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bB NEV

YOUNG.

HE following Life was written, at

TH

my request, by a gentleman who

had better information than I could eafily have obtained; and the publick will perhaps with that I had folicited and obtained more fuch favours from him.

"Dear Sir,

In confequence of our different converfations about authentick materials for the Life of Young, and in confequence of your fears left, for want of proper

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information, you might fay any thing of the father which fhould hurt the fon, I fend you the following detail. It is not, I confefs, immediately in the line of my profeffion; but hard indeed is our fate at the bar, if we may not call a few hours now-and-then our own.

Of great men fomething must always be faid to gratify curiofity. Of the great author of the Night Thoughts much has been told of which there never could have been proofs; and little care appears to have been taken to tell that of which proofs, with little trouble, might have been procured.

ED

EDWARD YOUNG was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June 1681. He was the fon of Edward Young, at that time Fellow of Winchefter College and Rector of Upham; who was the fon of Jo. Young of Woodhay in Berkshire, ftiled by Wood gentleman. In September 1682 the Poet's father was collated to the prebend of Gillingham Minor, in the church of Sarum, by bishop . Ward. On the childishness of Ward, his duties were neceffarily performed by others. We learn from Wood, that, at a visitation of Sprat, July the 12th, 1686, the Prebendary preached a Latin fermon, afterwards published, with which the Bishop was so pleased, that he told the Chapter he was concerned to find the preacher had one of the worst

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worst prebends in their church. In confequence of his merit and reputation, or of the intereft of lord Bradford (to whom, in 1702, he dedicated two volumes of fermons), he was, fome time after, appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, and preferred to the deanry of Sarum. Jacob, who wrote in 1720, fays, he was chaplain and clerk of the closet to the late Queen, who honoured him by ftanding godmother to the Poet. His fellowship of Winchester he refigned in favour of one Mr. Harris, who married his only daughter. The Dean died at Sarum, after a fhort illness, in 1705, in the fixty-third year of his age. On the Sunday after his decease Bishop Burnet preached at the cathedral, and began his fermon with faying, Death has

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