the Night Thoughts Philander and Narciffa are often mentioned, and often lamented. To recollect lamentations over the author's wife, the memory must have been charged with diftin&t paffages. This Lady brought him onechild, Frederick, now living. That domeftick grief is, in the first inftance, to be thanked for thefe ornaments to our language it is impoffible to deny. Nor would it be common hardiness to contend that worldly dif content had no hand in thefe joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means fure that, at any rate, we fhould not have had fomething of the fame colour from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the livelinefs of his fatires. In fo long a life, caufes for dif content content and occafions for grief must have occurred. It is not clear to me that his Mufe was not fitting upon the watch for the firft which happened. Night. Thoughts were not uncommon to her, even when first fhe vifited the poet, and at a time when he himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominefs. In his Laft Day, almoft his earlieft poem, he calls her the melancholy Maid, -whom difmal fcenes delight, Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night. And in the prayer which concludes the fecond book of the fame poem -Oh! permit the gloom of folemn night To facred thought may forcibly invite. - Oh! Oh! how divine to tread the milky way, To the bright palace of Eternal Day! Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominefs of the Night Thoughts to prove the gloominefs of Young, and to fhew that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was in fome measure the fullen infpiration of discontent? Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous De mortuis nil nifi bonum has always ftricken me as favouring more of female weaknefs than of manly reafon. Cenfure is not heard beneath the tomb any more than praise. De mortuis nil nifi verum-De vivis nil nifi bonum-would approach much nearer to good fenfe. After all, the few handfulls I fulls of remaining duft which once compofed the body of the author of the Night Thoughts, feel not much concern whether Young paffes now for a man of forrow, or for a fellow of infinite jeft. To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick.-His immortal part, whereever that now dwells, is ftill lefs folicitous on this head. But to a fon of worth and fenfibility it is of fome little confequence whether contemporaries believe, and pofterity be taught to believe, that his debauched and reprobate life caft a Stygian gloom over the evening of his father's days, faved him the trouble of feigning a character completely deteftable, and fucceeded at last in bringing his grey hairs with forrow to the grave. The The humanity of the world, little fatisfied with inventing perhaps a melancholy difpofition for the father, proceeds next to invent an argument in fupport of their invention, and choofes that Lorenzo should be Young's own fon. The Biographia pretty roundly afferts this to be the fact; of the abfolute impoffibility of which the Biographia itfelf, in particular dates, contains undeniable evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will hereafter perufe the Night Thoughts with lefs fatisfaction; who will wish they had ftill been deceived; who will quarrel with me for discovering that no such character as Lorenzo ever yet disgraced human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would thefe admirers of the fublime and |