which gave an impulse to the romantic movement in
English literature. He also ed. Pope's works, and had begun an ed. of
Dryden when he _d._
WARTON, THOMAS (1728-1790).--Literary historian and critic, younger _s._
of Thomas W., Prof. of Poetry at Oxf., and brother of the above, was
_ed._ under his _f._ at Basingstoke and at Oxf. At the age of 19 he
_pub._ a poem of considerable promise, _The Pleasures of Melancholy_, and
two years later attracted attention by _The Triumph of Isis_ (1749), in
praise of Oxf., and in answer to Mason's _Isis_. After various other
poetical excursions he _pub._ _Observations on Spenser's Faery Queen_
(1754), which greatly increased his reputation, and in 1757 he was made
Prof. of Poetry at Oxf., which position he held for 10 years. After
bringing out one or two ed. of classics and biographies of college
benefactors, he issued, from 1774-81, his great _History of English
Poetry_, which comes down to the end of the Elizabethan age. The research
and judgment, and the stores of learning often curious and recondite,
which were brought to bear upon its production render this work, though
now in various respects superseded, a vast magazine of information, and
it did much to restore our older poetry to the place of which it had been
unjustly deprived by the classical school. His ed. of Milton's minor
poems has been pronounced by competent critics to be the best ever
produced. W. was a clergyman, but if the tradition is to be believed that
he had only two sermons, one written by his _f._ and the other printed,
and if the love of ease and of ale which he celebrates in some of his
verses was other than poetical, he was more in his place as a critic than
as a cleric. As a poet he hardly came up to his own standards. He was
made Poet Laureate in 1785, and in the same year Camden Prof. of History,
and was one of the first to detect the Chatterton forgeries, a task in
which his antiquarian lore stood him in good stead.
WATERLAND, DANIEL (1683-1740).--Theologian, _b._ at Waseley Rectory,
Lincolnshire, and _ed._ at Camb., took orders, and obtained various
preferments, becoming Master of Magdalene Coll., Camb. 1713, Chancellor
of York 1722, and Archdeacon of Middlesex 1730. He was an acute and able
controversialist on behalf of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, on
which he wrote several treatises. He was also the author of a _History of
the Athanasian Creed_ (1723).
WATERTON, CHARLES (1782-1865).
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