his fall from Homer's numbers, free as air, lofty and harmonious as the spheres, into childish shackles and tinkling sounds; for putting Achilles into petticoats a second time:' but we are told that the dying swan talked over an Epic plan with Young a few weeks before his decease. 66 Young's chief inducement to write this letter was, as he confesses, that he might erect a monumental marble to the memory of an old friend. He, who employed his pious pen for almost the last time in thus doing justice to the exemplary death-bed of Addison, might probably, at the close of his own life, afford no unuseful lesson for the deaths of others. "In the postscript, he writes to Richardson, that he will see in his next how far Addison is an original. But no other letter appears. "The few lines which stand in the last edition, as sent by lord Melcombe to Dr. Young, not long before his Lordship's death,' were indeed so sent, but were only an introduction to what was there meant by The Muse's latest Spark.' The poem is necessary, whatever may be its merit, since the Preface to it is already printed. Lord Melcombe called his Tusculum La Trappe.' 6 Love thy country, wish it well, Not with too intense a care, Envy's censure, Flattery's praise, Void of strong desire and fear, With the tide, but near the shore. Thus prepar'd, thy shorten'd sail Waft thee to the Port of Peace. Keep thy conscience from offence, And tempestuous passions free, Easy shall thy passage be, Cheerful thy allotted stay, Short the' account 'twixt God and thee: Hope shall meet thee on the way: Truth shall lead thee to the gate, "The Poem was accompanied by a Letter. "La Trappe, the 27th of Oct. 1761. 66 DEAR SIR, "You seemed to like the ode I sent you for your amusement: I now send it you as a present. If you please to accept of it, and are willing that our friendship should be known when we are gone, you will be pleased to leave this among those of your own papers that may possibly see the light by a posthumous publication. God send us health while we stay, and an easy journey! "In 1762, a short time before his death, Young published Resignation.' Notwithstanding the manner in which it was really forced from him by the world, criticism has treated it with no common severity. If it shall be thought not to deserve the highest praise, on the other side of fourscore, by whom, except by Newton and by Waller, has praise been merited? 6 "To Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakspeare, I am indebted for the history of 'Resignation.' Observing that Mrs. Boscawen, in the midst of her grief for the loss of the admiral, derived consolation from the perusal of the Night Thoughts,' Mrs. Montagu proposed a visit to the author. From conversing with Young, Mrs. Boscawen derived still further consolation; and to that visit she and the world were indebted for this poem. It compliments Mrs. Montagu in the following lines: Yet write I must. A Lady sues : How shameful her request! And again And friend you have, and I the same, Whose prudent, soft address. Will bring to life those healing thoughts Which died in your distress. That friend, the spirit of thy theme Extracting for your ease, Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts Too common; such as these. By the same Lady I was enabled to say, in her own words, that Young's unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion than even in the author; that the Christian was in him a character still more inspired, more enraptured, more sublime, than the poet; and that, in his ordinary conversation, letting down the golden chain from high, He drew his audience upward to the sky. "Notwithstanding Young had said, in his Conjectures on original Composition,' that blank verse is verse unfallen, uncurst; verse reclaimed, re-inthroned in the true language of the gods:" notwithstanding he administered consolation to his own grief in this immortal language, Mrs. Boscawen was comforted in rhyme. "While the poet and the Christian were applying this comfort, Young had himself occasion for comfort, in consequence of the sudden death of Richardson, who was printing the former part of the poem. Of Richardson's death he says "To When Heaven would kindly set us free, And earth's enchantment end; It takes the most effectual means, And robs us of a friend. Resignation' was prefixed an Apology for its appearance: to which more credit is due than to the generality of such apologies, from Young's unusual anxiety that no more productions of his old age should disgrace his former fame. In his will, dated February 1760, he desires of manuscript books and writings whatever might be burned, except his book of accounts. 6 "In September 1764, he added a kind of codicil, wherein he made it his dying entreaty to his housekeeper, to whom he left £1000, that all his manuscripts might be destroyed as soon as he was dead, which would greatly oblige her deceased friend.' "It may teach mankind the uncertainty of worldly friendships, to know that Young, either by surviving those he loved, or by outliving their affections, could only recollect the names of two friends, his housekeeper and a hatter, to mention in his will; and it may serve to repress that testamentary pride, which too often seeks for sounding names and titles, to be informed that the author of the Night Thoughts' did not blush to leave a legacy to his friend Henry Stevens, a hatter at the Temple-gate.' Of these two remaining friends, one went before Young. But, at eighty-four, where,' as he asks in The Centaur, is that world into which we were born?' 6 6 "The same humility which marked a hatter and a housekeeper for the friends of the author of the Night Thoughts,' had before bestowed the same title on his footman, in an epitaph in his Church-yard' upon James Baker, dated 1749; which I am glad to find in the late collection of his works. 66 Young and his housekeeper were ridiculed, with more ill-nature than wit, in a kind of novel published by Kidgell in 1755, called The Card,' |