Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village. Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of B.C.L. and his doctor's degree some years later. Characteristically enough he began his poetical career by _An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne_ (1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence, _The Last Day_, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young, it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land 'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse is also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which even good men may have on appearing before that 'dread tribunal.' 'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh, Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye; Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein, And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain, Lest still some intervening chance should rise, Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize, Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late, And stab him in the crisis of his fate.' His next poem, _The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love_, was suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a gloomy hall: 'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes-- Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise An empire lost; I fling away the crown; Numbers have laid that bright delusion down; But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where, Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair? Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand In full possession of thy snowy hand! And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy! Till rapture reason happily destroys, And my soul wanders through immortal joys! Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss? I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'