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Lee, daughter of the Earl of Litchfield. The remainder of his life was spent in seclusion, and though his ambitious temperament frequently led him to seek preferment in the church, he never obtained it. He died in 1765.

PRINCIPAL WORKS.-Besides the " Night Thoughts," Dr. Young wrote a series of Satires in verse entitled "The Love of Fame, the Universal Passion," "The Last Day," "The Centaur not Fabulous," a prose satire, and some tragedies, of which "The Revenge" is the finest.

CHARACTERISTIC SPIRIT AND STYLE.-" The Night Thoughts contain many splendid and happy conceptions, but their beauty is thickly marred by false wit and overlaboured antithesis: indeed the whole ideas of the author seem to have been in a state of antithesis while he composed the poem. One portion of his fancy appears devoted to aggravate the picture of his desolate feelings; and the other half to contradict that picture by eccentric images and epigrammatic ingenuities. The reader most sensitive to his faults must, however, have felt, that there is in him a spark of originality which is never long extinguished, however far it may be from vivifying the entire mass of his poetry. Many and exquisite are his touches of sublime expression, of profound reflection, and of striking imagery. It is recalling but a few of these to allude to his description, in the eighth book, of the man whose thoughts are not of this world, to his simile of the traveller at the opening of the ninth book, to his spectre of the antediluvian world, and to some parts of his very unequal description of the conflagration; above all, to that noble and familiar image,

'When final Ruin fiercely drives Her ploughshare o'er creation."" 1

"It is true that he seldom, if ever, maintains a flight of poetry long free from oblique associations; but he has individual passages which philosophy might make her texts, and experience select for her mottoes."2

1 This metaphor is borrowed by Burns in the poem "To a Daisy," for which see p. 78. The Scottish bard was a great admirer of Young, 2 Campbell. "Specimens, &c." p. 467.

EXTRACTS FROM THE NIGHT THOUGHTS.

THE WONDROUS NATURE OF MAN.

THE bell strikes one.1 We take no note of time
But from its loss: to give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours.

Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.
It is the signal that demands dispatch:

How much is to be done! My hopes and fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down-On what? A fathomless abyss:
A dread eternity!-how surely mine!—
And can eternity belong to me,

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How passing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in our make such strange extremes!
From different natures marvellously mixed,
Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguished link in being's endless chain,
Midway from nothing to the Deity!
A beam ethereal, sullied and absorbed ;3
Though sullied and dishonoured, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal!+ insect infinite!

1 The bell strikes one-i. e. one in the morning. This passage is extracted from "Night the First" of the poem, and aptly exemplifies its characteristic beauties and faults-the condensed thought, the poetical turn of phrase, as well as the overlaboured antithesis.

2 Abject, mean-may be thus distinguished; abject—from the Latin abjectus, cast away-refers rather to the circumstances, and mean, to the nature of the individual; hence the former word is correctly employed here, the object of the writer being to show that man's nature is essentially noble.

3 Absorbed-i. e. not reflected, dull and dim.

4 Helpless immortal, &c.-A manifest failure in expression, since there is no real antithesis between the first pair of words, and no distinct meaning in the second.

A worm! a god!-I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost! At home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wondering at her own. How reason reels!
Oh what a miracle to man is man!

Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!
Alternately transported and alarmed!

What can preserve my life, or what destroy?
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof:
While o'er my limbs Sleep's soft dominion spreads,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields; or roamed along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or down the craggy steep
Hurled headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool,
Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds,
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain?
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod,
Active, aerial, towering, unconfined,

Unfettered with her gross companion's fall.
E'en silent night proclaims my soul immortal;
E'en silent night proclams eternal day.

For human weal Heaven husbands all events;

Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.
Yet man, fool man! here buries all his thoughts;
Inters celestial hopes without one sigh.

Prisoner of earth, and pent beneath the moon,
Here pinions all his wishes; winged by heaven
To fly at infinite, and reach it there,
Where seraphs gather immortality

On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God,
What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow
In his full beam, and ripen for the just,

Where momentary ages are no more!

When Time and Pain, and Chance, and Death expire!
And is it in the flight of threescore years

To push eternity from human thought,

1 Wondering at her own-What is our own is generally so familiar, as to excite no surprise or wonder, but Thought being conceived of as a "stranger at home," may with consistency be said to be surprised even at her own.

And smother souls immortal in the dust?
A soul immortal, spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptured or alarmed
At aught this scene can threaten or indulge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.

PROCRASTINATION.

1

BE wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer:
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment2 leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
If not so frequent, would not this be strange?
That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still.

Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
The palm, That all men are about to live,
For ever on the brink of being born.
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel; and their pride3
On this reversion takes up ready praise-

At least their own-their future selves applauds.
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead!
All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage. When young, indeed,

In full content we sometimes nobly rest,

Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,

1 Defer, delay, procrastinate-thus differ; to delay is to hold back in general; to defer, to put off for some specific purpose; to procrastinate, to put off till tomorrow, as a habit of the mind, and therefore culpably.

2 Moment-i. e. the moment of death.

3 Their pride, &c,-The construction here is somewhat abrupt and obscure, but the meaning seem to be that their pride, in the expectation of their one day becoming wise, compliments them with being so already-the present being at least their own, whatever the future may be-and thus they applaud their future selves.

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.
And why? because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal, but themselves;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of Fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where past the shaft no trace is found,
As from the wing no scar the sky retains,

The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.

THE MAN WHOSE THOUGHTS ARE NOT OF THIS WORLD.2

SOME angel guide my pencil, while I draw-
What nothing less than angel can exceed-
A man on earth devoted to the skies;
Like ships in seas, while in, above the world.
With aspect mild, and elevated eye,
Behold him seated on a mount serene,
Above the fogs of sense, and passion's storm:
All the black cares and tumults of this life,
Like harmless thunders breaking at his feet,
Excite his pity, not impair his peace.

Earth's genuine sons, the sceptred and the slave,
A mingled mob! a wandering herd! he sees,
Bewildered in the vale: in all unlike!
His full reverse in all! what higher praise?
What stronger demonstration of the right?

The present all their care, the future his.
When public welfare calls, or private want,
They give to Fame; his bounty he conceals.
Their virtues varnish Nature, his exalt.
Mankind's esteem they court, and he his own.
Theirs the wild chace of false felicities;
His the composed possession of the true.
Alike throughout is his consistent peace,

1 Themselves, &c.-They think even themselves mortal when, &c.

2 Young's peculiar style is finely displayed in this extract; the subject required strong contrasts of light and shade, and they are very strikingly introduced, especially in the passage commencing "He sees with other eyes," &c.

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