This is one reason why the Satires, read _seriatim_, have a flatness to us, which, when we afterward read picked passages, we are inclined to disbelieve in, and to attribute to some deficiency in our own mood. But there are deeper reasons for that dissatisfaction. Young is not a satirist of a high order. His satire has neither the terrible vigor, the lacerating energy of genuine indignation, nor the humor which owns loving fellowship with the poor human nature it laughs at; nor yet the personal bitterness which, as in Pope’s characters of Sporus and Atticus, insures those living touches by virtue of which the individual and particular in Art becomes the universal and immortal. Young could never describe a real, complex human being; but what he _could_ do with eminent success was to describe, with neat and finished point, obvious _types_, of manners rather than of character—to write cold and clever epigrams on personified vices and absurdities. There is no more emotion in his satire than if he were turning witty verses on a waxen image of Cupid or a lady’s glove. He has none of these felicitious epithets, none of those pregnant lines, by which Pope’s Satires have enriched the ordinary speech of educated men. Young’s wit will be found in almost every instance to consist in that antithetic combination of ideas which, of all the forms of wit, is most within reach of a clever effort. In his gravest arguments, as well as in his lightest satire, one might imagine that he had set himself to work out the problem, how much antithesis might be got out of a given subject. And there he completely succeeds. His neatest portraits are all wrought on this plan. “Narcissus,” for example, who “Omits no duty; nor can Envy say He miss’d, these many years, the Church or Play: He makes no noise in Parliament, ’tis true; But pays his debts, and visit when ’tis due; His character and gloves are ever clean, And then he can out-bow the bowing Dean; A smile eternal on his lip he wears, Which equally the wise and worthless shares. In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief, Patient of idleness beyond belief, Most charitably lends the town his face For ornament in every public place; As sure as cards he to th’ assembly comes, And is the furniture of drawing-rooms: When Ombre calls, his hand and heart are free, And, joined to two, he fails not—to make three; Narcissus is the glory of his race; For who does nothing with a better grace? To deck my list by nature were designed Such shining expletives of human kind, Who want, while through blank life they dream along, Sense to be right and passion to be wrong.” It is but seldom that we find a touch of that easy slyness which gives an additional zest to surprise; but here is an instance: