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THOMAS WARTON, 1728-1790, is chiefly known by his History of English Poetry.

Warton was born at Basingstoke, and educated at Oxford, where he was successively Fellow, Professor of Poetry, and Professor of Ancient History. He was also PoetLaureate from 1785 to 1790. He is mainly known by the work already named, A History of English Poetry, 3 vols., 4to. The history is brought down only to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is not very attractive in style, and not altogether accurate; yet it contains much valuable matter not easily found elsewhere, and it did important service in calling attention to several neglected authors, whose works have since, in consequence of Warton's remarks, and still more in consequence of his quotations from them, been thoroughly explored. Warton's other works are: Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser; numerous Poems and several Biographies. "Tom Warton was one of the finest fellows that ever breathed, and the gods had made him poetical, but not a poet."-Professor Wilson.

JOSEPH WARTON, 1722-1800, was brother of Thomas Warton the celebrated literary historian. Joseph Warton was educated at Oxford, and took orders in the Church of England. He published several poems, and translated the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil. This translation appeared in conjunction with Pitt's translation of the Æneid in 1753. It is a very correct and smooth rendering, but does not equal Dryden's version in idiomatic strength. Warton also published an Essay on the Genius of Pope. His unfinished edition of Dryden's works was completed and published, after his death, by his son John Warton and others.

Sir William Jones.

Sir William Jones, 1746-1794, is the most distinguished name in the history of English philology.

He was born in London; studied at Harrow and Oxford; was private tutor in the family of Earl Spencer; was admitted to the bar in 1774; and in 1783 was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court at Fort William (India).

Other distinguished British philologists, such for instance as Bentley, Porson, and Wilson, have surpassed him in accuracy of research in special fields, but none have equalled him in breadth of vision. At a time when the science of language had not yet been born, he was a proficient in many widely different languages. But the service by which his name will ever be remembered is the presentation of the claims of the Sanscrit to the notice of European scholars. He was the first to announce the great fact that Sanscrit, Latin, and Greek are kindred tongues. This principle, afterwards developed so successfully by Bopp in his Comparative Grammar, has gained for Sir William Jones the title of Father of Comparative Philology. For, although the science has advanced wonderfully since then, and is now made to embrace all languages and dialects, there is no doubt but that the recognition of the great IndoEuropean family was the germ from which the whole has sprung.

Works. Sir William Jones's principal works are his Grammar of the Persian Language, 1771; Dissertation sur la Litterature Orientale, same year; a Translation of Sakuntala, a Drama by Kalidasa, made in 1789, but not published until later; the first

volume of Asiatic Researches, 1789; a Translation of the Laws of Manu, 1794. Sir William Jones also established, 1784, the Asiatic Society, which has since contributed so largely to the advancement of the study of oriental languages. A collected edition of his works was published in 1799, by Lord Teignmouth. In addition to his philological attainments, Sir William Jones was profoundly versed in the law, as is shown by his Essay on the Law of Bailments, published in 1781.

JOSEPH RITSON, 1752-1803, did important service to literature by his antiquarian researches.

Ritson was Deputy High Bailiff of Lancaster. This lucrative sinecure gave him the means and the leisure for publishing a great number of works of antiquarian research. Unfortunately, his irritable temper kept him in constant feud with his contemporaries. The list of his works is almost interminable. The most prominent are: Observations on Warton's History of English Poetry; Criticism on Malone's Shakespeare; Robin Hood, a Collection of Poems, Ballads, etc., relating to that outlaw; and Bibliographia Poetica, or catalogue of English poets of the 12th-16th centuries. Ritson's Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty was attacked unmercifully in the Edinburgh Review by Brougham and Sydney Smith.

"A man of acute observations, profound research, and great labor. These valuable attributes were unhappily combined with an eager irritability of temper which induced him to treat antiquarian trifles with the same seriousness which men of the world reserve for matters of importance, and disposed him to drive controversies into personal quarrels, by neglecting, in literary debates, the courtesies of ordinary society. It ought to be said, however, by one who knew him well, that this irritability of disposition was a constitutional and physical infirmity, and that Ritson's extreme attachment to the severity of truth corresponded to the vigor of his criticisms upon the labors of others." -Sir Walter Scott.

Bishop Percy.

THOMAS PERCY, 1728-1811, gained for himself a permanent place in English literature by his publication of The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.

Percy studied at Oxford, took orders in the Church of England, and was finally made Bishop in the Irish Church. He published several books of a miscellaneous nature, but the work with which his name is indissolubly connected is the one already named, The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, published in 1765. This collection of old English ballads, it is not going too far to say, marked a new era in literature. It introduced a taste for the pure and healthy ballad of the folk, which had been lost during and since the age of the Restoration. The greatest minds in England and on the continent derived new delight and inspiration from the study of these Reliques of a half-forgotten age. We have only to turn to the biographies of men like Goethe, Bürger, Schiller, Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth, to learn of their effect. Since Percy's day the good work begun by him has gone on unceasingly. Other and larger stores of folk-song have been discovered, more accurate scholarship and sounder criticism have developed themselves, but still the labors of Bishop Percy are not forgotten, and will not be so long as a genuine love of naïve poetry remains.

"A collection singularly heterogeneous, and very unequal in merit, but from the

publication of which, in 1765, some of high name have dated the revival of a genuine feeling for true poetry in the public mind."- Hallam. "The first time I could scrape a few shillings together-which were not common occurrences with me-I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently or with half the enthusiasm."-Scott, in Lockhart's Life.

WILLIAM HAYLEY, 1745-1820, was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and, on leaving the University, retired to his estates in the country, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. He was the friend of Gibbon, the friend and biographer of Cowper, and was in high repute at the close of the last century as one of the literary magnates of England, "by popular election, king of the English poets."-Southey. It seems difficult at this day to realize that Hayley could ever have enjoyed such a reputation, so utterly has he now disappeared from the public view.

The following is a list of his principal publications: The Triumphs of Temper, a Poem, in 6 cantos, 4to; Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter, 4to; The Triumph of Music, a Poem, 4to; Essay on History, addressed to Gibbon, 4to; Essay on Epic Poetry, 4to; Essay on Old Maids, 3 vols., 12mo; Essay on Sculpture, 4to; Life, Works, and Letters of Cowper, 3 vols., 4to; Life of Milton, 4to., Life and Pestical Works of Milton, 3 vols., folio, etc.

Wakefield.

Gilbert Wakefield, 1756-1801, was a distinguished classical scholar and critic.

Wakefield was born in Nottingham, and educated at Cambridge. He entered the ministry of the Church of England, but afterwards abandoned episcopacy and became very bitter towards it, although he did not connect himself with any other religious body. He was classical tutor in the Dissenting Academy at Warrington from 1779 to 1783; taught a private school at Nottingham from 1784 to 1790; in 1791-2 was classical tutor in the Dissenting Academy at Hackney. He wrote intemperately on ecclesiastical and political subjects, and in 1799 was imprisoned for a year for a seditious libel. The sympathy for him, growing out of this appearance of persecution, led his political friends to make up for him a purse of £5000.

Wakefield possessed accurate scholarship and acuteness of intellect, but lacked judgment; he was violent in his prejudices, and bitter in his animosities; and he rebelled against authority, equally in church, in state, and in letters. His writings are valuable, not for his conclusions, but for the sharpness of his criticism.

He published An Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Social Worship, advocating its inexpediency and impropriety; An Inquiry concerning the Person of Jesus Christ; Evidences of Christianity; Examination of Paine's Age of Reason; Reply to Paine's Second Part of the Age of Reason; Translation of the New Testament; Poetical Translations from the Ancients; Memoirs of his Life, written by Himself. He gave critical editions of Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, and several of the Greek Plays.

"Gilbert Wakefield was a diligent, and, we believe, a sincere inquirer after truth,

but he was unhappily so framed in temper and habits of mind as to be nearly certain of missing it, in almost every topic of inquiry. He was as violent against the Greek accents as he was against the Trinity, and anathematized the final V as strongly as Episcopacy."- British Critic.

"He had the pale complexion and the mild features of a saint, was a most gentle creature in domestic life, and a very amiable man; but when he took part in political or religious controversy, his pen was dipped in gall."-Henry Crabb Robinson.

Porson.

RICHARD PORSON, 1759-1808, was the greatest Greek scholar of his day.

Porson was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and was made Regius Professor of Greek in that University, but dissolved the connection on account of his scruples concerning the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Porson's memory was remarkable, and his application, when not interfered with by intemperance, was extraordinary. He was conversant with the entire range of Greek and Latin classics, and extremely well read in English and French. He did not display as much originality and breadth of view, perhaps, as his great predecessor, Bentley, but his power of verbal criticism was immense. In private intercourse, especially with the unlearned, he was amiable and unassuming; but he could not endure any affectation of learning, or unsound scholarship in any shape. Hence his literary controversies are unpleasantly bitter in tone.

After leaving Cambridge he obtained the position of head librarian of the London Institution, and cked out his somewhat scanty salary by writing for the newspapers. Porson's published works do not correspond to his reputation. His life was too irregular, and too much harassed by petty cares, to permit him to give forth any one work fully commensurate with his genius. He edited several Greek plays, and published Notes and Emendations to the Greek poets, and numerous scattered essays. His celebrated Letters to Archdeacon Travis, against the authenticity of 1 John v. 7, were bitter but able, and exhausted the argument on that side of the question.

ROBERT POTTER, 1721-1804, a graduate of Cambridge and a clergyman of the Church of England, is favorably known as a translator from the Greek classics. His Translations of the Plays of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles have all been in demand, and all have substantial merit, though by no means of a high order. Potter also published a volume of Poems, and some other works of less note.

STUART and REVETT.-James Stuart, 1713-1788, a classical scholar, and Nicholas Revett, 1720-1804, an accomplished architect and painter, connected themselves indissolubly with the memory of Grecian art and architecture, by their work, The Antiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated, in 4 vols., imp. fol., first published in 1762. In this great work, the first which gave exactness to our knowledge of Athenian antiquities, the literary portions were furnished by Stuart, and the drawings and measurements by Revett. It is popularly quoted as "Stuart and Revett's Athens."

JACOB BRYANT, 1715-1804, was a man of great learning and a voluminous writer on learned topics. He was tutor to the sons of the Duke of Marlborough, and had free access to the famous library at the Duke's castle of Blenheim. His most important work was one on the Ancient Mythology, 3 vols., 4to. He published Observations on

Various parts of Ancient History, in which he joined issue with the greatest critics, Bentley, Grotius, Bochart, and Beza. He wrote also A Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures and the Truth of the Christian Religion; and many other works.

BENJAMIN BLAYNEY, D. D., 1801, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, had a high reputation as a Biblical critic, and was employed for many years in revising for the Clarendon Press the text of the Authorized Version of the Bible, with a view chiefly of eliminating typographical errors. His edition has been followed since as the standard in England. He wrote also a New Translation of Jeremiah and Zechariah, with Notes, after the manner of Lowth's Version of Isaiah, but not with equal success. He published a learned Dissertation on Daniel's Seventy Weeks, and a critical edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch. ** Blayney was not deficient in harmony, but he had not that exquisite taste, and acute discernment of poetical beauty, for which Lowth was distinguished." — Orme.

JAMES ELPHINSTON, 1721-1809, a Scotch schoolmaster, born in Edinburgh, exercised his vocation for a long time and with great favor, near London. Besides being intimate with Dr. Johnson and other literary celebrities, he dabbled a good deal in literature on his own account, and had a great fancy for reforming the spelling of the language. He made many attempts in this line, but found people just as obstinate on the subject then as they are now; no persuasions of the persevering Scotchman could make them see the beauty of writing proze, or, boath, geniusses, Inglish, Lattin, etc. Reformers of this kind do not seem to see the enormous difficulty of getting a whole people to change a single word at any one's bidding. Language, indeed, changes continually; nothing is half so fluctuating. But the change is never made to order. Elphinston published Propriety Ascertained in her Picture, an explanation of his phonographic system; English Orthography Epitomized; Proprietie's Pocket Dictionary; Fifty Years' Correspondence between Geniusses of boath Sexes and James Elphinston, 8 vols.; Education, a Poem; A Poetical Version of Racine's Redemption, etc., etc.

Walker.

John Walker, 1732-1807, a celebrated elocutionist of London, is widely known from his connection with the English Dictionary.

Walker was born at Colney-Hatch, Middlesex, and was educated a Presbyterian, but became afterwards a zealous Catholic. He was in early life an actor. At the age of thirty-five he left the stage, and engaged in teaching, which after two years he abandoned and devoted himself to public lectures on Elocution. These he delivered with great applause in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Walker had a quick ear, and was a careful observer of the sounds of the language; and by taking note of the way in which the several words were uttered by educated people, and by the best public speakers, he was enabled to give a standard for the pronunciation of English words. His Pronouncing Dictionary became an authority, not on the ground of his dictum, but because he had carefully and judiciously selected for each word or set of words that pronunciation which was used by genteel and educated people. It was an exact exhibit, prepared by an expert, of the actual

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