At length, in 1761, when Dr. Young had attained the age of fourscore, he was appointed Clerk of the Closet to the princess dowager of Wales.

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One obstacle, it is said, must have stood not a little in the way that preferment after which his whole life seems to have panted: though he took orders, he never entirely shook off politics; and thus if he gained some friends, he made many enemies.

It is further said, that in the latter part of his life he was in the habit of holding himself out for a man retired from the world; and he seems to have been taken, doubtless unwillingly, at his word. Notwithstanding his frequent complaints of being neglected, no hand was extended to draw him from that retirement of which he declared himself enamoured. As Croft further remarks-he who retires from the world will find himself in reality deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world.

The author's own sentiments and course in making poetry subservient to his interests and reputation, may be handsomely illustrated by an extract from the preface to his Satires. He had made some observations "which remind him of Plato's fable of the Birth of Love, one of the prettiest fables of all antiquity; which will hold likewise with regard to modern poetry. 'Love,' says he, 'is the son of the goddess of poverty and the god of riches: from his father he has daring genius, his elevation of thought, his building castles in the air, his prodigality, his neglect of things sérious and useful, his vain opinion of his own merit, and his affection of preference and distinction from his mother he inherits his indigence, which makes him a constant beggar of favours; that importunity with which he begs; his flattery, his servility, his fear of being despised, which is inseparable from him. This addition may be made:-that poetry, like love, is a little subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her way to preferments and honours: that she has her satirical quiver; and, lastly, that she retains a dutiful admiration of her father's family; but divides her favours, and generally lives with her mother's relatives. However, this is not necessity but choice. Were wisdom her governess, she might have much more of the father than the mother, especially in such an age as this which shows a due passion for her charms."

An anecdote may here be related, which is told by Ruff head, in his life of Pope, concerning the singular course adopted by Young in preparing for the clerical profession. To the absolute truth of the anecdote, however, our assent is not easily given. When he determined to change the profession of law for divinity, instead of asking advice of Bishops Sherlock, Atterbury, or Hare, as to the course of study he should pursue, he directed his inquiry on the point to his poetical friend, Alexander Pope, who in a jocose mood suggested to him the earnest study of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, one of the schoolmen of the dark ages. In compliance with the suggestion, regarded as sincere and profitable, Dr. Young procured the learned and mystic treasure, sought an obscure retreat in the suburbs of the city, where he might be free from interruption, and there devoted himself to the study of Aquinas. His witty guide in theology, hearing nothing of him for half a year, and apprehending he might have carried the jest farther than was profitable, found him just in time to prevent what Ruff head calls "an irretrievable derangement." If it be true that he devoted six months' study to the writings of such an ingenious disputer as Aquinas, it may have contributed to the shrewdness and epigrammatical point and intellectual penetration displayed by our author; yet his earlier writings abound in similar characteristics. It is certain that if he had mastered the entire works of Aquinas, amounting to seventeen folio volumes, and those in the Latin tongue, he had sufficient employment for more than six months of hard, intellectual toil, especially when the character of those volumes, as described by Hallam, is taken into account. Every question, he says, is discussed with a remarkable observation of distinctions, and an unremitting desire both to comprehend and to distribute a subject; and to present it to the mind in every possible light, and to trace all its relations and consequences. The writings of the schoolmen embrace a vast compass of thought and learning; but their distinctions often confuse instead of giving light, and the difficulties which they encounter are too arduous for them; and we find it impossible, as must generally be the case, to read so much as a few pages consecutively.

It is quite possible, nay, very certain, that Dr. Young did not confine himself in preparing for the duties of the pulpit to the writings

of Aquinas; for his "Night Thoughts" indicate that he was no mean theologian; that he was a well-read divine. Nowhere are the great facts and doctrines of Christianity more clearly and impressively described than in that remarkable production. But while he thus made honourable attainments in the science of theology, and was an earnest and pathetic preacher, he seems to have been convinced that his surest road to honour and preferment was the path of poesy rather than theology. His publications, therefore, are of the poetic order, almost exclusively. Two or three essays in prose, and a few sermons, constitute the full amount of his prose authorship. Soon after taking orders, in 1729, he preached a sermon before the House of Commons, on the martyrdom of Charles I., entitled, "An Apology for Princes, or the Reverence due to Gov-" ernment." In 1754 he put out "The Centaur not Fabulous; in six Letters to a friend, on the Life in Vogue." The third letter is quite celebrated for the graphic portrait which it presents of "the gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplished, and most wretched Altamont," whose last melancholy exclamations were-" my principles have poisoned my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness has murdered my wife!' Under the name of Altamont Lord Easton is supposed to have been represented.

In 1759, among the last public efforts of his pen, and one of the most remarkable, was a "Letter on Original Composition," the purpose of which was to do justice to the death-bed of Addison, “to erect" (as he himself expresses it) a monumental marble to the memory of an old friend." Of this letter it has been observed that when we consider it as the work of a man turned of eighty, we are not to be surprised so much that it has faults, as how it should come to have beauties. It is indeed strange that the load of fourscore years was not able to keep down that vigorous fancy which here bursts the bounds of judgment, and breaks the slavish shackles of age and experience. This work seems a brightening before death, and it had been well if the author had stopped here; but that taper which blazed as it declined, was at last shamefully exhibited to the public as burning in the socket, in a work called "The Resignation," the last but the worst of all Dr. Young's performances. But this failure in old age could no way diminish the fame that he had been

earning by a life of more than sixty years of excellence. As a poet he was still considered the only palladium left of ancient genius: and as a Christian, one of the finest examples of primeval piety."

The poem thus severely characterized was written at the request of the celebrated Mrs. Mary Wortley Montague, and addressed to the Hon. Mrs. Boscawen, the widow of a British admiral, to aid her in the exercise of due submission to providence in the death of her husband. Lady Montague having learned that her bereaved friend was in the habit of reading the "Night Thoughts,” and had derived from them much consolation, proposed a visit to the author, and offered to accompany her. The visit was performed, much to the satisfaction of both. The conversation of Dr. Young proved to be highly soothing to the afflicted widow, and deeply interesting to her sympathizing friend. The visit of these ladies, in like manner, seems to have been eminently gratifying to the aged poet and divine. He compliments them highly in the poem, Mrs. Montague at least.

"Yet write I must. A lady sues:

How shameful her request!

My brain in labour for dull rhyme;
Hers teeming with the best !"

In a subsequent part of the same poem, addressing Mrs. Boscawen, he continues:

"And friend you have, and I the same,

Whose prudent, soft address

Will bring to life those healing thoughts

Which died in your distress."

Lady Montague, by her visit to Dr. Young, seems to have been impressed not less favorably towards him; having asserted, that his unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion than even in the author; that the Christian was in him a character still more inspired, more enraptured, more sublime than the poet; and that in his ordinary conversation,

While the former part of this consolatory poem was being committed to the press by Mr. Samuel Richardson, the work was suddenly and unexpectedly arrested by the death of this individual, a particular friend of the poet; who accordingly introduces the painful incident in the part of the production which he was then writing. Thus, while engaged in consoling his noble acquaintance, he was unexpectedly brought into circumstances of affliction himself, which called for the same consolations he was endeavoring to administer—

He then introduces an honorable testimony to the genius and merit of Richardson, which is worth preservation.

"Whose frequent aid brought kind relief

In my distress of thought,

Ting'd with his beams my cloudy page

And beautified a fault.

To touch our passions' secret springs,

Was his peculiar care ;

And deep his happy genius dived

In bosoms of the fair:

Nature, which favors to the few,

All art beyond, imparts,
To him presented at his birth
The key of human hearts.

But not to me by him bequeath'd

His gentle, smooth address;

His tender hand to touch the wound

In throbbing of distress."

The Poem from which the above is taken was not prepared, the