Chapter XIII (3)

He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, about five on Friday morning, February 11, 1763; and was buried by the side of his brother in the church-yard of Hales-Owen.

He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever she was, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented, by his friend Dodsley, as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind to all that were within his influence: but, if once offended, not easily appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses; in his person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey hair in a particular manner; for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form[183].

His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.

His life was unstained by any crime; the Elegy on Jesse, which has been supposed to relate an unfortunate and criminal amour of his own, was known by his friends to have been suggested by the story of Miss Godfrey, in Richardson's Pamela.

What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his letters, was this:

"I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone's letters. Poor man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it; his correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who wrote verses too."

His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous sallies, and moral pieces.

His conception of an elegy he has in his preface very judiciously and discriminately explained. It is, according to his account, the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and always serious, and, therefore, superiour to the glitter of slight ornaments. His compositions suit not ill to this description. His topicks of praise are the domestick virtues, and his thoughts are pure and simple; but, wanting combination, they want variety. The peace of solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an humble station, can fill but a few pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will be soon described. His elegies have, therefore, too much resemblance of each other.

The lines are, sometimes, such as elegy requires, smooth and easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant; his diction is often harsh, improper, and affected: his words ill-coined, or ill-chosen; and his phrase unskilfully inverted.

The lyrick poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as trip lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any weighty meaning. From these, however, Rural Elegance has some right to be excepted. I once heard it praised by a very learned lady; and, though the lines are irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too much verbosity, yet it cannot be denied to contain both philosophical argument and poetical spirit.

Of the rest I cannot think any excellent: the Skylark pleases me best, which has, however, more of the epigram than of the ode.

But the four parts of his Pastoral Ballad demand particular notice. I cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent reader, acquainted with the scenes of real life, sickens at the mention of the _crook_, the _pipe_, the _sheep_, and the _kids_, which it is not necessary to bring forward to notice, for the poet's art is selection, and he ought to show the beauties without the grossness of the country life. His stanza seems to have been chosen in imitation of Rowe's Despairing Shepherd.

In the first part are two passages, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature:

I priz'd ev'ry hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleas'd me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh,
And I grieve that I priz'd them no more.

When forc'd the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt in my heart!
Yet I thought (but it might not be so)
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.

She gaz'd, as I slowly withdrew;
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.

In the second, this passage has its prettiness, though it be not equal to the former:

I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the woodpigeons breed;
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed:

For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov'd her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.

In the third, he mentions the commonplaces of amorous poetry with some address:

'Tis his with mock passion to glow!
'Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,
How her face is as bright as the snow,
And her bosom, be sure, is as cold;

How the nightingales labour the strain.
With the notes of his charmer to vie;
How they vary their accents in vain,
Repine at her triumphs and die.

In the fourth, I find nothing better than this natural strain of hope:

Alas! from the day that we met,
What hope of an end to my woes,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?

Yet time may diminish the pain:
The flow'r, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I rear'd for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me.

His Levities are, by their title, exempted from the severities of criticism; yet it may be remarked, in a few words, that his humour is sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.

Of the moral poems, the first is the Choice of Hercules, from Xenophon. The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts just; but something of vigour is still to be wished, which it might have had by brevity and compression. His Fate of Delicacy has an air of gaiety, but not a very pointed general moral. His blank verses, those that can read them may, probably, find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours. Love and Honour is derived from the old ballad, "Did you not hear of a Spanish Lady?"--I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme.

The Schoolmistress, of which I know not what claim it has to stand among the moral works, is surely the most pleasing of Shenstone's performances. The adoption of a particular style, in light and short compositions, contributes much to the increase of pleasure: we are entertained at once with two imitations, of nature in the sentiments, of the original author in the style, and between them the mind is kept in perpetual employment.

The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his mind been better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable[184].

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[Footnote 180: This charge against the Lyttelton family has been denied, with some degree of warmth, by Mr. Potter, and since by Mr. Graves. The latter says, "The truth of the case, I believe, was, that the Lyttelton family went so frequently with their family to the Leasowes, that they were unwilling to break in upon Mr. Shenstone's retirement on every occasion, and, therefore, often went to the principal points of view without waiting for any one to conduct them regularly through the whole walks. Of this Mr. Shenstone would sometimes peevishly complain; though, I am persuaded, he never really suspected any ill-natured intention in his worthy and much-valued neighbours." R.]

[Footnote 181: Mr. Graves, however, expresses his belief that this is a groundless surmise. "Mr. Shenstone," he adds, "was too much respected in the neighbourhood to be treated with rudeness; and though his works, (frugally as they were managed) added to his manner of living, must necessarily have made him exceed his income, and, of course, he might sometimes be distressed for money, yet he had too much spirit to expose himself to insults from trifling sums, and guarded against any great distress, by anticipating a few hundreds; which his estate could very well bear, as appeared by what remained to his executors after the payment of his debts, and his legacies to his friends, and annuities of thirty pounds a year to one servant, and six pounds to another, for his will was dictated with equal justice and generosity." R.]

[Footnote 182: We may, however, say with the Grecian orator, [Greek: hoti apollymeyos euphrainei], he gives forth a fragrance as he wastes away. ED.]

[Footnote 183: "These," says Mr. Graves, "were not precisely his sentiments, though he thought, right enough, that every one should, in some degree, consult his particular shape and complexion in adjusting his dress; and that no fashion ought to sanctify what was ungraceful, absurd, or really deformed."]

[Footnote 184: Mr. D'Israeli's remarks on Shenstone and his writings, may be profitably compared with Johnson's life. See last edition of the Curiosities of Literature. ED.]

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.