entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor regret the loss of expensive diversions, or variety of company, if she can be amused with an author in her closet. To render this amusement extensive she should be permitted to learn the languages. I have heard it lamented that boys lose so many years in mere learning of words: this is no objection to a girl, whose time is not so precious : she cannot advance herself in any profession, and has therefore more hours to spare; and as you say her memory is good, she will be very agreeably employed this way. There are two cautions to be given on this subject: first, not to think herself learned when she can read Latin, or even Greek. Languages are more properly to be called vehicles of learning than learning itself, as may be observed in many schoolmasters, who, though perhaps critics in grammar, are the most ignorant fellows upon earth. True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words. I would no further wish her a linguist than to enable her to read books in their originals, that are often corrupted, and always injured, by translations. Two hours' application every morning will bring this about much sooner than you can imagine, and she will have leisure enough besides to run over the English poetry, which is a more important part of a woman's education than it is generally supposed. Many a young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of verses, which she would have laughed at if she had known it had been stolen from Mr Waller. I remember, when I was a girl, I saved one of my companions from destruction, who communicated to me an epistle she was quite charmed with. As she had naturally a good taste, she observed the lines were not so smooth as Prior's or Pope's, but had more thought and spirit than any of theirs. She was wonderfully delighted with such a demonstration of her lover's sense and passion, and not a little pleased with her own charms, that had force enough to inspire such elegancies. In the midst of this triumph, I shewed her that they were taken from Randolph's poems, and the unfortunate transcriber was dismissed with the scorn he deserved. To say truth, the poor plagiary was very unlucky to fall into my hands: that author, being no longer in fashion, would have escaped any one of less universal reading than myself. You should encourage your daughter to talk over with you what she reads; and as you are very capable of distinguishing, take care she does not mistake pert folly for wit and humour, or rhyme for poetry, which are the common errors of young people, and have a train of ill consequences. The second caution to be given her (and which is most absolutely necessary) is to conceal whatever learning she attains, with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness: the parade of it can only serve to draw on her the envy, and consequently the most inveterate hatred, of all he and she fools, which will certainly be at least three parts in four of her acquaintance. The use of knowledge in our sex, beside the amusement of solitude, is to moderate the passions, and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life; and it may be preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves, and will not suffer us to share. You will tell me I have not observed this rule myself; but you are mistaken; it is only inevitable accident that has given me any reputation that way. I have always carefully avoided it, and ever thought it a misfortune. The explanation of this paragraph would occasion a long digression, which I will not trouble you with, it being my present design only to say what I think useful for the instruction of my granddaughter, which I have much at heart. If she has the same inclination (I should say passion) for learning I was born with, history, geography, and philosophy will furnish her with materials to pass away cheerfully a longer life than is allotted to mortals. I believe there are few heads capable of making Sir I. Newton's calculations, but the result of them is not difficult to be understood by a moderate capacity. Do not fear this should make her affect the character of Lady or Lady or Mrs [the blanks are in the original]; these women are ridiculous not because they have learning, but because they have it not. One thinks herself a complete historian after reading Echard's Roman History, another a profound philosopher after having got by heart some of Pope's unintelligible essays, and the third an able divine on the strength of Whitefield's sermons; thus you hear them screaming politics and controversy. It is a saying of Thucydides, ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved. Indeed it is impossible to be far advanced in it without being more humbled by a conviction of human ignorance than elated by learning. At the same time I recommend books, I neither exclude work nor drawing. I think it is as scandalous for a woman not to know how to use a needle, as for a man not to know how to use a sword. I was once extremely fond of my pencil, and it was a great mortification to me when my father turned off my master, having made a considerable progress for a short time I learnt. My over-eagerness in the pursuit of it had brought a weakness on my eyes, that made it necessary to leave it off; and all the advantage I got was the improvement of my hand. I see by hers that practice will make her a ready writer: she may attain it by serv ing you for a secretary, when your health or affairs make it troublesome to you to write yourself; and custom will make it an agreeable amusement to her. She cannot have too many for that station of life which will probably be her fate. The ultimate end of your education was to make you a good wife (and I have the comfort to hear that you are one); hers ought to be to make her happy in a virgin state. I will not say it is happier, but it is undoubtedly safer than any marriage. In a lottery, where there are (at the lowest computation) ten thousand blanks to a prize, it is the most prudent choice not to venture. I have always been so thoroughly persuaded of this truth, that, notwithstanding the flattering views I had for you (as I never intended you a sacrifice to my vanity), I thought I owed you the justice to lay before you all the hazards attending matrimony: you may recollect I did so in the strongest manner. Perhaps you may have more success in the instructing your daughter; she has so much company at home, she will not need seeking it abroad, and will more readily take the notions you think fit to give her. As you were alone in my family, it would have been thought a great cruelty to suffer you no companions of your own age, especially having so many near relations, and I do not wonder their opinions influenced yours. I was not sorry to see you not determined on a single life, knowing it was not your father's intention; and contented myself with endeavouring to make your home so easy that you might not be in haste to leave it. I am afraid you will think this a very long insignificant letter. I hope the kindness of the design will excuse it, being willing to give you every proof in my power that I am Your most affectionate mother. More complete than the surreptitious edition of Lady Mary's letters in 1763 was that of 1803 (5 vols.), and still better that edited by her great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe (1837). This was further extended and improved by Mr Moy Thomas (1861; revised, 1887). The letters from Constantinople and from France have appeared in various shapes. The editor of the surreptitious 1763 edition (3 vols.) was probably John Cleland (1709-89); the forged letters, presumably by him, were issued as a fourth volume in 1767. John Norris (1657–1711), an English Platonist and 'mystic divine,' was one of the earliest opponents of the philosophy of Locke. Educated at Oxford, in 1689 he took a Somersetshire living, but from 1692 he held George Herbert's old rectory of Bemerton near Salisbury. He was an intimate of Henry More. Hallam described him as 'more thoroughly Platonic than Malebranche, to whom, however, he pays great deference, and adopts his fundamental hypothesis of seeing all things in God.' More noteworthy is it that he carried into the eighteenth century much of the spirit of Henry More, something of the mood of Crashaw and Vaughan. His first original work was An Idea of Happiness (1683); his poems, essays, discourses, and letters, entitled A Collection of Miscellanies (1687), went through nine editions. His verses are quaint and full of conceits. One simile of his, in 'The Parting,' was copied or annexed by two better-known poets-by Blair in The Grave, and by Thomas Campbell in The Pleasures of Hope: How fading are the joys we dote upon! Mortality's too weak to bear them long. In 'Lines to the Memory of my dear Neece' Norris repeats the idea in other words: Angels, as 'tis but seldom they appear, Again, when Campbell wrote "Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,' he certainly had before his mind this from Norris's 'Infidel :' Distance presents the objects fair, In the same poem, with its unpromising title, we find the rather memorable stanza: So to the unthinking boy the distant sky Some of his verses are prosaic and tuneless enough to recall Zachary Boyd's paraphrases of Scripture at their worst. Thus 'Adam Turned out of Paradise' complains in these words: O whither now, whither shall I repair, There's nothing left that 's pleasant, good, or fair; Can't make me happy, tho' it makes me great. His twenty-three publications include The Picture of Love Unveiled (a translation from Waring's Latin, 1682); The Theory and Regulation of Love, a Moral Essay (1688); four volumes of Practical Discourses (1690-93); essays on reason and religion, on schism, against Quakerism; a Theory of the Ideal and Intelligible World (1701-4); and A Philosophical Discourse concerning the Immortality of the Soul (1708). Dr Grosart edited Norris's Poems in 1871 for Vol. III. of the Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library,' where he suggests many parallelisms between Norris and later writers, and insists on the debt of Blair and Campbell especially. Christopher Pitt (1699-1748) was admitted. by Johnson into his gallery of English poets. His best-known work is his translation (1725) of Vida's Art of Poetry; and in 1740 he produced a complete English Æneid. He also imitated some of the satires and epistles of Horace, and helped with Creech's Lucretius and Pope's Odyssey. 'Pitt pleases the critics, and Dryden the people; Pitt is quoted, and Dryden read.' Such was Johnson's report; but even the critics have long ceased to delight in him. From New College, Oxford, he was presented to the rectory of Pimperne in his native county of Dorset, and there he spent the rest of his life. 'Diamond Pitt,' Lord Chatham's grandfather, was his cousin. Gilbert West (1700?-1756) translated the Odes of Pindar (1749), prefixing a dissertation on the Olympic games, praised by Gibbon. He wrote Education, a Poem; The Institution of the Garter; and a number of other miscellaneous pieces of poetry. One On the Abuse of Travelling, professedly in imitation of Spenser's manner (1739), was noticed by Gray with very warm commendation. For his Observations on the Resurrection, the University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of D.C.L.; and Lyttelton addressed to him his treatise on St Paul. Pope left West a sum of £200, payable after the death of Martha Blount, and he did not live to receive it. The son of a prebendary of Winchester, he was educated at Eton and Christchurch, and found a post under the Secretary of State for the time. By the influence of Pitt, he was appointed (1752) one of the clerks of the Privy Council, and under-treasurer of Chelsea Hospital. Johnson included his miscellaneous poems in his collection. Edward Young, author of the Night Thoughts, was born towards the end of June 1683 at Upham in Hampshire, where his father-afterwards Dean of Salisbury— was rector. He was educated at Winchester School, and subsequently at New, Corpus, and All Souls Colleges, Oxford. In 1712 he commenced as poet and courtier of the great, and he continued both professions till he was over eighty. One of his patrons was the notorious Duke of Wharton, 'the scorn and wonder of his days,' whom Young accompanied to Ireland in 1716-17. He was for a while tutor in the family of the Marquis of Exeter, but was induced by Wharton to stand as parliamentary candidate for Cirencester, receiving a bond for £600 to defray expenses. Young was defeated, Wharton died (1731), but the EDWARD YOUNG, D.D. (From an Engraving in the British Museum.) courts sustained Young's claim to two annuities (worth £200 a year) promised by the Duke. His first tragedy, Busiris (afterwards burlesqued in Fielding's Tom Thumb), was produced in 1719; in 1721 his second and best, The Revenge; his last, The Brothers, not till 1753. Significantly enough, the three tragedies of the future author of the Night Thoughts all end in suicide. The Revenge contains, amidst some rant and hyperbole, passages of strong passion and eloquent declamation in Young's sonorous blank verse; like Othello, it is founded on jealousy, and the principal character, Zanga, is a Moor. Young's satires, seven in number, appeared in 1725-28 under the title of The Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. Doubtless his own experiences must have been valuable, for as the associate and toady of Bubb Dodington and the like his humilia His tions and disappointments must have been many and grievous. In 1727 Young entered the Church, wrote a panegyric on the king, and was made one of His Majesty's chaplains. In 1730 he obtained from his college the living of Welwyn in Hertfordshire, where he was destined to close his days, though always eager for further preferment. marriage with the (widowed) daughter of the Earl of Lichfield proved a happier union than rumour represented the noble alliances of Dryden and Addison. The lady had a daughter by her first marriage, to whom Young was warmly attached. That daughter and her husband died; and when the mother followed, the lonely survivor's Night Thoughts (1742-44) showed that years and sorrows had but enriched his poetic gift. In 1761 he was made clerk of the closet to the Princess-Dowager of Wales; and he lived on till the 5th of April 1765. In his youth Young was gay and dissipated; all his life he was an indefatigable flatterer and courtier; in his poetry only is he a severe moralist and ascetic divine. Even if he felt the emotions he describes, he hardly allowed them to influence his conduct. He was not weaned from the world till age overtook him; and the epigrammatic point and wit and gloom of his Night Thoughts show the poetic artist rather than the devout Christian. The bereavements even on which the poem was based were deliberately exaggerated for poetical effect : Insatiate archer ! could not one suffice? Thy shafts flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn. This tale of sorrows was a poetical license; one of the shafts struck after an interval of four years. The gay Lorenzo is overdrawn. Like the character of Childe Harold in the hands of Byron, it afforded its creator scope for dark and powerful painting, and was made the vehicle for bursts of indignant virtue, sorrow, regret, and admonition. This artificial character pervades the whole poem, and is an essential part of its structure; yet there are many noble and sublime passages, where, as with the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Young prophesies of life, death, and immortality. Epigram and repartee are then forgotten; fancy yields to feeling, and the imagery is natural and appropriate. But the poet-preacher seldom remains long at a time in his loftier mood; his desire to say witty and smart things, to load his picture with supernumerary horrors, and conduct his personages to their 'sulphureous or ambrosial seats,' soon converts him into the scene-painter or epigrammatist. Poetry disappears in verbiage and sentimentalism, which cloying antithesis and magniloquence make more tedious. Many of his sententious lines and short passages have become proverbial; some of his reflections make admirable copy-lines, such as 'Procrastination is the thief of time.' Young's great work, like Hudibras, is too full of compressed reflection and illustration to be read continuously with pleasure. There is no plot or progressive interest; each of the nine books is independent of the other. The reader seeks out favourite passages, or contents himself with a single excursion into a wide and variegated field. The worst fault is the inevitable suggestion of insincerity, or at least of overstrained sentiment. But the more the work is studied, the more marvellous seem the fertility of fancy, the pregnancy of wit and wisdom, the felicitous conjunction of sound and sense, of sympathetic tenderness and everlasting truth, clearly discernible through the gloomy recesses of the poet's melancholious imagination: The glorious fragments of a fire immortal, With rubbish mixed, and glittering in the dust. This magnificent apostrophe had hardly been equalled since Milton's days: On Life, Death, and Immortality. Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes; From short (as usual) and disturbed repose, Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave. Tumultuous; where my wrecked desponding thought At random drove, her helm of reason lost. Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, Silence and Darkness! solemn sisters! twins From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought To reason, and on reason build resolve That column of true majesty in man— The grave your kingdom: there this frame shall fall A victim sacred to your dreary shrine. But what are ye?— Thou, who didst put to flight Primeval Silence, when the morning stars O Thou! whose word from solid darkness struck To lighten and to cheer. Oh lead my mind, How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, A worm! a god! I tremble at myself, What can preserve my life? or what destroy? ... 'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof: The twilight of our day, the vestibule; This gross impediment of clay remove, And make us embryos of existence free Inters celestial hopes without one sigh. On life's fair tree, fast by the throne of God. Where time, and pain, and chance, and death expire! (From The Complaint-Night I.) On Time. The bell strikes one. We take no note of time Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. How much is to be done? My hopes and fears Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour? O time! than gold more sacred; more a load Fast binds, and vengeance claims the full arrear. Ah! how unjust to nature and himself Behold him when passed by; what then is seen We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live ; Not blundering, split on idleness for ease. We push time from us, and we wish him back; Life we think long and short; death seek and shun. Oh the dark days of vanity! while here, How tasteless! and how terrible when gone! Gone? they ne'er go; when past, they haunt us still: At once he draws the sting of life and death: 'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, (From The Complaint-Night II.) In these shorter passages he rings the changes on the same topics: Look nature through, 'tis revolution all; All change, no death; day follows night, and night Self-flattered, unexperienced, high in hope, |