a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was once in his life, according to the Biographia, deferted. As he was preaching in his turn at St. James's, he plainly perceived it was out of his power to command the attention of his audience. This fo affected the feelings of the preacher, that he fat back in the pulpit, and burst into tears. -But we must purfue his poetical life.

In 1719 he lamented the death of Addifon, in a Letter addreffed to their common friend Tickell. For the fecret hiftory of the following lines, if they contain any, it is now vain to seek:

In joy once join'd, in forrow, now, for years-
Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
Tickell, accept this verfe, thy mournful due.

From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to "communicate to each other whatever "verfes they wrote, even to the leaft things."

In 1719 appeared a Paraphrafe on Part of the Book of Job. Parker, to whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the feals, been qualified for a patron. Of this work the author's opinion may be known from his Letter to Curll: "You feem, in the Collection you "propofe, to have omitted what I think may claim "the first place in it; I mean a Tranflation from Part

of Job, printed by Mr. Tonfon." The Dedication, which was only fuffered to appear in Tonfon's edition, while it speaks with fatisfaction of his prefent retirement, feems to make an unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every one who fings in the dark does not fing from joy. It is addreffed, in no com

mon

mon ftrain of flattery, to a Chancellor, of whom he

clearly appears to have had no kind of knowledge.

Of his Satires it would not have been impoffible to fix the dates without the affiftance of first editions, which, as you had occafion to obferve in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We muft then have referred to the Poems, to discover when they were written. For these internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The firft Satire laments that "Guilt's "chief foe in Addifon is fled." The fecond, addreffing himself, asks,

Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,

Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?

A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

The Satires were originally published feparately in folio, under the title of The Univerfal Paffion. These paffages fix the appearance of the first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young feldom fuf fered his pen to dry, after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may conclude that he began his Satires foon after he had written the Paraphrafe on Job. The laft Satire was certainly finished in the beginning of the year 1726. In December 1725 the King, in his paffage from Helvoetfluys, escaped with great difficulty from a ftorm by landing at Rye; and the conclufion of the Satire turns the efcape into a miracle, in fuch an encomiaftick strain of compliment as poetry too of ten feeks to pay to royalty.

From the fixth of these poems we learn,

Midft empire's charms, how Carolina's heart

Glow'd with the love of virtue and of art:

fince the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,

Her

Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,

Excels of goodness! it has dawn'd on me.

Her Majesty had stood godmother and given her name to a daughter of the Lady whom Young married in 1731.

The fifth Satire, on Women, was not published till 1727; and the fixth not till 1728.

To these Poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he prefixed a Preface; in which he obferves, that "no man can converfe much in the "world but, at what he meets with, he must either "be infenfible or grieve, or be angry or fmile. Now "to fmile at it, and turn it into ridicule," adds he, "I "think mot eligible, as it hurts ourselves least, and "gives vice and folly the greatest offence.-Laughing

at the misconduct of the world, will, in a great mea"fure, eafe us of any more difagreeable paffion about it. "One paffion is more effectually driven out by an"other than by reason, whatever fome teach." So wrote, and fo of course thought, the lively and witty Satirist at the grave age of almoft fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the Laft Day. After all, Swift pronounced of thefe Satires, that they should either have been more angry, or more merry.

Is it not somewhat fingular that Young preferved, without any palliation, this Preface, fo bluntly decifive in favour of laughing at the world, in the fame collection of his works which contains the mournful, angry, gloomy Night Thoughts?

At the conclufion of the Preface he applies Plato's beautiful fable of the Birth of Love to modern poetry, with the addition," that Poetry, like Love, is a little fubject to blindnefs, which makes her mistake her

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way to preferments and honours; and that the re "tains a dutiful admiration of her father's family; "but divides her favours, and generally lives with her "mother's relations." Poetry, it is true, did not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not fomething like blindness in the flattery which he fometimes forced her, and her fifter Profe, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but furely Young, though nearly related to Poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the mother of Love. That he could not well complain of being related to Poverty appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By The Univerfal Paffion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds. A confiderable fum had already been fwallowed up in the South-Sea. For this lofs he took the vengeance of an author. His Muse makes poetical use more than once of a South-Sea Dream.

It is related by Mr. Spence, in his Manufcript Anecdotes, on the authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his Univerfal Paffion, received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, Two thousand pounds for a poem he faid it was the best bargain he ever made in his life, for the poem was worth four thoufand.

This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two anfwers of Lord Burghley and Sir Philip Sidney in Spenfer's Life.

After infcribing his Satires, not without the hope of preferments and honours, to the Duke of Dorset,

3

Mr.

Mr. Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain, and Sir Robert Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. In 1726 he addreffed a poem to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title fufficiently explains the intention. If Young was a ready celebrator, he did not endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. The Inftalment is among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his excufeable writings. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the power of bestowing immortality:

Oh how I long, enkindled by the theme,

In deep eternity to launch thy name!

The bounty of the former reign feems to have been continued, poffibly increased, in this. Whatever it was, the poet thought he deferved it ;-for he was not afhamed to acknowledge what, without his acknowledgement, would now perhaps never have been known:

My breaft, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The ftreams of royal bounty, turn'd by thee,
Refresh the dry domains of poefy.

If the purity of modern patriotifm term Young a penfioner, it must at least be confeffed he was a grateful

one.

The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode. The hint of it was taken from the royal fpeech, which recommended the increafe and encouragement of the feamen; that they might be invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the fervice of their country;-a a plan which humanity muft lament that policy has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution. Prefixed to the original publication were an Ode to the King, Pater Patria, and an Effay on Lyrick Poetry. It VOL. IV.

R

is