The finest things he has left behind him in verse are his character of a country school-master, and that prophetic description of Burke in the Retaliation.  His moral Essays in the Citizen of the World, are as agreeable chit-chat as can be conveyed in the form of didactic discourses.

Warton was a poet and a scholar, studious with ease, learned without affectation.  He had a happiness which some have been prouder of than he, who deserved it less—­he was poet-laureat.

      “And that green wreath which decks the bard when dead,
      That laurel garland crown’d his living head.”

But he bore his honours meekly, and performed his half-yearly task regularly.  I should not have mentioned him for this distinction alone (the highest which a poet can receive from the state), but for another circumstance; I mean his being the author of some of the finest sonnets in the language—­at least so they appear to me; and as this species of composition has the necessary advantage of being short (though it is also sometimes both “tedious and brief"), I will here repeat two or three of them, as treating pleasing subjects in a pleasing and philosophical way.

      Written in a blank leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon

      “Deem not, devoid of elegance, the sage,
      By Fancy’s genuine feelings unbeguil’d,
      Of painful pedantry the poring child;
      Who turns of these proud domes the historic page,
      Now sunk by Time, and Henry’s fiercer rage. 
      Think’st thou the warbling Muses never smil’d
      On his lone hours?  Ingenuous views engage
      His thoughts, on themes unclassic falsely styl’d,
      Intent.  While cloister’d piety displays
      Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores
      New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
      Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur’d stores. 
      Not rough nor barren are the winding ways
      Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers.”

      Sonnet.  Written at Stonehenge.

      “Thou noblest monument of Albion’s isle,
      Whether, by Merlin’s aid, from Scythia’s shore
      To Amber’s fatal plain Pendragon bore,
      Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
      T’entomb his Britons slain by Hengist’s guile: 
      Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
      Taught mid thy massy maze their mystic lore: 
      Or Danish chiefs, enrich’d with savage spoil,
      To victory’s idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
      Rear’d the rude heap, or in thy hallow’d ground
      Repose the kings of Brutus’ genuine line;
      Or here those kings in solemn state were crown’d;
      Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
      We muse on many an ancient tale renown’d.”

Nothing can be more admirable than the learning here displayed, or the inference from it, that it is of no use but as it leads to interesting thought and reflection.