“PATHETIC” LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE ESSAYS BY JOSEPH WARTON: A COMPROMISE BETWEEN AUGUSTANISM AND PRE-ROMANTICISM

K e y w o r d s : neo-classicism; pre-romanticism; the sublime; the pathetic; the ancient-modern controversy; the category of imagination; Joseph Warton; The Adventurer «ПАТЕТИЧЕСКАЯ» КРИТИКА В ЭССЕИСТИКЕ ДЖОЗЕФА УОРТОНА: МЕЖДУ АВГУСТИАНСТВОМ И ПРЕДРОМАНТИЗМОМ Поляков О. Ю. Вятский государственный университет (Киров, Россия) ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9362-7720 Поляков О. Ю. «Патетическая» критика в эссеистике Джозефа Уортона: между августианством... 274 А н н о т а ц и я . Статья посвящена анализу литературно-критических эссе видного английского писателя, публициста XVIII в. Джозефа Уортона, которого представляют, как правило, лишь в качестве зачинателя пересмотра ценности художественного наследия А. Поупа и одного из родоначальников предромантического движения в Англии. При этом корпус публикаций Уортона в журнале «Эдвенчерер» дает возможность более полно и объективно изучить истоки и фундаментальные положения его эстетической теории, отличавшейся гетерогенностью и отразившей состояние переходности в английской литературе и литературной критике середины XVIII в. Цель данной статьи – всесторонне рассмотреть эссеистику Дж. Уортона с целью уточнения особенностей его литературно-критического метода и определения его роли в процессе формирования английского предромантизма. Методология исследования опирается на обновленную концепцию английского литературного процесса XVIII в., которая представляет его не столько с позиций стадиальности, сколько как комплексный феномен, отличающийся компромиссностью идейно-художественных исканий писателей и критиков и взаимопроникновением ведущих литературных методов. В статье анализируются в широком контексте античной и английской эстетической мысли генезис эстетики Уортона и специфика его взглядов на миметическую природу творчества, рассматриваются основные положения его концепций воображения, возвышенного и патетического, проявленные в литературно-критических текстах журнала «Эдвенчерер», раскрываются позиция Уортона в споре «древних и новых» и его представления о жанровой поэтике. В ходе исследования показано, что определяющее значение в эстетике Уортона имеет категория возвышенного, представления о которой у него сложились под влиянием Псевдо-Лонгина, Квинтилиана и Аддисона и которая определяет особенности его рецепции библейских текстов, творчества Гомера и Шекспира. При этом литературная теория английского мыслителя восходит в равной мере к как к псевдо-лонгиновскому, так и к горацианскому началам, актуализирующим, соответственно, оригинальное и универсальное в художественной репрезентации, что обусловливает взаимодействие в его литературной критике классицистических (августианских) и предромантических подходов. К л ю ч е в ы е с л о в а : классицизм; предромантизм; возвышенное; патетическое; спор «древних и новых»; категория воображения; Джозеф Уортон; «Эдвенчерер» Д л я ц и т и р о в а н и я : Поляков,  О.  Ю. «Патетическая» критика в эссеистике Джозефа Уортона: между августианством и предромантизмом / О. Ю. Поляков // Филологический класс. – 2021. – Т. 26, No 4. – С. 273–283. – DOI: 10.51762/1FK-2021-2604-24. F o r c i t a t i o n : Polyakov,  O.  Y. (2021). “Pathetic” Literary Criticism in the Essays by Joseph Warton: a Compromise between Augustanism and Pre-Romanticism. In Philological Class. Vol. 26. No. 4, pp. 273–283. DOI: 10.51762/1FK-2021-26-04-24. Introduction Joseph Warton (1722–1800) was an outstanding man of letters who, after studying at Oxford, took up spiritual, pedagogical and literary career, that of a church rector, a schoolmaster and a poet. His most prominent achievement was made in the field of literary criticism: he is considered one of the precursors of Romanticism, a defender of genius, enthusiasm and poetic “fire”. As a periodical critic of the 18th century, Joseph Warton deserves to be honoured together with J. Addison and R. Steele, S. Johnson and O. Goldsmith, although he is mostly known and merited as the author of the fundamental Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (1756–1782). His essays, published in the Adventurer (1752–1754), are outstandingly representative of the aesthetic search of his epoch concerned with the problems of original art and the sources of literary imitation, the categories of genius, the sublime, and the pathetic. Joseph Warton tended to analyse particular literary texts, relying mainly on his own emotive response and general psychological attitudes rather than normative criticism, and his critical method, being descriptive and based on inductive empirical approach, anticipated significant changes in reviewing, associated with overcoming the neo-classical taste. A complex study of J. Warton’s essays is an actual matter, as it makes it possible not only to present his criticism in a wider context of aesthetic ideas of his time, but also to reveal border elements in his literary theory representative of the compromising character of English NeoClassicism as a whole, which is seen in the interrelation of neo-classical, sentimental and pre-romantic poetics in it. Considering J. Warton’s periodical criticism an insufficiently studied issue, we aim to outline the aesthetic foundations of his reviewing by analysing the Adventurer essays in the context of the critic’s predecessors’ and contemporaries’ opinions. We will consider the specificity of J. Warton’s views on the mimetic nature of art, highlight his Polyakov O. Y. “Pathetic” Literary Criticism in the Essays by Joseph Warton: a Compromise... 275 conceptions of imagination, the pathetic, and the sublime, reveal his attitude to the ancientmodern controversy, genre theories of his time and characterize his contribution to the advancement of psychological and historical methods of criticism. Finally, relying on the provided data, we will focus on evaluating J. Warton’s role in forming the theoretical basis of PreRomanticism in English literature. Methodological framework of the study The methodology of the study is based on the previous research of Joseph Warton’s critical heritage and, more essentially, on the reconsidered conceptions of the eighteenthcentury English literary evolution, which is seen nowadays not as a straightforward movement from NeoClassicism to PreRomanticism, but as a complex phenomenon distinguished by heterogeneity of aesthetic basis and interpenetration of the leading literary trends. This approach was anticipated by the works of N. Frye, B. Bronson, and R. Wellek [Frye 1956: 144–152; Bronson 1968: 3–4; Wellek 1981, 1st ed. 1955: 30], and in Russian literary studies it was developed by O. Y. Polyakov [Polyakov 2003: 7–10]. The number of works, devoted to the Adventurer essays on literature, is rather scarce. In the late 19th and early 20th c. G. Saintsbury [Saintsbury 1904] and H. Beers [Beers 1926] forwarded the problem of “romantic” tendencies in J. Warton’s literary criticism. H. Trowbridge studied the genesis of Warton’s aesthetic theory and his conception of imagination on the material of his essays more profoundly [Trowbridge 1937]. Nevertheless, he did not consider the category of the pathetic in the critic’s works published in the Adventurer. In the 1930–1950s, several generalizing works on the history of criticism appeared, in which Warton’s essays on Shakespeare were estimated. R. Wellek, in particular, marked their importance as one of the first specimens of a new kind of criticism, “probably, psychological” [Wellek 1981: 117]. A. Bosker, who appreciated the critic as a “defender of taste”, relied on the Essay on Pope, leaving Warton’s periodical essays without attention [Bosker 1953]. J. Atkins, who represented the development of the 18 c. English literary criticism as a steady movement towards romantic ideas, declared Warton one of the first apologists of original art, ignoring neo-classical elements of his aesthetics [Atkins 1951]. Then followed a break in studying J. Warton’s critical heritage, which ended in the 1970s, when J. Pittock’s book The Ascendancy of Taste was published. This work considers mainly aesthetic context of Warton’s criticism [Pittock 1973]. Then J. Vance gave a brief survey of the Adventurer essays on literature and emphasized that, in spite of undervaluing Homer’s Iliad and English Restoration comedy, Warton judged literary pieces objectively and contributed much to the eighteenth century Shakespearean and Miltonian criticism [Vance 1983]. In the 1990–2010s, J. Warton’s works attracted attention of scholars only occasionally: mostly, his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope was referred to in surveys of the history of English neo-classical criticism [Nisbet, Rawson 2005] or in the studies of particular aspects of 18 c. English literary process, such as the classical reception in the national literature of the period [Hopkins, Martindale 2012] and the formation of the national literary canon [Kramnik 1997]. In Russia, J. Warton’s criticism is predominantly viewed as an aesthetic source of PreRomanticism [Solov’eva 2005: 34–35; Lukov 2006: 160–161]. His periodical essays were once considered in the context of transformations of genre criticism in mid-18 c. England [Polyakov 2003: 129–155]. Undoubtedly, putting forward the issue of the sources of pre-romantic aesthetics in J. Warton’s literary criticism may sound disputable, as it tends to ignore a long and fruitful tradition in English literary theory, which helped to promote new aesthetic values (original imagination, the sublime, etc.). Warton’s conceptions were anticipated by T. Hobbes, J. Locke, J. Addison, D. Hume and M. Akenside, whose works were to become true sources of pre-romantic theory. Nevertheless, the most active shaping of new critical approaches occurred in the mid-eighteenth century, and from this point of view, J. Warton’s works, especially his periodical publications, are of considerable interest. Results and discussion Joseph Warton was the author of the greater part of critical essays published in the Adventurer to which he started to contribute his papers after joining the famous Samuel Johnson’s Club. The journal identified itself as a moral periodical, so Warton’s essays are predominantly didactic, alПоляков О. Ю. «Патетическая» критика в эссеистике Джозефа Уортона: между августианством... 276 though their ethical bias often gives way to aesthetic functions of literature, its subjective reception by the readers and psychological mechanisms of didactic effects. Like S. Johnson, J. Warton was conscious of the succession of his periodical to J. Addison’s Spectator, the archetypal model of didactic journalism, which led him to comparing his aesthetic views with those of the prominent Augustan. The Spectator’s critical essays encouraged J. Warton to reflect on artistic strengths of J. Milton’s Paradise Lost, emotional aspects of tragedy, the ancientmodern controversy and the functions of criticism. Warton’s reception of Addison’s criticism is often polemical. Summing up his publicist activities, he wrote in Adventurer 139 (1754) that criticism should perform social functions by correcting tastes of those who prefer “the tinsel of a Burletta” to “the gold of Shakespeare” [The British Essayists 25: 303].To achieve it, it must regain its high academic status which was lost when Addison declared his aim to bring “philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in coffeehouses” [The Spectator: 46]. Contemporary criticism, hasty and superficial, needs sophistication, so Warton demands that “literary subjects should be again introduced among the polite and gay”, who would articulate their ideas “without laboring too much to disguise them like common prattle”; criticism “should be weeded of folly and impertinence, of commonplace rhetoric, jingling phrases” [The British Essayists 25: 303]. This urge for rationalization, sophistication of critical discourse was not new (it was one of the aims of S. Johnson’s periodical activity) and it was an important aspect of the self-reflection of criticism which recognized its significant sociocultural mission. Men of letters were conscious of the fact that the massification of the basic categories of criticism, which was a result of its cooperation with periodicals, resulted in the bloom of pedantry mocked in the collective images of pseudocritics, such as Dick Minim and Timothy Tittle. It is quite understandable, then, that J. Warton turned to the most complicated aesthetic problems and issues of critical methodology. In particular, in Adventurer 49 (1753) he considered the works of Rapin, Le Bossu, Brumoy and Fenelon that had come to fashion among his contemporaries. Their treatises “administer great consolation to the indolent and incurious, to those who can tamely rest satisfied with second-hand language” and are ready to speak about the virtues of Greek and Roman classical works without reading the originals [The Adventurer 2: 107]. He demands that critics should scrupulously analyse texts, comprehend their “spirit and scale” and reveal authors’ individual manners. Thus, it is obvious that he tends to a break with neo-classical critical techniques by making a shift from the general to the particular, from poetics and authoritative interpretations to the text per se and the personality of its creator. Besides, criticism of NeoClassicism from the positions of the classics was a major liberating factor of the development of mid-eighteenthcentury English literary theory. Turning to ancient literary heritage, not mediated by French interpretations, was characteristic of English criticism in 18 c. (Ch. Gildon, J. Addison, S. Johnson), thus confirming a comparatively autonomous development of the national literary thought. J. Warton’s concern with classical literature influenced his position in the ancientmodern controversy. He was convinced that ancient writers had surpassed new authors in epic poetry, yet he praised J. Milton as the author of Paradise Lost for “the sublime conceptions he has copied from the Book of God” and revealed convincingly the personages’ psychology [The British Essayists 25: 226]. Warton regards that it is not the static scenes of Eden or episodes portraying celestial battles that should be praised most, but the depiction of Adam’s and Eve’s lamentations on being expelled from Eden, or Satan’s speech at the beginning of Book IX, in which “his inextinguishable pride and fierce indignation against God, and his envy towards man are so blended with an involuntary approbation of goodness, and disdain of the meanness and baseness of his present undertaking” that one can consider it “the most natural, most spirited, and truly dramatic speech, that is, perhaps, to be found in any writer whether ancient or modern” [The Adventurer 3: 266]. This remark is evident of Warton’s subtle critical vision and his ability to perceive the complexity of the epic characters. Like S. Johnson, he gives priority to the subjective response of critics who must “judge from their own sensations” and not to be “content to echo the decision of others” [The Adventurer 3: 265]. In the genre of tragedy the critic merits Shakespeare, Racine and Corneille who can compete Polyakov O. Y. “Pathetic” Literary Criticism in the Essays by Joseph Warton: a Compromise... 277 with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and in the field of comedy he declares the superiority of Moliere over all ancient masters. The French playwright did not limit himself by portraying ordinary personages, he studied “the numberless varieties of human nature” [The British Essayists 25: 262], noticed their subtle distinctions and depicted them with an outstanding artistic talent, in particular, in the characters of Tartuffe, Alcestis and Garpagone. The critic states that Moliere’s plays represent the true nature of the genre which he limits by the comedy of character, noting that its main traits are originality and individuality of the character type. In this sense, plays written by Restoration comedians, especially those of W. Congreve, in which the protagonists go back to the trivial type of a libertine, are inferior to Moliere’s comedies. Besides, their dramatic works are permeated with “false satire, ribaldry, obscenity, and blasphemy”; murderers, gamesters, knaves and spendthrifts are depicted in them with sympathy, “but a faithful husband is a dupe and cuckold, and a plain country gentleman a novice and a fool” [The Adventurer 3: 84]. Moral tendencies in J. Warton’s criticism, his support of decorum and sophisticated style that witness his reception of neo-classical standards, are also evident in his remarks about satirical genres. He thinks that Boileau’s and Pope’s satires surpass those of ancient authors, Horace and Juvenal, as their poems are more exquisite and their ridicule is less straightforward. Warton claims that one of the achievements of the “new” masters of satire, not known in the ancient times, was the creation and development of heroic comical poem. N. Boileau, A. Pope and S. Garth, having travestied the high epic kind, provided their works with “dignity and gracefulness” [The British Essayists 25: 264]. The superiority of the new in the satirical and comical genres is explained in the Adventurer by sociopolitical reasons, by the fact that European monarchies used to cultivate secular communication which made private and public vices more evident to become an object of ridicule. It is important that Warton drew literary analysis beyond the limits of poetics by focusing on social determination of literary facts. Later, in his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, he declared authoritatively that it is impossible to judge correctly about literature of the past without taking into consideration the “climate, country and age” that begot it. Warton’s historical thinking led him to the conclusion that ancient culture could not be restored and a blind imitation of the masterpieces of Antiquity would be fruitless. This motivated him to join the discussion of original and imitative art in which such prominent men of letters as S. Johnson and R. Hurd took part. Proper imitation, according to him, presupposes not borrowing the style of the ancient, not using their epithets or expressions, but “catching a portion of their spirit, and adapting their images and ways of thinking to new subjects” [The British Essayists, vol. 24: 300]. Specimens of such ideal imitations can be found in Racine’s (Phaedra, Iphigenia) and Milton’s (Paradise Lost) works. Warton’s interest in Racine is quite remarkable, for he considered the ability to portray characters, appealing to the spectators’ sympathy, a major virtue of an author. Sensibility and the pathetic are the notions so often referred to in the Adventurer essays that one can conclude about the influence of sentimentalism on J. Warton. The critic considered the pathetic in a close connection with the sublime, the latter being a matter of concern of many thinkers who turned to PseudoLonginus. S. Monk notes that Warton’s aesthetic views, as well as those of E. Young and R. Hurd, took shape in the process of revision of NeoClassicism from the point of view of originality and imagination, the categories praised by the ancient critic [Monk 1960: 63]. Their immediate predecessors were D. Hume, M. Akenside, J. Bailey and R. Lowth. R. Hume in A  Treatise of Human Nature (1739) considered the sublime from the point of view of its emotional impact and reflected on the functions of spacious properties of the objects influencing imagination. M. Akenside (The Pleasures of Imagination, 1744), following J. Addison, emphasized the significance of largescale natural phenomena for evoking sublime feelings. J. Bailey (An Essay on the Sublime, 1747) deepened the tendency for liberating the sublime from rhetorical interpretations and separated this aesthetic category from the pathetic. Like T. Burnett, J. Dennis and J. Addison, he thought that observations of the impressive natural events lead one to the idea of the Creator’s greatness. Growth of the interest to the sublime (encouraged partly by the critical revision of Milton’s heПоляков О. Ю. «Патетическая» критика в эссеистике Джозефа Уортона: между августианством... 278 ritage) was connected with repeated attempts to comprehend the Bible from the point of view of PseudoLonginus’s theory. The Holy Scripture was considered a specimen of high eloquence since the Middle Ages (St. Augustine). In the eighteenth century, J. Dennis (The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, 1704) and J. Addison (Spectator essays on Paradise Lost, 1712) highlighted the role of the biblical imagery as a source of the sublime in Milton’s poem. Ideas of Christianity, according to Dennis, have all the properties of PseudoLonginus’s sublime (“tender response of the soul, power and duration of impression”) [Dennis 1704: 73–89]. T. Blackwell in his Sacred Classics (1725) approached the Bible from the positions of PseudoLonginus’s sublime in N. Boileau’s interpretation. He viewed it as a just, majestic and marvelous idea that does not need ornamentation: the Christian ideas as such are able to cause admiration [Monk 1960: 78]. Warton was directly influenced by R. Lowth’s views expressed in the book The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (1753). Like Bailey, Lowth distinguished the sublime from the pathetic, but he also saw their immediate connection and shifted attention from the object of perception to the aesthetic subject. The author of The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews found the examples of the sublime in the Bible which he approached historically. He insisted that critics should consider literature of the past, taking into consideration social and natural circumstances of its development and individual manners of authors. In particular, Lowth explained the great expressiveness of biblical metaphors and similes by their organic connection with Palestinian scenery and the folk ways of life. As we have already seen, J. Warton also recognized the influence of extraliterary factors on writers’ works, but in his publicist practice he employed the idea of determinism not often. Like Lowth, he called the Bible one of the most sublime masterpieces which surpasses the most prominent works of ancient Greek literature, and emphasized, first of all, the perfection of its language. He devoted to it two Adventurer essays (Nos. 51 and 57, 1753) presented as a PseudoLonginus’s manuscript found in the library of Benedictine monks at Lyons. This mystification was motivated by the fact that PseudoLonginus quoted Five Books of Moses as a specimen of elevated ideas. In the first essay J. Warton focuses on the pathetic which he equals with the moving and whose examples he finds in the Books of Moses. In particular, he notes that the story of Joseph and his brothers is written “with so many little strokes of nature and passion, with such penetrating knowledge of human heart, with such various and unexpected changes of fortune [...], as cannot be read without astonishment and tears”, Aristotle himself would have preferred it to the story of Oedipus [The Adventurer 2: 126]. Drawing parallels between biblical materials and dramatic experience and poetics, Warton, probably, attempted to confirm the dignity of the sacred texts as facts of literature and, besides, like R. Lowth, he revealed his addiction to conventions of critical analysis (in The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Lowth tried to distribute biblical texts between the departments of the traditional genre system). On the other hand, he made an accent on psychologism, on the dramatic devices that his contemporaries could borrow from the evangelists and ancient tragedians. In particular, he singled out portraying silence which can be “more affecting, and more strongly expressive of passion, than the most artful speeches” [The Adventurer 2: 127] (we see here the influence of PseudoLonginus’ idea that a great utterance is an echo of the soul’s greatness and not a result of linguistic sophistication). Warton noted that the silences of Aeschylus’s Niobe, Sophocles’ Deianira and Job’s friends are the most expressive. J. Warton disproved of those French neo-classical tragedies and English heroic plays in which the depiction of genuine, sincere feelings was substituted for by rhetorical devices. He saw the sources of the pathetic / the moving not in the abstract, but in the concrete, that which involves emotionally loaded and picturesque details appealing to the audience. Warton’s thesis about the rhetorical efficiency of description has its origins in Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory in which he emphasized the concrete and detailed character of the utterance as a condition of the orator’s expressiveness. In 18 c., as R. Wellek justly noted, Quintilian’s theory was actualized due to the achievements of empirical philosophy with its special accent on sensual perception [Wellek 1981: 113]. Besides, in English literary criticism there existed a long tradition of appealing to PseudoLonginus who wrote in his treatise On the Sublime that a poet, creating visible images, evokes the “illusion of presence” in the readers [O vozvyshennom: 20]. J. Dryden, J. Dennis, L. Welsted, J. Addison, J. Hughes, A. Pope Polyakov O. Y. “Pathetic” Literary Criticism in the Essays by Joseph Warton: a Compromise... 279 and R. Hurd regarded this ability as a mark of a genius. Analyzing the Old Testament from the point of view of detalization of style, Warton relied on the thesis of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory. This is evident from the choice of quotations, a considerable part of which is concerned with the destruction of biblical cities. The critic admires “tender and affecting strokes”, describing the devastation of Babylon and Tyre, desolation and famine. Evangelists selected “such adjuncts and circumstances upon each subject, as are best calculated to strike the imagination and embellish their descriptions” [The Adventurer 2: 128–129]. Warton also makes an accent on the characters’ visions as a source of the sublime. He pays special attention to personification and simile as efficient devices of creating vivid images (Adventurer 57, 1753). The critic’s concern with using tropes as a vehicle of the sublime is suggestive of his following the traditional rhetorical understanding of this aesthetic category. At the same time, Warton states: “It is the peculiar privilege of poetry, not only to place material objects in the most amiable attitudes, and to clothe them in the most graceful dress, but also to give life and motion to immaterial beings; and form, and color, and action, even to abstract ideas, to embody the virtues, the vices, and the passions; and to bring before our eyes, or on a stage, every faculty of the human mind” [The Adventurer 2: 173–174]. The dynamic character of this definition of the functions of poetry reveals the author’s dissatisfaction with neo-classical statics of aestheticized descriptions. J. Pittock justly supposes that Warton’s words contain a key to overcoming the typical in poetic representation: a writer’s pretenсe of originality would be groundless if he does not depict the changeability of human emotional states, the complexity of man’s nature, by using nontrivial metaphors and comparisons among other devices [Pittock 1973: 138]. M. Abrams, commenting on Warton’s definition, concludes: “Thus by the mid-century, what had been a purely rhetorical figure had become an act of creation [..] having its analogue in God’s peopling of this world of which, naturally, the effect on the reader is a sublime astonishment and enlargement of soul. As a result, poetic personification, together with that fairy way of writing, was elevated to the highest achievement of poetic imagination” [Abrams 1981: 289]. Alas, the scholar does not take into consideration the contexts of Adventurer’s criticism which make it evident that Warton did not break with the mimetic doctrine of art and with the traditional neo-classical conceptions of imagination as a faculty of visualization of images. This is convincingly confirmed by Adventurer essay No. 63 (1753), devoted to borrowings in A. Pope’s works. The beginning of the essay seems to paraphrase Rambler 121: following S. Johnson, Warton complains that the number of original authors is rather small and the majority prefer to “creep tamely and cautiously in the track of their predecessors” [The Adventurer 2: 227]. On the other hand, he shares R. Hurd’s thesis, articulated in his Discourse on Poetical Imitation (1751), that nature as an object of imitation is always uniform and unchangeable, so there will always be certain similarity in writers’ works (this idea was also supported by S. Johnson in Rambler 125 and 136). Warton writes: “The objects material or animate, extraneous or internal, which they [writers – O. P.] all imitate, lie equally open to the observation of all, and are perfectly similar, [so] the first copier must be, perhaps, entitled to the praise of priority; but a succeeding one ought not certainly to be condemned for plagiarism” [The Adventurer 2: 228]. H. Trowbridge emphasizes that though Warton, like Hurd, reduces imitation to description, he provides its broadened interpretation which includes reflection, contemplation, comprehension of “internal essences”, the world of human feelings [Trowbridge 1937: 77]. Generally, Warton follows neo-classical conceptions of mimesis, understanding it as imitation of the eternal and unchangeable in nature: in spite of numerous achievements in the field of science and art, evolution of material and spiritual conditions of human existence, a contemporary epic or dramatic writer “would find it difficult or impossible to be totally original, and essentially different from Homer and Sophocles. The causes that excite and the operations that exemplify the greater passions, will always have an exact coincidence, though perhaps a little diversified by climate or customs: every exasperated hero must rage like Achilles, and every afflicted widow mourn like Andromache; an abandoned Armida will make use of Dido’s execrations; and a Jew will nearly resemble a Grecian, when almost placed in the same situation; i. e. the Ioas of Racine in his incompaПоляков О. Ю. «Патетическая» критика в эссеистике Джозефа Уортона: между августианством... 280 rable “Athalia”, will be very like Ion of Euripides” [The Adventurer 2: 228–229]. To prove this thesis, Warton appeals to the authority of N. Boileau and A. Pope, who expressed similar opinions in The Art of Poetry and An Essay on Criticism, and thus he leaves no doubts about his commitment to NeoClassicism. On the other hand, when the critic refers to Boileau [The Adventurer 2: 230], who stated that the freshest and the most unusual ideas are not those which were never uttered, but those which come to anyone’s mind in similar situations, probably, he means not only the universal, but also the concrete, thus showing his involvement in the search in the 1740–1750s English poetry which, as N. A. Solovyova notes, was aimed at making the usual, common poetically significant and original [Solov’eva 1988:30]. To reduce Warton’s aesthetic creed to neo-classical orthodoxy would be an unacceptable oversimplification, as his aesthetic theory is heterogeneous: its sources include the ideas of not only N. Boileau and A. Pope, R. Hurd and S. Johnson, but also those of J. Addison, which are of quite contradictory nature (especially, his theory of imagination, which influenced very much the formation of romantic views in England). In Adventurer 80 (1753), the great, unusual and beautiful, declared by the Spectator as sources of the pleasures of imagination, are presented as acknowledged and just criteria for judging the works of art. As such, they were promoted by actualization of Addison’s ideas in M. Akenside’s poem The Pleasures of Imagination which was very popular in England and which can be seen as a poetic periphrasis of the Spectator ’s essays. This poem might spur Warton’s interest in Addison’s views. Applying Addison’s categories to Homer’s works, J. Warton regards his Iliad as a sublime poem and the Odyssey a beautiful and “unusual” one; the former “resembles the river Nile, when it descends in a cataract that deafens and astonishes” an observer, and the latter is like the Nile, too, when “when its genial inundations gently diffuse fertility and fatness over the peaceful plains of Egypt” [The Adventurer 3: 89, 96]. Warton admires Homer’s “boundless exuberance of imagination”, his “unwearied spirit and fire” [The Adventurer 3: 90], emphasizes the variety of events in his poems, concreteness and detailing of descriptions, vivid pictures of customs and ways of ancient life, individualization of characters, dynamic plots and unexpected events. Alongside with it, to the majestic and tremendous in art, he opposes the pathetic, understood as the moving, which is “as strong an evidence of true genius as the sublime” [The Adventurer 3: 94]. He notes that PseudoLonginus in his treatise On the Sublime provided examples of expression of this aesthetic category in the descriptions of battles, elements, fantastic creatures, heroes’ traits, whereas one needs not less genius to portray such simple and moving pictures as parting of Andromache with Hector, and “the tender circumstance of the child Astyanax starting back from his father’s helmet and clinging to the bosom of his nurse”, the description of an old man tenderly waiting for his son’s return, not knowing that he was dead, the depiction of widows’ suffering, etc. Thus, we can single out several elements in the structure of artistic imagination, as Warton saw it. Firstly, as it was said above, he insisted authors use bright, vivid, picturesque metaphors seen by him as “one of the greatest efforts of the creative power of a warm and lively imagination” [The Adventurer 2: 174], and, consequently, he revealed his commitment to the traditional neo-classical understanding of imagination as a capacity for visualization of images. Secondly, as R. Wellek justly observed, in the 18 c. this conception was gradually ousted by equaling imagination with associational activity of the mind, ability of a writer to evoke sympathy, compassion [Wellek 1981: 111], and such understanding of imagination, as we have already seen, was also shared by J. Warton. Therefore, relying on the traditional system of artistic methods, we can state that the neo-classical in his aesthetics is associated with the sentimental. One more component of the category of imagination, as it is understood by J. Warton, ascends to J. Addison, who wrote in Spectator 419 about the “fairy way of writing” which is connected with using fantastic images in poetic works (fairies, witches, ghosts, etc.). Poetry, according to Addison, cannot limit itself by imitating the sensually perceived world; it must create its own worlds. Warton relied on this idea, developing his own conception of imagination in his essays devoted to Shakespeare’s dramatic works. The first advantage of the Elizabethan, praised in Adventurer 93 (1753), is his great fantasy that Polyakov O. Y. “Pathetic” Literary Criticism in the Essays by Joseph Warton: a Compromise... 281 distinguishes The Tempest especially in which Shakespeare “has carried the romantic, the wonderful, and the wild, to the most pleasing extravagance” [The Adventurer 3: 196]. The irrational, based on folklore, serves to an “expansion of imagination” and it does not need any justification from the positions of the traditional mimetic doctrine. But there is a personage in Shakespeare’s drama that cannot be found in folk tales. Caliban is “the creature of his own imagination, in the formation of which he could derive no assistance from observation or experience” [The Adventurer 3: 225]. Characterizing this personage, the critic uses highly emotional adjectives: “brutal barbarity, unfeeling savageness, horrible delight”, “fierce and implacable spirit”. “The poet is a more powerful magician than his own Prospero: we are transported into fairy land; we are wrapt in a delicious dream, [...] all around is enchantment”, writes Warton, for whom an author’s ability to strike the reader’s imagination is more important than following the neo-classical principle of probability [The Adventurer 3: 203]. In many aspects, Warton is an innovator: he enriches critical discourse with new emotive lexis, he supports subjectivization of criticism and makes a special accent not on formal traits of drama, but on characters (in his Tempest essays though, they are analysed with reliance on traditional approach which presupposes considering their consistency). M. G. Abrams is disposed to associate the beginning of worshipping Shakespeare with the essays on The Tempest [Abrams 1971: 275–276]. In any case, The Adventurer ’s Shakespearean essays are a certain result of a long development of English Shakespearean criticism started by J. Dryden, who respected the Elizabethan not less than J. Warton. Turning back to the sublime / the pathetic opposition, we can conclude that The Tempest belongs to the former category (although Warton finds in it many examples of “the moving” and “the natural”, in particular in the character of Miranda), while King Lear to the latter one. Warton devoted several essays to King Lear which we will consider briefly below. What is crucially important in these essays is a subtle analysis of Shakespeare’s psychologism in describing Lear’s madness, surpassing, according to Warton, “Euripides himself” with his Orestes. The basis of this analysis is formed by the idea that “absurd” standards of neo-classical criticism are inapplicable to Shakespeare’s works. The critic notes that it is easy just to declare Lear’s mental disorder “very natural and pathetic”. But in this case the readers or spectators will not see the protagonist’s “secret workings and changes of mind” [The Adventurer 4: 80] which vary from one cue to another and, consequently, must be considered in detail, with reliance on the text. That is why Warton pays attention to minute incidents, quotes much and follows the manifestations of Lear’s insane mind which explain the reader the causes of his catastrophe. The critic reveals Shakespeare’s intentions in the scenes portraying the pictures imagined by Lear (the trial of Goneril and Regan), and shows the playwright’s vivid imagery and stylistic devices (unexpected metaphors, emotionally loaded repetitions). It is for the first time in English literary criticism that Warton analysed so profoundly a Shakespearean character, so we cannot agree with T. M. Raysor who thinks that his essays are written “in the manner of J. Hughes, pointing out beauties in the plays rather than analysing the motives of the characters” [Raysor 1927: 496]. Indeed, Warton’s critical heritage is not free from errors caused by the authority of neo-classical standards. Among Shakespeare’s “drawbacks” he lists violations of probability, decorum and unity of action. These errors cannot eclipse the strong sides of Warton as a critic, one of which is the subjective character of his literary analysis, breaking with the traditions of “impartial criticism”, aesthetically distancing itself from a work of art. Warton is a “sensible” critic, ready to inform a reader that a literary piece caused his powerful excitement, floods of tears, and this, undoubtedly, witnesses of a certain shift in the critical standards which occurred under the influence of sentimentalism. H. Robinson called the “sincerity of feeling” the most striking trait of Warton as a critic of Shakespeare [Robinson 1932: 91]. To sum up, Warton’s essays witness a gradual shift from deductive to inductive critical approaches, from mimetic to psychological method of literary analysis. Conclusion The tenets of J. Warton’s literary theory, in spite of their heterogeneous character, are inspired by the category of the sublime which he associated directly with the pathetic and, relying on PseudoПоляков О. Ю. «Патетическая» критика в эссеистике Джозефа Уортона: между августианством... 282 Longinus and Quintilian, found its examples in the Bible. Being also influenced by J. Addison’s conception of imagination, the critic applied his views to Homer’s works and supported the irrational in Shakespeare’s plays. His Shakespearean criticism tended to break with genre doctrines, as it focused on dramatic characters, their motive sphere and its realization in the texts, and the author’s psychologism. This approach, as L. Damrosch put it, got “the criticism of drama off the dead center where it had rested since 16 c.” [Damrosch 1972: 234]. The normative criticism was to give way to the “criticism of taste” which made a special accent on subjective analysis and the critic’s intuition. One cannot be but ambiguous when deciding conclusively on Warton’s creed, as his views were contradictory enough. E. Gosse declared him a romanticist who anticipated Wordworth’s and Coleridge’s aesthetic views. G. Saintsbury wrote that “the spirit of time caught Warton”, but he followed it “half-consciously” [Saintsbury 1904: 260]. H. Trowbridge agreed with this opinion, noting that NeoClassicism limited his views and “controlled his taste” [Trowbridge 1937: 76]. This conclusion seems only partially true, as Warton’s aesthetic views are compromising, their origins are connected both with Horatian and Longinian traditions which presuppose, respectively, the universal and the original in artistic representation. Warton as a critic, in spite of his praise of neo-classical drama and the accent on character types and didactic functions of literature, defends new values, “the pleasures of imagination”, with much more enthusiasm. A close reading of his essays convinces us that he was a critic of Sense. Never were the sublime (with the exception of the Spectator) and the irrational, the fantastic as its sources supported so passionately in English periodicals before him. In J. Warton’s, as well as T. Warton’s and E. Young’s works there appears “an idea of genuine poetry as a source of pleasure and beauty helping to explain human experience and enriching sensibility”, which was important for “comparing the regular taste with susceptibility to the beautiful and the pathetic” [Solov’eva 1988: 32]. In general, we can conclude that J. Warton’s periodical criticism anticipated such manifestos of preRomanticism as E. Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition (1759) and R. Hurd’s Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762). Литература Луков, Вл. А. Предромантизм / Вл. А. Луков. – М. : Наука, 2006. – 683 с. О возвышенном. – М. ; Л. : Наука, 1966. – 149 с. Поляков, О. Ю. 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Raysor // Modern Language Notes. – 1927. – Vol. 42, No. 8. – P. 495–500. Saintsbury, G. A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe: Vol. 3 / G. A. Saintsbury. – Edinburgh : W. Blackwood and Sons, 1904. – 1748 p. The Adventurer. – 5th ed. – London : A. Millar, 1766. – 4 vols. Polyakov O. Y. “Pathetic” Literary Criticism in the Essays by Joseph Warton: a Compromise... 283 The British Essayists: with prefaces, historical and biographical, by A. Chalmers. – London : J. Johnson et al., 1802– 1803. – 39 vols. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 4: The Eighteenth Century / Ed by D. Nisbet, C. Rawson. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005. – 970 p. The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. Vol. 1 / Ed. by D. Hopkins, C. Martindale. – Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2012. – 752 p. The Spectator. Vol. 1. – Dublin : P. Wilson, 1755. – 324 p. Trowbridge, H. Joseph Warton on the Imagination / H. Trowbridge // Modern Philology. – 1937. – Vol. 35, No. 1. – P. 73–87. Vance, J. A. Joseph and Thomas Warton / J. A. Vance. – Boston : Twayne, 1983. – 152 p. Wellek, R. A History of Modern Criticism 1750-1950. Vol. 1 / R. Wellek. – Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1981. – 368 p. References Abrams, M. H. (1971). The Mirror and the Lamp. Romantic theory and the critical tradition. London, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press. 406 p. Atkins, J. (1951). English Literary Criticism. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Beers, H. A. (1926). A History of English Romanticism in 18 Century. London, Kegan and Paul. 467 p. Bosker, A. (1953). Literary Criticism in the Age of Johnson. Groningen, Djakarta, J. B. Wolters. 345 p. Bronson, B. (1968). When Was Neo-Classicism? In Facets of the Enlightenment. Berkeley, University of California Press, pp. 1–25. Centuries. London, Methuen. 383 p. Century England. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. 250 p. Damrosch, L. (1972). Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense. Princeton, Princeton University Press. 280 p. Dennis, J. (1704). The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry. London, Geo. Strahan. 127 p. Frye, N. (1956). Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility. In English Literary History. 1956. Vol. 23, pp. 144–152. Hopkins, D., Martindale, C. (Eds.). (2012). The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. Vol. 1. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 752 p. Kramnik, J. B. (1997). The Making of the English Canon. In Publications of Modern Language Association. Vol. 112. No. 5, pp. 1087-1101. Lukov, Vl. A. (2006). Predromantizm [Pre-Romanticism]. Moscow, Nauka. 683 p. Monk, S. H. (1960). The Sublime. A Study of Critical Theories in Eighteenth Nisbet, D., Rawson, C. (Eds.). (2005). The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 4: The Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 970 p. O vozvyshennom [On the Sublime]. (1966). Moscow, Leningrad, Nauka. 149 p. Pittock, J. (1973). The Ascendancy of Taste. The Achievement of Joseph and Thomas Warton. London, Routledge. 230 p. Polyakov, O. Yu. (2003). Literaturnaya kritika v periodicheskikh izdaniyakh Anglii 1750-kh gg. (problema metoda) [Literary Criticism in English Periodicals of the 1750s (the problem of method)]. Kirov, VGGU. 182 p. Raysor, T. M. (1927). The Study of Shakespeare’s Characters in the Eighteenth Century. In Modern Language Notes. Vol. 42. No. 8, pp. 495–500. Saintsbury, G. A. (1904). History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe: Vol. 3. Edinburgh, W. Blackwood and Sons. 1748 p. Solov’eva, N. A. (1988). U istokov angliiskogo romantizma [The Origins of English Romanticism]. Moscow, Izdatel’stvo MGU. 232 p. Solov’eva, N. A. (2005). Istoriya zarubezhnoi literatury: Predromantizm [A History of Foreign Literature: Pre-Romanticism]. Moscow, Akademiya. 272 p. The Adventurer. (1766). 5th ed. London, A. Millar. 4 vols. The British Essayists: with prefaces, historical and biographical, by A. Chalmers. (1802–1803). London, J. Johnson et al. 39 vols. The Spectator. (1755). Vol. 1. Dublin, P. Wilson. 324 p. Trowbridge, H. (1937). Joseph Warton on the Imagination. In Modern Philology. Vol. 35. No. 1, pp. 73–87. Vance, J. A. (1983). Joseph and Thomas Warton. Boston, Twayne. 152 p. Wellek, R. (1981). A History of Modern Criticism 1750-1950. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 368 p. Данные об авторе Поляков Олег Юрьевич – доктор филологических наук, профессор кафедры русской и зарубежной литературы и методики обучения, Вятский государственный университет (Киров, Россия). Адрес: 610000, Россия, Киров, ул. Московская, 36. E-mail: polyakoov@yandex.ru. Author’s information Polyakov Oleg Yurievich – Doctor of Philology, Professor of Department of Russian and Foreign Literature and Methods of Teaching, Vyatka State University (Kirov, Russia).


Introduction
Joseph Warton (1722-1800) was an outstanding man of letters who, after studying at Oxford, took up spiritual, pedagogical and literary career, that of a church rector, a schoolmaster and a poet. His most prominent achievement was made in the field of literary criticism: he is considered one of the precursors of Romanticism, a defender of genius, enthusiasm and poetic "fire". As a periodical critic of the 18 th century, Joseph Warton deserves to be honoured together with J. Addison and R. Steele, S. Johnson and O. Goldsmith, although he is mostly known and merited as the author of the fundamental Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (1756-1782. His essays, published in the Adventurer (1752)(1753)(1754), are outstandingly representative of the aesthetic search of his epoch concerned with the problems of original art and the sources of literary imitation, the categories of genius, the sublime, and the pathetic.
Joseph Warton tended to analyse particular literary texts, relying mainly on his own emotive re-sponse and general psychological attitudes rather than normative criticism, and his critical method, being descriptive and based on inductive empirical approach, anticipated significant changes in reviewing, associated with overcoming the neo-classical taste.
A complex study of J. Warton's essays is an actual matter, as it makes it possible not only to present his criticism in a wider context of aesthetic ideas of his time, but also to reveal border elements in his literary theory representative of the compromising character of English Neo-Classicism as a whole, which is seen in the interrelation of neo-classical, sentimental and pre-romantic poetics in it.
Considering J. Warton's periodical criticism an insufficiently studied issue, we aim to outline the aesthetic foundations of his reviewing by analysing the Adventurer essays in the context of the critic's predecessors' and contemporaries' opinions. We will consider the specificity of J. Warton's views on the mimetic nature of art, highlight his conceptions of imagination, the pathetic, and the sublime, reveal his attitude to the ancient-modern controversy, genre theories of his time and characterize his contribution to the advancement of psychological and historical methods of criticism. Finally, relying on the provided data, we will focus on evaluating J. Warton's role in forming the theoretical basis of Pre-Romanticism in English literature.

Methodological framework of the study
The methodology of the study is based on the previous research of Joseph Warton's critical heritage and, more essentially, on the reconsidered conceptions of the eighteenth-century English literary evolution, which is seen nowadays not as a straightforward movement from Neo-Classicism to Pre-Romanticism, but as a complex phenomenon distinguished by heterogeneity of aesthetic basis and interpenetration of the leading literary trends. This approach was anticipated by the works of N. Frye, B. Bronson, and R. Wellek [Frye 1956: 144-152;Bronson 1968: 3-4;Wellek 1981Wellek , 1 st ed. 1955, and in Russian literary studies it was developed by O. Y. Polyakov [Polyakov 2003: 7-10].
The number of works, devoted to the Adventurer essays on literature, is rather scarce. In the late 19 th and early 20 th c. G. Saintsbury [Saintsbury 1904] and H. Beers [Beers 1926] forwarded the problem of "romantic" tendencies in J. Warton's literary criticism. H. Trowbridge studied the genesis of Warton's aesthetic theory and his conception of imagination on the material of his essays more profoundly [Trowbridge 1937]. Nevertheless, he did not consider the category of the pathetic in the critic's works published in the Adventurer.
In the 1930-1950s, several generalizing works on the history of criticism appeared, in which Warton's essays on Shakespeare were estimated. R. Wellek, in particular, marked their importance as one of the first specimens of a new kind of criticism, "probably, psychological" [Wellek 1981: 117]. A. Bosker, who appreciated the critic as a "defender of taste", relied on the Essay on Pope, leaving Warton's periodical essays without attention ]. J. Atkins, who represented the development of the 18 c. English literary criticism as a steady movement towards romantic ideas, declared Warton one of the first apologists of original art, ignoring neo-classical elements of his aesthetics [Atkins 1951].
Then followed a break in studying J. Warton's critical heritage, which ended in the 1970s, when J. Pittock's book The Ascendancy of Taste was published. This work considers mainly aesthetic context of Warton's criticism ]. Then J. Vance gave a brief survey of the Adventurer essays on literature and emphasized that, in spite of undervaluing Homer's Iliad and English Restoration comedy, Warton judged literary pieces objectively and contributed much to the eighteenth century Shakespearean and Miltonian criticism [Vance 1983].
In the 1990-2010s, J. Warton's works attracted attention of scholars only occasionally: mostly, his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope was referred to in surveys of the history of English neo-classical criticism [Nisbet, Rawson 2005] or in the studies of particular aspects of 18 c. English literary process, such as the classical reception in the national literature of the period [Hopkins, Martindale 2012] and the formation of the national literary canon ]. In Russia, J. Warton's criticism is predominantly viewed as an aesthetic source of Pre-Romanticism [Solov'eva 2005: 34-35;Lukov 2006: 160-161]. His periodical essays were once considered in the context of transformations of genre criticism in mid-18 c. England [Polyakov 2003: 129-155].
Undoubtedly, putting forward the issue of the sources of pre-romantic aesthetics in J. Warton's literary criticism may sound disputable, as it tends to ignore a long and fruitful tradition in English literary theory, which helped to promote new aesthetic values (original imagination, the sublime, etc.). Warton's conceptions were anticipated by T. Hobbes, J. Locke, J. Addison, D. Hume and M. Akenside, whose works were to become true sources of pre-romantic theory. Nevertheless, the most active shaping of new critical approaches occurred in the mid-eighteenth century, and from this point of view, J. Warton's works, especially his periodical publications, are of considerable interest.

Results and discussion
Joseph Warton was the author of the greater part of critical essays published in the Adventurer to which he started to contribute his papers after joining the famous Samuel Johnson's Club. The journal identified itself as a moral periodical, so Warton's essays are predominantly didactic, al-though their ethical bias often gives way to aesthetic functions of literature, its subjective reception by the readers and psychological mechanisms of didactic effects.
Like S. Johnson, J. Warton was conscious of the succession of his periodical to J. Addison's Spectator, the archetypal model of didactic journalism, which led him to comparing his aesthetic views with those of the prominent Augustan. The Spectator's critical essays encouraged J. Warton to reflect on artistic strengths of J. Milton's Paradise Lost, emotional aspects of tragedy, the ancient-modern controversy and the functions of criticism.
Warton's reception of Addison's criticism is often polemical. Summing up his publicist activities, he wrote in Adventurer 139 (1754) that criticism should perform social functions by correcting tastes of those who prefer "the tinsel of a Burletta" to "the gold of Shakespeare" [The British Essayists 25: 303].To achieve it, it must regain its high academic status which was lost when Addison declared his aim to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in coffeehouses" [The Spectator: 46]. Contemporary criticism, hasty and superficial, needs sophistication, so Warton demands that "literary subjects should be again introduced among the polite and gay", who would articulate their ideas "without laboring too much to disguise them like common prattle"; criticism "should be weeded of folly and impertinence, of common-place rhetoric, jingling phrases" [The British Essayists 25: 303]. This urge for rationalization, sophistication of critical discourse was not new (it was one of the aims of S. Johnson's periodical activity) and it was an important aspect of the self-reflection of criticism which recognized its significant socio-cultural mission. Men of letters were conscious of the fact that the massification of the basic categories of criticism, which was a result of its cooperation with periodicals, resulted in the bloom of pedantry mocked in the collective images of pseudo-critics, such as Dick Minim and Timothy Tittle.
It is quite understandable, then, that J. Warton turned to the most complicated aesthetic problems and issues of critical methodology. In particular, in Adventurer 49 (1753) he considered the works of Rapin, Le Bossu, Brumoy and Fenelon that had come to fashion among his contemporaries. Their treatises "administer great consolation to the indolent and incurious, to those who can tamely rest satisfied with second-hand language" and are ready to speak about the virtues of Greek and Roman classical works without reading the originals [The Adventurer 2: 107]. He demands that critics should scrupulously analyse texts, comprehend their "spirit and scale" and reveal authors' individual manners. Thus, it is obvious that he tends to a break with neo-classical critical techniques by making a shift from the general to the particular, from poetics and authoritative interpretations to the text per se and the personality of its creator. Besides, criticism of Neo-Classicism from the positions of the classics was a major liberating factor of the development of mid-eighteenth-century English literary theory. Turning to ancient literary heritage, not mediated by French interpretations, was characteristic of English criticism in 18 c. (Ch. Gildon, J. Addison, S. Johnson), thus confirming a comparatively autonomous development of the national literary thought.
J. Warton's concern with classical literature influenced his position in the ancient-modern controversy. He was convinced that ancient writers had surpassed new authors in epic poetry, yet he praised J. Milton as the author of Paradise Lost for "the sublime conceptions he has copied from the Book of God" and revealed convincingly the personages' psychology [The British Essayists 25: 226].
Warton regards that it is not the static scenes of Eden or episodes portraying celestial battles that should be praised most, but the depiction of Adam's and Eve's lamentations on being expelled from Eden, or Satan's speech at the beginning of Book IX, in which "his inextinguishable pride and fierce indignation against God, and his envy towards man are so blended with an involuntary approbation of goodness, and disdain of the meanness and baseness of his present undertaking" that one can consider it "the most natural, most spirited, and truly dramatic speech, that is, perhaps, to be found in any writer whether ancient or modern" [The Adventurer 3: 266]. This remark is evident of Warton's subtle critical vision and his ability to perceive the complexity of the epic characters. Like S. Johnson, he gives priority to the subjective response of critics who must "judge from their own sensations" and not to be "content to echo the decision of others" [The Adventurer 3: 265].
In the genre of tragedy the critic merits Shakespeare, Racine and Corneille who can compete with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and in the field of comedy he declares the superiority of Moliere over all ancient masters. The French playwright did not limit himself by portraying ordinary personages, he studied "the numberless varieties of human nature" [The British Essayists 25: 262], noticed their subtle distinctions and depicted them with an outstanding artistic talent, in particular, in the characters of Tartuffe, Alcestis and Garpagone. The critic states that Moliere's plays represent the true nature of the genre which he limits by the comedy of character, noting that its main traits are originality and individuality of the character type.
In this sense, plays written by Restoration comedians, especially those of W. Congreve, in which the protagonists go back to the trivial type of a libertine, are inferior to Moliere's comedies. Besides, their dramatic works are permeated with "false satire, ribaldry, obscenity, and blasphemy"; murderers, gamesters, knaves and spendthrifts are depicted in them with sympathy, "but a faithful husband is a dupe and cuckold, and a plain country gentleman a novice and a fool" [The Adventurer 3: 84].
Moral tendencies in J. Warton's criticism, his support of decorum and sophisticated style that witness his reception of neo-classical standards, are also evident in his remarks about satirical genres. He thinks that Boileau's and Pope's satires surpass those of ancient authors, Horace and Juvenal, as their poems are more exquisite and their ridicule is less straightforward. Warton claims that one of the achievements of the "new" masters of satire, not known in the ancient times, was the creation and development of heroic comical poem. N. Boileau, A. Pope and S. Garth, having travestied the high epic kind, provided their works with "dignity and gracefulness" [The British Essayists 25: 264].
The superiority of the new in the satirical and comical genres is explained in the Adventurer by socio-political reasons, by the fact that European monarchies used to cultivate secular communication which made private and public vices more evident to become an object of ridicule. It is important that Warton drew literary analysis beyond the limits of poetics by focusing on social determination of literary facts. Later, in his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, he declared authoritatively that it is impossible to judge correctly about literature of the past without taking into consideration the "climate, country and age" that begot it.
Warton's historical thinking led him to the conclusion that ancient culture could not be restored and a blind imitation of the masterpieces of Antiquity would be fruitless. This motivated him to join the discussion of original and imitative art in which such prominent men of letters as S. Johnson and R. Hurd took part. Proper imitation, according to him, presupposes not borrowing the style of the ancient, not using their epithets or expressions, but "catching a portion of their spirit, and adapting their images and ways of thinking to new subjects" [The British Essayists,vol. 24: 300]. Specimens of such ideal imitations can be found in Racine's (Phaedra, Iphigenia) and Milton's (Paradise Lost) works.
Warton's interest in Racine is quite remarkable, for he considered the ability to portray characters, appealing to the spectators' sympathy, a major virtue of an author. Sensibility and the pathetic are the notions so often referred to in the Adventurer essays that one can conclude about the influence of sentimentalism on J. Warton. The critic considered the pathetic in a close connection with the sublime, the latter being a matter of concern of many thinkers who turned to Pseudo-Longinus. S. Monk notes that Warton's aesthetic views, as well as those of E. Young and R. Hurd, took shape in the process of revision of Neo-Classicism from the point of view of originality and imagination, the categories praised by the ancient critic [Monk 1960: 63] He viewed it as a just, majestic and marvelous idea that does not need ornamentation: the Christian ideas as such are able to cause admiration [Monk 1960: 78].
Warton was directly influenced by R. Lowth's views expressed in the book The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (1753). Like Bailey, Lowth distinguished the sublime from the pathetic, but he also saw their immediate connection and shifted attention from the object of perception to the aesthetic subject. The author of The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews found the examples of the sublime in the Bible which he approached historically. He insisted that critics should consider literature of the past, taking into consideration social and natural circumstances of its development and individual manners of authors. In particular, Lowth explained the great expressiveness of biblical metaphors and similes by their organic connection with Palestinian scenery and the folk ways of life.
As we have already seen, J. Warton also recognized the influence of extra-literary factors on writers' works, but in his publicist practice he employed the idea of determinism not often. Like Lowth, he called the Bible one of the most sublime masterpieces which surpasses the most prominent works of ancient Greek literature, and emphasized, first of all, the perfection of its language. He devoted to it two Adventurer essays (Nos. 51 and 57, 1753) presented as a Pseudo-Longinus's manuscript found in the library of Benedictine monks at Lyons. This mystification was motivated by the fact that Pseudo-Longinus quoted Five Books of Moses as a specimen of elevated ideas.
In the first essay J. Warton focuses on the pathetic which he equals with the moving and whose examples he finds in the Books of Moses. In particular, he notes that the story of Joseph and his brothers is written "with so many little strokes of nature and passion, with such penetrating knowledge of human heart, with such various and unexpected changes of fortune […], as cannot be read without astonishment and tears", Aristotle himself would have preferred it to the story of Oedipus [The Adventurer 2: 126]. Drawing parallels between biblical materials and dramatic experience and poetics, Warton, probably, attempted to confirm the dignity of the sacred texts as facts of literature and, besides, like R. Lowth, he revealed his addiction to conventions of critical analysis (in The Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Lowth tried to distribute biblical texts between the departments of the traditional genre system). On the other hand, he made an accent on psychologism, on the dramatic devices that his contemporaries could borrow from the evangelists and ancient tragedians. In particular, he singled out portraying silence which can be "more affecting, and more strongly expressive of passion, than the most artful speeches" [The Adventurer 2: 127] (we see here the influence of Pseudo-Longinus' idea that a great utterance is an echo of the soul's greatness and not a result of linguistic sophistication). Warton noted that the silences of Aeschylus's Niobe, Sophocles' Deianira and Job's friends are the most expressive.
J. Warton disproved of those French neo-classical tragedies and English heroic plays in which the depiction of genuine, sincere feelings was substituted for by rhetorical devices. He saw the sources of the pathetic / the moving not in the abstract, but in the concrete, that which involves emotionally loaded and picturesque details appealing to the audience. Warton's thesis about the rhetorical efficiency of description has its origins in Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory in which he emphasized the concrete and detailed character of the utterance as a condition of the orator's expressiveness. In 18 c., as R. Wellek justly noted, Quintilian's theory was actualized due to the achievements of empirical philosophy with its special accent on sensual perception [Wellek 1981: 113]. Besides, in English literary criticism there existed a long tradition of appealing to Pseudo-Longinus who wrote in his treatise On the Sublime that a poet, creating visible images, evokes the "illusion of presence" in the readers [O vozvyshennom: 20]. J. Dryden, J. Dennis, L. Welsted, J. Addison, J. Hughes, A. Pope and R. Hurd regarded this ability as a mark of a genius.
Analyzing the Old Testament from the point of view of detalization of style, Warton relied on the thesis of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory. This is evident from the choice of quotations, a considerable part of which is concerned with the destruction of biblical cities. The critic admires "tender and affecting strokes", describing the devastation of Babylon and Tyre, desolation and famine. Evangelists selected "such adjuncts and circumstances upon each subject, as are best calculated to strike the imagination and embellish their descriptions" [The Adventurer 2: 128-129].
Warton also makes an accent on the characters' visions as a source of the sublime. He pays special attention to personification and simile as efficient devices of creating vivid images (Adventurer 57, 1753).
The critic's concern with using tropes as a vehicle of the sublime is suggestive of his following the traditional rhetorical understanding of this aesthetic category. At the same time, Warton states: "It is the peculiar privilege of poetry, not only to place material objects in the most amiable attitudes, and to clothe them in the most graceful dress, but also to give life and motion to immaterial beings; and form, and color, and action, even to abstract ideas, to embody the virtues, the vices, and the passions; and to bring before our eyes, or on a stage, every faculty of the human mind" [The Adventurer 2: 173-174]. The dynamic character of this definition of the functions of poetry reveals the author's dissatisfaction with neo-classical statics of aestheticized descriptions. J. Pittock justly supposes that Warton's words contain a key to overcoming the typical in poetic representation: a writer's pretenсe of originality would be groundless if he does not depict the changeability of human emotional states, the complexity of man's nature, by using nontrivial metaphors and comparisons among other devices [Pittock 1973: 138].
M. Abrams, commenting on Warton's definition, concludes: "Thus by the mid-century, what had been a purely rhetorical figure had become an act of creation [..] having its analogue in God's peopling of this world of which, naturally, the effect on the reader is a sublime astonishment and enlargement of soul. As a result, poetic personification, together with that fairy way of writing, was elevated to the highest achievement of poetic imagination" [Abrams 1981: 289]. Alas, the scholar does not take into consideration the contexts of Adventurer's criticism which make it evident that Warton did not break with the mimetic doctrine of art and with the traditional neo-classical conceptions of imagination as a faculty of visualization of images. This is convincingly confirmed by Adventurer essay No. 63 (1753), devoted to borrowings in A. Pope's works. The beginning of the essay seems to paraphrase Rambler 121: following S. Johnson, Warton complains that the number of original authors is rather small and the majority prefer to "creep tamely and cautiously in the track of their predecessors" [The Adventurer 2: 227]. On the other hand, he shares R. Hurd's thesis, articulated in his Discourse on Poetical Imitation (1751), that nature as an object of imitation is always uniform and unchangeable, so there will always be certain similarity in writers' works (this idea was also supported by S. Johnson in Rambler 125 and 136). Warton writes: "The objects material or animate, extraneous or internal, which they [writers -O. P.] all imitate, lie equally open to the observation of all, and are perfectly similar, [so] the first copier must be, perhaps, entitled to the praise of priority; but a succeeding one ought not certainly to be condemned for plagiarism" [The Adventurer 2: 228]. H. Trowbridge emphasizes that though Warton, like Hurd, reduces imitation to description, he provides its broadened interpretation which includes reflection, contemplation, comprehension of "internal essences", the world of human feelings [Trowbridge 1937: 77].
Generally, Warton follows neo-classical conceptions of mimesis, understanding it as imitation of the eternal and unchangeable in nature: in spite of numerous achievements in the field of science and art, evolution of material and spiritual conditions of human existence, a contemporary epic or dramatic writer "would find it difficult or impossible to be totally original, and essentially different from Homer and Sophocles. The causes that excite and the operations that exemplify the greater passions, will always have an exact coincidence, though perhaps a little diversified by climate or customs: every exasperated hero must rage like Achilles, and every afflicted widow mourn like Andromache; an abandoned Armida will make use of Dido's execrations; and a Jew will nearly resemble a Grecian, when almost placed in the same situation; i. e. the Ioas of Racine in his incompa-rable "Athalia", will be very like Ion of Euripides" [The Adventurer 2: 228-229]. To prove this thesis, Warton appeals to the authority of N. Boileau and A. Pope, who expressed similar opinions in The Art of Poetry and An Essay on Criticism, and thus he leaves no doubts about his commitment to Neo-Classicism.
On the other hand, when the critic refers to Boileau [The Adventurer 2: 230], who stated that the freshest and the most unusual ideas are not those which were never uttered, but those which come to anyone's mind in similar situations, probably, he means not only the universal, but also the concrete, thus showing his involvement in the search in the 1740-1750s English poetry which, as N. A. Solovyova notes, was aimed at making the usual, common poetically significant and original [Solov'eva 1988:30].
To reduce Warton's aesthetic creed to neo-classical orthodoxy would be an unacceptable oversimplification, as his aesthetic theory is heterogeneous: its sources include the ideas of not only N. Boileau and A. Pope, R. Hurd and S. Johnson, but also those of J. Addison, which are of quite contradictory nature (especially, his theory of imagination, which influenced very much the formation of romantic views in England). In Adventurer 80 (1753), the great, unusual and beautiful, declared by the Spectator as sources of the pleasures of imagination, are presented as acknowledged and just criteria for judging the works of art. As such, they were promoted by actualization of Addison's ideas in M. Akenside's poem The Pleasures of Imagination which was very popular in England and which can be seen as a poetic periphrasis of the Spectator's essays. This poem might spur Warton's interest in Addison's views.
Applying Addison's categories to Homer's works, J. Warton regards his Iliad as a sublime poem and the Odyssey a beautiful and "unusual" one; the former "resembles the river Nile, when it descends in a cataract that deafens and astonishes" an observer, and the latter is like the Nile, too, when "when its genial inundations gently diffuse fertility and fatness over the peaceful plains of Egypt" [The Adventurer 3: 89,96].
Warton admires Homer's "boundless exuberance of imagination", his "unwearied spirit and fire" [The Adventurer 3: 90], emphasizes the variety of events in his poems, concreteness and detailing of descriptions, vivid pictures of customs and ways of ancient life, individualization of characters, dynamic plots and unexpected events. Alongside with it, to the majestic and tremendous in art, he opposes the pathetic, understood as the moving, which is "as strong an evidence of true genius as the sublime" [The Adventurer 3: 94]. He notes that Pseudo-Longinus in his treatise On the Sublime provided examples of expression of this aesthetic category in the descriptions of battles, elements, fantastic creatures, heroes' traits, whereas one needs not less genius to portray such simple and moving pictures as parting of Andromache with Hector, and "the tender circumstance of the child Astyanax starting back from his father's helmet and clinging to the bosom of his nurse", the description of an old man tenderly waiting for his son's return, not knowing that he was dead, the depiction of widows' suffering, etc.
Thus, we can single out several elements in the structure of artistic imagination, as Warton saw it. Firstly, as it was said above, he insisted authors use bright, vivid, picturesque metaphors seen by him as "one of the greatest efforts of the creative power of a warm and lively imagination" [The Adventurer 2: 174], and, consequently, he revealed his commitment to the traditional neo-classical understanding of imagination as a capacity for visualization of images.
Secondly, as R.
Wellek justly observed, in the 18 c. this conception was gradually ousted by equaling imagination with associational activity of the mind, ability of a writer to evoke sympathy, compassion [Wellek 1981: 111], and such understanding of imagination, as we have already seen, was also shared by J. Warton. Therefore, relying on the traditional system of artistic methods, we can state that the neo-classical in his aesthetics is associated with the sentimental.
One more component of the category of imagination, as it is understood by J. Warton, ascends to J. Addison, who wrote in Spectator 419 about the "fairy way of writing" which is connected with using fantastic images in poetic works (fairies, witches, ghosts, etc.). Poetry, according to Addison, cannot limit itself by imitating the sensually perceived world; it must create its own worlds. Warton relied on this idea, developing his own conception of imagination in his essays devoted to Shakespeare's dramatic works.
The first advantage of the Elizabethan, praised in Adventurer 93 (1753), is his great fantasy that distinguishes The Tempest especially in which Shakespeare "has carried the romantic, the wonderful, and the wild, to the most pleasing extravagance" [The Adventurer 3: 196]. The irrational, based on folklore, serves to an "expansion of imagination" and it does not need any justification from the positions of the traditional mimetic doctrine. But there is a personage in Shakespeare's drama that cannot be found in folk tales. Caliban is "the creature of his own imagination, in the formation of which he could derive no assistance from observation or experience" [The Adventurer 3: 225]. Characterizing this personage, the critic uses highly emotional adjectives: "brutal barbarity, unfeeling savageness, horrible delight", "fierce and implacable spirit". "The poet is a more powerful magician than his own Prospero: we are transported into fairy land; we are wrapt in a delicious dream, […] all around is enchantment", writes Warton, for whom an author's ability to strike the reader's imagination is more important than following the neo-classical principle of probability [The Adventurer 3: 203]. In many aspects, Warton is an innovator: he enriches critical discourse with new emotive lexis, he supports subjectivization of criticism and makes a special accent not on formal traits of drama, but on characters (in his Tempest essays though, they are analysed with reliance on traditional approach which presupposes considering their consistency).
M. G. Abrams is disposed to associate the beginning of worshipping Shakespeare with the essays on The Tempest [Abrams 1971: 275-276]. In any case, The Adventurer's Shakespearean essays are a certain result of a long development of English Shakespearean criticism started by J. Dryden, who respected the Elizabethan not less than J. Warton.
Turning back to the sublime / the pathetic opposition, we can conclude that The Tempest belongs to the former category (although Warton finds in it many examples of "the moving" and "the natural", in particular in the character of Miranda), while King Lear to the latter one. Warton devoted several essays to King Lear which we will consider briefly below.
What is crucially important in these essays is a subtle analysis of Shakespeare's psychologism in describing Lear's madness, surpassing, according to Warton, "Euripides himself" with his Orestes. The basis of this analysis is formed by the idea that "absurd" standards of neo-classical criticism are inapplicable to Shakespeare's works. The critic notes that it is easy just to declare Lear's mental disorder "very natural and pathetic". But in this case the readers or spectators will not see the protagonist's "secret workings and changes of mind" [The Adventurer 4: 80] which vary from one cue to another and, consequently, must be considered in detail, with reliance on the text. That is why Warton pays attention to minute incidents, quotes much and follows the manifestations of Lear's insane mind which explain the reader the causes of his catastrophe. The critic reveals Shakespeare's intentions in the scenes portraying the pictures imagined by Lear (the trial of Goneril and Regan), and shows the playwright's vivid imagery and stylistic devices (unexpected metaphors, emotionally loaded repetitions). It is for the first time in English literary criticism that Warton analysed so profoundly a Shakespearean character, so we cannot agree with T. M. Raysor who thinks that his essays are written "in the manner of J. Hughes, pointing out beauties in the plays rather than analysing the motives of the characters" [Raysor 1927: 496].
Indeed, Warton's critical heritage is not free from errors caused by the authority of neo-classical standards. Among Shakespeare's "drawbacks" he lists violations of probability, decorum and unity of action. These errors cannot eclipse the strong sides of Warton as a critic, one of which is the subjective character of his literary analysis, breaking with the traditions of "impartial criticism", aesthetically distancing itself from a work of art. Warton is a "sensible" critic, ready to inform a reader that a literary piece caused his powerful excitement, floods of tears, and this, undoubtedly, witnesses of a certain shift in the critical standards which occurred under the influence of sentimentalism. H. Robinson called the "sincerity of feeling" the most striking trait of Warton as a critic of Shakespeare [Robinson 1932: 91]. To sum up, Warton's essays witness a gradual shift from deductive to inductive critical approaches, from mimetic to psychological method of literary analysis.

Conclusion
The tenets of J. Warton's literary theory, in spite of their heterogeneous character, are inspired by the category of the sublime which he associated directly with the pathetic and, relying on Pseudo-Longinus and Quintilian, found its examples in the Bible. Being also influenced by J. Addison's conception of imagination, the critic applied his views to Homer's works and supported the irrational in Shakespeare's plays. His Shakespearean criticism tended to break with genre doctrines, as it focused on dramatic characters, their motive sphere and its realization in the texts, and the author's psychologism. This approach, as L. Damrosch put it, got "the criticism of drama off the dead center where it had rested since 16 c." [Damrosch 1972: 234]. The normative criticism was to give way to the "criticism of taste" which made a special accent on subjective analysis and the critic's intuition.
One cannot be but ambiguous when deciding conclusively on Warton's creed, as his views were contradictory enough. E. Gosse declared him a romanticist who anticipated Wordworth's and Coleridge's aesthetic views. G. Saintsbury wrote that "the spirit of time caught Warton", but he followed it "half-consciously" [Saintsbury 1904: 260]. H. Trowbridge agreed with this opinion, noting that Neo-Classicism limited his views and "controlled his taste" [Trowbridge 1937: 76]. This conclusion seems only partially true, as Warton's aesthetic views are compromising, their origins are connected both with Horatian and Longinian traditions which presuppose, respectively, the universal and the original in artistic representation. Warton as a critic, in spite of his praise of neo-classical drama and the accent on character types and didactic functions of literature, defends new values, "the pleasures of imagination", with much more enthusiasm. A close reading of his essays convinces us that he was a critic of Sense. Never were the sublime (with the exception of the Spectator) and the irrational, the fantastic as its sources supported so passionately in English periodicals before him. In J. Warton's, as well as T. Warton's and E. Young's works there appears "an idea of genuine poetry as a source of pleasure and beauty helping to explain human experience and enriching sensibility", which was important for "comparing the regular taste with susceptibility to the beautiful and the pathetic" [Solov'eva 1988: 32]. In general, we can conclude that J. Warton's periodical criticism anticipated such manifestos of pre-Romanticism as E. Young's Conjectures on Original Composition (1759) and R. Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762).