'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 "of this nature' may be of a serious moment to "me; and while I am in hopes of the great advan"tage 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 could'st 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.

Ah me! the dire effect

Of loitering here, of death defrauded long ;
Of old so gracious (and let that suffice)
My very master knows me not.

I've been so long remember'd, I'm forgot.

When in his courtiers' ears I pour my plaint,
They drink it as the Nectar of the Great;

And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.

Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
Court-favour, yet untaken, I besiege.

If this song lives, Posterity shall know

One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,
Who thought ev'n gold might come a day too late ;
Nor on his subtle death-bed plann'd his scheme
For future vacancies in church or state.

Deduct from the writer's age "twice told the period

66

spent on stubborn Troy," and you will still leave him more than forty when he sat down to the miserable siege of court-favor. 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 re

membered that from these he 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 acknowledgment of a favour, should not always print it.

Is it to the credit or to the 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 King"dom, addressed to the Duke of Newcastle;" indignant, as it appears, to behold

-a pope-bred Princeling crawl ashore, And whistle cut throats, with those swords that scrap'd

Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
To cut his passage to the British throne.

This political poem might be called a "Night 'Thought." Indeed it was originally printed as he conclusion of the "Night Thoughts," though e did not gather it with his other works.

Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's "De"vout 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 sin66 cere heart he never saw.

66

In 1753, when " The Brothers" had laid 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 profit of "The Brothers" would amount. In his 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."

66

"His last words were-my principles have poison"ed my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness 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.

66

The lively Letter in Prose, on "Original Composition," addressed to Richardson, the author of "Clarissa," appeared in 1759. "Though he despairs "of breaking through the frozen obstructions of 66 age and care's incumbent cloud, into that flow of "thought and brightness of expression which sub

66

jects so polite require ;"'yet it is 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

Pulverulentula vocant, septem sine flumine valles.

Such leaden labours are like Lycurgus's iron money, which was so much less in value than in