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interwoven with matter requiring attention on other accounts, of which occasional notice has been taken in the body of the work, and which must again be the subject of discussion. The reader of early English poetry will be at no loss to perceive, that the objections and conduct here spoken of, are those of the late Mr. Ritson. To be zealous in detecting error, exposing folly, or checking the presumptuous arrogance of any literary despot, is an obligation which the commonwealth of learning imposes upon all her sons. The tone of the reproof, and the character of the offence, are all that will be demanded of the ministrant in his office; and so great is the latitude allowed, that he who will condescend "to break a butterfly upon a wheel,” secundum artem, runs no greater risk, than a gentle censure for the eccentricity of his taste; and even acrimony, where great provocation has been given, may pass for just and honest indignation. But Mr. Ritson, in the execution of his censorial duty, indulged in a vein of low scurrility and gross personalities, wholly without example since the days of Curll. He not only combated Warton's opinions, and corrected his errors, questioned his scholarship, and denied his ability; but impugned his veracity, attacked his morality, and openly accused him of all those mean and despicable arts, by which a needy scribbler attempts to rifle the public purse. There would have been little in this beyond the common operation of a nine days wonder, and the ferment of the hour which every deviation from established practice is sure to excite, had the charges been limited to a single publication. But for a period of twenty years, both while the object of them was living, and after his decease, they were repeated in every variety of form, always from the same amiable motives, though occasionally in a subdued style of animosity. The result of this extraordinary course, was the establishment of Mr. Ritson as the critical lord paramount in the realms of

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romance and minstrelsy; his fiat became the ruling law, and no audacious hand was to raise the veil which covered the infirmities of the suzerain. For though he has magnified those venial errors, which, as the human mind is constituted, are almost inseparable from such an undertaking as Warton's, into offences which only meet their parallel in the criminal nomenclature of the country-into fraud, imposture and forgeryyet his own labours in the same department of literature, his "Ancient Songs," and "Metrical Romances," though scarcely equalling a tithe of the "History of English Poetry," are marked by the same kinds of inaccuracy as those he has so coarsely branded. Indeed on such a subject it would have been as marvellous as unaccountable, if they had not:-but this is foreign to our purpose. It will rather be asked, whether the historian of English poetry may not have provoked this treatment by his own intemperance of rebuke, or want of charity towards others; and whether the vehemence of Mr. Ritson's indignation, and the virulence of his invective, may not have had a more commensurate motive, than the misquotation of a date, a name or a text, or the fallacy of a mere speculative opinion. With the exception of one misdemeanour hereafter to be mentioned,—a sin in itself of pardonable levity, if it must be so stigmatized,-Warton's conduct towards his fellowlabourers in the mine of antiquarian research, was distinguished by a tone of courtesy and complimentary address, which the sterner principles of the present day have rejected as bordering too closely upon adulation. Of this therefore as a general charge he must be acquitted, and equally so of any intention to wound the feelings or undermine the reputation of Mr. Ritson, as that gentleman's first publication connected with early English literature, was his "Observations" on Warton's

A Collection of Garlands (which cannot now be referred to) may bear an earlier date. But this was a local pub

lication, not likely to extend beyond the limits of a country town. The "Observations" produced a controversy in

history. The causes of this extraordinary persecution must hence be sought for in other directions. Among these it is not difficult to detect the sullen rancour of a jealous and selfappointed rival, the workings of an inferior mind, aiming at notoriety by an insolent triumph over talents, which it at once envies and despairs of equalling. The "taste and elegance with which Warton had embellished his narrative, became a source of chagrin to a man who sought distinction by a style

the Gentleman's Magazine for 1782-83. The first letter on the subject, signed Verax, was in all probability written by Warton. (See his letter to Mr. Nichols of the same date, inclosing a communication to that Miscellany, and requesting a concealment of the writer's name.) Those signed A. S. were by the late Mr. Russell of Sydney College. The letter signed Vindex contains internal evidence of Mr. Ritson's hand, who may also have drawn up the epitome of his pamphlet (1783, p. 281). But who was Castigator? (1782, p. 571). Was it the same worthy personage of whom his friend records the following creditable transaction? "This venerabilissimus episcopus [the bishop of Dromore], upon a different occasion, gave Mister STEEVENS a transcript from the above [folio] MS., of the vulgar ballad of Old Simon the King, with a strict injunction not to show it to this editour [Mr. Ritson], which however he immediately brought him!" Yet these were honourable men!

In this extraordinary pamphlet, Mr. Ritson made thirty-eight remarks upon the multifarious matter contained in Warton's first volume (extending to p. 304, vol. ii. of the present edition). Nine of these consist of those personalities already spoken of, or are mere objections to the conduct and order of the work. Thirteen are devoted to glossarial corrections, among which are the candid specimen recorded vol. ii. p. 52, note, and two literal interpretations, instead of two very appropriate paraphrases. The remaining fifteen, or rather the subjects they refer to, it may be worth while to analyse. One of

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these had been already corrected by Warton in the Emendations appended to the second volume,—a circumstance which Mr. Ritson either knew, or ought to have known, as he carefully picked his way through this additional matter, for the purpose of supplying two corrections, one of which he afterwards recalled, and in furnishing the other committed an error equally great with that he amended. A second comprises the very "egregious blunder" of calling a piece of political rhyme a "ballad," when it is not written in " your balladmetre." In a third, Warton has chosen to make a direct inference, where the affair admits neither of absolute proof, nor disproof. And a fourth offers an opinion, but a mere and guarded opinion, as to the age of a poem, in which there is every reason to believe he was correct. (See Mr. Park's note, vol. ii. p. 512. a.) In seven examples, it may be allowed that Mr. Ritson has convicted the historian of "ignorance;" though two of these refer to matters that are rather probable than certain: but in four of the remaining five, he has offered objections or corrections on subjects, where the charges of error only rebound upon himself. The fifteenth refers to a subject where Warton candidly acknowledges his inability to gratify the reader's curiosity. Thus, with the exception of the glossarial inaccuracies, of which more will be said hereafter, Mr. Ritson can only be admitted to have corrected seven mistakes, or more rigidly speaking five, in a 4to volume of 468 pages, and in the execution of which he has himself become chargeable with four.

of orthography, resembling any thing but the language of his native country; and hence the sarcastic tone in which these graceful advantages are complimented, while they are carefully contrasted with the historian's "habitual blunders." Warton's learning was also of no common order; and his reading of that extensive kind which enabled him to illustrate his theme from the varied circle of ancient and modern literature; and here again it became matter of exultation to discover, that his knowledge of Italian had once been but limited, or to hint that his acquaintance with Hickes's Thesaurus had been assisted by a translation of "Wotton's Conspectus." But in the gaiety of his heart, Warton had smiled at the solemn dullness of Hearne, the idol of Mr. Ritson's affections; he had descanted on the laboured triflings of this diligent antiquary in a style of successful yet playful irony, and chose to entertain no very exalted opinion of the patient drudgery by which "Thomas" was to recommend himself to posterity. This was an unpardonable offence, and little short of a declaration of hostilities by anticipation. For though genius will approve the well-directed satire which exposes its own peculiar foibles, while pourtraying the follies of a contemporary, yet moody mediocrity never forgives the bolt which, aimed at another's eccentricities, inadvertently grazes its own inviolable person. In addition, the historian of English poetry was a Christian, a churchman, and a distinguished member of his college; all and either of them sufficient to condemn him in the eyes of a man whose creed was confined to a rigid abstinence from animal food; with whom a clergyman was but another name for a "lazy, stinking and ignorant monk;" and who seems never to have been better pleased, than when retailing the coarse and pointless ribaldry of the fifteenth century, against the honours and dignities of an University. To this full measure of indiscretion, Warton had superadded a warm admira

tion of the powers and learning of Warburton; and had even adopted, and considerably amplified, the fanciful theory of this eminent prelate on the origin of romantic fiction. This again was siding with the enemy. The bishop of Gloucester had conducted a merciless persecution against a sect of which Mr. Ritson made no scruple to acknowledge himself a follower, the "Epicureorum factio, æquo semper errore a vero devia et illa existimans ridenda quæ nesciat," and unhappily for his fame and the cause he advocated, in the possession of a giant's strength had too frequently exercised it with the cruelty of a giant. The tyranny of the master was therefore to be avenged on the head of his otherwise too guilty pupil; and the double end to be gained, of inflicting an insidious wound upon a foe too powerful to be encountered in the open field", and crushing an unresisting and applauded rival. But enough of this revolting subject, of which justice to the memory of an amiable, unoffending and elegant scholar required that some notice should be taken, and which no language can be too strong to mark with deserved reprobation.

It is now time to turn to those objections of Mr. Ritson, which embrace the literary defects of the History of English Poetry.

There can be no intention of dragging the reader through the minute and tedious details, with which this branch of the controversy is burthened. Wherever the better information of

10 Macrobius Som. Scipionis, in init. "It is ludicrous in the extreme to observe a man of Mr. Ritson's attainments, stating Warburton's "distinguishing characteristic" to be "a want of knowledge." The "habitual mendacity " of the same learned prelate finds its parallel, if mere errors of opinion must receive this bland distinction, in such hasty assertions as the following: "The real chanson de Roland was unquestionably a metrical romance of great length." Introd. to Met. Rom. p. 37. "The Armoricans never possessed a single story on the subject of Arthur

and the Round Table." Ib. p. 46. "The poets of Provence borrowed their art from the French or Normans." Ib. p. 50. "There is but one single romance existing that can be attributed to a troubadour," p. 51. "Before the first crusade, or for more than half a century after it, there was not one single romance on the achievements of Arthur or his knights." Ib. p. 52. To enumerate all the unfounded assertions contained in the section immediately following "the Saxon and English language would be to write a small treatise.

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