The History of English Poetry

The History of English Poetry, from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century (1774-1781) by Thomas Warton was a pioneering and influential literary history. Only three full volumes were ever published, going as far as Queen Elizabeth's reign, but their account of English poetry in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance was unrivalled for many years, and played a part in steering British literary taste towards Romanticism. It is generally acknowledged to be the first narrative English literary history.

Warton probably began researching the History in the 1750s, but did not actually begin writing in earnest until 1769. He conceived of his work as tracing "the transitions from barbarism to civility" in English poetry, but alongside this view of progress went a Romantic love of medieval poetry for its own sake. The first volume, published in 1774 with a second edition the following year, is prefaced with two dissertations: one on "The Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe", which he believed to lie in the Islamic world, and the other on "The Introduction of Learning into England", which deals with the revival of interest in Classical literature. Then begins the History proper. Warton decided to give no account of Anglo-Saxon poetry, ostensibly because it lay before "that era, when our national character began to dawn", though doubtless really because his knowledge of the language was too slight to serve him. Instead he began with the impact of the Norman Conquest on the English language, before moving on to the vernacular chronicles. Then follow a series of studies of various Middle English romances, of Piers Plowman, and of Early Scots historical writing. The volume ends with a long and detailed look at the works of Geoffrey Chaucer. The second volume appeared in 1788. It deals with John Gower, Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, and the controversy over the authenticity of Thomas Rowley's poems (actually forgeries by Thomas Chatterton, as Warton shows), before moving on to Stephen Hawes and other poets of the reigns of Henry VII. He studies the Scottish Chaucerians in some detail, then returns to England and John Skelton. The volume ends with chapters on the mystery plays, and on continental humanism and the Reformation. The third volume, published in 1791, begins with a dissertation on the Gesta Romanorum, one of many sections of the History to fall out of chronological sequence. He moves on to the Earl of Surrey, Thomas Wyatt, Tottel's Miscellany, John Heywood, Thomas More, and another out-of-sequence study, this time of the Middle English romance of Ywain and Gawain. Then come The Mirror for Magistrates, Thomas Sackville, Richard Edwardes, and finally a general survey of Elizabethan poetry. His fourth volume was never published complete, though 88 pages of it were printed in 1789. It is often said that attacks on the History by the antiquary Joseph Ritson were the cause of Warton's publishing no more, but other theories have been suggested: that he found the wide variety of 16th century literature difficult to bring within a simple narrative structure; that he found himself unable to reconcile his Romantic and Classical attitudes towards early poetry; that the further he left his greatest love, the era of romance, behind him the less interested he became; that an alternative project of editing Milton had captured his interest; or that he was just congenitally lazy.

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