of spinning the thread of life in another mythology. Theft is always
dangerous: Gray has made weavers of the slaughtered bards, by a fiction
outrageous and incongruous."[6] Indeed Mallet himself had a very
confused notion of the relation of the Celtic to the Teutonic race. He
speaks constantly of the old Scandinavians as Celts. Percy points out
the difference, in the preface to his translation, and makes the
necessary correction in the text, where the word Celtic occurs--usually
by substituting "Gothic and Celtic" for the "Celtic" of the original.
Mason made his contribution to Runic literature, "Song of Harold the
Valiant," a rather insipid versification of a passage from the "Knytlinga
Saga," which had been rendered by Bartholin into Latin, from him into
French by Mallet, and from Mallet into English prose by Percy. Mason
designed it for insertion in the introduction to Gray's abortive history
of English poetry.

The true pioneers of the mediaeval revival were the Warton brothers.
"The school of Warton" was a term employed, not without disparaging
implications, by critics who had no liking for antique minstrelsy.
Joseph and Thomas Warton were the sons of Thomas Warton, vicar of
Basingstoke, who had been a fellow of Magdalen and Professor of Poetry at
Oxford; which latter position was afterward filled by the younger of his
two sons. It is interesting to note that a volume of verse by Thomas
Warton, Sr., posthumously printed in 1748, includes a Spenserian
imitation and translations of two passages from the "Song of Ragner
Lodbrog," an eleventh-century Viking, after the Latin version quoted by
Sir Wm. Temple in his essay "Of Heroic Virtue";[7] so that the romantic
leanings of the Warton brothers seem to be an instance of heredity.
Joseph was educated at Winchester,--where Collins was his
schoolfellow--and both of the brothers at Oxford. Joseph afterward
became headmaster of Winchester, and lived till 1800, surviving his
younger brother ten years. Thomas was always identified with Oxford,
where he resided for forty-seven years. He was appointed, in 1785,
Camden Professor of History in the university, but gave no lectures. In
the same year he was chosen to succeed Whitehead, as Poet Laureate. Both
brothers were men of a genial, social temper. Joseph was a man of some
elegance; he was fond of the company of young ladies, went into general
society, and had a certain renown as a drawing-room wit and diner-out.
He