A republication of Pope's works, with notes, offered him an easier occupation than the digesting of those scattered materials for the History of Poetry which he had thus assisted in disarranging. He was probably glad to escape from inaction, and set himself to parcel out his Essay into comments for this edition; which, in 1797, was published in nine volumes. His indiscretion, in adding to it some of Pope's productions which had been before excluded, has been most bitterly censured. That it would have been better to let them remain where they were can scarcely be questioned. But I should be more willing to regard the insertion of them as proof of his own simplicity, in suspecting no harm from what he had himself found to be harmless, than of any design to communicate injury to others. A long life, passed without blame, and in the faithful discharge of arduous duties, ought to have secured him from this misconstruction at its close. After all, the pieces objected to are such as are more offensive to good manners than dangerous to morality. There are some other of Pope's writings, more likely to inflame the passions, which yet no one scruples to read; and Dr. Wooll has suggested that it was inconsistent to set up the writer as a teacher of virtue, and in the same breath to condemn his editor as a pander to vice. He bestowed on his censurers no more consideration than they deserved, and went on to prepare an edition of Dry den for the press. Two volumes, with his notes, were completed, when his labours were finally broken off by a painful disease. His malady was an affection of the kidneys, which continued to harass him for some months, and ended in a fatal paralysis on the twenty-third of February, 1800, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He was interred in the cathedral at Winchester, where, by the contributions of his former scholars, a monument, executed by Mr. Flaxman, was raised to his memory, of a design so elegant, as the tomb of a poet has not often been honoured with. It is inscribed with the following epitaph-- H.S.E. Josephus Warton, S.T.P. Hujus Ecclesiae Prebendarius: Scolae Wintoniensis Per annos fere triginta Informator: Poeta fervidus, facilis, expolitus. Criticus eruditus, perspicax, elegans: Obiit XXIII'o. Feb. M.D.CCC. Aetat. LXXVIII. Hoc qualecunque Pietatis monumentum Praeceptori optimo, Desideratissimo, Wiccamici sui P.C.