worthy the attention of children only, or of the lowest and rudest orders, are now admired for that artless simplicity which once obtained the name of coarseness and vulgarity.”  Early English poetry, continues the essayist, “has had its day, and the antiquary must not despise us if we cannot peruse it with patience.  He who delights in all such reading as is never read, may derive some pleasure from the singularity of his taste, but he ought still to respect the judgment of mankind, which has consigned to oblivion the works which he admires.  While he pores unmolested on Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve, let him not censure our obstinacy in adhering to Homer, Virgil, Milton, and Pope. . .  Notwithstanding the incontrovertible merit of many of our ancient relics of poetry, I believe it may be doubted whether any one of them would be tolerated as the production of a modern poet.  As a good imitation of the ancient manner, it would find its admirers; but, considered independently, as an original, it would be thought a careless, vulgar, inartificial composition.  There are few who do not read Dr. Percy’s own pieces, and those of other late writers, with more pleasure than the oldest ballad in the collection of that ingenious writer.”  Mr. Percy quotes another paper of Knox in which he divides the admirers of English poetry into two parties:  “On one side are the lovers and imitators of Spenser and Milton; and on the other, those of Dryden, Boileau, and Pope”; in modern phrase, the romanticists and the classicists.

Joseph Warton’s “Essay on Pope” was an attempt to fix its subject’s rank among English poets.  Following the discursive method of Thomas Warton’s “Observations on the Faerie Queen,” it was likewise an elaborate commentary on all of Pope’s poems seriatim.  Every point was illustrated with abundant learning, and there were digressions amounting to independent essays on collateral topics:  one, e.g., on Chaucer, one on early French Metrical romances; another on Gothic architecture:  another on the new school of landscape gardening, in which Walpole’s essay and Mason’s poem are quoted with approval, and mention is made of the Leasowes.  The book was dedicated to Young; and when the second volume was published in 1782, the first was reissued in a revised form and introduced by a letter to the author from Tyrwhitt, who writes that, under the shelter of Warton’s authority, “one may perhaps venture to avow an opinion that poetry is not confined to rhyming couplets, and that its greatest powers are not displayed in prologues and epilogues.”

The modern reader will be apt to think Warton’s estimate of Pope quite high enough.  He places him, to be sure, in the second rank of poets, below Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton, yet next to Milton and above Dryden; and he calls the reign of Queen Anne the great age of English poetry.  Yet if it be recollected that the essay was published only twelve years after Pope’s death, and at a time when he was still commonly held to be, if not the greatest poet, at least the greatest artist in verse, that England had ever produced, it will be seen that Warton’s opinions might well be thought revolutionary, and his challenge to the critics a bold one.  These opinions can be best exhibited by quoting a few passages from his book, not consecutive, but taken here and there as best suits the purpose.