in massy pride,
Their mingling branches shoot from side to side;
Where elfin sculptors, with fantastic clew,
O'er the long roof their wild embroidery drew;
Where Superstition, with capricious hand,
In many a maze, the wreathed window planned,
With hues romantic tinged the gorgeous pane,
To fill with holy light the wondrous fane."[10]

The application of the word "romantic," in this passage, to the mediaeval
art of glass-staining is significant. The revival of the art in our own
day is due to the influence of the latest English school of romantic
poetry and painting, and especially to William Morris. Warton's
biographers track his passion for antiquity to the impression left upon
his mind by a visit to Windsor Castle, when he was a boy. He used to
spend his summers in wandering through abbeys and cathedrals. He kept
notes of his observations and is known to have begun a work on Gothic
architecture, no trace of which, however, was found among his
manuscripts. The Bodleian Library was one of his haunts, and he was
frequently seen "surveying with quiet and rapt earnestness the ancient
gateway of Magdalen College." He delighted in illuminated manuscripts
and black-letter folios. In his "Observations on the Faery Queene"[11]
he introduces a digression of twenty pages on Gothic architecture, and
speaks lovingly of a "very curious and beautiful folio manuscript of the
history of Arthur and his knights in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,
written on vellum, with illuminated initials and head-pieces, in which we
see the fashion of ancient armour, building, manner of tilting and other
particulars."

Another very characteristic poem of Warton's is the "Ode Written at
Vale-Royal Abbey in Cheshire," a monastery of Cistercian monks, founded
by Edward I. This piece is saturated with romantic feeling and written
in the stanza and manner of Gray's "Elegy," as will appear from a pair of
stanzas, taken at random:

"By the slow clock, in stately-measured chime,
That from the messy tower tremendous tolled,
No more the plowman counts the tedious time,
Nor distant shepherd pens the twilight fold.

"High o'er the trackless heath at midnight seen,
No more the windows, ranged in array
(Where the tall shaft and fretted nook between
Thick ivy twines), the tapered rites betray."

It is a note of Warton's period that, though Fancy and the Muse survey
the ruins of the abbey wi