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and encouragement of the feamen; that they might be invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the fervice of their country;-a plan which humanity muft 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 Effay on Lyrick Poetry. It is but justice to confefs, that though the bookfellers have now, for fome reafon, revived them both, he preferved neither of them; and that the ode itself, which in the first edition and in the prefent confifts of feventy-three ftanzas, in the author's own édition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted paffages is a Wifh, that con

cluded

cluded the poein, which few would have suspected Young of forming, and of which few, after having formed it, would confefs their fhame by fuppreffion.

It is whimfical that he, who was foon to bid adieu to rhyme, fhould fix upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to fatiety. Of this he said, in his Essay on Lyrick 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." But the moderns furely deferve

deferve not much cenfure for their fondnefs of what, by his own confeffion, affords pleasure, and abounds in har

mony.

About this time he entered into Orders; and in April 1728, foon after he 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 refigned it with fome reluctance to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The Epilogue to The Brothers, the only appendage to any of his three plays which he added himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an hiftorical Epilogue.

Finding that Guilt's

dread

dreadful clofe his narrow feene denied, he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the Epilogue, and relates how Rome revenged the fhade of Demetrius, and punished Perfeus for this night's deed.

Of this change of profeffion fomething is told by the biographer of Pope, which places the cafinefs and fimplicity of Young in a fingular light. When he determined on Orders, he did not addrefs himself to Sherlock, to Atterbury, or to Hare, for the best inftructions in Theology, but to Pope; who, in a youthful frolick, advised the diligent perufal of Thomas Aquinas. With this treasure Young retired from interruption to an obfcure place in the fuburbs. His poetical guide to godli

nefs

nefs hearing nothing of him during half a year, and apprehending he might have carried the jeft too far, fought after him, and found him juft in time to pre. vent what Ruffhead calls an irretrievable derangement.

That attachment to his favourite study which made him think a poet the fureft guide in his new profeffion, left him little doubt whether poetry was the fureft path to its honours and preferments. Not long indeed after he took Orders, he published in prose, A true Estimate of Human Life, dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which it abounds, to the Queen; and a fermon preached before the House. of Commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of

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