THE following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman (Mr.
Herbert Croft) who had better information than I could easily have
obtained; and the public will perhaps wish that I had solicited and
obtained more such favours from him:—
“Dear Sir,—In consequence of our different conversations about
authentic materials for the Life of Young, I send you the following
details:”—
Of great men something must always be said to gratify curiosity. Of the
illustrious author of the “Night Thoughts” much has been told of which
there never could have been proofs, and little care appears to have been
taken to tell that of which proofs, with little trouble, might have been
procured.
Edward Young was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June, 1681. He was
the son of Edward Young, at that time Fellow of Winchester College, and
Rector of Upham, who was the son of Jo. Young, of Woodhay, in Berkshire,
styled by Wood, _gentleman_. In September, 1682, the poet’s father was
collated to the prebend of Gillingham Minor, in the church of Sarum, by
Bishop Ward. When Ward’s faculties were impaired through age, his duties
were necessarily performed by others. We learn from Wood that, at a
visitation of Sprat’s, July the 12th, 1686, the prebendary preached a
Latin sermon, afterwards published, with which the Bishop was so pleased,
that he told the chapter he was concerned to find the preacher had one of
the worst prebends in their Church. Some time after this, in consequence
of his merit and reputation, or of the interest of Lord Bradford, to
whom, in 1702, he dedicated two volumes of sermons, he was appointed
chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, and preferred to the Deanery of
Sarum. Jacob, who wrote in 1720, says, “he was Chaplain and Clerk of the
Closet to the late Queen, who honoured him by standing godmother to the
poet.” His Fellowship of Winchester he resigned in favour of a gentleman
of the name of Harris, who married his only daughter. The Dean died at
Sarum, after a short illness, in 1705, in the sixty-third year of his
age. On the Sunday after his decease, Bishop Burnet preached at the
cathedral, and began his sermon with saying, “Death has been of late
walking round us, and making breach upon breach upon us, and has now
carried away the head of this body with a stroke, so that he, whom you
saw a week ago distributing the holy mysteries, is now laid in the dust.
But he still lives in the many excellent directions he has left us both
how to live and how to die.”
The dean placed his son upon the foundation at Winchester College, where
he had himself been educated. At this school Edward Young remained till
the election after his eighteenth birthday, the period at which those
upon the foundation are superannuated. Whether he did not betray his
abilities early in life, or his masters had not skill enough to discover
in their pupil any marks of genius for which he merited reward, or no
vacancy at Oxford offered them an opportunity to bestow upon him the
reward provided for merit by William of Wykeham; certain it is, that to
an Oxford fellowship our poet did not succeed. By chance, or by choice,
New College cannot claim the honour of numbering among its fellows him
who wrote the “Night Thoughts.”
On the 13th of October, 1703, he was entered an independent member of New
College, that he might live at little expense in the warden’s lodgings,
who was a particular friend of his father’s, till he should be qualified
to stand for a fellowship at All Souls. In a few months the warden of
New College died. He then removed to Corpus College. The president of
this society, from regard also for his father, invited him thither, in
order to lessen his academical expenses. In 1708 he was nominated to a
law-fellowship at All Souls by Archbishop Tenison, into whose hands it
came by devolution. Such repeated patronage, while it justifies Burnet’s
praise of the father, reflects credit on the conduct of the son. The
manner in which it was exerted seems to prove that the father did not
leave behind him much wealth.
On the 23rd of April, 1714, Young took his degree of bachelor of civil
laws, and his doctor’s degree on the 10th of June, 1719. Soon after he
went to Oxford he discovered, it is said, an inclination for pupils.
Whether he ever commenced tutor is not known. None has hitherto boasted
to have received his academical instruction from the author of “Night
Thoughts.” It is probable that his College was proud of him no less as a
scholar than as a poet; for in 1716, when the foundation of the
Codrington Library was laid, two years after he had taken his bachelor’s
degree, Young was appointed to speak the Latin oration. This is at least
particular for being dedicated in English “To the Ladies of the
Codrington Family.” To these ladies he says “that he was unavoidably
flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle dedicatory
void of commonplace, and such an one was never published before by any
author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any obligation of
reading what was presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of
it, because it would make people stare, was absurd enough and perfectly
right.” Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his
works; and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, in 1741, is a
letter from Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December the
9th, 1739, wherein he says that he has not leisure to review what he
formerly wrote, and adds, “I have not the ‘Epistle to Lord Lansdowne.’
If you will take my advice, I would have you omit that, and the oration
on Codrington. I think the collection will sell better without them.”
There are who relate that, when first Young found himself independent,
and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and
morality which he afterwards became. The authority of his father,
indeed, had ceased, some time before, by his death; and Young was
certainly not ashamed to be patronised by the infamous Wharton. But
Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet, and particularly the
tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronised only by virtuous
peers, who shall point them out? Yet Pope is said by Ruffhead to have
told Warburton that “Young had much of a sublime genius, though without
common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable
to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a _foolish youth_, the
sport of peers and poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to
support the clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency,
and afterwards with honour.”
They who think ill of Young’s morality in the early part of his life may
perhaps be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of Young’s
warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to spend much
of his time at All Souls. “The other boys,” said the atheist, “I can
always answer, because I always know whence they have their arguments,
which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually
pestering me with something of his own.”
After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable. Young
might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which his
natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were so,
he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue, but the
potent testimony of experience against vice. We shall soon see that one
of his earliest productions was more serious than what comes from the
generality of unfledged poets.
Young perhaps ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the “Poem to his
Majesty,” presented with a copy of verses, to Somers: and hoped that he
also might soar to wealth and honours on wings of the same kind. His
first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to the House of Lords
the sons of the Earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in one
day, ten others to the number of Peers. In order to reconcile the people
to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, “An Epistle to
the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdowne.” In this composition the
poet pours out his panegyric with the extravagance of a young man, who
thinks his present stock of wealth will never be exhausted. The poem
seems intended also to reconcile the public to the late peace. This is
endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and that in
peace “harvests wave, and commerce swells her sail.” If this be
humanity, for which he meant it, is it politics? Another purpose of this
epistle appears to have been to prepare the public for the reception of
some tragedy he might have in hand. His lordship’s patronage, he says,
will not let him “repent his passion for the stage;” and the particular
praise bestowed on _Othello_ and _Oroonoko_ looks as if some such
character as Zanga was even then in contemplation. The affectionate
mention of the death of his friend Harrison of New College, at the close
of this poem, is an instance of Young’s art, which displayed itself so
wonderfully some time afterwards in the “Night Thoughts,” of making the
public a party in his private sorrow. Should justice call upon you to
censure this poem, it ought at least to be remembered that he did not
insert it in his works; and that in the letter to Curll, as we have seen,
he advises its omission. The booksellers, in the late body of English
poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the
respective authors. This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young.
“I think,” says he, “the following pieces in _four_ volumes to be the
most excusable of all that I have written; and I wish _less apology_ was
less needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the
pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them
as _pardonable_ as it was in my power to do.”
Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?
When Addison published “Cato” in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing
to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the pieces which
the author of the “Night Thoughts” did not republish.
On the appearance of his poem on the “Last Day,” Addison did not return
Young’s compliment; but “The Englishman” of October 29, 1713, which was
probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. The “Last
Day” was published soon after the peace. The Vice-Chancellor’s
_imprimatur_ (for it was printed at Oxford) is dated the 19th, 1713.
From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the
composition of it. While other bards “with Britain’s hero set their
souls on fire,” he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough _had
been_ considered by Britain as her _hero_; but, when the “Last Day” was
published, female cabal had blasted for a time the laurels of Blenheim.
This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710, before he was
thirty; for part of it is printed in the _Tatler_. It was inscribed to
the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he did not admit into
his works. It tells her that his only title to the great honour he now
does himself is the obligation which he formerly received from her royal
indulgence. Of this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded
to her being his godmother. He is said indeed to have been engaged at a
settled stipend as a writer for the Court. In Swift’s “Rhapsody on
Poetry” are these lines, speaking of the Court:—
“Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face,
Where Y— must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.”