able and intentional burlesque. The author seems by his rhymes to have had no ear at all, and his gross and fulsome flattery is unspeakably nauseous. Of this latter peculiarity indeed even his best work contains but too many instances. The fine passage, soon to be quoted, from the Last Day is disfigured by the insertion in the midst of it of a clumsy and foolish panegyric on Queen Anne, which any one but an eighteenth-century divine would have felt to be not only intrinsically in bad taste, but hopelessly inappropriate to the case. The depths to which Young sinks at his worst are however compensated by the heights at which at his best he arrives. If poetry and poets could be judged by single lines, there are few save the highest who could safely challenge comparison with Young. He had an astonishing fertility of thought of a certain kind, and a corresponding richness of expression. Nor were his powers confined, as it has been asserted, to the production of 'gloomy epigram.' He stands pre-eminent among artists of blank verse, and a critic might well have asked him, as Jeffrey asked Macaulay, where he got his style from. The earlier eighteenth century is indeed remarkable for its mould of blank verse. Considering that though Young was a much older man than Thomson he did not produce his great work until many years after the appearance of Winter, it may be that The Seasons exercised some influence over him; but the influence was scarcely that of imitation. The different uses to which the two instruments were put may perhaps in some measure account for the difference of their sound. Both have in common the tendency to florid language and to antithesis which the Popian couplet had made popular, both use and indeed abuse the effect of strongly contrasted lights and shades. But Young, probably owing to his dramatic studies, is much more rhetorical than Thomson. Not a few passages in the Night Thoughts, especially that remarkable one in the Third Night about dying friends, where the confusion of metaphors does not obscure the grandeur of the verse, are of the finest tragic mould. It was inevitable that in the hands of a man of such uncritical taste as Young this tragic quality should often degenerate into mere declamation. The inequality indeed which is so characteristic of him exists even in detached passages of very small extent, so that it is difficult if not impossible to select any in which the taste shall not be offended. The Night Thoughts has accordingly long ceased to be the popular book it once was. poet of moral ideas however Young will always deserve attention, As a independently of the excellence of his versification. The famous passage on Procrastination, which, hackneyed as it is, is so decidedly his masterpiece, that it cannot be left out in any selection from his works, is in its way not to be surpassed, and its excellence fully accounts for the popularity of Young in a century such as the eighteenth, which, whatever its practice might be, was, in theory, nothing if not moralist. This popularity, as is pretty generally known, spread to France, where Young long had many fervent admirers, though he is probably to a great extent chargeable with the bad repute of England for spleen. Blake's remarkable illustrations also add considerable interest of the accidental kind to the book. Those of the minor poems which deserve notice at all are not dissimilar in characteristics to the Night Thoughts. The satires have almost as great, though scarcely so original a merit as these latter, and both in the Last Day and the Job fine and striking passages abound. GEORGE SAINTSBURY. FROM THE LAST DAY.' BOOK I. Sooner or later, in some future date, (A dreadful secret in the book of Fate) This hour, for aught all human wisdom knows, THE OLD COQUETTE. [From Satire V, on Women.] 'But adoration! give me something more,' Cries Lycé on the borders of threescore. Nought treads so silent as the foot of Time: Hence we mistake our autumn for our prime. VOL. III. Q 'Tis greatly wise to know before we're told The melancholy news that we grow old. Autumnal Lycé carries in her face Memento mori to each public place. O how your beating breast a mistress warms And with his spade the sexton marks the ground! PROCRASTINATION. [From The Complaint, Night I.] By nature's law, what may be, may be now; In human hearts what bolder thought can rise As on a rock of adamant, we build Our mountain hopes, spin out eternal schemes And big with life's futurities, expire. Not e'en Philander had bespoke his shroud, Nor had he cause; a warning was denied: As sudden, though for years admonish'd home! And scarce in human wisdom to do more. All promise is poor dilatory man, And that through every stage: when young indeed As duteous sons our fathers were more wise. At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same. |