Warton probably began researching the History in the 1750s, but did not actually begin writing in earnest until 1769. He conceived of his work as tracing "the transitions from barbarism to civility" in English poetry, but alongside this view of progress went a Romantic love of medieval poetry for its own sake. The first volume, published in 1774 with a second edition the following year, is prefaced with two dissertations: one on "The Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe", which he believed to lie in the Islamic world, and the other on "The Introduction of Learning into England", which deals with the revival of interest in Classical literature. Then begins the History proper. Warton decided to give no account of Anglo-Saxon poetry, ostensibly because it lay before "that era, when our nation