Young feems to have been taken at his word. Notwithstanding his frequent complaints of being neglected, no hand was reached out to pull him from that retirement of which he declared himself. enamoured. Alexander affigned no palace for the refidence of Diogenes, who boafted his furly fatisfaction with his tub. Of the domeftic manners and petty habits of the author of the Night Thoughts, I hoped to have given you an account from the best authority;—but who fhall dare to fay, To morrow I will be wife or virtuous, or to-morrow I will do a particular thing? Upon enquiring for his houfekeeper, I learned that the was buried two days before I reached the town of her abode. In a Letter from Tfcharner, a noble foreigner, to Count Haller, Tfcharner fays, he has lately fpent four days with Young at Wellwyn, where the author tastes all the ease and pleasure mankind can defire. "Every thing about him "fhews the man, each individual being "placed by rule. All is neat without "art. He is very pleafant in converfa❝tion, and extremely polite." This, and more, may poffibly be true; but Tfcharner's was a firft vifit, a vifit of curiofity and admiration, and a vifit which the author expected. The attention Young beftowed upon the perufal of books is not unworthy imitation. When any paffage pleafed him, he appears to have folded down the leaf. On these paffages he bestowed a fecond reading. But the labours of man are too frequently vain. Before he returned, a fecond time, to what he had once approved, he died. Many of his books, which I have feen, are by those notes of approbation fo fwelled beyond their real bulk, that they will not fhut. What though we wade in wealth, or foar in fame! Earth's higheft ftation ends in here Here he lies! And dust to duft concludes her nobleft fong! The author of these lines is not without his kic jacet. By By the good fenfe of his fon, it contains none of that praife which no marble can make the bad or the foolish merit; which, without the direction of a ftone or a turf, will find its way, fooner or later, to the deserving. M. S. Optimi parentis EDWARDI YOUNG, LL. D. Et Elizabethæ fæm. prænob. Conjugis ejus amantiffimæ Pio & gratiffimo animo Filius fuperftes. |