The Memoirs of Joseph Warton, by Dr. Wooll, the present Head-master of
Rugby school, is a book which, although it contains a faithful
representation of his life and character by one who had been his pupil,
and though it is enriched with a collection of letters between some of
the men most distinguished in literature during his time, is yet so much
less known than it deserves, that in speaking of it to Mr. Hayley, who
had been intimate with Warton, and to whom some of the letters are
addressed, I found him ignorant of its contents. It will supply me with
much of what I have to relate concerning the subject of it.

There is no instance in this country of two brothers having been equally
celebrated for their skill in poetry with Joseph and Thomas Warton. What
has been already told of the parentage of the one renders it unnecessary
to say more in this respect of the other. He was born at Dunsfold, in
Surrey, under the roof of his maternal grandfather, in the beginning of
1722. Like his brother, he experienced the care of an affectionate
parent, who did the utmost his scanty means would allow to educate them
both as scholars; but with this difference, that Joseph being three-and
-twenty years old at the time of Mr. Warton's decease, whereas Thomas was
but seventeen, was more capable of appreciating, as it deserved, the
tenderness of such a father. To what has been before said of this
estimable man, I have to add, that his poems, of which I had once a
cursory view, appeared to me to merit more notice than they have
obtained; and that his version of Fracastorio's pathetic lamentation on
the death of his two sons particularly engaged my attention. Suavis adeo
poeta ac doctus, is the testimony borne to him by one[1] who will
himself have higher claims of the same kind on posterity.

Having been some time at New College school, but principally taught by
his father till he was fourteen years old, Joseph was then admitted on