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 ancients. 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 into “ 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 postscript 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,

With unmov'd indifference view;
Learn to tread life's dangerous maze,

With unerring Virtue's clue.
Void of strong desire and fear,

Life's wide ocean trust no more;
Strive thy little bark to steer

With the tide, but near the shore.
Thus prepar'd, thy shorten'd sail

Shall, whene'er the winds increase,
Seizing each propitious gale,

Waft thee to the Port of Peace.
Keep thy conscience from offence,

And tempestuous passions free,
So, when thou art call'd from hence,

Easy shall thy passage be;
Easy shall thy passage be,

Cheerful thy allotted stay,
Short th' account 'twixt God and thee:

Hope shall meet thee on the way:

Truth shall lead thee to the gate,

Mercy's self shall let thee in,
Where its never-changing state,

Full perfection shall begin.”

The

poem was accompanied by a Letter.

s La Trappe, the 27th of Oct. 1761. • Dear Sir, “ You seemed to like the ode I sent you for samusement: 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,
“ Yours, most cordially,

“ MELCOMBE."

In 1762, à 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 “Re

signation.” 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,” Mr. Montagu proposed a visit to the author. From conversing with Young, Mrs. Boscawen derived still further consolation ; and to that

l visit she and the world were indebted for this poem. It compliments Mrs. Montagu in the following

lines :

Yet write I must. A lady sues :

How shameful her request !
My brain in labour with dull rhyme,

Her's teeming with the best!
And again-
And friend you have, and I the same,

Whose prudent, soft address
Will bring to life those healing thoughts.

Which died in your distress.

That friend, the spirit of thy theme

Extracting for your ease,
Will leave me to the dreg, in thoughts

Too common : such as these.

By the same lady I was 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, He drew his audience upward to the sky. Notwithstanding Young had said, in his “ Conjectures on original Composition," that “ blank “ verse is verse unfallen, uncurst; verse reclaimed, “ re-inthroned in the true language of the Gods," notwithstanding he administered 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 books and writings whatever might be burned, except his book of accounts.

In September 1764, he added a kind of codicil, wherein he made it his dying intreaty to his housekeeper, to whom he left 10001. “ that all his ma

nuscripts might be destroyed as soon as he was “ dead, which would greatly oblige her deceased "friend." It

may teach mankind the uncertainty of worldly friendships, to know that Young, either by surviving those he loved, or by outliving their affections,