position is now known. His Jacobite sympathies rendered him popular in the university, and he was elected professor of poetry, in succession to Joseph Trapp [q. v.], on 17 July 1718. He was re-elected, in spite of the opposition of the Constitution Club, for a second term of five years in 1723. He retired from the professorship in 1728. He possessed small literary qualifications for the office, and his election provoked the sarcasm of Nicholas Amhurst [q. v.], who devoted three numbers of his 'Terrae Filius' (Nos. x. xv. xvi.) to an exposure of his incompetence. 'Squeaking Tom of Maudlin ' is the sobriquet Amhurst conferred on him. After 1723 Warton ceased to reside regularly in Oxford. In that year he became vicar of Basingstoke, Hampshire, and master of the grammar school there. Among his pupils was the great naturalist Gilbert White [q. v.] He remained at Basingstoke till his death, but with the living he held successively the vicarages of Framfield, Sussex (1726), of Woking, Surrey, from 1727, and of Cobham, Surrey. He died at Basingstoke on 10 Sept. 1745, and was buried in the church there. He married Elizabeth, second daughter of Joseph Richardson, rector of Dunsfold, Surrey, and left two sons, Joseph and Thomas, both of whom are noticed separately, and a daughter Jane, who died unmarried at Wickham, Hampshire, on 3 Nov. 1809, at the age of eighty-seven (Gent. Mag. 1809, ii. 1175).
Warton was a writer of occasional verse, but published none collectively in his lifetime. After his death his son Joseph issued, by subscription, 'Poems on several Occasions by the Rev. Thomas Warton,' London, 1748, 8vo. Some 'runic' odes are included, and are said to have drawn the attention of the poet Gray to 'runic' topics. At the end of the volume are two elegies on the author–one by his daughter Jane, and the other by Joseph Warton, the editor.
[Bloxam's Reg. of Magdalen College, Oxford, vi. 169; Hearne's Collections (Oxford Hist. Soc.); Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 373, vi. 168, 169, 171; Cary's Lives of English Poets, 1846.]
WARTON, THOMAS (1728–1790), historian of English poetry, born at Basingstoke on 9 Jan. 1727–8, and baptised there on the 25th, was younger son of Thomas Warton the elder [q. v.], vicar of Basingstoke. Joseph Warton [q. v.] was his elder brother. Warton's education was directed by his father until he was sixteen, when he entered Trinity College, Oxford, matriculating in the university on 16 March 1743–4. He graduated B.A. in 1747, and, after taking holy orders, engaged in tutorial work in the college. He graduated M.A. in 1750, succeeded to a fellowship next year, and in 1767 proceeded to the degree of B.D. Throughout his life Warton remained a college don, and, although he read and wrote extensively until his death, he never claimed to be a professional man of letters. He often represented to his friends that his functions as a tutor left him little time for regular literary work. But, as a matter of fact, he did not regard his tutorial obligations very seriously. Lord Eldon wrote of him: ‘Poor Tom Warton! He was a tutor at Trinity; at the beginning of every term he used to send to his pupils to know whether they would wish to attend lecture that term’ (Twiss, Eldon, iii. 302). His vacations were invariably spent in archæological tours, during which he examined old churches and ruined castles. He thus acquired a thorough knowledge and affection for Gothic architecture, which few of his contemporaries regarded as of any account.
From a precociously early age Warton attempted English verse. At nine he sent his sister a verse translation of an epigram of Martial. A collection of ‘Five Pastoral Eclogues’ which is said to have been published in 1745 was placed by his friends to his credit. In the same year he wrote ‘The Pleasures of Melancholy,’ which was published anonymously two years later. It was little more than a cento of passages from Milton and Spenser, but evidenced that appreciation of sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry which was characteristic of almost all he wrote. In 1749 he made a wide academic reputation by the publication of ‘The Triumph of Isis,’ an heroic poem in praise of Oxford, with some account of the celebrated persons educated there and appreciative notices of its specimens of Gothic architecture. It was written by way of reply to William Mason's ‘Isis,’ published in 1746, which cast aspersions on the academic society of Oxford, chiefly on the ground of its Jacobite leanings. Warton at the time inclined to the Jacobite opinions for which his father had made himself notorious in the university. Mason magnanimously admitted the superior merits of the rival poem, but in later life he and his friend Horace Walpole rarely lost an opportunity of depreciating Warton's literary work. Warton soon issued another poem entitled ‘Newmarket, a Satire’ (London, 1751), and a collection of verses by himself (under the pseudonym of ‘A Gentleman from Aberdeen’) and others, called ‘The Union, or Select Scotch and English pieces’ (Edinburgh, 1753).
