) %a3AIMJ\& V^* % A*;lOSAHGEl% - ^ -* % i? = =? ^ ^ \= i /I s % )ii S i "5 s s y a vehicle really brilliant. It is questionable, however, whether the lirst George cared much for this sort of thing : ' With pray'r we smooth the billows for thy fleet, With ardent wishes fill thy swelling sheet, And when thy foot took place on Albion's shor, We, bending, blessed the Gods, and ask'd no more!" Before the Queen's death Young had brought out his " Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love," a poem founded on the tragedy of Lady Jane Grey. In this there are beauties. The misfortune lies in the odd way they are mixed up with nonsense. In this effort it is the female sex that is chiefly flattered. As usual, the dedication contains the strongest incense, and that in good broad prose. A certain Countess of Salisbury is therein gravely told that the sight of her "works a sort of miracle, occasions the bias of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very senses and affections converts to our religion." What a pity that lady had not been immortal ! To the sex in general, at least in Britain, he exclaims in small raptures "All, all but adoration is your due!" The poet was about to undergo some refinement in the school of trial. The Marquis of Wharton died within a year of the Queen, and thus was Young bereaved of two of his patrons. The poet attached himself the closer to the brilliant son of the late Marquis. His father appears to have become intimate with the Wharton family through Anne Wharton, first wife of Thomas Wharton, Esq., afterwards Marquis. She wrote some verses which were prefixed to the published translation of the visitation sermon which Bishop Spratt had found so edifying. There ap X LIFE OP EDWARD YOUNO. pears to have been at first a sort of literary friendship between the lady and the dean, which, as it extended to her family, and as the Whartons rose in the world, would naturally take the form of patronage on their part When the dean died his son succeeded to their favour, probably with increased condescension on the one hand, and subserviency on the other. When the Marquis died, his son, still a minor, maintained the relation already sub- sisting. But with all his pliancy, the poet appears to have pos- sessed in reality what the peer only assumed by title, with his elevation to a dukedom, grace. Rank, wealth, and power seduced the latter, by the specious road of public favour, into levity, recklessness, and ruin. - But the former, although foully prostituting his genius, finally arose nearly clean out of the mire. Time elevated and refined him, whilst his patron fell from one moral degradation to another, until he found in a foreign and a lonely grave the last earthly refuge from misery, ignominy, and scorn. This lesson, although its display took time, was not lost on Young. How far he may have plunged with his youthful patron into the madnesses of levity does not appear. The young Marquis, after his father's death, spent a year abroad. Returning home in 1717, he went to Ireland, and was permitted, on account of his extraordinary qualities, to take his seat in the Irish House of Lords, while yet under age. Young is supposed to have ac- companied the Marquis to Ireland, as he long afterwards mentions an incident in the conduct of Swift which he observed whilst walking with him near Dublin. The poet principally resided at Oxford, but was doubtless always ready, when invited, to bestow his company on his patrons. His wit, however, although bril- liant, required a sober axiditory a condition not generally obtainable in those days in great society. He now began to write plays, notwithstanding his serious bent. From the Englishman it appears that a tragedy of his was in the theatre so early as 1713. " Busiris " appeared on the stage at Drury Lane in 1719. In the same year he addressed a poetical letter to Tickell on the death of Addison, their common friend. It is said that Addison and he used to "communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things." This does not appear unlikely. The very differences in the intel- lectual constitution of the men would serve to bind them closer in the mutual respect generated by the similarity of their moral qualities. Both of them were champions, perhaps even heroes, of chastity in a licentious age. In the same year appeared a " Paraphrase on the Book of Job," which might perhaps still be read, if the original were not. The ir.liration is fulsome to disgust, and the avithor knew nothing of the person he addressed in it, except that he was Lord Chancellor. About the period when he received his degree of Doctor of LIFE OP EDWARD YOUNG. XI Laws (10th June 1719), he entered for a few months the family of the Earl of Exeter, as tutor to Lord Burleigh. But Wharton, who was somewhat of a scribbler himself, seems to have been jealous of any interference with bis poet, and withdrew him, by pressing solicitations and promises, from the opportunity of becoming the protege of another. It is likely the young scape- grace began to feel the need of a respectable friend like Young. Besides, he had discovered Young to be an orator, and proposed to place him in Parliament. At a trial twenty years afterwards, Wharton's creditors sought to set aside the poet's claims on the other's estate. He proved on oath that he had given up, at Wharton's instance, an annuity of 100 a- year for life, offered him by the Exeter family, to continue Lord Burleigh's tutor. He had also refused two livings in the gift of his college upon the same account. He had farther expended 600 in the expenses of a contested election at Cirencester, for which the Duke had granted his bond, dated 15th March 1721. Whai ton had afterwards conferred on Young two annuities, which were the subjects of the legal inquiry. The point was as to the consideration given. The deeds affirmed the " public good " and the Duke's private love to have been the consideration. These, however valuable to Maecenas, were not satisfactory to the Hebrew mind, and Young had to array in public against the Jews the above facts in aid of his case, which he gained. His college had derived some benefits through Young from the ducal grace. In 1721, the " Revenge " was acted at Drury Lane, and met with very great success. It is enough to say here of this piece that it still keeps possession of the s~ Between 1725 and 1728, he published seven satires under the title of the "Love of Fame, or the Universal Passion." It is said that Young realised above 3000 by it. There is good down- right power in these compositions. But satire rarely keeps hold of the public mind, however it may dazzle as a novelty. Swift said of these that they should either have been more angry or more merry. The following whimsical criticism from a well- known pen in Blackwood's Magazine 1 will give some idea of these pieces : "Talking of churchyards, old big-wigged Dr Young, author of the 'Night Thoughts,' a poem which will always be read by thoughtful people who have but few books, are poor, and live in the country, was no small shakes in satire. He was himself the prey of his own epigrammatic genius, that would never let him rest in ordinary speech, but kept painting every line as it came up, often at the wrong end ; so that ivader is some- times unexpectedly stung and loses his temper, like an old woman taking up, without due caution, a needle by the sharp nose instead of the blunt eye, or a pin out of her mouth in a like 1 Professor \Vil.-im. Xii LIFE OF EDWARD YOUNG. predicament. Yet the doctor had a clear, far-seeing eye to vice and folly. He did not, however, 'shoot folly as it flies,' for he was afraid of missing, but let bang at her in the seat ; and it is funny to see her, like a hare shot in form, jumping up some six feet or so, and then down again to the ground with a thud, a quadrupedal sprawl, and then over and over on her back or side, stone dead. The doctor sometimes makes much ado about nothing, and mouths as if in the pulpit. You always know that you are reading a satire written by a man in black, and with bands. He sometimes seems to be angry with sins, solely because they in- sult him in his character as a clergyman, and have no respectfor the cloth. He writes at other times like a disappointed man, who had no hopes of ever becoming a bishop ; and perhaps in lawn sleeves he had been less truculent about trifles, for spiritual peers are in general more pompous than savage. To cut up poor curates and such small deer would be monstrous in a mitre. Men of the world, we believe, used to laugh at the doctor's satire, but, we suspect, on the wrong side of their mouths ; for instead of tickling, he stabbed them in the midriff ; and the Lorenzo of his ' Night Thoughts,' who is there always a gentleman, was trans- mogrified in his satires into a mere vile and vulgar sceptic. All his writings, however, want keeping, are distinguished by ex- aggeration and disproportion. He hammers vice well when laid on the anvil, but he is not expert at hitting the right nail on the head ; and often, when wielding his mace against a fly sticking to the wall, merely shatters the wainscot. But Young was a poet, nevertheless, of a high order. He had a fine imagination and deep sensibilities, and has produced single lines and passages seldom if ever excelled, and in their meaning perhaps more pro- found than the poet himself knew, for he was subject to fits of inspiration." In 1726, Young addressed to Sir Robert Walpole " The Instal- ment." It is possible the title had a double reference, and after- wards became to the poet a memorial of disappointment. But that his gratitude did not entirely apply to future favours is apparent from the lines : "My breast, Walpole, glows with grateful flre. The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee, Refresh the dry domains of poesy. My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care, What slender worth foibids us to despair. Be this thy partial smile from censure free; Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me." What fell, must have been the pension before mentioned. On the accession of George II., appeared, like the address, in echo of the royal speech, "Ocean; an Ode, concluding with a Wish." Prefixed was an ode to the King, and an essay on Lyric Poetry. LIFE OF EDWARD YOUNO. At the ripe age of forty-six the poet appears to be getting chastened by disappointment. He exclaims, "0 who can gaze On restless seas, Uustruct with life's more restless state ? Where all are tossed, And most are lost By tides of passion, blasts of fate." He sighs for repose in words we have not space for, but it is still a poetical rest he seeks "In landscapes preen, True bliss is seen." This sort of stuff, coming just before his ordination as a minister of the Church of England, is painful. Of this event there is no specific record, but in April 1728, whilst his gown was yet new, he was appointed chaplain to the King. It was, perhaps, in view of this appointment that he took orders. At any rate, his resolution to become a clergyman appears to have been a sudden one, from the fact, that at the time he had a tragedy in re- hearsal at the theatre, the managers of which reluctantly per- mitted him to withdraw the play, in deference to the character he was about to assume. There is an apocryphal story told of him at this time in illustration of his simplicity. In his ignor- ance of theological literature, it is said he applied to Pope for advice. The little Romish wag recommended Thomas Aquinas to be diligently studied in private. Young accordingly retired for some months to Camden Town, whence Pope, apprehensive of the consequences, at length disinterred him, in time to prevent an "irretrievable derangement." He published, soon after he took orders, a prose essay, entitled " A True Estimate of Human Life ;" this, being in the dismallest vein, tends to confirm the pleasant story above related. It was intended to be followed by another on the bright side of things. Presuming that the poet began to consult the New Testament for the materials of this part of the question, it is not wonderful, considering his possible discoveries there, that it never appeared. A Sermon on " The Reverence due to Government," preached before the House of Commons, next appeared. It is not recorded whether " His Majesty's loyal opposition was materially bene- fited thereby, nor whether any of the public, beside the printer and the trunkmaker, were edified by it." In 1730, Young relapsed into poetry, and published "Imperium Pelagi, a Naval Lyric." Perhaps the less said about this the better.- The Pindaric was not Young's style. He disowned this bantling afterwards. It was one of Young's merits, that whatever his literary transgressions might be, they were generally followed by confession, repentance, and amendment. The same Xiv LIFE OP EDWARD YOUNG. year appeared " Two Epistles to Mr Pope, concerning the Aivthors of the Age." There is good satire in these. Up to this time Young appears to have resided chiefly at Oxford. In July 1730, he was presented by his College to the Rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire. The office of rector carried with it, as it still does, the lordship of the manor. Welwyn is a little town on the great road from London to York, and appears to have taken its rise and its name from a chalybeate spring, formerly held in repute, but now nearly for- gotten. The little river Mimram runs through the place, crossing the main road ; the houses straggle about the borders of both, and of the road leading to Hitchin. The parsonage was not habitable. The rector, accordingly, was compelled to purchase a dwelling. He chose one nearly opposite the church, and separated from it by the Hitchin turn- pike. The river ran at the foot of the garden, which was not large. Neither church nor parsonage were very pretentious. In this quiet spot he spent the chief part of the remainder of his life. At first it is probable he made frequent visits to London, for he was a popular preacher, "the grace and animation of his delivery attracting many hearers." It is related of him that on one occasion his oratorical powers deserted him. The day was probably warm, and the season nearly over. The audience at St James', Piccadilly, were doubtless wearying for the green- fields, and the "innocence in shades" he had taught them to seek. The preacher found Ids utmost efforts of address insuffi- cient to command attention. At length, being in despair, and unable to control his feelings, he sat back in the pulpit and burst into tears. To this period, if any, must be referred the following well- known anecdote. Walking in his garden with two ladies, one of whom was his future wife, he was told that a gentleman awaited him in the house. " Tell him that I am too happily engaged to change my situation." The ladies insisted he should go, as his visitor was a man of rank, his friend and patron. Per- suasives being of no avail, they used the gentle force of taking him, one at each arm, to the garden gate. Finding resistance vain, he bowed, and laying his hand upon his heart, addressed them impromptu : "Thus Adam look'd when from the garden driven, And thus disputed orders sent from heaven ; Like him I go, and yet to go am loth ; Like him I go, for angels drove us both. Hard was his fate, but mine still more unkind, His Eve went with him, but mine stays behind." In May 1731, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of Colonel Lee. This Lady's first LIFE OF EDWARD YOUNG. husband was a relative of Lady Anne Wharton, his father's poetical friend, the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley, in Oxfordshire. The " Sea Piece," consisting of two odes, with a dedication to Mr Voltaire, was his next eifort. Of course he flatters Voltaire. He had immense respect for the Frenchman's talents. Yet in the conflict of wits, it is said the advantage was greatly on his own side. He does not offer a very dignified role to the foreigner, in connection with the sea piece. He proposes to sit on his fame, as Arion did on the dolphin's back. " How will thy name illustrious raise My sinking song?" The metaphor must have suggested uncomfortable ideas to such a fish out of the water as Voltaire always was. In another effort of wit, said to have been addressed impromptu to the sneering dolphin himself, he confers upon him compliments still more cold-blooded : "You are so witty, profligate, and thin, At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin." Yet he claims to have " soothed " the irritable and " grisly terror" on Dorset Downs, with "gentle rhpnes." The pro- bability is, that this rhyme was gentle, compared with Voltaire's rabid ebullitions of spleen. In 1734, Young published "The Foreign Address, or the Best Argument for Peace," &c. In this he takes leave of the Pindaric ode. In 1733, Lady Elizabeth Young brought him a son, who was named Frederick, and to whom the Prince of Wales stood god- father. Frederick Young has most unreasonably, in his turn, been made sponsor for the Lorenzo of " Night Thoughts." It is possible that the son of a poet should occasionally be a naughty boy, but he must, indeed, have been a peculiarly naughly boy, who, at the tender age of eight, when the " Complaint " was made, could fill so large a part of his father's conception of a licentious man of the world. His wife had a son and two daughters by her former husband. The young man married, and soon afterwards died. Miss Lee became the wife of Mr Temple, son of the then Lord Palmerston. Mr and Mrs Temple have been named as the models for the characters of Philander and Narcissa. They died within four years of each other, and the poet's wife a few months later. Thus the insatiate archer's shaft " Flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain," but certainly not, " Ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn." Either tliis was a fiction, or it applied to other parties. Mrs Temple died of consumption at Nice in 1736, the year after her -<. The iiot has it " in her bridal hour." He maybe LIFE OP EDWARD YOUNG. justified in extending a bridal hour to a period of twelve months ; the moon, however, cannot be excused for taking five years to "fill her horn" thrice. But the poet's office is to create, not to copy. The "Complaint" is not a narrative. Young and his wife accompanied Mrs Temple to the Continent as he expresses it, " bore her nearer to the sun," but it was of no avail. Her funeral was actually attended with the difficulties described in Night the Third. The remainder of the party wintered at Nice. Young's ten years of married life were probably the happiest of his not very happy life. How they were spent we can only guess from incidental statements. His garden, as every true poet's should, seems to have had much of his care. He planted rows of trees, which afterwards became in Dr Johnson's magniloquent language a fine grove. He erected alcoves with mottoes ; formed deceptive imitations to point the morals written on them, such as Invisibilia non dicipiunt on the semblance of a resting-place, which wasnone. "Here," said he to Langton, "I had put up a handsome sun-dial, with the motto Eheu fugaces 1 which," he added with a smile, " was sadly verified, for by next morning my dial had been carried off." The church received some portion of his care. He commenced a tower for it, which does not appear to have been completed. He designed inscriptions for the decor- ation of the chancel ; and Lady Betty worked in embroidery an ornamental cover for the communion table, which is still occasionally used. In the middle of this " altar piece" is worked in capital letters the motto, "i AM THE BREAD OF LIFE." On the north side of the chancel the parson inscribed the words, " VIRGINTBUS " INCREASE IN UNDERSTANDING AND WISDOM ; and on the south side "PUERISQUE "AND IN FAVOR WITH GOD AND MAN." These have since disappeared. His concern for the eternal welfare of his parishioners may be inferred from his character, which, as it became purified from the subserviency of his youth, grew in dignity and charity until his piety invested him with a sort of patriarchal air. Before his time there had been only one weekly service in the church. He began to read prayers on Sunday afternoons, and on Wednesdays, Fridays, and all holidays. He united with this a regard for the temporal wellbeing of his flock. He promoted innocent recrea- tions by the establishment of a bowluip-L'ivcn, and an assembly- room, and evinced his interest in the children of the poor by building and endowing a school where sixteen boys should le clothed and instructed free. Though the turn of his mind was naturally solemn, and he indulged himself by spending somct iinc.s many hours a-day in walking amongstjthe tombs in the church- LIFE OP EDWABD YOUNG. XVU yard, he yet condescended to promote the mirth of the company at the public rooms by the brilliancy of his wit. He generally directed the shafts of his satire at those who testified any con- tempt for decency and religion ; and thus his assembly-room appears to have been an enlightened attempt, such as philan- thropists are only now awaking to perceive the value of, to com- bine innocence with freedom, and to secure the advantages of society without its frivolity and dissipation. The assembly-room has since disappeared, but the school foundation still remains incorporated with the National School of Welwyn. Of his wife he was bereaved in 1741. Her remains were laid underneath the communion table, and Young went home to weep in darkness melodious tears, and to soothe his melancholy with the composition of the immortal "Complaint, or Night Thoughts." He retired to rest at night very early, about eight o'clock, and after his first sleep would be awake for hours meditating and composing verses, which, on rising at an early hour, he would transcribe. For some years before the death of the Prince of Wales, Young, who was in favour with the prince, attended Court pretty constantly, but after that event in 1751, he was deprived of his chaplaincy, and all his chances of preferment in the church came to an end. Upon the death of Dr Hales, in 1761, he was chosen to succeed him as clerk of the closet to Her Royal Highness the Dowager Princess of Wales. By that time, how- ever, he was fourscore. His reputation had culminated. The " Night Thoughts " had for long been the property of the book- sellers, and their author had not been called on by his own genius nor the public to supply further ore of the same ponderous character from his inexhaustible mine. The circumstances attending the publication of the " Night Thoughts " are uot certainly known. The first "Night " appears in the registers of the Stationers' Company in London for the year 1742 as the property of Robert Dodsley. The preface to Night Seventh, which probably came out along with the eighth and last, is dated July 7th, 1744. Soon after this the whole were united and published together. It would be digressing too far from the object of this notice to refer to the criticisms which have been passed upon the "Night Thoughts" by other poets and by critics in general. As Dr Johnson's remarks are comprehen- sive, a short quotation from them is subjoined : " In his ' Night Thoughts ' Young has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and colour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be exchanged for rhyme, but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of the imagination, would have been compressed and restrained bv confinement to rhyme. Xviii LIFE OF EDWARD YOUNQ. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness ; particular lines are not to be regarded : the power is in the whole, and in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantations, the magnificence of vast extent and endless variety." In 1745, Young produced a kind of political sequel to the " Night Thoughts," addressed to the Duke of Newcastle, and entitled " Some Thoughts occasioned by the present Juncture." Political sermons in blank verse are not likely to be ever popular. This one was no exception to the rule. That it does not want vigour, however, may be seen from these lines, applied to the Pretender : "And shall a Pope-'brcd princeling crawl ashore, Replete with venom, guiltless of a sting, And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scraped Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance, To cut his passage to the British Throne ? " TellitnotinAppin! In 1753, "The Brothers," a tragedy, which had been laid aside since Young had been in orders, was brought out on the stage of Drury Lane. The author compounded for the impro- priety, if there were any, by dedicating the profits to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. But these did not equal his expectations, and he made up the proceeds from 400 to a thousand guineas, by supplying the deficiency from his own pocket. His next publication was " The Centaur not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a Friend, on the Life in Vogue." This piece contains the elegant extract well known under the title of the " Death of Altamont." In 1758, he again became a dedicator, by the publication of a " Sermon preached before their Majesties at Kensington." He appears still to have been hankering after preferment. It was natural that a man of his fame should imagine he might become a bishop. It was a pity he should desire it. The king's answer always was, "He has a pension." Archbishop Seeker sent him, in reply to some solicitation, a letter, beginning "Good Dr Young," and concluding with a mild allusion to his published sentiir-ents. At that time he was seventy-seven. Towards the latter part of his life he was but little talked of. He says of himself, in his epigrammatic way, " I have been so long remembered that I am forgotten." Some insight into the later years of his private life are given by Richardson, the printer, and by a Mr Jones, who was his curate. He appears to have been both absent and reserved ; andy whilst his manner was invariably perfectly courteous, and even impressive, from an air of benevolence, he seems to have fre- quently felt society irksome, and tolerable only for the sake of the news of the day, which he tjreedily soffght from his visitors. LIFE OP EDWARD TOUXQ. Langton was surprised at this eagerness in a man whose intel- lectual stores must have been so great, and " who had retired from life with decided disappointment in his expectations." Richardson complains of him in his gossiping way : " Dr Young is another uncontrollable, and therefore unaccountable. He had been in town, somewhere behind the Royal Exchange, for three weeks without letting me know a syllable of the matter, till the very day that, ready booted, he called in Salisbury Court, leaving word (I was out) that he was very desirous of seeing me at Welwyn, I wish that he is not concerned in some plot, by this his privacy to one of his sincerest friends. He is an absent man, you know, madam, and if he be in a plot, it will not be long a secret. Of this we may be sure, it will not be against the State." Richardson visited him at Welwyn, along with a party of friends, who took up their quarters in the neighbour- hood, the parsonage not being large enough to accommodate them. Some of the best letters in "Sir Charles Grandison" were written on this occasion, in the early mornings, before breakfast. One of his letters to Richardson in 1745 has this sad sentiment : " "What has man to do but to know the vanity and avoid the vexation of human life ? Evils fly so near aad so thick about us that I 'm half persuaded, my dear friend, that we should aim at little more than negative good here, and positive in another scene. Escape here, and enjoyment hereafter." This is miser- able philosophy, but it is to be feared Young never rose high above it, although passages in his works of better comfort might be quoted. The fact is, Young is always rhapsodising, maunder- ing about religion. But he never appears to realise, although he sometimes declares, and that in memorable lines too, that the religion of a Christian is the love of Christ. The very man who writes thus does not appreciate heartily the truth he enunciates. He ministers, like an ancient prophet, not to himself, but to us, the truth he writes "Talk they of morals? thon Weeding Lo ye i Thou maker of new morals to mankind! The grand morality is love of Thee." The consequence is, he never enjoys the happiness of simply loving a Divine Lover. In his letters, too, he talks of joy m the Holy Ghost, but never seems to have it. He was so intent on the knowledge that puffs \ip, as never properly to attain to the love that builds up. With all his marvellous attachment to and knowledge of antithesis, he never appreciated this one. How he contradicts it in this remark: "Happy is the man whose head has secured him one immortality, and whose heart entitles- him to the, other ! " Who that has found the immor- tality there is in love, sighs for the immortality of earthly fame ? Fame is the immortality of earth ; love is the immor- I tality of heaven. The faith of the glory that is to be revealed I XX LIFE OP EDWARD YOUNQ. spurns the glory that is. The "Good Doctor" ultimately becomes hipped, and proses to the garrulous printer about his health, tar-water, and the Welwyn springs. Vanity of vanities ! One of Richardson's correspondents, the Bishop of Soder and Man, writes of Young thus : " He was, one or other, the most modest, the most patient of contradiction, and the most inform- ing and entertaining of any man (at least of any man who had so just pretensions to pertinacity and reserve) I ever conversed with. He is, I think, a man of singular importance to the Christian world." But the testimonies to Young's excellence of character are numerous, and the proof of the high estimation in which he was generally held lies in his popular title, " The Good Doctor." It is really of more importance in such a case to learn what measure of exception there was to the general excellence of his character. Mr Jones became Young's curate in 1759, and continued until the Good Doctor died, in 1765. He usually spent two hours every evening with the rector in useful conversation, and in reading, to relieve Mrs Hallows, whose eyes were much impaired by constant reading. This Mrs Hallows was the daughter of a rector of All-Hallows, Hertford. On the marriage of Miss Caroline Lee, the step-daughter of Dr Young, which took place after 1747, Mrs Hallows came by invitation to live with him. She was advanced in j'ears, and was always treated by Young "with the politeness and respect due to a gentlewoman." But Young treated every person with the same politeness and respect. His domestics shared his friendship and regard. Mrs Hallows abused his respect. She lorded it considerably over the old man, and having gained a complete command over all his arrangements, appears to have mismanaged them most con- scientiously. The curate under such circumstances could not be very comfortable. He had a small benefice of his own in Bedfordshire, and Young allowed him only a very small salary. He had previously given his curates only 20 a-year, perhaps when he could himself discharge most part of the duty. But for the last three or four years of his life, although retaining the use of his understanding, he was incapable of doing duty, and was obliged to raise his curate's salary. Parsimony and obstinacy are the charges brought against his old age, under these circum- stances, but Mr Jones confesses them more properly the sins of his housekeeper. After February 1762, Jones every now and then gave notice he should leave, and so put the old man into quandaries, from which his housekeeper could not afford him much relic-f. All his old friends were dead ; even Richardson, that Christian <>1 tho world, had gone to his long home. It is pitiful to hear of the solitary old man, whose name had found a deathless fame, forgotten even by the Church he adorned, so far as to feel com- LIFE OF EDWARD YOUNG. XXI pelled to advertise for mercenary help to feed his flock. His health, too, had been failing for years, and his nerves were shattered. A mind like Young's, never thoroughly chastened into acquiescence with Divine government or guidance, must in such circumstances have sometimes recoiled upon itself with serious violence. He could summon up almost to the last wonderful literary vigour. In 1759, he published a letter to Richardson in prose, " On Original Composition," and promised therein another which never came. In 1762, he completed his labours by " Resignation," a poem in two parts, with a post- script to Mrs Boscawen, the admiral's widow. Resignation appears to have been the long, long lesson of his life. He knew not that there was a better and a higher experience, even this " Rejoice evermore." As one of the latest indications of his chastened spirit, the following extract of a letter, dated Welwyn, 25th November 1762, is given. It is addressed to the Rev. Thomas Newcombe, Hackney : " As for my own health, I do not love to complain ; but one particular I must tell you, that my sight is so far gone as to lay me under the necessity of a hand to write this. God grant me grace under this darkness to see more clearly things in- visible and eternal those great things which you and I must soon be acquainted with ; and why not rejoice at it ? There is not a day of my long life that I desire to repeat, and at four- score it is all labour and sorrow. What, then, have we to do ? But one thing remains, and in that one, blessed be God, by His assistance we are sure of success. Let nothing, therefore, lie heavy on your heart ; let us rely on Him who has done so great things for us that lover of souls, that hearer of prayers whenever they come from the heart, and sure rewarder of all those who love Him and put their trust in His mercy. " Let us not be discontented with this world ; that is bad, but it is still worse to be satisfied with it so satisfied, as not to be very anxious for something more. " At length in 1765, this old man of eighty-four, blind, helpless, and forgotten by the world, managed by an old woman, whose senility appears to have been less than his, only because her will was the stronger, came to lie down upon his deathbed. His curate was absent, or was not admitted to see him. Even his son was denied so natural a privilege. His son had incurred his displeasure. It is not known how, but it is inferred that the estrangement dated from certain improprieties of the tatter's college days. According to the most authentic of the different accounts, on his son's arrival at his father's house to pay the last duties, hs sent to him his blessing and forgiveness, with an assurance that he did not refuse to see him from any remains of resentment, but that his bodily pain was so exquisite, that he was unable to bear so affecting a meeting, and that he would LIFE OF EDWARD YOU SO. find, by his last will, that he had always considered him as his son, and never meant to carry his displeasure to the grave. Parental authority in those days was earned farther than now. Children were children so long as their parents lived, and it is not unlikely that Frederick was called upon to endure some undue parental severity. But, in a house governed by a gentlewoman " who had never been degraded by the receipt of wages," and who considered herself at liberty, after the death of the testator, who bequeathed to her 1000, to disregard his strictest injunctions to destroy his papers, who can answer for the facts reported of an old man on his deathbed, in the sub- missiveness of eighty-four, and constantly under the influence of opiates ? After a fortnight's illness, with excessive pain, he died, a little before eleven at night, on Good Friday, 5th April 1765. He was buried on the 12th, in the chancel of his own church, beside the remains of his wife, about six in the evening, Mr Jones his curate reading the burial service. The funeral was a very private one. It is said the bell did not toll "until the corpse was brought out of the house," and that neither the master nor the children of his charity school were present at the interment. Yet "the mourners were his son, his nephew, another near relative, his housekeeper, most of the clergy, who bore the pall, and the whole town of Welwyn." Besides the legacy to Mrs Hallows, he left bequests to his friend Henry Stephens, a hatter at the Temple Gate, who died before him, and to his curate. The remainder of his property which, according to Mr Jones, amounted to a handsome fortune, he left to his son. Mr Frederick Young appears to have continued for some years to reside in the house at Welwyn. Boswell found him there with his daughter when passing through Welwyn with Dr Johnson, and gives an entertaining account of their visit to the parsonage and the garden of the poet. The monument erected by Mr Frederick Young to the memory of his parents still remains. The inscription is as follows : - OPTIMI PAREXTF.S EDWARDI TOUHQ, LL.D. HUJCS ECCLESLE RF.CT. ET F.LF/AHETH;E F