wrong fide of the tapestry; and being asked why he did not show the right, he is said to have replied he could not-though by others it has been told me that this was finished, but that a Lady's monkey tore it in pieces before there existed any copy.

Still, is it altogether fair to drefs up the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the Night Thoughts to prove the gloominess of Young, and to fhew that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was in fome measure the fullen inspiration of discontent?

From them who answer in the affirmative it should not be concealed that, though Invifibilia non decipiunt was infcribed upon a deception in Young's grounds, and Ambulantes in horto audiérunt vocem Dei on a building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good humour of the author of the Night Thoughts for an affembly and a bowling green.

Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous De mortuis nil nifi bonum, always appeared to me to favour more of female weakness than of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead, who, if they cannot defend themselves, are at least ignorant of his abufe, will not hesitate by the most wanton calumny to deftroy the quiet, the reputation, the fortune of the living. Cenfure is not heard beneath the tomb any more than praife. De mortuis nil nifi verum-De vivis nil nifi bonum-would approach perhaps much nearer to good fenfe. After all, the few handfuls 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

immortal part, wherever 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 laft in bringing his grey hairs with forrow to the

grave. 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 chooses that Lorenzo should be Young's own fon. The Biographia and every account of Young pretty roundly affert this to be the fact; of the absolute 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 fuch character as their Lorenzo ever yet dif graced human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would thefe admirers of the fublime and terrible be offended, fhould you fet them down for cruel and for favage.

Of this report, inhuman to the furviving fon, if it be untrue, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to find the proofs ? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.

From the first line to the last of the Night Thoughts, no one expreffion can be discovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the fecond Night I find an

expreffion

expreffion which betrays fomething else; that Lorenzo was his friend: one, it is poffible, of his former companions; one of the Duke of Wharton's fet. The Poet ftyles him gay Friend-an appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father to fuch a being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his fon.

But let us fee how he has ketched this dreadful portrait, from the fight of fome of whose features the artist himself must have turned away with horror.-A fubject more shocking, if his only child really fat to him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told of which, Young compofed a fhort Poem of fourteen lines in the early part of his life, which he did not think deserved to be republished. In the first Night, the addrefs to the Poet's fuppofed fon is,

Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee.

In the fifth Night

And burns Lorenzo ftill for the fublime

Of life? to hang his airy neft on high?

Is this a picture of the fon of the rector of Welwyn ?

Eighth Night

In foreign realms (for thou haft travelled far)— which even now does not apply to his fon.

In Night five

So wept Lorenzo fair Clariffa's fate,

Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes,
And died to give him, orphan'd in his birth!
At the beginning of the fifth Night we find-

Lorenzo, to recriminate is juft,

I grant the man is vain who writes for praise

But,

But, to cut short all enquiry; if any one of these paffages, if any paffage in the poems be applicable, my friend fhall pafs for Lorenzo. The fon of the author of the Night Thoughts was not old enough, when they were written, to recriminate, or to be a father. The Night Thoughts were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The firft Nights appear in the books of the company of Stationers, as the property of Robert Dodfley, in 1742. The Preface to Night Seven is dated July the 7th, 1744. The marriage, in confequence of which the fuppofed Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till June 1733. In 1741 this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to whofe education Vice had for fome years put the laft hand, was only eight years old.

An anecdote of this cruel fort, fo open to contradiction, fo impoffible to be true, who could propagate? Thus easily are blasted the reputations of the living and of the dead.

Who then was Lorenzo? exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If he was not his fon, which would have been finely terrible, was he not his nephew, his coufin?

These are queftions which I do not pretend to anfwer. For the fake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the Poet's fancy-no more than the Quintius of Anti-Lucretius, quo nomine, fays Polignac, quemvis Atheum intellige. That this was the cafe, many expreffions in the Night Thoughts would feem to prove, did not a paffage in Night Eight appear to fhew that he had fomebody in his eye for the ground-work at least of the painting. Lovelace or Lorenzo may be feigned characters; but

a writer

a writer does not feign a name of which he only gives the initial letter.

Tell not Califta. She will laugh thee dead.
Or fend thee to her hermitage with L-.

The Biographia, not fatisfied with pointing out the fon of Young, in that fon's lifetime, as his father's Lorenzo, travels out of its way into the hiftory of the fon, and tells of his having been forbidden his college at Oxford for misbehaviour. How fuch anecdotes, were they true, tend to illuftrate the life of Young, it is not easy to discover. If the fon of the author of the Night Thoughts was indeed forbidden his college for a time, at one of our Universities, the author of Paradife Loft is by fome fupposed to have been difgracefully ejected from the other. From juvenile follies who is free? But, whatever the Biographia chooses to relate, the fon of Young experienced no difmiffion from his college either lafting or

temporary.

Yet, were nature to indulge him with a fecond youth, and to leave him at the fame time the experience of that which is paft, he would probably spend it differently-who would not?-he would certainly be the occafion of lefs uneafinefs to his father. But, from the fame experience, he would as certainly, in the fame cafe, be treated differently by his father.

Young was a poet; poets, with reverence be it fpoken, do not make the best parents. Fancy and imagination feldom deign to ftoop from their heights; always ftoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties. Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of mortals, and defcend

not