1771, was chosen a Fellow of the Antiquarian Society; and on the
nomination of the Earl of Lichfield, Chancellor of the University, was
collated to the Rectory of Kiddington, Oxfordshire, a benefice of small
value. Ten years after, he drew up a History of his Parish, and
published it as a specimen of a Parochial History of Oxfordshire.
Meanwhile, he was engaged in an undertaking, of higher interest to the
national antiquities and literature.

In illustrating the origin, and tracing the progress of our vernacular
poetry, we had not kept pace with the industry of our continental
neighbours. To supply this deficiency, a work had been projected by
Pope, and was now contemplated, and indeed entered on, by Gray and
Mason, in conjunction. We cannot but regret, that Gray relinquished the
undertaking, as he did, on hearing into whose hands it had fallen, since
he would (as the late publication of his papers by Mr. Mathias has
shewn) have brought to the task a more accurate and extensive
acquaintance with those foreign sources from whence our early writers
derived much of their learning, and would, probably, have adopted a
better method, and more precision in the general disposition of his
materials. Yet there is no reason to complain of the way in which Warton
has acquitted himself, as far as he has gone. His History of English
Poetry is a rich mine, in which, if we have some trouble in separating
the ore from the dross, there is much precious metal to reward our
pains. The first volume of this laborious work was published in 1774;
two others followed, in 1778, and in 1781; and some progress had been
made at his decease in printing the fourth. In 1777, he increased the
poetical treasure of his country by a volume of his own poems, of which
there was a demand for three other editions before his death. In 1782,
we find him presented by his college to the donative of Hill Farrance,
in Somersetshire, and employed in publishing an Inquiry into the