Joseph, the elder brother of Thomas and Jane Warton, attended Winchester and Oriel College, Oxford (B.A. 1744, M.A. 1759, D.D. from New College 1768); he was curate of Chelsea, rector of Tunworth, and prebendary of St. Paul's (1782) and Westminster (1788). Warton returned to Winchester College in 1755 where he served as headmaster from 1766 until his death. An amiable man and polite writer, Warton contributed to Dodsley's Collection of Poems and assisted John Nichols in selecting poems for its successor, A Select Collection of Poems (1780-84).
TEXT RECORDS:
1736 ca.[The Palace of Vanity.]
1739Sappho's Advice.
1740 ca.[Fragment of an Allegory.]
1740[Sketch of a Subject for Verse.]
1744The Enthusiast: or, the Lover of Nature. A Poem.
1746Ode I. To Fancy
1746Ode II. To Liberty.
1746Ode III. To Health. Written on a Recovery from the Small-Pox.
1746Ode IV. To Superstition.
1746Ode IX. To the Nightingale.
1746Ode VI. Against Despair.
1746Ode VII. To Evening.
1746Ode X. On the Spring. To a Lady.
1746Ode XI. To a Lady who hates the Country.
1746Ode XII. On the Death of —
1746Ode XIII. On Shooting.
1746Ode XIV. To Solitude.
1746Odes on Various Subjects: The Advertisement.
1746To Superstition. An Ode.
1747Ode VIII. The Happy Life. [To Content.]
1748An Ode, written in a Grotto near Farnham in Surrey, call'd Ludlow's Cave.
1748Ode on the Death of the Author.
1748Ode to Sleep.
1748Retirement: an Ode.
1753A Dissertation upon Pastoral Poetry.
1753Adventurer 57 [On Personifications.]
1753The World 26 [On Simplicity.]
1756Dedication to Essay on Genius and Writings of Pope.
1756Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope.
1761To his Royal Highness the Duke of York, written from Winchester-Camp.
1764Contentment.
1780[Letters to John Nichols.]
1782An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope. Volume the Second.
1797Note to Part of the Ninth Ode of the Fourth Book. A Fragment.
1797Note to The Alley.
PUBLICATIONS:
Fashion: an epistolary satire to a friend. 1742.
The enthusiast, or the lover of nature. A poem. 1744.
Odes on various subjects. 1746.
Ranelagh house: a satire in prose. 1747.
Thomas Warton Sr, Poems on several occasions, ed. Joseph Warton. 1748.
An ode, occasioned by reading Mr West's translation of Pindar. 1749.
An ode to evening. 1749.
The works of Virgil in Latin and English [Eclogues and Georgics trans. Warton]. 4 vols. 1753.
An essay on the writings and genius of Pope. 1756, 2 vols, 1782.
Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of poetry, and observations on poetry and eloquence, from the Discoveries of Ben Jonson [ed. Warton]. 1787.
The works of Alexander Pope [ed. Warton]. 9 vols, 1797.
The poetical works of John Dryden [ed. John Warton]. 4 vols, 1811.
The three Wartons, a choice of their verse, ed. Eric Partridge. 1927.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
Basingstoke Grammar School
Winchester College
Oriel College Oxford
Bachelor of Arts
Master of Arts
New College Oxford
Bachelor of Divinity
clergyman
schoolmaster
Prebendary of St. Paul's
Prebendary of Westminster
poet
essayist
The Adventurer
The Museum
The World
Christian's Magazine
Dr. Mark Akenside
Robert Bedingfield
Rev. Peregrine Bingham
Rev. William Lisle Bowles
Edmund Burke
George Colman
William Collins
Robert Dodsley
Rev. John Dyer
Rev. Francis Fawkes
Henry Fielding
David Garrick
William Gerard Hamilton
James Harris
John Hawkesworth
William Hayley
Rev. Robert Holmes
John Hoole
Rev. George Huddesford
Samuel Johnson
William King of Oxford
Rev. William Lipscomb
Bp. Robert Lowth
George Lyttelton
Bp. Richard Mant
Rev. William Mason
Rev. James Merrick
William Julius Mickle
Elizabeth Montagu
Edward Moore
Hannah More
Rev. Thomas Morell
Francis Noel Clarke Mundy
John Nichols
Richard Phelps
Joshua Reynolds
Rev. Glocester Ridley
Samuel Rogers
Rev. Thomas Russell
William Seward
Rev. Joseph Spence
Bonnell Thornton
Robert Vansittart
William Vernon
Rev. Thomas Warton the Elder
Jane Warton
Rev. Thomas Warton
Gilbert West
Michael Wodhull
Edward Young
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL; DLB.
Robert Dodsley, Collection of Poems (1748-58); Pearch, Supplement to Dodsley's Collection (1768-83); Percival Stockdale, in An Inquiry into the Nature, and Genuine Laws of Poetry (1778); Catalogue of five hundred Celebrated Authors (1788); "Remarks on Warton's Pope" Monthly Magazine 6 (August 1798) 88; obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 70 (March, May 1800) 287-88, 409-12; "Account of Joseph Warton" European Magazine 37 (March 1800) 199-201 [portrait]; "Joseph Warton" European Magazine 37 (May 1800) 348-51; "Account of Dr. Joseph Warton" Scots Magazine 62 (April 1800) 219-20; obituary in Monthly Magazine 9 (May 1800) 398; Annual Register for (1800) 5; obituary in Universal Magazine 108 (May 1801) 329-30; John Wooll, Biographical Memoirs of Warton (1806); Review of Wooll, European Magazine 51 (January-February 1807) 40-44, 125-29; Samuel Egerton Brydges, "Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Warton" Censura Literaria 3 (1807) 184-99; Monthly Review (1807) i 225; "Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Warton" Monthly Anthology [Boston] 4 (January 1807) 5-12; Robert Southey, Specimens of Later English Poets (1807); Alexander Chalmers, English Poets (1810); Nathan Drake, Essays illustrative of the Rambler (1810); Alexander Chalmers, General Biographical Dictionary (1812-17); John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes (1812-15), John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the XVIII Century (1817-58); Thomas Campbell, Specimens of the British Poets (1819); John Aikin, Select Works of the British Poets (1820); Henry Francis Cary, "Joseph Warton" in London Magazine 5 (March 1822) 264-69; Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the most Eminent Persons (1832-34); Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Foster, Alumni Oxon (1887-91); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); Edmund Gosse, "Joseph and Thomas Warton" in Some Diversions of a Man of Letters (1920); Edith J. Morley, "Joseph Warton, a Comparison of his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope with his Edition of Pope's Works" Essays and Studies 9 (1923); Arthur O. Lovejoy, "On the Discrimination of Romanticisms" PMLA 39 (1924) 229-53; Blanche Isabel Megaffin, "The Warton Brothers: Their Relation to Romanticism and Milton" (Master's thesis, Manitoba University, 1931); Burns Martin, "Some unpublished Wartoniana" Studies in Philology 29 (1932) 53-67; William D. MacClintock, Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope: a History of the Five Editions (1933); Hoyt Trowbridge, "Joseph Warton's Classification of the English Poets" MLN 51 (1936) 515-18; Fairchild, in Religious Trends in English Poetry (1942); Julia Helen Hysham, "Joseph Warton: a Biographical and Critical Study" (dissertation, Columbia University, 1950); Arthur Fenner Jr., "The Wartons romanticize their Verse" Studies in Philology 53 (1956) 501-08; George B. Schick, "Kind Hints to John Nichols, by Joseph Warton and others" Notes and Queries 201 (February 1956) 76-78; George B. Schick, "Appreciation of Milton as a Criterion of Eighteenth-Century Taste" Notes and Queries NS 4 (1957) 113-14; Julia Hysham, "Joseph Warton's Reputation as a Poet" Studies in Romanticism 1 (1962) 220-29; Joan Pittock, "Joseph Warton and His Second Volume of the Essay on Pope" RES 18 (1967) 264-73; David B. Morris, "Joseph Warton's Figure of Virtue: Poetic Indirection in The Enthusiast" Philological Quarterly 50 (1971); Joan Pittock, The Ascendancy of Taste: the Achievement of Joseph and Thomas Warton (1973); David Fairer, "The Poems of Thomas Warton the Elder?" RES 26 (1975) 287-300, 395-406; 29 (1978) 61-65; David Fairer, "The Writing and Printing of Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope" Studies in Bibliography 30 (1977) 211-19; Joan Pittock, "Lives and Letters: New Wartoniana" Durham University Journal 70 (1978) 193-203; Butt, OHEL (1979); Richard Wendorf, introduction to Joseph Warton Odes on Various Subjects (Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1979); John A. Vance, "The Samuel Johnson-Joseph Warton Friendship" Johnson Society Transactions (1982) 44-55; John A. Vance, Joseph and Thomas Warton (1983); Christina le Prevost, "More Unacknowledged Verse by Joseph Warton" RES 37 (1986) 317-47; Hugh Reid, "A Probable Addition to the Poetic Works of Joseph Warton" RES 38 (1987) 526-29; Hugh Reid, "The Printing of Joseph Warton's Odes" Papers of the Bibliographic Society of America 84 (June 1990) 151-57; Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995); Michael F. Suarez, ed., Dodsley, Collection of Poems (1997) 1:220.
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Rev. Joseph Warton:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Rev. Joseph Warton:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)