Towards the end of his life he went with his wife to France; but after
awhile, finding his health declining, he returned alone to England, and
died in April, 1765.
awhile, finding his health declining, he returned alone to England, and
died in April, 1765.
Samuel Johnson
"
All the light thrown on this inquiry, by the following letter from
Seeker, only serves to show at what a late period of life the author of
the Night Thoughts solicited preferment.
"Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8, 1758.
"GOOD DR. YOUNG,--I have long wondered, that more suitable notice
of your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. But
how to remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath ever
been given me to mention things of this nature to his majesty. And
therefore, in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it
would be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly
have on some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set
you above the need of advancement; and your sentiments, above that
concern for it, on your own account, which, on that of the publick,
is sincerely felt by
"Your loving brother,
"THO. CANT. "
At last, at the age of fourscore, he was appointed, in 1761, clerk of
the closet to the princess dowager.
One obstacle must have stood not a little in the way of that preferment,
after which his whole life seems to have panted. Though he took orders,
he never entirely shook off politicks. He was always the lion of his
master Milton, "pawing to get free his hinder parts. " By this conduct,
if he gained some friends, he made many enemies.
Again: Young was a poet; and again, with reverence be it spoken, poets
by profession, do not always make the best clergymen. If the author of
the Night Thoughts composed many sermons, he did not oblige the publick
with many.
Besides, in the latter part of life, Young was fond of holding himself
out for a man retired from the world. But he seemed to have forgotten
that the same verse which contains "oblitus meorum," contains also
"obliviscendus et illis. " The brittle chain of worldly friendship and
patronage is broken as effectually, when one goes beyond the length of
it, as when the other does. To the vessel which is sailing from the
shore, it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly
thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality,
deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The publick is not to be
treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with
desertion, in order to increase fondness.
Young seems to have been taken at his word. Notwithstanding his frequent
complaints of being neglected, no hand was reached out to pull him from
that retirement of which he declared himself enamoured. Alexander
assigned no palace for the residence of Diogenes, who boasted his surly
satisfaction with his tub.
Of the domestick manners and petty habits of the author of the Night
Thoughts, I hoped to have given you an account from the best authority:
but who shall dare to say, to-morrow I will be wise or virtuous, or
to-morrow I will do a particular thing? Upon inquiring for his
house-keeper, I learned that she was buried two days before I reached
the town of her abode.
In a letter from Tscharner, a noble foreigner, to count Haller,
Tscharner says, he has lately spent four days with Young at Welwyn,
where the author tastes all the ease and pleasure mankind can desire.
"Every thing about him shows the man, each individual being placed by
rule. All is neat without art. He is very pleasant in conversation, and
extremely polite. "
This, and more, may possibly be true; but Tscharner's was a first visit,
a visit of curiosity and admiration, and a visit which the author
expected.
Of Edward Young, an anecdote which wanders among readers is not true,
that he was Fielding's Parson Adams. The original of that famous
painting was William Young, who was a clergyman. He supported an
uncomfortable existence by translating for the booksellers from Greek;
and, if he did not seem to be his own friend, was, at least, no man's
enemy. Yet the facility with which this report has gained belief in the
world argues, were it not sufficiently known, that the author of the
Night Thoughts bore some resemblance to Adams.
The attention which Young bestowed upon the perusal of books, is not
unworthy imitation. When any passage pleased him, he appears to have
folded down the leaf. On these passages he bestowed a second reading.
But the labours of man are too frequently vain. Before he returned to
much of what he had once approved, he died. Many of his books, which I
have seen, are by those notes of approbation so swelled beyond their
real bulk, that they will hardly shut.
What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame!
Earth's highest station ends in, _Here he lies! _
And _dust to dust_ concludes her noblest song!
The author of these lines is not without his _hic jacet. _
By the good sense of his son, it contains none of that praise which no
marble can make the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the
direction of a stone or a turf, will find its way, sooner or later, to
the deserving.
M. S.
Optimi parentis
EDVARDI YOUNG, LL. D.
hujus ecclesiae rect.
Et Elizabethae
faem. praenob.
Conjugis ejus amantissimae,
pio et gratissimo animo
hoc marmor posuit
F. Y.
Filius superstes.
Is it not strange that the author of the Night Thoughts has inscribed no
monument to the memory of his lamented wife? Yet, what marble will
endure as long as the poems?
Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to collect
of the great Young. That it may be long before any thing like what I
have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the sincere wish of,
Dear sir,
Your greatly obliged friend,
HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
Lincoln's Inn, Sept. 1780.
P. S. This account of Young was seen by you in manuscript, you know, sir;
and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alteration, you
insisted on striking out one passage, because it said, that, if I did
not wish you to live long, for your sake, I did for the sake of myself
and of the world. But this postscript you will not see before the
printing of it; and I will say here, in spite of you, how I feel myself
honoured and bettered by your friendship: and that, if I do credit to
the church, after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to
give in exchange the bar, though not at so late a period of life as
Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure, to my having
had the happiness of calling the author of the Rambler my friend[191].
H. C.
Oxford, Oct. 1782.
Of Young's poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he
has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has no great resemblance
to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at
different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His
numbers are sometimes smooth, and sometimes rugged; his style is
sometimes concatenated, and sometimes abrupt; sometimes diffusive, and
sometimes concise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the
present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes
adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.
He was not one of those writers whom experience improves, and who,
observing their own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the
Last Day, his first great performance, has an equability and propriety,
which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many
paragraphs are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid: the
plan is too much extended, and a succession of images divides and
weakens the general conception; but the great reason why the reader is
disappointed is, that the thought of the Last Day makes every man more
than poetical, by spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred
horrour, that oppresses distinction, and disdains expression.
His story of Jane Grey was never popular. It is written with elegance
enough; but Jane is too heroick to be pitied.
The Universal Passion is, indeed, a very great performance. It is said
to be a series of epigrams; but, if it be, it is what the author
intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and
pointed sentences; and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment,
and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.
His characters are often selected with discernment, and drawn with
nicety; his illustrations are often happy, and his reflections often
just. His species of satire is between those of Horace and Juvenal; and
he has the gaiety of Horace without his laxity of numbers, and the
morality of Juvenal, with greater variation of images. He plays, indeed,
only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the
mind, and, therefore, the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a
single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise.
To translate he never condescended, unless his Paraphrase on Job may be
considered as a version; in which he has not, I think, been
unsuccessful; he, indeed, favoured himself, by choosing those parts
which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry.
He had least success in his lyrick attempts, in which he seems to have
been under some malignant influence: he is always labouring to be great,
and at last is only turgid.
In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very wide display of original
poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a
wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers
of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which
blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The
wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of
imagination, would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to
rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness;
particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and
in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese
plantations, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.
His last poem was Resignation; in which he made, as he was accustomed,
an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded better than in his
Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falsely represented as a proof of
decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was
in his highest vigour.
His tragedies, not making part of the collection, I had forgotten, till
Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed
to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three plays all concluded with
lavish suicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily
rids his scene of persons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Busiris
there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination: but the pride of
Busiris is such as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote
from known life to raise either grief, terrour, or indignation. The
Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and,
therefore, keeps possession of the stage: the first design seems
suggested by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the
diction, are original. The moral observations are go introduced, and so
expressed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of the
Brothers I may be allowed to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of
it by the publick.
It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but
without much accuracy or selection. When he lays hold of an
illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as in
his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure[192] which I have heard
repeated at the approbation by a lady, of whose praise he would have
been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtile, and almost
exact: but sometimes he is less lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts,
having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs floating in space might
be called the _cluster_ of creation, he thinks of a cluster of grapes,
and says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectareous
juice of immortal life. "
His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the Last Day he hopes
to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at
the "trump of doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
tinkling of a pan.
The prophet says of Tyre, that "her merchants are princes. " Young says
of Tyre, in his Merchant,
Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.
Let burlesque try to go beyond him.
He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance
of Britain, "Climes were paid down. " Antithesis is his favourite: "They
for kindness hate;" and, "because she's right, she's ever in the wrong. "
His versification is his own: neither his blank nor his rhyming lines
have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no
hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid
up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous
suggestions of the present moment. Yet I have reason to believe that,
when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very
patient industry; and that he composed with great labour and frequent
revisions.
His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have
studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear.
But, with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.
-----
[Footnote 185: See Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. p. 225. N. ]
[Footnote 186: As my great friend is now become the subject of
biography, it should be told, that every time I called upon Johnson
during the time I was employed in collecting materials for this life and
putting it together, he never suffered me to depart without some such
farewell as this: "Don't forget that rascal Tindal, sir. Be sure to hang
up the atheist. " Alluding to this anecdote, which Johnson had mentioned
to me. ]
[Footnote 187: Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed
differently, particularly in Young's works. J. N. ]
[Footnote 188: Not in the Tatler, but in the Guardian, May 9, 1713. ]
[Footnote 189: See a letter from the duke of Wharton to Swift, dated
1717, in Swift's works, in which he mentions Young being then in
Ireland. J. B. N. ]
[Footnote 190: Davies, in his life of Garrick, says 1720, and that it
was produced thirty-three years after. ]
[Footnote 191: Mr. Boswell discovered in this heavy piece of biography a
successful imitation of Johnson's style. An eminent literary character
exclaimed, "No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all
his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without
its strength. " Endeavouring to express himself still more in Johnsonian
phrase, he added, "It has all the contortions of the Sybil, without the
inspiration. " See Boswell, iv. According to Malone, this eminent person
was Burke, and the observation is assigned to him, without hesitation,
in Prin's Life. It has sometimes been attributed to G. Stevens. ED. ]
[Footnote 192: See Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 162. ]
MALLET.
Of David Mallet, having no written memorial, I am able to give no other
account than such as is supplied by the unauthorised loquacity of common
fame, and a very slight personal knowledge.
He was, by his original, one of the Macgregors, a clan that became,
about sixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and
so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a
legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themselves anew,
the father, I suppose, of this author, called himself Malloch.
David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to be janitor
of the high school at Edinburgh; a mean office, of which he did not
afterwards delight to hear. But he surmounted the disadvantages of his
birth and fortune; for, when the duke of Montrose applied to the college
of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his sons, Malloch was recommended;
and I never heard that he dishonoured his credentials.
When his pupils were sent to see the world, they were entrusted to his
care; and, having conducted them round the common circle of modish
travels, he returned with them to London, where, by the influence of the
family in which he resided, he naturally gained admission to many
persons of the highest rank, and the highest character; to wits, nobles,
and statesmen.
Of his works, I know not whether I can trace the series. His first
production was William and Margaret[193] of which, though it contains
nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the reputation;
and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved.
Not long afterwards he published the Excursion, 1728; a desultory and
capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his
knowledge enabled him, to describe. It is not devoid of poetical spirit.
Many of the images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant.
The cast of diction seems to be copied from Thomson, whose Seasons were
then in their full blossom of reputation. He has Thomson's beauties and
his faults.
His poem on Verbal Criticism, 1733, was written to pay court to Pope, on
a subject which he either did not understand, or willingly
misrepresented; and is little more than an improvement, or rather
expansion, of a fragment which Pope printed in a Miscellany long before
he engrafted it into a regular poem. There is in this piece more
pertness than wit, and more confidence than knowledge. The versification
is tolerable, nor can criticism allow it a higher praise.
His first tragedy was Eurydice, acted at Drury-lane in 1731; of which I
know not the reception nor the merit, but have heard it mentioned as a
mean performance. He was not then too high to accept a prologue and
epilogue from Aaron Hill, neither of which can be much commended.
Having cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation so as to be no
longer distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disencumber himself
from all adherences of his original, and took upon him to change his
name from Scotch _Malloch_ to English Mallet, without any imaginable
reason of preference which the eye or ear can discover. What other
proofs he gave of disrespect to his native country, I know not; but it
was remarked of him, that he was the only Scot, whom Scotchmen did not
command.
About this time Pope, whom he visited familiarly, published his Essay on
Man, but concealed the author; and, when Mallet entered one day, Pope
asked him slightly, what there was new. Mallet told him, that the newest
piece was something called an Essay on Man, which he had inspected idly,
and seeing the utter inability of the author, who had neither skill in
writing nor knowledge of the subject, had tossed it away. Pope, to
punish his self-conceit, told him the secret[194]
A new edition of the works of Bacon being prepared, 1750, for the press,
Mallet was employed to prefix a life, which he has written with
elegance, perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more knowledge
of history than of science, that, when he afterwards undertook the life
of Marlborough, Warburton remarked, that he might, perhaps, forget that
Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a
philosopher.
When the prince of Wales was driven from the palace, and, setting
himself at the head of the opposition, kept a separate court, he
endeavoured to increase his popularity by the patronage of literature,
and made Mallet his under-secretary, with a salary of two hundred pounds
a year: Thomson, likewise, had a pension; and they were associated in
the composition of the Mask of Alfred, which, in its original state, was
played at Cliefden in 1740; it was afterwards almost wholly changed by
Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury-lane in 1751, but with no
great success.
Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the
diligence which he was then exerting upon the life of Marlborough, let
him know, that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited, he
should _find a niche_ for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to
wonder by what artifice he could be introduced: but Mallet let him know,
that, by a dexterous anticipation, he should fix him in a conspicuous
place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick, in his gratitude of exultation, "have
you left off to write for the stage? " Mallet then confessed that he had
a drama in his hands. Garrick promised to act it; and Alfred was
produced.
The long retardation of the life of the duke of Marlborough shows, with
strong conviction, how little confidence can be placed in posthumous
renown. When he died, it was soon determined that his story should be
delivered to posterity; and the papers, supposed to contain the
necessary information, were delivered to lord Molesworth, who had been
his favourite in Flanders. When Molesworth died the same papers were
transferred, with the same design, to sir Richard Steele, who, in some
of his exigencies, put them in pawn. They then remained with the old
dutchess who, in her will, assigned the task to Glover and Mallet, with
a reward of a thousand pounds, and a prohibition to insert any verses.
Glover rejected, I suppose, with disdain, the legacy, and devolved the
whole work upon Mallet; who had from the late duke of Marlborough a
pension to promote his industry, and who talked of the discoveries which
he had made; but left not, when he died, any historical labours behind
him.
While he was in the prince's service he published Mustapha, with a
prologue by Thomson, not mean, but far inferiour to that which he had
received from Mallet, for Agamemnon. The epilogue, said to be written by
a friend, was composed in haste by Mallet, in the place of one promised,
which was never given. This tragedy was dedicated to the prince his
master. It was acted at Drury-lane, in 1739, and was well received, but
was never revived.
In 1740, he produced, as has been already mentioned, the Mask of Alfred,
in conjunction with Thomson.
For some time afterwards he lay at rest. After a long interval, his next
work was Amyntor and Theodora, 1747, a long story in blank verse; in
which it cannot be denied that there is copiousness and elegance of
language, vigour of sentiment, and imagery well adapted to take
possession of the fancy. But it is blank verse. This he sold to Vaillant
for one hundred and twenty pounds. The first sale was not great, and it
is now lost in forgetfulness.
Mallet, by address or accident, perhaps by his dependance on the prince,
found his way to Bolingbroke; a man whose pride and petulance made his
kindness difficult to gain, or keep, and whom Mallet was content to
court by an act, which, I hope, was unwillingly performed. When it was
found that Pope had clandestinely printed an unauthorised number of the
pamphlet called the Patriot King, Bolingbroke, in a fit of useless fury,
resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet, 1749, as the
executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not virtue, or had not spirit,
to refuse the office; and was rewarded, not long after, with the legacy
of lord Bolingbroke's works.
Many of the political pieces had been written during the opposition to
Walpole, and given to Franklin, as he supposed, in perpetuity. These,
among the rest, were claimed by the will. The question was referred to
arbitrators; but when they decided against Mallet, he refused to yield
to the award; and, by the help of Millar the bookseller, published all
that he could find, but with success very much below his expectation.
In 1755, his Mask of Britannia was acted at Drury-lane; and his tragedy
of Elvira in 1763; in which year he was appointed keeper of the book of
entries for ships in the port of London.
In the beginning of the last war, when the nation was exasperated by ill
success, he was employed to turn the publick vengeance upon Byng, and
wrote a letter of accusation under the character of a Plain Man. The
paper was, with great industry, circulated and dispersed; and he, for
his seasonable intervention, had a considerable pension bestowed upon
him, which he retained to his death.
Towards the end of his life he went with his wife to France; but after
awhile, finding his health declining, he returned alone to England, and
died in April, 1765.
He was twice married, and by his first wife had several children. One
daughter, who married an Italian of rank, named Cilesia, wrote a tragedy
called Almida, which was acted at Drury-lane. His second wife was the
daughter of a nobleman's steward, who had a considerable fortune, which
she took care to retain in her own hands.
His stature was diminutive, but he was regularly formed; his
appearance, till he grew corpulent, was agreeable, and he suffered it to
want no recommendation that dress could give it. His conversation was
elegant and easy. The rest of his character may, without injury to his
memory, sink into silence.
As a writer he cannot be placed in any high class. There is no species
of composition in which he was eminent. His dramas had their day, a
short day, and are forgotten: his blank verse seems, to my ear, the echo
of Thomson. His Life of Bacon is known, as it is appended to Bacon's
volumes, but is no longer mentioned. His works are such as a writer,
bustling in the world, showing himself in publick, and emerging
occasionally, from time to time, into notice, might keep alive by his
personal influence; but which, conveying little information, and giving
no great pleasure, must soon give way, as the succession of things
produces new topicks of conversation and other modes of amusement.
-----
[Footnote 193: Mallet's William and Margaret was printed in Aaron Hill's
Plain Dealer, No. 36, July 24,1724 In its original state it was very
different from what it is in the last edition of his works. Dr. J. ]
[Footnote 194: See note on this passage of Pope's life in the present
edition. ]
AKENSIDE.
Mark Akenside was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His father, Mark, was a butcher, of the
Presbyterian sect; his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. He received the
first part of his education at the grammar-school of Newcastle; and was
afterwards instructed by Mr. Wilson, who kept a private academy.
At the age of eighteen he was sent to Edinburgh, that he might qualify
himself for the office of a dissenting minister, and received some
assistance from the fund which the dissenters employ in educating young
men of scanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other
scenes, and prompted other hopes; he determined to study physick, and
repaid that contribution, which, being received for a different purpose,
he justly thought it dishonourable to retain.
Whether, when he resolved not to be a dissenting minister, he ceased to
be a dissenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unnecessary and
outrageous zeal for what he called, and thought, liberty; a zeal which
sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which
it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or degrading
greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and
anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very
little care what shall be established.
Akenside was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions of
genius, and one of those students who have very early stored their
memories with sentiments and images. Many of his performances were
produced in his youth; and his greatest work, the Pleasures of
Imagination, appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodsley, by whom it was
published, relate, that when the copy was offered him, the price
demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he
was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope,
who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer;
for "this was no every-day writer. "
In 1741 he went to Leyden, in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three
years afterwards, May 16, 1744, became doctor of physick, having,
according to the custom of the Dutch universities, published a thesis or
dissertation. The subject which he chose was the Original and Growth of
the Human Foetus; in which he is said to have departed, with great
judgment, from the opinion then established, and to have delivered that
which has been since confirmed and received.
Akenside was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or
accident had been connected with the sound of liberty, and, by an
eccentricity which such dispositions do not easily avoid, a lover of
contradiction, and no friend to any thing established. He adopted
Shaftesbury's foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the
discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended
by Dyson: Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his
dedication to the Freethinkers.
The result of all the arguments, which have been produced in a long and
eager discussion of this idle question, may easily be collected. If
ridicule be applied to any position, as the test of truth, it will then
become a question whether such ridicule be just; and this can only be
decided by the application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men,
fearing, one a real and the other a fancied danger, will be for awhile
equally exposed to the inevitable consequences of cowardice,
contemptuous censure, and ludicrous representation; and the true state
of both cases must be known, before it can be decided whose terrour is
rational, and whose is ridiculous; who is to be pitied, and who to be
despised. Both are for awhile equally exposed to laughter, but both are
not, therefore, equally contemptible.
In the revisal of his poem, though he died before he had finished it,
he omitted the lines which had given occasion to Warburton's objections.
He published, soon after his return from Levden, 1745, his first
collection of odes; and was impelled, by his rage of patriotism, to
write a very acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he stigmatizes, under
the name of Curio, as the betrayer of his country.
Being now to live by his profession, he first commenced physician at
Northampton, where Dr. Stonehouse then practised with such reputation
and success, that a stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him.
Akenside tried the contest awhile; and, having deafened the place with
clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than
two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man
of accomplishments like his.
At London he was known as a poet, but was still to make his way as a
physician; and would, perhaps, have been reduced to great exigencies,
but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of friendship that has not many
examples, allowed him three hundred pounds a year. Thus supported, he
advanced gradually in medical reputation, but never attained any great
extent of practice, or eminence of popularity. A physician in a great
city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation
is, for the most part, totally casual; they that employ him know not his
excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute
observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for
half a century, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of
Physicians[195]
Akenside appears not to have been wanting to his own success: he placed
himself in view by all the common methods; he became a fellow of the
Royal Society; he obtained a degree at Cambridge; and was admitted into
the College of Physicians; he wrote little poetry, but published, from
time to time, medical essays and observations; he became physician to
St. Thomas's hospital; he read the Gulstonian lectures in anatomy; but
began to give, for the Crounian lecture, a history of the revival of
learning, from which he soon desisted; and, in conversation, he very
eagerly forced himself into notice by an ambitious ostentation of
elegance and literature.
His Discourse on the Dysentery, 1764, was considered as a very
conspicuous specimen of Latinity, which entitled him to the same height
of place among the scholars as he possessed before among the wits; and
he might, perhaps, have risen to a greater elevation of character, but
that his studies were ended with his life, by a putrid fever, June 23,
1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age[196].
Akenside is to be considered, as a didactick and lyrick poet. His great
work is the Pleasures of Imagination; a performance which, published as
it was, at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not
very amply satisfied. It has undoubtedly a just claim to very particular
notice, as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon
amplitude of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much
exercised in combining and comparing them.
With the philosophical or religious tenets of the author, I have nothing
to do; my business is with his poetry. The subject is well chosen, as it
includes all images that can strike or please, and thus comprises every
species of poetical delight. The only difficulty is in the choice of
examples and illustrations; and it is not easy, in such exuberance of
matter, to find the middle point between penury and satiety. The parts
seem artificially disposed, with sufficient coherence, so as that they
cannot change their places without injury to the general design.
His images are displayed with such luxuriance of expression, that they
are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by a "veil of light;" they are forms
fantastically lost under superfluity of dress. "Pars minima est ipsa
puella sui. " The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly
perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. The
reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed, and
sometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth,
comes out as he went in. He remarked little, and laid hold on nothing.
To his versification, justice requires that praise should not be denied.
In the general fabrication of his lines he is, perhaps, superiour to any
other writer of blank verse: his flow is smooth, and his pauses are
musical; but the concatenation of his verses is commonly too long
continued, and the full close does not recur with sufficient frequency.
The sense is carried on through a long inter-texture of complicated
clauses, and, as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.
The exemption which blank verse affords from the necessity of closing
the sense with the couplet, betrays luxuriant and active minds into such
self-indulgence, that they pile image upon image, ornament upon
ornament, and are not easily persuaded to close the sense at all. Blank
verse will, therefore, I fear, be too often found in description
exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome.
His diction is certainly poetical as it is not prosaick, and elegant as
it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of
disgust than most of his brethren of the blank song. He rarely either
recalls old phrases, or twists his metre into harsh inversions. The
sense, however, of his words is strained, when "he views the Ganges from
Alpine heights;" that is, from mountains like the Alps: and the pedant
surely intrudes, (but when was blank verse without pedantry? ) when he
tells how "planets _absolve_ the stated round of time. "
It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to
revise and augment this work, but died before he had completed his
design. The reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he had
made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He seems to
have somewhat contracted his diffusion; but I know not whether he has
gained in closeness what he has lost in splendour. In the additional
book, the Tale of Solon is too long.
One great defect of his poem is very properly censured by Mr. Walker,
unless it may be said, in his defence, that what he has omitted was not
properly in his plan. "His picture of man is grand and beautiful, but
unfinished. The immortality of the soul, which is the natural
consequence of the appetites and powers she is invested with, is
scarcely once hinted throughout the poem. This deficiency is amply
supplied by the masterly pencil of Dr. Young; who, like a good
philosopher, has invincibly proved the immortality of man, from the
grandeur of his conceptions, and the meanness and misery of his state;
for this reason, a few passages are selected from the Night Thoughts,
which, with those from Akenside, seem to form a complete view of the
powers, situation, and end of man. " Exercises for Improvement in
Elocution, p. 66.
His other poems are now to be considered; but a short consideration will
despatch them. It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself so
diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the ease and airiness of the
lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he
lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to desert
him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression, nor variety of
images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his
love of lyricks, that, having written, with great vigour and poignancy,
his Epistle to Curio, he transformed it afterwards into an ode
disgraceful only to its author.
Of his odes nothing favourable can be said; the sentiments commonly want
force, nature, or novelty; the diction is sometimes harsh and uncouth,
the stanzas ill-constructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes dissonant, or
unskilfully disposed, too distant from each other, or arranged with too
little regard to established use, and, therefore, perplexing to the ear,
which, in a short composition, has not time to grow familiar with an
innovation.
To examine such compositions singly cannot be required; they have,
doubtless, brighter and darker parts; but, when they are once found to
be generally dull, all further labour may be spared: for to what use can
the work be criticised that will not be read?
-----
[Footnote 195: Johnson entertained a very high idea of the varied
learning and science necessarily connected with the character of an
accomplished physician, and often affirmed of the physicians of this
island, that "they did more good to mankind without a prospect of
reward, than any profession of men whatever. " His friendship for Dr.
Bathurst, and the most eminent men in the medical line of his day, is
well known. See an epistle to Dr. Percival, developing the wide field of
knowledge over which a physician should expatiate, prefixed to
Observations on the Literature of the Primitive Christian Writers. ED. ]
[Footnote 196: A most curious and original character of Akenside is
given by George Hardinge, in vol. viii. of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes.
ED. ]
GRAY.
Thomas Gray, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born
in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at
Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then
assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a
pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge.
The transition from the school to the college is, to most young
scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty,
and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with
academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of
life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when
his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to
profess the common law, he, took no degree.
When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole,
whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him
as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's
letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey.
But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they
quarrelled and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told
that it was by his fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the
world, we shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit
sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough, in their
association with superiours, to watch their own dignity with troublesome
and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact
that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the
quarrel; and the rest of their travels was, doubtless, more unpleasant
to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own
little fortune, with only an occasional servant.
He returned to England in September, 1741, and in about two months
afterwards buried his father, who had, by an injudicious waste of money
upon a new house, so much lessened his fortune, that Gray thought
himself too poor to study the law. He, therefore, retired to Cambridge,
where he soon after became bachelor of civil law; and where, without
liking the place or its inhabitants, or professing to like them, he
passed, except a short residence at London, the rest of his life.
About this time he was deprived of Mr. West, the son of a chancellor of
Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a high value, and who
deserved his esteem by the powers which he shows in his letters, and in
the Ode to May, which Mr. Mason has preserved, as well as by the
sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of Agrippina, a tragedy
that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted
the progress of the work, and which the judgment of every reader will
confirm. It was certainly no loss to the English stage that Agrippina
was never finished.
In this year, 1742, Gray seems first to have applied himself seriously
to poetry; for in this year were produced the Ode to Spring, his
Prospect of Eton, and his Ode to Adversity. He began likewise a Latin
poem, De Principiis Cogitandi.
It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason, that his first
ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were
reasonable to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for, though there
is at present some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in
his lyrick numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few
possess; and his lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom
practice would quickly have made skillful.
He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what others did or
thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without any
other purpose than of improving and amusing himself; when Mr. Mason,
being elected fellow of Pembroke hall, brought him a companion who was
afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has kindled
in him a zeal of admiration, which cannot be reasonably expected from
the neutrality of a stranger, and the coldness of a critick.
In this retirement he wrote, 1747, an ode on the Death of Mr. Walpole's
Cat; and the year afterwards attempted a poem, of more importance, on
Government and Education, of which the fragments which remain have many
excellent lines.
His next production, 1750, was his far-famed Elegy in the Church-yard,
which, finding its way into a magazine, first, I believe, made him known
to the publick.
An invitation from lady Cobham, about this time, gave occasion to an odd
composition called a Long Story, which adds little to Gray's character.
Several of his pieces were published, 1753, with designs by Mr. Bentley;
and, that they might in some form or other make a book, only one side of
each leaf was printed. I believe the poems and the plates recommended
each other so well, that the whole impression was soon bought. This year
he lost his mother.
Some time afterwards, 1756, some young men of the college, whose
chambers were near his, diverted themselves with disturbing him by
frequent and troublesome noises, and, as is said, by pranks yet more
offensive and contemptuous. This insolence, having endured it awhile, he
represented to the governours of the society, among whom, perhaps, he
had no friends; and, finding his complaint little regarded, removed
himself to Pembroke hall.
In 1757 he published the Progress of Poetry, and the Bard, two
compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to
gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability
to understand them, though Warburton said that they were understood as
well as the works of Milton and Shakespeare, which it is the fashion to
admire. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions
undertook to rescue them from neglect; and, in a short time, many were
content to be shown beauties which they could not see.
Gray's reputation was now so high, that, after the death of Cibber, he
had the honour of refusing the laurel, which was then bestowed on Mr.
Whitehead.
His curiosity, not long after, drew him away from Cambridge to a lodging
near the Museum, where he resided near three years, reading and
transcribing; and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected by
two odes on Oblivion and Obscurity, in which his lyrick performances
were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity.
When the professor of modern history at Cambridge died, he was, as he
says, "cockered and spirited up," till he asked it of lord Bute, who
sent him a civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the
tutor of sir James Lowther.
His constitution was weak, and believing that his health was promoted by
exercise and change of place, he undertook, 1765, a journey into
Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is very curious
and eleg'ant; for, as his comprehension was ample, his curiosity
extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of nature, and all
the monuments of past events. He naturally contracted a friendship with
Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man. The
Mareschal college at Aberdeen offered him the degree of doctor of laws,
which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to
refuse.
What he had formerly solicited in vain was at last given him without
solicitation. The professorship of history became again vacant, and he
received, 1768, an offer of it from the duke of Grafton. He accepted,
and retained it to his death; always designing lectures, but never
reading them; uneasy at his neglect of fluty, and appeasing his
uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a resolution which he
believed himself to have made of resigning the office, if he found
himself unable to discharge it.
Ill health made another journey necessary, and he visited, 1769,
Westmorland and Cumberland. He that reads his epistolary narration,
wishes, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his
employment; but it is by studying at home that we must obtain the
ability of travelling with intelligence and improvement.
His travels and his studies were now near their end. The gout, of which
he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach, and, yielding
to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which, July 30, 1771,
terminated in death.
His character I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a
letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell, by the reverend Mr. Temple,
rector of St. Gluvias, in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest
well-wisher to believe it true.
"Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally
acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not
superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both
natural and civil; had read all the original historians of England,
France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysicks,
morals, politicks, made a principal part of his study; voyages and
travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and he had a fine
taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund
of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and
entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity.
There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think
the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather
effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his
inferiours in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which
disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value
others chiefly according to the progress that they had made in
knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered himself merely as a
man of letters; and, though without birth, or fortune, or station, his
desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman, who
read for his amusement. Perhaps it may be said, what signifies so much
knowledge, when it produced so little? Is it worth taking so much pains
to leave no memorial but a few poems? But let it be considered, that Mr.
Gray was, to others at least, innocently employed, to himself certainly
beneficially. His time passed agreeably; he was every day making some
new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened,
his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shown to him without
a mask; and he was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and
unworthy of the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of knowledge
and practice of virtue, in that state wherein God hath placed us. "
To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular account of
Gray's skill in zoology. He has remarked, that Gray's effeminacy was
affected most "before those whom he did not wish to please;" and that he
is unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference,
as he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be
good.
What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his letters, in
which my undertaking has engaged me, is, that his mind had a large
grasp; that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated;
that he was a man likely to love much where he loved at all; but that he
was fastidious and hard to please. His contempt, however, is often
employed, where I hope it will be approved, upon skepticism and
infidelity. His short account of Shaftesbury I will insert.
"You say you cannot conceive how lord Shaftesbury came to be a
philosopher in vogue; I will tell you: first, he was a lord; secondly,
he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to
believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe any
thing at all, provided they are under no obligation to believe it;
fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads
nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seems always to
mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of
above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks
with commoners; vanity is no longer interested in the matter; for a new
road has become an old one. "
Mr. Mason has added, from his own knowledge, that, though Gray was poor,
he was not eager of money; and that, out of the little that he had, he
was very willing to help the necessitous.
As a writer he had this peculiarity, that he did not write his pieces
first rudely, and then correct them, but laboured every line as it arose
in the train of composition; and he had a notion, not very peculiar,
that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a
fantastick foppery, to which my kindness for a man of learning and
virtue wishes him to have been superiour.
* * * * *
Gray's poetry is now to be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as
an enemy to his name, if I confess that I contemplate it with less
pleasure than his life. His ode on Spring has something poetical, both
in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and
the thoughts have nothing new. There has, of late, arisen a practice of
giving to adjectives derived from substantives, the termination of
participles; such as the _cultured_ plain, the _daisied_ bank; but I was
sorry to see, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the _honied_ spring.
The morality is natural, but too stale; the conclusion is pretty.
The poem on the Cat was, doubtless, by its author, considered as a
trifle; but it is not a happy trifle. In the first stanza, "the azure
flowers that blow" show resolutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it
cannot easily be found. Selima, the cat, is called a nymph, with some
violence both to language and sense; but there is no good use made of it
when it is done: for of the two lines,
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?
The first relates merely to the nymph, and the second only to the cat.
The sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth, that "a favourite has no
friend;" but the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the
purpose; if _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have
gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.
The Prospect of Eton College suggests nothing to Gray which every
beholder does not equally think and feel.
All the light thrown on this inquiry, by the following letter from
Seeker, only serves to show at what a late period of life the author of
the Night Thoughts solicited preferment.
"Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8, 1758.
"GOOD DR. YOUNG,--I have long wondered, that more suitable notice
of your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. But
how to remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath ever
been given me to mention things of this nature to his majesty. And
therefore, in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it
would be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly
have on some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set
you above the need of advancement; and your sentiments, above that
concern for it, on your own account, which, on that of the publick,
is sincerely felt by
"Your loving brother,
"THO. CANT. "
At last, at the age of fourscore, he was appointed, in 1761, clerk of
the closet to the princess dowager.
One obstacle must have stood not a little in the way of that preferment,
after which his whole life seems to have panted. Though he took orders,
he never entirely shook off politicks. He was always the lion of his
master Milton, "pawing to get free his hinder parts. " By this conduct,
if he gained some friends, he made many enemies.
Again: Young was a poet; and again, with reverence be it spoken, poets
by profession, do not always make the best clergymen. If the author of
the Night Thoughts composed many sermons, he did not oblige the publick
with many.
Besides, in the latter part of life, Young was fond of holding himself
out for a man retired from the world. But he seemed to have forgotten
that the same verse which contains "oblitus meorum," contains also
"obliviscendus et illis. " The brittle chain of worldly friendship and
patronage is broken as effectually, when one goes beyond the length of
it, as when the other does. To the vessel which is sailing from the
shore, it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly
thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality,
deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The publick is not to be
treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with
desertion, in order to increase fondness.
Young seems to have been taken at his word. Notwithstanding his frequent
complaints of being neglected, no hand was reached out to pull him from
that retirement of which he declared himself enamoured. Alexander
assigned no palace for the residence of Diogenes, who boasted his surly
satisfaction with his tub.
Of the domestick manners and petty habits of the author of the Night
Thoughts, I hoped to have given you an account from the best authority:
but who shall dare to say, to-morrow I will be wise or virtuous, or
to-morrow I will do a particular thing? Upon inquiring for his
house-keeper, I learned that she was buried two days before I reached
the town of her abode.
In a letter from Tscharner, a noble foreigner, to count Haller,
Tscharner says, he has lately spent four days with Young at Welwyn,
where the author tastes all the ease and pleasure mankind can desire.
"Every thing about him shows the man, each individual being placed by
rule. All is neat without art. He is very pleasant in conversation, and
extremely polite. "
This, and more, may possibly be true; but Tscharner's was a first visit,
a visit of curiosity and admiration, and a visit which the author
expected.
Of Edward Young, an anecdote which wanders among readers is not true,
that he was Fielding's Parson Adams. The original of that famous
painting was William Young, who was a clergyman. He supported an
uncomfortable existence by translating for the booksellers from Greek;
and, if he did not seem to be his own friend, was, at least, no man's
enemy. Yet the facility with which this report has gained belief in the
world argues, were it not sufficiently known, that the author of the
Night Thoughts bore some resemblance to Adams.
The attention which Young bestowed upon the perusal of books, is not
unworthy imitation. When any passage pleased him, he appears to have
folded down the leaf. On these passages he bestowed a second reading.
But the labours of man are too frequently vain. Before he returned to
much of what he had once approved, he died. Many of his books, which I
have seen, are by those notes of approbation so swelled beyond their
real bulk, that they will hardly shut.
What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame!
Earth's highest station ends in, _Here he lies! _
And _dust to dust_ concludes her noblest song!
The author of these lines is not without his _hic jacet. _
By the good sense of his son, it contains none of that praise which no
marble can make the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the
direction of a stone or a turf, will find its way, sooner or later, to
the deserving.
M. S.
Optimi parentis
EDVARDI YOUNG, LL. D.
hujus ecclesiae rect.
Et Elizabethae
faem. praenob.
Conjugis ejus amantissimae,
pio et gratissimo animo
hoc marmor posuit
F. Y.
Filius superstes.
Is it not strange that the author of the Night Thoughts has inscribed no
monument to the memory of his lamented wife? Yet, what marble will
endure as long as the poems?
Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to collect
of the great Young. That it may be long before any thing like what I
have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the sincere wish of,
Dear sir,
Your greatly obliged friend,
HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
Lincoln's Inn, Sept. 1780.
P. S. This account of Young was seen by you in manuscript, you know, sir;
and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alteration, you
insisted on striking out one passage, because it said, that, if I did
not wish you to live long, for your sake, I did for the sake of myself
and of the world. But this postscript you will not see before the
printing of it; and I will say here, in spite of you, how I feel myself
honoured and bettered by your friendship: and that, if I do credit to
the church, after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to
give in exchange the bar, though not at so late a period of life as
Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure, to my having
had the happiness of calling the author of the Rambler my friend[191].
H. C.
Oxford, Oct. 1782.
Of Young's poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he
has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has no great resemblance
to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at
different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His
numbers are sometimes smooth, and sometimes rugged; his style is
sometimes concatenated, and sometimes abrupt; sometimes diffusive, and
sometimes concise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the
present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes
adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.
He was not one of those writers whom experience improves, and who,
observing their own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the
Last Day, his first great performance, has an equability and propriety,
which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many
paragraphs are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid: the
plan is too much extended, and a succession of images divides and
weakens the general conception; but the great reason why the reader is
disappointed is, that the thought of the Last Day makes every man more
than poetical, by spreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred
horrour, that oppresses distinction, and disdains expression.
His story of Jane Grey was never popular. It is written with elegance
enough; but Jane is too heroick to be pitied.
The Universal Passion is, indeed, a very great performance. It is said
to be a series of epigrams; but, if it be, it is what the author
intended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and
pointed sentences; and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment,
and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.
His characters are often selected with discernment, and drawn with
nicety; his illustrations are often happy, and his reflections often
just. His species of satire is between those of Horace and Juvenal; and
he has the gaiety of Horace without his laxity of numbers, and the
morality of Juvenal, with greater variation of images. He plays, indeed,
only on the surface of life; he never penetrates the recesses of the
mind, and, therefore, the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a
single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise.
To translate he never condescended, unless his Paraphrase on Job may be
considered as a version; in which he has not, I think, been
unsuccessful; he, indeed, favoured himself, by choosing those parts
which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry.
He had least success in his lyrick attempts, in which he seems to have
been under some malignant influence: he is always labouring to be great,
and at last is only turgid.
In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very wide display of original
poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a
wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers
of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which
blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The
wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of
imagination, would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to
rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness;
particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and
in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese
plantations, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.
His last poem was Resignation; in which he made, as he was accustomed,
an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded better than in his
Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falsely represented as a proof of
decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was
in his highest vigour.
His tragedies, not making part of the collection, I had forgotten, till
Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed
to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three plays all concluded with
lavish suicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily
rids his scene of persons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Busiris
there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination: but the pride of
Busiris is such as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote
from known life to raise either grief, terrour, or indignation. The
Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and,
therefore, keeps possession of the stage: the first design seems
suggested by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the
diction, are original. The moral observations are go introduced, and so
expressed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of the
Brothers I may be allowed to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of
it by the publick.
It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but
without much accuracy or selection. When he lays hold of an
illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as in
his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure[192] which I have heard
repeated at the approbation by a lady, of whose praise he would have
been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtile, and almost
exact: but sometimes he is less lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts,
having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs floating in space might
be called the _cluster_ of creation, he thinks of a cluster of grapes,
and says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectareous
juice of immortal life. "
His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the Last Day he hopes
to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at
the "trump of doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
tinkling of a pan.
The prophet says of Tyre, that "her merchants are princes. " Young says
of Tyre, in his Merchant,
Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.
Let burlesque try to go beyond him.
He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance
of Britain, "Climes were paid down. " Antithesis is his favourite: "They
for kindness hate;" and, "because she's right, she's ever in the wrong. "
His versification is his own: neither his blank nor his rhyming lines
have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no
hemistichs, he copies no favourite expressions; he seems to have laid
up no stores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous
suggestions of the present moment. Yet I have reason to believe that,
when once he had formed a new design, he then laboured it with very
patient industry; and that he composed with great labour and frequent
revisions.
His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have
studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear.
But, with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.
-----
[Footnote 185: See Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. p. 225. N. ]
[Footnote 186: As my great friend is now become the subject of
biography, it should be told, that every time I called upon Johnson
during the time I was employed in collecting materials for this life and
putting it together, he never suffered me to depart without some such
farewell as this: "Don't forget that rascal Tindal, sir. Be sure to hang
up the atheist. " Alluding to this anecdote, which Johnson had mentioned
to me. ]
[Footnote 187: Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed
differently, particularly in Young's works. J. N. ]
[Footnote 188: Not in the Tatler, but in the Guardian, May 9, 1713. ]
[Footnote 189: See a letter from the duke of Wharton to Swift, dated
1717, in Swift's works, in which he mentions Young being then in
Ireland. J. B. N. ]
[Footnote 190: Davies, in his life of Garrick, says 1720, and that it
was produced thirty-three years after. ]
[Footnote 191: Mr. Boswell discovered in this heavy piece of biography a
successful imitation of Johnson's style. An eminent literary character
exclaimed, "No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all
his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without
its strength. " Endeavouring to express himself still more in Johnsonian
phrase, he added, "It has all the contortions of the Sybil, without the
inspiration. " See Boswell, iv. According to Malone, this eminent person
was Burke, and the observation is assigned to him, without hesitation,
in Prin's Life. It has sometimes been attributed to G. Stevens. ED. ]
[Footnote 192: See Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, 162. ]
MALLET.
Of David Mallet, having no written memorial, I am able to give no other
account than such as is supplied by the unauthorised loquacity of common
fame, and a very slight personal knowledge.
He was, by his original, one of the Macgregors, a clan that became,
about sixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and
so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a
legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themselves anew,
the father, I suppose, of this author, called himself Malloch.
David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to be janitor
of the high school at Edinburgh; a mean office, of which he did not
afterwards delight to hear. But he surmounted the disadvantages of his
birth and fortune; for, when the duke of Montrose applied to the college
of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his sons, Malloch was recommended;
and I never heard that he dishonoured his credentials.
When his pupils were sent to see the world, they were entrusted to his
care; and, having conducted them round the common circle of modish
travels, he returned with them to London, where, by the influence of the
family in which he resided, he naturally gained admission to many
persons of the highest rank, and the highest character; to wits, nobles,
and statesmen.
Of his works, I know not whether I can trace the series. His first
production was William and Margaret[193] of which, though it contains
nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the reputation;
and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved.
Not long afterwards he published the Excursion, 1728; a desultory and
capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his
knowledge enabled him, to describe. It is not devoid of poetical spirit.
Many of the images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant.
The cast of diction seems to be copied from Thomson, whose Seasons were
then in their full blossom of reputation. He has Thomson's beauties and
his faults.
His poem on Verbal Criticism, 1733, was written to pay court to Pope, on
a subject which he either did not understand, or willingly
misrepresented; and is little more than an improvement, or rather
expansion, of a fragment which Pope printed in a Miscellany long before
he engrafted it into a regular poem. There is in this piece more
pertness than wit, and more confidence than knowledge. The versification
is tolerable, nor can criticism allow it a higher praise.
His first tragedy was Eurydice, acted at Drury-lane in 1731; of which I
know not the reception nor the merit, but have heard it mentioned as a
mean performance. He was not then too high to accept a prologue and
epilogue from Aaron Hill, neither of which can be much commended.
Having cleared his tongue from his native pronunciation so as to be no
longer distinguished as a Scot, he seems inclined to disencumber himself
from all adherences of his original, and took upon him to change his
name from Scotch _Malloch_ to English Mallet, without any imaginable
reason of preference which the eye or ear can discover. What other
proofs he gave of disrespect to his native country, I know not; but it
was remarked of him, that he was the only Scot, whom Scotchmen did not
command.
About this time Pope, whom he visited familiarly, published his Essay on
Man, but concealed the author; and, when Mallet entered one day, Pope
asked him slightly, what there was new. Mallet told him, that the newest
piece was something called an Essay on Man, which he had inspected idly,
and seeing the utter inability of the author, who had neither skill in
writing nor knowledge of the subject, had tossed it away. Pope, to
punish his self-conceit, told him the secret[194]
A new edition of the works of Bacon being prepared, 1750, for the press,
Mallet was employed to prefix a life, which he has written with
elegance, perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more knowledge
of history than of science, that, when he afterwards undertook the life
of Marlborough, Warburton remarked, that he might, perhaps, forget that
Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a
philosopher.
When the prince of Wales was driven from the palace, and, setting
himself at the head of the opposition, kept a separate court, he
endeavoured to increase his popularity by the patronage of literature,
and made Mallet his under-secretary, with a salary of two hundred pounds
a year: Thomson, likewise, had a pension; and they were associated in
the composition of the Mask of Alfred, which, in its original state, was
played at Cliefden in 1740; it was afterwards almost wholly changed by
Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury-lane in 1751, but with no
great success.
Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the
diligence which he was then exerting upon the life of Marlborough, let
him know, that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited, he
should _find a niche_ for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to
wonder by what artifice he could be introduced: but Mallet let him know,
that, by a dexterous anticipation, he should fix him in a conspicuous
place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick, in his gratitude of exultation, "have
you left off to write for the stage? " Mallet then confessed that he had
a drama in his hands. Garrick promised to act it; and Alfred was
produced.
The long retardation of the life of the duke of Marlborough shows, with
strong conviction, how little confidence can be placed in posthumous
renown. When he died, it was soon determined that his story should be
delivered to posterity; and the papers, supposed to contain the
necessary information, were delivered to lord Molesworth, who had been
his favourite in Flanders. When Molesworth died the same papers were
transferred, with the same design, to sir Richard Steele, who, in some
of his exigencies, put them in pawn. They then remained with the old
dutchess who, in her will, assigned the task to Glover and Mallet, with
a reward of a thousand pounds, and a prohibition to insert any verses.
Glover rejected, I suppose, with disdain, the legacy, and devolved the
whole work upon Mallet; who had from the late duke of Marlborough a
pension to promote his industry, and who talked of the discoveries which
he had made; but left not, when he died, any historical labours behind
him.
While he was in the prince's service he published Mustapha, with a
prologue by Thomson, not mean, but far inferiour to that which he had
received from Mallet, for Agamemnon. The epilogue, said to be written by
a friend, was composed in haste by Mallet, in the place of one promised,
which was never given. This tragedy was dedicated to the prince his
master. It was acted at Drury-lane, in 1739, and was well received, but
was never revived.
In 1740, he produced, as has been already mentioned, the Mask of Alfred,
in conjunction with Thomson.
For some time afterwards he lay at rest. After a long interval, his next
work was Amyntor and Theodora, 1747, a long story in blank verse; in
which it cannot be denied that there is copiousness and elegance of
language, vigour of sentiment, and imagery well adapted to take
possession of the fancy. But it is blank verse. This he sold to Vaillant
for one hundred and twenty pounds. The first sale was not great, and it
is now lost in forgetfulness.
Mallet, by address or accident, perhaps by his dependance on the prince,
found his way to Bolingbroke; a man whose pride and petulance made his
kindness difficult to gain, or keep, and whom Mallet was content to
court by an act, which, I hope, was unwillingly performed. When it was
found that Pope had clandestinely printed an unauthorised number of the
pamphlet called the Patriot King, Bolingbroke, in a fit of useless fury,
resolved to blast his memory, and employed Mallet, 1749, as the
executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not virtue, or had not spirit,
to refuse the office; and was rewarded, not long after, with the legacy
of lord Bolingbroke's works.
Many of the political pieces had been written during the opposition to
Walpole, and given to Franklin, as he supposed, in perpetuity. These,
among the rest, were claimed by the will. The question was referred to
arbitrators; but when they decided against Mallet, he refused to yield
to the award; and, by the help of Millar the bookseller, published all
that he could find, but with success very much below his expectation.
In 1755, his Mask of Britannia was acted at Drury-lane; and his tragedy
of Elvira in 1763; in which year he was appointed keeper of the book of
entries for ships in the port of London.
In the beginning of the last war, when the nation was exasperated by ill
success, he was employed to turn the publick vengeance upon Byng, and
wrote a letter of accusation under the character of a Plain Man. The
paper was, with great industry, circulated and dispersed; and he, for
his seasonable intervention, had a considerable pension bestowed upon
him, which he retained to his death.
Towards the end of his life he went with his wife to France; but after
awhile, finding his health declining, he returned alone to England, and
died in April, 1765.
He was twice married, and by his first wife had several children. One
daughter, who married an Italian of rank, named Cilesia, wrote a tragedy
called Almida, which was acted at Drury-lane. His second wife was the
daughter of a nobleman's steward, who had a considerable fortune, which
she took care to retain in her own hands.
His stature was diminutive, but he was regularly formed; his
appearance, till he grew corpulent, was agreeable, and he suffered it to
want no recommendation that dress could give it. His conversation was
elegant and easy. The rest of his character may, without injury to his
memory, sink into silence.
As a writer he cannot be placed in any high class. There is no species
of composition in which he was eminent. His dramas had their day, a
short day, and are forgotten: his blank verse seems, to my ear, the echo
of Thomson. His Life of Bacon is known, as it is appended to Bacon's
volumes, but is no longer mentioned. His works are such as a writer,
bustling in the world, showing himself in publick, and emerging
occasionally, from time to time, into notice, might keep alive by his
personal influence; but which, conveying little information, and giving
no great pleasure, must soon give way, as the succession of things
produces new topicks of conversation and other modes of amusement.
-----
[Footnote 193: Mallet's William and Margaret was printed in Aaron Hill's
Plain Dealer, No. 36, July 24,1724 In its original state it was very
different from what it is in the last edition of his works. Dr. J. ]
[Footnote 194: See note on this passage of Pope's life in the present
edition. ]
AKENSIDE.
Mark Akenside was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His father, Mark, was a butcher, of the
Presbyterian sect; his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. He received the
first part of his education at the grammar-school of Newcastle; and was
afterwards instructed by Mr. Wilson, who kept a private academy.
At the age of eighteen he was sent to Edinburgh, that he might qualify
himself for the office of a dissenting minister, and received some
assistance from the fund which the dissenters employ in educating young
men of scanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other
scenes, and prompted other hopes; he determined to study physick, and
repaid that contribution, which, being received for a different purpose,
he justly thought it dishonourable to retain.
Whether, when he resolved not to be a dissenting minister, he ceased to
be a dissenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unnecessary and
outrageous zeal for what he called, and thought, liberty; a zeal which
sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which
it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or degrading
greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and
anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very
little care what shall be established.
Akenside was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions of
genius, and one of those students who have very early stored their
memories with sentiments and images. Many of his performances were
produced in his youth; and his greatest work, the Pleasures of
Imagination, appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodsley, by whom it was
published, relate, that when the copy was offered him, the price
demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he
was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope,
who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer;
for "this was no every-day writer. "
In 1741 he went to Leyden, in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three
years afterwards, May 16, 1744, became doctor of physick, having,
according to the custom of the Dutch universities, published a thesis or
dissertation. The subject which he chose was the Original and Growth of
the Human Foetus; in which he is said to have departed, with great
judgment, from the opinion then established, and to have delivered that
which has been since confirmed and received.
Akenside was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or
accident had been connected with the sound of liberty, and, by an
eccentricity which such dispositions do not easily avoid, a lover of
contradiction, and no friend to any thing established. He adopted
Shaftesbury's foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the
discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and defended
by Dyson: Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the end of his
dedication to the Freethinkers.
The result of all the arguments, which have been produced in a long and
eager discussion of this idle question, may easily be collected. If
ridicule be applied to any position, as the test of truth, it will then
become a question whether such ridicule be just; and this can only be
decided by the application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men,
fearing, one a real and the other a fancied danger, will be for awhile
equally exposed to the inevitable consequences of cowardice,
contemptuous censure, and ludicrous representation; and the true state
of both cases must be known, before it can be decided whose terrour is
rational, and whose is ridiculous; who is to be pitied, and who to be
despised. Both are for awhile equally exposed to laughter, but both are
not, therefore, equally contemptible.
In the revisal of his poem, though he died before he had finished it,
he omitted the lines which had given occasion to Warburton's objections.
He published, soon after his return from Levden, 1745, his first
collection of odes; and was impelled, by his rage of patriotism, to
write a very acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he stigmatizes, under
the name of Curio, as the betrayer of his country.
Being now to live by his profession, he first commenced physician at
Northampton, where Dr. Stonehouse then practised with such reputation
and success, that a stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him.
Akenside tried the contest awhile; and, having deafened the place with
clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than
two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man
of accomplishments like his.
At London he was known as a poet, but was still to make his way as a
physician; and would, perhaps, have been reduced to great exigencies,
but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of friendship that has not many
examples, allowed him three hundred pounds a year. Thus supported, he
advanced gradually in medical reputation, but never attained any great
extent of practice, or eminence of popularity. A physician in a great
city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation
is, for the most part, totally casual; they that employ him know not his
excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute
observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for
half a century, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of
Physicians[195]
Akenside appears not to have been wanting to his own success: he placed
himself in view by all the common methods; he became a fellow of the
Royal Society; he obtained a degree at Cambridge; and was admitted into
the College of Physicians; he wrote little poetry, but published, from
time to time, medical essays and observations; he became physician to
St. Thomas's hospital; he read the Gulstonian lectures in anatomy; but
began to give, for the Crounian lecture, a history of the revival of
learning, from which he soon desisted; and, in conversation, he very
eagerly forced himself into notice by an ambitious ostentation of
elegance and literature.
His Discourse on the Dysentery, 1764, was considered as a very
conspicuous specimen of Latinity, which entitled him to the same height
of place among the scholars as he possessed before among the wits; and
he might, perhaps, have risen to a greater elevation of character, but
that his studies were ended with his life, by a putrid fever, June 23,
1770, in the forty-ninth year of his age[196].
Akenside is to be considered, as a didactick and lyrick poet. His great
work is the Pleasures of Imagination; a performance which, published as
it was, at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not
very amply satisfied. It has undoubtedly a just claim to very particular
notice, as an example of great felicity of genius, and uncommon
amplitude of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with images, and much
exercised in combining and comparing them.
With the philosophical or religious tenets of the author, I have nothing
to do; my business is with his poetry. The subject is well chosen, as it
includes all images that can strike or please, and thus comprises every
species of poetical delight. The only difficulty is in the choice of
examples and illustrations; and it is not easy, in such exuberance of
matter, to find the middle point between penury and satiety. The parts
seem artificially disposed, with sufficient coherence, so as that they
cannot change their places without injury to the general design.
His images are displayed with such luxuriance of expression, that they
are hidden, like Butler's Moon, by a "veil of light;" they are forms
fantastically lost under superfluity of dress. "Pars minima est ipsa
puella sui. " The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly
perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. The
reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed, and
sometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth,
comes out as he went in. He remarked little, and laid hold on nothing.
To his versification, justice requires that praise should not be denied.
In the general fabrication of his lines he is, perhaps, superiour to any
other writer of blank verse: his flow is smooth, and his pauses are
musical; but the concatenation of his verses is commonly too long
continued, and the full close does not recur with sufficient frequency.
The sense is carried on through a long inter-texture of complicated
clauses, and, as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.
The exemption which blank verse affords from the necessity of closing
the sense with the couplet, betrays luxuriant and active minds into such
self-indulgence, that they pile image upon image, ornament upon
ornament, and are not easily persuaded to close the sense at all. Blank
verse will, therefore, I fear, be too often found in description
exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in narration tiresome.
His diction is certainly poetical as it is not prosaick, and elegant as
it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of
disgust than most of his brethren of the blank song. He rarely either
recalls old phrases, or twists his metre into harsh inversions. The
sense, however, of his words is strained, when "he views the Ganges from
Alpine heights;" that is, from mountains like the Alps: and the pedant
surely intrudes, (but when was blank verse without pedantry? ) when he
tells how "planets _absolve_ the stated round of time. "
It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to
revise and augment this work, but died before he had completed his
design. The reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he had
made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He seems to
have somewhat contracted his diffusion; but I know not whether he has
gained in closeness what he has lost in splendour. In the additional
book, the Tale of Solon is too long.
One great defect of his poem is very properly censured by Mr. Walker,
unless it may be said, in his defence, that what he has omitted was not
properly in his plan. "His picture of man is grand and beautiful, but
unfinished. The immortality of the soul, which is the natural
consequence of the appetites and powers she is invested with, is
scarcely once hinted throughout the poem. This deficiency is amply
supplied by the masterly pencil of Dr. Young; who, like a good
philosopher, has invincibly proved the immortality of man, from the
grandeur of his conceptions, and the meanness and misery of his state;
for this reason, a few passages are selected from the Night Thoughts,
which, with those from Akenside, seem to form a complete view of the
powers, situation, and end of man. " Exercises for Improvement in
Elocution, p. 66.
His other poems are now to be considered; but a short consideration will
despatch them. It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself so
diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the ease and airiness of the
lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he
lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to desert
him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression, nor variety of
images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his
love of lyricks, that, having written, with great vigour and poignancy,
his Epistle to Curio, he transformed it afterwards into an ode
disgraceful only to its author.
Of his odes nothing favourable can be said; the sentiments commonly want
force, nature, or novelty; the diction is sometimes harsh and uncouth,
the stanzas ill-constructed and unpleasant, and the rhymes dissonant, or
unskilfully disposed, too distant from each other, or arranged with too
little regard to established use, and, therefore, perplexing to the ear,
which, in a short composition, has not time to grow familiar with an
innovation.
To examine such compositions singly cannot be required; they have,
doubtless, brighter and darker parts; but, when they are once found to
be generally dull, all further labour may be spared: for to what use can
the work be criticised that will not be read?
-----
[Footnote 195: Johnson entertained a very high idea of the varied
learning and science necessarily connected with the character of an
accomplished physician, and often affirmed of the physicians of this
island, that "they did more good to mankind without a prospect of
reward, than any profession of men whatever. " His friendship for Dr.
Bathurst, and the most eminent men in the medical line of his day, is
well known. See an epistle to Dr. Percival, developing the wide field of
knowledge over which a physician should expatiate, prefixed to
Observations on the Literature of the Primitive Christian Writers. ED. ]
[Footnote 196: A most curious and original character of Akenside is
given by George Hardinge, in vol. viii. of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes.
ED. ]
GRAY.
Thomas Gray, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born
in Cornhill, November 26, 1716. His grammatical education he received at
Eton, under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother's brother, then
assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a
pensioner at Peterhouse, in Cambridge.
The transition from the school to the college is, to most young
scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty,
and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with
academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of
life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when
his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to
profess the common law, he, took no degree.
When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole,
whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him
as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's
letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey.
But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they
quarrelled and parted; and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told
that it was by his fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the
world, we shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit
sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough, in their
association with superiours, to watch their own dignity with troublesome
and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact
that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, whatever was the
quarrel; and the rest of their travels was, doubtless, more unpleasant
to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own
little fortune, with only an occasional servant.
He returned to England in September, 1741, and in about two months
afterwards buried his father, who had, by an injudicious waste of money
upon a new house, so much lessened his fortune, that Gray thought
himself too poor to study the law. He, therefore, retired to Cambridge,
where he soon after became bachelor of civil law; and where, without
liking the place or its inhabitants, or professing to like them, he
passed, except a short residence at London, the rest of his life.
About this time he was deprived of Mr. West, the son of a chancellor of
Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a high value, and who
deserved his esteem by the powers which he shows in his letters, and in
the Ode to May, which Mr. Mason has preserved, as well as by the
sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of Agrippina, a tragedy
that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably intercepted
the progress of the work, and which the judgment of every reader will
confirm. It was certainly no loss to the English stage that Agrippina
was never finished.
In this year, 1742, Gray seems first to have applied himself seriously
to poetry; for in this year were produced the Ode to Spring, his
Prospect of Eton, and his Ode to Adversity. He began likewise a Latin
poem, De Principiis Cogitandi.
It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason, that his first
ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were
reasonable to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for, though there
is at present some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in
his lyrick numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few
possess; and his lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom
practice would quickly have made skillful.
He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what others did or
thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without any
other purpose than of improving and amusing himself; when Mr. Mason,
being elected fellow of Pembroke hall, brought him a companion who was
afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has kindled
in him a zeal of admiration, which cannot be reasonably expected from
the neutrality of a stranger, and the coldness of a critick.
In this retirement he wrote, 1747, an ode on the Death of Mr. Walpole's
Cat; and the year afterwards attempted a poem, of more importance, on
Government and Education, of which the fragments which remain have many
excellent lines.
His next production, 1750, was his far-famed Elegy in the Church-yard,
which, finding its way into a magazine, first, I believe, made him known
to the publick.
An invitation from lady Cobham, about this time, gave occasion to an odd
composition called a Long Story, which adds little to Gray's character.
Several of his pieces were published, 1753, with designs by Mr. Bentley;
and, that they might in some form or other make a book, only one side of
each leaf was printed. I believe the poems and the plates recommended
each other so well, that the whole impression was soon bought. This year
he lost his mother.
Some time afterwards, 1756, some young men of the college, whose
chambers were near his, diverted themselves with disturbing him by
frequent and troublesome noises, and, as is said, by pranks yet more
offensive and contemptuous. This insolence, having endured it awhile, he
represented to the governours of the society, among whom, perhaps, he
had no friends; and, finding his complaint little regarded, removed
himself to Pembroke hall.
In 1757 he published the Progress of Poetry, and the Bard, two
compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to
gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability
to understand them, though Warburton said that they were understood as
well as the works of Milton and Shakespeare, which it is the fashion to
admire. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions
undertook to rescue them from neglect; and, in a short time, many were
content to be shown beauties which they could not see.
Gray's reputation was now so high, that, after the death of Cibber, he
had the honour of refusing the laurel, which was then bestowed on Mr.
Whitehead.
His curiosity, not long after, drew him away from Cambridge to a lodging
near the Museum, where he resided near three years, reading and
transcribing; and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected by
two odes on Oblivion and Obscurity, in which his lyrick performances
were ridiculed with much contempt and much ingenuity.
When the professor of modern history at Cambridge died, he was, as he
says, "cockered and spirited up," till he asked it of lord Bute, who
sent him a civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the
tutor of sir James Lowther.
His constitution was weak, and believing that his health was promoted by
exercise and change of place, he undertook, 1765, a journey into
Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is very curious
and eleg'ant; for, as his comprehension was ample, his curiosity
extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of nature, and all
the monuments of past events. He naturally contracted a friendship with
Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man. The
Mareschal college at Aberdeen offered him the degree of doctor of laws,
which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to
refuse.
What he had formerly solicited in vain was at last given him without
solicitation. The professorship of history became again vacant, and he
received, 1768, an offer of it from the duke of Grafton. He accepted,
and retained it to his death; always designing lectures, but never
reading them; uneasy at his neglect of fluty, and appeasing his
uneasiness with designs of reformation, and with a resolution which he
believed himself to have made of resigning the office, if he found
himself unable to discharge it.
Ill health made another journey necessary, and he visited, 1769,
Westmorland and Cumberland. He that reads his epistolary narration,
wishes, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his
employment; but it is by studying at home that we must obtain the
ability of travelling with intelligence and improvement.
His travels and his studies were now near their end. The gout, of which
he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach, and, yielding
to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which, July 30, 1771,
terminated in death.
His character I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a
letter written to my friend Mr. Boswell, by the reverend Mr. Temple,
rector of St. Gluvias, in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest
well-wisher to believe it true.
"Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally
acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not
superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both
natural and civil; had read all the original historians of England,
France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysicks,
morals, politicks, made a principal part of his study; voyages and
travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and he had a fine
taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund
of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and
entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity.
There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think
the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather
effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his
inferiours in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which
disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value
others chiefly according to the progress that they had made in
knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered himself merely as a
man of letters; and, though without birth, or fortune, or station, his
desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman, who
read for his amusement. Perhaps it may be said, what signifies so much
knowledge, when it produced so little? Is it worth taking so much pains
to leave no memorial but a few poems? But let it be considered, that Mr.
Gray was, to others at least, innocently employed, to himself certainly
beneficially. His time passed agreeably; he was every day making some
new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened,
his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shown to him without
a mask; and he was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and
unworthy of the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of knowledge
and practice of virtue, in that state wherein God hath placed us. "
To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular account of
Gray's skill in zoology. He has remarked, that Gray's effeminacy was
affected most "before those whom he did not wish to please;" and that he
is unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference,
as he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be
good.
What has occurred to me from the slight inspection of his letters, in
which my undertaking has engaged me, is, that his mind had a large
grasp; that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated;
that he was a man likely to love much where he loved at all; but that he
was fastidious and hard to please. His contempt, however, is often
employed, where I hope it will be approved, upon skepticism and
infidelity. His short account of Shaftesbury I will insert.
"You say you cannot conceive how lord Shaftesbury came to be a
philosopher in vogue; I will tell you: first, he was a lord; secondly,
he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to
believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe any
thing at all, provided they are under no obligation to believe it;
fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads
nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seems always to
mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of
above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks
with commoners; vanity is no longer interested in the matter; for a new
road has become an old one. "
Mr. Mason has added, from his own knowledge, that, though Gray was poor,
he was not eager of money; and that, out of the little that he had, he
was very willing to help the necessitous.
As a writer he had this peculiarity, that he did not write his pieces
first rudely, and then correct them, but laboured every line as it arose
in the train of composition; and he had a notion, not very peculiar,
that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a
fantastick foppery, to which my kindness for a man of learning and
virtue wishes him to have been superiour.
* * * * *
Gray's poetry is now to be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as
an enemy to his name, if I confess that I contemplate it with less
pleasure than his life. His ode on Spring has something poetical, both
in the language and the thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and
the thoughts have nothing new. There has, of late, arisen a practice of
giving to adjectives derived from substantives, the termination of
participles; such as the _cultured_ plain, the _daisied_ bank; but I was
sorry to see, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the _honied_ spring.
The morality is natural, but too stale; the conclusion is pretty.
The poem on the Cat was, doubtless, by its author, considered as a
trifle; but it is not a happy trifle. In the first stanza, "the azure
flowers that blow" show resolutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it
cannot easily be found. Selima, the cat, is called a nymph, with some
violence both to language and sense; but there is no good use made of it
when it is done: for of the two lines,
What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?
The first relates merely to the nymph, and the second only to the cat.
The sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth, that "a favourite has no
friend;" but the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the
purpose; if _what glistered_ had been _gold_, the cat would not have
gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.
The Prospect of Eton College suggests nothing to Gray which every
beholder does not equally think and feel.
