The device continued to be very popular throughout the eighteenth century, especially by those who continue or represent the “Ethical” school of Pope. First amongst these may be mentioned Edward Young (1681-1765), whose “Night Thoughts” was first published between 1742-1744. Young, like his contemporaries, has recourse to personifications, both for didactic purposes and apparently to add dignity to his style. It is probable, too, that in this respect he owes something to “Paradise Lost”; from Milton no doubt he borrowed his figure of Death, which, though poetically not very impressive, seems to have captured the imagination of Blake and other artists who have tried to depict it. The figure is at first only casually referred to in the Fourth Book (l. 96), where there is a brief and commonplace reference to “Death, that mighty hunter”; but it is not until the fifth book that the figure is developed. Yet, though the characterization is carried to great length, there is no very striking personification: we are given, instead, a long-drawn-out series of abstractions, with an attempt now and then to portray a definite human figure. Thus Like princes unconfessed in foreign courts Who travel under cover, Death assumes The name and look of life, and dwells among us. And then the poet describes Death as being present always and everywhere, and especially Gaily carousing, to his gay compeers Inly he laughs to see them laugh at him As absent far. But Young has not, like Milton, been able to conjure up a definite and convincing vision, and thus he never achieves anything approaching the overwhelming effect produced by the phantom of Death in “Paradise Lost,” called before us in a single verse: So spake the grisly Terror. (P.L., II. 704) For the rest, Young’s personifications, considering the nature of his subject, are fewer than might be expected. Where they occur they often seem to owe their presence to a desire to vary the monotony of his moral reflections; as a result we get a number of abstractions, which may be called personifications only because they are sometimes accompanied by human attributes. Young has also certain other evocations which can scarcely be called abstractions, but which are really indistinct, shadowy beings, like the figures of a dream, as when he describes the phantom of the past: The spirit walks of every day deceased And smiles an angel, or a fury frowns (ll. 180-181) or the grief of the poet as he ever meets the shades of joys gone for ever: The ghosts Of my departed joys: a numerous train.