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 weakness 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 hand-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 jest. To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick.-His 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 posterity 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 detestable, and fucceeded at laft in bringing his hairs with forrow to the grave.

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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 fhould be Young's own fon. The Biographia pretty roundly afferts this to be the fact; of the abfolute impoffibility of which the Biographia itself, in particular dates, contains undeniable evidence. Readers I know there are of a ftrange turn of mind, who will hereafter peruse the Night Thoughts with less fatisfaction; who will wish they had still been deceived; who will quarrel with me for difcovering that no fuch character as Lorenzo ever yet disgraced human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would thefe admirers of the fublime and terrible be offended, fhould you set 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 performance itself. From the first line to the last of the Night Thoughts, no one expreffion

expreffion can be difcovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the second Night I find an 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 fett. The Poet ftyles him gay Friend-an appellation not very natural from a pious incenfed father to fuch a being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his fon.

But let us fee how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the fight of fome of whose features the artist himself must have turned away with horror!--A fubject more fhocking, if his only child really fat to him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid ftory told of which, Young composed a short Poem of fourteen lines in the early part of life, which he did not think deferved to be republished.

In the first Night, the address to the Poet's fuppofed son 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 travell'd far)→ which even now does not apply to his son.

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 praife.

But, to cut fhort 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

Thoughts was not old enough, when the Night Thoughts were written, to recriminate, or to be a father. The Night Thoughts were begun immediately after the mournful events of 1740. The firft Nights appear in the Stationers' books 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 April 1732. Young's child was not born till June 1733. In 1740 this Lorenzo, this finished, infidel, this father, to whofe education Vice had for fome years put the laft hand, was only seven years old. An anecdote of this cruel fort, fo open to contradiction, so impoffible to be true, who could propagate? Thus eafily are blafted 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, was he not his nephew, his coufin?

These are queftions which I do not pretend to answer. For the fake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only VOL. IV. D d

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