tion, hastened to Oxford, but arrived too late to witness the closing scene. He was buried on the 27th, with the highest academical pomp, the Vice-Chancellor, the Heads of Houses, and the Proctors, at their own request, attending his funeral.
The influence of Warton upon English literature has been great; greater than at the first glance we should imagine; not from any peculiar force of mind stamping its impress on his own age, and giving a direction to the thinkings of posterity; but from his opportune appearance, and the accidental bent of his studies. Himself a traveller in unaccustomed regions of research, he pointed out the way to that wide field of romantic literature which had become almost a shadowy land to his contemporaries, and told of the exuberance and strength of our earlier writers, to those whose tastes had been formed on the faultless classicalism of the era of Anne. Spenser and Milton were his favourite authors through life. His affection for them never wavered. His first prose work was a tribute to Spenser, his last important occupation an edition of the lesser poems of Milton. His fondness for these two authors cramped his own freedom of expression, as his ideas conformed too readily to turns of phraseology which constant study had rendered so familiar.
The ingenious author of "Hermes" distinguishes three species of criticism: philosophical, historical, and corrective; and places the writings of Warton under the second category. Without attempting to analyse the principles of art, he contents himself with examining their outward form and expression, and is occupied solely with the subordinate though useful labour of explaining obsolete words and phrases, and of applying his historical learning to the elucidation of obscure allusions.
As a poet, he possessed imagination, fancy, and copiousness, but he never attempted to touch the heart or to stir
