Miscellaneous essays ; The lifted veil ; Brother Jacob

<Xbe TOorfcs of George jEltot

I N T W E L V E V O L U M E S

Miscellaneous Essays

The Lifted Veil

Brother Jacob

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

2

księgozbiorU,

ESSAYS AND LEA V ES FROM A

NOTE-BOOK

CONTENTS.

LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK.

Au t h o r s h i p, 2 0 8 Ju d g m e n t s o n Au t h o r s, , 2 1 3 St o r y Te l l i n g, . . . 2 1 5 H i s t o r i c I m a g i n a t i o n , 217 V a l u e i n O r i g i n a l i t y , 219 To t h e P r o s a i c A l l T h i n g s A r e P r o s a i c , . . . . . 219 \

4 CONTENTS. p aa s ‘ ‘ De a r Re l i g i o u s Lo v e, ” 2 2 0 Wb Ma k e Ou r Ow n Pr e c e d e n t s, ...2 2 0 Bi r t h o f To l e r a n c e, ...2 2 0 F e l i x Qu i Non P o t u i t , ... 2 2 1 Di v i n e Gr a c e a Re a l Em a n a t i o n, . • • • • • 2 2 1 “ A F i n e E x c e s s . ” F e e l i n g Is Enroot, • • • • • £ 2 2

P R E F A C E

W i s h e s have often been expressed th a t the articles k n o w n

to have been w ritten by George Eliot in the “ W estminster Review ” before she had become famous under th a t pseudo­ nym, should be republished. Those wishes are now g rati­ fied—as far, a t any rate, as it is possible to gratify them. For i t was not George E liot’s desire th a t the whole of those articles should be rescued from oblivion. And in order th a t there m ight be no doubt on the subject, she made some tim e before her death a collection of such of her fugitive writings as she considered deserving of a perm anent form ; carefully revised them for the p ress; and left them, in th e order in which they here appear, with w ritten injunctions th a t no other pieces w ritten by her, of date prior to 1857, should be republished.

I t will thus be seen th a t the present collection of Essays has th e weight of her sanction, and has had, moreover, the advantage of such corrections and alterations as a revision long subsequent to the period of w riting may have suggested to her.

The opportunity afforded by this republication seemed a

suitable one for giving to the world some “ notes, ” as George E liot simply called them, which belong to a much later period, and which have not been previously published. The exact date of th eir w riting cannot be fixed w ith any certainty, but it m ust have been some tim e between th e appearance of “ Mid- dlem arch” and th a t of “ Theophrastus Such.” They were probably w ritten w ithout any distinct view to publication— some of them for the satisfaction of her own m ind; others perhaps as memoranda, and with an idea of working them out

6 PREFACE.

more fully a t some later time. I t may be of interest to know th at, besides the “ notes ” here given, the note-book contains four which appeared in “ Theophrastus Such, ” three of them practically as they there sta n d ; and i t is not impossible th at some of those in the present volume m ight also have been so utilized had they not happened to fall outside the general scope of the work. The marginal titles are George E liot’s own, but for the general title, “ Leaves from a Note-Book,” I am responsible.

I need only add that, in publishing these notes, I have th e complete concurrence of my friend Mr. Cross.

C H A R LES L E E LEW ES.

t

E S S A Y S .

W O RLD LIN ESS AND O T H E R -W O R L D L IN E SS : T H E PO ET YOUNG.

T h e study of men, as they have appeared in different ages, and under various social conditions, may be considered as the natural history of the race. L et us, then, for a moment im­ agine ourselves, as students of this natural history, “ dredg­ ing ” th e first h alf of th e eighteenth century in search of speci­ mens. About th e year 1730 we have hauled up a remarkable individual of the species divine— a surprising name, consid­ ering th e nature of the animal before u s ; b u t we are used to unsuitable names in natural history. L et us examine this in­ dividual a t our leisure. H e is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his metamorphosis into the clerical form. R ather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe him narrow ly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a psalm ist; a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the " L ast Day ” and by a creation of peers, who fluctuates between rhapsodic ap­ plause of K ing George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. A fter spending “ a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets,” after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of W harton, after aiming in vain at a parliam entary career, and angling for pensions and preferm ent w ith fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general mendicancy busi­ ness to a particular branch; in other words, he has deter­ mined on th a t renunciation of the world implied in “ taking orders,” with the prospect of a good living and an advanta­ geous m atrim onial connection. And he personifies the nicest

s

balance of tem poralities and spiritualities. H e is equally im­ pressed w ith the momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes a t once for immortal life and for “ livings ” ; he has a fervid attachm ent to patrons in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. H e will teach, w ith something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly th in g s ; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his m erito­ rious efforts in directing men’s attention to another world are not rewarded by substantial preferm ent in this. H is secular man believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as character­ istic attire for “ an ornament, of religion and virtue ” ; hopes courtiers will never forget to copy Sir Robert W alpole; and writes begging-letters to th e K in g ’s mistress. H is spiritual man recognizes no motives more fam iliar than Golgotha and “ the skies ” ; i t walks in graveyards, or it soars among the stars. H is religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. I f it were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers, it would be wise and agreeable to be indecent, or to murder one’s fath er; and, heaven apart, it would be extrem ely irra­ tional in any man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a com­ pound of the angel and the b ru te : the brute is to be humbled by being reminded of its “ relation to the stalls,” and frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and sk u lls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and ex­ alting the n e x t; and by this double process you get the Chris­ tian —“ the highest style of m an.” W ith all this, our new- made divine is an unm istakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of Prom ethean fire. H e will one day clothe his apostrophes and objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive: for this divine is Edw ard Young, the future author of the “ N ight Thoughts.”

Judging from Young’s works, one m ight imagine th a t the preacher had been organized in him by hereditary transm is­ sion through a long line of clerical forefathers,—th a t the dia­ monds of the “ N ight T houghts” had been slowly condensed

from the charcoal of ancestral sermons. Y et it was not so. H is grandfather, apparently, wrote himself gentleman, not clerk; and there is no evidence th at preaching had run in the family blood before it took th a t tu rn in the person of the poet’s father, who was quadruply clerical, being a t once rector, preb­ endary, court chaplain, and dean. Young was born a t his father’s rectory of Upham, in 1681. In due time th e boy went to W inchester College, and subsequently, though not till he was twenty-two, to Oxford, where, for his father’s sake, he was befriended by the wardens of two colleges, and in 1708, three years after his father’s death, nominated by Arch­ bishop Tenison to a law fellowship a t All Souls. Of Young’s life a t Oxford in these years, hardly anything is known. H is biographer, Croft, has nothing to tell us but the vague report that, when “ Young found himself independent and his own m aster a t A ll Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and morality th a t he afterw ard became,” and the perhaps apocry­ phal anecdote, th a t Tindal, th e atheist, confessed him self em­ barrassed by the originality of Young’s arguments. Both the report and the anecdote, however, are borne out by indirect evidence. As to the latter, Young has left us sufficient proof th a t he was fond of arguing on the theological side, and th a t he had his own way of treating old subjects. As to th e former, we learn th a t Pope, after saying other things which we know to be true of Young, added, th a t he passed “ a foolish youth, th e sport of peers and poets ” ; and, from all the indications we possess of his career till he was nearly fifty, we are in­ clined to think th a t Pope’s statem ent only errs by defect, and th a t he should rather have said, “ a foolish youth and middle age.” I t is not likely th a t Young was a very hard student, for he impressed Johnson, who caw him in his old age, as “ not a great scholar,” and as surprisingly ignorant of w hat Johnson thoug ht “ quite common maxims ” in lite ra tu re ; and there is no evidence th a t he filled either his leisure or his purse by taking pupils. H is career as an author did not be­ gin till he was nearly thirty, even dating from the publication of a portion of the “ Last Day, ” in the Tatler; so th a t he could hardly have been absorbed in composition. But where the fully developed insect is parasitic, we believe th e larva is usu­

10 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS:

ally parasitic also, and we shall probably not be far wrong in supposing th a t Young at Oxford, as elsewhere, spent a good deal of his time in hanging about possible and actual patrons, and accommodating him self to their habits w ith considerable flexibility of conscience and of tongue; being none th e less ready, upon occasion, to present him self as th e champion of theology, and to rhapsodize a t convenient moments in the com­ pany of the skies or of skulls. T hat brilliant profligate, the Duke of W harton, to whom Young afterw ard clung as his chief patron, was a t this time a mere boy ; and, though it is proba­ ble th a t th eir intimacy had already begun, since the Duke’s father and m other were friends of the old Dean, th a t intim acy ought not to aggravate any unfavorable inference as to Young’s Oxford life. I t is less likely th a t he fell into any exceptional vice, than th a t he differed from the men around him chiefly in his episodes of theological advocacy and rhapsodic solemn­ ity. H e probably sowed his wild oats after the coarse fashion of his times, for he has left us sufficient evidence th a t his moral sense was not delicate; but his companions, who were occupied in sowing th eir own oats, perhaps took it as a m at­ te r of course th a t he should be a rake, and were only struck w ith the exceptional circumstance th a t he was a pious and moralizing rake.

There is some irony in the fact th a t the two first poetical productions of Young, published in the same year, were his “ Epistle to Lord Lansdowne, ” celebrating the recent creation of peers—Lord Lansdowne’s creation in particular; and the “ L ast D ay.” Other poets, besides Young, found th e device for obtaining a Tory m ajority by turning twelve insignificant commoners into insignificant lords, an irresistible stimulus to v erse; but no other poet showed so versatile an enthusiasm — so nearly equal an ardor for the honor of the new baron and the honor of the Deity. B ut the twofold nature of th e syco* phant and the psalm ist is not more strikingly shown in the contrasted themes of the two poems, than in the transitions from bombast about monarchs, to bombast about the resurrec­ tion, in th e “ L ast Day ” itself. The dedication of th is poem to Queen Anne, Young afterw ard suppressed, for he was always ashamed of having flattered a dead patron. In th is

THE POET YOUNG.

dedication, Croft tells us, “ he gives her M ajesty praise indeed for her victories, but says th a t the author is more pleased to see her rise from th is lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind h er; nor will he lose her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey toward eternal bliss, till he behold th e heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his imagina­ tion, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth. ” The self-criticism which prom pted the suppression of the dedication, did not, however, lead him to improve either the rhym e or th e reason of the unfortunate couplet,—

“ When other Bourbons reign in other lands, And, i f men’s sin s forbid not, other Annes.”

In the “ Epistle to Lord Lansdowne, ” Young indicates his taste for the d ram a; and there is evidence th a t his tragedy of “ Busiris ” was “ in the theatre ” as early as this very year, 1713, though it was not brought on the stage till nearly six years later; so th a t Young was now very decidedly bent on authorship, for which his degree of B .C .L ., taken in this year, was doubtless a magical equipment. Another poem, “ The Force of Religion; or, Vanquished Love,” founded on the execution of Lady Ja n e Grey and her husband, quickly followed, showing fertility in feeble and tasteless verse; and on the Queen’s death, in 1714, Young lost no time in making a poetical lam ent for a departed patron a vehicle for extrav­ agant laudation of the new monarch. No fu rther literary production of his appeared until 1716, when a L atin oration which he delivered on the foundation of the Codrington Library a t All Souls, gave him a new opportunity for displaying his alacrity in inflated panegyric.

In 1717 it is probable th a t Young accompanied the Duke of W harton to Ireland, though so slender are the m aterials for his biography, th a t the chief basis for this supposition is a passage in his “ Conjectures on Original Composition,” w ritten when he was nearly eighty, in which he intim ates th a t he had once been in th a t country. B ut there are many facts surviv­

12 W0RLDLINES9 AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS:

ing to indicate th a t for th e next eight or nine years Young was a sort of attaché of W harton’s. I n 1719, according to legal records, th e Duke granted him an annuity, in considera­ tion of his having relinquished the office of tutor to Lord Bur­ leigh, with a life annuity of £ 1 0 0 a year, on his Grace’s as­ surances th a t he would provide for him in a much more ample manner. And again, from th e same evidence, it appears th a t in 1721 Young received from W harton a bond for £600, in compensation of expenses incurred in standing for P arliam ent a t the D uke’s desire, and as an earnest of greater services which his Grace had promised him on his refraining from th e spiritual and tem poral advantages of taking orders w ith a cer­ tain ty of two livings in the gift of his college. I t is clear, therefore, th a t lay advancement, as long as there was any chance of it, had more attractions for Young th an clerical preferm ent; and th a t a t this tim e he accepted the Duke of W harton as the pilot of his career.

A more creditable relation of Young’s was his friendship w ith Tickell, w ith whom he was in the habit of interchanging criticisms, and to whom in 1719—the same year, let us note, in which he took his doctor’s degree—he addressed his “ Lines on th e D eath of Addison.” Close upon these followed his “ P araphrase of P a rt of the Book of J o b ,” w ith a dedication to P arker, recently made Lord Chancellor, showing th at the possession of W harton’s patronage did not prevent Young from fishing in other waters. H e knew nothing of Parker, but th a t did not prevent him from magnifying th e new Chancellor’s m erits; on the other hand, he did know W harton, but this again did not prevent him from prefixing to his tragedy, “ The Revenge,” which appeared in 1721, a dedication attributing to the Duke all virtues, as well as all accomplishments. In the concluding sentence of this dedication, Young naively indicates th a t a considerable ingredient in his gratitude was a lively sense of anticipated favors. “ My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care; which I will venture to say will always be remembered to his honor; since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit, though, through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive

the benefit of it .w Young was economical w ith his ideas and im ages; he was rarely satisfied with using a clever thing once, and this bit of ingenious hum ility was afterw ard made to do duty in the “ Instalm ent,” a poem addressed to W alpole:—

“ Be this thy partial sm ile, from censure free, ’Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.”

I t was probably “ The Revenge ” th a t Young was writing when, as we learn from Spence’s “ Anecdotes,” the Duke of W harton gave him a skull w ith a candle fixed in it, as the most appropriate lamp by which to write tragedy. Accord­ ing to Young’s dedication, th e Duke was “ accessory ” to the scenes of this tragedy in a more im portant way, “ not only by suggesting th e most beautiful incident in them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the whole.” A state­ m ent which is credible, not indeed on the ground of Young’s dedicatory assertion, but from the known ability of the Duke, who, as Pope tells us, possessed

“ Each g ift of Nature and of Art, And wanted nothing but an honest heart.”

The year 1722 seems to have been the period of a visit to Mr. Dodington, a t E ast bury, in Dorsetshire—the “ pure Dor- setian downs ” celebrated by Thomson,—in which Young made the acquaintance of Voltaire; for in the subsequent dedication of his “ Sea Piece ” to “ Mr. V oltaire,” he recalls their meeting on Dorset Downs; and i t was in th is year th a t Christopher P itt, a gentleman-poet of those days, addressed an “ Epistle to Dr. Edw ard Young, at Eastbury, in D orsetshire,” which has a t least the m erit of this biographical couplet,—

“ W hile w ith your Dodington retired you sit, Charm’d w ith h is flowing Burgundy and w it.”

Dodington, apparently, was charmed in his turn, for he told Dr. W arton th a t Young was “ fa r superior to the French poet in the variety and novelty of his bonmots and repartees. ” U n­ fortunately, the only specimen of Young’s w it on this occasion th a t has been preserved to us is the epigram represented as an

14 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER WORLDLINESS:

extempore retort (spoken aside, surely) to Voltaire’s criticism of Milton’s episode of Sin and D e ath :—

“ Thou art so w itty, profligate, and thin,

A t once we think thee Milton, Death, and S in ” ;

an epigram which, in the absence of “ flowing B urgundy,” does not striko us as remarkably brilliant. L et us give Young the benefit of the doubt thrown on the genuineness of this epi­ gram by his own poetical dedication, in which he represents himself as having “ soothed ” Voltaire’s “ rage ” against Milton “ w ith gentle rhym es ” ; though in other respects th a t dedica­ tion is anything but favorable to a high estimate of Young’s wit. Other evidence apart, we should not be eager for the after-dinner conversation of the man who wrote,—

“ Thine is the Drama, how renown’d! Thine E p ic’s loftier trump to sound ;— B u t let A vion's sea-strung harp be m in e : B u t where's his dolphin ? K now 'st thou where f M ay that be fo u n d in thee, V oltaire! ”

The “ Satires ” appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, of course, with its laudatory dedication and its compliments insinuated amongst the rhymes. The seventh and last is dedicated to Sir R obert Walpole, is very short, and contains nothing in particular except lunatic flattery of George I. and his prime m inister, attributing th a t m onarch’s late escape from a storm

at sea to the miraculous influence of his grand and virtuous soul—for George, he says, rivals the angels:—

“ George, who in foes can soft affections raise, And charm envenomed satire into praise. Nor human rage alone h is pow ’r perceives, But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves. E v ’n storms (D eath’s fiercest ministers !) forbear, And in their own w ild empire learn to spare. Thus, Nature’s self, supporting Man’s decree, Styles B ritain ’s sovereign, sovereign of the sea.” A s for Walpole, w hat he felt at this tremendous crisis—

“ No powers of language, but h is own, can tell,— H is own, which Nature and the Graces form, A t will, to raise, or hush, the c iv il storm.”

I t is a coincidence worth noticing, th a t this seventh Satire was published in 1726, and th a t the w arrant of George I., granting Young a pension of £200 a year from Lady-day 1725, is dated May 3, 1726. The gratitude exhibited in this Satire may have been chiefly prospective, but the “ In stalm en t” —a poem inspired by the thrilling event of W alpole’s installa­ tion as K night of the G arter—was clearly w ritten with the double ardor of a man who has got a pension, and hopes for something more. H is emotion about W alpole is precisely at the same pitch as his subsequent emotion about the Second Advent. In the “ Instalm ent ” he sa y s :—

“ W ith invocations some their hearts inflam e; I need no muse, a Walpole is m y theme.”

And of God coming to judgment, he says, in the “ N ight Thoughts ” :—

“ I find my inspiration in my theme ; The grandeur o f m y subject is m y muse.”

Nothing can be feebler than this “ Instalm ent,” except in the strength of impudence w ith which the w riter professes to scorn the prostitution of fair fame, the “ profanation of celes­ tial fire.”

H erbert Croft tells us th a t Young made more than three thousand pounds by his “ Satires, ”—a surprising statem ent, taken in connection w ith the reasonable doubt he throws on the story related in Spence’s “ Anecdotes, ” th a t the Duke of W harton gave Young £ 2 ,000 for this work. Young, however, seems to have been tolerably fortunate in the p e c u n ia r y results of his publications; and w ith his literary profits, his annuity from W harton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to men­ tion other bounties which may be inferred from the high merits he discovers in many men of wealth and position, we may fairly suppose th a t he now laid the foundation of the con­ siderable fortune he left a t his death.

I t is probable th a t the Duke of W harton’s final departure for the Continent and disgrace a t Court in 1726, and the con­ sequent cessation of Young’s reliance on his patronage, tended not only to heighten the tem perature of his poetical enthu­

16 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS:

siasm for Sir R obert Walpole, but also to tu rn his thoughts toward the Church again, as the second-best means of rising in the world. On the accession of George I I ., Young found the same transcendent m erits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated them in a style of poetry previously unat- tem pted by him —th e Pindaric ode, a poetic form which helped him to surpass him self in furious bombast. “ Ocean, an O de: concluding w ith a W ish,” was the title of this piece. H e afterw ard pruned it, and cut off, amongst other things, the concluding Wish, expressing the yearning for humble retire­ ment, which, of course, had prom pted 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 B ritain’s dead m ariners to rise and meet their “ country’s full-blown glory ” in the person of the new King, he sa y s:—

“ What powerful charm Can Death disarm?

Your long, your iron slumbers break? B y Jove, by Fame,

B y George's name

A w a k e! aw ake! aw ake! aw ake!w

Soon after this notable production, which was w ritten with th e ripe folly of forty-seven, Young took orders, and was pres­ ently appointed chaplain to the King. “ The Brothers, ” his th ird and last tragedy, which was already in rehearsal, he now withdrew from the stage, and sought reputation in a way more accordant w ith the decorum of his new profession, by turning prose-writer. B ut after publishing “ A True E sti­ mate of Hum an L ife,” w ith a dedication to th e Queen, as one of the “ most shining representatives ” of God on earth, and a sermon, entitled “ An Apology for Princes; or, the Rever­ ence due to Government, ” preached before the House of Com­ mons, his Pindaric ambition again seized him, and he matched his former ode by another, called “ Im perium Pelagi; a Naval Lyric, w ritten in Im itation of P in d ar’s spirit, occasioned by his M ajesty’s R eturn from Hanover, 1729, and the succeeding Peace.” Since he afterw ard suppressed this second ode, we m ust suppose th a t it was rather worse than the first. Next

A ge,” remarkable for nothing but the audacity of affectation w ith which the most servile of poets professes to despise servility.

In 1730, Young was presented by his college w ith the rec­ tory of Welwyn, in H ertfordshire; ana in the following year, when he was ju st fifty, he m arried Lady Elizabeth Lee, a widow w ith two children, who seems to have been in favor w ith Queen Caroline, and who probably had an income—two attractions which doubtless enhanced the power of her other charms. P astoral duties and domesticity probably cured Young Of some bad h a b its; but, unhappily, they did not cure him either of flattery or of fustian. Three more odes followed, quite as bad as those of his bachelorhood, except th a t in the th ird he announced the wise resolution of never w riting another. I t m ust have been about this time, since Young was now “ turned of fifty,” th a t he wrote the letter to Mrs. Howard (afterward Lady Suftolk), George I I . ’s mistress, which proves th a t he used other engines, besides the Pindaric, in “ besieging Court favor.” The letter is too characteristic to be o m itted :—

“ Monday Morning. “ M a d a m , —I know h is m ajesty’s goodness to h is servants, and h is love of justice in general, so well, that I am confident, if h is majesty knew my case, I should not have any cause to despair of his gracious favor to me.

Want.

SaBe™ f ) for his Zeal | majesty. These, madam, are the proper points of consideration in the person that humbly hopes h is m ajesty’s favor.

“ As to Abilities, all I can presume to say is, I have done the best I could to improve them.

“ A s to Good Manners, I desire no favor, i f any just objection lies against them.

“ As for Service, I have been near seven years in his m ajesty’s, and never omitted any duty in it, which few can say.

“ As for Age, I am turned of fifty.

“ As for W ant, I have no manner of preferment.

“ As for Sufferings, I have lost £300 per ann. by being in his majesty’s serv ice; as I have shown in a Representation which h is majesty has been 80 good us to read and consider.

“ A bilities. Good Manners. Service. Age.

18 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS:

“ A s for Zeal, I have written nothing without showing my duty to their majesties, and some pieces are dedicated to them.

“ This, madam, is the short and true state of my case. They that make their court to the ministers, and not their majesties, succeed better. If my case deserves some consideration, and you can serve me in it, I humbly hope and believe you w i l l : I shall, therefore, trouble you no farther; but beg leave to subscribe myself, w ith truest respect and gratitude, yours, &c. E d w a r d Y o u n g .

“ P .S .—I have some hope that my Lord Townshend is my friend ; if therefore soon and before he leaves the court, you had an opportuni ty of m entioning me, w ith that favor you have been so good to show, I think it would not fail of success; and, if not, I shall owe you more than any.'1 — Suffolk Letters, vol. i. p. 285.

Young’s wife died in 1741, leaving him one son, born in 1733. T h at he had attached him self strongly to her two daughters by her former marriage, there is better evidence in the report, mentioned by Mrs. Montagu, of his practical kind­ ness and liberality to the younger, than in his lam entations over the elder as the “ N arcissa” of the “ N ight Thoughts.” “ N arcissa” had died in 1735, shortly after marriage to Mr. Temple, the son of Lord P alm erston; and Mr. Temple him ­ self, after a second marriage, died in 1740, a year before Lady Elizabeth Young. These, then, are the three deaths supposed to have inspired “ The Complaint, ” which forms the three first books of the “ N ight Thoughts ” :—

“ Insatiate archer, could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice ; and thrice my peace was s la in ; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.” Since we find Young departing from the tra th of dates, in order to heighten the effect of his calamity, or at least of his climax, we need not be surprised th at he allowed his imagina­ tion great freedom in other m atters besides chronology, and th a t the character of “ P hilander ” can, by no process, be made to fit Mr. Temple. The supposition th a t the much-lectured “ Lorenzo” of the “ N ight T h oug hts” was Young’s own son, is hardly rendered more absurd by the fact th a t the poem was w ritten when th at son was a boy, than by the obvious artifi­ ciality of the characters Young introduces as targets for his arguments and rebukes. Among all the trivial efforts of con­ jectural criticism, there can hardly be one more futile than th e

THE POET YOUNG. 19

attem p t to discover th e original of those pitiable lay-figures, the “ Lorenzos ” and “ A ltam onts ” of Young’s didactic prose and poetry. H is muse never stood face to face w ith a genu­ ine, living hum an being; she would have been as much startled by such an encounter as a stage necromancer whose incantations and blue fire h ad actually conjured up a demon.

T he “ N ight Thoughts ” appeared between 1741 and 1745. Although he declares in them th a t h e has chosen God for his “ patron ” henceforth, th is is not a t all to the prejudice of some half-dozen lords, duchesses, and rig h t honorables, who have th e privilege of sharing finely turned compliments w ith their eo-patron. The line which closed th e Second N ight in the earlier editions—

“ W its spare not Heaven, O W ilm ington!—nor thee”— is an intense specimen of th a t perilous juxtaposition of ideas by which Young, in his incessant search after point and nov­ elty, unconsciously converts his compliments ¡into ¡sarcasms; and his apostrophe to the moon as more likely to be favorable tc his song if he calls her “ fair P ortland r of the ' skies, ” is worthy even of his Pindaric ravings. H is ostentatious re­ nunciation of worldly schemes, and especially of his ¡twenty- years’ siege of Court favor, are in the tone of one who retains some hope, in th e m idst of his querulousness.

H e descended from the astronomical rhapsodies of his N inth N ight, published ¡in 1745, to more terrestrial strains in his

Reflections on the Public Situation of the Kingdom, ” dedi­ cated to the Duke of Newcastle} but in th is critical year we get a glimpse of him through a more prosaic and less refract­ ing medium. H e spent a p art of the year a t Tunbridge W ells; and Mrs. Montagu, who was there too, gives a very lively pic­ tu re of th e “ divine Doctor ” in her letters to th e Duchess of Portland, on whom Young had bestowed the superlative bom­ bast to which we have ju st referred. We shall borrow th e quotations from Dr. Doran, in spite of th eir length, because, to our mind, they present th e most agreeable portrait we pos­ sess of Young:—

‘“ I have great joy in Dr. Young, whom I disturbed in a reverie. A t flist he etarted, then bowed, then fell back into a surprise; then began

20 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS:

a speech, relapsed into h is astonishment two or three times, forgot what he had been sa y in g ; began a new subject, and so went on. I told him your grace desired he would w rite longer letters; to which he cried “ H a ! ” most emphatically, and I leave you to interpret what it meant. He has made a friendship w ith one person here, whom I believe you would not imagine to have been made for h is bosom friend. You would, perhaps, suppose it was a bishop or dean, a prebend, a pious preacher, a clergyman of exemplary life, or, i f a layman, of most virtuous conversa­ tion, one that had paraphrased St. Matthew, or wrote comments on St. Paul. . . . You would not guess that th is associate of the doctor’s was — old Cibber ! Certainly, in their religious, moral, and c iv il character, there is no relation ; but in their dramatic capacity there is some. ’— Mrs. Montagu was not aware that Cibber, whom Young had named not disparagingly in h is Satires, was the brother o f his old schoolfellow ; but to return to our hero. ‘The waters, ’ says Mrs. Montagu, ‘ have raised h is spirits to a fine pitch, as your grace w ill im agine, when I tell you how sublime an answer he made to a very vulgar question. I asked him how long he stayed at the W ells: he said, A s long as my rival stayed ;— as long as the sun d id .’ Among the visitors at the W ells were Lady Sunderland (w ife of Sir Robert Sutton) and her sister, Mrs. Tichborne. 4 He did an admirable thing to Lady Sunderland: on her mentioning Sir Robert Sutton, he asked her where Sir Robert’s lady was ; on which we all laughed very heartily, and I brought him off, half ashamed, to my lodgings, where, during breakfast, he assured me he had asked after Lady Sunderland, because he had a great honor for h er; and that, hav­ ing a respect for her sister, he designed to have inquired after her, if we had not put i t out of h is head by laughing at him . You must know, Mrs. Tichborne sat next to Lady Sunderland. It would have been ad­ mirable to have had him finish h is compliment in that manner.’ . . . ‘H is expressions all bear the stamp of novelty, and h is thoughts of ster­ lin g sense. He practises a kind of philosophical abstinence. . . . He carried Mrs. R olt and m yself to Tunbridge, five m iles from hence, where we were to see some fine old ruins. . . . F irst rode the doctor on a tall steed, decently caparisoned in dark g r a y ; next, ambled Mrs. Rolt on a hackney horse; . . . then followed your humble servant on a milk-white palfrey. I rode on in safety, and at leisure to observe the company, especially the two figures that brought up the rear. The first was my servant, valiantly armed w ith two uncharged p is to ls; the last was the doctor’s man, whose uncombed hair so resembled the mane of the horse he rode, one could not help im agining they were of kin, and w ishing, for the honor o f the fam ily, that they had had one comb betw ixt them. On h is head was a velvet cap, much resembling a black saucepan, and on h is side hung a little basket.—A t last we arrived at the K ing’s Head, where the loyalty o f the doctor induced him to a lig h t; and then, knight-errant-like, he took his damsels from off their palfreys, and courteously handed us into the inn. ’ . . . The party returned to the W ells; and ‘the silver Cynthia held up her lamp in the heavens ’ the

while. ‘The night silenced all but our divine doctor, who sometimes uttered things fit to be spoken in a season when all nature seems to be hushed and hearkening. I followed, gathering wisdom as I went, till I found, by my horse’s stumbling, that I was in a bad road, and that the blind was leading the blind. So I placed my servant between the doctor and m y self; which he not perceiving, went on in a most philosophical strain, to the great admiration of my poor clown of a servant, who, not being wrought up to any pitch of enthusiasm, nor making any answer to all the fine things he heard, the doctor, wondering I was dumb, and grieving I was so stupid, looked round and declared h is surprise.’ ”

Young’s oddity and absence of mind are gathered from other sources besides these stories of Mrs. M ontagu’s, and gave rise to the report th a t he was the original of Fielding’s “ Parson A dam s” ; but this Croft denies, and mentions an­ other Young, who really sat for the portrait, and who, we imag­ ine, had both more Greek and more genuine sim plicity than the poet. H is love of chatting w ith Colley Cibber was an indication th a t the old predilection for the stage survived, in spite of his emphatic contempt for “ all joys but joys th a t never can expire ” ; and the production of “ The Brothers ” a t D rury Lane in 1753, after a suppression of fifteen years, was perhaps not entirely due to the expressed desire to give the proceeds to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The author’s profits were not more than £ 4 0 0 —in those days a disappointing sum, and Young, as we learn from his friend Richardson, did not make this the lim it of his donation, but gave a thousand guineas to the Society. “ I had some talk w ith him, ” says Richardson, in one of his letters, “ about th is great action. ‘ I a lw a y s ,’ said he, ‘ intended to do something handsome for the Society. H ad I deferred it to my demise, I should have given away my son’s money. All the world are inclined to p leasure; could I have given myself a greater by disposing of the sum to a different use, I should have done it.’ ”

His next work was “ The Centaur not F abulous; in Six L et­ ters to a Friend, on the Life in Vogue,” which reads very much like the most objurgatory parts of the “ N ight Thoughts ’* reduced to prose. I t is preceded by a preface which, though addressed to a lady, is in its denunciations of vice as grossly indecent and almost as flippant as the epilogues w ritten by “ friends,” which he allowed to be reprinted after his tragedies

22 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS :

in the latest edition of his works. We like much better than “ The C entaur,” “ Conjectures on Original Composition,” w rit­ ten in 1759, for th e sake, h e says, of communicating to the world th e well-known anecdote about Addison’s death-bed, and, w ith th e exception of his poem on Kesignation, th e last th in g he ever published.

The estrangem ent from his son, which m ust have im bittered the later years of his life, appears to have begun not many years after the m other’s death. On. th e m arriage of her second daughter, who had previously presided over Young’s house­ hold, a Mrs. Hallows, understood to be a woman of discreet age, and th e daughter (or widow) of a clergyman who was an old friend of Young’s, became housekeeper a t Welwyn. Opinions about ladies are ap t to differ. “ Mrs. Hallows was a woman of piety, improved by reading,” says one witness. “ She was a very coarse woman,” says Dr. Johnson; and we shall presently find some indirect evidence th a t her tem per was perhaps not quite so much improved as her piety. Ser­ vants, i t seems, were not fond of remaining long in the house w ith h er; a satirical curate, named Kidgell, h ints a t “ drops of ju n ip e r” taken as a cordial (but perhaps he was spiteful, and a teetotaler) ; and Young’s son is said to have told his fa th e r th a t “ an old man should not resign himself to the man­ agement of anybody.” The result was, th a t the son was ban­ ished from home for th e rest of his father’s lifetime, though Y oung seems never to have thought of disinheriting him.

Our latest glimpses of th e aged poet are derived from cer­ ta in letters of Mr. Jones, his curate—letters preserved in the B ritish Museum, and, happily, made accessible to common mor-> tals in Nichols’s ‘Anecdotes.’ Mr. Jones was a man of some literary activity and am bition,— a collector of interesting docu­ ments, and one of those concerned in th e “ Free and Candid D isquisitions,” th e design of which was “ to point out such things in our ecclesiastical establishm ent as want to be re­ viewed and am ended.” On these and kindred subjects he cor­ responded w ith Dr. Birch, occasionally troubling him with queries and m anuscripts. W e havo a respect for Mr. Jones. U nlike most persons who trouble others with queries or manu­ scripts, he m itigates the infliction by such gifts as “ a fa t

THE POET YOUNG.

p ullet,” wishing he “ had anything better to send; but this depauperizing vicarage (of Alconbury) too often checks the freedom and forwardness of my m ind.” Another day comes a “ pound canister of t e a ” ; another, a “ young fatted goose.” Mr. Jones’s first letter from Welwyn is dated June, 1759, not quite six years before Young’s death. In June, 1762, he ex­ presses a wish to go to London “ this summer. But, ” he con­ tinues, —

“ My tim e and pains are almost continually taken up here, and . . . I have been (I now find) a considerable loser, upon the whole, by con­ tinuing here so long. The consideration of this, and the inconveniences I sustained, and do still experience from my late illness, obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor (Young) w ith my case, and to assure him that I plainly perceived the duty and confinement here to be too much for m e ; for which reason I must (I said) beg to be at liberty to resign my charge at Michaelmas. I began to give him these notices in Febru­ ary, when I was very i l l : and now I perceive, by what he told me the other day, that he is in some difficulty : for which reason he is at last (he says) resolved to advertise, and even (which is much wondered at) to raise the salary considerably higher. (What he allowed my predecessors was .£20 per annum ; and now he proposes £50, as he tells me.) I never asked him to raise it for me, though r w ell knew it was not equal to the duty ; nor did I say a word about myself when he lately suggested to me h is intentions upon th is subject.”

In a postscript to this letter he s a y s :—

“ I may mention to you farther, as a friend that may be trusted, that, in all likelihood, the poor old gentleman w ill not find it a very easy matter, unless by dint of money, and force upon him self, to procure a man that he can like for h is next curate, nor one that will stay with him so long as 1 have done. Then, h is great age w ill recur to people’s thoughts; and if he has any foibles, either in temper or conduct, they w ill be sure not to be forgotten on th is occasion by those who know h im ; and those who do not w ill probably be on their guard. On these and the like considerations, it is by no means an eligible office to be seeking out for a curate for him , as he has several tim es wished me to do ; and would, i f he knew that I am now w riting to you, wish your assistance also. But my best friends here, who well foresee the probable consequences, and w ish me w ell, earnestly dissuade me from complying ; and I w ill decline the office w ith as much decency as I c a n : but high salary w ill,

suppose, fetch in somebody or other, soon.” In th e following Ju ly , he w rites:—

old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you freely) seems to to be in a pretty odd way o f late,—moping, dejected, self-w illed, and

24 'WORLDLINESS AND OTHER - W ORLDLINESS.

as i f surrounded w ith some perplexing circumstances. Though I visit him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very little to h is affairs, not choosing to be a party concerned, especially in cases o f so critical and tender a nature. There is much mystery in almost all h is temporal affairs, as w ell as in many of h is speculative theories. Whoever lives in this neighborhood to see h is ex it, w ill probably see and hear some very strange things. Tim e w ill show ;—I am afraid, not greatly to h is credit. There is thought to be cm irremovable obstruction to his happiness w ithin his walls, as well as another without them ; but the former is the more powerful, and like to continue so. He has this day been trying anew to engage me to stay w ith him . No lucrative view s can tempt me to sacrifice my liberty or my health, to such measures as are pro­ posed here. N or do I like to have to do with persons whose word and honor cannot be depended on. So much for this very odd and unhappy topic.’*

I n August, Mr. Jones’s tone is slightly modified. E arnest entreaties, not lucrative considerations, have induced him to cheer the Doctor’s dejected heart by remaining a t Welwyn some tim e longer. The Doctor is, “ in various respects, a very unhappy man, ” and few know so much of these “ respects ” as Mr. Jones. I n September, he recurs to tho su b ject:—

“ My ancient gentleman here is still full of trouble: which moves my concern, though it moves only the secret laughter o f many, and some untoward surmises in disfavor of him and his household. The loss of a very large sum of money (about £200) is talked o f ; whereof this v ill and neighborhood is full. Some disbelieve ; others say, * I t is no wonder, where about eighteen or more servants are sometimes taken and dismissed in the course o f a year. ’ The gentleman him self is allowed by all to be far more harmless and easy in h is fam ily than some one else who hath too much the lead in it. This, among others, was one reason for my late motion to quit.”

No other mention of Young’s affairs occurs until A pril 2, 1765, when he says th a t Dr. Young is very ill, attended by two physicians.

“ Having mentioned th is young gentleman (Dr. Young’s son), I would acquaint you next, that he came hither this morning, having been sent for, as I am told, by the direction of Mrs. Hallows. Indeed, she in ­ timated to me as much herself. And i f th is he so, I must say that it is one of the most prudent acts she ever did, or could havo done in such a case as t h i s ; as It may prove a means of preventing much confusion after the death o f the Doctor. I have had some little discourse w ith the Bon : he seems much affected, and I believe really is so. He earnestly w ishes h is father might be pleased to ask after h im , for you must know

THE POET YOUNG.

h e nas not y et done this, nor is, in my opinion, like to do it. And it has Deen said farther, that upon a late application made to him on the behalf of h is son, he desired that no more might be said to him about it. How true th is may be, I cannot as yet be certain ; all I shall say is, it seems not improbable. . . . I heartily w ish the ancient man’s heart may prove tender toward h is s o n ; though, knowing him so welly I can scarce hope to hear such desirable news.”

Eleven days laiar, he w rites:—

“ I have now the pleasure to acquaint you, that the late Dr. Young, though he had for many years kept his son at a distance from him , yet has now at last left him all h is possessions, after the payment of certain legacies; so that the young gentleman (who bears a fair character, and behaves well, as far as I can hear or see) w ill, I hope, soon enjoy and make a prudent use of a handsome fortune. The father, on h is death­ bed, and since my return from London, was applied to in the tenderest manner, by one of h is physicians, and by another person, to admit the son into h is presence, to make submission, entreat forgiveness, and ob­ tain h is blessing. As to an interview w ith h is son, he intimated that he chose to decline it, as h is spirits were then low, and his nerves weak. W ith regard to the next particular, he said, ‘I heartily forgive h im ’ • and upon mention of this last, he gently lifted up h is hand, and letting it gently fall, pronounced these words, ‘ God bless him I ’ . . . I know it w ill give you pleasure to be farther informed, that he was pleased to make respectful mention of me in his w i l l ; expressing h is satisfaction in my care of h is parish, bequeathing to me a handsome legacyy and ap­ pointing me to be one of h is executors.”

So fa r Mr. Jones, in his confidential correspondence w ith a “ friend who may be trusted.” In a letter communicated ap­ parently by him to the “ Gentleman’s Magazine ” seventeen years later—namely, in 1782—on th e appearance of Croft’s biography of Yonng, we find him speaking of “ the ancient gentleman ” in a tone of reverential eulogy, quite a t variance w ith the free comments we have jn st quoted. B ut th e Rev. Jo h n Jones was probably of opinion, w ith Mrs. Montagu, whose contemporary and retrospective letters are also set in a different key, th a t “ the interests of religion were connected w ith the character of a man so distinguished for piety as Dr. Young.” A t all events, a subsequent q u a s i official statem ent Weighs nothing as evidence against contemporary, spontaneous, an d confidential hints.

To Mrs. Hallows, Young left a legacy of £1,000 , w ith th e 2—V ol. X I

26 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER WORLDLINESS:

request th a t she would destroy all his m anuscripts. This final request, from some unknown cause, was not complied with, and among the papers he left behind him was the following letter from Archbishop Seeker, which probably m arks th e date of his latest effort after p referm ent:—

“ D e a n e r y o p S t . P a u l ’s , July 8, 1768. “ G o o d D r. Y o u n g ,—I have long wondered that more suitable notice o f your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. But how to remedy the om ission I see not. No encouragement hath ever been given me to mention things of this nature to his Majesty. And there­ fore, in all likelihood, the only consequence o f doing it would be weak­ ening the little influence which else I may possibly have on some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set you above the need o f advancem ent; and your sentiments above that concern fo r it on your own account, which, on that of the public, is sincerely feit by

“ Your l o v i n g B r o t h e r , “ Th o. Ca n t.” The loving brother’s irony is severe!

P erhaps the least questionable testimony to the better side of Young’s character is th a t of Bishop Hildesley, who, as the vicar of a parish near W elwyn, had been Young’s neighbor for upw ard of tw enty years. The affection of the clergy for each other, we have observed, is, like th a t of the fair sex, not a t all of a blind and infatuated kind; and we may therefore the rath er believe them when they give each other any extra- official praise. Bishop Hildesley, then, w riting of Young to Richardson, says:—

“ The impertinence of my frequent visits to him was amply rewarded ; forasmuch as, I can truly say, he never received me but w ith agreeable open complacency ; and I never left him but w ith profitable pleasure and improvement. He was one or other, the most modest, the most patient of contradiction, and the most informing and entertaining I ever con­ versed w ith—at least, o f any man who had so just pretensions to per­ tin acity and reserve.”

Mr. Langton, however, who was also a frequent visitor of Young’s, informed Boswell—

“ That there was an air of benevolence in h is manner; but that he could obtain from him less information than he had hoped to receive from one who had lived so much in intercourse w ith the brightest men of what had been called the Augustan age of E ngland; and that he

showed a degree of eager curiosity concerning the common occurrences that were then passing, which appeared somewhat remarkable in a man of such intellectual stores, of such an advanced age, and who had retired from life w ith declared disappointment in h is expectations.”

The same substance, we know, will exhibit different quali­ ties under different te s ts ; and, after all, imperfect reports of individual impressions, whether immediate or traditional, are a very frail basis on which to build our opinion of a man. One’s character may be very indifferently mirrored in the mind of the most intim ate neighbor; it all depends on the quality of th a t gentleman’s reflecting surface.

But, discarding any inferences from such uncertain evi­ dence, the outline of Young’s character is too distinctly trace­ able in th e w ell-attested facts of his life, and y et more in the self-betrayal th a t runs through all his works, for us to fear th a t our general estim ate of him may be false. For, while no poet seems less easy and spontaneous than Young, no poet discloses himself more completely. Men’s minds have no hid­ ing-place out of themselves—th eir affectations do but betray another phase of their nature. And if, in the present view of Young, we seem to be more intent on laying bare unfavorable facts th an on shrouding them in charitable speeches, it is not because we have any irreverential pleasure in turning m en’s characters th e seamy side without, but because we see no great advantage in considering a man as he was not. Young’s bi­ ographers and critics have usually set out from th e position th a t he was a great religious teacher, and th a t his poetry is morally sublim e; and they have toned down his failings into harmony w ith th eir conception of the divine and the poet. F or our own part, we set out from precisely the opposite con­ viction—namely, th a t th e religious and moral sp irit of Young’s poetry is low and fa lse; and we th in k it of some importance to show th a t the “ N ig h t T h ou ghts” are the reflex of a mind in which the higher hum an sym pathies were inactive. This judgm ent is entirely opposed to our youthful predilections and enthusiasm. The sweet garden-breath of early enjoym ent lin­ gers about many a page of the “ N ight Thoughts,” and even of the “ L ast Day, ” giving an extrinsic charm to passages of Stilted rhetoric and false sentim ent; but the sober and re­

28 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS»

peated reading of m aturer years has convinced us th a t it would hardly be possible to find a more typical instance than Young’s poetry, of the m istake which substitutes interested obedience for sym pathetic emotion, and baptizes egoism as religion.

Pope said of Young, th a t he had “ much of a sublime genius w ithout common sense.” The deficiency Pope m eant to indi­ cate was, we imagine, moral rather than intellectu al: it was the w ant of th a t fine sense of w hat is fitting in speech and action, which is often eminently possessed by men and women whose intellect is of a very common order, but who have the sincerity and dignity which can never coexist w ith th e selfish preoccupations of vanity or interest. This was the “ common sen se” in which Young was conspicuously deficient; and it was p artly owing to this deficiency th a t his genius, waiting to be determ ined by the highest prizes, fluttered uncertainly from effort to effort, until, when he was more than sixty, it sud­ denly spread its broad wing, and soared so as to arrest the gaze of other generations besides his own. For he had no versatility of faculty to mislead him. The “ N ight Thoughts ” only differ from his previous works in the degree and not in the kind of power they m anifest. W hether he writes prose or poetry, rhym e or blank verse, dramas, satires, odes, or meditations, we see everywhere th e same Young—the same narrow circle of thoughts, the same love of abstractions, the same telescopic view of hum an things, the same appetency tow ard antithetic apothegm and rhapsodic climax. The pas­ sages th a t arrest us in his tragedies are those in which he an­ ticipates some fine passage in the “ N ight Thoughts, ” and where his characters are only transparent shadows through which we see the bewigged e m b o n p o in t of th e didactic poet, excogitating epigrams or ecstatic soliloquies by the light of a candle fixed in

a skull. Thus, in “ The Revenge, ” Alonzo, in the conflict of jealousy and love th a t at once urges and forbids him to m urder his wife, sa y s:—

“ This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun,

Those skies, through which it rolls, must all have end. 'What then is man? The smallest part of nothing. Day buries day ; month, month ; and year the year I Our life is but a chain of many deaths.

Can then D eath’s self be feared? Our life much rather -• L ife is the desert, life the solitude;

Death ;oins us to the great majority : ’T is to be born to Plato and to Caesar; ’T is to be great forever;

’Tis pleasure, ’tis am bition, then, to die.”

H is prose writings all read like the “ N ight Thoughts,” either diluted into prose, or not yet crystallized into poetry. For example, in his “ Thoughts for A ge,” he say s:—

“ Though we stand on its awful brink, such our leaden bias to the world, we turn our faces the wrong w a y ; we are still looking on our old acquaintance, T im e

;

This is a dilution of the magnificent im age:— “ Time in advance behind him hides his wings,

And seems to creep decrepit w ith his age. Behold him when past by 1 What then is seen But h is bioad pinions, sw ifter than the w inds?” A gain:—

“ A requesting Omnipotence? What can stun and confound thy reason more? What more can ravish and exalt thy heart? It cannot but ravish and e x a lt; it cannot but gloriously disturb and perplex thee, to take in all that thought suggests. Thou child of the dust 1 thou speck o f misery and sin 1 how abject thy weakness 1 how great is thy pow er! Thou crawler on earth, and possible (I was about to say) controller of the s k ie s ! weigh, and weigh well, the wondrous truths I have in v ie w ; which cannot be weighed too much ; which the more they are weighed, amaze the m ore, which to have supposed, before they were revealed, would have been as great madness, and to have presumed on as great sin , as i t is now madness and sin not to believe.”

Even in his Pindaric odes, in which he made the most vio­ lent effort against nature, he is still neither more nor less than the Young of the “ Last D ay,” emptied and swept of his genius, and possessed by seven demons of fustian and bad thyme. Even here, his “ Ercles’ v e in ” alternates w ith his

30 WORLDLINES8 AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS :

moral platitudes, and we have the perpetual tex t of the “ N ight Thoughts ” :—

“ Gold pleasure b u y s; But pleasure dies,

For soon the gross fruition c lo y s; Though raptures court, The sense is sh ort; But virtue kindles living jo y s;—

“ Joys felt alone I Joys asked of none !

Which T im e’s and Fortune’s arrows m iss: Joys that subsist,

Though fates resist, An unprecarious, endless b lis s !

“ Unhappy they I And falsely g a y ! Who bask forever in success;

A constant feast Quite palls the taste, A n d long enjoyment is distress.”

In the “ L ast Day, ” again, which is the earliest thing he wrote, we have an anticipation of all his greatest faults and m erits. Conspicuous among the faults is th a t attem pt to exalt our conceptions of Deity by vulgar images and comparisons, which is so offensive in the later “ N ight Thoughts.” In a burst of prayer and homage to God, called forth by the con­ tem plation of Christ coming to judgment, he asks, W ho brings th e change of the seasons? and answers—

“ Not the great Ottoman, or greater C zar; Not Europe’s arbitress of peace and war !”

Conceive the soul, in its most solemn moments, assuring God th a t it does not place H is power below th a t of Louis Napoleon or Queen Victoria!

B ut in the m idst of uneasy rhymes, inappropriate imagery, vaulting sublimity th a t o’erleaps itself, and v u lg a r emotions, we have in this poem an occasional flash of genius, a touch of simple grandeur, which promises as much as Young ever achieved. Describing the oncoming of the dissolution of all things, he says:—