Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/337

Rh work, and other faculties were needful for the task, Warton, whose mind was discursive rather than reflective, estimating justly, and therefore mistrusting his own powers, may purposely have abstained from the completion of a design, the end of which would have heen so disproportionate to the commencement. The studious omission of all mention of the dramatic writers which, in a history of the literature of the Elizabethan age, is like performing the play of "Hamlet," with the part of Hamlet omitted, would seem to countenance this hypothesis.

Architecture and topography having always been favourite subjects of study with him, he now meditated a congenial work, "The History of his favourite county, Oxfordshire," of which the description of his own parish was sent forth as a specimen. He took a prominent part in the controversy respecting the Chatterton papers, proving their spuriousness from internal evidence with singular sagacity and acuteness; and on the death of Whitehead, in 1785, he accepted the office of Poet-Laureate.

The Laureates, like Falstaff, have been a fruitful occasion of wit in other men; and a jeu d'esprit appeared on the occasion, entitled "Probationary Odes," a copy of which was forwarded to Warton by the editor. All the pieces in the book were burlesques but one, and that solitary exception was Warton's own, the one he had just written in the year of his appointment. It happened to be about the worst composition that ever proceeded from his pen, and the heartless humourist had inserted it verbatim, as if it was itself a burlesque in its inimitable bathos.

He lived, however, to vindicate his office and reputation; and we must go back to the time of Dryden to find any birthday odes comparable to his in merit. On the resignation of Lord Stowell as Camden Professor of Y 2