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Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives by Henry Francis Cary
page 119 of 337 (35%)


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THOMAS WARTON.

The life of Thomas Warton, by Dr. Mant, now Bishop of Killaloe, prefixed
to the edition of his poems published at Oxford, is drawn from sources
so authentic, and detailed with so much exactness, that little remains
to be added to the circumstances which it relates.

Thomas Warton was descended from a very respectable family in Yorkshire.
His grandfather, Anthony Warton, was rector of a village in Hampshire;
and his father was a fellow of Magdalen College, and Poetry Professor in
the University of Oxford. His mother, daughter of Joseph Richardson, who
was also a clergyman, gave birth to three children:--Joseph, of whom
some account will hereafter be given, Thomas, and Jane. Thomas was born
at Basingstoke, in 1728; and very early in life afforded promise of his
future excellence. A letter, addressed to his sister from school when he
was about nine years of age, containing an epigram on Leander, was
preserved with affectionate regard by their brother, Dr. Warton. What
school it was, that may claim the honour of contributing to the
instruction of one who was afterwards so distinguished as a scholar, has
not been recorded.

On the 16th of March, 1743, he was admitted a commoner of Trinity
College, Oxford; and about two years after lost his father,--a volume of
whose poems was, soon after his death, printed by subscription, by his
eldest son Joseph, with two elegiac poems to his memory, one by the
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