connexion, and to the expectations of that preferment which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at least, to the manner in which they had fo frequently been exerted.

The next production of his Mufe was The Sea-piece, in two odes.

Young enjoys the credit of what is called an Extempore Epigram on Voltaire; who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death

You are fo witty, profligate, and thin,

At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.

From the following paffage in the poetical Dedication of his Sea-piece to Voltaire, it seems that his extemporaneous reproof, if it must be extemporaneous, for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved any reproof, was fomething longer than a diftich, and fomething more gentle than the diftich juft quoted.

No stranger, Sir, though born in foreign climes.

On Dorfet downs, when Milton's page,
With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage,

Thy rage provok'd, who footh'd with gentle rhymes?

By Dorfet downs he probably meant Mr. Dodington's feat. In Pitt's Poems is An Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury in Dorfetfhire, on the Review at Sarum, 1722.

1

While with your Dodington retired you fit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.

Thomfon, in his Autumn, addreffing Mr. Doding

ton, calls his feat the feat of the Mufes,

Where, in the fecret bower and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.

The praises Thomson beftows but a few lines before on
Philips, the fecond

Who nobly durft, in rhyme-unfettered verfe,
With British freedom fing the British fong,

added to Thomson's example and fuccefs, might perhaps induce Young, as we shall fee prefently, to write his great work without rhyme.

In 1734 he published The Foreign Addrefs, or the best Argument for Peace; occafioned by the British Fleet and the Pofture of Affairs. Written in the Character of a Sailor. It is not to be found in the author's four volumes.

He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and perhaps at laft refolved to turn his ambition to fome original fpecies of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewel to Ode, which few of Young's readers will regret :

My fhell which Clio gave, which Kings applaud,
Which Europe's bleeding Genius call'd abroad,
Adieu !

In a fpecies of poetry altogether his own he next tried his skill, and fucceeded.

Of his wife he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had loft, after her marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, juft after she was married to Mr. Temple, fon of Lord Palmerfton. Mr. Temple did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a fecond time to a daughter of Sir John Barnard, whofe fon is the prefent peer. Mr. and Mrs. Temple have generally been confidered as Philander and Narciffa. From the great friendship which conftantly fubfifted between Mr. Temple and Young,

as

as well as from other circumstances, it is probable the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these characters; though at the fame time there are fome paffages refpecting Philander which do not appear to fuit either Mr. Temple or any other perfon with whom Young was known to be connected or acquainted, while all the circumftances relating to Narciffa have been conftantly found applicable to Young's daughterin-law.

At what fhort intervals the poet tells us he was wounded by the deaths of the three perfons particularly lamented, none that has read the Night Thoughts (and who has not read them?) needs to be informed.

Infatiate Archer! could not one fuffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was flain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn. Yet how is it poffible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and Lady Elizabeth Young could be these three victims over whom Young has hitherto been pitied for having to pour the Midnight Sorrows of his religious poetry? Mrs. Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards in 1740; and the poet's wife feven months after Mr. Temple in 1741. How could the infatiate Archer thrice flay his peace, in these three perfons, ere thrice the moon had filled her horn?

But in the fhort Preface to The Complaint he ferioufly tells us, "the occafion of this poem was real, 66 not fictitious; and that the facts mentioned did "naturally pour thefe moral reflections on the "thought of the writer." It is probable, therefore, that in these three contradictory lines, the poet complains more than the father-in-law, the friend, or the widower.

Whatever

Whatever names belong to these facts, or, if the names be those generally fuppofed, whatever heightening a poet's forrow may have given the facts; to the forrow Young felt from them, religion and morality are indebted for the Night Thoughts. There is a pleafure fure in fadness which mourners only know!

Of these poems the two or three firft have been perufed perhaps more eagerly and more frequently than the reft. When he got as far as the fourth or fifth, his original motive for taking up the pen was anfwered; his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We ftill find the fame pious poet; but we hear lefs of Philander and Narciffa, and lefs of the mourner whom we loved to pity.

Mrs. Temple died of a confumption at Lyons, in her way to Nice, the year after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, in her bridal hour. It is more than poetically true, that Young accompanied her to the continent.

I flew, I fnatch'd her from the rigid North,

And bore her nearer to the fun.

But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in fuch animated colours in Night the Third. After her death, the remainder of the party paffed the enfuing winter at Nice.

The poet feems perhaps in thefe compofitions to dwell with more melancholy on the deaths of Philander and Narciffa, than of his wife. But it is only for this reafon. He who runs and reads may remember, that in the Night Thoughts Philander and Narciffa are often mentioned, and often lamented. To recollect lamentations over the author's wife, the memory muft have been charged with diftinct paffages. This Lady brought

brought him one child, Frederick, now living, to whom the Prince of Wales was godfather.

That domeftick grief is, in the first inftance, to be thanked for these ornaments to our language, it is impoffible to deny.. Nor would it be common hardiness to contend, that worldly difcontent had no hand in these joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means fure that, at any rate, we should not have had something of the fame colour from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his fatires. In fo long a life, causes for discontent 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 firft fhe visited the poet, and at a time when he himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his Laft Day, almoft his earliest poem, he calls her the melancholy Maid,

whom difmal fcenes delight,

Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night.

In the prayer which concludes the fecond book of the fame poem, he fays

-Oh! permit the gloom of folemn night
To facred thought may forcibly invite.
Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
To the bright palace of Eternal Day !

When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is faid by Spence to have fent him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp; and the poet is reported to have ufed it.

What he calls "The true eftimate of Human Life," which has already been mentioned, exhibits only the

wrong