In 1800 Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (by no means an uncritical admirer of his work) said of Thomas Warton: "Perhaps there was no one, by whose death the literature of England could have sustained a greater chasm." This comment is not an empty encomium but a considered judgment which recognizes the width of Warton's achievement. He was a poet, biographer, humorist, classical scholar, Gothic enthusiast, local historian, literary critic, and editor, and he made a distinct and influential contribution to each field; the gap left by his death could never again be filled by one person.

The future poet laureate was born on 9 January 1728 in the then-small market town of Basingstoke, Hampshire, the younger son of Elizabeth Richardson Warton (daughter of the rector of Dunsfold, Surrey) and Thomas Warton the Elder, headmaster of Basingstoke Grammar School and former fellow of Magdalen college, Oxford, and Oxford professor of poetry. While...