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Oh! how divine to tread the milky way, To the bright palace of Eternal Day!

Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the Night Thoughts to prove the gloominefs of Young, and to fhew that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was in fome measure the fullen inspiration of discontent?

Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous De mortuis nil nifi bonum has always ftricken me as favouring more of female weakness than of manly reafon. Cenfure is not heard beneath the tomb any more than praise. De mortuis nil nifi verum-De vivis nil nifi bonum-would approach much nearer to good fenfe. After all, the few handfulls

I

fulls of remaining duft which once compofed the body of the author of the

Night Thoughts, feel not much concern whether Young paffes now for a man of forrow, or for a fellow of infinite jeft. To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick.-His immortal part, whereever that now dwells, is ftill lefs folicitous on this head. But to a fon of worth and fenfibility it is of fome little confequence whether contemporaries believe, and pofterity be taught to believe, that his debauched and reprobate life caft a Stygian gloom over the evening of his father's days, faved him the trouble of feigning a character completely deteftable, and fucceeded at last in bringing his grey hairs with forrow to the grave.

The

The humanity of the world, little fatisfied with inventing perhaps a melancholy difpofition for the father, proceeds next to invent an argument in fupport of their invention, and chooses that Lorenzo fhould be Young's own fon. The Biographia pretty roundly afferts this to be the fact; of the abfolute impoffibility of which the Biographia itfelf, in particular dates, contains undeniable evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will hereafter peruse the Night Thoughts with lefs, fatisfaction; who will wifh they had ftill been deceived; who will quarrel with me for discovering that no fuch character as Lorenzo ever yet difgraced human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would thefe admirers of the fublime

and

and terrible be offended, fhould you fet them down for cruel and for favage.

Of this report, inhuman to the furviving fon, if it be untrue, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to find the proofs? Perhaps it is clear from the performance itself. From the first line to the laft of the Night Thoughts no one expreffion can be difcovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the fecond Night I find an expreffion which betrays fomething elfe; that Lorenzo was his friend; one, it is poffible, of his former companions; one of the Duke of Wharton's fett. The Poet ftiles him gay Friend-an appellation not very natural from a pious incenfed father to

fuch.

fuch a being as he paints Lorenzo, and

that being his fon.

But let us fee how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the fight of fome of whofe features the artift himfelf must have turned away with horror!-A fubject more fhocking, if his only child really fat to him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid ftory told of which, Young compofed a fhort Poem of fourteen lines in the early part of life, which he did not think deserved to be republished.

In the first Night, the addrefs to the Poet's fuppofed son is,

Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to

thee.

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