No.128
No.125
November
2019
May 2018
Thou hast thy music too:
Winchester and Birth of Romanticism
The school’s Chaplain and historian,
Budge Firth, propounded the
notion that Romanticism began at
Winchester College: ‘The group to
whom in some real sense the origins
of the Romantic revival are to be
traced was devotedly and consciously
Wykehamical’, he wrote in Winchester
College (1948). The bicentenary of
Keats’s ode ‘To Autumn’ has given
the opportunity to re-examine this
claim.
Romanticism, we explain in Div, is a
European cultural movement which
explores the importance and rights of
the individual. It has three prominent
characteristics: the philosophical;
the political and revolutionary; and
the aesthetic. Wikipedia suggests that
Romanticism began around 1770, but
a radically different view is possible.
Romanticism is earlier, quieter, and
more local than is commonly realised;
the heritage of Winchester, not
Philadelphia, Paris or Vienna.
Any account of Winchester’s poetic
tradition involves the Warton
family. Thomas Warton the Elder
(c1688–1745) was Professor of
Poetry at Oxford. His oldest son,
Joseph (1722-1800), became Second
Master and then Headmaster. His
second son, Thomas the Younger
(1728-1790), became, like his father,
Professor of Poetry, and also Poet
Laureate. In term time, he resided
in Trinity College, Oxford; in the
extensive vacations, he lived with his
brother and enjoyed the company
of Winchester’s pupils. Sociable and
gregarious, Thomas was a member of
Doctor Johnson’s dining circle, The
Club.
Both brothers harboured reservations
about the poetry of Pope, much
admired by Johnson and his
school. Their criticism, by contrast
with Pope’s admiration of ‘what
oft was thought but ne’er so well
express’d’, stressed the importance
of imagination: ‘It is a creative and
glowing imagination, and that alone
can stamp a writer’, argued Joseph.
The Wartons were inspirational
teachers. At least three Wykehamist
pupils of Joseph (John Codrington
Bamfylde, Francis Noel Clarke
Mundy and Thomas Russell) became
published poets, as did Henry Kett,
William Benwell, Edward Gardner,
Henry Headley and George Richards
– all pupils of Thomas the Younger.
The palm, however, goes to William
Lisle Bowles, alumnus of both
institutions, great nephew of a Fellow
who tried to redesign Meads, and so
loyal a Wykehamist that even when
composing a sonnet about Ostend
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