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A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation By: Thomas Warton |
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THOMAS WARTON A History of English Poetry : an Unpublished Continuation Edited, with an Introduction, by Rodney M. Baine Publication Number 39 Los Angeles
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1953 GENERAL EDITORS H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial Library
RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan
RALPH COHEN, University of California, Los Angeles
VINTON A. DEARING, University of California, Los Angeles ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington
BENJAMIN BOYCE, Duke University
LOUIS BREDVOLD, University of Michigan
JOHN BUTT, King's College, University of Durham
JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University
ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles
LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton University
SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota
EARNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas
JAMES SUTHERLAND, University College, London
H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles CORRESPONDING SECRETARY EDNA C. DAVIS, Clark Memorial Library
INTRODUCTION
Among the unpublished papers of Thomas and Joseph Warton at Winchester
College the most interesting and important item is undoubtedly a
continuation of Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry . This
continuation completes briefly the analysis of Elizabethan satire and
discusses the Elizabethan sonnet. The discussion offers material of
interest particularly for the bibliographer and the literary historian.
The bibliographer, for example, will be intrigued by a statement of
Thomas Warton that he had examined a copy of the Sonnets published in
1599 a decade before the accepted date of the first edition. The
literary historian will be interested in, inter alia, unpublished
information concerning the university career of Samuel Daniel and in the
theory that Shakespeare's sonnets should be interpreted as if addressed
by a woman to her lover. Critically appraised, Warton's treatment of the Elizabethan sonnet seems
skimpy. To dismiss the sonnet in one third the amount of space devoted
to Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum seems to betray a want of proportion.
Perhaps even more damaging may seem the fact that Warton failed to
mention more sonnet collections than he discussed. About twenty years
later, in 1802, Joseph Ritson listed in his Bibliographia Poetica the
sonnet collections of Barnaby Barnes, Thomas Lodge, William Percy, and
John Soowthern all evidently unknown to Warton. But Warton was not
particularly slipshod in his researches. In his immediately preceding
section, on Elizabethan satire, he had stopped at 1600; and in the
continuation he deliberately omitted the sonnet collections published
after that date. Thus, though he had earlier in the History (III, 264,
n.) promised a discussion of Drayton, he omitted him here because his
sonnets were continually being augmented until 1619. Two sixteenth
century collections which Warton had mentioned earlier in the History
(III, 402, n.) he failed to discuss here, William Smith's Chloris
(1596) and Henry Lock's Sundry Christian Passions, contayned in two
hundred Sonnets (1593). Concerning Lock he had quoted significantly
(IV, 8 9) from The Return from Parnassus : "'Locke and Hudson, sleep
you quiet shavers among the shavings of the press, and let your books
lie in some old nook amongst old boots and shoes, so you may avoid my
censure.'" A collection which certainly did not need to avoid censure
was Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella ; and for Warton's total
neglect of Sidney's sonnets it seems difficult to account, for in this
section on the sonnet Sidney as a poet would have been most aptly
discussed. The Astrophel and Stella was easily available in
eighteenth century editions of Sidney's works, and Warton admired the
author. Both Thomas and Joseph Warton, however, venerated Sidney mainly
for his Arcadia and his Apology for Poetry ... Continue reading book >>
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