The Wartons, wandering in their woodlands, were confronted with a
problem such as would be involved, to a couple of youths to-day, in
considering the reputation of Tennyson and Browning.

There remains no doubt in my mind, after a close examination of such
documents as remain to us, that Joseph Warton, whose attitude has
hitherto been strangely neglected, was in fact the active force in this
remarkable revolt against existing conventions in the world of
imaginative art. His six years of priority would naturally give him an
advantage over his now better-known and more celebrated brother.
Moreover, we have positive evidence of the firmness of his opinions at a
time when his brother Thomas was still a child. The preface to Joseph's
_Odes_ of 1746 remains as a dated document, a manifesto, which admits of
no question. But the most remarkable of his poems, "The Enthusiast," was
stated to have been written in 1740, when he was eighteen and his
brother only twelve years of age. It is, of course, possible that these
verses, which bear no sign of juvenile mentality, were touched up at a
later date. But this could only be a matter of diction, of revision, and
we are bound to accept the definite and repeated statement of Joseph,
that they were essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a
fact, "The Enthusiast" is seen to be a document of extraordinary
importance. I do not speak of the positive merit of the poem, which it
would be easy to exaggerate. Gray, in a phrase which has been much
discussed, dismissed the poetry of Joseph Warton by saying that he had
"no choice at all." It is evident to me that Gray meant by this to
stigmatise the diction of Joseph Warton, which is jejune, verbose, and
poor. He had little magic in writing; he fails to express himself with
creative charm. But this is not what constitutes his interest for us,
which is moreover obscured by the tameness of his Miltonic-Thomsonian
versification. What should arrest our attention is the fact that here,