“Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,”
added to Thomson’s example and success, might perhaps induce Young, as we
shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
In 1734 he published “The Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
Written in the Character of a Sailor.” It is not to be found in the
author’s four volumes. He now appears to have given up all hopes of
overtaking Pindar, and perhaps at last resolved to turn his ambition to
some original species of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal
farewell to Ode, which few of Young’s readers will regret:
“My shell, which Clio gave, which _Kings applaud_,
Which Europe’s bleeding genius called abroad,
Adieu!”
In a species of poetry altogether his own he next tried his skill, and
succeeded.
Of his wife he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her
marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just
after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of Lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple
did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time
to a daughter of Sir John Barnard’s, whose son is the present peer. Mr.
and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and Narcissa.
From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between Mr. Temple
and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is probable that the
poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these characters; though,
at the same time, some passages respecting Philander do not appear to
suit either Mr. Temple or any other person with whom Young was known to
be connected or acquainted, while all the circumstances relating to
Narcissa have been constantly found applicable to Young’s
daughter-in-law. At what short intervals the poet tells us he was
wounded by the deaths of the three persons particularly lamented, none
that has read the “Night Thoughts” (and who has not read them?) needs to
be informed.
“Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.”
Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and Lady Elizabeth Young
could be these three victims, over whom Young has hitherto been pitied
for having to pour the “Midnight Sorrows” of his religious poetry? Mrs.
Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the
poet’s wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the
insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, “ere
thrice the moon had filled her horn.” But in the short preface to “The
Complaint” he seriously tells us, “that the occasion of this poem was
real, not fictitious, and that the facts mentioned did naturally pour
these moral reflections on the thought of the writer.” It is probable,
therefore, that in these three contradictory lines the poet complains
more than the father-in-law, the friend, or the widower. Whatever names
belong to these facts, or if the names be those generally supposed,
whatever heightening a poet’s sorrow may have given the facts; to the
sorrow Young felt from them religion and morality are indebted for the
“Night Thoughts.” There is a pleasure sure in sadness which mourners
only know! Of these poems the two or three first have been perused
perhaps more eagerly and more frequently than the rest. When he got as
far as the fourth or fifth his original motive for taking up the pen was
answered; his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We
still find the same pious poet, but we hear less of Philander and
Narcissa, and less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.
Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, on her way to Nice, the year
after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, “in her bridal
hour.” It is more than poetically true that Young accompanied her to the
Continent:
“I flew, I snatched her from the rigid North,
And bore her nearer to the sun.”
But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in
such animated colours in “Night the Third.” After her death the
remainder of the party passed the ensuing winter at Nice. The poet seems
perhaps in these compositions to dwell with more melancholy on the death
of Philander and Narcissa than of his wife. But it is only for this
reason. He who runs and reads may remember that in the “Night Thoughts”
Philander and Narcissa are often mentioned and often lamented. To
recollect lamentations over the author’s wife the memory must have been
charged with distinct passages. This lady brought him one child,
Frederick, now living, to whom the Prince of Wales was godfather.
That domestic grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these
ornaments to our language it is impossible to deny. Nor would it be
common hardiness to contend that worldly discontent had no hand in these
joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means sure that,
at any rate, we should not have had something of the same colour from
Young’s pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires. In so
long a life causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have
occurred. It is not clear to me that his Muse was not sitting upon the
watch for the first which happened. “Night Thoughts” were not uncommon
to her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he
himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his “Last
Day,” almost his earliest poem, he calls her “The Melancholy Maid,”
“whom dismal scenes delight,
Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night.”
In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he says:
“Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night
To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
To the bright palace of Eternal Day!”
When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have sent
him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp, and the poet is
reported to have used it. What he calls “The _true_ Estimate of Human
Life,” which has already been mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of
the tapestry, and being asked why he did not show the right, he is said
to have replied that he could not. By others it has been told me that
this was finished, but that, before there existed any copy, it was torn
in pieces by a lady’s monkey. Still, is it altogether fair to dress up
the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the “Night Thoughts”
to prove the gloominess of Young, and to show that his genius, like the
genius of Swift, was in some measure the sullen inspiration of
discontent? From them who answer in the affirmative it should not be
concealed that, though “Invisibilia non decipiunt” appeared upon a
deception in Young’s grounds, and “Ambulantes in horto audierunt vocem
Dei” on a building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good
humour of the author of the “Night Thoughts” for an assembly and a
bowling green.
Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous “De mortuis nil
nisi bonum” always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than
of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead,
who, if they cannot defend themselves, are at least ignorant of his
abuse, will not hesitate by the most wanton calumny to destroy the quiet,
the reputation, the fortune of the living. Yet censure is not heard
beneath the tomb, any more than praise. “De mortuis nil nisi verum—De
vivis nil nisi bonum” would approach much nearer to good sense. After
all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed the body of
the author of the “Night Thoughts” feel not much concern whether Young
pass now for a man of sorrow or for “a fellow of infinite jest.” To this
favour must come the whole family of Yorick. His immortal part, wherever
that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this head. But to a son of
worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence whether
contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that his
debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening of his
father’s days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character completely
detestable, and succeeded at last in bringing his “grey hairs with sorrow
to the grave.” The humanity of the world, little satisfied with
inventing perhaps a melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next
to invent an argument in support of their invention, and chooses that
Lorenzo should be Young’s own son. “The Biographia,” and every account
of Young, pretty roundly assert this to be the fact; of the absolute
impossibility of which, the “Biographia” itself, in particular dates,
contains undeniable evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn
of mind, who will hereafter peruse the “Night Thoughts” with less
satisfaction; who will wish they had still been deceived; who will
quarrel with me for discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo
ever yet disgraced human nature or broke a father’s heart. Yet would
these admirers of the sublime and terrible be offended should you set
them down for cruel and for savage? Of this report, inhuman to the
surviving son, if it be true, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo
is diabolical, where are we to find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from
the poems.
From the first line to the last of the “Night Thoughts” no one expression
can be discovered which betrays anything like the father. In the “Second
Night” I find an expression which betrays something else—that Lorenzo was
his friend; one, it is possible, of his former companions; one of the
Duke of Wharton’s set. The poet styles him “gay friend;” an appellation
not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a being as he
paints Lorenzo, and that being his son. But let us see how he has
sketched this dreadful portrait, from the sight of some of whose features
the artist himself must have turned away with horror. A subject more
shocking, if his only child really sat to him, than the crucifixion of
Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told of which Young composed a
short poem of fourteen lines in the early part of his life, which he did
not think deserved to be republished. In the “First Night” the address
to the poet’s supposed son is:—
“Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee.”