within his influence; but if once offended, not But the four parts of his "Pastoral Ballad " easily appeased: inattentive to economy, and demand particular notice. I cannot but regret careless of his expenses. In his person he was that it is pastoral; an intelligent reader, acquaintlarger than the middle size, with something clum-ed with the scenes of real life, sickens at the sy in his form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his gray hair in a particular manner; for he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man was to suit his appearance to his natural form.* His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated. mention of the crook, the pipe, the sheep, and the kids, which it is not necessary to bring forward to notice, for the poet's art is selection, and he ought to show the beauties without the grossness of the country life. His stanza seems to have been chosen in imitation of Rowe's "Despairing Shepherd." In the first part are two passages, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaint His life was unstained by any crime; the Ele-ance with love or nature. gy on Jesse, which has been supposed to relate an unfortunate and criminal amour of his own, was known by his friends to have been suggested by the story of Miss Godfrey, in Richardson's "Pamela." What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his letters, was this: "I have read too an octavo volume of Shenstone's Letters. Poor man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and commend it; his correspondence is about nothing else but this place and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who wrote verses too." His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous sallies, and moral pieces. I priz'd every hour that went by, My path I could hardly discern; I thought that she bade me return. I have found out a gift for my fair; I have found where the wood-pigeons breed; She will say 'twas a barbarous deed: 'Tis his with mock-passions to glow! How the nightingales labour the strain, His conception of an elegy he has in his pre-amorous poetry with some address:face very judiciously and discriminately explained. It is, according to his account, the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and always serious, and therefore superior to the glitter of slight ornaments. His compositions suit not ill to this description. His topics of praise are the domestic virtues, and his thoughts are pure and simple; but, wanting combination, they want variety. The peace of solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an humble station, can fill but a few pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will be soon described. His elegies have therefore too much resemblance of each other. The lines are sometimes such as elegy requires, sinooth and easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant; his diction is often harsh, improper, and affected; his words ill-coined, or ill-chosen; and his phrase unskilfully inverted. In the fourth I find nothing better than this natural strain of Hope: Alas from the day that we met, What hope of an end to my woes, The glance that undid my repose? In time may have comfort for me. The lyric poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as trip lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any weighty meaning. From Of the moral poems, the first is "The Choice these, however, Rural Elegance has some right to of Hercules," from Xenophon. The numbers be excepted. I once heard it praised by a very are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts learned lady; and though the lines are irregular, just; but something of vigour is still to be wishand the thoughts diffused with too much verbosi-ed, which it might have had by brevity and comty, yet it cannot be denied to contain both philosophical argument and poetical spirit. Of the rest I cannot think any excellent: "The Skylark" pleases me best, which has, however, more of the epigram than of the ode. "These," says Mr. Graves, "were not precisely his sentiments, though he thought right enough, that every one should, in some degree, consult his particular shape and complexion in adjusting his dress; and that no fashion ought to sanctify what was ungraceful, ab. surd, or really deformed." pression. His "Fate of Delicacy" has an air of gayety, but not a very pointed and general moral. His blank verses, those that can read them may probably find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours. "Love and Honour" is derived from the old ballad, "Did you not hear of a Spanish Lady?"-I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme. "The School-Mistress," of which I know not what claim it has to stand among the moral works, is surely the most pleasant of Shenstone's performances. The adoption of a particular style, in light and short compositions, contributes much to the increase of pleasure; we are entertained at once with two imitations, of nature in the sentiments, of the original author in the style; and between them the mind is kept in perpetual employment. The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his mind been better stored with knowledge, whe ther he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable. YOUNG. upon breach upon us, and has now carried away the head of this body with a stroke; so that he, whom you saw a week ago distributing the holy THE following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman who had better information than I could easily have obtained; and the public will perhaps wish that I had solicited and ob-mysteries, is now laid in the dust. But he still tained more such favours from him.* "DEAR SIR, "Of great men, something must always be said to gratify curiosity. Of the illustrious Author of the "Night Thoughts" much has been told of which there never could have been proofs; and little care appears to have been taken to tell that, of which proofs, with little trouble, might have been procured." lives in the many excellent directions he has left us, both how to live and how to die." The Dean placed his son upon the foundation "In consequence of our different conversations at Winchester College, where he had himself about authentic materials for the life of Young,been educated. At this school Edward Young I send you the following detail. remained till the election after his eighteenth birthday, the period at which those upon the foundation are superannuated. Whether he did not betray his abilities early in life, or his masters had not skill enough to discover in their pupil any marks of genius for which he merited reward, or no vacancy at Oxford offered them an opportunity to bestow upon him the reward provided for merit by William of Wykeham; certain it is, that to an Oxford fellowship our Poet did not succeed. By chance, or by choice, New College cannot claim the honour of numbering among its fellows him who wrote the "Night Thoughts." EDWARD YOUNG was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June, 1681. He was the son of Edward Young, at that time fellow of Winchester College and rector of Upham; who was the son of Jo. Young, of Woodhay, in Berkshire, styled by Wood, gentleman. In September, 1632, the Poet's father was collated to the prebend of Gillingham Minor, in the church of Sarum, by Bishop Ward. When Ward's faculties were impaired through age, his duties were necessarily performed by others. We learn from Wood, that at a visitation of Sprat's, July the 12th, 1636, the prebendary preached a Latin sermon, afterwards published, with which the bishop was so pleased, that he told the chapter he was concerned to find the preacher had one of the worst prebends in their church. Some time after this, in consequence of his merit and reputation, or of the interest of Lord Bradford, to whom, in 1702, he dedicated two volumes of sermons, he was appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, and preferred to the deanery of Sarum. Jacob, who wrote in 1720, says, "he was chaplain and clerk of the closet to the late queen, who honoured him by standing godmother to the Poet." His fellowship of Winchester he resigned in favour of a gentleman of the name of Harris, who married his only daughter. The Dean died at Sarum, after a short illness, in 1705, in the sixty-third year On the Sunday after his decease Bishop Burnet preached at the cathedral, and began his sermon with saying, "Death has been of late walking round us, and making breach of his age. * See Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. p. 225.—N. On the 13th of October, 1703, he was entered an independent member of New College, that he might live at little expense in the warden's lodgings, who was a particular friend of his father's, till he should be qualified to stand for a fellowship at All Souls. In a few months the warden of New College died. He then removed to Corpus College. The president of this society, from regard also for his father, invited him thi ther, in order to lessen his academical expenses. In 1708, he was nominated to a law-fellowship at All Souls by Archbishop Tenison, into whose hands it came by devolution. Such repeated patronage, while it justifies Burnet's praise of the father, reflects credit on the conduct of the son: the manner in which it was exerted seems to prove that the father did not leave behind much wealth. On the 23d of April, 1714, Young took his degree of bachelor of civil laws, and his doctor's degree on the 10th of June, 1719. Soon after he went to Oxford, he discovered, it is said, an inclination for pupils. Whether he ever commenced tutor is not known. None has hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from the author of the "Night Thoughts." It is probable that his College was proud of him no less as a scholar than as a poet; for, in 1716, when the foundation of the Codrington Library was laid, two years after he had taken nis bachelor's degree, Young was appointed to speak the Latin oration. This is at least particular for being dedicated in English "To the Ladies of the Codrington Family." To these ladies he says, that "he was unavoidably flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle dedicatory void of common-place, and such a one was never published before by any author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any obligation of reading what was presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of it, because it would make people stare, was absurd enough, and perfectly right." Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his works; and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, 1741, is a letter from Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December the 9th, 1739, wherein he says, that he has not leisure to review what he formerly wrote, and adds, “I have not the 'Epistle to Lord Lansdowne.' If you will take my advice, I would have you omit that, and the Oration on Codrington. I think the collection will sell better without them." There are who relate, that, when first Young found himself independent, and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became. The authority of his father, indeed, had ceased, some time before, by his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronised by the infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet, and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronised only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out? Yet Pope is said by Ruff head to have told Warburton, that "Young had much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets; but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the clerical character, when he assumed it, first with decency, and afterwards with honour." They who think ill of Young's morality in the early part of his life, may perhaps be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to spend much of his time at All Souls. "The other boys," said the Atheist, "I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually pestering me with something of his own."* After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcileable. Young might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue, but the potent testimony of experience against vice. As my great friend is now become the subject of biography, it should be told, that, every time I called upon Johnson during the time I was employed in collecting materials for this life and putting it together, he never Buffered me to depart without some such farewell as this: "Don't forget that rascal Tindal, sir. Be sure to hang up the Atheist." Alluding to this anecdote, which Johnson had mentioned to me. We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was more serious than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets. Young perhaps ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the "Poem to his Majesty," presented, with a copy of verses, to Somers; and hoped that he also might soar to wealth and honour on wings of the same kind. His first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to the House of Lords the sons of the Earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in one day, ten others to the number of peers. In order to reconcile the people to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, "An Epistle to the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdowne." In this composition the Poet pours out his panegyric with the extravagance of a young man, who thinks his present stock of wealth will never be exhausted. The poem seems intended also to reconcile the public to the late peace. This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and that in peace "harvests wave, and Commerce swells her sail." If this be humanity, for which he meant it, is it politics? Another purpose of this Epistle appears to have been, to prepare the public for the reception of some tragedy he might have in hand. His Lordship's patronage, he says, will not let him "repent his passion for the stage ;" and the particular praise bestowed on “Othello” and “Oroonoko" looks as if some such character as Zanga was even then in contemplation. The affectionate mention of the death of his friend Harrison, of New College, at the close of this poem, is an instance of Young's art, which displayed itself so wonderfully some time afterwards in the " Night Thoughts," of making the public a party in his private sorrow. Should justice call upon you to censure this poem, it ought at least to be remembered that he did not insert it in his works; and that in the letter to Curll, as we have seen, he advises its omission. The book sellers, in the late body of English Poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective authors. This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young. "I think," says he, "the following pieces in four volumes to be the most excusable of all that I have written; and I wish less apology was needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them as pardonable as it was in my power to do." Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners? When Addison published "Cato," in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the pieces which the Author of the "Night Thoughts" did not republish. On the appearance of his Poem on the Last Day, Addison did not return Young's compli ment; but "The Englishman" of October 29, 1713, which was probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. "The Last Day," was published soon after the peace. The vice-chancellor's imprimatur, for it was printed Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed differently, particulariy in Young's Works.-J. N. found him fixed as a statue, and earnestly | ral, March 14, 1740, as authority for the life of a gazing upward at a noble elm, which in its up-poet. But biographers do not always find such permost branches was much withered and decayed. Pointing at it, he said, 'I shall be like that tree, I shall die at top.'" Is it not probable that this visit to Ireland was paid when he had an opportunity of going thither with his avowed friend and patron? certain guides as the oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to determine whether two annuities, granted by the Duke of Wharton to Young, were for legal considerations. One was dated the 24th of March, 1719, and accounted for his Grace's bounty in a From "The Englishman" it appears that a style princely and commendable, if not legaltragedy by Young was in the theatre so early as "considering that the public good is advanced by 1713. Yet "Busiris" was not brought upon the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, Drury-lane stage till 1719. It was inscribed to and being pleased therein with the attempts of the Duke of Newcastle, "because the late in- Dr. Young, in consideration thereof, and of the stances he had received of his Grace's undeserv-love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the ed and uncommon favour, in an affair of some 10th of July, 1722. consequence, foreign to the theatre, had taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." The dedication he afterwards suppressed. "Busiris" was followed in the year 1731 by "The Revenge." He dedicated this famous tragedy to the Duke of Wharton. "Your Grace," says the dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessary to the following scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the whole." That his Grace should have suggested the incident to which he alludes, whatever that incident might have been, is not unlikely. The last mental exertion of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in Spain, was some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary Queen of Scots. Dryden dedicated Marriage a-la-Mode" to Wharton's infamous relation Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to Wharton thus-"My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care, which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour, since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit, though, through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty and respect, I happened to receive the benefit of it." That he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his works. He should have remembered that he at the same time concealed his obligation to Wharton for the most beautiful incident in what is surely not his least beautiful composition. The passage just quoted is, in a poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied : Be this thy partial smile from censure free! 'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me. While Young, who, in his "Love of Fame," complains grievously how often "dedications wash an Ethiop white," was painting an amiable Duke of Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe the " scorn and wonder of his days" in lasting verse. To the patronage of such a character, had Young studied men as much as Pope, he would have known how little to have trusted. Young, however, was certainly indebted to it for something material; and the Duke's regard for Young, added to his "lust of praise," procured to All Souls College a donation, which was not forgotten by the poet when he dedicated "The Revenge." It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, Case 136, Stiles versus the Attorney-Gene Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and refused an annuity of one hundred pounds, which had been offered him for life if he would continue tutor to Lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations of the Duke of Wharton, and his Grace's assurances of providing for him in a much more ample manner. It also appeared that the Duke had given him a bond for six hundred pounds, dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration of his taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to be chosen member of the House of Commons, at the Duke's desire, and in consideration of his not taking two livings of two hundred pounds and four hundred pounds, in the gift of All Souls College, on his Grace's promises of serving and advancing him in the world. Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account. The attempt to get into parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood a contested election. His Grace discovered in him talents for oratory as well as for poetry: nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was preaching in his turn at St. James's, he plainly perceived it was out of his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit and burst into tears. But we must pursue his poetical life. In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if they contain any, it is now vain to seek : In joy once join'd, in sorrow, now, for yearsPartner in grief and brother of my tears, Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due. From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to "communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things." In 1719 appeared a "Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job." Parker, to whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been qualified for a patron. Of this work the Author's opinion may be known from his letter to Curll: "You seem, in the Collection you propose, to have omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean a Translation from Part of Job, printed by Mr. Tonson." The Dedication, which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson's edition, while it speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every |