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 a 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 deferved any reproof, was fomething longer than a diftich, and fomething more gentle than this diftich. No stranger, Sir, though born in foreign climes. By Dorfet downs he probably meant Mr. While with your Dodington retir'd you fit, Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c, In 1734 he publifhed The foreign Addrefs, occafioned by the British Fleet and the Pofture of Affairs. Written in the Character of a This Ode confifted of forty-five Sailor. My fhell which Clio gave, which Kings applaud, In a fpecies of poetry altogether his own he next tried his skill, and fucceeded. Of his wife he was deprived in 1740. She was foon followed by an amiable daughter, the child of her former husband, who was 1 juft married to Mr. Temple, fon of Lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple did not long remain after his wife *. How fuddenly their deaths happened, and how nearly together, none who has read the Night Thoughts (and who has not read them?) needs to be informed. Insatiate Archer! could not one suffice? Thy fhaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was flain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn. To the forrow Young felt at his loffes we are indebted for thefe poems. There is a pleasure fure in sadness which mourners only know. Of these poems the three or four first have been perused perhaps more eagerly, and more frequently, than the latter. When he got as far as the fourth or fifth, his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We find the fame religion, the fame piety; but we hear lefs of Philander and of Narciffa. * The Irish Peerage, if authentic, in the account of Lord Palmerston's family, fomewhat confuses this busi¬ nefs; but I take what I have related to be the fact. Mrs. Mrs. Temple died in her bridal hour at Nice. He, with the reft of her family, accompanied her to the continent, He flew, he fnatch'd her from the rigid North, And bore her nearer to the fun. The poet seems to dwell with more melancholy on the deaths of Philander and Narciffa, than of his wife. 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 must have been charged with diftinct paffages. This Lady brought him one child, Frederick, now living. 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 discontent 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, notwith standing upon standing the livelinefs 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 the watch for the first which happened. Night Thoughts were not uncommon to her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominefs. In his Laft Day, almost his earliest 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 second book of the fame poem -Oh! permit the gloom of folemn night 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 some mea fure the fullen inspiration of discontent? Whether |