II. The father of Edward Young was chaplain to William and Mary, and afterwards to Queen Anne--the latter of whom, when Princess royal, stood godmother to the Poet. Young, early in life, lost his father, and having fallen in with the wild Duke of Wharton, went with him to Ireland, where he remained long enough to acquire many of that young nobleman's dissipated habits. The impressions however of his childhood still had influence upon him, and in his worst hours he defended the Christian belief against the atheistical Tindall, and his cavilling companions. In the least religious years of his life, he wrote a poem called "The Last Day." Indeed his mind was at all times rather dark and visionary. It is told of him that "while a mere boy, at Oxford, he would close his windows at mid-day, and compose by lamp light,"--with a skull upon his table. Not lingering upon his many minor works--works now of no interest to the reader--we will pass on to his three greater ones--"Revenge," a tragedy--the "Night Thoughts"--and "Love of Fame," a series of satirical poems. Of the first it will be unnecessary to say more than that it still keeps possession of the stage. Of the "Night Thoughts," Blair and Johnson have both spoken in high terms. These, say they, are great poems, abounding with "rich and fervid thought expressed in a manner seldom turgid--often noble." And with this very brief notice, mindful of the long path before me, I will content myself and proceed to his satires. These, it strikes me, perhaps singularly, are our poet's best works. Swift has said of them that they should have been either "more merry or more severe," and the sententious brevity of this criticism has made it a popular one. Boileau sacrificed Tasso to an antithesis; wits suffer an epigrammatic point to outweigh real merit. We must make allowance therefore for the Dean's professional indifference to truth of criticism. Young's satires were much labored. They show it,--_ars_ NON _celat artem_; but this in satire is hardly a fault. We distrust the severity which we believe born of the hour's anger: we say the poet will repent of this hollow and unmerited invective when cool. But when a work bears about it the mark of labor, we hold it to be the offspring of a judicious and settled hatred of all that it castigates. Such a work oftenest has truth upon its face. This exposure of the laboring hand, then, is a merit in the satires before us. Of their epigrammatic {103} sententiousness, the reader may judge from a distich or two which I mean now to select from an indifferent page. Speaking of noblemen: "These stand for fame on their forefathers' feet, By heraldry proved valiant or discreet." * * * * * "Men should press forward in fame's glorious chase-- Nobles look backward, and so lose the race." * * * * *