Johnson's Lives of the Poets Volume Ii Part 8

From "The Englishman" it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the theatre so early as 1713. Yet Busiris was not brought upon Drury Lane stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the Duke of Newcastle, "because the late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." The Dedication he afterwards suppressed.

Busiris was followed in the year 1721 by The Revenge. He dedicated this famous tragedy to the Duke of Wharton. "Your Grace," says the Dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessory to the following scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the whole." That his grace should have suggested the incident to which he alludes, whatever that incident might have been, is not unlikely. The last mental exertion of the superannuated young man, in his quarters at Lerida, in Spain, was some scenes of a tragedy on the story of Mary Queen of Scots.

Dryden dedicated "Marriage a la Mode" to Wharton's infamous relation Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his poetry, but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his address to Wharton thus--"My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care; which I will venture to say will be always remembered to his honour, 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." That he ever had such a patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his power to conceal from the world, by excluding this dedication from his works. He should have remembered that he at the same time concealed his obligation to Wharton for THE MOST BEAUTIFUL INCIDENT in what is surely not his least beautiful composition. The pa.s.sage just quoted is, in a poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:

"Be this thy partial smile from censure free!

'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me."

While Young, who, in his "Love of Fame," complains grievously how often "dedications wash an AEthiop white," was painting an amiable Duke of Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to describe the "scorn and wonder of his days" in lasting verse. To the patronage of such a character, had Young studied men as much as Pope, he would have known how little to have trusted. Young, however, was certainly indebted to it for something material; and the duke's regard for Young, added to his l.u.s.t of praise, procured to All Souls College a donation, which was not forgotten by the poet when he dedicated The Revenge.

It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, Case 136, Stiles versus the Attorney-General, March 14, 1740, as authority for the life of a poet. But biographers do not always find such certain guides as the oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to determine whether two annuities, granted by the Duke of Wharton to Young, were for legal considerations. One was dated the 24th March, 1719, and accounted for his grace's bounty in a style princely and commendable, if not legal--"considering that the public good is advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration thereof, and of the love I bear him, etc." The other was dated the 10th of July, 1722.

Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family, and refused an annuity of 100 pounds which had been offered him for life if he would continue tutor to Lord Burleigh, upon the pressing solicitations of the Duke of Wharton, and his grace's a.s.surances of providing for him in a much more ample manner. It also appeared that the duke had given him a bond for 600 pounds dated the 15th of March, 1721, in consideration of his taking several journeys, and being at great expenses, in order to be chosen member of the House of Commons, at the duke's desire, and in consideration of his not taking two livings of 200 pounds and 400 pounds in the gift of All Souls College, on his grace's promises of serving and advancing him in the world.

Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any account.

The attempt to get into Parliament was at Cirencester, where Young stood a contested election. His grace discovered in him talents for oratory as well as for poetry. Nor was this judgment wrong. Young, after he took orders, became a very popular preacher, and was much followed for the grace and animation of his delivery. By his oratorical talents he was once in his life, according to the Biographia, deserted. As he was preaching in his turn at St. James's, he plainly perceived it was out of his power to command the attention of his audience. This so affected the feelings of the preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into tears. But we must pursue his poetical life.

In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to their common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the following lines, if they contain any, it is now vain to seek:

"IN JOY ONCE JOINED, in sorrow, now, for years-- Partner in grief, and brother of my tears, Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due."

From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to "communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things."

In 1719 appeared a "Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job." Parker, to whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been qualified for a patron. Of this work the author's opinion may be known from his letter to Curll: "You seem, in the Collection you propose, to have omitted what I think may claim the first place in it; I mean 'a Translation from part of Job,' printed by Mr. Tonson." The Dedication, which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson's edition, while it speaks with satisfaction of his present retirement, seems to make an unusual struggle to escape from retirement. But every one who sings in the dark does not sing from joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of flattery, to a chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no kind of knowledge.

Of his Satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates without the a.s.sistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion to observe in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We must then have referred to the poems, to discover when they were written. For these internal notes of time we should not have referred in vain. The first Satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe in Addison is fled." The second, addressing himself, asks:--

"Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme, Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?

A fool at FORTY is a fool indeed."

The Satires were originally published separately in folio, under the t.i.tle of "The Universal Pa.s.sion." These pa.s.sages fix the appearance of the first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young seldom suffered his pen to dry after he had once dipped it in poetry, we may conclude that he began his Satires soon after he had written the "Paraphrase on Job." The last Satire was certainly finished in the beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the King, in his pa.s.sage from Helvoetsluys, escaped with great difficulty from a storm by landing at Rye; and the conclusion of the Satire turns the escape into a miracle, in such an encomiastic strain of compliment as poetry too often seeks to pay to royalty. From the sixth of these poems we learn,

"'Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart Glowed with the love of virtue and of art."

Since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,

"Her favour is diffused to that degree, Excess of goodness! it has dawned on me."

Her Majesty had stood G.o.dmother, and given her name, to the daughter of the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had perhaps shown some attention to Lady Elizabeth's future husband.

The fifth Satire, "On Women," was not published till 1727; and the sixth not till 1728.

To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he prefixed a Preface, in which he observes that "no man can converse much in the world, but at what he meets with he must either be insensible or grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least, and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the misconduct of the world will, in a great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable pa.s.sion about it. One pa.s.sion is more effectually driven out by another than by reason, whatever some teach." So wrote, and so of course thought, the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost fifty, who, many years earlier in life, wrote the "Last Day." After all, Swift p.r.o.nounced of these Satires, that they should either have been more angry or more merry.

Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any palliation, this Preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing at the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the mournful, angry, gloomy "Night Thoughts!" At the conclusion of the Preface he applies Plato's beautiful fable of the "Birth of Love" to modern poetry, with the addition, "that Poetry, like Love, is a little subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her way to preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful admiration of her father's family; but divides her favours, and generally lives with her mother's relations." Poetry, it is true, did not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not something like blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her, and her sister Prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young, though nearly related to Poetry, had no connection with her whom Plato makes the mother of Love. That he could not well complain of being related to Poverty appears clearly from the frequent bounties which his grat.i.tude records, and from the wealth which he left behind him. By "The Universal Pa.s.sion" he acquired no vulgar fortune--more than three thousand pounds. A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South Sea. For this loss he took the vengeance of an author. His Muse makes poetical use more than once of a South Sea Dream.

It is related by Mr. Spence, in his "Ma.n.u.script Anecdotes," on the authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his "Universal Pa.s.sion," received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "Two thousand pounds for a poem!" he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his life, for the poem was worth four thousand. This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two answers of Lord Burghley and Sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.

After inscribing his Satires, not perhaps without the hopes of preferments and honours, to such names as the Duke of Dorset, Mr.

Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain, and Sir Robert Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. In 1726 he addressed a poem to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the t.i.tle sufficiently explains the intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. "The Instalment"

is among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his EXCUSABLE WRITINGS. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the power of bestowing immortality:--

"Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme, In deep eternity to launch thy name!"

The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his acknowledgment, would now perhaps never have been known:--

"My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.

The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee, Refresh the dry remains of poesy."

If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must at least be confessed he was a grateful one.

The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with "Ocean, an Ode." The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be "invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the service of their country"--a plan which humanity must lament that policy has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.

Prefixed to the original publication were an "Ode to the King, Pater Patriae," and an "Essay on Lyric Poetry." It is but justice to confess that he preserved neither of them; and that the Ode itself, which in the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas, in the author's own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted pa.s.sages is a "Wish," that concluded the poem, which few would have suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it, would confess something like their shame by suppression. It stood originally so high in the author's opinion, that he ent.i.tled the poem, "Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish." This wish consists of thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:--

"O may I STEAL Along the VALE Of humble life, secure from foes!

My friend sincere, My judgment clear, And gentle business my repose!"

The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but, altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:--

"Prophetic schemes, And golden dreams, May I, unsanguine, cast away!

Have what I HAVE, And live, not LEAVE, Enamoured of the present day!

"My hours my own!

My faults unknown!

My chief revenue in content!

Then leave one BEAM Of honest FAME!

And scorn the laboured monument!

"Unhurt my urn Till that great TURN When mighty Nature's self shall die, Time cease to glide, With human pride, Sunk in the ocean of eternity!"

It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said, in his "Essay on Lyric Poetry," prefixed to the poem--"For the more harmony likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome give grace and pleasure. Nor can I account for the PLEASURE OF RHYME IN GENERAL (of which the moderns are too fond) but from this truth." Yet the moderns surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by their own confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony. The next paragraph in his Essay did not occur to him when he talked of "that great turn"

in the stanza just quoted. "But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme consistent with as perfect sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly free from that shackle." Another part of this Essay will convict the following stanza of what every reader will discover in it "involuntary burlesque:--

"The northern blast, The shattered mast, The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock, The breaking spout, The STARS GONE OUT, The boiling strait, the monster's shock."

But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes if all their productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?

If Young be not a lyric poet, he is at least a critic in that sort of poetry; and, if his lyric poetry can be proved bad, it was first proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.

Milbourne was styled by Pope "the fairest of critics," only because he exhibited his own version of "Virgil" to be compared with Dryden's, which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets for prefixing to a lyric composition an "Essay on Lyric Poetry," so just and impartial as to condemn himself.

We shall soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it contains some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the language.

Soon after the appearance of "Ocean," when he was almost fifty, Young entered into orders. In April, 1728, not long after he had put on the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George II.

The tragedy of The Brothers, which was already in rehearsal, he immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it with some reluctance to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The Epilogue to The Brothers, the only appendages to any of his three plays which he added himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an historical Epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the Epilogue, and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished Perseus "for this night's deed."

Of Young's taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope, which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular light. When he determined on the Church he did not address himself to Sherlock, to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best instructions in theology, but to Pope, who, in a youthful frolic, advised the diligent perusal of Thomas Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from interruption to an obscure place in the suburbs. His poetical guide to G.o.dliness hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he might have carried the jest too far, sought after him, and found him just in time to prevent what Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable derangement."