Author: Warwick, Thomas
Biography:
WARWICK, Thomas (1754-85: Wikipedia)
He was baptised on 15 Sept. 1754 at St. Mary’s, Truro, the son of Thomas Warrick (sic) and his wife Sibilla Peters, who had married in 1752. He was educated at the Cathedral School, Truro, and proceeded to University College Oxford (matric. 1771, BCL 1779 as “Warwick”). He entered the Established Church and was ordained deacon in 1777 and priest in 1778 but never seems to have secured a living. At Oxford, where he may have come under the influence of the Warton circle, he published a loyalist poem against American rebels and their French allies, The Rights of Sovereignty Asserted (1777). He later published two poetic tales, Abelard to Eloisa (1783) and Edwy (1784) but it was mostly on account of the fourteen sonnets in Abelard to Eloisa (1783) that he was admired for his originality and skill. He was erroneously included in “A List of Living Authors” (GM Aug. 1792, 691) with a correction supplied by “Blondel” stating that he had “died before that list appeared”(GM Nov. 1792, 972). This probably led Sir Egerton Brydges (q.v.) to assign 1791 as his year of death (Censuria Literaria [1805], 1: 321). He died in 1785 on the Bath-London road when he was thrown from his phaeton and crushed under the wheels of a passing wagon. (Wikipedia 10 Jun. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 10 Jun. 2022; CCEd 10 Jun. 2022; Bath Chronicle 24 Nov. 1785; Richard Polwhele, Poems, Chiefly by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall [1792], 2: 54-5, 212-22 and Biographical Sketches in Cornwall [1831], 2: 40-44; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, 2: 853-4; Lawrence S. Wright, “Eighteenth-Century Replies to Pope’s Eloisa,” Studies in Philology 31:4 [1934], 519-33) AA
Other Names:
- Thos. Warwick