and incongruous."[6] Indeed Mallet himself had a very confused notion of the relation of the Celtic to the Teutonic race.  He speaks constantly of the old Scandinavians as Celts.  Percy points out the difference, in the preface to his translation, and makes the necessary correction in the text, where the word Celtic occurs—­usually by substituting “Gothic and Celtic” for the “Celtic” of the original.  Mason made his contribution to Runic literature, “Song of Harold the Valiant,” a rather insipid versification of a passage from the “Knytlinga Saga,” which had been rendered by Bartholin into Latin, from him into French by Mallet, and from Mallet into English prose by Percy.  Mason designed it for insertion in the introduction to Gray’s abortive history of English poetry.

The true pioneers of the mediaeval revival were the Warton brothers.  “The school of Warton” was a term employed, not without disparaging implications, by critics who had no liking for antique minstrelsy.  Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of Thomas Warton, vicar of Basingstoke, who had been a fellow of Magdalen and Professor of Poetry at Oxford; which latter position was afterward filled by the younger of his two sons.  It is interesting to note that a volume of verse by Thomas Warton, Sr., posthumously printed in 1748, includes a Spenserian imitation and translations of two passages from the “Song of Ragner Lodbrog,” an eleventh-century Viking, after the Latin version quoted by Sir Wm. Temple in his essay “Of Heroic Virtue";[7] so that the romantic leanings of the Warton brothers seem to be an instance of heredity.  Joseph was educated at Winchester,—­where Collins was his schoolfellow—­and both of the brothers at Oxford.  Joseph afterward became headmaster of Winchester, and lived till 1800, surviving his younger brother ten years.  Thomas was always identified with Oxford, where he resided for forty-seven years.  He was appointed, in 1785, Camden Professor of History in the university, but gave no lectures.  In the same year he was chosen to succeed Whitehead, as Poet Laureate.  Both brothers were men of a genial, social temper.  Joseph was a man of some elegance; he was fond of the company of young ladies, went into general society, and had a certain renown as a drawing-room wit and diner-out.  He used to spend his Christmas vacations in London, where he was a member of Johnson’s literary club.  Thomas, on the contrary, who waxed fat and indolent in college cloisters, until Johnson compared him to a turkey cock, was careless in his personal habits and averse to polite society.  He was the life of a common room at Oxford, romped with the schoolboys when he visited Dr. Warton at Winchester, and was said to have a hankering after pipes and ale and the broad mirth of the taproom.  Both Wartons had an odd passion for military parades; and Thomas—­who was a believer in ghosts—­used secretly to attend hangings.  They were also remarkably harmonious in their tastes and intellectual pursuits,