But unconfined by bounds of time and place,
You choose companions from all human race,
Converse with those the deluge swept away,

Or those whose midnight is Britannia's day.

The poem concludes with a lamentation on the death of Harrison,* the author of Woodstock, and other poems; who was recommended by Swift to the patronage of Bolingbroke, and who died soon after his return to England from the embassy at Utrecht. There is a passage in it which contains the sentiment afterwards so beautifully introduced and expressed by Gray in his Ode to Vicissitude.

The Patient thus, when on his bed of Pain,
No longer he invokes the gods in vain.
But rises to new life;-in every field
He finds Elysium:-rivers nectar yield,
Nothing so cheap and vulgar but can please,
And borrow beauties from his late disease.

In 1713, he prefixed a copy of indifferent verses to Addison's Cato; his poem also on the Last Day was given to the public in the same year,† though it had been finished by Young as early as 1710,

*Spence's Anecdotes, p. 351, "Harrison had a sweetness of versification even beyond that of Ovid. Dr. Young remembered some lines on a woman debauched by presents, who repented afterwards, and died of grief.

- Tarpææ virginis instar,

Obruitur donis accumulata suis."

See further account of him in note by Dr. Young.

†The Vice-Chancellor's imprimatur was dated at Oxford, March 19, 1713, on this poem, see Tatler, vol. v. p. 138.

before he was thirty part of it was printed in the Guardian, May 9th, 1713. It was inscribed to the Queen in a dedication that was afterwards judiciously omitted; for it was written in a strain of fulsome and hyperbolical flattery." It is, madam, (he writes,) a prospect truly great to behold you seated on your throne, surrounded with your faithful counsellors, and mighty men of war, issuing forth commands to your own people, or giving audience to the great princes, and powerful rulers of the earth. But why should we confine your glory here? I am pleased to see you rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and second heavens, leaving the fixt stars behind you: nor will I lose you there, but keep you still in view through the boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in your journey towards eternal bliss; till I behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying you still onward from the stretch of my imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to the earth."

This poem has received the praise of Johnson, but it must be allowed that the choice of the subject was not judicious; there is also much exaggeration in the language, as

Leviathans but heave their cumbrous mail,

It makes a tide, and wind-bound navies sail.

and an incongruity of allusion, and want of finish, as

While other Bourbons rule in other lands,
And (if man's sin forbids not) other Anne's.

and the descriptions are often minute and particular, when the subject should have been veiled in general terms, as in the description of the Resurrection:

Now monuments prove faithful to their trust,
And render back their long committed dust.
Now charnels rattle, scattered limbs, and all
The various bones, obsequious to the call,
Self-mov'd advance. the neck perhaps to meet
The distant head, the distant legs the feet,
Dreadful to view, see through the dusky sky,
Fragments of bodies in confusion fly,

To distant regions journeying, there to claim
Deserted members, and complete the same.

and in another place,

When lo! a mighty trump, one half conceal'd

In clouds, one half to mortal eye reveal'd,

Shall pour a dreadful note.

That Young at this time received a stipend as a writer on the side of the Court, seems to be proved by some lines in Swift's Rhapsody on Poetry:

Whence Gay was banish'd in disgrace,

Where Pope will never show his face,

Where Y

must torture his invention

To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

That the initial letter was meant for Young, the biographer observes is proved by other lines in the same poem:

Attend, ye Youngs, and Popes, and Gays,
And tune your harps, and strew your bays,
Your panegyricks here provide,

You cannot err on flattery's side.

*

A poem in two books called the "Force of Religion; or, Vanquished Love," was the next production of our author. It was founded on the execution of Lady Jane Grey, and her husband Lord Guildford. This also came into the world under the shelter of a dedication to the Countess of Salisbury, highly extolling her beauty and virtue; but which having been cancelled by the author, need not now be revived. Occasionally the expressions are flat and too familiar, as

In space confined, the muse forbears to tell,
Deep was her anguish, but she bore it well.

On the death of the Queen, in 1714, Young published a poem which he inscribed to Addison: it abounded in the most complimentary and somewhat extravagant praises of the new King, and attributed our military achievements, and the splendid series of victories won by the British Army, not to the skill of the Generals or courage of the troops, but to the prayers and piety of the Queen:

Argyle and Churchill but the glory share,

Whilst millions lie subdued by Anna's prayer.

*This was chosen as the subject of a tragedy by Webster, afterwards by Edw. Smith, and Rowe.

The poet has also not forgotten to return thanks for the tenths and first-fruits bestowed by the Queen upon the Church:

She saw, and grieved to see the mean estate
Of those who round the hallow'd altars wait;
She shed her bounty piously profuse,

And thought it more her own in sacred use.

This poem having performed its transitory purpose, joined the ranks of its suppressed predecessors. From a passage in Young's letter to Richardson,* on Original composition, relating to Swift, it appears that he was at one time in Ireland; and it has been supposed that he went with the Marquis of Wharton, in 1717.

In 1719,† his tragedy of Busiris was brought on the stage; it was inscribed to the Duke of Newcastle, "because the late instances he had received of his Grace's undeserved and uncommon favor in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." Of the extent nature of

* Two epigrams, by Young, on Richardson's Grandison, are in the life of the latter, by Mrs. Barbauld, vol. 1, cxxviii, cxliii.

† From a passage in the Englishman, it would appear that Young began his theatrical career so early as 1713, v. Biogr. Dict. See a criticism on Busiris and Young's plays, in Biogr. Dramatica, art. Bvsiris. Young received £84 for his play, as appears by an old account book of B. Lintot, a price much larger than was paid to Rowe, either for Jane Shore or Lady Jane Grey.