EDWARD YOUNG. OUNG'S satires have at least | ter. The Night Thoughts certainly contain many splendid and happy conceptions, but their beauty is thickly marred by false wit and overlabored antithesis. Indeed, his whole ideas seem to have been in a state of antithesis while he composed the poem. One portion of his fancy appears devoted to aggravate the picture of his desolate feelings, and the other half to contradict that picture by eccentric images and epigrammatic ingenuities. As a poet he was fond of exaggeration but it was that of the fancy more than of the heart. This appears no less in the noisy hyperboles. of his tragedies than in the studied melancholy of the Night Thoughts, in which he pronounces the simple act of laughter to be half immoral. That he was a pious man, and had felt something from the afflictions described in the Complaint, need not be called in question; but he seems covenanting with himself to be as desolate as possible, as if he had continued the custom, ascribed to him at college, of studying with a candle stuck in a human skull, while, at the same time, the feelings and habits of a man of the world, which still adhere to him, throw a singular contrast over his renunciations of human vanity. He abjures the world in witty metaphors, commences his poem with a sarcasm on sleep, deplores his being neglected at court, compliments a lady of quality by asking the moon if she would choose to be called "the fair Portland of the skies," and dedicates to the patrons of "a much-indebted Muse," one of whom (Lord Wilmington) on some occasion he puts in the balance of the merit of containing a number of epigrams, and, as they appeared rather earlier than those of Pope, they may boast of having afforded that writer some degree of example. The opinion of Swift concerning them, however, seems to us not to be an unjust one-that they should have either been more merry or more angry. One of his tragedies is still popular on the stage, and his Night Thoughts have many admirers both at home and abroad. Of his lyrical poetry he had himself the good sense to think but indifferently. In none of his works is he more spirited and amusing than in his "Essay on Original Composition," written at the age of eighty. The Night Thoughts have been translated into more than one foreign language, and it is usual for foreigners to regard them as eminently characteristic of the peculiar temperament of English genius. Madame de Staël has, indeed, gravely deduced the genealogy of our national melancholy from Ossian and the Northern Scalds down to Dr. Young. Few Englishmen, however, will, probably, be disposed to recognize the author of the Night Thoughts as their national poet by way of eminence. His devotional gloom is more in the spirit of St. Francis of Asisium than of an English divine, and his austerity is blended with a vein of whimsical conceit that is still more unlike the plainness of English charac antithesis as a counterpart to Heaven. He was, in truth, not so sick of life as of missing its preferments, and was still ambitious not only of converting Lorenzo, but of shining before this utterly worthless and wretched world as a sparkling, sublime and witty poet. Hence his poetry has not the majestic simplicity of a heart abstracted from human vanities, and, while the groundwork of his sentiments is more darkly shaded than is absolutely necessary either for poetry or religion, the surface of his expression glitters with irony and satire, and with thoughts sometimes absolutely approaching to pleasantry. His ingenuity in the false sublime is very peculiar. In Night IX. he concludes his description of the day of judgment by showing the just and the unjust consigned respectively to their sulphureous or ambrosial seats," while "Hell through all her glooms Returns in groans a melancholy roar." This is aptly put under the book of Consolation. But, instead of winding up his labors, he proceeds through a multitude of reflections, and amidst many comparisons assimilates the constellations of heaven to gems of immense weight and value on a ring for the finger of their Creator. Conceit could hardly go farther than to ascribe finery to Omnipotence. The taste of the French artist was not quite so bold when, in the picture of Belshazzar's feast, he put a ring and ruffle on the hand that was writing on the wall. Here, however, he was in earnest, comparatively, with some other passages-such as that in which he likens Death to Nero driving a phaeton in a female guise, or where he describes the same personage, Death, borrowing the "cockaded brow of a spendthrift" in order to gain admittance to "a gay circle.' Men, with the same familiarity, are compared to monkeys before a looking-glass, and at the end of the eighth book Satan is roundly denominated a "dunce "—the first time, perhaps, that his abilities were ever seriously called in question. Shall we agree with Dr. Johnson when he affirms of the Night Thoughts that particular lines are not to be regarded, that the power is in the whole and that in the whole there is a magnificence like that which is ascribed to a Chinese plantation-the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity? Of a Chinese plantation few men have, probably, a very distinct conception, but, unless that species of landscape be an utterly capricious show of objects-in which case even extent and variety will hardly possess magnificence—it must possess amusement and vicissitude arising from the relation of parts to each other. But there is nothing of entertaining succession of parts in the Night Thoughts; the poem excites no anticipation as it proceeds. One book bespeaks no impatience for another, nor is found to have laid the smallest foundation for new pleasure when the succeeding Night sets in. The poet's fancy discharges itself on the mind in short ictuses of surprise which rather lose than increase their force by reiteration, but he is remarkably defective in progressive interest and collective effect. The power of the poem, instead of being in the whole, lies in short, vivid and broken gleams of genius; so that, if we disregard particular lines, we shall but too often miss the only gems of ransom which the poet can bring as the price of his relief from surrounding tedium. Of any long work where the character really lies in the whole we feel reluctant "When final Ruin fiercely drives Her ploughshare o'er creation." to hazard the character by a few short quota- | tinguished, however far it may be from vivitions, because a few fragments can convey no fying the entire mass of his poetry. Many adequate idea of the architecture; but the di- and exquisite are his touches of sublime exrectly reverse of this is the case with the Night pression, of profound reflection and of striking Thoughts, for by selecting particular beauties imagery. It is recalling but a few of these of the poem we should delight and electrify a to allude to his description, in the eighth sensitive reader, but might put him to sleep book, of the man whose thoughts are not of by a perusal of the whole. This character this world, to his simile of the traveller at the of detached felicities unconnected with inter- opening of the ninth book, to his spectre of the esting progress or reciprocal animation of parts antediluvian world, and to some parts of his may be likened to a wilderness without path very unequal description of the conflagration ; or perspective or to a Chinese plantation, if above all, to that noble and familiar image, the illustration be more agreeable-but it does not correspond with our idea of the magnificence of a great poem of which it can be said. that the power is in the whole. After all, the variety and extent of reflection in the Night Thoughts is, to a certain degree, more imposing than real. They have more metaphorical than substantial variety of thought. Questions which we had thought exhausted and laid at rest in one book are called up again in the next in a Proteus metamorphosis of shape and a chameleon diversity of color. Happily, the awful truths which they illustrate are few and simple. Around these truths the poet directs his course with innumerable sinuosities of fancy, like a man appearing to make a long voyage, while he is in reality only crossing and recrossing the same expanse of water. He has been well described in a late as one in whom "Still gleams and still expires the cloudy day Of genuine poetry." poem The above remarks have been made with no desire to depreciate what is genuine in his beauties. The reader most sensitive to his faults must have felt that there is in him a spark of originality which is never long ex It is true that he seldom, if ever, maintains a flight of poetry long free from oblique associations, but he has individual passages which Philosophy might make her texts and Experience select for her mottoes. THOMAS CAMPBELL. [Young was born at Upham, Hampshire, England, in 1684. He received his education at Winchester School and at Corpus He obtained a Christi College, Oxford. law-fellowship at All Souls' College, Oxford, and in 1719 took the degree of Doctor of Laws at that institution. He was a candidate for Parliament at Cirencester, but failed to receive sufficient votes to elect him. He took orders in the Church of England in 1727, was appointed a royal chaplain in 1728, and in 1731 married a daughter of the earl of Lichfield, whom he survived, her death occurring in 1741. Besides Night Thoughts, he was author of several successful satires and dramas and of some volumes of political essays. He died at Welwyn, Hertfordshire, on the 12th of April, 1765.] Each breath of wind the bearded groves makes bend, Which seems the fatal sickle to portend. In desolation Nature seems to lie; The unstained snow from the full clouds descends, Whose sparkling lustre open eyes offends; In maiden white the glittering fields do shine; Then bleating flocks for want of food repine : With withered eyes they see all snow around, And with their fore-feet and paw scrape the ground; They cheerfully crop the insipid grass, The shepherds, sighing, cry, "Alas! alas!" Then pinching want the wildest beast does And as the country rings with pleasant How sweet and innocent are country sports! Then at fit seasons you may clothe your hook | Or to the sweet adjoining grove retire, With a sweet bait dressed by a faithless cook; But all, alas! his life cannot redeem. At last, outwearied by the stronger hound, And in his course outflies our very sight, See how the wary gunner casts about, snare, Of which the entangled fowl was not aware; Through pathless wastes he doth pursue his sport, Where trees with interwoven boughs conspire There you may stretch yourself upon the grass, And, lulled with music, to kind slumbers pass: No meagre cares your fancy will distract, Away the vicious pleasures of the town! lot To live in peace from noisy towns remote. JAMES THOMSON. THE LAST DAYS OF HERCULANEUM. A Roman soldier, for some daring deed But generous and brave and kind. Where naught but moor-fowl and wild beasts In face and gesture. In her pangs she died resort. When the noon sun directly darts his beams streams, That gave him birth, and ever since the child Every sport The father shared and heightened. But at length |