Waller, Spenser, and Dryden were, he says, his great favourites in the order named, till he was twelve.

Like so many other poets, he took infinite delight in the _Faery Queen_; but Dryden, the great poetical luminary of his own day, naturally exercised a predominant influence upon his mind.
He declared that he had learnt versification wholly from Dryden's works, and always mentioned his name with reverence.

Many scattered remarks reported by Spence, and the still more conclusive evidence of frequent appropriation, show him to have been familiar with the poetry of the preceding century, and with much that had gone out of fashion in his time, to a degree in which he was probably excelled by none of his successors, with the exception of Gray.

Like Gray he contemplated at one time the history of English poetry which was in some sense executed by Warton.

It is characteristic, too, that he early showed a critical spirit.