My faults
unknown!
Samuel Johnson
None has
hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from the
author of the Night Thoughts.
It is probable that his college was proud of him no less as a scholar
than as a poet; for in 1716, when the foundation of the Codrington
library was laid, two years after he had taken his bachelor's degree,
Young was appointed to speak the Latin oration. This is, at least,
particular for being dedicated in English, "To the ladies of the
Codrington family. " To these ladies he says, "that he was unavoidably
flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle
dedicatory void of commonplace, and such a one as was never published
before by any author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any
obligation of reading what was presented to them, and that the
bookseller approved of it, because it would make people stare, was
absurd enough, and perfectly right. "
Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his works;
and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, 1741, is a letter from
Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December the 9th, 1739,
wherein he says, that he has not leisure to review what he formerly
wrote, and adds, "I have not the Epistle to lord Lansdowne. If you will
take my advice, I would have you omit that, and the oration on
Codrington. I think the collection will sell better without them. "
There are who relate, that, when first Young found himself independent,
and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and
morality which he afterwards became.
The authority of his father, indeed, had ceased, some time before, by
his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronised by the
infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet,
and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronised
only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out?
Yet Pope is said, by Ruffhead, to have told Warburton, that "Young had
much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his
genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into
bombast. This made him pass a _foolish youth_, the sport of peers and
poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the
clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, and
afterwards with honour. "
They who think ill of Young's morality in the early part of his life
may, perhaps, be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of
Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to
spend much of his time at All Souls. "The other boys," said the atheist,
"I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their
arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is
continually pestering me with something of his own. "[186]
After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable. Young
might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which
his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were
so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue,
but the potent testimony of experience against vice.
We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was more serious
than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets.
Young, perhaps, ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the Poem to His
Majesty, presented, with a copy of verses, to Somers; and hoped that he
also might soar to wealth and honour on wings of the same kind. His
first poetical flight was when queen Anne called up to the house of
lords the sons of the earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in
one day, ten others to the number of peers. In order to reconcile the
people to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, an
Epistle to the right honourable George lord Lansdowne. In this
composition the poet pours out his panegyrick with the extravagance of a
young man, who thinks his present stock of wealth will never be
exhausted.
The poem seems intended also to reconcile the publick to the late peace.
This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and
that in peace "harvests wave, and commerce swells her sail. " If this be
humanity, for which he meant it; is it politicks? Another purpose of
this epistle appears to have been, to prepare the publick for the
reception of some tragedy he might have in hand. His lordship's
patronage, he says, will not let him "repent his passion for the stage;"
and the particular praise bestowed on Othello and Oroonoko looks as if
some such character as Zanga was even then in contemplation. The
affectionate mention of the death of his friend Harrison, of New
college, at the close of this poem, is an instance of Young's art, which
displayed itself so wonderfully, some time afterwards, in the Night
Thoughts, of making the publick a party in his private sorrow.
Should justice call upon you to censure this poem, it ought, at least,
to be remembered, that he did not insert it in his works; and that in
the letter to Curll, as we have seen, he advises its omission. The
booksellers, in the late body of English poetry, should have
distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective
authors[187]. This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young. "I
think," says he, "the following pieces in _four_ volumes to be the most
excusable of all that I have written; and I wish _less apology_ was
needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the
pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them
as _pardonable_ as it was in my power to do. "
Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?
When Addison published Cato, in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing
to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the pieces which
the author of the Night Thoughts did not republish.
On the appearance of his Poem on the Last Day, Addison did not return
Young's compliment; but the Englishman of October 29, 1713, which was
probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. The Last
Day was published soon after the peace. The vicechancellor's
_imprimatur_, for it was printed at Oxford, is dated May the 19th, 1713.
From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the
composition of it. While other bards "with Britain's hero set their
souls on fire," he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough _had
been_ considered by Britain as her hero; but, when the Last Day was
published, female cabal had blasted, for a time, the laurels of
Blenheim. This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710,
before he was thirty; for part of it is printed in the Tatler[188] It
was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he
did not admit into his works. It tells her, that his only title to the
great honour he now does himself, is the obligation which he formerly
received from her royal indulgence.
Of this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded to her being
his godmother. He is said, indeed, to have been engaged at a settled
stipend as a writer for the court. In Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry are
these lines, speaking of the court:
Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face,
Where Y---- must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
That Y---- means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same
poem:
Attend, ye Popes and Youngs and Gays,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyricks here provide;
You cannot err on flatt'ry's side.
Yet who shall say, with certainty, that Young was a pensioner? In all
modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been
regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots?
Of the dedication, the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in the
highest terms of the late peace; it gives her majesty praise, indeed,
for her victories, but says, that the author is more pleased to see her
rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first
and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he
lose her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the
boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards
eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels
receiving and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his
imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.
The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where
human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of
little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the
praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he
conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written
it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politicks,
notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the church was in danger, had
not yet subsided. The Last Day, written by a layman, was much approved
by the ministry, and their friends.
Before the queen's death, the Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, was
sent into the world. This poem is founded on the execution of lady Jane
Grey, and her husband lord Guildford, 1554, a story, chosen for the
subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by
Rowe. The dedication of it to the countess of Salisbury does not appear
in his own edition. He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption,
that the story could not have been read without thoughts of the countess
of Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another. "To behold," he
proceeds, "a person _only_ virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to
behold a person _only_ amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
indignation; but to turn our eyes on a countess of Salisbury gives us
pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias
of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and
affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty. " His
flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was, at least,
as well adapted.
August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas that he is just
arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the queen's
death, but that no panegyricks are ready yet for the king. Nothing like
friendship had yet taken place between Pope and Young; for, soon after
the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the queen's
death, and his majesty's accession to the throne. It is inscribed to
Addison, then secretary to the lords justices. Whatever were the
obligations, which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears
to aim at something of the same sort from George. Of the poem, the
intention seems to have been to show, that he had the same extravagant
strain of praise for a king as for a queen. To discover, at the very
outset of a foreigner's reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in
such a king, is something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one
of his _excusable pieces_. We do not find it in his works.
Young's father had been well acquainted with lady Anne Wharton, the
first wife of Thomas Wharton, esq. afterwards marquis of Wharton; a lady
celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.
To the dean of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added
some verses "by that excellent poetess Mrs. Anne Wharton," upon its
being translated into English, at the instance of Waller, by Atwood.
Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron,
and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion. The marquis
died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year the young marquis
set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a
twelve-month. The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland; where, says
the Biographia, "on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the
honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in
the house of lords. "
With this unhappy character, it is not unlikely that Young went to
Ireland. From his letter to Richardson, on Original Composition, it is
clear he was, at some period of his life, in that country. "I remember,"
says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, "as I and others were taking
with him an evening walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short:
we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found
him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which
in its uppermost branches was much withered and decayed. Pointing at it,
he said, 'I shall be like that tree, I shall die at top. '" Is it not
probable, that this visit to Ireland was paid when he had an opportunity
of going thither with his avowed friend and patron[189]?
From the Englishman, it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
theatre so early as 1713. Yet Busiris was not brought upon Drury-lane
stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the duke of Newcastle, "because the
late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had
taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron. " The dedication he
afterwards suppressed.
Busiris was followed, in the year 1721, by the Revenge. He dedicated
this famous tragedy to the duke of Wharton. "Your grace," says the
dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessory to the
following scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in
them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the
whole. "
That his grace should have suggested the incident to which he alludes,
whatever that incident might have been, is not unlikely. The last mental
exertion of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in
Spain, was some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary queen of Scots.
Dryden dedicated Marriage à-la-Mode to Wharton's infamous relation,
Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry,
but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to
Wharton thus: "My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care;
which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour,
since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit,
though through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so
sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive the benefit of it. " That
he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his
power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his
works. He should have remembered that he, at the same time, concealed
his obligation to Wharton for _the most beautiful incident_ in what is
surely not his least beautiful composition. The passage just quoted is,
in a poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:
Be this thy partial smile from censure free!
'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.
While Young, who, in his Love of Fame, complains grievously how often
"dedications wash an Aethiop white," was painting an amiable duke of
Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe
the "scorn and wonder of his days" in lasting verse.
To the patronage of such a character, had Young studied men as much as
Pope, he would have known how little to have trusted. Young, however,
was certainly indebted to it for something material; and the duke's
regard for Young, added to his "lust of praise," procured to All Souls'
college a donation, which was not forgotten by the poet when he
dedicated the Revenge.
It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, case 136, Stiles
_versus_ the Attorney General, March 14; 1740, as authority for the life
of a poet. But biographers do not always find such certain guides as the
oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to
determine whether two annuities, granted by the duke of Wharton to
Young, were for legal considerations. One was dated the 24th of March,
1719, and accounted for his grace's bounty in a style princely and
commendable, if not legal--"considering that the publick good is
advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being
pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration
thereof, and of the love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the 10th
of July, 1722.
Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
refused an annuity of 100_l_. which had been offered him for life if he
would continue tutor to lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations
of the duke of Wharton, and his grace's assurances of providing for him
in a much more ample manner. It also appeared, that the duke had given
him a bond for 600_l_. dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration
of his taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to
be chosen member of the house of commons, at the duke's desire, and in
consideration of his not taking two livings of 200_l_. and 400_l_. in
the gift of All Souls' college, on his grace's promises of serving and
advancing him in the world.
Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account.
The attempt to get into parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood
a contested election. His grace discovered in him talents for oratory,
as well as for poetry. Nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took
orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the
grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was
once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was
preaching in his turn at St. James's he plainly perceived it was out of
his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the
feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into
tears. But we must pursue his poetical life.
In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their
common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if
they contain any, it is now vain to seek:
_In joy once join'd_, in sorrow, now, for years--
Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due.
From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to
"communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote even to the least
things. "
In 1719 appeared a Paraphrase on part of the book of Job. Parker, to
whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been
qualified for a patron. Of this work the author's opinion may be known
from his letter to Curll: "You seem, in the collection you propose, to
have omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean 'a
translation from part of Job,' printed by Mr. Tonson. " The dedication,
which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson's edition, while it
speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an
unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every one who sings in
the dark does not sing from joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of
flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no
kind of knowledge.
Of his satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates, without
the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe
in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have
referred to the poems, to discover when they were written. For these
internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first
satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled. " The second,
addressing himself, asks:
Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
A fool at _forty_ is a fool indeed.
The Satires were originally published separately, in folio, under the
title of the Universal Passion. These passages fix the appearance of the
first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young seldom
suffered his pen to dry, after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may
conclude that he began his satires soon after he had written the
Paraphrase on Job. The last satire was certainly finished in the
beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the king, in his passage
from Helvoetsluys, escaped, with great difficulty, from a storm by
landing at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a
miracle, in such an encomiastick strain of compliment, as poetry too
often seeks to pay to royalty.
From the sixth of these poems we learn,
Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart
Glow'd with the love of virtue and of art:
since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawn'd on me.
Her majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter of
the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had, perhaps, shown some
attention to lady Elizabeth's future husband.
The fifth satire, on Women, was not published till 1727; and the sixth
not till 1728.
To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he
prefixed a preface; in which he observes, that "no man can converse much
in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or
grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into
ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least,
and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the
misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more
disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven
out by another than by reason, whatever some teach. " So wrote, and so of
course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost
fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the Last Day. After all,
Swift pronounced of these satires, that they should either have been
more angry or more merry.
Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any
palliation, this preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at
the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the
mournful, angry, gloomy Night Thoughts?
At the conclusion of the preface he applies Plato's beautiful fable of
the Birth of Love to modern poetry, with the addition, "that poetry,
like love, is a little subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her
way to preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful
admiration of her father's family; but divides her favours, and
generally lives with her mother's relations. " Poetry, it is true, did
not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not something
like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her, and her
sister prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to
entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though
nearly related to poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the
mother of love. That he could not well complain of being related to
poverty, appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude
records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By the Universal
Passion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds.
A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South sea. For
this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His muse makes poetical
use more than once of a South sea dream.
It is related by Mr. Spence, in his manuscript anecdotes, on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
Universal Passion, received from the duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "two thousand
pounds for a poem! " he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his
life, for the poem was worth four thousand.
This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two
answers of lord Burghley and sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.
After inscribing his satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferment and honours, to such names as the duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, lady Elizabeth Germaine, and sir Robert
Walpole, he returns to plain panegyrick. In 1726, he addressed a poem to
sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. The Instalment is
among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his _excusable
writings_. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
power of bestowing immortality:
Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!
The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
acknowledgment, would now, perhaps, never have been known:
My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turn'd by thee,
Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must,
at least, be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode.
The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the
increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
"invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
service of their country;" a plan which humanity must lament that policy
has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
Prefixed to the original publication were an Ode to the King, Pater
Patriae, and an Essay on Lyrick Poetry. It is but justice to confess,
that he preserved neither of them; and that, the ode itself, which in
the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas,
in the author's own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted
passages is a Wish, that concluded the poem, which few would have
suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it,
would confess something like their shame by suppression.
It stood originally so high in the author's opinion, that he entitled
the poem, Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish. This wish consists of
thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:
O may I _steal_
Along the _vale_
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:
Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I _have_,
And live, not _leave_,
Enamour'd of the present day!
My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one _beam_
Of honest _fame_!
And scorn the labour'd monument!
Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty nature's self shall die;
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said,
in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: "For the more
_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome, give grace and
pleasure. Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_, (of
which the moderns are too fond,) but from this truth. " Yet the moderns
surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by his own
confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.
The next paragraph in his essay did not occur to him when he talked of
"that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must
take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme
consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he
was perfectly free from that shackle. "
Another part of this essay will convict the following stanza of, what
every reader will discover in it, "involuntary burlesque:"
"The northern blast
The shatter'd mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock.
The breaking spout,
The _stars gone out_,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock. "
But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes, if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
If Young be not a lyrick poet, he is, at least, a critick in that sort
of poetry; and, if his lyrick poetry can be proved bad, it was first
proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.
Milbourne was styled, by Pope, "the fairest of criticks," only because
he exhibited his own version of Virgil to be compared with Dryden's,
which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in
his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets
for prefixing to a lyrick composition an essay on lyrick poetry, so just
and impartial as to condemn himself.
We shall soon come to a work, before which we find, indeed, no critical
essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
language.
Soon after the appearance of Ocean, when he was almost fifty, Young
entered into orders. In April, 1728[190] not long after he had put on
the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the second.
The tragedy of the Brothers, which was already in rehearsal, he
immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it, with some
reluctance, to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The epilogue to the
Brothers, the only appendage to any of his three plays which he added
himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an
historical epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow
scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the epilogue,
and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
Perseus "for this night's deed. "
Of Young's taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular
light. When he determined on the church, he did not address himself to
Sherlock, to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in
theology; but to Pope, who, in a youthful frolick, advised the diligent
perusal of Thomas Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from
interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to
godliness hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he
might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him
just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable
derangement. "
That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the
surest guide to his new profession, left him little doubt whether poetry
was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long, indeed,
after he took orders, he published, in prose, 1728, a true Estimate of
Human Life, dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which
it abounds, to the queen; and a sermon preached before the house of
commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of king Charles, entitled, an Apology
for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government. But the Second
Discourse, the counterpart of his Estimate, without which it cannot be
called a _true_ Estimate, though, in 1728, it was announced as "soon to
be published," never appeared; and his old friends the muses were not
forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world,
Imperium Pelagi, a naval lyrick, written in imitation of Pindar's
Spirit, occasioned by his majesty's return from Hanover, September,
1729, and the succeeding peace. It is inscribed to the duke of Chandos.
In the preface we are told, that the ode is the most spirited kind of
poetry, and that the Pindarick is the most spirited kind of ode. "This I
speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril.
But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to
suffer by it. " Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's Imperium
Pelagi was ridiculed in Fielding's Tom Thumb; but let us not forget that
it was one of his pieces which the author of the Night Thoughts
deliberately refused to own.
Not long after this Pindarick attempt, he published two epistles to
Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age, 1730. Of these poems, one
occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the liveliness of
his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious for promotion
in the church.
In July, 1730, he was presented, by his college, to the rectory of
Welwyn, in Hertfordshire. In May, 1731, he married lady Elizabeth Lee,
daughter of the earl of Lichfield, and widow of colonel Lee. His
connexion with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already
mentioned, with lady Anne Wharton, who was coheiress of sir Henry Lee,
of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to
aspire to the arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary happiness.
We may naturally conclude, that Young now gave himself up, in some
measure, to the comforts of his new connexion, and to the expectations
of that preferment, which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at
least, to the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.
The next production of his muse was the Sea-piece, in two odes.
Young enjoys the credit of what is called an Extempore Epigram on
Voltaire; who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death:
You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.
From the following passage, in the poetical dedication of his Sea-piece
to Voltaire, it seems, that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
any reproof,) was something longer than a distich, and something more
gentle than the distich just quoted:
No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
On _Dorset_ downs, when Milton's page
With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage,
Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with _gentle_ rhymes?
By Dorset downs, he probably meant Mr. Dodington's seat. In Pitt's poems
is an Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on the
Review at Sarum, 1722.
While with your Dodington retir'd you sit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.
Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
of the muses,
Where, in the secret bow'r and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.
The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the
second
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,
added to Thomson's example and success, might, perhaps, induce Young, as
we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
In 1734 he published the Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
Written in the character of a sailor. It is not to be found in the
author's four volumes.
He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and,
perhaps, at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species
of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few
of Young's readers will regret:
My shell, which Clio gave, which _kings applaud_,
Which Europe's bleeding genius call'd abroad,
Adieu!
In a species of poetry altogether his own, he next tried his skill, and
succeeded.
Of his wife, he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her
marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just
after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple
did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time
to a daughter of sir John Barnard, whose son is the present peer. Mr.
and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and
Narcissa. From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between
Mr. Temple and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is
probable that the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these
characters; though, at the same time, some passages respecting Philander
do not appear to suit either Mr. Temple or any other person with whom
Young was known to be connected or acquainted, while all the
circumstances relating to Narcissa have been constantly found applicable
to Young's daughter-in-law.
At what short intervals the poet tells us he was wounded by the deaths
of the three persons particularly lamented, none that has read the Night
Thoughts (and who has not read them? ) needs to be informed.
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and lady Elizabeth Young
could be these three victims, over whom Young has hitherto been pitied
for having to pour the Midnight Sorrows of his religious poetry; Mrs.
Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the
poet's wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the
insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, "ere
thrice the moon had fill'd her horn? "
But, in the short preface to the Complaint, he seriously tells us, "that
the occasion of this poem was real, not fictitious; and that the facts
mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of
the writer. " It is probable, therefore, that in these three
contradictory lines, the poet complains more than the father-in-law, the
friend, or the widower.
Whatever names belong to these facts, or, if the names be those
generally supposed, whatever heightening a poet's sorrow may have given
the facts; to the sorrow Young felt from them, religion and morality are
indebted for the Night Thoughts. There is a pleasure sure in sadness
which mourners only know!
Of these poems, the two or three first have been perused, perhaps more
eagerly and more frequently than the rest. When he got as far as the
fourth or fifth, his original motive for taking up the pen was answered;
his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We still find
the same pious poet; but we hear less of Philander and Narcissa, and
less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.
Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, in her way to Nice, the year
after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, "in her
bridal hour. " It is more than poetically true, that Young accompanied
her to the Continent:
I flew, I snatch'd her from the rigid north, And bore her nearer to the
sun.
But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in
such animated colours in Night the Third. After her death, the remainder
of the party passed the ensuing winter at Nice.
The poet seems, perhaps, in these compositions, to dwell with more
melancholy on the death of Philander and Narcissa, than of his wife. But
it is only for this reason. He who runs and reads may remember, that in
the Night Thoughts Philander and Narcissa are often mentioned and often
lamented. To recollect lamentations over the author's wife, the memory
must have been charged with distinct passages. This lady brought him one
child, Frederick, now living, to whom the prince of Wales was
godfather.
That domestick grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these
ornaments to our language, it is impossible to deny. Nor would it be
common hardiness to contend, that worldly discontent had no hand in
these joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means sure
that, at any rate, we should not have had something of the same colour
from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires. In
so long a life, causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have
occurred. It is not clear to me that his muse was not sitting upon the
watch for the first which happened. Night thoughts were not uncommon to
her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself
was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his Last Day,
almost his earliest poem, he calls her the Melancholy Maid,
Whom dismal scenes delight,
Frequent at tombs and in the realms of night.
In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he
says--
Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night
To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
To the bright palace of eternal day!
When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have sent
him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp; and the poet is
reported to have used it.
What he calls the _true_ Estimate of Human Life, which has already been
mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of the tapestry; and, being
asked why he did not show the right, he is said to have replied that he
could not. By others it has been told me that this was finished; but
that, before there existed any copy, it was torn in pieces by a lady's
monkey.
Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to
bring the gloominess of the Night Thoughts to prove the gloominess of
Young, and to show that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was, in
some measure, the sullen inspiration of discontent.
From them who answer in the affirmative it should not be concealed,
that, though "Invisibilia non decipiunt" appeared upon a deception in
Young's grounds, and "Ambulantes in horto audiêrunt vocem Dei" on a
building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good humour of
the author of the Night Thoughts for an assembly and a bowling-green.
Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil
nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than
of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead,
who, if they cannot defend themselves, are, at least, ignorant of his
abuse, will not hesitate, by the most wanton calumny, to destroy the
quiet, the reputation, the fortune, of the living. Yet censure is not
heard beneath the tomb, any more than praise. "De mortuis nil nisi
verum--De vivis nil nisi bonum," would approach much nearer to good
sense. After all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed
the body of the author of the Night Thoughts feel not much concern
whether Young pass now for a man of sorrow, or for a "fellow of infinite
jest. " To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick. His immortal
part, wherever that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this head.
But to a son of worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence
whether contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that
his debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening
of his father's days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character
completely detestable, and succeeded, at last, in bringing his "grey
hairs with sorrow to the grave. "
The humanity of the world, little satisfied with inventing perhaps a
melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next to invent an
argument in support of their invention, and chooses that Lorenzo should
be Young's own son. The Biographia and every account of Young pretty
roundly assert this to be the fact; of the absolute impossibility of
which the Biographia itself, in particular dates, contains undeniable
evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will
hereafter peruse the Night Thoughts with less satisfaction; who will
wish they had still been deceived; who will quarrel with me for
discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo ever yet disgraced
human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would these admirers of the
sublime and terrible be offended, should you set them down for cruel and
for savage.
Of this report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in
proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to
find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.
From the first line to the last of the Night Thoughts no one expression
can be discovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the Second
Night I find an expression which betrays something else; that Lorenzo
was his friend; one, it is possible, of his former companions; one of
the duke of Wharton's set. The poet styles him "gay friend;" an
appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a
being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his son.
But let us see how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the
sight of some of whose features the artist himself must have turned away
with horrour. A subject more shocking, if his only child really sat to
him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told
of which, Young composed a short poem of fourteen lines in the early
part of his life, which he did not think deserved to be republished.
In the First Night, the address to the poet's supposed son is,
Lorenzo, fortune makes her court to thee.
In the Fifth Night;
And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?
Is this a picture of the son of the rector of Welwyn?
Eighth Night;
In foreign realms (for thou hast travell'd far;)
which even now does not apply to his son.
In Night Five;
So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate;
Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes;
And dy'd to give him, orphan'd in his birth!
At the beginning of the Fifth Night we find;
Lorenzo! to recriminate is just;
I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.
But, to cut short all inquiry; if any one of these passages, if any
passage in the poems, be applicable, my friend shall pass for Lorenzo.
The son of the author of the Night Thoughts was not old enough, when
they were written, to recriminate, or to be a father. The Night Thoughts
were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The first
Nights appear, in the books of the company of Stationers, as the
property of Robert Dodsley, in 1742. The preface to Night Seven is dated
July 7th, 1744. The marriage, in consequence of which the supposed
Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till
June, 1733. In 1741 this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to
whose education vice had for some years put the last hand, was only
eight years old.
An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to contradiction, so impossible
to be true, who could propagate? Thus easily are blasted the reputations
of the living and of the dead.
Who, then, was Lorenzo? exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If we
cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely
terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin?
These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of
human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the
poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti-Lucretius, "quo nomine," says
Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige. " That this was the case, many
expressions in the Night Thoughts would seem to prove, did not a
passage in Night Eight appear to show that he had something in his eye
for the groundwork, at least, of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may
be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he
only gives the initial letter:
Tell not Calista. She will laugh thee dead,
Or send thee to her hermitage with L----.
The Biographia, not satisfied with pointing out the son of Young, in
that son's lifetime, as his father's Lorenzo, travels out of its way
into the history of the son, and tells of his having been forbidden his
college at Oxford, for misbehaviour. How such anecdotes, were they true,
tend to illustrate the life of Young, it is not easy to discover. Was
the son of the author of the Night Thoughts, indeed, forbidden his
college for a time, at one of the universities? The author of Paradise
Lost is by some supposed to have been disgracefully ejected from the
other. From juvenile follies who is free? But, whatever the Biographia
chooses to relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his
college, either lasting or temporary.
Yet, were nature to indulge him with a second youth, and to leave him at
the same time the experience of that which is past, he would probably
spend it differently--who would not? --he would certainly be the occasion
of less uneasiness to his father. But, from the same experience, he
would as certainly, in the same case, be treated differently by his
father.
Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the
best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their
heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties.
Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of
mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The
prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets.
He who is connected with the author of the Night Thoughts, only by
veneration for the poet and the christian, may be allowed to observe,
that Young is one of those, concerning whom, as you remark in your
account of Addison, it is proper rather to say "nothing that is false,
than all that is true. "
But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo,
than see himself vindicated, at the expense of his father's memory, from
follies which, if it may be thought blamable in a boy to have committed
them, it is surely praiseworthy in a man to lament, and certainly not
only unnecessary but cruel in a biographer to record.
Of the Night Thoughts, notwithstanding their author's professed
retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names. He had not
yet weaned himself from earls and dukes, from speakers of the house of
commons, lords commissioners of the treasury, and chancellors of the
exchequer.
In Night Eight the politician plainly betrays himself:
Think no post needful that demands a knave:
When late our civil helm was shifting hands,
So P---- thought; think better if you can.
Yet it must be confessed, that at the conclusion of Night Nine, weary,
perhaps, of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul,
Henceforth
Thy _patron_ he, whose diadem has dropt
Yon gems of heaven; eternity thy prize;
And leave the racers of the world their own.
The Fourth Night was addressed, by a "much-indebted muse," to the
honourable Mr. Yorke, now lord Hardwicke; who meant to have laid the
muse under still greater obligation, by the living of Shenfield in
Essex, if it had become vacant.
The First Night concludes with this passage:
Dark, though not blind, like thee, Meonides:
Or Milton, thee. Ah! could I reach your strain;
Or his who made Meonides our own!
Man too he sung. Immortal man I sing.
Oh! had he prest his theme, pursu'd the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
Oh! had he mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd, where I sink, and sung immortal man--
How had it blest mankind, and rescu'd me!
To the author of these lines was dedicated, in 1756, the first volume of
an Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, which attempted, whether
justly or not, to pluck from Pope his "wing of fire," and to reduce him
to a rank at least one degree lower than the first class of English
poets.
hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from the
author of the Night Thoughts.
It is probable that his college was proud of him no less as a scholar
than as a poet; for in 1716, when the foundation of the Codrington
library was laid, two years after he had taken his bachelor's degree,
Young was appointed to speak the Latin oration. This is, at least,
particular for being dedicated in English, "To the ladies of the
Codrington family. " To these ladies he says, "that he was unavoidably
flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle
dedicatory void of commonplace, and such a one as was never published
before by any author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any
obligation of reading what was presented to them, and that the
bookseller approved of it, because it would make people stare, was
absurd enough, and perfectly right. "
Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his works;
and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, 1741, is a letter from
Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December the 9th, 1739,
wherein he says, that he has not leisure to review what he formerly
wrote, and adds, "I have not the Epistle to lord Lansdowne. If you will
take my advice, I would have you omit that, and the oration on
Codrington. I think the collection will sell better without them. "
There are who relate, that, when first Young found himself independent,
and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and
morality which he afterwards became.
The authority of his father, indeed, had ceased, some time before, by
his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronised by the
infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet,
and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronised
only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out?
Yet Pope is said, by Ruffhead, to have told Warburton, that "Young had
much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his
genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into
bombast. This made him pass a _foolish youth_, the sport of peers and
poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the
clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, and
afterwards with honour. "
They who think ill of Young's morality in the early part of his life
may, perhaps, be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of
Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to
spend much of his time at All Souls. "The other boys," said the atheist,
"I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their
arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is
continually pestering me with something of his own. "[186]
After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable. Young
might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which
his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were
so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue,
but the potent testimony of experience against vice.
We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was more serious
than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets.
Young, perhaps, ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the Poem to His
Majesty, presented, with a copy of verses, to Somers; and hoped that he
also might soar to wealth and honour on wings of the same kind. His
first poetical flight was when queen Anne called up to the house of
lords the sons of the earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in
one day, ten others to the number of peers. In order to reconcile the
people to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, an
Epistle to the right honourable George lord Lansdowne. In this
composition the poet pours out his panegyrick with the extravagance of a
young man, who thinks his present stock of wealth will never be
exhausted.
The poem seems intended also to reconcile the publick to the late peace.
This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and
that in peace "harvests wave, and commerce swells her sail. " If this be
humanity, for which he meant it; is it politicks? Another purpose of
this epistle appears to have been, to prepare the publick for the
reception of some tragedy he might have in hand. His lordship's
patronage, he says, will not let him "repent his passion for the stage;"
and the particular praise bestowed on Othello and Oroonoko looks as if
some such character as Zanga was even then in contemplation. The
affectionate mention of the death of his friend Harrison, of New
college, at the close of this poem, is an instance of Young's art, which
displayed itself so wonderfully, some time afterwards, in the Night
Thoughts, of making the publick a party in his private sorrow.
Should justice call upon you to censure this poem, it ought, at least,
to be remembered, that he did not insert it in his works; and that in
the letter to Curll, as we have seen, he advises its omission. The
booksellers, in the late body of English poetry, should have
distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective
authors[187]. This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young. "I
think," says he, "the following pieces in _four_ volumes to be the most
excusable of all that I have written; and I wish _less apology_ was
needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the
pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them
as _pardonable_ as it was in my power to do. "
Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?
When Addison published Cato, in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing
to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the pieces which
the author of the Night Thoughts did not republish.
On the appearance of his Poem on the Last Day, Addison did not return
Young's compliment; but the Englishman of October 29, 1713, which was
probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. The Last
Day was published soon after the peace. The vicechancellor's
_imprimatur_, for it was printed at Oxford, is dated May the 19th, 1713.
From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the
composition of it. While other bards "with Britain's hero set their
souls on fire," he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough _had
been_ considered by Britain as her hero; but, when the Last Day was
published, female cabal had blasted, for a time, the laurels of
Blenheim. This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710,
before he was thirty; for part of it is printed in the Tatler[188] It
was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he
did not admit into his works. It tells her, that his only title to the
great honour he now does himself, is the obligation which he formerly
received from her royal indulgence.
Of this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded to her being
his godmother. He is said, indeed, to have been engaged at a settled
stipend as a writer for the court. In Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry are
these lines, speaking of the court:
Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face,
Where Y---- must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.
That Y---- means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same
poem:
Attend, ye Popes and Youngs and Gays,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyricks here provide;
You cannot err on flatt'ry's side.
Yet who shall say, with certainty, that Young was a pensioner? In all
modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been
regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots?
Of the dedication, the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in the
highest terms of the late peace; it gives her majesty praise, indeed,
for her victories, but says, that the author is more pleased to see her
rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first
and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he
lose her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the
boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards
eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels
receiving and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his
imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.
The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where
human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of
little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the
praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he
conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written
it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politicks,
notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the church was in danger, had
not yet subsided. The Last Day, written by a layman, was much approved
by the ministry, and their friends.
Before the queen's death, the Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, was
sent into the world. This poem is founded on the execution of lady Jane
Grey, and her husband lord Guildford, 1554, a story, chosen for the
subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by
Rowe. The dedication of it to the countess of Salisbury does not appear
in his own edition. He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption,
that the story could not have been read without thoughts of the countess
of Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another. "To behold," he
proceeds, "a person _only_ virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to
behold a person _only_ amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
indignation; but to turn our eyes on a countess of Salisbury gives us
pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias
of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and
affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty. " His
flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was, at least,
as well adapted.
August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas that he is just
arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the queen's
death, but that no panegyricks are ready yet for the king. Nothing like
friendship had yet taken place between Pope and Young; for, soon after
the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the queen's
death, and his majesty's accession to the throne. It is inscribed to
Addison, then secretary to the lords justices. Whatever were the
obligations, which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears
to aim at something of the same sort from George. Of the poem, the
intention seems to have been to show, that he had the same extravagant
strain of praise for a king as for a queen. To discover, at the very
outset of a foreigner's reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in
such a king, is something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one
of his _excusable pieces_. We do not find it in his works.
Young's father had been well acquainted with lady Anne Wharton, the
first wife of Thomas Wharton, esq. afterwards marquis of Wharton; a lady
celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.
To the dean of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added
some verses "by that excellent poetess Mrs. Anne Wharton," upon its
being translated into English, at the instance of Waller, by Atwood.
Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron,
and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion. The marquis
died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year the young marquis
set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a
twelve-month. The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland; where, says
the Biographia, "on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the
honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in
the house of lords. "
With this unhappy character, it is not unlikely that Young went to
Ireland. From his letter to Richardson, on Original Composition, it is
clear he was, at some period of his life, in that country. "I remember,"
says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, "as I and others were taking
with him an evening walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short:
we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found
him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which
in its uppermost branches was much withered and decayed. Pointing at it,
he said, 'I shall be like that tree, I shall die at top. '" Is it not
probable, that this visit to Ireland was paid when he had an opportunity
of going thither with his avowed friend and patron[189]?
From the Englishman, it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
theatre so early as 1713. Yet Busiris was not brought upon Drury-lane
stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the duke of Newcastle, "because the
late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had
taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron. " The dedication he
afterwards suppressed.
Busiris was followed, in the year 1721, by the Revenge. He dedicated
this famous tragedy to the duke of Wharton. "Your grace," says the
dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessory to the
following scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in
them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the
whole. "
That his grace should have suggested the incident to which he alludes,
whatever that incident might have been, is not unlikely. The last mental
exertion of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in
Spain, was some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary queen of Scots.
Dryden dedicated Marriage à-la-Mode to Wharton's infamous relation,
Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry,
but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to
Wharton thus: "My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care;
which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour,
since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit,
though through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so
sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive the benefit of it. " That
he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his
power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his
works. He should have remembered that he, at the same time, concealed
his obligation to Wharton for _the most beautiful incident_ in what is
surely not his least beautiful composition. The passage just quoted is,
in a poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:
Be this thy partial smile from censure free!
'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.
While Young, who, in his Love of Fame, complains grievously how often
"dedications wash an Aethiop white," was painting an amiable duke of
Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe
the "scorn and wonder of his days" in lasting verse.
To the patronage of such a character, had Young studied men as much as
Pope, he would have known how little to have trusted. Young, however,
was certainly indebted to it for something material; and the duke's
regard for Young, added to his "lust of praise," procured to All Souls'
college a donation, which was not forgotten by the poet when he
dedicated the Revenge.
It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, case 136, Stiles
_versus_ the Attorney General, March 14; 1740, as authority for the life
of a poet. But biographers do not always find such certain guides as the
oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to
determine whether two annuities, granted by the duke of Wharton to
Young, were for legal considerations. One was dated the 24th of March,
1719, and accounted for his grace's bounty in a style princely and
commendable, if not legal--"considering that the publick good is
advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being
pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration
thereof, and of the love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the 10th
of July, 1722.
Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
refused an annuity of 100_l_. which had been offered him for life if he
would continue tutor to lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations
of the duke of Wharton, and his grace's assurances of providing for him
in a much more ample manner. It also appeared, that the duke had given
him a bond for 600_l_. dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration
of his taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to
be chosen member of the house of commons, at the duke's desire, and in
consideration of his not taking two livings of 200_l_. and 400_l_. in
the gift of All Souls' college, on his grace's promises of serving and
advancing him in the world.
Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account.
The attempt to get into parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood
a contested election. His grace discovered in him talents for oratory,
as well as for poetry. Nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took
orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the
grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was
once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was
preaching in his turn at St. James's he plainly perceived it was out of
his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the
feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into
tears. But we must pursue his poetical life.
In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their
common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if
they contain any, it is now vain to seek:
_In joy once join'd_, in sorrow, now, for years--
Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due.
From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to
"communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote even to the least
things. "
In 1719 appeared a Paraphrase on part of the book of Job. Parker, to
whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been
qualified for a patron. Of this work the author's opinion may be known
from his letter to Curll: "You seem, in the collection you propose, to
have omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean 'a
translation from part of Job,' printed by Mr. Tonson. " The dedication,
which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson's edition, while it
speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an
unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every one who sings in
the dark does not sing from joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of
flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no
kind of knowledge.
Of his satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates, without
the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe
in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have
referred to the poems, to discover when they were written. For these
internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first
satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled. " The second,
addressing himself, asks:
Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
A fool at _forty_ is a fool indeed.
The Satires were originally published separately, in folio, under the
title of the Universal Passion. These passages fix the appearance of the
first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young seldom
suffered his pen to dry, after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may
conclude that he began his satires soon after he had written the
Paraphrase on Job. The last satire was certainly finished in the
beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the king, in his passage
from Helvoetsluys, escaped, with great difficulty, from a storm by
landing at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a
miracle, in such an encomiastick strain of compliment, as poetry too
often seeks to pay to royalty.
From the sixth of these poems we learn,
Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart
Glow'd with the love of virtue and of art:
since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawn'd on me.
Her majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter of
the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had, perhaps, shown some
attention to lady Elizabeth's future husband.
The fifth satire, on Women, was not published till 1727; and the sixth
not till 1728.
To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he
prefixed a preface; in which he observes, that "no man can converse much
in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or
grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into
ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least,
and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the
misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more
disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven
out by another than by reason, whatever some teach. " So wrote, and so of
course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost
fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the Last Day. After all,
Swift pronounced of these satires, that they should either have been
more angry or more merry.
Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any
palliation, this preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at
the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the
mournful, angry, gloomy Night Thoughts?
At the conclusion of the preface he applies Plato's beautiful fable of
the Birth of Love to modern poetry, with the addition, "that poetry,
like love, is a little subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her
way to preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful
admiration of her father's family; but divides her favours, and
generally lives with her mother's relations. " Poetry, it is true, did
not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not something
like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her, and her
sister prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to
entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though
nearly related to poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the
mother of love. That he could not well complain of being related to
poverty, appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude
records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By the Universal
Passion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds.
A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South sea. For
this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His muse makes poetical
use more than once of a South sea dream.
It is related by Mr. Spence, in his manuscript anecdotes, on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
Universal Passion, received from the duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "two thousand
pounds for a poem! " he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his
life, for the poem was worth four thousand.
This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two
answers of lord Burghley and sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.
After inscribing his satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferment and honours, to such names as the duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, lady Elizabeth Germaine, and sir Robert
Walpole, he returns to plain panegyrick. In 1726, he addressed a poem to
sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. The Instalment is
among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his _excusable
writings_. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
power of bestowing immortality:
Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!
The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
acknowledgment, would now, perhaps, never have been known:
My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turn'd by thee,
Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must,
at least, be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode.
The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the
increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
"invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
service of their country;" a plan which humanity must lament that policy
has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
Prefixed to the original publication were an Ode to the King, Pater
Patriae, and an Essay on Lyrick Poetry. It is but justice to confess,
that he preserved neither of them; and that, the ode itself, which in
the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas,
in the author's own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted
passages is a Wish, that concluded the poem, which few would have
suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it,
would confess something like their shame by suppression.
It stood originally so high in the author's opinion, that he entitled
the poem, Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish. This wish consists of
thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:
O may I _steal_
Along the _vale_
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:
Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I _have_,
And live, not _leave_,
Enamour'd of the present day!
My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one _beam_
Of honest _fame_!
And scorn the labour'd monument!
Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty nature's self shall die;
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said,
in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: "For the more
_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome, give grace and
pleasure. Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_, (of
which the moderns are too fond,) but from this truth. " Yet the moderns
surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by his own
confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.
The next paragraph in his essay did not occur to him when he talked of
"that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must
take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme
consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he
was perfectly free from that shackle. "
Another part of this essay will convict the following stanza of, what
every reader will discover in it, "involuntary burlesque:"
"The northern blast
The shatter'd mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock.
The breaking spout,
The _stars gone out_,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock. "
But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes, if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
If Young be not a lyrick poet, he is, at least, a critick in that sort
of poetry; and, if his lyrick poetry can be proved bad, it was first
proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.
Milbourne was styled, by Pope, "the fairest of criticks," only because
he exhibited his own version of Virgil to be compared with Dryden's,
which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in
his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets
for prefixing to a lyrick composition an essay on lyrick poetry, so just
and impartial as to condemn himself.
We shall soon come to a work, before which we find, indeed, no critical
essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
language.
Soon after the appearance of Ocean, when he was almost fifty, Young
entered into orders. In April, 1728[190] not long after he had put on
the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the second.
The tragedy of the Brothers, which was already in rehearsal, he
immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it, with some
reluctance, to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The epilogue to the
Brothers, the only appendage to any of his three plays which he added
himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an
historical epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow
scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the epilogue,
and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
Perseus "for this night's deed. "
Of Young's taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular
light. When he determined on the church, he did not address himself to
Sherlock, to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in
theology; but to Pope, who, in a youthful frolick, advised the diligent
perusal of Thomas Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from
interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to
godliness hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he
might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him
just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable
derangement. "
That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the
surest guide to his new profession, left him little doubt whether poetry
was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long, indeed,
after he took orders, he published, in prose, 1728, a true Estimate of
Human Life, dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which
it abounds, to the queen; and a sermon preached before the house of
commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of king Charles, entitled, an Apology
for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government. But the Second
Discourse, the counterpart of his Estimate, without which it cannot be
called a _true_ Estimate, though, in 1728, it was announced as "soon to
be published," never appeared; and his old friends the muses were not
forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world,
Imperium Pelagi, a naval lyrick, written in imitation of Pindar's
Spirit, occasioned by his majesty's return from Hanover, September,
1729, and the succeeding peace. It is inscribed to the duke of Chandos.
In the preface we are told, that the ode is the most spirited kind of
poetry, and that the Pindarick is the most spirited kind of ode. "This I
speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril.
But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to
suffer by it. " Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's Imperium
Pelagi was ridiculed in Fielding's Tom Thumb; but let us not forget that
it was one of his pieces which the author of the Night Thoughts
deliberately refused to own.
Not long after this Pindarick attempt, he published two epistles to
Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age, 1730. Of these poems, one
occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the liveliness of
his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious for promotion
in the church.
In July, 1730, he was presented, by his college, to the rectory of
Welwyn, in Hertfordshire. In May, 1731, he married lady Elizabeth Lee,
daughter of the earl of Lichfield, and widow of colonel Lee. His
connexion with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already
mentioned, with lady Anne Wharton, who was coheiress of sir Henry Lee,
of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to
aspire to the arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary happiness.
We may naturally conclude, that Young now gave himself up, in some
measure, to the comforts of his new connexion, and to the expectations
of that preferment, which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at
least, to the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.
The next production of his muse was the Sea-piece, in two odes.
Young enjoys the credit of what is called an Extempore Epigram on
Voltaire; who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death:
You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.
From the following passage, in the poetical dedication of his Sea-piece
to Voltaire, it seems, that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
any reproof,) was something longer than a distich, and something more
gentle than the distich just quoted:
No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
On _Dorset_ downs, when Milton's page
With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage,
Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with _gentle_ rhymes?
By Dorset downs, he probably meant Mr. Dodington's seat. In Pitt's poems
is an Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on the
Review at Sarum, 1722.
While with your Dodington retir'd you sit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.
Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
of the muses,
Where, in the secret bow'r and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.
The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the
second
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,
added to Thomson's example and success, might, perhaps, induce Young, as
we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
In 1734 he published the Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
Written in the character of a sailor. It is not to be found in the
author's four volumes.
He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and,
perhaps, at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species
of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few
of Young's readers will regret:
My shell, which Clio gave, which _kings applaud_,
Which Europe's bleeding genius call'd abroad,
Adieu!
In a species of poetry altogether his own, he next tried his skill, and
succeeded.
Of his wife, he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her
marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just
after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple
did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time
to a daughter of sir John Barnard, whose son is the present peer. Mr.
and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and
Narcissa. From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between
Mr. Temple and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is
probable that the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these
characters; though, at the same time, some passages respecting Philander
do not appear to suit either Mr. Temple or any other person with whom
Young was known to be connected or acquainted, while all the
circumstances relating to Narcissa have been constantly found applicable
to Young's daughter-in-law.
At what short intervals the poet tells us he was wounded by the deaths
of the three persons particularly lamented, none that has read the Night
Thoughts (and who has not read them? ) needs to be informed.
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn.
Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and lady Elizabeth Young
could be these three victims, over whom Young has hitherto been pitied
for having to pour the Midnight Sorrows of his religious poetry; Mrs.
Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the
poet's wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the
insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, "ere
thrice the moon had fill'd her horn? "
But, in the short preface to the Complaint, he seriously tells us, "that
the occasion of this poem was real, not fictitious; and that the facts
mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of
the writer. " It is probable, therefore, that in these three
contradictory lines, the poet complains more than the father-in-law, the
friend, or the widower.
Whatever names belong to these facts, or, if the names be those
generally supposed, whatever heightening a poet's sorrow may have given
the facts; to the sorrow Young felt from them, religion and morality are
indebted for the Night Thoughts. There is a pleasure sure in sadness
which mourners only know!
Of these poems, the two or three first have been perused, perhaps more
eagerly and more frequently than the rest. When he got as far as the
fourth or fifth, his original motive for taking up the pen was answered;
his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We still find
the same pious poet; but we hear less of Philander and Narcissa, and
less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.
Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, in her way to Nice, the year
after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, "in her
bridal hour. " It is more than poetically true, that Young accompanied
her to the Continent:
I flew, I snatch'd her from the rigid north, And bore her nearer to the
sun.
But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in
such animated colours in Night the Third. After her death, the remainder
of the party passed the ensuing winter at Nice.
The poet seems, perhaps, in these compositions, to dwell with more
melancholy on the death of Philander and Narcissa, than of his wife. But
it is only for this reason. He who runs and reads may remember, that in
the Night Thoughts Philander and Narcissa are often mentioned and often
lamented. To recollect lamentations over the author's wife, the memory
must have been charged with distinct passages. This lady brought him one
child, Frederick, now living, to whom the prince of Wales was
godfather.
That domestick grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these
ornaments to our language, it is impossible to deny. Nor would it be
common hardiness to contend, that worldly discontent had no hand in
these joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means sure
that, at any rate, we should not have had something of the same colour
from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires. In
so long a life, causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have
occurred. It is not clear to me that his muse was not sitting upon the
watch for the first which happened. Night thoughts were not uncommon to
her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself
was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his Last Day,
almost his earliest poem, he calls her the Melancholy Maid,
Whom dismal scenes delight,
Frequent at tombs and in the realms of night.
In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he
says--
Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night
To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
To the bright palace of eternal day!
When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have sent
him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp; and the poet is
reported to have used it.
What he calls the _true_ Estimate of Human Life, which has already been
mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of the tapestry; and, being
asked why he did not show the right, he is said to have replied that he
could not. By others it has been told me that this was finished; but
that, before there existed any copy, it was torn in pieces by a lady's
monkey.
Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to
bring the gloominess of the Night Thoughts to prove the gloominess of
Young, and to show that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was, in
some measure, the sullen inspiration of discontent.
From them who answer in the affirmative it should not be concealed,
that, though "Invisibilia non decipiunt" appeared upon a deception in
Young's grounds, and "Ambulantes in horto audiêrunt vocem Dei" on a
building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good humour of
the author of the Night Thoughts for an assembly and a bowling-green.
Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil
nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than
of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead,
who, if they cannot defend themselves, are, at least, ignorant of his
abuse, will not hesitate, by the most wanton calumny, to destroy the
quiet, the reputation, the fortune, of the living. Yet censure is not
heard beneath the tomb, any more than praise. "De mortuis nil nisi
verum--De vivis nil nisi bonum," would approach much nearer to good
sense. After all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed
the body of the author of the Night Thoughts feel not much concern
whether Young pass now for a man of sorrow, or for a "fellow of infinite
jest. " To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick. His immortal
part, wherever that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this head.
But to a son of worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence
whether contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that
his debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening
of his father's days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character
completely detestable, and succeeded, at last, in bringing his "grey
hairs with sorrow to the grave. "
The humanity of the world, little satisfied with inventing perhaps a
melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next to invent an
argument in support of their invention, and chooses that Lorenzo should
be Young's own son. The Biographia and every account of Young pretty
roundly assert this to be the fact; of the absolute impossibility of
which the Biographia itself, in particular dates, contains undeniable
evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will
hereafter peruse the Night Thoughts with less satisfaction; who will
wish they had still been deceived; who will quarrel with me for
discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo ever yet disgraced
human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would these admirers of the
sublime and terrible be offended, should you set them down for cruel and
for savage.
Of this report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in
proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to
find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.
From the first line to the last of the Night Thoughts no one expression
can be discovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the Second
Night I find an expression which betrays something else; that Lorenzo
was his friend; one, it is possible, of his former companions; one of
the duke of Wharton's set. The poet styles him "gay friend;" an
appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a
being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his son.
But let us see how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the
sight of some of whose features the artist himself must have turned away
with horrour. A subject more shocking, if his only child really sat to
him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told
of which, Young composed a short poem of fourteen lines in the early
part of his life, which he did not think deserved to be republished.
In the First Night, the address to the poet's supposed son is,
Lorenzo, fortune makes her court to thee.
In the Fifth Night;
And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?
Is this a picture of the son of the rector of Welwyn?
Eighth Night;
In foreign realms (for thou hast travell'd far;)
which even now does not apply to his son.
In Night Five;
So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate;
Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes;
And dy'd to give him, orphan'd in his birth!
At the beginning of the Fifth Night we find;
Lorenzo! to recriminate is just;
I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.
But, to cut short all inquiry; if any one of these passages, if any
passage in the poems, be applicable, my friend shall pass for Lorenzo.
The son of the author of the Night Thoughts was not old enough, when
they were written, to recriminate, or to be a father. The Night Thoughts
were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The first
Nights appear, in the books of the company of Stationers, as the
property of Robert Dodsley, in 1742. The preface to Night Seven is dated
July 7th, 1744. The marriage, in consequence of which the supposed
Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till
June, 1733. In 1741 this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to
whose education vice had for some years put the last hand, was only
eight years old.
An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to contradiction, so impossible
to be true, who could propagate? Thus easily are blasted the reputations
of the living and of the dead.
Who, then, was Lorenzo? exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If we
cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely
terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin?
These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of
human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the
poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti-Lucretius, "quo nomine," says
Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige. " That this was the case, many
expressions in the Night Thoughts would seem to prove, did not a
passage in Night Eight appear to show that he had something in his eye
for the groundwork, at least, of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may
be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he
only gives the initial letter:
Tell not Calista. She will laugh thee dead,
Or send thee to her hermitage with L----.
The Biographia, not satisfied with pointing out the son of Young, in
that son's lifetime, as his father's Lorenzo, travels out of its way
into the history of the son, and tells of his having been forbidden his
college at Oxford, for misbehaviour. How such anecdotes, were they true,
tend to illustrate the life of Young, it is not easy to discover. Was
the son of the author of the Night Thoughts, indeed, forbidden his
college for a time, at one of the universities? The author of Paradise
Lost is by some supposed to have been disgracefully ejected from the
other. From juvenile follies who is free? But, whatever the Biographia
chooses to relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his
college, either lasting or temporary.
Yet, were nature to indulge him with a second youth, and to leave him at
the same time the experience of that which is past, he would probably
spend it differently--who would not? --he would certainly be the occasion
of less uneasiness to his father. But, from the same experience, he
would as certainly, in the same case, be treated differently by his
father.
Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the
best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their
heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties.
Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of
mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The
prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets.
He who is connected with the author of the Night Thoughts, only by
veneration for the poet and the christian, may be allowed to observe,
that Young is one of those, concerning whom, as you remark in your
account of Addison, it is proper rather to say "nothing that is false,
than all that is true. "
But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo,
than see himself vindicated, at the expense of his father's memory, from
follies which, if it may be thought blamable in a boy to have committed
them, it is surely praiseworthy in a man to lament, and certainly not
only unnecessary but cruel in a biographer to record.
Of the Night Thoughts, notwithstanding their author's professed
retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names. He had not
yet weaned himself from earls and dukes, from speakers of the house of
commons, lords commissioners of the treasury, and chancellors of the
exchequer.
In Night Eight the politician plainly betrays himself:
Think no post needful that demands a knave:
When late our civil helm was shifting hands,
So P---- thought; think better if you can.
Yet it must be confessed, that at the conclusion of Night Nine, weary,
perhaps, of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul,
Henceforth
Thy _patron_ he, whose diadem has dropt
Yon gems of heaven; eternity thy prize;
And leave the racers of the world their own.
The Fourth Night was addressed, by a "much-indebted muse," to the
honourable Mr. Yorke, now lord Hardwicke; who meant to have laid the
muse under still greater obligation, by the living of Shenfield in
Essex, if it had become vacant.
The First Night concludes with this passage:
Dark, though not blind, like thee, Meonides:
Or Milton, thee. Ah! could I reach your strain;
Or his who made Meonides our own!
Man too he sung. Immortal man I sing.
Oh! had he prest his theme, pursu'd the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
Oh! had he mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd, where I sink, and sung immortal man--
How had it blest mankind, and rescu'd me!
To the author of these lines was dedicated, in 1756, the first volume of
an Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, which attempted, whether
justly or not, to pluck from Pope his "wing of fire," and to reduce him
to a rank at least one degree lower than the first class of English
poets.
