Beauclerk and Thomas Warton, all Trinity men. Of Dr. Warton he was often the guest, at Kettell Hall.
Warton was "Poet Laureate of England," a title of doubtful glory, from 1785 to 1790. He entered Trinity in 1743; he was graduated in 1747; he was a Tutor for some years; he became a Fellow in 1751; he was appointed Professor of Poetry in 1757; Professor of History in 1785; and he was thus, in one way or another, associated with Trinity for the greater part of his life. He wrote verses in his undergraduate days, and he continued to write verses. Wilson ("Christopher North") said once that, "the gods had made Warton poetical but not a poet"; but that he was, nevertheless, the finest fellow who ever breathed. There was very little medium in Wilson's opinions of any of the fellows who breathed. If they were in his eyes not the finest, they were apt to be altogether the reverse.
Someone else has described Warton as a fat little man; with a thick utterance, resembling the gabble of a turkey-cock. His taste for amusements does not seem to have been particularly refined despite his scholarly habits and acquirements and his general studious disposition; and his favorite associates in Oxford, next to Johnson and the Thinkers, and sometimes even in preference to the Thinkers, were the barge-men on the river, with
