the leaf. On these paffages he bestowed a fecond reading. But the labours of man are too frequently vain. Before he returned, a fecond time, to much of what he had once approved, he died. Many of his books, which I have seen, are by thofe notes of approbation fo fwelled beyond their real bulk, that they will not fhut.

What though we wade in wealth, or foar in fame!
Earth's highest station ends in Here he lies!

And duft to duft concludes her noblest song.

The author of these lines is not without his hic jacet.

By the good fenfe of his fon, it contains none of that praise which no marble can make the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the direction of a stone or a turf, will find its way, fooner or later, to the deferving.

M. S.
Optimi parentis

EDWARDI YOUNG, LL. D.
Hujus Ecclefiæ rect.

Et Elizabethæ

fæm. prænob.

Conjugis ejus amantiffimæ

Pio & gratiffimo animo

Hoc marmor pofuit
F. Y.

Filius fuperftes.

Is it not strange that the author of the Night Thoughts has infcribed no monument to the memory of his lamented wife? Yet what marble will endure as long as the poems ?

Such, my good friend, is the account I have been able to collect of Young. That it may be long before

VOL. IV.

T

any

any thing like what I have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the fincere wish of,

Lincoln's Inn,

Sept. 1780.

Dear Sir,

Your greatly obliged Friend,

HERBERT CROFT, Jun.

P. S. This account of Young was feen by you in manufcript, you know, Sir; and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alterations, you infifted on ftriking out one paffage, only because it faid, that, if I did not with you to live long for your fake, I did for the fake of myfelf and of the world. But this poftfcript you will not fee before it is printed; and I will fay here, in fpite of you, how I feel myself honoured and bettered by your friendfhip-and that, if I do credit to the church, after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to give in exchange the bar, though not at fo late a period of life as Young took Orders, it will be owing, in no fmall meafure, to my having had the happinefs of calling the author of The Rambler my friend.

Oxford, Sept. 1-82.

H. C."

OF Young's Poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has no great refemblance to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His numbers are fometimes smooth, and fometimes rugged; his ftyle is fometimes concatenated, and fometimes abrupt; fometimes diffufive, and fometimes concife. His plan feems to have started in his mind at the prefent moment, and his thoughts

appear

appear the effect of chance, fometimes adverfe, and fometimes lucky, with very little operation of judge

ment.

He was not one of the writers whom experience improves, and who obferving their own faults become gradually correct. His Poem on the Last Day, his first great performance, has an equability and propriety, which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many paragraphs are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid; the plan is too much extended, and a fucceffion of images divides and weakens the general conception; but the great reason why the reader is disappointed is, that the thought of the LAST DAY makes every man more than poetical, by fpreading over his mind a general obfcurity of facred horror, that oppreffes diftinction, and difdains expreffion.

His story of Jane Grey was never popular. It is written with elegance enough, but Jane is too heroic to be pitied.

The Univerfal Paffion is indeed a very great performance. It is faid to be a feries of Epigrams: but if it be, it is what the author intended: his endeavour was at the production of ftriking diftichs and pointed fentences; and his diftichs have the weight of folid fentiment, and his points the fharpness of refiftlefs truth. His characters are often felected with difcernment, and drawn with nicety; his illuftrations are often happy, and his reflections often juft. His fpecies of fatire is between thofe of Horace and of Juvenal; he has the gaiety of Horace without his laxity of numbers, and the morality of Juvenal with greater variation of images. He plays, indeed, only on the

furface of life; he never penetrates the receffes of the of his poetry is

mind, and therefore the whole power exhausted by a fingle perufal; his conceits please only when they furprise.

To tranflate he never condefcended, unless his Paraphrafe on Job may be confidered as a verfion; in which he has not, I think, been unfuccefsful; he indeed favoured himfelf, by chufing thofe parts which moft easily admit the ornaments of English poetry.

He had leaft fuccefs in his lyrick attempts, in which he feems to have been under fome malignant influence: he is always labouring to be great, and at last is only turgid.

wide

In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very difplay of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allufions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy fcatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verfe could not be changed for rhyme but with difadvantage. The wild diffufion of the fentiments, and the digreffive fallies of imagination, would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactnefs but copioufnefs; particular lines. are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole, and in the whole there is a magnificence like that afcribed to Chinese plantation, the magnificence of vaft extent and endiefs diverfity.

His lat poem was the Refignation; in which he made, as he was accuftomed, an experiment of a new mode of writing, and fucceeded better than in his Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falfely represented

as

as a proof of decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was in his highest vigour.

His tragedies not making part of the Collection, I had forgotten, till Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three Plays all concluded with lavish fuicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily rids his fcene of perfons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Bufiris there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination; but the pride of Bufiris is fuch as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote from known life to raise either grief, terror, or indignation. The Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and therefore keeps poffeffion of the ftage: the firft defign feems fuggefted by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the diction, are original. The moral obfervations are fo introduced, and fo expreffed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of The Brothers I may be allowed to fay nothing, fince nothing was ever faid of it by the Publick.

It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but without much accuracy or felection. When he lays hold of an illuftration, he pursues it beyond expectation, fometimes happily, as in his parallel of Quickfilver with Pleafure, which I have heard repeated with approbation by a Lady, of whofe praise he would have been juftly proud, and which is very ingenious, very fubtle, and almost exact; but fometimes he is lefs lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts, having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs, floating in space, might be called the cluster of Creation, he thinks on a cluster of grapes, T 3

and