In this letter Pope is severely censured for his "fall from Homer's
numbers, free as air, lofty and harmonious as the spheres, into childish
shackles and tinkling sounds; for putting Achilles into petticoats a
second time:" but we are told that the dying swan talked over an epick
plan with Young a few weeks before his decease.
Young's chief inducement to write this letter was, as he confesses, that
he might erect a monumental marble to the memory of an old friend. He,
who employed his pious pen, for almost the last time, in thus doing
justice to the exemplary deathbed of Addison, might, probably, at the
close of his own life, afford no unuseful lesson for the deaths of
others.
In the postscript, he writes to Richardson, that he will see in his next
how far Addison is an original. But no other letter appears.
The few lines which stand in the last edition, as "sent by lord Melcombe
to Dr. Young, not long before his lordship's death," were, indeed, so
sent, but were only an introduction to what was there meant by "the
muse's latest spark." The poem is necessary, whatever may be its merit,
since the preface to it is already printed. Lord Melcombe called his
Tusculum, La Trappe.
"Love thy country, wish it well,
Not with too intense a care;
'Tis enough that, when it fell,
Thou its ruin didst not share.
Envy's censure, flatt'ry's praise,
With unmov'd indiff'rence view;
Learn to tread life's dang'rous maze,
With unerring virtue's clew.
Void of strong desire and fear,
Life's wide ocean trust no more;
Strive thy little bark to steer
With the tide, but near the shore.
Thus prepar'd, thy shorten'd sail
Shall, whene'er the winds increase,
Seizing each propitious gale.
Waft thee to the port of peace.
Keep thy conscience from offence,
And tempestuous passions free;
So, when thou art call'd from hence,
Easy shall thy passage be;
Easy shall thy passage be,
Cheerful thy allotted stay,
Short th' account 'twixt God and thee:
Hope shall meet thee on the way:
Truth shall lead thee to the gate,
Mercy's self shall let thee in,
Where its never-changing state
Full perfection shall begin."
The poem was accompanied by a letter.
"La Trappe, the 27th of Oct. 1761.
"DEAR SIR,--You seemed to like the ode I sent you for your
amusement: I now send it you as a present. If you please to accept
of it, and are willing that our friendship should be known when we
are gone, you will be pleased to leave this among those of your own
papers that may possibly see the light by a posthumous publication.
God send us health while we stay, and an easy journey!
"My dear Dr. Young,
"yours, most cordially,
"MELCOMBE."
In 1762, a short time before his death, Young published Resignation.
Notwithstanding the manner in which it was really forced from him by the
world, criticism has treated it with no common severity. If it shall be
thought not to deserve the highest praise, on the other side of
fourscore, by whom, except by Newton and by Waller, has praise been
merited?
To Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakespeare, I am indebted for
the history of Resignation. Observing that Mrs. Boscawen, in the midst
of her grief for the loss of the admiral, derived consolation from the
perusal of the Night Thoughts, Mrs. Montagu proposed a visit to the
author. From conversing with Young, Mrs. Boscawen derived still further
consolation; and to that visit she and the world were indebted for this
poem. It compliments Mrs. Montagu in the following lines:
Yet write I must. A lady sues:
How shameful her request!
My brain in labour with dull rhyme,
Hers teeming with the best!
And again;
A friend you have, and I the same,
Whose prudent, soft address
Will bring to life those healing thoughts
Which dy'd in your distress.
That friend, the spirit of thy theme
Extracting for your ease,
Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts
Too common; such as these.
By the same lady I am enabled to say, in her own words, that Young's
unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion than
even in the author; that the christian was in him a character still more
inspired, more enraptured, more sublime, than the poet; and that, in his
ordinary conversation,
Letting down the golden chain from high,
He drew his audience upward to the sky.
Notwithstanding Young had said, in his Conjectures on original
Composition, that "blank verse is verse unfallen, uncurst; verse
reclaimed, reinthroned in the true language of the gods,"
notwithstanding he administered consolation to his own grief in this
immortal language, Mrs. Boscawen was comforted in rhyme.
While the poet and the Christian were applying this comfort, Young had
himself occasion for comfort, in consequence of the sudden death of
Richardson, who was printing the former part of the poem. Of
Richardson's death he says,
When heav'n would kindly set us free,
And earth's enchantment end;
It takes the most effectual means,
And robs us of a friend.
To Resignation was prefixed an apology for its appearance; to which more
credit is due than to the generality of such apologies, from Young's
unusual anxiety that no more productions of his old age should disgrace
his former fame. In his will, dated February, 1760, he desires of his
executors, "in a particular manner," that all his manuscript books and
writings whatever might be burned, except his book of accounts.
In September, 1764, he added a kind of codicil, wherein he made it his
dying intreaty to his house-keeper, to whom he left 100_l_. "that all
his manuscripts might be destroyed, as soon as he was dead, which would
greatly oblige her deceased _friend_."
It may teach mankind the uncertainty of worldly friendships, to know
that Young, either by surviving those he loved, or by outliving their
affections, could only recollect the names of two _friends_, his
house-keeper and a hatter, to mention in his will; and it may serve to
repress that testamentary pride, which too often seeks for sounding
names and titles, to be informed, that the author of the Night Thoughts
did not blush to leave a legacy to "his friend Henry Stevens, a hatter
at the Temple-gate." Of these two remaining friends, one went before
Young. But, at eighty-four, "where," as he asks in the Centaur, "is that
world into which we were born?"
The same humility which marked a hatter and a house-keeper for the
friends of the author of the Night Thoughts had before bestowed the same
title on his footman, in an epitaph in his Church-yard upon James
Barker, dated 1749; which I am glad to find in the late collection of
his works.
Young and his house-keeper were ridiculed, with more ill-nature than
wit, in a kind of novel published by Kidgell, in 1755, called the Card,
under the names of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.
In April, 1765, at an age to which few attain, a period was put to the
life of Young.
He had performed no duty for three or four years, but he retained his
intellects to the last.
Much is told in the Biographia, which I know not to have been true, of
the manner of his burial; of the master and children of a
charity-school, which he founded in his parish, who neglected to attend
their benefactor's corpse; and of a bell which was not caused to toll so
often as upon those occasions bells usually toll. Had that humanity,
which is here lavished upon things of little consequence either to the
living or to the dead, been shown in its proper place to the living, I
should have had less to say about Lorenzo. They who lament that these
misfortunes happened to Young, forget the praise he bestows upon
Socrates, in the preface to Night Seven, for resenting his friend's
request about his funeral.
During some part of his life Young was abroad, but I have not been able
to learn any particulars.
In his seventh Satire he says,
When, after battle, I the field have SEEN
Spread o'er with ghastly shapes which once were men.
It is known also, that from this, or from some other field, he once
wandered into the enemy's camp, with a classick in his hand, which he
was reading intently; and had some difficulty to prove that he was only
an absent poet, and not a spy.
The curious reader of Young's life will naturally inquire to what it was
owing, that though he lived almost forty years after he took orders,
which included one whole reign, uncommonly long, and part of another, he
was never thought worthy of the least preferment. The author of the
Night Thoughts ended his days upon a living which came to him from his
college, without any favour, and to which he probably had an eye when he
determined on the church. To satisfy curiosity of this kind is, at this
distance of time, far from easy. The parties themselves know not often,
at the instant, why they are neglected, or why they are preferred. The
neglect of Young is by some ascribed to his having attached himself to
the prince of Wales, and to his having preached an offensive sermon at
St. James's. It has been told me, that he had two hundred a year in the
late reign, by the patronage of Walpole; and that, whenever any one
reminded the king of Young, the only answer was, "he has a pension."
All the light thrown on this inquiry, by the following letter from
Seeker, only serves to show at what a late period of life the author of
the Night Thoughts solicited preferment.
"Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8, 1758.
"GOOD DR. YOUNG,--I have long wondered, that more suitable notice
of your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. But
how to remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath ever
been given me to mention things of this nature to his majesty. And
therefore, in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it
would be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly
have on some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set
you above the need of advancement; and your sentiments, above that
concern for it, on your own account, which, on that of the publick,
is sincerely felt by
"Your loving brother,
"THO. CANT."
At last, at the age of fourscore, he was appointed, in 1761, clerk of
the closet to the princess dowager.
One obstacle must have stood not a little in the way of that preferment,
after which his whole life seems to have panted. Though he took orders,
he never entirely shook off politicks. He was always the lion of his
master Milton, "pawing to get free his hinder parts." By this conduct,
if he gained some friends, he made many enemies.
Again: Young was a poet; and again, with reverence be it spoken, poets
by profession, do not always make the best clergymen. If the author of
the Night Thoughts composed many sermons, he did not oblige the publick
with many.
Besides, in the latter part of life, Young was fond of holding himself
out for a man retired from the world. But he seemed to have forgotten
that the same verse which contains "oblitus meorum," contains also
"obliviscendus et illis." The brittle chain of worldly friendship and
patronage is broken as effectually, when one goes beyond the length of
it, as when the other does. To the vessel which is sailing from the
shore, it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly
thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality,
deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The publick is not to be
treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with
desertion, in order to increase fondness.
Young seems to have been taken at his word. Notwithstanding his frequent
complaints of being neglected, no hand was reached out to pull him from
that retirement of which he declared himself enamoured. Alexander
assigned no palace for the residence of Diogenes, who boasted his surly
satisfaction with his tub.
Of the domestick manners and petty habits of the author of the Night
Thoughts, I hoped to have given you an account from the best authority:
but who shall dare to say, to-morrow I will be wise or virtuous, or
to-morrow I will do a particular thing? Upon inquiring for his
house-keeper, I learned that she was buried two days before I reached
the town of her abode.
In a letter from Tscharner, a noble foreigner, to count Haller,
Tscharner says, he has lately spent four days with Young at Welwyn,
where the author tastes all the ease and pleasure mankind can desire.
"Every thing about him shows the man, each individual being placed by
rule. All is neat without art. He is very pleasant in conversation, and
extremely polite."
This, and more, may possibly be true; but Tscharner's was a first visit,
a visit of curiosity and admiration, and a visit which the author
expected.
Of Edward Young, an anecdote which wanders among readers is not true,
that he was Fielding's Parson Adams. The original of that famous
painting was William Young, who was a clergyman. He supported an
uncomfortable existence by translating for the booksellers from Greek;
and, if he did not seem to be his own friend, was, at least, no man's
enemy. Yet the facility with which this report has gained belief in the
world argues, were it not sufficiently known, that the author of the
Night Thoughts bore some resemblance to Adams.
The attention which Young bestowed upon the perusal of books, is not
unworthy imitation. When any passage pleased him, he appears to have
folded down the leaf. On these passages he bestowed a second reading.
But the labours of man are too frequently vain. Before he returned to
much of what he had once approved, he died. Many of his books, which I
have seen, are by those notes of approbation so swelled beyond their
real bulk, that they will hardly shut.
What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame!
Earth's highest station ends in, _Here he lies!_
And _dust to dust_ concludes her noblest song!