WARREN, SAMUEL (1807-1877).—­Novelist, b. in Denbighshire, s. of a Nonconformist minister.  After studying medicine at Edin. he took up law, and became a barrister, wrote several legal text-books, and in 1852 was made Recorder of Hull.  He sat in the House of Commons for Midhurst 1856-59, and was a Master in Lunacy 1859-77.  He was the author of Passages from the Diary of a late Physician, which appeared (1832-37) first in Blackwood’s Magazine, as did also Ten Thousand a Year (1839).  Both attracted considerable attention, and were often reprinted and translated.  His last novel, Now and Then, had little success.  W. entertained exaggerated ideas as to the importance of his place in literature.

WARTON, JOSEPH (1722-1800).—­Critic, elder s. of the Rev. Thomas W., Prof. of Poetry at Oxf., was ed. at Basingstoke School, (of which his f. was headmaster), Winchester, and Oxf.  He took orders, held various benefices, and became headmaster of Winchester Coll., and Prebendary of Winchester and of St. Paul’s.  He pub. miscellaneous verses, 2 vols. of Odes (1744 and 1746), in which he displayed a then unusual feeling for nature, and revolted against the critical rules of Pope and his followers.  He was a good classical scholar, and made an approved translation of the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil.  He and his brother Thomas (q.v.) were friends of Johnson, and members of the Literary Club.  His last work of importance was an Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, of which the first vol. appeared in 1757, and the second in 1782, and which gave an impulse to the romantic movement in English literature.  He also ed.  Pope’s works, and had begun an ed. of Dryden when he d.

WARTON, THOMAS (1728-1790).—­Literary historian and critic, younger s. of Thomas W., Prof. of Poetry at Oxf., and brother of the above, was ed. under his f. at Basingstoke and at Oxf.  At the age of 19 he pub. a poem of considerable promise, The Pleasures of Melancholy, and two years later attracted attention by The Triumph of Isis (1749), in praise of Oxf., and in answer to Mason’s Isis.  After various other poetical excursions he pub. Observations on Spenser’s Faery Queen (1754), which greatly increased his reputation, and in 1757 he was made Prof. of Poetry at Oxf., which position he held for 10 years.  After bringing out one or two ed. of classics and biographies of college benefactors, he issued, from 1774-81, his great History of English Poetry, which comes down to the end of the Elizabethan age.  The research and judgment, and the stores of learning often curious and recondite, which were brought to bear upon its production render this work, though now in various respects superseded, a vast magazine of information, and it did much to restore our older poetry to the place of which it had been