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 distinct paffages. This Lady brought him one child, Frederick, now living.

That domeftick grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these ornaments to our language it is impoffible to deny. Nor would it be common hardiness to contend that worldly dif content 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 fomething of the fame colour from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the livelinefs of his fatires. In fo long a life, caufes for dif

content

content and occafions for grief must have occurred. It is not clear to me that his

Mufe was not fitting upon the watch for the first which happened. Night Thoughts were not uncommon to her, even when first fhe vifited the poet, and at a time when he himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominefs. In his Laft Day, almoft his earlieft 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 fecond book of the fame poem—

-Oh! permit the gloom of folemn. night

To facred thought may forcibly invite.

! Oh!

Oh! how divine to tread the milky way, To the bright palace of Eternal Day!

Still, is it altogether fair to dress upthe 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 fome measure the fullem" inspiration of discontent?

Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous De mortuis nil nift 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 praife. De mortuis nil nifi verum-De vivis nil nifi bonum-would approach much nearer to good fenfe. After all, the few handfulls

1

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 jeft. To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick.-His immortal part, whereever 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

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 choofes that Lorenzo should be Young's own fon. The Biographia pretty roundly afferts 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 peruse the Night Thoughts with lefs fatisfaction; who will with they had ftill been deceived; who will quarrel with me for discovering that no fuch character as Lorenzo ever yet difgraced human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would these admirers of the fublime

and