Thomas Warton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Thomas Warton
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| Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom | |
| In office 20 April 1785 – 21 May 1790 |
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| Monarch | George III |
| Preceded by | William Whitehead |
| Succeeded by | Henry James Pye |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 9 January 1728 Basingstoke, Hampshire, England |
| Died | 21 May 1790 (aged 62) Oxford, England |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Literary historian, critic, and poet |
Thomas Warton (9 January 1728 – 21 May 1790) was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1785, following the death of William Whitehead (poet). He is sometimes called Thomas Warton the younger to distinguish him from his father Thomas Warton the elder. His most famous poem is The Pleasures of Melancholy, a representative work of the Graveyard poets.
Life
Warton was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, the son of poet Thomas Warton, the Elder, and younger brother of Joseph Warton. As a youngster, Warton demonstrated a strong predilection toward writing poetry, a skill he would continue to develop all of his life. In fact, Warton translated one of Martial's epigrams at nine, and wrote The Pleasures of Melancholy at seventeen.
His early education was given to him by his father. At sixteen years of age he enrolled at Winchester College, later moving to Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated from Oxford in 1747, where he subsequently became a Fellow. Warton was selected as Poet Laureate of Oxford in 1747 and again in 1748. His duty in this post was to write a poem about a selected patroness of the University, which would be read to her on a specially appointed day.
Warton was appointed Professor of Poetry at the university in 1757, a post that he held for ten years.
In 1771 he was appointed rector of Kiddington in Oxfordshire, a post he held until his death.
In 1785, he was appointed Camden Professor of History, as well as Poet Laureate. He was a friend and rival of Samuel Johnson, and his poetry was greatly influenced by earlier English poets such as Chaucer, Drayton, Fairfax, and Spenser.
Among other important contributions, Warton, along with his brother, was among the first to argue that Sir Thopas, by Geoffrey Chaucer, was a parody. Warton contributed to the general project of the ballad revival. He was a general supporter of the poetry of Thomas Gray—a fact that Johnson satirized in his parody "Hermit hoar, in solemn cell." Among his minor works were an edition of Theocritus, a selection of Latin and Greek inscriptions, the humorous Oxford Companion to the Guide and Guide to the Companion (1762); lives of Sir Thomas Pope and Ralph Bathurst; and an Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782).
Warton, who did not marry, gave little attention to his clerical duties, and Oxford always remained his home. He was known as a very easy and convivial as well as a very learned don, with a taste for taverns and crowds as well as dim aisles and romances.
A sonnet by Warton
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Ah! what a weary race my feet have run |
Various works
– an anthology of verse and Oxford wit
Warton Lectures
In 1910 Frida Mond endowed the British Academy with a fund to establish an annual Shakespeare oration or lecture, as well as an annual lecture on English poetry to be called the Warton Lecture, as a tribute to the memory of Thomas Warton as a historian of English poetry. The inaugural lectures in these series were delivered in 1911 and 1910, respectively.
See also
In Spanish: Thomas Warton para niños
