Thomas Warton (1728-1790), poet and historian, was born in Basingstoke, Hampshire, on 9 January 1728. He was educated at home until 1744, when he entered Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated BA (1747) and MA (1750), and was elected a probationary fellow of Trinity on 25 May 1752 and perpetual fellow on 6 June 1753.
Warton's first major poem, 'The Pleasures of Melancholy' was published in 1747. As a response to William Mason's poem Isis: an Elegy (1749), Warton published The Triumph of Isis (1750). While he was a serious scholar and poet, he was also a humorist and satirist publishing 'Verses on Miss C-s [Cotes] and Miss W-;t [Wilmot]', anonymously in July 1749 and 'A Panegyric on Oxford Ale' and 'The Pleasures of being out of Debt', which appeared on 31 March 1750 in The Student.
In 1757 Warton was elected professor of poetry at Oxford and on 7 December 1767 took the degree of BD. In 1771 he was elected a fellow of the London Society of Antiquaries. He began his The history of English poetry, from the close of the eleventh to the commencement of the eighteenth centuryin 1769; volume 1 appeared in 1774, volume 2 in 1778, and volume 3 in 1781. Warton was made poet laureate in 1785.
During his lifetime Warton held a number of preferments after being ordained a priest on 10 March 1754. From 1755 to 1774 he was curate of Woodstock, Oxfordshire, appointed chaplain to the Royal Lancashire Regiment, Winchester, in 1762, received the living of Kiddington, Oxfordshire, in 1771, and the perpetual curacy of Hill Farrance, Somerset, in August 1782. He died on 20 May 1790 and was buried in the ante-chapel of Trinity.
Source: Hugh Reid, 'Warton, Thomas (1728-1790)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. By permission of Oxford University Press -- http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28799.
John Bowle (1725-1788), literary editor, was born on 15 October 1725 at Idmiston, near Salisbury, Wiltshire. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, where he took his MA in 1750 and, after ordination, became vicar of Idmiston. On 7 November 1754 he married Elizabeth, daughter of John Elliott, of Winterbourne Cherburgh, Wiltshire. Bowle was elected FSA in 1776.
He published the Troublesome Raigne of King John of 1591 (1764), together with various works by John Marston, and made contributions to Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry and the 1778 Johnson-Steevens edition of Shakespeare. His edition of Don Quixote was published at Salisbury in 1781. Bowle died on 26 October 1788 at Idmiston, and is buried in the church there.
Source: R.W. Truman, 'Bowle, John (1725-1788)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. By permission of Oxford University Press - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3066.
