not preferred to them all.

Warton admitted but three supreme English poets--Spenser, Shakespeare,
Milton--and he vehemently insisted that moral, didactic and panegyrical
poetry could never rise above the second class in importance. To assert
this was not merely to offend against the undoubted supremacy of Pope,
but it was to flout the claims of all those others to whom the age gave
allegiance. Joseph Warton does not shrink from doing this, and he gives
reason for abating the claims of all the classic favourites--Cowley,
Waller, Dryden, Addison. When it was advanced against him that he showed
arrogance in placing his opinion against that of a multitude of highly
trained judges, he replied that a real "relish and enjoyment of poetry"
is a rare quality, and "a creative and glowing imagination" possessed by
few. When the _dicta_ of Boileau were quoted against him, he repudiated
their authority with scarcely less vivacity than Keats was to display
half a century later.

Joseph Warton's _Essay_ wanders about, and we may acknowledge ourselves
more interested in the mental attitude which it displays than in the
detail of its criticism. The author insists, with much force, on the
value of a grandiose melancholy and a romantic horror in creating a
poetical impression, and he allows himself to deplore that Pope was so
ready to forget that "wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but
nature and passion are eternal." We need not then be surprised when
Joseph Warton boldly protests that no other part of the writings of Pope
approaches _Eloisa to Abelard_ in the quality of being "truly poetical."
He was perhaps led to some indulgence by the fact that this is the one
composition in which Pope appears to be indebted to Milton's lyrics, but
there was much more than that. So far as I am aware, _Eloisa to Abelard_
had never taken a high place with Pope's extreme admirers, doubtless