now reft, contented in ignorance. The fifth Satire, on Women, was not published till 1727; and the fixth not till 1728.

To thefe Poems, when he gathered them into one publication under the title of The Univerfal Paffion, he prefixed a Preface, in which he obferves, that

66

no man can converfe much in the "world but, at what he meets with, he "muft either be infenfible or grieve, or "be angry or fmile. Now to fmile at

1

it, and turn it into ridicule," adds he, "I think most eligible, as it hurts our"felves leaft, and gives vice and folly "the greatest offence.-Laughing at the "mifconduct of the world, will, in a

great meafure, cafe us of any more "difagreeable paffion about it. One હતું paffion is more effectually driven out "by

"by another than by reafon, whatever "fome teach." So wrote, and fo of course thought the fively and witty Satirift at the grave age of almoft fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the Laft Day. After all, Swift pronounced of thefe Satires, that they fhould either have been more angry, or more merry. Is it not fomewhat fingular that Young preferved, without any palhation, this Preface, fo bluntly deci five in favour of laughing at the world, in the fame collection of his works which contains the mournful, angry, gloomy Night Thoughts?

At the conclufion of the Preface he applies Plato's beautiful fable of the Birth of Love to modern poetry, with

the addition, "that Poetry, like Love,

is a little fubject to blindness, which "makes her mistake her way to prefer"ments and honours; and that the re"tains a dutiful admiration of her fa"ther's family; but divides her favours, "and generally lives with her mother's "relations." Poetry, it is true, did not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not fomething like blindness sometimes in the flattery which he forced her, and her fifter Profe, to utter? He always, indeed, made her entertain a moft dutiful admiration of riches; but furely Young, though nearly related to Poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the mother of Love. The frequent bounties his

gratitude records, and the fortune che:: left behind him, clearly fhow that he' could not complain of being related to Poverty. By The Univerfal Paffion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds. A fum not much less had already been swallowed

up

in the South Sea. For this lofs he' took the vengeance of an author. His Mufe makes poetical use more than once of a South-fea Dream.

It is related by Mr. Spence, in his Manufcript Anecdotes, on the autho rity of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his Univerfat Paffion, received from the Duke of Graf-i ton two thousand pounds; and that, w Whenio

when one of his friends exclaimed, Two thousand pounds for a poem! he faid it was the best bargain he ever made in his life, for the poem was worth four thou fand.

This ftory may be true; but it seems

to have been raised from the two answers of Lord Burghley and Sir Philip Sidney in Spenfer's Life.

When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is faid to have fent him a human fkull, with a candle in it, as a proper lamp *.

After inferibing his Satires, not in the hope of not finding preferments and honours, to the Duke of Dorfet, Mr. Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady

* Spence