Notes

1] For Warton's antiquarian interests, see note on lines 7-16 of Verses on Reynolds' Painted Window. Speculation as to the origin of Stonehenge was rife during the 17th and 18th centuries. Nennius, a 9th-century historian, first stated that it was erected to commemorate four hundred British nobles treacherously slain by Hengist, a leader of the Jutes. The Welsh bards and Geoffrey of Monmouth (Hist. Brit.) elaborate this into a tale that the marvellous feat was brought about for Uther Pendragon (father of King Arthur) by the magician Merlin, who caused a great stone circle in Ireland (previously carried there out of Scythia by giants) to be transported to Salisbury Plain. Inigo Jones (1655) tried to show that it was a Roman temple. Dr. Charleton (1663; cf. notes to Dryden's poem addressed to him) maintained against this that it was erected by the Danes. Dr. Stukeley (1740) argued that it was a Druid temple. Warton used especially Camden's Britannia, but has a long note on the subject in his History of English Poetry in connection with the poetry of Robert of Gloucester.

3] Amber's fatal plain. "In the translation of a copy of Latin verses, p. 123, Camden calls the site of Stonehenge 'Amber's plains'; and in p. 125 explains the neighbouring village of Ambresbury, or (as it is now pronounced and written) Amesbury, to mean 'Ambrose's town,' called by Matthew of Westminster, Pagus Ambri." (Warton, Poetical Works, ed. Mant).

11] Brutus. Great-grandson of Aeneas, legendary ancestor of the Britons.

Other poems by Thomas Warton the younger