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قراءة كتاب A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation
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A History of English Poetry: an Unpublished Continuation
href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@33658@[email protected]#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[6] but neither Winchester nor Wickham, whither he retired in 1793, was a proper place in which to carry on the necessary research. Moreover he was much more interested in editing Pope and Dryden; and securing advantageous contracts to edit these poets whom he knew well, he let the History slide.
Joseph Warton appears, however, to have touched up the present continuation, for a few expansions seem to be in his script rather than in his brother's. It is difficult to be positive in the discrimination of hands here, as Thomas Warton's hand in this manuscript is quite irregular. Pens of varying thicknesses were used; black ink was used for the text and red ink for footnotes, and one note (16) was pencilled. Moreover, certain passages appear to have been written during periods of marked infirmity or haste and are legible only with difficulty if at all. In any case, those additions which were presumably made by Joseph Warton merely expand the original version; they do not alter or modify any of Thomas Warton's statements.
In the text of the present edition the expansions which appear to be in Joseph Warton's hand are placed within parentheses, which were not used for punctuation in the text of the manuscript itself. Because of the difficulties of reproduction, all small capitals have been translated into lover case italics.
This continuation, discovered by the editor among the Warton papers in the Moberly Library at Winchester College, is here published with the kind permission of the Right Honorable Harold T. Baker and Sir George Henry Gates, retired and present Wardens of Winchester College, and of the Fellows of the College. The editor is indebted also to the Reverend Mr. J. d'E. Firth, Assistant Master and Chaplain; and Mr. C. E. R. Claribut and Mr. J. M. G. Blakiston, past and present Assistant Fellows' Librarians. The Richmond Area University Center contributed a generous grant-in-aid.
Rodney M. Baine
The University of Richmond
Richmond, Virginia
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[1] Joseph Warton, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (London, 1756-1782), I, 270-271.
[2] John Milton, Poems upon Several Occasions (London, 1785), ed. Thomas Warton, p. 331, n.
[3] Nineteenth-century editions of the History give the false impression that the eight sheets were prepared from manuscript material left at Thomas Warton's death, but these sheets were certainly printed before Thomas died, and probably in the early 1780's. See John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1812-1816), III, 702-703. They contain no reference postdating that to Isaac Reed's revised edition of Robert Dodsley's Collection of Old Plays, published in 1780.
[4] Thomas Warton to Richard Price, 13 October 1781, in Thomas Warton, Poetical Works, ed. Richard Mant (Oxford, 1802), I, lxxviii; Daniel Prince to Richard Gough, 4 August 1783, in Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, III, 702.
[5] Thomas Caldecott to Bishop Percy, 21 March 1803, in Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1817-1858), VIII, 372.
[6] Joseph Warton to William Hayley, 12 March 1792, in John Wooll, Biographical Memoirs of the late Revd. Joseph Warton (London, 1806), p. 404.
A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY: AN UNPUBLISHED CONTINUATION
(In enumerating so many of these petty Epigrammatists, I may have been perhaps too prolix,—but I did it to shew the taste & turn of writing at this time; & now proceed to observe, that, in the year, 1614,)[1] the vogue which satire had acquired from Hall and Marston, probably encouraged Barten Holiday of Christ-Church in Oxford, to translate Persius, when he was scarcely twenty years of age. The first edition is dated 1616. This version had four editions from its publication to the year 1673 inclusive, notwithstanding the versification is uncommonly scabrous. The success of his Persius induced Holiday to translate Juvenal, a clearer & more translatable satirist. But both versions, as Dryden has justly observed,[2] were written for scholars, and not for the world: and by treading on the heels of his originals, he seems to have hurt them by too near an approach. He seized the meaning but not the spirit of his authors. Holiday, however, who was afterwards graduated in divinity and promoted to an archdeaconry, wrote a comedy called the Marriage of the Arts, acted before the court at Woodstock-palace, which was even too grave and scholastic for king James the first.
I close my prolix review of these pieces by remarking, that as our old plays have been assembled and exhibited to the public in one uniform view,[3] so a collection of our old satires and epigrams would be a curious and useful publication. Even the dull and inelegant productions, of a remote period which have real Life for their theme, become valuable and important by preserving authentic pictures of antient popular manners: by delineating the gradations of vice and folly, they furnish new speculation to the moral historian, and at least contribute to the illustration of writers of greater consequence.
Sect. XLIX.
The Sonnet, together with the Ottava Rima, seems to have been the invention of the Provincial bards, but to have been reduced to its present rhythmical prosody by some of the earliest Italian poets. It is a short monody, or Ode of one stanza containing fourteen lines, with uncommonly frequent returns of rhymes more or less combined. But the disposition of the rhymes has been sometimes