when the foundation of the Codrington Library was laid, two years after he had taken his 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 bis own edition of his works; and prefixed to an edition by Curl and Tonson, 1741, is a letter from Young to Curl, 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 patronized by the infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet, and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronized only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out? "Yet Pope is said by Ruffhead 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 2.' "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. "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 honours on wings of the same kind. His first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to the House of Lords the 2 Every time I called upon Johnson during the time I was employed in collecting materials for this life, he never suffered 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. 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. 6 "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 booksellers, in the late body of English Poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective authors 3. This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young. I think, (says 3 Dr. Johnson, in many cases, thought and directed differently. 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 compliment; 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 at Oxford, is dated May the 19th, 1713. From the exordium Young appears to have spent some time on the composition of it. While other bards 'with Britain's hero set their souls on fire,' he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough had been considered by Britain as her hero; but, when the Last Day' was published, female cabal had blasted for a time the laurels of Blenheim. This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710, before he was thirty; for part of it is printed in the 'Tatler.' It was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he did not admit into his works. It tells her, that only title to the great honour he now does himself, is the obligation which he formerly received from her royal indulgence.' bis ‘Of this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded to her being his godmother. He is said, indeed, to have been engaged at a settled stipend as 6 a writer for the court. In Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry' are these lines, speaking of the court Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace, Where Pope will never show his face, To flatter knaves, or lose his pension. "That Y means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same poem: Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays, You cannot err on Flattery's side. "Yet who shall say with certainty, that Young was a pensioner? In all modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been regularly called hirelings, and on the other patriots? "Of the Dedication the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in the highest terms of the late peace; it gives her majesty praise indeed for her victories, but says, that the author is more pleased to see her rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the boundless spaces on the other side of Creation, in her journey towards eternal bliss, till he behold the Heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth. "The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he conscious of the exaggera |