from the narrative of Dr. Gibbons, to have been neither indigent nor illiterate.
Isaac, the eldest of nine children, was given to books from his infancy, and began, we are told, to learn Latin when he was four years old–I suppose, at home. He was afterwards taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, by Mr. Pinhorne, a clergyman, master of the Free School at Southampton, to whom the gratitude of his scholar afterwards inscribed a Latin ode. His proficiency at school was so conspicuous that a subscription was proposed for his support at the University, but he declared his resolution of taking his lot with the Dissenters. Such he was as every Christian Church would rejoice to have adopted. He therefore repaired, in 1690, to an academy taught by Mr. Rowe, where he had for his companions and fellow students Mr. Hughes the poet, and Dr. Horte, afterwards Archbishop of Tuam. Some Latin Essays, supposed to have been written as exercises at this academy, show a degree of knowledge, both philosophical and theological, such as very few attain by a much longer course of study. He was, as he hints in his “Miscellanies,” a maker of verses from fifteen to fifty, and in his youth he appears to have paid attention to Latin poetry. His verses to his brother, in the glyconic measure, written when he was seventeen, are remarkably easy and elegant. Some of his other odes are deformed by the Pindaric folly then prevailing, and are written with such neglect of all metrical rules as is without example among the ancients; but his diction, though perhaps not always exactly pure, has such copiousness and splendour as shows that he was but a very little distance from excellence. His method of study was to impress the contents of his books upon his memory by abridging them, and by interleaving them to amplify one system with supplements from another.
With the congregation of his tutor, Mr. Rowe, who were, I believe, Independents, he communicated in his nineteenth year. At the age of twenty he left the academy, and spent two years in study and devotion at the house of his father, who treated him with great tenderness, and had the happiness, indulged to few parents, of living to see his son eminent for literature and venerable for piety. He was then entertained by Sir John Hartopp five years, as domestic tutor to his son, and in that time particularly devoted himself to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and, being chosen assistant to Dr. Chauncey, preached the first time on the birthday that completed his twenty-fourth year, probably considering that as the day of a second nativity, by which he entered on a new period of existence.
In about three years he succeeded Dr. Chauncey; but soon after his entrance on his charge he was seized by a dangerous illness, which sunk him to such weakness that the congregation thought an assistant necessary, and appointed Mr. Price. His health then returned gradually, and he performed his duty till (1712) he was seized by a fever of such violence and continuance, that from the feebleness which it brought upon him he never perfectly recovered. This calamitous state made the compassion of his friends necessary, and drew upon him the attention of Sir Thomas Abney, who received him into his house, where, with a constancy of friendship and uniformity of conduct not often to be found, he was treated for thirty-six years with all the kindness that friendship could prompt, and all the attention that respect could dictate. Sir Thomas died about eight years afterwards, but he continued with the lady and her daughters to the end of his life. The lady died about a year after him.
A coalition like this, a state in which the notions of patronage and dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits, deserves a particular memorial; and I will not withhold from the reader Dr. Gibbons’s representation, to which regard is to be paid as to the narrative of one who writes what he knows, and what is known likewise to multitudes besides:–
“Our next observation shall be made upon that remarkably kind Providence which brought the Doctor into Sir Thomas Abney’s family, and continued him there till his death, a period of no less than thirty-six years. In the midst of his sacred labours for the glory of God, and good of his generation, he is seized with a most violent and threatening fever, which leaves him oppressed with great weakness, and puts a stop at least to his public services for four years. In this distressing season, doubly so to his active and pious spirit, he is invited to Sir Thomas Abney’s family, nor ever removes from it till he had finished his days. Here he enjoyed the uninterrupted demonstrations of the truest friendship. Here, without any care of his own, he had everything which could contribute to the enjoyment of life, and favour the unwearied pursuit of his studies. Here he dwelt in a family which, for piety, order, harmony, and every virtue, was a house of God. Here he had the privilege of a country recess, the fragrant bower, the spreading lawn, the flowery garden, and other advantages, to soothe his mind and aid his restoration to health; to yield him, whenever he chose them, most grateful intervals from his laborious studies, and enable him to return to them with redoubled vigour and delight. Had it not been for this most happy event, he might, as to outward view, have feebly, it may be painfully, dragged on through many more years of languor, and inability for public service, and even for profitable study, or perhaps might have sunk into his grave under the overwhelming load of infirmities in the midst of his days; and thus the Church and world would have been deprived of those many excellent sermons and works which he drew up and published during his long residence in this family. In a few years after his coming hither, Sir Thomas Abney dies; but his amiable consort survives, who shows the Doctor the same respect and friendship as before, and most happily for him and great numbers besides; for, as her riches were great, her generosity and munificence were in full proportion; her thread of life was drawn out to a great age, even beyond that of the Doctor’s, and thus this excellent man, through her kindness, and that of her daughter, the present Mrs. Elizabeth Abney, who in a like degree esteemed and honoured him, enjoyed all the benefits and felicities he experienced at his first entrance into this family till his days were numbered and finished, and, like a shock of corn in its season, he ascended into the regions of perfect and immortal life and joy.”
If this quotation has appeared long, let it be considered that it comprises an account of six-and-thirty years, and those the years of Dr. Watts.
From the time of his reception into this family his life was no otherwise diversified than by successive publications. The series of his works I am not able to deduce; their number and their variety show the intenseness of his industry and the extent of his capacity. He was one of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction. He continued to the end of his life a teacher of a congregation, and no reader of his works can doubt his fidelity or diligence. In the pulpit, though his low stature, which very little exceeded five feet, graced him with no advantages of appearance, yet the gravity and propriety of his utterance made his discourses very efficacious. I once mentioned the reputation which Mr. Foster had gained by his proper delivery, to my friend Dr. Hawkesworth, who told me that in the art of pronunciation he was far inferior to Dr. Watts. Such was his flow of thoughts, and such his promptitude of language, that in the latter part of his life he did not precompose his cursory sermons, but, having adjusted the heads and sketched out some particulars, trusted for success to his extemporary powers. He did not endeavour to assist his eloquence by any gesticulations; for, as no corporeal actions have any correspondence with theological truth, he did not see how they could enforce it. At the conclusion of weighty sentences he gave time, by a short pause, for the proper impression.
To stated and public instruction he added familiar visits and personal application, and was careful to improve the opportunities which conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence of religion. By his natural temper he was quick of resentment; but by his established and habitual practice he was gentle, modest, and inoffensive. His tenderness appeared in his attention to children, and to the poor. To the poor, while he lived in the family of his friend, he allowed the third part of his annual revenue; though the whole was not a hundred a year; and for children he condescended to lay aside the scholar, the philosopher, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems of instruction, adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of reason through its gradations of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year. A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach.
As his mind was capacious, his curiosity excursive, and his industry continual, his writings are very numerous and his subjects various. With his theological works I am only enough acquainted to admire his meekness of opposition, and his mildness of censure. It was not only in his book, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity.
Of his philosophical pieces, his “Logic” has been received into the Universities, and therefore wants no private recommendation; if he owes part of it to Le Clerc, it must be considered that no man who undertakes merely to methodise or illustrate a system pretends to be its author.
In his metaphysical disquisitions it was observed by the late learned Mr. Dyer, that he confounded the idea of SPACE with that of EMPTY SPACE, and did not consider that though space might be without matter, yet matter being extended could not be without space.
Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure than his “Improvement of the Mind,” of which the radical principle may indeed be found in Locke’s “Conduct of the Understanding;” but they are so expanded and ramified by Watts, as to confer upon him the merit of a work in the highest degree useful and pleasing. Whoever has the care of instructing others may be charged with deficiency in his duty if this book is not recommended.
I have mentioned his treatises of theology as distinct from his other productions; but the truth is that whatever he took in hand was, by his incessant solicitude for souls, converted to theology. As piety predominated in his mind, it is diffused over his works. Under his direction it may be truly said, Theologiae philosophia ancillatur (Philosophy is subservient to evangelical instruction). It is difficult to read a page without learning, or at least wishing, to be better. The attention is caught by indirect instruction; and he that sat down only to reason is on a sudden compelled to pray. It was therefore with great propriety that, in 1728, he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a Doctor of Divinity. Academical honours would have more value if they were always bestowed with equal judgment. He continued many years to study and to preach, and to do good by his instruction and example, till at last the infirmities of age disabled him from the more laborious part of his ministerial functions, and, being no longer capable of public duty, he offered to remit the salary appendent to it; but his congregation would not accept the resignation. By degrees his weakness increased, and at last confined him to his chamber and his bed, where he was worn gradually away without pain, till he expired November 25th 1748, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.
Few men have left behind such purity of character, or such monuments of laborious piety. He has provided instruction for all ages–from those who are lisping their first lessons, to the enlightened readers of Malebranche and Locke; he has left neither corporeal nor spiritual nature unexamined; he has taught the art of reasoning, and the science of the stars. His character, therefore, must be formed from the multiplicity and diversity of his attainments, rather than from any single performance, for it would not be safe to claim for him the highest rank in any single denomination of literary dignity; yet, perhaps, there was nothing in which he would not have excelled, if he had not divided his powers to different pursuits.
As a poet, had he been only a poet, he would probably have stood high among the authors with whom he is now associated. For his judgment was exact, and he noted beauties and faults with very nice discernment; his imagination, as the “Dacian Battle” proves, was vigorous and active, and the stores of knowledge were large by which his fancy was to be supplied. His ear was well tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious. But his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has done well. His poems on other subjects seldom rise higher than might be expected from the amusements of a man of letters, and have different degrees of value as they are more or less laboured, or as the occasion was more or less favourable to invention. He writes too often without regular measures, and too often in blank verse; the rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent. He is particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of characters. His lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater measure of sprightliness and vigour? He is at least one of the few poets with whom youth and ignorance may be safely pleased; and happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his non-conformity, to copy his benevolence to man, and his
reverence to God.
A. PHILIPS.
Of the birth or early part of the life of Ambrose Philips I have not been able to find any account. His academical education he received at St. John’s College in Cambridge, where he first solicited the notice of the world by some English verses, in the collection published by the University on the death of Queen Mary. From this time how he was employed, or in what station he passed his life, is not yet discovered. He must have published his “Pastorals” before the year 1708, because they are evidently prior to those of Pope. He afterwards (1709) addressed to the universal patron, the Duke of Dorset, a “Poetical Letter from Copenhagen,” which was published in the Tatler, and is by Pope, in one of his first Letters, mentioned with high praise as the production of a man “who could write very nobly.”
Philips was a zealous Whig, and therefore easily found access to Addison and Steele; but his ardour seems not to have procured him anything more than kind words, since he was reduced to translate the “Persian Tales” for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown. The book is divided into many sections, for each of which, if he received half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was very liberal; but half-a-crown had a mean sound. He was employed in promoting the principles of his party, by epitomising Hacket’s “Life of Archbishop Williams.” The original book is written with such depravity of genius, such mixture of the fop and pedant, as has not often appeared. The epitome is free enough from affectation, but has little spirit or vigour.
In 1712 he brought upon the stage The Distressed Mother, almost a translation of Racine’s Andromaque. Such a work requires no uncommon powers, but the friends of Philips exerted every art to promote his interest. Before the appearance of the play a whole Spectator, none indeed of the best, was devoted to its praise; while it yet continued to be acted, another Spectator was written to tell what impression it made upon Sir Roger, and on the first night a select audience, says Pope, was called together to applaud it. It was concluded with the most successful Epilogue that was ever yet spoken on the English theatre. The three first nights it was recited twice, and not only continued to be demanded through the run, as it is termed, of the play, but whenever it is recalled to the stage, where by peculiar fortune, though a copy from the French, it yet keeps its place, the Epilogue is still expected, and is still spoken.
The propriety of Epilogues in general, and consequently of this, was questioned by a correspondent of the Spectator, whose letter was undoubtedly admitted for the sake of the answer, which soon followed, written with much zeal and acrimony. The attack and the defence equally contributed to stimulate curiosity and continue attention. It may be discovered in the defence that Prior’s Epilogue to Phaedra had a little excited jealousy, and something of Prior’s plan may be discovered in the performance of his rival. Of this distinguished Epilogue the reputed author was the wretched Budgell, whom Addison used to denominate “the man who calls me cousin;” and when he was asked how such a silly fellow could write so well, replied, “The Epilogue was quite another thing when I saw it first.” It was known in Tonson’s family, and told to Garrick, that Addison was himself the author of it, and that, when it had been at first printed with his name, he came early in the morning, before the copies were distributed, and ordered it to be given to Budgell, that it might add weight to the solicitation which he was then making for a place.
Philips was now high in the ranks of literature. His play was applauded; his translations from Sappho had been published in the Spectator; he was an important and distinguished associate of clubs, witty and poetical; and nothing was wanting to his happiness but that he should be sure of its continuance. The work which had procured him the first notice from the public was his “Six Pastorals,” which, flattering the imagination with Arcadian scenes, probably found many readers, and might have long passed as a pleasing amusement had they not been unhappily too much commended.
The rustic poems of Theocritus were so highly valued by the Greeks and Romans that they attracted the imitation of Virgil, whose Eclogues seem to have been considered as precluding all attempts of the same kind; for no shepherds were taught to sing by any succeeding poet, till Nemesian and Calphurnius ventured their feeble efforts in the lower age of Latin literature.
At the revival of learning in Italy it was soon discovered that a dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with little difficulty, because the conversation of shepherds excludes profound or refined sentiment; and for images and descriptions, satyrs and fauns, and naiads and dryads, were always within call; and woods and meadows, and hills and rivers, supplied variety of matter, which, having a natural power to soothe the mind, did not quickly cloy it.
Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the novelty of modern pastorals in Latin. Being not ignorant of Greek, and finding nothing in the word “eclogue” of rural meaning, he supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own productions “AEglogues,” by which he meant to express the talk of goat-herds, though it will mean only the talk of goats. This new name was adopted by subsequent writers, and among others by our Spenser.
More than a century afterwards (1498) Mantuan published his Bucolics with such success that they were soon dignified by Badius with a comment, and, as Scaliger complained, received into schools, and taught as classical; his complaint was vain, and the practice, however injudicious, spread far and continued long. Mantuan was read, at least in some of the inferior schools of this kingdom, to the beginning of the present century. The speakers of Mantuan carried their disquisitions beyond the country to censure the corruptions of the Church, and from him Spenser learned to employ his swains on topics of controversy. The Italians soon transferred pastoral poetry into their own language. Sannazaro wrote “Arcadia” in prose and verse; Tasso and Guarini wrote “Favole Boschareccie,” or Sylvan Dramas; and all nations of Europe filled volumes with Thyrsis and Damon, and Thestylis and Phyllis.
Philips thinks it “somewhat strange to conceive how, in an age so addicted to the Muses, pastoral poetry never comes to be so much as thought upon.” His wonder seems very unseasonable; there had never, from the time of Spenser, wanted writers to talk occasionally of Arcadia and Strephon, and half the book, in which he first tried his powers, consists of dialogues on Queen Mary’s death, between Tityrus and Corydon, or Mopsus and Menalcas. A series or book of pastorals, however, I know not that anyone had then lately published.
Not long afterwards Pope made the first display of his powers in four pastorals, written in a very different form. Philips had taken Spenser, and Pope took Virgil for his pattern. Philips endeavoured to be natural, Pope laboured to be elegant.
Philips was now favoured by Addison and by Addison’s companions, who were very willing to push him into reputation. The Guardian gave an account of Pastoral, partly critical and partly historical; in which, when the merit of the modern is compared, Tasso and Guarini are censured for remote thoughts and unnatural refinements, and, upon the whole, the Italians and French are all excluded from rural poetry, and the pipe of the pastoral muse is transmitted by lawful inheritance from Theocritus to Virgil, from Virgil to Spenser, and from Spenser to Philips. With this inauguration of Philips his rival Pope was not much delighted; he therefore drew a comparison of Philips’s performance with his own, in which, with an unexampled and unequalled artifice of irony, though he has himself always the advantage, he gives the preference to Philips. The design of aggrandising himself he disguised with such dexterity that, though Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of displeasing Pope by publishing his paper. Published however it was (Guardian, No. 40), and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence. In poetical powers, of either praise or satire, there was no proportion between the combatants; but Philips, though he could not prevail by wit, hoped to hurt Pope with another weapon, and charged him, as Pope thought with Addison’s approbation, as disaffected to the Government. Even with this he was not satisfied, for, indeed, there is no appearance that any regard was paid to his clamours. He proceeded to grosser insults, and hung up a rod at Button’s, with which he threatened to chastise Pope, who appears to have been extremely exasperated, for in the first edition of his Letters he calls Philips “rascal,” and in the last still charges him with detaining in his hands the subscriptions for “Homer” delivered to him by the Hanover Club. I suppose it was never suspected that he meant to appropriate the money; he only delayed, and with sufficient meanness, the gratification of him by whose prosperity he was pained.
Men sometimes suffer by injudicious kindness; Philips became ridiculous, without his own fault, by the absurd admiration of his friends, who decorated him with honorary garlands, which the first breath of contradiction blasted.
When upon the succession of the House of Hanover every Whig expected to be happy, Philips seems to have obtained too little notice; he caught few drops of the golden shower, though he did not omit what flattery could perform. He was only made a commissioner of the lottery (1717), and, what did not much elevate his character, a justice of the peace.
The success of his first play must naturally dispose him to turn his hopes towards the stage; he did not, however, soon commit himself to the mercy of an audience, but contented himself with the fame already acquired, till after nine years he produced (1722) The Briton, a tragedy which, whatever was its reception, is now neglected; though one of the scenes, between Vanoc the British Prince and Valens the Roman General, is confessed to be written with great dramatic skill, animated by spirit truly poetical. He had not been idle though he had been silent, for he exhibited another tragedy the same year on the story of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester. This tragedy is only remembered by its title.
His happiest undertaking was (1711) of a paper called The Freethinker, in conjunction with associates, of whom one was Dr. Boulter, who, then only minister of a parish in Southwark, was of so much consequence to the Government that he was made first Bishop of Bristol, and afterwards Primate of Ireland, where his piety and his charity will be long honoured. It may easily be imagined that what was printed under the direction of Boulter would have nothing in it indecent or licentious; its title is to be understood as implying only freedom from unreasonable prejudice. It has been reprinted in volumes, but is little read; nor can impartial criticism recommend it as worthy of revival.
Boulter was not well qualified to write diurnal essays, but he knew how to practise the liberality of greatness and the fidelity of friendship. When he was advanced to the height of ecclesiastical dignity, he did not forget the companion of his labours. Knowing Philips to be slenderly supported, he took him to Ireland as partaker of his fortune, and, making him his secretary, added such preferments as enabled him to represent the county of Armagh in the Irish Parliament. In December, 1726, he was made secretary to the Lord Chancellor, and in August, 1733, became Judge of the Prerogative Court.
After the death of his patron he continued some years in Ireland, but at last longing, as it seems, for his native country, he returned (1748) to London, having doubtless survived most of his friends and enemies, and among them his dreaded antagonist Pope. He found, however, the Duke of Newcastle still living, and to him he dedicated his poems collected into a volume.
Having purchased an annuity of 400 pounds, he now certainly hoped to pass some years of life in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope deceived him: he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749, in his seventy-eighth year.
Of his personal character all that I have heard is, that he was eminent for bravery and skill in the sword, and that in conversation he was solemn and pompous. He had great sensibility of censure, if judgment may be made by a single story which I heard long ago from Mr. Ing, a gentleman of great eminence in Staffordshire. “Philips,” said he, “was once at table, when I asked him, ‘How came thy king of Epirus to drive oxen, and to say, “I’m goaded on by love”?’ After which question he never spoke again.”
Of The Distressed Mother not much is pretended to be his own, and therefore it is no subject of criticism: his other two tragedies, I believe, are not below mediocrity, nor above it. Among the poems comprised in the late Collection, the “Letter from Denmark” may be justly praised; the Pastorals, which by the writer of the Guardian were ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustic Muse, cannot surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life which did not exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected: the supposition of such a state is allowed to be pastoral. In his other poems he cannot be denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom much force or much comprehension. The pieces that please best are those which, from Pope and Pope’s adherents, procured him the name of “Namby-Pamby,” the poems of short lines, by which he paid his court to all ages and characters, from Walpole the “steerer of the realm,” to Miss Pulteney in the nursery. The numbers are smooth and sprightly, and the diction is seldom faulty. They are not loaded with much thought, yet, if they had been written by Addison, they would have had admirers: little things are not valued but when they are done by those who can do greater.
In his translations from “Pindar” he found the art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke. He has added nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his book deserves to be read: perhaps he valued most himself that part which the critic would reject.
WEST.
Gilbert West is one of the writers of whom I regret my inability to give a sufficient account; the intelligence which my inquiries have obtained is general and scanty. He was the son of the Rev. Dr. West; perhaps him who published “Pindar” at Oxford about the beginning of this century. His mother was sister to Sir Richard Temple, afterwards Lord Cobham. His father, purposing to educate him for the Church, sent him first to Eton, and afterwards to Oxford; but he was seduced to a more airy mode of life, by a commission in a troop of horse, procured him by his uncle. He continued some time in the army, though it is reasonable to suppose that he never sunk into a mere soldier, nor ever lost the love, or much neglected the pursuit, of learning; and afterwards, finding himself more inclined to civil employment, he laid down his commission, and engaged in business under the Lord Townshend, then Secretary of State, with whom he attended the King to Hanover.
His adherence to Lord Townshend ended in nothing but a nomination (May, 1729) to be Clerk-Extraordinary of the Privy Council, which produced no immediate profit; for it only placed him in a state of expectation and right of succession, and it was very long before a vacancy admitted him to profit.
Soon afterwards he married, and settled himself in a very pleasant house at Wickham, in Kent, where he devoted himself to learning and to piety. Of his learning the late Collection exhibits evidence, which would have been yet fuller if the dissertations which accompany his version of “Pindar” had not been improperly omitted. Of his piety the influence has, I hope, been extended far by his “Observations on the Resurrection,” published in 1747, for which the University of Oxford created him a Doctor of Laws, by diploma (March 30, 1748), and would doubtless have reached yet further had he lived to complete what he had for some time meditated–the “Evidences of the Truth of the New Testament.” Perhaps it may not be without effect to tell that he read the prayers of the public Liturgy every morning to his family, and that on Sunday evening he called his servants into the parlour and read to them first a sermon and then prayers. Crashaw is now not the only maker of verses to whom may be given the two venerable names of Poet and Saint. He was very often visited by Lyttelton and Pitt, who, when they were weary of faction and debates, used at Wickham to find books and quiet, a decent table, and literary conversation. There is at Wickham a walk made by Pitt; and, what is of far more importance, at Wickham, Lyttelton received that conviction which produced his “Dissertation on St. Paul.” These two illustrious friends had for a while listened to the blandishments of infidelity; and when West’s book was published, it was bought by some who did not know his change of opinion, in expectation of new objections against Christianity; and as infidels do not want malignity, they revenged the disappointment by calling him a Methodist.
Mr. West’s income was not large; and his friends endeavoured, but without success, to obtain an augmentation. It is reported that the education of the young Prince was offered to him, but that he required a more extensive power of superintendence than it was thought proper to allow him. In time, however, his revenue was improved; he lived to have one of the lucrative clerkships of the Privy Council (1752); and Mr. Pitt at last had it in his power to make him Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital. He was now sufficiently rich; but wealth came too late to be long enjoyed; nor could it secure him from the calamities of life; he lost (1755) his only son; and the year after (March 26) a stroke of the palsy brought to the grave one of the few poets to whom the grave might be without its terrors.
Of his translations I have only compared the first Olympic Ode with the original, and found my expectation surpassed, both by its elegance and its exactness. He does not confine himself to his author’s train of stanzas; for he saw that the difference of languages required a different mode of versification. The first strophe is eminently happy; in the second he has a little strayed from Pindar’s meaning, who says, “If thou, my soul, wishest to speak of games, look not in the desert sky for a planet hotter than the sun; nor shall we tell of nobler games than those of Olympia.” He is sometimes too paraphrastical. Pindar bestows upon Hiero an epithet which, in one word, signifies DELIGHTING IN HORSES; a word which, in the translation, generates these lines:–
“Hiero’s royal brows, whose care
Tends the courser’s noble breed, Pleased to nurse the pregnant mare,
Pleased to train the youthful steed.”
Pindar says of Pelops, that “he came alone in the dark to the White Sea;” and West–
“Near the billow-beaten side
Of the foam-besilvered main,
Darkling, and alone, he stood:”
which, however, is less exuberant than the former passage.
A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many imperfections; but West’s version, so far as I have considered it, appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities.
His “Institution of the Garter” (1742) is written with sufficient knowledge of the manners that prevailed in the age to which it is referred, and with great elegance of diction; but, for want of a process of events, neither knowledge nor elegance preserves the reader from weariness.
His “Imitations of Spenser” are very successfully performed, both with respect to the metre, the language, and the fiction; and being engaged at once by the excellence of the sentiments, and the artifice of the copy, the mind has two amusements together. But such compositions are not to be reckoned among the great achievements of intellect, because their effect is local and temporary; they appeal not to reason or passion, but to memory, and presuppose an accidental or artificial state of mind. An imitation of Spenser is nothing to a reader, however acute, by whom Spenser has never been perused. Works of this kind may deserve praise, as proofs of great industry and great nicety of observation; but the highest praise, the praise of genius, they cannot claim. The noblest beauties of art are those of which the effect is co-extended with rational nature, or at least with the whole circle of polished life; what is less than this can be only pretty, the plaything of fashion, and the amusement of a day.
There is in the Adventurer a paper of verses given to one of the authors as Mr. West’s, and supposed to have been written by him. It should not be concealed, however, that it is printed with Mr. Jago’s name in Dodsley’s Collection, and is mentioned as his in a letter of Shenstone’s. Perhaps West gave it without naming the author, and Hawkesworth, receiving it from him, thought it his; for his he thought it, as he told me, and as he tells the public.
COLLINS.
William Collins was born at Chichester, on the 25th day of December, about 1720. His father was a hatter of good reputation. He was in 1733, as Dr. Warton has kindly informed me, admitted scholar of Winchester College, where he was educated by Dr. Burton. His English exercises were better than his Latin. He first courted the notice of the public by some verses to a “Lady weeping,” published in The Gentleman’s Magazine (January, 1739).
In 1740 he stood first in the list of the scholars to be received in succession at New College, but unhappily there was no vacancy. He became a Commoner of Queen’s College, probably with a scanty maintenance; but was, in about half a year, elected a Demy of Magdalen College, where he continued till he had taken a Bachelor’s degree, and then suddenly left the University; for what reason I know not that he told.
He now (about 1744) came to London a literary adventurer, with many projects in his head, and very little money in his pocket. He designed many works; but his great fault was irresolution; or the frequent calls of immediate necessity broke his scheme, and suffered him to pursue no settled purpose. A man doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation or remote inquiries. He published proposals for a “History of the Revival of Learning;” and I have heard him speak with great kindness of Leo X., and with keen resentment of his tasteless successor. But probably not a page of his history was ever written. He planned several tragedies, but he only planned them. He wrote now and then odes and other poems, and did something, however little. About this time I fell into his company. His appearance was decent and manly; his knowledge considerable, his views extensive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful. By degrees I gained his confidence; and one day was admitted to him when he was immured by a bailiff that was prowling in the street. On this occasion recourse was had to the booksellers, who, on the credit of a translation of Aristotle’s “Poetics,” which he engaged to write with a large commentary, advanced as much money as enabled him to escape into the country. He showed me the guineas safe in his hand. Soon afterwards his uncle, Mr. Martin, a lieutenant-colonel, left him about 2000 pounds; a sum which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not live to exhaust. The guineas were then repaid, and the translation neglected. But man is not born for happiness. Collins, who, while he studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study than his life was assailed by more dreadful calamities–disease and insanity.
Having formerly written his character, while perhaps it was yet more distinctly impressed upon my memory, I shall insert it here.
“Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties. He was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had employed his mind chiefly on works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens. This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were always desired by him, but not always attained. Yet, as diligence is never wholly lost, if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendour. This idea which he had formed of excellence led him to Oriental fictions and allegorical imagery, and, perhaps, while he was intent upon description, he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment. His poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties.
“His morals were pure, and his opinions pious; in a long continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform. There is a degree of want by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and abate the fervour of sincerity. That this man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed always unentangled through the snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that at least he preserved the source of action unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected pressure, or casual temptation.
“The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it. These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellect he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. He was for some time confined in a house of lunatics, and afterwards retired to the care of his sister in Chichester, where death, in 1756, came to his relief.
“After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his sister, whom he had directed to meet him. There was then nothing of disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children carry to the school. When his friend took it into his hand, out of curiosity to see what companion a man of letters had chosen, ‘I have but one book,’ said Collins, ‘but that is the best.'”
Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness.
He was visited at Chichester, in his last illness, by his learned friends Dr. Warton and his brother, to whom he spoke with disapprobation of his “Oriental Eclogues,” as not sufficiently expressive of Asiatic manners, and called them his “Irish Eclogues.” He showed them, at the same time, an ode inscribed to Mr. John Home, on the superstitions of the Highlands, which they thought superior to his other works, but which no search has yet found. His disorder was no alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness–a deficiency rather of his vital than his intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with his former vigour. The approaches of this dreadful malady he began to feel soon after his uncle’s death; and, with the usual weakness of men so diseased, eagerly snatched that temporary relief with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce. But his health continually declined, and he grew more and more burthensome to himself.
To what I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival: and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure.
Mr. Collins’s first production is added here from the Poetical Calendar:–
TO MISS AURELIA C–R,
ON HER WEEPING AT HER SISTER’S WEDDING.
“Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn; Lament not Hannah’s happy state;
You may be happy in your turn,
And seize the treasure you regret. With Love united Hymen stands,
And softly whispers to your charms, ‘Meet but your lover in my bands,
You’ll find your sister in his arms.'”
DYER.
John Dyer, of whom I have no other account to give than his own letters, published with Hughes’s correspondence, and the notes added by the editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the second son of Robert Dyer of Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of great capacity and note. He passed through Westminster school under the care of Dr. Freind, and was then called home to be instructed in his father’s profession. But his father died soon, and he took no delight in the study of the law; but, having always amused himself with drawing, resolved to turn painter, and became pupil to Mr. Richardson, an artist then of high reputation, but now better known by his books than by his pictures.
Having studied a while under his master, he became, as he tells his friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales and the parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and about 1727 [1726] printed “Grongar Hill” in Lewis’s Miscellany. Being, probably, unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters, travelled to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the “Ruins of Rome.” If his poem was written soon after his return, he did not make use of his acquisitions in painting, whatever they might be; for decline of health and love of study determined him to the Church. He therefore entered into orders; and, it seems, married about the same time a lady of the name of Ensor; “whose grandmother,” says he, “was a Shakspeare, descended from a brother of everybody’s Shakspeare;” by her, in 1756, he had a son and three daughters living.
His ecclesiastical provision was for a long time but slender. His first patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp in Leicestershire, of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years, and then exchanged it for Belchford, in Lincolnshire, of seventy-five. His condition now began to mend. In 1751 Sir John Heathcote gave him Coningsby, of one hundred and forty pounds a year; and in 1755 the Chancellor added Kirkby, of one hundred and ten. He complains that the repair of the house at Coningsby, and other expenses, took away the profit. In 1757 he published “The Fleece,” his greatest poetical work; of which I will not suppress a ludicrous story. Dodsley the bookseller was one day mentioning it to a critical visitor, with more expectation of success than the other could easily admit. In the conversation the author’s age was asked; and being represented as advanced in life, “He will,” said the critic, “be buried in woollen.” He did not indeed long survive that publication, nor long enjoy the increase of his preferments, for in 1758 he died.
Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate criticism. “Grongar Hill” is the happiest of his productions: it is not indeed very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again. The idea of the “Ruins of Rome” strikes more, but pleases less, and the title raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some passages, however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says,
“The Pilgrim oft
At dead of night, ‘mid his orison hears Aghast the voice of Time, disparting tow’rs Tumbling all precipitate down dashed, Rattling around, loud thund’ring to the Moon.”
Of “The Fleece,” which never became popular, and is now universally neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to COUPLE THE SERPENT WITH THE FOWL. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer’s arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased.
Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight of censure. I have been told that Akenside, who, upon a poetical question, has a right to be heard, said, “That he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer’s ‘Fleece;’ for, if that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence.”
SHENSTONE.
William Shenstone, the son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was born in November, 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one of those insulated districts which, in the division of the kingdom, was appended, for some reason not now discoverable, to a distant county; and which, though surrounded by Warwickshire and Worcestershire, belongs to Shropshire, though perhaps thirty miles distant from any other part of it. He learned to read of an old dame, whom his poem of the “Schoolmistress” has delivered to posterity; and soon received such delight from books, that he was always calling for fresh entertainment, and expected that, when any of the family went to market, a new book should be brought him, which, when it came, was in fondness carried to bed and laid by him. It is said, that, when his request had been neglected, his mother wrapped up a piece of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night. As he grew older, he went for a while to the Grammar-school in Hales-Owen, and was placed afterwards with Mr. Crumpton, an eminent schoolmaster at Solihul, where he distinguished himself by the quickness of his progress.
When he was young (June, 1724) he was deprived of his father, and soon after (August, 1726) of his grandfather; and was, with his brother, who died afterwards unmarried, left to the care of his grandmother, who managed the estate.
From school he was sent in 1732 to Pembroke College in Oxford, a society which for half a century has been eminent for English poetry and elegant literature. 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 Rev. 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 public 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 the 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 sullen and surly spectator 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 a while 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.
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 fauns and fairies. 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. 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 Leasowes, of a putrid fever, about five on Friday morning, February 11, 1763, and was buried by the side of his brother in the churchyard 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. 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 superior to the glitter of slight ornaments. His compositions suit not ill to this description. His topics of praise are the domestic virtues, and his thoughts are pure and simple, but wanting combination; they want variety. The peace of solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and the unenvied security of an humble station, can fill but a few pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will be soon described. His elegies have, therefore, too much resemblance of each other. The lines are sometimes, such as Elegy requires, 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 Lyric Poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as trip lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any weighty meaning. From 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 are two passages, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature:–
“I prized every hour that went by, Beyond all that had pleased me before: But now they are past, and I sigh,
And I grieve that I prized them no more.
When forced 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 gazed, 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 wood pigeons breed: But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say ’twas a barbarous deed:
For he ne’er could be true, she averred, Who could rob a poor bird of its young; And I loved her the more when I heard Such tenderness fall from her tongue.”
In the third he mentions the common-places 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 this 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 flower, and the shrub, and the tree, Which I reared 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 and general moral. His blank verses, those that can read them, may probably find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours. “Love and Honour” is derived from the old ballad, “Did you not hear of a Spanish Lady?”–I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme.
The “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.
YOUNG.
The following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman (Mr. Herbert Croft) who had better information than I could easily have obtained; and the public will perhaps wish that I had solicited and obtained more such favours from him:–
“Dear Sir,–In consequence of our different conversations about authentic materials for the Life of Young, I send you the following details:”–
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 offered them an opportunity to bestow upon him the reward provided for merit by William of Wykeham; certain it is, that to an Oxford fellowship our poet did not succeed. By chance, or by choice, New College cannot claim the honour of numbering among its fellows him who wrote the “Night Thoughts.”
On the 13th of October, 1703, he was entered an independent member of New College, that he might live at little expense in the warden’s lodgings, who was a particular friend of his father’s, till he should be qualified to stand for a fellowship at All Souls. In a few months the warden of New College died. He then removed to Corpus College. The president of this society, from regard also for his father, invited him 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 commenced tutor is not known. None has hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from the author of “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 an one was never published before by any author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any obligation of reading what was presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of it, because it would make people stare, was absurd enough and perfectly right.” Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his works; and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, in 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.”
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 honours on wings of the same kind. His first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to the House of Lords the sons of the Earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in one day, ten others to the number of Peers. In order to reconcile the people to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, “An Epistle to the Right Honourable George Lord Lansdowne.” In this composition the poet pours out his panegyric with the extravagance of a young man, who thinks his present stock of wealth will never be exhausted. The poem seems intended also to reconcile the public to the late peace. This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and that in peace “harvests wave, and commerce swells her sail.” If this be humanity, for which he meant it, is it politics? Another purpose of this epistle appears to have been to prepare the public for the reception of some tragedy he might have in hand. His lordship’s patronage, he says, will not let him “repent his passion for the stage;” and the particular praise bestowed on Othello and Oroonoko looks as if some such character as Zanga was even then in contemplation. The affectionate mention of the death of his friend Harrison of New College, at the close of this poem, is an instance of Young’s art, which displayed itself so wonderfully some time afterwards in the “Night Thoughts,” of making the public a party in his private sorrow. Should justice call upon you to censure this poem, it ought at least to be remembered that he did not insert it in his works; and that in the letter to Curll, as we have seen, he advises its omission. The booksellers, in the late body of English poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately rejected by the respective authors. This I shall be careful to do with regard to Young. “I think,” says he, “the following pieces in FOUR volumes to be the most excusable of all that I have written; and I wish LESS APOLOGY was less needful for these. As there is no recalling what is got abroad, the pieces here republished I have revised and corrected, and rendered them as PARDONABLE as it was in my power to do.”
Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?
When Addison published “Cato” in 1713, Young had the honour of prefixing to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the pieces which the author of the “Night Thoughts” did not republish.
On the appearance of his poem on the “Last Day,” Addison did not return Young’s compliment; but “The Englishman” of October 29, 1713, which was probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this poem. The “Last Day” was published soon after the peace. The Vice- Chancellor’s imprimatur (for it was printed at Oxford) is dated the 19th, 1713. From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the composition of it. While other bards “with Britain’s hero set their souls on fire,” he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough HAD BEEN considered by Britain as her HERO; but, when the “Last Day” was published, female cabal had blasted for a time the laurels of Blenheim. This serious poem was finished by Young as early as 1710, before he was thirty; for part of it is printed in the Tatler. It was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which, for some reason, he did not admit into his works. It tells her that 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 banished 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 panegyrics here provide;
You cannot err on flattery’s side.”
Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been regularly called Hirelings, and on the other Patriots?
Of the dedication the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in the highest terms of the late peace; it gives her Majesty praise indeed for her victories, but says that the author is more pleased to see her rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.
The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place where human praise or human flattery, even less general than this, are of little consequence. If Young thought the dedication contained only the praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in his works. Was he conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he should not have written it. The poem itself is not without a glance towards politics, 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 to 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 panegyrics are ready yet for the king. Nothing like friendship has 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 onset 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 twelvemonth. 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?
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 a la Mode” to Wharton’s infamous relation Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to Wharton thus–“My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care; which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour, since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit, though through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty and respect, I 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 March, 1719, and accounted for his grace’s bounty in a style princely and commendable, if not legal–“considering that the public 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, etc.” 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 pounds which had been offered him for life if he would continue tutor to Lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations of the Duke of Wharton, and his grace’s assurances of providing for him in a much more ample manner. It also appeared that the duke had given him a bond for 600 pounds dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration of his taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to be chosen member of the House of Commons, at the duke’s desire, and in consideration of his not taking two livings of 200 pounds and 400 pounds in the gift of All Souls College, on his grace’s promises of serving and advancing him in the world.
Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account. The attempt to get into Parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood a contested election. His grace discovered in him talents for oratory as well as for poetry. Nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was preaching in his turn at St. James’s, he plainly perceived it was out of his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into tears. But we must pursue his poetical life.
In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if they contain any, it is now vain to seek:
“IN JOY ONCE JOINED, 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 encomiastic 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 Glowed with the love of virtue and of art.”
Since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,
“Her favour is diffused to that degree, Excess of goodness! it has dawned 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 connection 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 preferments and honours, to such names as the Duke of Dorset, Mr. Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain, and Sir Robert Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. 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, turned by thee, Refresh the dry remains 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 Lyric 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,
Enamoured 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 laboured 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 Lyric 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 their 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 consistent 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 shattered 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 lyric poet, he is at least a critic in that sort of poetry; and, if his lyric 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 critics,” 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 lyric composition an “Essay on Lyric 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 critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it contains 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, not long after he had put on the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George II.
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 appendages 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 frolic, 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 Course,” 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 Lyric, 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 Pindaric 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 Pindaric 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 connection with this lady arose from his father’s acquaintance, already mentioned, with Lady Anne Wharton, who was co-heiress 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 connection, 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 provoked thy rage, Thy rage provoked who soothed 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 retired you sit, Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit,” etc.
Thomson, in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat of the Muses,
“Where, in the secret bower and winding walk, For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.”
The praises Thomson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the second
“Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered 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 called 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’s, 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. Temple or any other person with whom Young was known to be connected or acquainted, while all the circumstances relating to Narcissa have been constantly found applicable to Young’s daughter-in-law. At what short intervals the poet tells us he was wounded by the deaths of the three persons particularly lamented, none that has read the “Night Thoughts” (and who has not read them?) needs to be informed.
“Insatiate archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.”
Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and Lady Elizabeth Young could be these three victims, over whom Young has hitherto been pitied for having to pour the “Midnight Sorrows” of his religious poetry? Mrs. Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the poet’s wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, “ere thrice the moon had filled her horn.” But in the short preface to “The Complaint” he seriously tells us, “that the occasion of this poem was real, not fictitious, and that the facts mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of the writer.” It is probable, therefore, that in these three contradictory lines the poet complains more than the father-in-law, the friend, or the widower. Whatever names belong to these facts, or if the names be those generally supposed, whatever heightening a poet’s sorrow may have given the facts; to the sorrow Young felt from them religion and morality are indebted for the “Night Thoughts.” There is a pleasure sure in sadness which mourners only know! Of these poems the two or three first have been perused perhaps more eagerly and more frequently than the rest. When he got as far as the fourth or fifth his original motive for taking up the pen was answered; his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We still find the same pious poet, but we hear less of Philander and Narcissa, and less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.
Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, on her way to Nice, the year after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, “in her bridal hour.” It is more than poetically true that Young accompanied her to the Continent:
“I flew, I snatched her from the rigid North, And bore her nearer to the sun.”
But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in such animated colours in “Night the Third.” After her death the remainder of the party passed the ensuing winter at Nice. The poet seems perhaps in these compositions to dwell with more melancholy on the death of Philander and Narcissa than of his wife. But it is only for this reason. He who runs and reads may remember that in the “Night Thoughts” Philander and Narcissa are often mentioned and often lamented. To recollect lamentations over the author’s wife the memory must have been charged with distinct passages. This lady brought him one child, Frederick, now living, to whom the Prince of Wales was godfather.
That domestic grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these ornaments to our language it is impossible to deny. Nor would it be common hardiness to contend that worldly discontent had no hand in these joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means sure that, at any rate, we should not have had something of the same colour from Young’s pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires. In so long a life causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have occurred. It is not clear to me that his Muse was not sitting upon the watch for the first which happened. “Night Thoughts” were not uncommon to her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his “Last Day,” almost his earliest poem, he calls her “The Melancholy Maid,”
“whom dismal scenes delight, Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night.”
In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he says:
“Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night To sacred thought may forcibly invite. Oh! how divine to tread the milky way, To the bright palace of Eternal Day!”
When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have sent him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp, and the poet is reported to have used it. What he calls “The TRUE Estimate of Human Life,” which has already been mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of the tapestry, and being asked why he did not show the right, he is said to have replied that he could not. By others it has been told me that this was finished, but that, before there existed any copy, it was torn in pieces by a lady’s monkey. Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the “Night Thoughts” to prove the gloominess of Young, and to show that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was in some measure the sullen inspiration of discontent? From them who