Lowell, furthermore, pronounces Joseph Warton’s “Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope” (1756) “the earliest public official declaration of war against the reigning mode.”  The new school had its critics, as well as its poets, and the Wartons were more effective in the former capacity.  The war thus opened was by no means as internecine as that waged by the French classicists and romanticists of 1830.  It has never been possible to get up a very serious conflict in England, upon merely aesthetic grounds.  Yet the same opposition existed.  Warton’s biographer tells us that the strictures made upon his essay were “powerful enough to damp the ardor of the essayist, who left his work in an imperfect state for the long space of twenty-six years,” i.e., till 1782, when he published the second volume.

Both Wartons were personal friends of Dr. Johnson; they were members of the Literary Club and contributors to the Idler and the Adventurer.  Thomas interested himself to get Johnson the Master’s degree from Oxford, where the doctor made him a visit.  Some correspondence between them is given in Boswell.  Johnson maintained in public a respectful attitude toward the critical and historical work of the Wartons; but he had no sympathy with their antiquarian enthusiasm or their liking for old English poetry.  In private he ridiculed Thomas’ verses, and summed them up in the manner ensuing: 

    “Whereso’er I turn my view,
    All is strange yet nothing new;
    Endless labor all along,
    Endless labor to be wrong;
    Phrase that time has flung away,
    Uncouth words in disarray,
    Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet,
    Ode and elegy and sonnet.”

And although he added, “Remember that I love the fellow dearly, for all I laugh at him,” this saving clause failed to soothe the poet’s indignant breast, when he heard that the doctor had ridiculed his lines.  An estrangement resulted which Johnson is said to have spoken of even with tears, saying “that Tom Warton was the only man of genius he ever knew who wanted a heart.”

Goldsmith, too, belonged to the conservative party, though Mr. Perry[12] detects romantic touches in “The Deserted Village,” such as the line,

    “Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe,”

or

    “On Torno’s cliffs or Pambamarca’s side.”

In his “Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning” (1759) Goldsmith pronounces the age one of literary decay; he deplores the vogue of blank verse—­which he calls an “erroneous innovation”—­and the “disgusting solemnity of manner” that it has brought into fashion.  He complains of the revival of old plays upon the stage.  “Old pieces are revived, and scarcely any new ones admitted. . .  The public are again obliged to ruminate over those ashes of absurdity which were disgusting to our ancestors even in an age of ignorance. . .  What must be