The new social emphasis and the new literary theme was social reform . This would require the main literary genre to be the novel , and Keats ’ s path to St Cross therefore became another Winchester College story – Trollope ’ s path to The Warden .
Three poets lived on , even if with significant weakening of their output : Coleridge until 1834 ; Bowles , loyal Wykehamist that he was , published a life of Bishop Ken in two volumes in 1830-31 , but died on 7 April 1850 , just over a fortnight before Wordsworth .
As for Wordsworth , one of Thomas Warton ’ s successors as Poet Laureate , the argument that the last 40 years of Wordsworth ’ s life produced few poems of quality overlooks one of his finest . In 1820 Wordsworth published a sequence of 33 sonnets , entitled The River Duddon . The last is magnificently in the Bowles tradition , a tribute to the effect of nature in forming the moral character :
‘ To the River Duddon ’ I Thought of Thee , my partner and my guide , As being pass ’ d away – Vain sympathies ! For , backward , Duddon ! as I cast my eyes , I see what was , and is , and will abide ; Still glides the Stream , and shall for ever glide ; The Form remains , the Function never dies ; While we , the brave , the mighty , and the wise , We Men , who in our morn of youth defied The elements , must vanish ; – be it so ! Enough , if something from our hands have power To live , and act , and serve the future hour ; And if , as toward the silent tomb we go , Through love , through hope , and faith ’ s transcendent dower , We feel that we are greater than we know .
Wordsworth has abandoned the purely nostalgic longing for childhood innocence to Coleridge and Southey , substituting a tribute to the effect of nature informing the moral character . Neither Warton nor Bowles could ever have written the last and most Wordsworthian of The River Duddon sonnets , but it may not be too much to claim the sequence as the last product of the tradition inaugurated by Warton and popularised by Bowles . Johnson may have been defeated , but Romanticism was over too , and with Wordsworth the last of the English romantics had gone . John Codrington Bampfylde hymned the change , and the death of his quondam Headmaster , quietly :
‘ To Mr Warton ’ Tis not for Muse like mine , in rude essay , To paint the beauties of thy Classic Page ; Which ay deserve far other patronage Than the small meed sincere she fain would pay Of Verse , grave Eulogy , or Distich gay : For that thou deign ’ st inform this sapient age , What ‘ ere was whilom told by tuneful Sage , Or harp ’ d in hall , or bow ’ r , on solemn day ; But more for that thy skill , the minstrel throng , Forbids in cold Oblivion ’ s arms to lie . Dear long-lost masters of the British Song , They shall requite thee better far than I ; And other climes , and other shades among , Weave thee a Laureate Wreath that ne ’ er shall die .
Do the Wartons still possess those laureate wreaths ? If so , the bicentenary of the composition of ‘ To Autumn ’ provides a serendipitous opportunity to celebrate them further .
22 Joseph Warton , by Sir Joshua Reynolds .