and restrained by regard to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness, but copiousness; particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole, and in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese Plantation, the magnificence of vaft extent and endless diversity.

His laft poem was the Refignation; in which he made, as he was accustomed, an experiment of a new mode of writing, and fucceeded better than in his Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falsely represented as a proof of decaying faculties. There is Young in every ftanza, fuch as he often was in his highest vigour.

His Tragedies not making part of this Collection, I had forgotten, till Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three Plays all concluded with lavish suicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet eafily rids his scene of perfons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Bufiris there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination; but the pride of Bufiris is fuch as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote from known life to raise either grief, terror, or indignation. The Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and therefore keeps poffeffion of the ftage: the firft defign feems fug

gested

gefted by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the diction, are original. The moral obfervations are fo introduced, and fo expreffed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of The Brothers I may be allowed to fay nothing, fince nothing was ever faid of it by the Publick.

It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but without much accuracy or felection. When he lays hold of an illuftration, he purfues it beyond expectation, fometimes happily, as in his parallel of Quickfilver with Pleasure, which I have heard repeated with approbation by a Lady, of whofe praise he would have been juftly proud

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proud, and which is very ingenious, very fubtle, and almoft exact; but fometimes he is lefs lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts, having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs, floating in space, might be called the cluster of Creation, he thinks on a clufter of grapes, and fays, that they all hang on the great Vine, drinking the nectareous juice of immortal Life.

His conceits are fometimes yet lefs valuable; in the Last Day, he hopes to illuftrate the re-affembly of the atoms that compofe the human body at the Trump of Doom, by the collection of bees into a fwarm at the tinkling of a

pan.

The

The Prophet fays of Tyre, that her
Merchants are Princes; Young fays of
Tyre in his Merchant,

Her merchants Princes, and each deck
a Throne.

Let burlesque try to go beyond him

He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance of Britain, Climes were paid down. Antithefis is his favourite. They for kindness hate; and because she's right,, she's ever in the wrong.

His verfification is his own; neither his blank nor his rhyming lines have any resemblance to thofe of former writers he picks up no hemiftichs, he

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