“Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyrics here provide;
You cannot err on flattery’s side.”
Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all
modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been
regularly called Hirelings, and on the other Patriots?
Of the dedication the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in the
highest terms of the late peace; it gives her Majesty praise indeed for
her victories, but says that the author is more pleased to see her rise
from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and
second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose
her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the boundless
spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards eternal
bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving
and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his imagination, which
tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.
The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where
human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of
little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the
praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he
conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written
it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politics,
notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the Church was in danger had
not yet subsided. The “Last Day,” written by a layman, was much approved
by the ministry and their friends.
Before the queen’s death, “The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love,”
was sent into the world. This poem is founded on the execution of Lady
Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guildford, 1554, a story chosen for the
subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by Rowe.
The dedication of it to the Countess of Salisbury does not appear in his
own edition. He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption that the
story could not have been read without thoughts of the Countess of
Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another. “To behold,” he
proceeds, “a person _only_ virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to
behold a person _only_ amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
indignation; but to turn our eyes to a Countess of Salisbury, gives us
pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias
of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and
affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty.” His
flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was at least as
well adapted.
August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas, that he is just
arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the queen’s
death, but that no panegyrics are ready yet for the king. Nothing like
friendship has yet taken place between Pope and Young, for, soon after
the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the queen’s
death, and his Majesty’s accession to the throne. It is inscribed to
Addison, then secretary to the Lords Justices. Whatever were the
obligations which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears to
aim at something of the same sort from George. Of the poem the intention
seems to have been, to show that he had the same extravagant strain of
praise for a king as for a queen. To discover, at the very onset of a
foreigner’s reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in such a king is
something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one of his excusable
pieces. We do not find it in his works.
Young’s father had been well acquainted with Lady Anne Wharton, the first
wife of Thomas Wharton, Esq., afterwards Marquis of Wharton; a lady
celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.
To the Dean of Sarum’s visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added
some verses “by that excellent poetess, Mrs. Anne Wharton,” upon its
being translated into English, at the instance of Waller by Atwood.
Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron,
and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion. The marquis
died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year, the young
marquis set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a
twelvemonth. The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland: where, says
the Biographia, “on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the
honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in
the House of Lords.” With this unhappy character it is not unlikely that
Young went to Ireland. From his letter to Richardson on “Original
Composition,” it is clear he was, at some period of his life, in that
country. “I remember,” says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, “as I
and others were taking with him an evening walk, about a mile out of
Dublin, he stopped short; we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow
us, I went back, and found him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing
upward at a noble elm, which in its uppermost branches was much withered
and decayed. Pointing at it, he said, ‘I shall be like that tree, I
shall die at top.’” Is it not probable, that this visit to Ireland was
paid when he had an opportunity of going thither with his avowed friend
and patron?
From “The Englishman” it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
theatre so early as 1713. Yet _Busiris_ was not brought upon Drury Lane
stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the Duke of Newcastle, “because the
late instances he had received of his grace’s undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had
taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron.” The Dedication he
afterwards suppressed.
_Busiris_ was followed in the year 1721 by _The Revenge_. He dedicated
this famous tragedy to the Duke of Wharton. “Your Grace,” says the
Dedication, “has been pleased to make yourself accessory to the following
scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in them, but
by making all possible provision for the success of the whole.” That his
grace should have suggested the incident to which he alludes, whatever
that incident might have been, is not unlikely. The last mental exertion
of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in Spain, was
some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary Queen of Scots.
Dryden dedicated “Marriage a la Mode” to Wharton’s infamous relation
Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry,
but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to
Wharton thus—“My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care;
which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour,
since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit,
though through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so
sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive the benefit of it.” That
he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his
power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his
works. He should have remembered that he at the same time concealed his
obligation to Wharton for _the most beautiful incident_ in what is surely
not his least beautiful composition. The passage just quoted is, in a
poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:
“Be this thy partial smile from censure free!
’Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.”
While Young, who, in his “Love of Fame,” complains grievously how often
“dedications wash an Æthiop white,” was painting an amiable Duke of
Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe the
“scorn and wonder of his days” in lasting verse. To the patronage of
such a character, had Young studied men as much as Pope, he would have
known how little to have trusted. Young, however, was certainly indebted
to it for something material; and the duke’s regard for Young, added to
his lust of praise, procured to All Souls College a donation, which was
not forgotten by the poet when he dedicated _The Revenge_.
It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, Case 136, Stiles
_versus_ the Attorney-General, March 14, 1740, as authority for the life
of a poet. But biographers do not always find such certain guides as the
oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to
determine whether two annuities, granted by the Duke of Wharton to Young,
were for legal considerations. One was dated the 24th March, 1719, and
accounted for his grace’s bounty in a style princely and commendable, if
not legal—“considering that the public good is advanced by the
encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being pleased therein
with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration thereof, and of the love
I bear him, &c.” The other was dated the 10th of July, 1722.
Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
refused an annuity of £100 which had been offered him for life if he
would continue tutor to Lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations of
the Duke of Wharton, and his grace’s assurances of providing for him in a
much more ample manner. It also appeared that the duke had given him a
bond for £600 dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration of his
taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to be
chosen member of the House of Commons, at the duke’s desire, and in
consideration of his not taking two livings of £200 and £400 in the gift
of All Souls College, on his grace’s promises of serving and advancing
him in the world.
Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account.
The attempt to get into Parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood
a contested election. His grace discovered in him talents for oratory as
well as for poetry. Nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took
orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the
grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was
once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was
preaching in his turn at St. James’s, he plainly perceived it was out of
his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the
feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into
tears. But we must pursue his poetical life.
In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their
common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if
they contain any, it is now vain to seek:
“_In joy once joined_, in sorrow, now, for years—
Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due.”
From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to
“communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least
things.”
In 1719 appeared a “Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job.” Parker, to
whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been qualified
for a patron. Of this work the author’s opinion may be known from his
letter to Curll: “You seem, in the Collection you propose, to have
omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean ‘a
Translation from part of Job,’ printed by Mr. Tonson.” The Dedication,
which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson’s edition, while it
speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an
unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every one who sings in
the dark does not sing from joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of
flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no kind
of knowledge.
Of his Satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates without
the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe
in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have
referred to the poems, to discover when they were written. For these
internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first
Satire laments, that “Guilt’s chief foe in Addison is fled.” The second,
addressing himself, asks:—
“Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
A fool at _forty_ is a fool indeed.”
The Satires were originally published separately in folio, under the
title of “The Universal Passion.” These passages fix the appearance of
the first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young seldom
suffered his pen to dry after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may
conclude that he began his Satires soon after he had written the
“Paraphrase on Job.” The last Satire was certainly finished in the
beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the King, in his passage
from Helvoetsluys, escaped with great difficulty from a storm by landing
at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a miracle,
in such an encomiastic strain of compliment as poetry too often seeks to
pay to royalty. From the sixth of these poems we learn,
“’Midst empire’s charms, how Carolina’s heart
Glowed with the love of virtue and of art.”
Since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
“Her favour is diffused to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawned on me.”
Her Majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter of
the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had perhaps shown some attention
to Lady Elizabeth’s future husband.
The fifth Satire, “On Women,” was not published till 1727; and the sixth
not till 1728.
To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he
prefixed a Preface, in which he observes that “no man can converse much
in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or
grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into
ridicule,” he adds, “I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least,
and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the
misconduct of the world will, in a great measure, ease us of any more
disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven
out by another than by reason, whatever some teach.” So wrote, and so of
course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost
fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the “Last Day.” After all,
Swift pronounced of these Satires, that they should either have been more
angry or more merry.
Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any palliation,
this Preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at the world, in
the same collection of his works which contains the mournful, angry,
gloomy “Night Thoughts!” At the conclusion of the Preface he applies
Plato’s beautiful fable of the “Birth of Love” to modern poetry, with the
addition, “that Poetry, like Love, is a little subject to blindness,
which makes her mistake her way to preferments and honours; and that she
retains a dutiful admiration of her father’s family; but divides her
favours, and generally lives with her mother’s relations.” Poetry, it is
true, did not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not
something like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her,
and her sister Prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to
entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though
nearly related to Poetry, had no connection with her whom Plato makes the
mother of Love. That he could not well complain of being related to
Poverty appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude
records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By “The Universal
Passion” he acquired no vulgar fortune—more than three thousand pounds.
A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South Sea. For
this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His Muse makes poetical
use more than once of a South Sea Dream.
It is related by Mr. Spence, in his “Manuscript Anecdotes,” on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
“Universal Passion,” received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, “Two thousand pounds
for a poem!” he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his life,
for the poem was worth four thousand. This story may be true; but it
seems to have been raised from the two answers of Lord Burghley and Sir
Philip Sidney in Spenser’s Life.
After inscribing his Satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferments and honours, to such names as the Duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain, and Sir Robert
Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. In 1726 he addressed a poem to
Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. “The Instalment” is
among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his _excusable
writings_. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
power of bestowing immortality:—
“Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!”
The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
acknowledgment, would now perhaps never have been known:—
“My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee,
Refresh the dry remains of poesy.”
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must
at least be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with “Ocean, an
Ode.” The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended
the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
“invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
service of their country”—a plan which humanity must lament that policy
has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
Prefixed to the original publication were an “Ode to the King, Pater
Patriæ,” and an “Essay on Lyric Poetry.” It is but justice to confess
that he preserved neither of them; and that the Ode itself, which in the
first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas, in the
author’s own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted
passages is a “Wish,” that concluded the poem, which few would have
suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it,
would confess something like their shame by suppression. It stood
originally so high in the author’s opinion, that he entitled the poem,
“Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish.” This wish consists of thirteen
stanzas. The first runs thus:—
“O may I _steal_
Along the _vale_
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!”
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:—
“Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I _have_,
And live, not _leave_,
Enamoured of the present day!
“My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one _beam_
Of honest _fame_!
And scorn the laboured monument!
“Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty Nature’s self shall die,
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!”
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said,
in his “Essay on Lyric Poetry,” prefixed to the poem—“For the more
_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome give grace and
pleasure. Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_ (of
which the moderns are too fond) but from this truth.” Yet the moderns
surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by their own
confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony. The next paragraph
in his Essay did not occur to him when he talked of “that great turn” in
the stanza just quoted. “But then the writer must take care that the
difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme consistent with as
perfect sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly
free from that shackle.” Another part of this Essay will convict the
following stanza of what every reader will discover in it “involuntary
burlesque:—
“The northern blast,
The shattered mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock,
The breaking spout,
The _stars gone out_,
The boiling strait, the monster’s shock.”
But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
If Young be not a lyric poet, he is at least a critic in that sort of
poetry; and, if his lyric poetry can be proved bad, it was first proved
so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.
Milbourne was styled by Pope “the fairest of critics,” only because he
exhibited his own version of “Virgil” to be compared with Dryden’s, which
he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in his
power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets for
prefixing to a lyric composition an “Essay on Lyric Poetry,” so just and
impartial as to condemn himself.
We shall soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical
essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
contains some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
language.
Soon after the appearance of “Ocean,” when he was almost fifty, Young
entered into orders. In April, 1728, not long after he had put on the
gown, he was appointed chaplain to George II.
The tragedy of _The Brothers_, which was already in rehearsal, he
immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it with some
reluctance to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The Epilogue to _The
Brothers_, the only appendages to any of his three plays which he added
himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an
historical Epilogue. Finding that “Guilt’s dreadful close his narrow
scene denied,” he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the Epilogue,
and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
Perseus “for this night’s deed.”
Of Young’s taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular light.
When he determined on the Church he did not address himself to Sherlock,
to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in theology, but to
Pope, who, in a youthful frolic, advised the diligent perusal of Thomas
Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from interruption to an
obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to godliness hearing
nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he might have carried
the jest too far, sought after him, and found him just in time to prevent
what Ruffhead calls “an irretrievable derangement.”
That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the
surest guide to his new profession left him little doubt whether poetry
was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long indeed
after he took orders he published in prose (1728) “A True Estimate of
Human Life,” dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which
it abounds, to the Queen; and a sermon preached before the House of
Commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of King Charles, entitled, “An Apology
for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Government.” But the “Second
Course,” the counterpart of his “Estimate,” without which it cannot be
called “A True Estimate,” though in 1728 it was announced as “soon to be
published,” never appeared, and his old friends the Muses were not
forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world
“Imperium Pelagi: a Naval Lyric, written in imitation of Pindar’s Spirit,
occasioned by his Majesty’s return from Hanover, September, 1729, and the
succeeding peace.” It is inscribed to the Duke of Chandos. In the
Preface we are told that the Ode is the most spirited kind of poetry, and
that the Pindaric is the most spirited kind of Ode. “This I speak,” he
adds, “with sufficient candour at my own very great peril. But truth has
an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to suffer by it.”
Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young’s “Imperium Pelagi” was
ridiculed in Fielding’s “Tom Thumb;” but let us not forget that it was
one of his pieces which the author of the “Night Thoughts” deliberately
refused to own. Not long after this Pindaric attempt he published two
Epistles to Pope, “Concerning the Authors of the Age,” 1730. Of these
poems one occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the
liveliness of his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious
for promotion in the Church.
In July, 1730, he was presented by his College to the Rectory of Welwyn,
in Hertfordshire. In May, 1731, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter
of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of Colonel Lee. His connection with
this lady arose from his father’s acquaintance, already mentioned, with
Lady Anne Wharton, who was co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley in
Oxfordshire. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to aspire to the
arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary happiness. We may
naturally conclude that Young now gave himself up in some measure to the
comforts of his new connection, and to the expectations of that
preferment which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at least, to
the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.
The next production of his muse was “The Sea-piece,” in two odes.
Young enjoys the credit of what is called an “Extempore Epigram on
Voltaire,” who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
jealous English poet, Milton’s allegory of “Sin and Death:”
“You are so witty, profligate and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.”
From the following passage in the poetical dedication of his “Sea-piece”
to Voltaire it seems that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
any reproof), was something longer than a distich, and something more
gentle than the distich just quoted.
“No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
On _Dorset_ Downs, when Milton’s page,
With Sin and Death provoked thy rage,
Thy rage provoked who soothed with _gentle_ rhymes?”
By “Dorset Downs” he probably meant Mr. Dodington’s seat. In Pitt’s
Poems is “An Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on
the Review at Sarum, 1722.”
“While with your Dodington retired you sit,
Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit,” etc.
Thomson, in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
of the Muses,
“Where, in the secret bower and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.”