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life of an Oxford student affords but indifferent materials for the writer of biography. Undiversified by incident, it glides along as tranquilly as doth the tideless Isis through its level and unromantic but beautiful meadows. And for that inner life, which, in the meanest, is a romance and a mystery, who may depict it, even when himself is his hero? Those, therefore, who die and make no sign, can rarely awaken the interest of posterity; and insensibly their fame diminishes, until a few dates are all we have to tell the story of their lives and of their works.

Thomas Warton sprang from a family conspicuous for its literary attainments, and its hereditary loyalty. His ancestors were settled at Beverley in Yorkshire, one of whom was knighted by Charles I., and the family estate was confiscated for their attachment to the royal cause during the Civil War. His father was sometime Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Professor of Poetry in that University, and Rector of Basingstoke in Hampshire, where the subject of this Memoir was born, in 1728. From his earliest years he displayed a studious