SOURCE: Rinaker, Clarissa. “Criticism: The Observations on the Fairie Queene of Spenser, 1754-1762.” In Thomas Warton: A Biographical and Critical Study, pp. 37-58. Urbana: University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 1916.

In the following excerpt, Rinaker regards Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser as an important work of English literary criticism for having revived interest in Edmund Spenser.

The hand of the poet is as evident as that of the scholar in the Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser.¹ Warton's love for Spenser and his poetical enthusiasm were here first turned to criticism, but of a sort unknown before. And the secret of the new quality is to be found in this poetical enthusiasm of the writer which enabled him to study the poem from its own point of view, not hampered by artificial, pseudo-classical standards of which the poet had known nothing, but with...