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school, for which high office he was peculiarly qualified by his talents and character, as he united to his great learning a peculiar aptness to impart instruction, and the rare art of exciting in his scholars an enthusiasm for literature, and a love and respect for himself. The next year he published the first volume of his "Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope," which must ever be ranked as one of the most elegant and interesting productions in the department of criticism. "It abounds," says Dr. Drake, "with literary anecdote and collateral disquisition, is written in a style of great ease and purity, and exhibits a taste refined, chaste, and classical. In short, it is a work which, however often perused, affords fresh delight, and may be considered as one of the books best adapted to excite a love of literature."

In 1766, he succeeded to the head mastership of Winchester school, which he held till 1793, when, being seventy-one years old, he resigned this position, and retired to the Rectory of Wickham, in Hants. "That ardent mind," says Mr. Wooll in his "Memoirs," "which had so eminently distinguished the exercise of his public duties, did not desert him in the hours of leisure and retirement; for inactivity was foreign to his nature. His parsonage, his farm, his garden, were cultivated and adorned with the eagerness and taste of undiminished youth. His lively sallies of playful wit, his rich stores of literary anecdote, and the polished and habitual ease with which he imperceptibly entered into the various ideas and pursuits of men, rendered him an acquaintance both profitable and amusing; whilst his unaffected piety and unbounded charity stamped him a pastor adored by his parishioners. Difficult indeed would it be to decide whether he shone in a degree less, in this social character, than in the closet of criticism or the chair of instruction."

He did not, however, sink into literary idleness. In 1797, he edited the works of Pope, in nine vols. octavo. The notes to this edition, which necessarily include the greatest part of his celebrated "Essay," are highly entertaining and instructive. He, however, was censured for introducing some pieces of Pope's, which Warburton had very properly omitted. But he was not deterred by the blame he thus suffered from entering upon an edition of Dryden, which, alas! he did not live to finish, though he left two volumes ready for the press. He died February 23, 1800, leaving behind him a widow, one son, (the Rev. John Warton,) and three daughters. Such is a brief outline of the life of this most excellent man;-one of the ripest scholars and soundest critics England has produced.

ODE TO LIBERTY.

O Goddess, on whose steps attend
Pleasure, and laughter-loving health,

White mantled Peace with olive-wand,

Young Joy, and diamond-scepter'd Wealth,

Roscoe has incorporated most of Warton's notes in his-now the best

edition of Pope, 8 vols. 8vo.

Blithe Plenty, with her loaded horn,
With Science bright-eyed as the morn;
In Britain, which for ages past

Has been thy choicest darling care,
Who madest her wise, and strong, and fair,
May thy best blessings ever last!

For thee, the pining prisoner mourns,
Deprived of food, of mirth, of light;
For thee pale slaves to galleys chain'd,
That ply tough oars from morn to night;
Thee the proud Sultan's beauteous train,
By eunuchs guarded, weep in vain,
Tearing the roses from their locks;
And Guinea's captive kings lament,
By Christian lords to labor sent,
Whipt like the dull, unfeeling ox.

Inspired by thee, deaf to fond Nature's cries,
Stern Brutus, when Rome's genius loudly spoke,
Gave her the matchless filial sacrifice,

Nor turn'd, nor trembled at the deathful stroke!

And he of later age, but equal fame,

Dared stab the tyrant, though he loved the friend.
How burnt the Spartan' with warm patriot flame,
In thy great cause his valorous life to end!
How burst Gustavus from the Swedish mine!
Like light from chaos dark, eternally to shine.

When Heaven to all thy joys bestows,
And graves upon our hearts-be free-
Shall coward man those joys resign,
And dare reverse this great decree?
Submit him to some idol-king,
Some selfish, passion-guided thing,
Abhorring man, by man abhorr'd,

Around whose throne stands trembling doubt,
Whose jealous eyes still roll about,
And murder with his reeking sword?

Where trampling Tyranny with Fate
And black Revenge gigantic goes,
Hark, how the dying infants shriek!
How hopeless age is sunk in woes!
Fly, mortals, from that fated land,
Though birds in shades of cassia sing,
Harvests and fruits spontaneous rise,
No storms disturb the smiling skies,
And each soft breeze rich odors bring.

Britannia, watch!-remember peerless Rome,
Her high-tower'd head dash'd meanly to the ground;
Remember, Freedom's guardian, Grecia's doom,
Whom, weeping, the despotic Turk has bound⚫

1 Leonidas.

May ne'er thy oak-crown'd hills, rich meads, and downs,
(Fame, Virtue, Courage, Poverty, forgot,)

Thy peaceful villages, and busy towns,

Be doom'd some death dispensing tyrant's lot;

On deep foundations may thy freedom stand,

Long as the surge shall lash thy sea-encircled land.

ODE TO CONTENT.

Welcome Content! from roofs of fretted gold,
From Persian sofas, and the gems of Ind,
From courts, and camps, and crowds,
Fled to my cottage mean.

Meek Virgin, wilt thou deign with me to sit
In pensive pleasure by my glimmering fire,
And with calm smile despise

The loud world's distant din?

As from the piny mountain's topmost cliff
Some wandering hermit sage hears unconcern'd,
Far in the vale below,

The thundering torrent burst!

Teach me, good Heaven, the gilded chains of vice
To break; to study independent ease;

Pride, pomp, and power to shun

Those fatal Syrens fair,

That, robed like Eastern queens, sit on high thrones,
And, beckoning every thirsty traveller,

Their baleful cups present

With pleasing poisons fraught.

O let me dwell in life's low valley, blest
With the dear Nymph I love, true, heartfelt joy,
With chosen friends to turn

The polish'd Attic page;

Nor seldom, if nor Fortune damp my wings,
Nor dire Disease, to soar to Pindus' hill,

My hours, my soul devote

To Poesy and Love!

POETS NOT NECESSARILY NOR UNIVERSALLY POOR.

The neglect of economy, in which great geniuses are supposed to have indulged themselves, has unfortunately given so much authority and justification to carelessness and extravagance, that many a minute rhymer has fallen into dissipation and drunkenness,

because Butler and Otway lived and died in an alehouse. As a certain blockhead wore his gown on one shoulder to mimic the negligence of Sir Thomas More, so these servile imitators follow their masters in all that disgraced them; contract immoderate debts, because Dryden died insolvent; and neglect to change their linen, because Smith was a sloven. "If I should happen to look pale," says Horace, "all the hackney-writers in Rome would immediately drink cumin to gain the same complexion." And I myself am acquainted with a witling who uses a glass only because Pope was near-sighted.

I can easily conceive that a mind occupied and overwhelmed with the weight and immensity of its own conceptions, glancing with astonishing rapidity from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, cannot willingly submit to the dull drudgery of examining the justness and accuracy of a butcher's bill. To descend from the widest and most comprehensive views of nature, and weigh out hops for a brewing, must be invincibly disgusting to a true genius: to be able to build imaginary palaces of the most exquisite architecture, but yet not to pay a carpenter's bill, is a cutting mortification and disgrace: to be ruined by pursuing the precepts of Virgilian agriculture, and by ploughing classically, without attending to the wholesome monitions of low British farmers, is a circumstance that aggravates the failure of a crop to a man who wishes to have lived in the Augustan age, and despises the system of modern husbandry.

Many poets, however, may be found, who have condescended to the cares of economy, and who have conducted their families with all the parsimony and regularity of an alderman of the last century; who have not superciliously disdained to enter into the concerns of common life, and to subscribe to and study certain necessary dogmas of the vulgar, convinced of their utility and expediency, and well knowing that because they are vulgar, they are, therefore, both important and truc.

If we look backwards on antiquity, or survey ages nearer our own, we shall find several of the greatest geniuses so far from being sunk in indigence, that many of them enjoyed splendor and honors, or at least were sccured against the anxieties of poverty by a decent competence and plenty of the conveniences of life.

Indeed, to pursue riches farther than to attain a decent competence is too low and illiberal an occupation for a real genius to descend to; and Horace wisely ascribes the manifest inferiority of the Roman literature to the Grecian, to an immoderate love of money, which necessarily contracts and rusts the mind, and disqualifies it for noble and generous undertakings.

Eschylus was an officer of no small rank in the Athenian army at the celebrated battle of Marathon; and Sophocles was an accomplished general, who commanded his countrymen in several most important expeditions: Theocritus was caressed and enriched by Ptolemy; and the gaiety of Anacreon was the result of ease and plenty: Pindar was better rewarded for many of his odes than any other bard, ancient or modern, except perhaps Boileau for his celebrated piece of flattery on the taking of Namur: Virgil at last possessed a fine house at Rome, and a villa at Naples: "Horace," says Swift, in one of his lectures on economy to Gay, "I am sure kept his coach:" Lucan and Silius Italicus dwelt in marble palaces, and had their gardens adorned with the most exquisite capital statues of Greece: Milton was fond of a domestic life, and lived with exemplary frugality and order: Corneille and Racine were both admirable masters of their families, faithful husbands, and prudent economists: Boileau, by the liberalities of Louis, was enabled to purchase a delightful privacy at Auteuil, was eminently skilled in the management of his finances, and despised that affectation which arrogantly aims to place itself above the necessary decorums and rules of civil life; in all which particulars they were equalled by Addison, Swift, and Pope.

It ought not, therefore, to be concluded, from a few examples to the contrary, that poetry and prudence are incompatible; a conclusion that seems to have arisen, in this kingdom, from the dissolute behavior of the despicable debauchees that disgraced the muses, and the court of Charles the Second, by their lives and by their writings. Let those who are blest with genius recollect that economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease; and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness, and health: and that profuseness is a cruel and crafty demon, that gradually involves her followers in dependence and debts; that is, fetters them with "irons that enter into their souls."

Adventurer, No. 107.

POPE AS A POET.

Thus have I endeavored to give a critical account, with freedom, but it is hoped with impartiality, of each of POPE's works; by which review it will appear, that the largest portion of them is of the didactic, moral, and satiric kind; and consequently, not of the most poetic species of poetry; whence it is manifest, that good sense and judgment were his characteristical excellencies, rather than fancy and invention; not that the author of the Rape

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