The Essays of "George Eliot": CompleteEliot, George
History
The Essays of "George Eliot": Complete
Eliot, George
Literature -- History and criticism
“With invocations some their hearts inflame;
_I need no muse_, _a Walpole is my theme_.”
And of God coming to judgment, he says, in the “Night Thoughts:”
“I find my inspiration is my theme;
_The grandeur of my subject is my muse_.”
Nothing can be feebler than this “Instalment,” except in the strength of
impudence with which the writer professes to scorn the prostitution of
fair fame, the “profanation of celestial fire.”
Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more than three thousand pounds by
his “Satires”—a surprising statement, taken in connection with the
reasonable doubt he throws on the story related in Spence’s “Anecdotes,”
that the Duke of Wharton gave Young £2000 for this work. Young, however,
seems to have been tolerably fortunate in the pecuniary results of his
publications; and, with his literary profits, his annuity from Wharton,
his fellowship, and his pension, not to mention other bounties which may
be inferred from the high merits he discovers in many men of wealth and
position, we may fairly suppose that he now laid the foundation of the
considerable fortune he left at his death.
It is probable that the Duke of Wharton’s final departure for the
Continent and disgrace at Court in 1726, and the consequent cessation of
Young’s reliance on his patronage, tended not only to heighten the
temperature of his poetical enthusiasm for Sir Robert Walpole, but also
to turn his thoughts toward the Church again, as the second-best means of
rising in the world. On the accession of George the Second, Young found
the same transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated
them in a style of poetry previously unattempted by him—the Pindaric ode,
a poetic form which helped him to surpass himself in furious bombast.
“Ocean, an Ode: concluding with a Wish,” was the title of this piece. He
afterward pruned it, and cut off, among other things, the concluding
Wish, expressing the yearning for humble retirement, which, of course,
had prompted him to the effusion; but we may judge of the rejected
stanzas by the quality of those he has allowed to remain. For example,
calling on Britain’s dead mariners to rise and meet their “country’s
full-blown glory” in the person of the new King, he says:
“What powerful charm
Can Death disarm?
Your long, your iron slumbers break?
_By Jove_, _by Fame_,
_By George’s name_,
Awake! awake! awake! awake!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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