born at Dunsfold, Surrey, in 1722, at the vicarage of his mother's father, Joseph Richardson, being baptised on 22 April. Thomas Warton [q. v.], the historian of English poetry, was his younger brother. He received his earliest instruction at the grammar school of Basingstoke, of which his father was headmaster. Here Gilbert White [q. v.] was a schoolfellow. In 1735 he was elected scholar of Winchester, and formed a lasting friendship with another schoolfellow who afterwards attained distinction, the poet William Collins. Collins, Warton, and a boy named Tomkins wrote verses in rivalry, and a poem by each was published in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ in October 1739. A complimentary notice of these efforts appeared in the next number of the magazine, and was assigned by Wooll, Warton's biographer, to Dr. Johnson. Like Collins, Warton failed to obtain election from Winchester to New College, Oxford, and on 16 Jan. 1739–40 he matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, going into residence in the following September. He graduated B.A. on 13 March 1743–4. Taking holy orders immediately afterwards, he acted as curate to his father at Basingstoke until his father's death on 10 Sept. 1745. Subsequently he served a curacy at Chelsea, but after an attack of small-pox returned to Basingstoke.
In 1744 Warton published a first volume of verse, entitling it ‘Ode on reading West's Pindar.’ It included, with other poems, a long piece in blank verse called ‘The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature.’ Here he avowed an unfashionable love of nature and of natural scenery and sentiment. Gray at once commended the poem as ‘all pure description’ (Gray, Works, ed. Gosse, ii. 121). In December 1746 Warton published a second volume of seventeen ‘Odes on various Subjects,’ most of which he had penned while an undergraduate. In the preface he warned his readers against identifying the true subject-matter of poetry with the moral and didactic themes to which, under Pope's sway, writers of verse at the time confined their efforts. Warton's friend Collins issued his volume of odes simultaneously. Gray wrote on 27 Dec. 1746 of the odd coincidence that two unknown men had published at the same instant collections of odes. ‘Each is the half of a considerable man, and one the counterpart of the other. The first [i.e. Warton] has but little invention, very poetical choice of expression, and a good ear. The second [i.e. Collins] a fine fancy, modelled upon the antique, a bad ear, great variety of words, and images with no choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not’ (ib. ii. 160). Warton's work was fairly successful, but Collins's proved a dismal failure. Posterity has reversed the contemporary judgment.
In 1748 Charles Paulet (or Powlett), third duke of Bolton, conferred on Warton the rectory of Winslade, and in April 1751 he accompanied his patron, the Duke of Bolton, on a short tour in the south of France under peculiar and not very creditable circumstances. The duke's wife was believed to be at the point of death, and the duke required the attendance of a chaplain on his travels so that he might be married without loss of time to his mistress, Lavinia Fenton [q. v.], as soon as the duchess had breathed her last. The duchess lingered on beyond expectation, and Warton returned home in September without presiding over
