To the dean of Sarum's
visitation
sermon, already mentioned, were added
some verses "by that excellent poetess Mrs.
some verses "by that excellent poetess Mrs.
Samuel Johnson
Here it appears that he found delight and
advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he
took no degree. After the first four years he put on the civilian's
gown, but without showing any intention to engage in the profession.
About the time when he went to Oxford, the death of his grandmother
devolved his affairs to the care of the reverend Mr. Dolman, of Brome,
in Staffordshire, whose attention he always mentioned with gratitude.
At Oxford he employed himself upon English poetry; and, in 1737,
published a small miscellany, without his name.
He then for a time wandered about to acquaint himself with life, and was
sometimes at London, sometimes at Bath, or any other place of publick
resort; but he did not forget his poetry. He published, in 1741, his
Judgment of Hercules, addressed to Mr. Lyttelton, whose interest he
supported with great warmth at an election: this was next year followed
by the Schoolmistress.
Mr. Dolman, to whose care he was indebted for his ease and leisure, died
in 1745, and the care of his own fortune now fell upon him. He tried to
escape it awhile, and lived at his house with his tenants, who were
distantly related; but finding that imperfect possession inconvenient,
he took the whole estate into his own hands, more to the improvement of
its beauty, than the increase of its produce.
Now was excited his delight in rural pleasures, and his ambition of
rural elegance: he began, from this time, to point his prospects, to
diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters;
which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little
domain the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful; a place
to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers. Whether to plant a
walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where
there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be
heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where
the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is
something to be hidden; demands any great powers of mind, I will not
inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such
performances rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it
must be at least confessed, that to embellish the form of nature is an
innocent amusement; and some praise must be allowed, by the most
supercilious observer, to him who does best what such multitudes are
contending to do well.
This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other modes of
felicity, it was not enjoyed without its abatements. Lyttelton was his
neighbour and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with
disdain on the _petty state_ that _appeared behind it_. For awhile the
inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little
fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when, by degrees,
the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the
curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants
perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them, at the
wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone
would heavily complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity;
and where there is vanity there will be folly[180].
The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye: he valued what he valued
merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if
there were any fishes in his water.
His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his
grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors
flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money
for its reparation.
In time his expenses brought clamours about him, that overpowered the
lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by
beings very different from fawns and fairies[181]. He spent his estate
in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties.
He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing[182]. It is said, that if he
had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension:
such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed; but that it
was ever asked is not certain; it is too certain that it never was
enjoyed.
He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, about five on Friday
morning, February 11, 1763; and was buried by the side of his brother in
the church-yard of Hales-Owen.
He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever
she was, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented,
by his friend Dodsley, as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind
to all that were within his influence: but, if once offended, not easily
appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses; in his
person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his
form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey
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[183].
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.
His life was unstained by any crime; the Elegy 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.
His conception of an elegy he has in his preface very judiciously and
discriminately explained. It is, according to his account, the effusion
of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and always serious, and,
therefore, superiour to the glitter of slight ornaments. His
compositions suit not ill to this description. His topicks of praise are
the domestick 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, smooth 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.
The lyrick 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
these, however, Rural Elegance has some right to be excepted. I once
heard it praised by a very learned lady; and, though the lines are
irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too much verbosity, 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.
But the four parts of his Pastoral Ballad demand particular notice. I
cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent reader, acquainted
with the scenes of real life, sickens at the 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 acquaintance with love or nature:
I priz'd ev'ry hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleas'd me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh,
And I grieve that I priz'd them no more.
When forc'd the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt in my heart!
Yet I thought (but it might not be so)
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gaz'd, as I slowly withdrew;
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.
In the second, this passage has its prettiness, though it be not equal
to the former:
I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the woodpigeons breed;
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed:
For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov'd her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
In the third, he mentions the commonplaces of amorous poetry with some
address:
'Tis his with mock passion to glow!
'Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,
How her face is as bright as the snow,
And her bosom, be sure, is as cold;
How the nightingales labour the strain.
With the notes of his charmer to vie;
How they vary their accents in vain,
Repine at her triumphs and die.
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,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?
Yet time may diminish the pain:
The flow'r, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I rear'd for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me.
His Levities are, by their title, exempted from the severities of
criticism; yet it may be remarked, in a few words, that his humour is
sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.
Of the moral poems, the first is the Choice of Hercules, from Xenophon.
The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts just; but
something of vigour is still to be wished, which it might have had by
brevity and compression. His Fate of Delicacy has an air of gaiety, but
not a very pointed 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 Schoolmistress, of which I know not what claim it has to stand among
the moral works, is surely the most pleasing 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, whether he could have been great, I know
not; he could certainly have been agreeable[184].
-----
[Footnote 180: This charge against the Lyttelton family has been denied,
with some degree of warmth, by Mr. Potter, and since by Mr. Graves. The
latter says, "The truth of the case, I believe, was, that the Lyttelton
family went so frequently with their family to the Leasowes, that they
were unwilling to break in upon Mr. Shenstone's retirement on every
occasion, and, therefore, often went to the principal points of view
without waiting for any one to conduct them regularly through the whole
walks. Of this Mr. Shenstone would sometimes peevishly complain; though,
I am persuaded, he never really suspected any ill-natured intention in
his worthy and much-valued neighbours. " R. ]
[Footnote 181: Mr. Graves, however, expresses his belief that this is a
groundless surmise. "Mr. Shenstone," he adds, "was too much respected in
the neighbourhood to be treated with rudeness; and though his works,
(frugally as they were managed) added to his manner of living, must
necessarily have made him exceed his income, and, of course, he might
sometimes be distressed for money, yet he had too much spirit to expose
himself to insults from trifling sums, and guarded against any great
distress, by anticipating a few hundreds; which his estate could very
well bear, as appeared by what remained to his executors after the
payment of his debts, and his legacies to his friends, and annuities of
thirty pounds a year to one servant, and six pounds to another, for his
will was dictated with equal justice and generosity. " R. ]
[Footnote 182: We may, however, say with the Grecian orator, [Greek:
hoti apollymeyos euphrainei], he gives forth a fragrance as he wastes
away. ED. ]
[Footnote 183: "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,
absurd, or really deformed. "]
[Footnote 184: Mr. D'Israeli's remarks on Shenstone and his writings,
may be profitably compared with Johnson's life. See last edition of the
Curiosities of Literature. ED. ]
YOUNG.
The following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman who had
better information than I could easily have obtained; and the publick
will, perhaps, wish that I had solicited and obtained more such favours
from him[185].
"DEAR SIR,--In consequence of our different conversations about
authentick materials for the life of Young, I send you the
following detail.
"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. "
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, 1682, 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, 1686, 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 of his age. 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 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 mysteries, is
now laid in the dust. But he still 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 at Winchester college, where
he had himself been educated. At this school Edward Young 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 afforded 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.
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, 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
thither, 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 him much wealth.
On the 23rd 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 commented 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 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 commonplace, and such a one as 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 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. "[186]
After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable. 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 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 panegyrick 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 publick 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 politicks? Another purpose of
this epistle appears to have been, to prepare the publick 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 publick 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
booksellers, in the late body of English poetry, should have
distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective
authors[187]. 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 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 vicechancellor'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[188] It
was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he
did not admit into his works. It tells her, that his only title to the
great honour he now does himself, is the obligation which he formerly
received from her royal indulgence.
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 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,
Where Y---- must torture his invention
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,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyricks here provide;
You cannot err on flatt'ry'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 exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written
it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politicks,
notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the church was in danger, had
not yet subsided. The Last Day, written by a layman, was much approved
by the ministry, and their friends.
Before the queen's death, the Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, was
sent into the world. This poem is founded on the execution of lady Jane
Grey, and her husband lord Guildford, 1554, a story, chosen for the
subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by
Rowe. The dedication of it to the countess of Salisbury does not appear
in his own edition. He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption,
that the story could not have been read without thoughts of the countess
of Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another. "To behold," he
proceeds, "a person _only_ virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to
behold a person _only_ amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
indignation; but to turn our eyes on a countess of Salisbury gives us
pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias
of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and
affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty. " His
flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was, at least,
as well adapted.
August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas that he is just
arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the queen's
death, but that no panegyricks are ready yet for the king. Nothing like
friendship had yet taken place between Pope and Young; for, soon after
the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the queen's
death, and his majesty's accession to the throne. It is inscribed to
Addison, then secretary to the lords justices. Whatever were the
obligations, which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears
to aim at something of the same sort from George. Of the poem, the
intention seems to have been to show, that he had the same extravagant
strain of praise for a king as for a queen. To discover, at the very
outset of a foreigner's reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in
such a king, is something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one
of his _excusable pieces_. We do not find it in his works.
Young's father had been well acquainted with lady Anne Wharton, the
first wife of Thomas Wharton, esq. afterwards marquis of Wharton; a lady
celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.
To the dean of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added
some verses "by that excellent poetess Mrs. Anne Wharton," upon its
being translated into English, at the instance of Waller, by Atwood.
Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron,
and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion. The marquis
died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year the young marquis
set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a
twelve-month. The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland; where, says
the Biographia, "on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the
honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in
the house of lords. "
With this unhappy character, it is not unlikely that Young went to
Ireland. From his letter to Richardson, on Original Composition, it is
clear he was, at some period of his life, in that country. "I remember,"
says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, "as I and others were taking
with him an evening walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short:
we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found
him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which
in its uppermost 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[189]?
From the Englishman, it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
theatre so early as 1713. Yet Busiris was not brought upon Drury-lane
stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the duke of Newcastle, "because the
late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some 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 1721, by the Revenge. He dedicated
this famous tragedy to the duke of Wharton. "Your grace," says the
dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessory 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 à-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 happen 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 Aethiop 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 General, March 14; 1740, as authority for the life
of a poet. But biographers do not always find such 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 style princely and
commendable, if not legal--"considering that the publick good is
advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being
pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration
thereof, and of the love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the 10th
of July, 1722.
Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
refused an annuity of 100_l_. 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 600_l_. 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 200_l_. and 400_l_. 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 years--
Partner 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 one who sings in
the dark does not sing from joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of
flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no
kind of knowledge.
Of his satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates, without
the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe
in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have
referred to the poems, to discover when they were written. For these
internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first
satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled. " The second,
addressing himself, asks:
Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
A fool at _forty_ is a fool indeed.
The Satires were originally published separately, in folio, under the
title of the Universal Passion. These passages fix the appearance of the
first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young seldom
suffered his pen to dry, after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may
conclude that he began his satires soon after he had written the
Paraphrase on Job. The last satire was certainly finished in the
beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the king, in his passage
from Helvoetsluys, escaped, with great difficulty, from a storm by
landing at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a
miracle, in such an encomiastick strain of compliment, as poetry too
often seeks to pay to royalty.
From the sixth of these poems we learn,
Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart
Glow'd with the love of virtue and of art:
since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawn'd on me.
Her majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter of
the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had, perhaps, shown some
attention to lady Elizabeth's future husband.
The fifth satire, on Women, was not published till 1727; and the sixth
not till 1728.
To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he
prefixed a preface; in which he observes, that "no man can converse much
in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or
grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into
ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least,
and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the
misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more
disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven
out by another than by reason, whatever some teach. " So wrote, and so of
course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost
fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the Last Day. After all,
Swift pronounced of these satires, that they should either have been
more angry or more merry.
Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any
palliation, this preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at
the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the
mournful, angry, gloomy Night Thoughts?
At the conclusion 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 subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her
way to preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful
admiration of her father'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 something
like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her, and her
sister prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to
entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though
nearly related to poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the
mother of love. That he could not well complain of being related to
poverty, appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude
records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By the Universal
Passion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds.
A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South sea. For
this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His muse makes poetical
use more than once of a South sea dream.
It is related by Mr. Spence, in his manuscript anecdotes, on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
Universal Passion, received from the duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "two thousand
pounds for a poem! " he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his
life, for the poem was worth four thousand.
This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two
answers of lord Burghley and sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.
After inscribing his satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferment and honours, to such names as the duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, lady Elizabeth Germaine, and sir Robert
Walpole, he returns to plain panegyrick. In 1726, he addressed a poem to
sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. The Instalment is
among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his _excusable
writings_. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
power of bestowing immortality:
Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!
The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
acknowledgment, would now, perhaps, never have been known:
My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turn'd by thee,
Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must,
at least, be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode.
The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the
increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
"invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
service of their country;" a plan which humanity must lament that policy
has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
Prefixed to the original publication were an Ode to the King, Pater
Patriae, and an Essay on Lyrick Poetry. It is but justice to confess,
that he preserved neither of them; and that, the ode itself, which in
the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas,
in the author's own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted
passages is a Wish, that concluded the poem, which few would have
suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it,
would confess something like their shame by suppression.
It stood originally so high in the author's opinion, that he entitled
the poem, Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish. This wish consists of
thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:
O may I _steal_
Along the _vale_
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:
Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I _have_,
And live, not _leave_,
Enamour'd of the present day!
My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one _beam_
Of honest _fame_!
And scorn the labour'd monument!
Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty nature's self shall die;
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said,
in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: "For the more
_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome, give grace and
pleasure. Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_, (of
which the moderns are too fond,) but from this truth. " Yet the moderns
surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by his own
confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.
The next paragraph in his essay did not occur to him when he talked of
"that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must
take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme
consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he
was perfectly free from that shackle. "
Another part of this essay will convict the following stanza of, what
every reader will discover in it, "involuntary burlesque:"
"The northern blast
The shatter'd mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock.
The breaking spout,
The _stars gone out_,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock. "
But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes, if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
If Young be not a lyrick poet, he is, at least, a critick in that sort
of poetry; and, if his lyrick poetry can be proved bad, it was first
proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.
Milbourne was styled, by Pope, "the fairest of criticks," only because
he exhibited his own version of Virgil to be compared with Dryden's,
which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in
his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets
for prefixing to a lyrick composition an essay on lyrick poetry, so just
and impartial as to condemn himself.
We shall soon come to a work, before which we find, indeed, no critical
essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
language.
Soon after the appearance of Ocean, when he was almost fifty, Young
entered into orders. In April, 1728[190] not long after he had put on
the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the second.
The tragedy of the Brothers, which was already in rehearsal, he
immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it, with some
reluctance, to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The epilogue to the
Brothers, the only appendage to any of his three plays which he added
himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an
historical epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow
scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the epilogue,
and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
Perseus "for this night's deed. "
Of Young's taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular
light. When he determined on the church, he did not address himself to
Sherlock, to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in
theology; but to Pope, who, in a youthful frolick, advised the diligent
perusal of Thomas Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from
interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to
godliness hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he
might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him
just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable
derangement. "
That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the
surest guide to his new profession, left him little doubt whether poetry
was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long, indeed,
after he took orders, he published, in prose, 1728, a true Estimate of
Human Life, dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which
it abounds, to the queen; and a sermon preached before the house of
commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of king Charles, entitled, an Apology
for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government. But the Second
Discourse, the counterpart of his Estimate, without which it cannot be
called a _true_ Estimate, though, in 1728, it was announced as "soon to
be published," never appeared; and his old friends the muses were not
forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world,
Imperium Pelagi, a naval lyrick, written in imitation of Pindar's
Spirit, occasioned by his majesty's return from Hanover, September,
1729, and the succeeding peace. It is inscribed to the duke of Chandos.
In the preface we are told, that the ode is the most spirited kind of
poetry, and that the Pindarick is the most spirited kind of ode. "This I
speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril.
But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to
suffer by it. " Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's Imperium
Pelagi was ridiculed in Fielding's Tom Thumb; but let us not forget that
it was one of his pieces which the author of the Night Thoughts
deliberately refused to own.
Not long after this Pindarick attempt, he published two epistles to
Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age, 1730. Of these poems, one
occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the liveliness of
his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious for promotion
in the church.
In July, 1730, he was presented, by his college, to the rectory of
Welwyn, in Hertfordshire. In May, 1731, he married lady Elizabeth Lee,
daughter of the earl of Lichfield, and widow of colonel Lee. His
connexion with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already
mentioned, with lady Anne Wharton, who was coheiress of sir Henry Lee,
of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to
aspire to the arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary happiness.
We may naturally conclude, that Young now gave himself up, in some
measure, to the comforts of his new connexion, and to the expectations
of that preferment, which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at
least, to the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.
The next production of his muse was the Sea-piece, in two odes.
Young enjoys the credit of what is called an Extempore Epigram on
Voltaire; who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death:
You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.
From the following passage, in the poetical dedication of his Sea-piece
to Voltaire, it seems, that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
any reproof,) was something longer than a distich, and something more
gentle than the distich just quoted:
No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
On _Dorset_ downs, when Milton's page
With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage,
Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with _gentle_ rhymes?
By Dorset downs, he probably meant Mr. Dodington's seat. In Pitt's poems
is an Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on the
Review at Sarum, 1722.
While with your Dodington retir'd you sit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.
Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
of the muses,
Where, in the secret bow'r and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.
The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the
second
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,
added to Thomson's example and success, might, perhaps, induce Young, as
we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
In 1734 he published the Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
Written in the character of a sailor. It is not to be found in the
author's four volumes.
He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and,
perhaps, at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species
of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few
of Young's readers will regret:
My shell, which Clio gave, which _kings applaud_,
Which Europe's bleeding genius call'd abroad,
Adieu!
In a species of poetry altogether his own, he next tried his skill, and
succeeded.
Of his wife, he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her
marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just
after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple
did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time
to a daughter of sir John Barnard, whose son is the present peer. Mr.
and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and
Narcissa. From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between
Mr. Temple and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is
probable that the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these
characters; though, at the same time, some passages respecting Philander
do not appear to suit either Mr.
advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he
took no degree. After the first four years he put on the civilian's
gown, but without showing any intention to engage in the profession.
About the time when he went to Oxford, the death of his grandmother
devolved his affairs to the care of the reverend Mr. Dolman, of Brome,
in Staffordshire, whose attention he always mentioned with gratitude.
At Oxford he employed himself upon English poetry; and, in 1737,
published a small miscellany, without his name.
He then for a time wandered about to acquaint himself with life, and was
sometimes at London, sometimes at Bath, or any other place of publick
resort; but he did not forget his poetry. He published, in 1741, his
Judgment of Hercules, addressed to Mr. Lyttelton, whose interest he
supported with great warmth at an election: this was next year followed
by the Schoolmistress.
Mr. Dolman, to whose care he was indebted for his ease and leisure, died
in 1745, and the care of his own fortune now fell upon him. He tried to
escape it awhile, and lived at his house with his tenants, who were
distantly related; but finding that imperfect possession inconvenient,
he took the whole estate into his own hands, more to the improvement of
its beauty, than the increase of its produce.
Now was excited his delight in rural pleasures, and his ambition of
rural elegance: he began, from this time, to point his prospects, to
diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters;
which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little
domain the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful; a place
to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers. Whether to plant a
walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where
there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be
heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where
the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is
something to be hidden; demands any great powers of mind, I will not
inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such
performances rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it
must be at least confessed, that to embellish the form of nature is an
innocent amusement; and some praise must be allowed, by the most
supercilious observer, to him who does best what such multitudes are
contending to do well.
This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other modes of
felicity, it was not enjoyed without its abatements. Lyttelton was his
neighbour and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent, looked with
disdain on the _petty state_ that _appeared behind it_. For awhile the
inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little
fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when, by degrees,
the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the
curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants
perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them, at the
wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone
would heavily complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity;
and where there is vanity there will be folly[180].
The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye: he valued what he valued
merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if
there were any fishes in his water.
His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his
grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floors
flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money
for its reparation.
In time his expenses brought clamours about him, that overpowered the
lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by
beings very different from fawns and fairies[181]. He spent his estate
in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties.
He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing[182]. It is said, that if he
had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension:
such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed; but that it
was ever asked is not certain; it is too certain that it never was
enjoyed.
He died at the Leasowes, of a putrid fever, about five on Friday
morning, February 11, 1763; and was buried by the side of his brother in
the church-yard of Hales-Owen.
He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady, whoever
she was, to whom his Pastoral Ballad was addressed. He is represented,
by his friend Dodsley, as a man of great tenderness and generosity, kind
to all that were within his influence: but, if once offended, not easily
appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless of his expenses; in his
person he was larger than the middle size, with something clumsy in his
form; very negligent of his clothes, and remarkable for wearing his grey
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[183].
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.
His life was unstained by any crime; the Elegy 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.
His conception of an elegy he has in his preface very judiciously and
discriminately explained. It is, according to his account, the effusion
of a contemplative mind, sometimes plaintive, and always serious, and,
therefore, superiour to the glitter of slight ornaments. His
compositions suit not ill to this description. His topicks of praise are
the domestick 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, smooth 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.
The lyrick 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
these, however, Rural Elegance has some right to be excepted. I once
heard it praised by a very learned lady; and, though the lines are
irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too much verbosity, 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.
But the four parts of his Pastoral Ballad demand particular notice. I
cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent reader, acquainted
with the scenes of real life, sickens at the 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 acquaintance with love or nature:
I priz'd ev'ry hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleas'd me before;
But now they are past, and I sigh,
And I grieve that I priz'd them no more.
When forc'd the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt in my heart!
Yet I thought (but it might not be so)
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gaz'd, as I slowly withdrew;
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.
In the second, this passage has its prettiness, though it be not equal
to the former:
I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the woodpigeons breed;
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed:
For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I lov'd her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
In the third, he mentions the commonplaces of amorous poetry with some
address:
'Tis his with mock passion to glow!
'Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,
How her face is as bright as the snow,
And her bosom, be sure, is as cold;
How the nightingales labour the strain.
With the notes of his charmer to vie;
How they vary their accents in vain,
Repine at her triumphs and die.
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,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?
Yet time may diminish the pain:
The flow'r, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I rear'd for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me.
His Levities are, by their title, exempted from the severities of
criticism; yet it may be remarked, in a few words, that his humour is
sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.
Of the moral poems, the first is the Choice of Hercules, from Xenophon.
The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the thoughts just; but
something of vigour is still to be wished, which it might have had by
brevity and compression. His Fate of Delicacy has an air of gaiety, but
not a very pointed 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 Schoolmistress, of which I know not what claim it has to stand among
the moral works, is surely the most pleasing 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, whether he could have been great, I know
not; he could certainly have been agreeable[184].
-----
[Footnote 180: This charge against the Lyttelton family has been denied,
with some degree of warmth, by Mr. Potter, and since by Mr. Graves. The
latter says, "The truth of the case, I believe, was, that the Lyttelton
family went so frequently with their family to the Leasowes, that they
were unwilling to break in upon Mr. Shenstone's retirement on every
occasion, and, therefore, often went to the principal points of view
without waiting for any one to conduct them regularly through the whole
walks. Of this Mr. Shenstone would sometimes peevishly complain; though,
I am persuaded, he never really suspected any ill-natured intention in
his worthy and much-valued neighbours. " R. ]
[Footnote 181: Mr. Graves, however, expresses his belief that this is a
groundless surmise. "Mr. Shenstone," he adds, "was too much respected in
the neighbourhood to be treated with rudeness; and though his works,
(frugally as they were managed) added to his manner of living, must
necessarily have made him exceed his income, and, of course, he might
sometimes be distressed for money, yet he had too much spirit to expose
himself to insults from trifling sums, and guarded against any great
distress, by anticipating a few hundreds; which his estate could very
well bear, as appeared by what remained to his executors after the
payment of his debts, and his legacies to his friends, and annuities of
thirty pounds a year to one servant, and six pounds to another, for his
will was dictated with equal justice and generosity. " R. ]
[Footnote 182: We may, however, say with the Grecian orator, [Greek:
hoti apollymeyos euphrainei], he gives forth a fragrance as he wastes
away. ED. ]
[Footnote 183: "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,
absurd, or really deformed. "]
[Footnote 184: Mr. D'Israeli's remarks on Shenstone and his writings,
may be profitably compared with Johnson's life. See last edition of the
Curiosities of Literature. ED. ]
YOUNG.
The following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman who had
better information than I could easily have obtained; and the publick
will, perhaps, wish that I had solicited and obtained more such favours
from him[185].
"DEAR SIR,--In consequence of our different conversations about
authentick materials for the life of Young, I send you the
following detail.
"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. "
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, 1682, 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, 1686, 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 of his age. 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 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 mysteries, is
now laid in the dust. But he still 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 at Winchester college, where
he had himself been educated. At this school Edward Young 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 afforded 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.
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, 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
thither, 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 him much wealth.
On the 23rd 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 commented 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 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 commonplace, and such a one as 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 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. "[186]
After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable. 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 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 panegyrick 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 publick 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 politicks? Another purpose of
this epistle appears to have been, to prepare the publick 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 publick 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
booksellers, in the late body of English poetry, should have
distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective
authors[187]. 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 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 vicechancellor'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[188] It
was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he
did not admit into his works. It tells her, that his only title to the
great honour he now does himself, is the obligation which he formerly
received from her royal indulgence.
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 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,
Where Y---- must torture his invention
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,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyricks here provide;
You cannot err on flatt'ry'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 exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written
it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politicks,
notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the church was in danger, had
not yet subsided. The Last Day, written by a layman, was much approved
by the ministry, and their friends.
Before the queen's death, the Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, was
sent into the world. This poem is founded on the execution of lady Jane
Grey, and her husband lord Guildford, 1554, a story, chosen for the
subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and wrought into a tragedy by
Rowe. The dedication of it to the countess of Salisbury does not appear
in his own edition. He hopes it may be some excuse for his presumption,
that the story could not have been read without thoughts of the countess
of Salisbury, though it had been dedicated to another. "To behold," he
proceeds, "a person _only_ virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to
behold a person _only_ amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
indignation; but to turn our eyes on a countess of Salisbury gives us
pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias
of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and
affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our duty. " His
flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and was, at least,
as well adapted.
August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas that he is just
arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the queen's
death, but that no panegyricks are ready yet for the king. Nothing like
friendship had yet taken place between Pope and Young; for, soon after
the event which Pope mentions, Young published a poem on the queen's
death, and his majesty's accession to the throne. It is inscribed to
Addison, then secretary to the lords justices. Whatever were the
obligations, which he had formerly received from Anne, the poet appears
to aim at something of the same sort from George. Of the poem, the
intention seems to have been to show, that he had the same extravagant
strain of praise for a king as for a queen. To discover, at the very
outset of a foreigner's reign, that the gods bless his new subjects in
such a king, is something more than praise. Neither was this deemed one
of his _excusable pieces_. We do not find it in his works.
Young's father had been well acquainted with lady Anne Wharton, the
first wife of Thomas Wharton, esq. afterwards marquis of Wharton; a lady
celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.
To the dean of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added
some verses "by that excellent poetess Mrs. Anne Wharton," upon its
being translated into English, at the instance of Waller, by Atwood.
Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old
friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found a patron,
and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion. The marquis
died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year the young marquis
set out upon his travels, from which he returned in about a
twelve-month. The beginning of 1717 carried him to Ireland; where, says
the Biographia, "on the score of his extraordinary qualities, he had the
honour done him of being admitted, though under age, to take his seat in
the house of lords. "
With this unhappy character, it is not unlikely that Young went to
Ireland. From his letter to Richardson, on Original Composition, it is
clear he was, at some period of his life, in that country. "I remember,"
says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, "as I and others were taking
with him an evening walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short:
we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found
him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which
in its uppermost 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[189]?
From the Englishman, it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
theatre so early as 1713. Yet Busiris was not brought upon Drury-lane
stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the duke of Newcastle, "because the
late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some 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 1721, by the Revenge. He dedicated
this famous tragedy to the duke of Wharton. "Your grace," says the
dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessory 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 à-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 happen 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 Aethiop 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 General, March 14; 1740, as authority for the life
of a poet. But biographers do not always find such 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 style princely and
commendable, if not legal--"considering that the publick good is
advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being
pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration
thereof, and of the love I bear him," &c. The other was dated the 10th
of July, 1722.
Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and
refused an annuity of 100_l_. 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 600_l_. 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 200_l_. and 400_l_. 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 years--
Partner 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 one who sings in
the dark does not sing from joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of
flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no
kind of knowledge.
Of his satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates, without
the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe
in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have
referred to the poems, to discover when they were written. For these
internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first
satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled. " The second,
addressing himself, asks:
Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
A fool at _forty_ is a fool indeed.
The Satires were originally published separately, in folio, under the
title of the Universal Passion. These passages fix the appearance of the
first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young seldom
suffered his pen to dry, after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may
conclude that he began his satires soon after he had written the
Paraphrase on Job. The last satire was certainly finished in the
beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the king, in his passage
from Helvoetsluys, escaped, with great difficulty, from a storm by
landing at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a
miracle, in such an encomiastick strain of compliment, as poetry too
often seeks to pay to royalty.
From the sixth of these poems we learn,
Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart
Glow'd with the love of virtue and of art:
since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawn'd on me.
Her majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter of
the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had, perhaps, shown some
attention to lady Elizabeth's future husband.
The fifth satire, on Women, was not published till 1727; and the sixth
not till 1728.
To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he
prefixed a preface; in which he observes, that "no man can converse much
in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or
grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into
ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least,
and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the
misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more
disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven
out by another than by reason, whatever some teach. " So wrote, and so of
course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost
fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the Last Day. After all,
Swift pronounced of these satires, that they should either have been
more angry or more merry.
Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any
palliation, this preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at
the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the
mournful, angry, gloomy Night Thoughts?
At the conclusion 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 subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her
way to preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful
admiration of her father'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 something
like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her, and her
sister prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to
entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though
nearly related to poetry, had no connexion with her whom Plato makes the
mother of love. That he could not well complain of being related to
poverty, appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his gratitude
records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By the Universal
Passion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds.
A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South sea. For
this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His muse makes poetical
use more than once of a South sea dream.
It is related by Mr. Spence, in his manuscript anecdotes, on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
Universal Passion, received from the duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "two thousand
pounds for a poem! " he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his
life, for the poem was worth four thousand.
This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two
answers of lord Burghley and sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.
After inscribing his satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferment and honours, to such names as the duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, lady Elizabeth Germaine, and sir Robert
Walpole, he returns to plain panegyrick. In 1726, he addressed a poem to
sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. The Instalment is
among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his _excusable
writings_. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
power of bestowing immortality:
Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!
The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
acknowledgment, would now, perhaps, never have been known:
My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turn'd by thee,
Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must,
at least, be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode.
The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the
increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
"invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
service of their country;" a plan which humanity must lament that policy
has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
Prefixed to the original publication were an Ode to the King, Pater
Patriae, and an Essay on Lyrick Poetry. It is but justice to confess,
that he preserved neither of them; and that, the ode itself, which in
the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas,
in the author's own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted
passages is a Wish, that concluded the poem, which few would have
suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it,
would confess something like their shame by suppression.
It stood originally so high in the author's opinion, that he entitled
the poem, Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish. This wish consists of
thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:
O may I _steal_
Along the _vale_
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:
Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I _have_,
And live, not _leave_,
Enamour'd of the present day!
My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one _beam_
Of honest _fame_!
And scorn the labour'd monument!
Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty nature's self shall die;
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix
upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said,
in his Essay on Lyrick Poetry, prefixed to the poem: "For the more
_harmony_ likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me
under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome, give grace and
pleasure. Nor can I account for the _pleasure of rhyme in general_, (of
which the moderns are too fond,) but from this truth. " Yet the moderns
surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by his own
confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony.
The next paragraph in his essay did not occur to him when he talked of
"that great turn" in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must
take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme
consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he
was perfectly free from that shackle. "
Another part of this essay will convict the following stanza of, what
every reader will discover in it, "involuntary burlesque:"
"The northern blast
The shatter'd mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock.
The breaking spout,
The _stars gone out_,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock. "
But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes, if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
If Young be not a lyrick poet, he is, at least, a critick in that sort
of poetry; and, if his lyrick poetry can be proved bad, it was first
proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.
Milbourne was styled, by Pope, "the fairest of criticks," only because
he exhibited his own version of Virgil to be compared with Dryden's,
which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in
his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets
for prefixing to a lyrick composition an essay on lyrick poetry, so just
and impartial as to condemn himself.
We shall soon come to a work, before which we find, indeed, no critical
essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
language.
Soon after the appearance of Ocean, when he was almost fifty, Young
entered into orders. In April, 1728[190] not long after he had put on
the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the second.
The tragedy of the Brothers, which was already in rehearsal, he
immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it, with some
reluctance, to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The epilogue to the
Brothers, the only appendage to any of his three plays which he added
himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an
historical epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow
scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the epilogue,
and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
Perseus "for this night's deed. "
Of Young's taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular
light. When he determined on the church, he did not address himself to
Sherlock, to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in
theology; but to Pope, who, in a youthful frolick, advised the diligent
perusal of Thomas Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from
interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to
godliness hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he
might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him
just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable
derangement. "
That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the
surest guide to his new profession, left him little doubt whether poetry
was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long, indeed,
after he took orders, he published, in prose, 1728, a true Estimate of
Human Life, dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which
it abounds, to the queen; and a sermon preached before the house of
commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of king Charles, entitled, an Apology
for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government. But the Second
Discourse, the counterpart of his Estimate, without which it cannot be
called a _true_ Estimate, though, in 1728, it was announced as "soon to
be published," never appeared; and his old friends the muses were not
forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world,
Imperium Pelagi, a naval lyrick, written in imitation of Pindar's
Spirit, occasioned by his majesty's return from Hanover, September,
1729, and the succeeding peace. It is inscribed to the duke of Chandos.
In the preface we are told, that the ode is the most spirited kind of
poetry, and that the Pindarick is the most spirited kind of ode. "This I
speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril.
But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though we are sure to
suffer by it. " Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's Imperium
Pelagi was ridiculed in Fielding's Tom Thumb; but let us not forget that
it was one of his pieces which the author of the Night Thoughts
deliberately refused to own.
Not long after this Pindarick attempt, he published two epistles to
Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age, 1730. Of these poems, one
occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the liveliness of
his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious for promotion
in the church.
In July, 1730, he was presented, by his college, to the rectory of
Welwyn, in Hertfordshire. In May, 1731, he married lady Elizabeth Lee,
daughter of the earl of Lichfield, and widow of colonel Lee. His
connexion with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already
mentioned, with lady Anne Wharton, who was coheiress of sir Henry Lee,
of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to
aspire to the arms of nobility, though not with extraordinary happiness.
We may naturally conclude, that Young now gave himself up, in some
measure, to the comforts of his new connexion, and to the expectations
of that preferment, which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at
least, to the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.
The next production of his muse was the Sea-piece, in two odes.
Young enjoys the credit of what is called an Extempore Epigram on
Voltaire; who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death:
You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.
From the following passage, in the poetical dedication of his Sea-piece
to Voltaire, it seems, that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
any reproof,) was something longer than a distich, and something more
gentle than the distich just quoted:
No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
On _Dorset_ downs, when Milton's page
With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage,
Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with _gentle_ rhymes?
By Dorset downs, he probably meant Mr. Dodington's seat. In Pitt's poems
is an Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on the
Review at Sarum, 1722.
While with your Dodington retir'd you sit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.
Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
of the muses,
Where, in the secret bow'r and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.
The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the
second
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,
added to Thomson's example and success, might, perhaps, induce Young, as
we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
In 1734 he published the Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
Written in the character of a sailor. It is not to be found in the
author's four volumes.
He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and,
perhaps, at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species
of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few
of Young's readers will regret:
My shell, which Clio gave, which _kings applaud_,
Which Europe's bleeding genius call'd abroad,
Adieu!
In a species of poetry altogether his own, he next tried his skill, and
succeeded.
Of his wife, he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her
marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just
after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple
did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time
to a daughter of sir John Barnard, whose son is the present peer. Mr.
and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and
Narcissa. From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between
Mr. Temple and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is
probable that the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these
characters; though, at the same time, some passages respecting Philander
do not appear to suit either Mr.
