there are some beautiful lines, and much that is written with poetical elegance and force, but the groundwork to the plot, which is the dissension between the brothers, is displeasing to the mind. The guilty machinations of Perseus are too successful, while the feelings of the reader sympathize with the innocence and the undeserved misfortunes of his brother. Perplexities thicken too closely around the termination of the story, which ordinary prudence could avert, or resolution overcome; and the whole is terminated in a manner so unsatisfactory and unskilful, that the author has appended an historical epilogue to carry on the story towards the conclusion, that lay unfortunately beyond the frame and boundaries of his plot.

* Young's epilogue was never read, the place of it being supplied by one from Mallet, who expresses himself in the following terms:

A scheme forsooth to benefit the nation,

Some queer odd whim of pious propagation,
Lord! talk so here! the man must be a widgeon,
Drury may propagate· but not religion.

Alluding to the profits being given to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Young was much offended, nor would suffer it to be printed at the end of his piece. He was scarce less angry with Garrick, at whose instigation it was written, as well as delivered to Mrs. Clive, who spoke it in her broadest manner. The play was very coldly received, see Richardson's Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 246; it did not produce £400. See Young's speech to Richardson on the subject.

There is something affecting in the patient kindness and distress of the king; but on the whole there is not much in this play to excite our sympathy. Young seems, in his dramatic poems, to have delighted most in the delineation of the sterner passions. Pride, revenge, and hatred, and cruelty, are the main-springs of the three plays; and if he has fallen behind his contemporaries or immediate predecessors in the same dramatic school, in the popularity of his productions, it arises not from any inferiority in the execution, but from their having engaged on their side the feelings of pity and love, and opened those sources from which the softer affections of the heart arise.

Ruffhead, in his life of Pope, mentions that when Young, quitting the study of the law, took holy orders, he consulted his friend Pope with regard to his theological studies, who perhaps, half seriously and half in banter, recommended the study of Aquinas; but when Ruffhead adds, that after half a year's silence, when Pope sought out his friend, he arrived just in time to save him from an irretrievable derangement, it is plain that he knew nothing of the work to which he alludes. To whatever results it might have led, it assuredly had no tendency to weaken his reasoning powers, oppress his imagination, or disturb the soundness and serenity of his mind.

In 1728, he published in prose a true Estimate of Human Life, dedicated to the Queen; it

was suggested by the King's death, and is in fact a moral essay on the passions, written with point and force, but abounding too much in antithesis of sentiment and expression. It reads somewhat like a commentary on Ecclesiastes,* and would need but little decoration to be formed into a poem in blank verse. Young also printed a very long sermon, preached before the House of Commons, January 30th, 1728-9, on the martyrdom of King Charles, entitled, an Apology for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government.

This sermon has little application to Charles, or to the circumstances connected with his death, but is employed in abstract considerations of the duties of princes, and the difficulties of the government. There is always ingenuity of thought and fertility of allusion, but it too much resembles a declamation filled with the commonplaces of a rhetorician, and it reads like a translation glittering with the pithy apophthegms and pointed sentences of Seneca. What Young most delighted in, were eloquent expositions of moral duty, and directions for the conduct of life, the government of the passions, and the regulation of the understanding. Of his style and its peculiarities, a short specimen will be sufficient. "If we cast too an eye on our own account, have we con

The second course, the counterpart of this estimate, never appeared, though announced in 1728.

tracted no national guilt? or is the moral world almost reversed, a system of infatuation nigh finished among us? have we not luxurious poverty, avaricious wealth? shame-faced religion, frontless immorality, industrious debauchery, contemplative impiety; corruption in high-place, insolence in low, ambitious shame, and criminal repentance; repentance for omission of sins, that black inversion of the day's duty? Has not sin its commandments, error its creed, hypocrisy its saints, profaneness its confessor, and sensuality its martyr, &c." Young, it is to be presumed, was at this time living on his college fellowship, and the pension of Lord Wharton; anxious for the advancement of his fortune and situation in the world, he addressed a letter to Mrs. Howard, the favorite of the King, which has been assigned, by the editor of Lady Suffolk's letters, to a date lying between 1727 and 1730, yet there seems an objection either to admit this or to advance it to a later

year. Young asserts that he is turned of fifty years; yet, if the date of his birth is correctly given, in the year 1730 he could have been but forty-nine. Again he alleges that he has no preferment: but in 1731 he took the college living of Welwyn, so that either the preferment he desired may not have been clerical, or there is some error in the statement, which it is not easy to rectify. The letter will probably be deemed the most curious one we possess from the poet, con

sidering the language of the petition and the party to whom it was addressed.

TO MRS. HOWARD.

MADAM,

Monday Morning.

I KNOW his majesty's goodness to his servants, and his love of justice in general, so well, that I am confident, if his majesty knew my case, I should not have any cause to despair of his gracious favor to me.

These, madam, are the proper points of consideration, in the person that humbly hopes his majesty's favor.

As to abilities, all I can presume to say is, I have done the best I could to improve them.

As to good manners, I desire no favor, if any just objection lies against them.

As for service, I have been near seven years in his majesty's, and never omitted any duty in it, which few can say.

As for age, I am turned of fifty.

As for want, I have no manner of preferment.