"De vivis nil nisi bonum-" would approach much nearer to good sense. After all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed the body of the author of the " Night Thoughts," feel not much concern whether Young pass now for a man of sorrow, or for a "fellow of infinite jest.". To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick, His immortal part, wherever that now dwell, is still less solicitous on this head.

But to a son of worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence whether contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that his debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening of his father's days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character completely detestable, and succeeded at last in bringing his " hairs with sorrow to the grave."

grey

The humanity of the world, little satisfied with inventing perhaps a melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next to invent an argument in support of their invention, and chooses that Lorenzo should be Young's own son. The Biographia and every account of Young pretty roundly assert this To be the fact of the absolute impossibility of which the Biographia itself, in particular dates, contains undeniable evidence, Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will hereafter peruse the "Night Thoughts" with less satisfaction; who will wish they had still been deceived; who will quarrel with me for discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo ever yet disgraced human nature, or broke a fathers heart. Yet would these admirers of the sublime and terrible be offended, should you set them down for cruel and for savage.

Of this report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.

From the first line to the last of the Night Thoughts," no one expression can be discovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the second "Night" I find an expression which betrays something else; that Lorenzo was his friend: one, it is possible, of his former companions: one of the Duke of Wharton's set. The Poet styles him "gay Friend;" an appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his son.

But let us see how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the sight of some of whose features the artist himself must have turned away with horror. A subject more shocking, if his only child really sat to him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo, upon the horrid story told of which, Young composed a short Poem of fourteen lines in the early part of his life, which he did not think deserved to be republished.

In the first "Night" the address to the Poet's supposed son is,
Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee.

In the fifth "Night"

And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?

Is this a picture of the son of the rector of Welwyn?
Eight "Night-"

In foreign realms (for thou hast travelled far)

which even now does not apply to his son.

In "Night" five

So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate,
Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes,
And died to give him, orphan'd in his birth?

At the beginning of the fifth "Night we find-
Lorenzo, to recriminate is just,

I grant the man is vain who writes for praise.

But, to cut short all enquiry; if any one of these passages, if any passage in the poems be applicable, my friend shall pass for Lorenzo. The son of the author of the Night Thoughts" was not old enough, when they were written, to recriminate, or to be a father. The "Night Thoughts" were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The first "Nights” appear in the books of the company of Stationers, as the property of Robert Dodsley, 1742. The Preface to " Night" seven is dated July the 7th, 1744. The marriage in consequence of which the supposed Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till June 1733 In 1741 this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to whose education Vice had for some years put the last hand, was only eight years old.

An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to contradiction, so impossible to be true, who could propagate? Thus easily are blasted the reputation of the living and of the dead.

Who then was Lorenzo? exclaims the readers I have mentioned. If we cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely terrible was he not his nephew, his cousin?

These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the Poet's fancy like the Quintus of Anti-Lucretius," quo nomine," says Polignac,quemvis Atheum intellige.' That this was the case, many

:

expressions

1

expressions in the "Night Thoughts" would seem to prove, did not a passage in "Night" Eight appear to shew that he had somebody in his eye for the groundwork at least of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may be feigned characters; but a writer does not feign a name of which he only gives the initial letter.

Tell not Calista. She will laugh thee dead,

Or send thee to her hermitage with L.

The Biographia, not satisfied with pointing out the son of Young, in that son's life-time, as his father's Lorenzo, travels out of its way into the history of the son, and tells of his having been forbidden his college at Oxford for misbehaviour. How such anecdotes, were they true, tend to illustrate the life of Young, it is not easy to discover. Was the son of the author of the "Night Thoughts indeed forbidden his college for a time, at one of our universites? The author of "Paradise Lost" is by some supposed to have been disgracefully ejected from the other. From juvenile follies who is free? But, whatever the Biographia choose to relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his college either lasting or temporary.

Yet, were nature to indulge him with a second youth, and to leave him at the same time the experience of that which is past, he would probably spend it differently-who would not?-he would certainly be the occasion of less uneasiness to his father. But, from the same experience, he would as certainly, in the same case, be treated differently by his father.

Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties. Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets

He, who is connected with the author of the "Night Thoughts," only by veneration for the Poet and the Christian, may be allowed to observe, that Young is one of those, concerning whom, as you remark in your account of Addison, it is proper rather to say "nothing that is false than all that is true."

But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo, than see himself vindicated, at the expence of his father's memory, from follies which, if it may be thought blameable in a boy to have commited them, it is surely praise-worthy in a man to lament, and certainly not only unnecessary but cruel in a biographer to record.

Of the "Night Thoughts," notwithstanding their author's professed retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names. He had not yet

weaned

weaned himself from Earls and Dukes, from Speakers of the House of
Commons, Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and Chancellors of the
Exchequer. In "Night" Eight the politician plainly betrays himself
Think no post needful that demands a knave,
When late our civil helm was shifting hands,
So P-- thought: think better if you can.

Yet it must be confessed, that at the conclusion of " Night" Nine, weary perhaps of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul,

Henceforth

Thy patron he, whose diadem has dropt
Yon gems of heaven; Eternity thy prize;
And leave the racers of the world their own,

The Fourth" Night" was addressed by "a much-indebted Muse" to the Honorable Mr. Yorke, now Lord Hardwicke; who meant to have laid the Muse under still greater obligations, by the living of Shenfield in Essex, if it had become vacant.

The first "Night" concludes with this passage-

Dark, though not blind, like thee, Meonides:

Or Milton, thee. Ah! could I reach your strain:

Or his who made Meonides our own!

Man too he sung. Immortal man I sing.

Oh had he prest his theme, pursued the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
Oh had he mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd, where I sink, and sung immortal man
How had it blest mankind, and rescued me!

To the author of these lines was dedicated, in 1756, the first volume of an "Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope," which attempted, whether justly or not, to pluck from Pope his "Wing of Fire," and to reduce him to a rank at least one degree lower than the first class of English poets. If Young accepted and approved the dedication, he countenanced this attack upon the fame of him whom he invokes as his Muse.

Part of "paper-sparing" Pope's Third Book of the "Odyssey," deposited in the Museum, is written upon the back of a letter signed E. Young, which is clearly the hand-writing of our Young. The Letter, dated only May the 2d, seems obscure; but there can be little doubt that the friendship he requests was a literary one, and that he had the highest literary opinion of Pope. The request was a prologue, I am told.

"Dear

"Dear Sir,

May the 2d.

"Having been often from home, I know not if you have done me the "favour of calling on me. But, be that as it will, I much want that in"stance of your friendship I mentioned in my last; a friendship I am very "sensible I can receive from no one but yourself. I should not urge this "thing so much but for very particular reasons; nor can you be at a loss to "conceive how a trifle of this nature may be of serious moment to me; and "while I am in hopes of the great advantage of your advice about it, I shall "not be so absurd as to make any further step without it. I know you are "much engaged, and only hope to hear of you at your entire leisure.

"I am, Sir, your most faithful
"and obedient servant,

"E. YOUNG."

Nay, even after Pope's death, he says, in "Night" Seven:

Pope, who couldst make immortals, art thou dead?

Either the "Essay," then, was dedicated to a patron who disapproved its doctrine, which I have been told by the author was not the case; or Young appears, in his old age, to have bartered for a dedication, an opinion entertained of his friend through all that part of life when he must have been best able to form opinions.

From this account of Young, two or three short passages, which stand almost together in "Night" Four, should.not be excluded. They afford a picture, by his own hand, from the study of which my readers may choose to form their own opinion of the features of his mind and the complexion of his life.