addressed a poem to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title 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: O! 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, turn'd by thee, Refresh the dry domains 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 Patriæ," 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 passages 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 intitled 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 remarkablefor 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,
Enamour'd 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 labour'd 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 consist with as perfect sense and expression, as could be expected if he was per-" fectly 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 shatter'd mast,

The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock,

The breaking spout,"

The stars gone out,

The boiling streight, 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.

Milbourn 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 contain 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 the Second,

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 "Quilt'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

Davies, in his Life of Garrick, says 1720, and that it was produced thirty-three years after, which corresponds with the date in p. 284.-C.

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 godli ness 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."

That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the surest guide to his new profession, left him little doubt whether poetry was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long indeed after he took orders, he published in prose, 1728, "A true Estimate of Human Life," dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which it abounds, to the Queen; and a sermon preached before the House of Commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of King Charles, intituled, " An Apology for Princes, or the Reverence due to Government." But the "Second Course," the counterpart of his "Estimate;" without which it cannot be called "A true Estimate," though in 1728 it was announced as "soon to be published," never appeared; and his old friends the muses were not forgotten. In 1730, he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world "Imperium Pelagi: a Naval Lyric, written in Imitation of Pindar's Spirit, occasioned by his Majesty's Return from Hanover, September, 1729, and the succeeding Peace." It is inscribed to the Duke of Chandos. In the Preface we are told, that the ode is the most spirited kind of poetry, and that the Pindaric is the most spirited kind of ode. "This I speak," he adds, “with sufficient candour, at my own very great peril. But truth has an eternal title to our confession, though