his bachelor's degree, Young was appointed to speak the Latin oration. This is at least particular for being dedicated in English "To the Ladies of the Codrington Family." To these ladies he says, that "he was unavoidably flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle dedicatory void of common-place, and such a one was never published before by any author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any obligation of reading what was presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of it, because it would make people stare, was absurd enough, and perfectly right." Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his works; and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, 1741, is a letter from Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December the 9th, 1739, wherein he says, that he has not leisure to review what he formerly wrote, and adds, "I have not the 'Epistle to Lord Lansdowne.' If you will take my advice, I would have you omit that, and the Oration on Codrington. I think the collection will sell better without them." There are who relate, that, when first Young found himself independent, and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became. The authority of his father, indeed, had ceased, some time before, by his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronised by the infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet, and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronised only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out? Yet Pope is said by Ruff head to have told Warburton, that "Young had much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets; but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the clerical character, when he assumed it, first with decency, and afterwards with honour." We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was more serious than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets. Young perhaps ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the "Poem to his Majesty,” presented, with a copy of verses, to Somers; and hoped that he also might soar to wealth and honour on wings of the same kind. His first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to the House of Lords the sons of the Earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in one day, ten others to the number of peers. In order to reconcile the people to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, "An Epistle to the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdowne." In this composition the Poet pours out his panegyric with the extravagance of a young man, who thinks his present stock of wealth will never be exhausted. The poem seems intended also to reconcile the public to the late peace. This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and that in peace "harvests wave, and Commerce swells her sail." If this be humanity, for which he meant it, is it politics? Another purpose of this Epistle appears to have been, to prepare the public for the reception of some tragedy he might have in hand. His Lordship's patronage, he says, will not let him "repent his passion for the stage ;" and the particular praise bestowed on "Othello" and "Oroonoko" looks as if some such character as Zanga was even then in contemplation. The affectionate mention of the death of his friend Harrison, of New College, at the close of this poem, is an instance of Young's art, which displayed itself so wonderfully some time afterwards in the "Night Thoughts," of making the public a party in his private sorrow. Should justice call upon you to censure this poem, it ought at least to be remembered that he did not insert it in his works; and that in the letter to Curll, as we have seen, he advises its omission. The booksellers, in the late body of English Poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective They who think ill of Young's morality in authors. This I shall be careful to do with the early part of his life, may perhaps be wrong; regard to Young. "I think," says he, "the but Tindal could not err in his opinion of following pieces in four volumes to be the most Young's warmth and ability in the cause of re-excusable of all that I have written; and I wish ligion. Tindal used to spend much of his time at All Souls."The other boys," said the Atheist, "I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually pestering me with something of his own."* After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcileable. Young might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue, but the potent testimony of experience against vice. 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 sffered 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. less apology was needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them as pardonable as it was in my power to do." Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners? When Addison published "Cato," in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the pieces which the Author of the "Night Thoughts" did not republish. On the appearance of his Poem on the Last Day, Addison did not return Young's compli ment; but "The Englishman" of October 29, 1713, which was probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. " The Last Day," was published soon after the peace. The vice-chancellor's imprimatur, for it was printed Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed differently, particulariy in Young's Works.-J. N. at Oxford, is dated March the 19th, 1713.From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the composition of it. While other bards "with Britain's hero set their souls on fire," he draws, he says, a deeper scene.Marlborough had been considered by Britain as her hero; but, when the "Last Day" was published, female cabal had blasted for a time the laurels of Blenheim. This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710, before he was thirty, for part of it is printed in the "Tatler." It was inscribed to the Queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he did not admit into his works. It tells her, that his only title to the great honour he now does himself, is the obligation which he formerly received from her royal indulgence. subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by Rowe. The dedication of it to the Countess of Salisbury does not appear in his own edition. He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption, that the story could not have been read without thoughts of the Countess of Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another. "To behold," he proceeds, "a person only virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to behold a person only amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious indignation; but to turn our eyes to a Countess of Salisbury, gives us pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty." His flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was at least as well adapted. Of this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded to her being his godmother. He is said indeed to have been engaged at a settled August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his stipend as a writer for the court. In Swift's friend Jervas, that he is just arrived from Ox"Rhapsody on Poetry" are these lines, speak-ford; that every one is much concerned for the ing of the court Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace, To flatter knaves, or lose his pension. Queen's death, but that no panegyrics are ready yet for the King. Nothing like friendship had yet taken place between Pope and Young; for, soon after the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the Queen's death, That Y-means Young seems clear from four and his Majesty's accession to the throne. It other lines in the same poem: Attend, ye Popes and Youngs and Gays, You cannot err on flattery's side. is inscribed to Addison, then secretary to the lords justices. Whatever were the obligations which he had formerly received from Anne, the Poet appears to aim at something of the same seems to have been, to show that he had the sort from George. Of the poem the intention same extravagant strain of praise for a King as for a Queen. To discover, at the very onset of a foreigner's reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in such a King, is something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one of his excusable pieces. We do not find it in his works. Young's father had been well acquainted with Lady Anne Wharton, the first wife of Thomas Wharton, Esq. afterwards Marquis of Wharton; a lady celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller. To the Dean of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added some verses "by The Queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politics, notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the church was in danger had not yet subsided.The "Last Day," written by a layman, was With this unhappy character, it is not unlikely much approved by the ministry and their friends. that Young went to Ireland. From his letter Before the Queen's death, "The force of to Richardson on "Original Composition," it is Religion, or Vanquished Love," was sent into clear he was, at some period of his life, in that the world. This poem is founded on the exe-country. "I remember," says he, in that letter, cution of Lady Jane Grey, and her husband, Lord Guildford, 1554, a story chosen for the *Not in the "Tatler," but in the “Guardian," May 9, 1713.-C. House of Lords." speaking of Swift, "as I and others were taking with him an evening walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short; we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found him fixed as a statue, and earnestly | ral, March 14, 1740, as authority for the life of a gazing upward at a noble clm, which in its up- poet. But biographers do not always find such permost branches was much withered and de- certain guides as the oaths of the persons whom cayed. Pointing at it, he said, 'I shall be like they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to dethat tree, I shall die at top.'' Is it not probable termine whether two annuities, granted by the that this visit to Ireland was paid when he had Duke of Wharton to Young, were for legal conan opportunity of going thither with his avowed siderations. One was dated the 24th of March, friend and patron? 1719, and accounted for his Grace's bounty in a From "The Englishman" it appears that a style princely and commendable, if not legaltragedy by Young was in the theatre so early as considering that the public good is advanced by 1713. Yet "Busiris" was not brought upon the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, Drury-lane stage till 1719. It was inscribed to and being pleased therein with the attempts of the Duke of Newcastle, "because the late in- Dr. Young, in consideration thereof, and of the stances he had received of his Grace's undeserv-love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the ed and uncommon favour, in an affair of some 10th of July, 1722. consequence, foreign to the theatre, had taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." The dedication he afterwards suppressed. "Busiris" was followed in the year 1731 by "The Revenge." He dedicated this famous tragedy to the Duke of Wharton. "Your Grace," says the dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessary to the following scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the whole." four hundred pounds, in the gift of All Souls College, on his Grace's promises of serving and advancing him in the world. Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and refused an annuity of one hundred pounds, which had been offered him for life if he would continue tutor to Lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations of the Duke of Wharton, and his Grace's assurances of providing for him in a much more ample manner. It also appeared that the Duke had given him a bond for six hundred pounds, dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration of his taking seve ral journeys, and being at great expenses, in order That his Grace should have suggested the in- to be chosen member of the House of Commons, cident to which he alludes, whatever that incident at the Duke's desire, and in consideration of his might have been, is not unlikely. The last men-not taking two livings of two hundred pounds and tal exertion of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in Spain, was some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary Queen of Scots. Dryden dedicated Marriage a-la-Mode" to Wharton's infamous relation Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to Wharton thus-"My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care, which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour, since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit, though, through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty and respect, I happened to receive the benefit of it." That he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his works. He should have remembered that he at the same time concealed his obligation to Wharton for the most beautiful incident in what is surely not his least beautiful composition. The passage just quoted is, in a poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied : Be this thy partial smile from censure free! 'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me. While Young, who, in his "Love of Fame," complains grievously how often "dedications wash an Ethiop white," was painting an amiable Duke of Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe the " scorn and wonder of his days" in lasting verse. To the patronage of such a character, had Young studied men as much as Pope, he would have known how little to have trusted. Young, however, was certainly indebted to it for something material; and the Duke's regard for Young, added to his "lust of praise," procured to All Souls College a donation, which was not forgotten by the poet when he dedicated "The Revenge." It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkius, Case 136, Stiles versus the Attorney-Gene Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account. The attempt to get into parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood a contested election. His Grace discovered in him talents for oratory as well as for poetry: nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was preaching in his turn at St. James's, he plainly perceived it was out of his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit and burst into tears. But we must pursue his poetical life. In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if they contain any, it is now vain to seek: In joy once join'd, in sorrow, now, for yearsPartner in grief and brother of my tears, Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due. From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to "communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things." In 1719 appeared a "Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job." Parker, to whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been qualified for a patron. Of this work the Author's opinion may be known from his letter to Curll: "You seem, in the Collection you propose, to have omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean a Translation from Part of Job, printed by Mr. Tonson." The Dedication, which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson's edition, while it speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every one who sings in the dark does not sing from joy. | It is addressed, in no common strain of flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no kind of knowledge. Of his Satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates without the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have referred to the poems to discover when they were written. For these internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first Satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled." The second, addressing himself, asks Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme, Thou unambitious fool, at this late time; The Satires were originally published separately From the sixth of these poems we learn, Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet, Her favour is diffus'd to that degree, Excess of goodness, it has dawn'd on me. Her Majesty had stood godmother, and given her name to the daughter of the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had perhaps shown some attention to Lady Elizabeth's future husband. The fifth Satire, "On Women," was not published till 1727; and the sixth not till 1728. Plato's beautiful fable of "The Birth of Love" to modern poetry, with the addition "that poetry, like love, is a little subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her way to preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful admiration of her father's family; but divides her favours. and generally lives with her mother's relations." Poetry, it is true, did not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not something like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her and her sister Prose to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though nearly related to Poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the mother of Love. That he could not well complain of being related to Poverty appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By "The Universal Passion" he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three A considerable sum had thousand pounds. already been swallowed up in the South Sea. For this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His muse makes poetical use more than once of a South Sea dream. It is related by Mr. Spence in his Manuscript Anecdotes, on the authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his "Universal Passion," received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand pounds, and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "Two thousand pounds for a poem!" he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his life, for the poem was worth four thousand. This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two answers of Lord Burghley and Sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life. After inscribing his Satires, not perhaps without the hopes of preferment and honours, to such names as the Duke of Dorset, Mr. Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germaine, and Sir Robert Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. In 1726 he addressed a poem to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered sufficiently explains the intention. If Young them into one publication, he prefixed a Preface; must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he in which he observes, that "no man can converse did not endeavour, or did not choose, to be a much in the world, but at what he meets with he lasting_one. "The Instalment" is among the must either be insensible or grieve, or be angry or pieces he did not admit into the number of his smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into ridi-excusable writings. Yet it contains a couplet cule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts which pretends to pant after the power of beourselves least, and gives vice and folly the stowing immortality: greatest offence. Laughing at the misconduct of the world will, in a great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven out by another than by reason, whatever some teach." So wrote, and so of course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote "The Last Day." After all, Swift pronounced of these Satires, that they should either have been more angry or more merry. Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any palliation, this Preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the mournful, angry, gloomy, Night 'Thoughts?" O! how I long, enkindled by the theme, The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the Poet thought he deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his acknowledgment, would now perhaps never have been known: My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire, If the purity of modern patriotism will term The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with "Ocean, an Ode." The hint At the conclusion of the Preface he applies of it was taken from the royal speech, which re an commended the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be "invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the service of their country;" a plan which humanity must lament that policy has not even yet been able or willing to carry into execution. Prefixed to the original publication were an "Ode to the King, Pater Patria," and Essay on Lyric Poetry." It is but justice to confess, that he preserved neither of them; and that the Ode itself, which in the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas, in the Author's own edition is reduced to fortynine. Among the omitted passages is a "Wish," that concluded the poem, which few would have suspected Young of forming; and of which, few, after having formed it, would confess something like their shame by suppression. It stood originally so high in the Author's opinion, that he entitled the poem, "Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish.' This wish consists of thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus: O may I steal Of humble life secure from foes! My judgment clear, And gentle business my repose! The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes: but, altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young: Prophetic schemes, Enamour'd of the present day! My hours my own! My chief revenue in content! Of honest fame! And scorn the labour'd monument! Unhurt my urn Till that great turn When mighty Nature's self shall die, With human pride, critic in that sort of poetry; and, if his lyric If Young be not a lyric poet, he is at least a Poetry can be proved bad, it was first proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid. critics," only because he exhibited his own verMilbourn was styled by Pope "the fairest of sion of Virgil to be compared with Dryden's which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair Essay on Lyric Poetry, so just and impartial as of poets for prefixing to a lyric composition an to condemn himself. We shall soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the language. Soon after the appearance of "Ocean," when he was almost fifty, Young entered into orders. In April, 1728,* not long after he had put on the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the Second. The tragedy of "The Brothers," which was already in rehearsal, he immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it with some reluctance to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The epilogue to "The Brothers," the only appendage to any of his three plays which he added himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an historical epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the epilogue, and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished Perseus "for this night's deed." It is whimsical, that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix upon a measure in Of Young's taking orders, something is told which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this by the biographer of Pope, which places the eahe said, in his "Essay on Lyric Poetry," pre-siness and simplicity of the Poet in a singular fixed to the poem-"For the more harmony like- light. When he determined on the church, he wise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which did not address himself to Sherlock, to Atterlaid me under great difficulties. But difficulties bury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in theovercome, give grace and pleasure. Nor can I ology; but to Pope, who, in a youthful frolic, account for the pleasure of rhyme in general (of advised the diligent perusal of Thomas Aquiwhich the moderns are too fond) but from this nas. With this treasure Young retired from truth." Yet the moderns surely deserve not interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. much censure for their fondness of what, by their His poetical guide to godliness hearing nothing own confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in of him during half a year, and apprehending he harmony. might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable derangement." The next paragraph in his Essay did not occur to him when he talked of "that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he was perfectly free from that shackle." Another part of this Essay will convict the following stanza of, what every reader will discover in it, "involuntary burlesque." That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the surest guide to his new profession, left him little doubt whether poetry was the surest path to its honours and *Davies, in his Life of Garrick, says, 1720, and that it was produced thirty-three years after.-C. |