If this song lives, Posterity shall know One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred, For future vacancies in church or state, Deduct from the writer's age "twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy," and you will still leave him more than forty when he sate down to the miserable siege of court-favour. He has before told us "A fool at forty is a fool indeed.” After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence of what the General thought his "death-bed." By these extraordinary Poems, written after he was sixty, of which I have been led to say so much, I hope by the wish of doing justice to the living and the dead, it was the desire of Young to be principally known. He entitled the four volumes which he published himself."The Works of the Author of the Night Thoughts." While it is remembered that from these hé excluded many of his writings, let it not be forgotten that the rejected pieces contained nothing prejudicial to the cause of virtue, or of religion. Were every thing that Young ever wrote to be published, he would only appear perhaps in a less respectable light as a poet, and more despicable as a dedicator: he would not pass for a worse christian, or for a worse man. This enviable praise is due to Young. Can it be claimed by every writer? His dedications, after all, he had perhaps no right to suppress. They all, I believe, speak, not a little to the credit of his gratitude, of favours received; and I know not whether the author, who has once solemnly printed an acknowledgement of a favour, should not always print it. 66 Is it to the credit or discredit of Young, as a poet, that of his "Night Thoughts" the French are particularly fond? Of the "Epitaph on Lord Aubrey Beauclerk," dated 1740, all I know is, that I find it in the late body of English Poetry, and that I am sorry to find it there. Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to have taken in the Night Thoughts" of every thing which bore the least resemblance to ambition, he dipped again in politics. In 1745 he wrote "Reflections on the public Situation of the Kingdom, addressed to the Duke of Newcastle;" indignant, as it appears, to behold -a pope-bred princeling crawl ashore, And whistle cut threats, with those swords that scrap'd To cut his passage to the British throne, This political poem might be called a "Night Thought." Indeed it was originally printed as the conclusion of the "Night Thoughts." though he did not gather it with his other works. Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's "Devout Meditations" is a Letter from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald Macauly, Esq; thanking him for the book, which he says " he shall never "lay far out of his reach: for a greater demonstration of a sound head and a sincere heart he never saw." In 1753, when "The Brothers" had lain by him above thirty years, it appeared upon the stage. If any part of his fortune had been acquired by servility of adulation, he now determined to deduct from it no inconsiderable sum, as a gift to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. To this sum he hoped the profits of "The Brothers" would amount. In this calculation he was deceived; but by the bad success of his play the Society was not a loser. The author made up the sum he originally intended, which was a thousand pounds, from his own pocket. The next performance which he printed was a prose publication, entituled, "The Centaur not fabulous, in six Letters to a Friend on the Life in Vogue." The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third Letter is described the death-bed of the "gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplished and most "wretched Altamont." His last words were- - My principles "have poisoned my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy, my un"kindness has murdered my wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of wickedness. Report, has been accustomed to call Altamont Lord Euston. "The Old Man's Relapse," occasioned by an Epistle to Walpole, if written by Young, which I much doubt, must have been written very late in life. It has been seen, I am told, in a Miscellany published thirty years before his death. In 1758, he exhibited "the Old Man's Relapse" in more than words, by again becoming a dedicator, and publishing a sermon addressed to the King. The lively Letter in prose on " Original Composition," addressed to Richardson the author of Clarissa, appeared in 1759. Though he despair "of breaking through the frozen obstructions of age and care's incumbent "cloud, into that flow of thought and brightness of expression which sub"jects so polite require ;" yet is it more like the production of untamed, unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore. Some sevenfold volumes put him in mind of Ovid's sevenfold channels of the Nile at the conflagration. -ostia septem Pulverulenta vocant, septem sine flumine valles. 40 VOLI. Such Such leaden labours are like Lycurgus's iron money, which was so much less in value than in bulk, that it required barns for strong boxes, and a yoke of oxen to draw five hundred pounds. If there is a famine of invention in the land, we must travel, he says, like Joseph's brethren, far for food; we must visit the remote and rich antients. But an inventive genius may safely stay at home; that, like the widow's cruse, is divinely replenished from within, and affords us a miraculous delight. He asks why it should seem altogether impossible, that Heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be the most correct and fair? And Johnson, he tells us, was very learned, as Sampson was very strong, to his own hurt. Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it. Is this" care's incumbent cloud," or " the frozen obstructions of age?" In this letter Pope is severely censured for his "fall from Homer's numbers, free" as air, lofty and harmonious as the spheres, into childish shackles and " tinkling sounds; for putting Achilles in petticoats a second time:" but we are told that the dying swan talked over an Epic plan with Young a few weeks before his decease. Young's chief inducement to write this letter was, as he confesses, that he might erect a monumental marble to the memory of an old friend. He, who employed his pious pen for almost the last time in thus doing justice to the exemplary death-bed of Addison, might probably, at the close of his own life, afford no unuseful lesson for the deaths of others. In the postcript he writes to Richardson, that he will see in his next how far Addison is an original. But no other letter appears. The few lines which stand in the last edition, as "sent by Lord Melcombe "to Dr. Young, not long before his Lordship's death," were indeed so sent, but were only an introduction to what was there meant by "The Muse's "latest Spark." The poem is necessary, whatever may be its merit, since the preface to it is already printed. Lord Melcombe called his Tusculum "La Trappe." "Love thy country, wish it well, Not with too intense a care, "Tis enough, that, when it fell, Thou its ruin didst not share. Envy's censure, Flattery's praise, Learn to tread Life's dangerous maze, Void of strong desire and fear, Life's wide ocean trust no more; Strive thy little bark to steer Thus "Dear Sir, "La Trappe, the 27th of Oct. 1761. "You seemed to like the ode I sent you for your amusement; I now "send it you as a present. If you please to accept of it, and are willing that "our friendship should be known when we are gone, you will be pleased "to leave this among those of your own papers that may possibly see the "light by a posthumous publication. God send us health while we stay, "and an easy journey! "My dear Dr. Young, . MELCOMBE." In 1762, a short time before his death, Young published "Resignation." Notwithstanding the manner in which it was really forced from him by the world, criticism has treated it with no common severity. If it shall be thought not to deserve the highest praise, on the other side of fourscore, by whom, except by Newton and by Waller, has praise been merited?, To Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakspeare, I am indebted for the history of "Resignation." Observing that Mrs. Boscawen, in the midst of her grief for the loss of the admiral, derived consolation from the perusal of the "Night Thoughts," Mrs. Montagu proposed a visit to the author. From conversing with Young, Mrs. Boscawen derived still further consolation; and to that visit she and the world were indebted for this poem. It compliments Mrs. Montagu in the following lines: 4 0 2 Yet Yet, write I must. A Lady sues, And again A friend you have and I the same, Will bring to life those healing thoughts That friend, the spirit of my theme Extracting for your ease, Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts Too common; such as these. By the same Lady I am enabled to say, in her own words, that Young's unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion, than even in the author; that the Christian was in him a character still more inspired, more enraptured, more sublime than the poet; and that, in his ordinary conversation, -letting down the golden chain from high, Notwithstanding Young had said, in his "Conjectures on original Com position," that "blank verse is verse unfallen, uncurst; verse reclaimed, re"inthroned in the true language of the Gods:" notwithstanding he adıninistered consolation to his own grief in this immortal language. Mrs Boscawen was comforted in rhyme. While the poet and the christian were applying this comfort, Young had himself occasion for comfort, in consequence of the sudden death of Richardson, who was printing the former part of the poem. Of Richardson's death he says When heaven would kindly set us free, And earth's enchantment end; It takes the most effectual means, And robs us of a friend, To "Resignation" was prefixed an Apology for its appearance: to which more credit is due than to the generality of such apologies, from Young's unusual anxiety that no more productions of his old age should disgrace his former fame. In his will, dated February 1760, he desires of his executors, in a particular manner, that all his manuscript book and writings whatever, might be burned, except his book of accounts. |