YOUNG.

The following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman who had

better information than I could easily have obtained; and the publick

will, perhaps, wish that I had solicited and obtained more such favours

from him[185].

"DEAR SIR,--In consequence of our different conversations about

authentick materials for the life of Young, I send you the

following detail.

"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 afforded 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, 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 commented tutor is not known. None has

hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from the

author of the 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 a one as 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, 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."[186]

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 honour 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 panegyrick 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 publick 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 politicks? Another purpose of

this epistle appears to have been, to prepare the publick 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 publick 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[187].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

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 vicechancellor's

_imprimatur_, for it was printed at Oxford, is dated May 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[188] 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 banish'd in disgrace,

Where Pope will never show his face,

Where Y---- must torture his invention

To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

That Y---- means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same

poem:

Attend, ye Popes and Youngs and Gays,

And tune your harps and strew your bays;

Your panegyricks here provide;

You cannot err on flatt'ry'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 politicks,

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 on 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 panegyricks are ready yet for the king. Nothing like

friendship had 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

outset 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

twelve-month. 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[189]?

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 à-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 Aethiop 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 of March,

1719, and accounted for his grace's bounty in a style princely and

commendable, if not legal--"considering that the publick 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_l_. 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_l_. 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_l_. and 400_l_. 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 join'd_, 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 encomiastick 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

Glow'd with the love of virtue and of art:

since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,

Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,

Excess of goodness! it has dawn'd 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 connexion 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

preferment and honours, to such names as the duke of Dorset, Mr.

Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, lady Elizabeth Germaine, and sir Robert

Walpole, he returns to plain panegyrick. 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, turn'd by thee,

Refresh the dry domains 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

Patriae, and an Essay on Lyrick 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_,

Enamour'd 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 labour'd 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 Lyrick 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 his 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

consist 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 shatter'd 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 lyrick poet, he is, at least, a critick in that sort

of poetry; and, if his lyrick 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 criticks," 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 lyrick composition an essay on lyrick 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

critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it

contain 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[190] not long after he had put on

the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the second.

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 appendage 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 frolick, 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

Discourse, 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 lyrick, 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 Pindarick 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 Pindarick 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

connexion with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already

mentioned, with lady Anne Wharton, who was coheiress 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 connexion, 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 provok'd thy rage,

Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd 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 retir'd you sit,

Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.

Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat

of the muses,

Where, in the secret bow'r and winding walk,

For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.

The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the

second

Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd 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 call'd 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, 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 fill'd 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 fill'd 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, in 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 snatch'd 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 domestick 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 audiêrunt 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 any thing 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 horrour. 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.

In the Fifth Night;

And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime

Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?

Is this a picture of the son of the rector of Welwyn?

Eighth Night;

In foreign realms (for thou hast travell'd far;)

which even now does not apply to his son.

In Night Five;

So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate;

Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes;

And dy'd to give him, orphan'd in his birth!

At the beginning of the Fifth Night we find;

Lorenzo! to recriminate is just;

I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.

But, to cut short all inquiry; if any one of these passages, if any

passage in the poems, be applicable, my friend shall pass for Lorenzo.

The son of the author of the Night Thoughts was not old enough, when

they were written, to recriminate, or to be a father. The Night Thoughts

were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The first

Nights appear, in the books of the company of Stationers, as the

property of Robert Dodsley, in 1742. The preface to Night Seven is dated

July 7th, 1744. The marriage, in consequence of which the supposed

Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till

June, 1733. In 1741 this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to

whose education vice had for some years put the last hand, was only

eight years old.

An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to contradiction, so impossible

to be true, who could propagate? Thus easily are blasted the reputations

of the living and of the dead.

Who, then, was Lorenzo? exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If we

cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely

terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin?

These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of

human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the

poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti-Lucretius, "quo nomine," says

Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige." That this was the case, many

expressions in the Night Thoughts would seem to prove, did not a

passage in Night Eight appear to show that he had something in his eye

for the groundwork, at least, of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may

be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he

only gives the initial letter:

Tell not Calista. She will laugh thee dead,

Or send thee to her hermitage with L----.

The Biographia, not satisfied with pointing out the son of Young, in

that son's lifetime, as his father's Lorenzo, travels out of its way

into the history of the son, and tells of his having been forbidden his

college at Oxford, for misbehaviour. How such anecdotes, were they true,

tend to illustrate the life of Young, it is not easy to discover. Was

the son of the author of the Night Thoughts, indeed, forbidden his

college for a time, at one of the universities? The author of Paradise

Lost is by some supposed to have been disgracefully ejected from the

other. From juvenile follies who is free? But, whatever the Biographia

chooses to relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his

college, either lasting or temporary.

Yet, were nature to indulge him with a second youth, and to leave him at

the same time the experience of that which is past, he would probably

spend it differently--who would not?--he would certainly be the occasion

of less uneasiness to his father. But, from the same experience, he

would as certainly, in the same case, be treated differently by his

father.

Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the

best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their

heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties.

Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of

mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The

prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets.

He who is connected with the author of the Night Thoughts, only by

veneration for the poet and the christian, may be allowed to observe,

that Young is one of those, concerning whom, as you remark in your

account of Addison, it is proper rather to say "nothing that is false,

than all that is true."

But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo,

than see himself vindicated, at the expense of his father's memory, from

follies which, if it may be thought blamable in a boy to have committed

them, it is surely praiseworthy in a man to lament, and certainly not

only unnecessary but cruel in a biographer to record.

Of the Night Thoughts, notwithstanding their author's professed

retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names. He had not

yet weaned himself from earls and dukes, from speakers of the house of

commons, lords commissioners of the treasury, and chancellors of the

exchequer.

In Night Eight the politician plainly betrays himself:

Think no post needful that demands a knave:

When late our civil helm was shifting hands,

So P---- thought; think better if you can.

Yet it must be confessed, that at the conclusion of Night Nine, weary,

perhaps, of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul,

Henceforth

Thy _patron_ he, whose diadem has dropt

Yon gems of heaven; eternity thy prize;

And leave the racers of the world their own.

The Fourth Night was addressed, by a "much-indebted muse," to the

honourable Mr. Yorke, now lord Hardwicke; who meant to have laid the

muse under still greater obligation, by the living of Shenfield in

Essex, if it had become vacant.

The First Night concludes with this passage:

Dark, though not blind, like thee, Meonides:

Or Milton, thee. Ah! could I reach your strain;

Or his who made Meonides our own!

Man too he sung. Immortal man I sing.

Oh! had he prest his theme, pursu'd the track

Which opens out of darkness into day!

Oh! had he mounted on his wing of fire,

Soar'd, where I sink, and sung immortal man--

How had it blest mankind, and rescu'd me!

To the author of these lines was dedicated, in 1756, the first volume of

an Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, which attempted, whether

justly or not, to pluck from Pope his "wing of fire," and to reduce him

to a rank at least one degree lower than the first class of English

poets. If Young accepted and approved the dedication, he countenanced

this attack upon the fame of him whom he invokes as his muse.

Part of "paper-sparing" Pope's third book of the Odyssey, deposited in

the Museum, is written upon the back of a letter signed "E. Young,"

which is clearly the handwriting of our Young. The letter, dated only

May the 2nd, seems obscure; but there can be little doubt that the

friendship he requests was a literary one, and that he had the highest

literary opinion of Pope. The request was a prologue, I am told.

"May the 2nd.

"DEAR SIR,--Having been often from home, I know not if you have

done me the favour of calling on me. But, be that as it will, I

much want that instance of your friendship I mentioned in my last;

a friendship I am very sensible I can receive from no one but

yourself. I should not urge this thing so much but for very

particular reasons; nor can you be at a loss to conceive how a

'trifle of this nature' may be of serious moment to me; and while I

am in hopes of the great advantage of your advice about it, I shall

not be so absurd as to make any further step without it. I know you

are much engaged, and only hope to hear of you at your entire

leisure.

"I am, sir, your most faithful,

"and obedient servant,

"E. YOUNG."

Nay, even after Pope's death, he says, in Night Seven,

Pope, who couldst make immortals, art thou dead?

Either the Essay, then, was dedicated to a patron, who disapproved its

doctrine, which I have been told by the author was not the case; or

Young appears, in his old age, to have bartered for a dedication, an

opinion entertained of his friend through all that part of life when he

must have been best able to form opinions.

From this account of Young, two or three short passages, which stand

almost together in Night Four, should not be excluded. They afford a

picture by his own hand, from the study of which my readers may choose

to form their own opinion of the features of his mind, and the

complexion of his life:

Ah me! the dire effect

Of loit'ring here, of death defrauded long;

Of old so gracious (and let that suffice)

_My very master knows me not_.

I've been so long remember'd, I'm forgot.

When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint,

They drink it as the nectar of the great;

And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.

Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,

Court-favour, yet untaken, I _besiege_.

If this song lives, posterity shall know

One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,

Who thought e'en gold might come a day too late;

Nor on his subtle deathbed plann'd his scheme

For future vacancies in church or state.

Deduct from the writer's age "twice told the period spent on stubborn

Troy," and you will still leave him more than forty when he sat down to

the miserable siege of court-favour. He has before told us,

A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence of

what the General thought his "deathbed."

By these extraordinary poems, written after he was sixty, of which I

have been led to say so much, I hope, by the wish of doing justice to

the living and the dead, it was the desire of Young to be principally

known. He entitled the four volumes which he published himself, the

Works of the Author of the Night Thoughts. While it is remembered that

from these he excluded many of his writings, let it not be forgotten

that the rejected pieces contained nothing prejudicial to the cause of

virtue, or of religion. Were every thing that Young ever wrote to be

published, he would only appear, perhaps, in a less respectable light as

a poet, and more despicable as a dedicator; he would not pass for a

worse christian, or for a worse man. This enviable praise is due to

Young. Can it be claimed by every writer? His dedications, after all, he

had, perhaps, no right to suppress. They all, I believe, speak, not a

little to the credit of his gratitude, of favours received, and I know

not whether the author, who has once solemnly printed an acknowledgment

of a favour, should not always print it.

Is it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a poet, that of his

Night Thoughts the French are particularly fond?

Of the Epitaph on lord Aubrey Beauclerk, dated 1740, all I know is, that

I find it in the late body of English poetry, and that I am sorry to

find it there.

Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to have taken in the Night

Thoughts of every thing which bore the least resemblance to ambition, he

dipped again in politicks. In 1745 he wrote Reflections on the publick

Situation of the Kingdom, addressed to the duke of Newcastle; indignant,

as it appears, to behold

A pope-bred princeling crawl ashore,

And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scrap'd

Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,

To cut his passage to the British throne.

This political poem might be called a Night Thought. Indeed it was

originally printed as the conclusion of the Night Thoughts, though he

did not gather it with his other works.

Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's Devout Meditations, is a

letter from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald

Macaulay, esq. thanking him for the book, which he says "he shall never

lay far out of his reach; for a greater demonstration of a sound head

and a sincere heart he never saw."

In 1753, when the Brothers had lain by him above thirty years, it

appeared upon the stage. If any part of his fortune had been acquired by

servility of adulation, he now determined to deduct from it no

inconsiderable sum, as a gift to the society for the propagation of the

Gospel. To this sum he hoped the profits of the Brothers would amount.

In his calculation he was deceived; but by the bad success of his play

the society was not a loser. The author made up the sum he originally

intended, which was a thousand pounds, from his own pocket.

The next performance which he printed was a prose publication, entitled,

the Centaur not fabulous, in six Letters to a Friend on the Life in

Vogue. The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third letter is

described the deathbed of the "gay, young, noble, ingenious,

accomplished, and most wretched Altamont." His last words were, "my

principles have poisoned my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy,

my unkindness has murdered my wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were

the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two

characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of

wickedness. Report has been accustomed to call Altamont lord Euston.

The Old Man's Relapse, occasioned by an epistle to Walpole, if written

by Young, which I much doubt, must have been written very late in life.

It has been seen, I am told, in a miscellany published thirty years

before his death. In 1758, he exhibited the Old Man's Relapse, in more

than words, by again becoming a dedicator, and publishing a sermon

addressed to the king.

The lively letter in prose, on Original Composition, addressed to

Richardson, the author of Clarissa, appeared in 1759. "Though he

despairs of breaking through the frozen obstructions of age and care's

incumbent cloud, into that flow of thought and brightness of expression,

which subjects so polite require;" yet is it more like the production of

untamed, unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore. Some sevenfold

volumes put him in mind of Ovid's sevenfold channels of the Nile at the

conflagration:

----ostia septem

Pulverulenta vocant, septem sine flumine valles.

Such leaden labours are like Lycurgus's iron money, which was so much

less in value than in bulk, that it required barns for strong boxes, and

a yoke of oxen to draw five hundred pounds.

If there is a famine of invention in the land, we must travel, he says,

like Joseph's brethren, far for food; we must visit the remote and rich

ancients. But an inventive genius may safely stay at home: that, like

the widow's cruise, is divinely replenished from within, and affords us

a miraculous delight. He asks why it should seem altogether impossible,

that heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be the most correct

and fair? And Jonson, he tells us, was very learned, as Sampson was very

strong, to his own hurt. Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down

all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it.