What now but immortality can please? O had he pressed his theme, pursued the track, Pope could not have sung "immortal man" without subverting the system of Bolingbroke, which was the basis of his whole poem; but Bolingbroke and all his works were an abomination to the author of the above lines. He was the son of Edward Young, Rector of Upham in Hampshire, where he was born in June 1681. Educated on the foundation at Winchester, he entered New College on the 13th of October 1703 as a Commoner, but soon removed to Corpus Christi College, where he remained till 1708, when he was nominated to a law Fellowship at All Souls by Archbishop Tenison. While he was at Oxford, Tindal the Deist, also a Fellow of All Souls, exercised a considerable intellectual influence through the University, but it appears from the testimony of the latter that he could make little impression on the mind of Young, who was then best known among his companions for his witty extemporary epigrams. Young was more than thirty years old when, in 1712, he published his first poem, An Epistle to the Right Hon. George, Lord Lansdown, on the subject of the approaching Peace, aimed at by the Tory Ministry. In 1713 appeared his poem on the Last Day, which he dedicated to the Queen, who was his godmother, and a few months later was issued another religious work by him, The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, the subject being the execution of Lady Jane Grey. He took the degree of B.C.L. in 1714, and in the following year was appointed tutor to Philip, afterwards Marquis and then Duke of Wharton. The latter, who succeeded to the title of Marquis in 1715, was fond of the poet's society, and in 1716 sent for him to be his companion in Ireland, when he himself returned thither after many escapades on the Continent. Young, being at the time tutor to the son of the Marquis of Exeter, complied with his first pupil's request and resigned his position, a sacrifice in return for which Wharton in 1719 granted him an annuity. He also used his influence to promote the success of the poet's tragedy, Busiris, which, having been begun in 1713, was completed and brought upon the stage in 1719; in that year also Young was granted the degree of D.C.L. His tragedy called Revenge was produced in 1721; and soon afterwards the Duke (for to this rank Wharton had been raised in 1718) gave him a bond for £600, to compensate him for travelling expenses and for his refusal (though he was not yet ordained) of more than one living in the gift of his College. In 1722 Young spent a considerable time at Eastbury, the seat of Bubb Dodington, who had been his contemporary at New College, and there he met Voltaire. Their meeting seems to have been memorable. Joseph Warton says: Nobody ever said more brilliant things in conversation than Dr. Young. The late Lord Melcombe informed me that when he and Voltaire were on a visit to his Lordship at Eastbury, the English poet was far superior to the French in the variety and novelty of his bon-mots and repartees. He continued to be a close companion of the Duke of Wharton till 1725 when the latter, after wasting almost all his substance in riotous living, went abroad. Young now turned his attention seriously to composition. Between 1725 and 1730 he produced several of his lyrical poems (1728)—a style of writing for which he was entirely unqualified-his excellent satires on The Universal Passion (1725-7), and his Epistle to Pope (1730). The merits of his work, joined to the servile flattery, which he had practised from his first appearance as a writer, at length procured him the pension at which he had been so long aiming. It amounted to £200, and the warrant for it is dated 3rd May 1726. Swift no doubt alludes to it in his Rhapsody on Poetry when he says that Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves or lose his pension. VOL. V U In 1728 he was ordained, and in 1730 was presented by his college to Welwyn, a rectory worth £300 a year. Beyond this he obtained no preferment, though he must often have applied for it at Court, having perhaps made the mistake, like many other suitors, of overrating the influence of Lady Suffolk with George II. A letter without date, but probably written soon after the King's accession in 1727, as it is addressed to "Mrs. Howard," dwells on the writer's claim to advancement and concludes: As for zeal, I have written nothing without showing my duty to their Majesties, and some pieces are dedicated to them. This, Madam, is the short and true state of my case. They that make their court to the Ministers, and not to their Majesties, succeed better. If my case deserves some consideration, and you can serve me in it, I humbly hope and believe you will. Disappointment, thinly veiled, often makes itself visible in Night Thoughts, as under the philosophic moralisings of the following passage:— Indulge me, nor conceive I drop my theme: Embittering the possessed. Why wish for more? Wishing would waste me to this shade again.1 But he had good cause to think religiously. In 1731 (or according to some authorities 1732) he was married to Lady Elizabeth Lee-daughter of the Earl of Lichfield and widow of Colonel Lee-with whom he lived happily at Welwyn Rectory. His wife had a daughter by her first husband, who, after being married to a son of Lord Palmerston for only fifteen months, was carried off by consumption in 1736, at Lyons, while Young was taking her to Nice. Owing to difficulties made by the authorities, 1 Night Thoughts, Night iv. 64-74. she had to be buried in unconsecrated ground. Her husband died in 1740, and in 1741 Young lost his own wife. The three are commemorated, under the names of Narcissa, Philander, and Lucia, in Night Thoughts, a poem that was written and published between the years 1741 and 1745. After the publication of Night Thoughts, Young's life as a poet contains little that is worth recording. He completed in 1753 a play called The Brothers, the proceeds of which, amounting to £400, with an addition of £600 from his own purse, he presented to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In 1762, being then eighty-one, he was able to compose his poem Resignation, of which Johnson, who had made his acquaintance the year before, says: "It was very falsely represented as a proof of decayed faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was in the highest vigour." Young died at Welwyn on the 5th of April 1765. A certain prejudice has affected the reputation of this poet on account of the divergence between his principles and his practice as a minister of religion. Young (says a typical writer in one of the schools of Anglican theology) is one of the most striking examples of the sad disunion of Piety from Truth. If we read his most true, impassioned, and impressive estimate of the world and of religion, we shall think it impossible that he was uninfluenced by his subject. It is, however, a melancholy fact that he was hunting after preferment at eighty years old, and spoke like a disappointed man. The Truth was pictured on his mind in most vivid colours. He felt it while he was writing. He felt himself on a retired spot; and he saw Death, the mighty hunter, pursuing the unthinking world. He saw Redemption—its necessity and its grandeur; and while he looked on it, he spoke as a man would speak whose mind and heart are deeply engaged. Notwithstanding all this, the view did not reach his heart. Had I preached in his pulpit with the fervour and interest that his Night Thoughts discover, he would have been terrified. He told a friend of mine, who went to him under religious fears, that he "must go more into the world.” 1 1 Remains of the Rev. Richard Cecil, M.A. (1876), p. 11. If Night Thoughts had been primarily a lyrical poem, or Young a religious writer of the same cast as Cowper, this mode of judgment would have been just. But the case was otherwise. Young was a man of poetic imagination, whose life, as the sketch I have given of it shows, had from an early period been engaged in the active interests and pursuits of society. To condemn him as insincere in his sentiments, because these were inconsistent with his conduct, is to evince an ignorance of the constitution of human nature. Night Thoughts ought not to be judged as an emotional so much as a philosophic poem, owing its existence mainly to the intellectual conditions of the times: its inspiring motive is antagonism to the Deistic movement in society, and its form and character are determined by the dramatic and satiric instincts of its author. The curious mixture of worldliness and religion in Young's temperament is characteristically reflected in his satire entitled The Universal Passion, the subject of which is the desire of fame, or at least reputation, by which all members of a gay and licentious society are variously animated. Consisting of seven satires, each inscribed to a different person, it was published in detachments between the years 1725 and 1727. No man of the time was more intimately acquainted than Young with the manners he described. The familiar companion both of men of rank or wealth, like Wharton and Dodington, and of men of letters such as Addison, Swift, and Pope; patronised by such statesmen as Dorset, Wilmington, and Walpole; a favourite with the leading ladies of the Court; the motives and characters of his contemporaries were ever before his eyes. Considering the tone adopted in his early religious poem, The Last Day, it might perhaps have been expected that the satirist's standard of judgment would have been lofty and severe. But this was far from being the case : Laughing satire (says Young in his Preface to The Universal Passion) bids the fairest for success. The world is too proud to |