Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down
all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it.
all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Is this "care's incumbent cloud," or "the frozen obstructions of age? "
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!
The author of these lines is not without his _hic jacet. _
By the good sense of his son, it contains none of that praise which no
marble can make the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the
direction of a stone or a turf, will find its way, sooner or later, to
the deserving.
M. S.
Optimi parentis
EDVARDI YOUNG, LL. D.
hujus ecclesiae rect.
Et Elizabethae
faem. praenob.
Conjugis ejus amantissimae,
pio et gratissimo animo
hoc marmor posuit
F. Y.
Filius superstes.
Is it not strange that the author of the Night Thoughts has inscribed no
monument to the memory of his lamented wife? Yet, what marble will
endure as long as the poems?
Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to collect
of the great Young. That it may be long before any thing like what I
have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the sincere wish of,
Dear sir,
Your greatly obliged friend,
HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
Lincoln's Inn, Sept. 1780.
P. S. This account of Young was seen by you in manuscript, you know, sir;
and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alteration, you
insisted on striking out one passage, because it said, that, if I did
not wish you to live long, for your sake, I did for the sake of myself
and of the world. But this postscript you will not see before the
printing of it; and I will say here, in spite of you, how I feel myself
honoured and bettered by your friendship: and that, if I do credit to
the church, after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to
give in exchange the bar, though not at so late a period of life as
Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure, to my having
had the happiness of calling the author of the Rambler my friend[191].
H. C.
Oxford, Oct. 1782.
Of Young's poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he
has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has no great resemblance
to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at
different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His
numbers are sometimes smooth, and sometimes rugged; his style is
sometimes concatenated, and sometimes abrupt; sometimes diffusive, and
sometimes concise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the
present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes
adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.
He was not one of those writers whom experience improves, and who,
observing their own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the
Last Day, his first great performance, has an equability and propriety,
which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many
paragraphs are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid: the
plan is too much extended, and a succession of images divides and
weakens the general conception; but the great reason why the reader is
disappointed is, that the thought of the Last Day makes every man more
than poetical, by spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred
horrour, that oppresses distinction, and disdains expression.
His story of Jane Grey was never popular. It is written with elegance
enough; but Jane is too heroick to be pitied.
The Universal Passion is, indeed, a very great performance. It is said
to be a series of epigrams; but, if it be, it is what the author
intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and
pointed sentences; and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment,
and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.
His characters are often selected with discernment, and drawn with
nicety; his illustrations are often happy, and his reflections often
just. His species of satire is between those of Horace and Juvenal; and
he has the gaiety of Horace without his laxity of numbers, and the
morality of Juvenal, with greater variation of images. He plays, indeed,
only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the
mind, and, therefore, the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a
single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise.
To translate he never condescended, unless his Paraphrase on Job may be
considered as a version; in which he has not, I think, been
unsuccessful; he, indeed, favoured himself, by choosing those parts
which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry.
He had least success in his lyrick attempts, in which he seems to have
been under some malignant influence: he is always labouring to be great,
and at last is only turgid.
In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very wide display of original
poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a
wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers
of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which
blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The
wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of
imagination, would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to
rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness;
particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and
in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese
plantations, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.
His last poem was Resignation; in which he made, as he was accustomed,
an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded better than in his
Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falsely represented as a proof of
decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was
in his highest vigour.
His tragedies, not making part of the collection, I had forgotten, till
Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed
to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three plays all concluded with
lavish suicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily
rids his scene of persons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Busiris
there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination: but the pride of
Busiris is such as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote
from known life to raise either grief, terrour, or indignation. The
Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and,
therefore, keeps possession of the stage: the first design seems
suggested by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the
diction, are original. The moral observations are go introduced, and so
expressed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of the
Brothers I may be allowed to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of
it by the publick.
It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but
without much accuracy or selection. When he lays hold of an
illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as in
his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure[192] which I have heard
repeated at the approbation by a lady, of whose praise he would have
been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtile, and almost
exact: but sometimes he is less lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts,
having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs floating in space might
be called the _cluster_ of creation, he thinks of a cluster of grapes,
and says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectareous
juice of immortal life. "
His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the Last Day he hopes
to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at
the "trump of doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
tinkling of a pan.
The prophet says of Tyre, that "her merchants are princes. " Young says
of Tyre, in his Merchant,
Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.
Let burlesque try to go beyond him.
He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance
of Britain, "Climes were paid down. " Antithesis is his favourite: "They
for kindness hate;" and, "because she's right, she's ever in the wrong. "
His versification is his own: neither his blank nor his rhyming lines
have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no
hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid
up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous
suggestions of the present moment. Yet I have reason to believe that,
when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very
patient industry; and that he composed with great labour and frequent
revisions.
His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have
studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear.
But, with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.
-----
[Footnote 185: See Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. p. 225. N. ]
[Footnote 186: As my great friend is now become the subject of
biography, it should be told, that every time I called upon Johnson
during the time I was employed in collecting materials for this life and
putting it together, he never suffered me to depart without some such
farewell as this: "Don't forget that rascal Tindal, sir. Be sure to hang
up the atheist. " Alluding to this anecdote, which Johnson had mentioned
to me. ]
[Footnote 187: Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed
differently, particularly in Young's works. J. N.
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.
Is this "care's incumbent cloud," or "the frozen obstructions of age? "
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!
The author of these lines is not without his _hic jacet. _
By the good sense of his son, it contains none of that praise which no
marble can make the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the
direction of a stone or a turf, will find its way, sooner or later, to
the deserving.
M. S.
Optimi parentis
EDVARDI YOUNG, LL. D.
hujus ecclesiae rect.
Et Elizabethae
faem. praenob.
Conjugis ejus amantissimae,
pio et gratissimo animo
hoc marmor posuit
F. Y.
Filius superstes.
Is it not strange that the author of the Night Thoughts has inscribed no
monument to the memory of his lamented wife? Yet, what marble will
endure as long as the poems?
Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to collect
of the great Young. That it may be long before any thing like what I
have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the sincere wish of,
Dear sir,
Your greatly obliged friend,
HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
Lincoln's Inn, Sept. 1780.
P. S. This account of Young was seen by you in manuscript, you know, sir;
and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alteration, you
insisted on striking out one passage, because it said, that, if I did
not wish you to live long, for your sake, I did for the sake of myself
and of the world. But this postscript you will not see before the
printing of it; and I will say here, in spite of you, how I feel myself
honoured and bettered by your friendship: and that, if I do credit to
the church, after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to
give in exchange the bar, though not at so late a period of life as
Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure, to my having
had the happiness of calling the author of the Rambler my friend[191].
H. C.
Oxford, Oct. 1782.
Of Young's poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he
has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has no great resemblance
to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at
different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His
numbers are sometimes smooth, and sometimes rugged; his style is
sometimes concatenated, and sometimes abrupt; sometimes diffusive, and
sometimes concise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the
present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes
adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.
He was not one of those writers whom experience improves, and who,
observing their own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the
Last Day, his first great performance, has an equability and propriety,
which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many
paragraphs are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid: the
plan is too much extended, and a succession of images divides and
weakens the general conception; but the great reason why the reader is
disappointed is, that the thought of the Last Day makes every man more
than poetical, by spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred
horrour, that oppresses distinction, and disdains expression.
His story of Jane Grey was never popular. It is written with elegance
enough; but Jane is too heroick to be pitied.
The Universal Passion is, indeed, a very great performance. It is said
to be a series of epigrams; but, if it be, it is what the author
intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and
pointed sentences; and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment,
and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.
His characters are often selected with discernment, and drawn with
nicety; his illustrations are often happy, and his reflections often
just. His species of satire is between those of Horace and Juvenal; and
he has the gaiety of Horace without his laxity of numbers, and the
morality of Juvenal, with greater variation of images. He plays, indeed,
only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the
mind, and, therefore, the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a
single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise.
To translate he never condescended, unless his Paraphrase on Job may be
considered as a version; in which he has not, I think, been
unsuccessful; he, indeed, favoured himself, by choosing those parts
which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry.
He had least success in his lyrick attempts, in which he seems to have
been under some malignant influence: he is always labouring to be great,
and at last is only turgid.
In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very wide display of original
poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a
wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers
of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which
blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The
wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of
imagination, would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to
rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness;
particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and
in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese
plantations, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.
His last poem was Resignation; in which he made, as he was accustomed,
an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded better than in his
Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falsely represented as a proof of
decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was
in his highest vigour.
His tragedies, not making part of the collection, I had forgotten, till
Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed
to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three plays all concluded with
lavish suicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily
rids his scene of persons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Busiris
there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination: but the pride of
Busiris is such as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote
from known life to raise either grief, terrour, or indignation. The
Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and,
therefore, keeps possession of the stage: the first design seems
suggested by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the
diction, are original. The moral observations are go introduced, and so
expressed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of the
Brothers I may be allowed to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of
it by the publick.
It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but
without much accuracy or selection. When he lays hold of an
illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as in
his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure[192] which I have heard
repeated at the approbation by a lady, of whose praise he would have
been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtile, and almost
exact: but sometimes he is less lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts,
having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs floating in space might
be called the _cluster_ of creation, he thinks of a cluster of grapes,
and says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectareous
juice of immortal life. "
His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the Last Day he hopes
to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at
the "trump of doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
tinkling of a pan.
The prophet says of Tyre, that "her merchants are princes. " Young says
of Tyre, in his Merchant,
Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.
Let burlesque try to go beyond him.
He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance
of Britain, "Climes were paid down. " Antithesis is his favourite: "They
for kindness hate;" and, "because she's right, she's ever in the wrong. "
His versification is his own: neither his blank nor his rhyming lines
have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no
hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid
up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous
suggestions of the present moment. Yet I have reason to believe that,
when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very
patient industry; and that he composed with great labour and frequent
revisions.
His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have
studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear.
But, with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.
-----
[Footnote 185: See Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. p. 225. N. ]
[Footnote 186: As my great friend is now become the subject of
biography, it should be told, that every time I called upon Johnson
during the time I was employed in collecting materials for this life and
putting it together, he never suffered me to depart without some such
farewell as this: "Don't forget that rascal Tindal, sir. Be sure to hang
up the atheist. " Alluding to this anecdote, which Johnson had mentioned
to me. ]
[Footnote 187: Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed
differently, particularly in Young's works. J. N.
