Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance, This political poem might be called a "Night "Thought." Indeed it was originally printed as the conclusion of the "Night Thoughts," though he did not gather it with his other works. Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's "De"vout Meditations" is a Letter from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald Macauly, Esq.; thanking him for the book, which he says "he 'shall never lay far out of his reach; for a greater demonstration of a sound head and a sin66 cere heart he never saw. 66 In 1753, when " The Brothers" had laid by him above thirty years, it appeared upon the stage. If any part of his fortune had been acquired by servility of adulation, he now determined to deduct from it no inconsiderable sum, as a gift to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. To this sum he hoped the profit of "The Brothers" would amount. In his calculation he was deceived; but by the bad success of his play the Society was not a loser. The author made up the sum he originally intended, which was a thousand pounds, from his own pocket. The next performance which he printed was a prose publication, entituled, "The Centaur not fabulous, "in six Letters to a Friend on the Life in Vogue." The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third Letter is described the death-bed of the "gay, young, noble, ingenious, "accomplished, and most wretched Altamont." 66 "His last words were-my principles have poison❝ed my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness has murdered my wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of wickedness. Report has been accustomed to call Altamont Lord Euston. "The Old Man's Relapse," occasioned by an Epistle to Walpole, if written by Young, which I much doubt, must have been written very late in life. It has been seen, I am told, in a Miscellany published thirty years before his death. In 1758, he exhibited "The Old Man's Relapse" in more than words, by again becoming a dedicator, and publishing a sermon addressed to the king. 66 66 The lively Letter in Prose, on “Original Composition," addressed to Richardson, the author of Clarissa," appeared in 1759. “Though he despairs "of breaking through the frozen obstructions of 66 age and care's incumbent cloud, into that flow of thought and brightness of expression which sub'jects so polite require ;"'yet it is more like the production of untamed, unbridled youth, than of jaded fourscore. Some sevenfold volumes put him in mind of Ovid's sevenfold channels of the Nile at the conflagration: 66 ostia septem Pulverulentula vocant, septem sine flumine valles. Such leaden labours are like Lycurgus's iron money, which was so much less in value than in bulk, that it required barns for strong boxes, and a yoke of oxen to draw five hundred pounds. If there is a famine of invention in the land, we must travel, he says, like Joseph's brethren, far for food; we must visit the remote and rich ancients. But an inventive genius may safely stay at home; that, like the widow's cruse, is divinely replenished from within, and affords us a miraculous delight. He asks why it should seem altogether impossible, that Heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be the most correct and fair? And Johnson, he tells us, was very learned, as Sampson was very strong, to his own hurt. Blind to the nature of tragedy, he pulled down all antiquity on his head, and buried himself under it. Is this "care's incumbent cloud," or "the frozen "obstructions of age?" In this letter Pope is severely censured for his "fall from Homer's numbers, free as air, lofty and "harmonious as the spheres, into childish shackles "and tinkling sounds; for putting Achilles into "petticoats a second time:" but we are told that the dying swan talked over an Epic plan with Young a few weeks before his decease. Young's chief inducement to write this letter was, as he confesses that he might erect a monumental marble to the memory of an old friend. He, who employed his pious pen for almost the last time in thus doing justice to the exemplary death-bed of Addison, might probably, at the close of his own life, afford no unuseful lesson for the deaths of others. In the postscript he writes to Richardson, that he will see in his next how far Addison is an original. But no other letter appears. The few lines which stand in the last edition, as "sent by Lord Melcombe to Dr. Young, not long "before his Lordship's death," were indeed so sent, but were only an introduction to what was there meant by "The Muse's latest Spark." The poem is necessary, whatever may be its merit, since the Preface to it is already printed. Lord Melcombe called his Tusculum "La Trappe." "Love thy country, wish it well, "Tis enough that, when it fell, Thou its ruin didst not share. Envy's censure, flattery's praise, Void of strong desire and fear, Life's wide ocean trust no more; Strive thy little bark to steer With the tide, but near the shore. Thus prepar'd, thy shorten'd sail Shall, whene'er the winds increase, Seizing each propitious gale, Waft thee to the Port of Peace. Keep thy conscience from offence, And tempestuous passions free, Easy shall thy passage be, Cheerful thy allotted stay, Short th' account 'twixt God and thee: Hope shall meet thee on the way: 1 66 66 Truth shall lead thee to the gate, The poem was accompanied by a Letter. "La Trappe, the 27th of Oct. 1761. "Dear Sir, "You seemed to like the ode I sent you for "amusement: I now send it you as a present. If you please to accept of it, and are willing that "our friendship should be known when we are gone, you will be pleased to leave this among "those of your own papers that may possibly see "the light by a posthumous publication. God "send us health while we stay, and an easy journey! "My dear Dr. Young, "Yours, most cordially, In 1762, a short time before his death, Young published "Resignation." Notwithstanding the manner in which it was really forced from him by the world, criticism has treated it with no common severity. If it shall be thought not to deserve the highest praise, on the other side of fourscore, by whom, except by Newton and by Waller, has praise been merited ? To Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakspeare, I am indebted for the history of "Resignation." Observing that Mrs. Boscawen, in the midst of her grief for the loss of the admiral, 66 |