Books: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.

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In his "Night Thoughts" he has exhibited a very wide display of
original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking
allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy
scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of
the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme
but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments and the
digressive sallies of imagination would have been compressed and
restrained by confinement 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 vast extent and endless diversity.

His last poem was the "Resignation," in which he made, as he was
accustomed, an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded
better than in his "Ocean" or his "Merchant." It was very falsely
represented as a proof of decaying faculties. There is Young in
every stanza, such as he often was in the highest vigour. His
tragedies, not making part of the collection, I had forgotten, till
Mr. Stevens 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 easily rids his scene of persons whom he wants not
to keep alive. In Busiris there are the greatest ebullitions of
imagination, but the pride of Busiris is such 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 possession of
the stage; the first design seems suggested by Othello, but the
reflections, the incidents, and the diction, are original. The
moral observations are so introduced and so expressed as to have all
the novelty that can be required. Of The Brothers I may be allowed
to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of it by the public. It
must be allowed of Young's poetry that it abounds in thought, but
without much accuracy or selection. When he lays hold of an
illustration he pursues it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as
in his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure, which I have heard
repeated with approbation by a lady, of whose praise he would have
been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtle, and
almost exact; but sometimes he is less 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 of a
cluster of grapes, and says, that they all hang on the great vine,
drinking the "nectareous juice of immortal life." His conceits are
sometimes yet less valuable. In the "Last Day" he hopes to
illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body
at the "Trump of Doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
tinkling of a pan. The Prophet says of Tyre that "her merchants are
princes." Young says 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." Antithesis is his
favourite, "They for kindness hate:" and "because she's right, she's
ever in the wrong." His versification is his own; neither his blank
nor his rhyming lines have any resemblance to those of former
writers; he picks up no hemistichs, he copies no favourite
expressions; he seems to have laid up no stores of thought or
diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous suggestions of the present
moment. Yet I have reason to believe that, when once he had formed
a new design, he then laboured it with very patient industry; and
that he composed with great labour and frequent revisions. His
verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to
have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own
ear. But with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.

MALLET.

Of David Mallet, having no written memorial, I am able to give no
other account than such as is supplied by the unauthorised loquacity
of common fame, and a very slight personal knowledge. He was by his
original one of the Macgregors, a clan that became, about sixty
years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and so
infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a
legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themselves
anew, the father, I suppose, of this author, called himself Malloch.

David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to be
Janitor of the High School at Edinburgh, a mean office of which he
did not afterwards delight to hear. But he surmounted the
disadvantages of his birth and fortune; for, when the Duke of
Montrose applied to the College of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate
his sons, Malloch was recommended; and I never heard that he
dishonoured his credentials. When his pupils were sent to see the
world, they were entrusted to his care; and having conducted them
round the common circle of modish travels, he returned with them to
London, where, by the influence of the family in which he resided,
he naturally gained admission to many persons of the highest rank,
and the highest character--to wits, nobles, and statesmen. Of his
works, I know not whether I can trace the series. His first
production was, "William and Margaret;" of which, though it contains
nothing very striking or difficult, he has been envied the
reputation; and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never
proved. Not long afterwards he published the "Excursion" (1728); a
desultory and capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy
led him, or his knowledge enabled him, to describe. It is not
devoid of poetical spirit. Many of his images are striking, and
many of the paragraphs are elegant. The cast of diction seems to be
copied from Thomson, whose "Seasons" were then in their full blossom
of reputation. He has Thomson's beauties and his faults. His poem
on "Verbal Criticism" (1733) was written to pay court to Pope, on a
subject which he either did not understand, or willingly
misrepresented; and is little more than an improvement, or rather
expansion, of a fragment which Pope printed in a miscellany long
before he engrafted it into a regular poem. There is in this piece
more pertness than wit, and more confidence than knowledge. The
versification is tolerable, nor can criticism allow it a higher
praise.

His first tragedy was Eurydice, acted at Drury Lane in 1731; of
which I know not the reception nor the merit, but have heard it
mentioned as a mean performance. He was not then too high to accept
a prologue and epilogue from Aaron Hill, neither of which can be
much commended. Having cleared his tongue from his native
pronunciation so as to be no longer distinguished as a Scot, he
seems inclined to disencumber himself from all adherences of his
original, and took upon him to change his name from Scotch Malloch
to English Mallet, without any imaginable reason of preference which
the eye or ear can discover. What other proofs he gave of
disrespect to his native country I know not; but it was remarked of
him that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend. About
this time Pope, whom he visited familiarly, published his "Essay on
Man," but concealed the author; and, when Mallet entered one day,
Pope asked him slightly what there was new. Mallet told him that
the newest piece was something called an "Essay on Man," which he
had inspected idly, and seeing the utter inability of the author,
who had neither skill in writing nor knowledge of the subject, had
tossed it away. Pope, to punish his self-conceit, told him the
secret.

A new edition of the works of Bacon being prepared (1740) for the
press, Mallet was employed to prefix a Life, which he has written
with elegance, perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more
knowledge of history than of science, that, when he afterwards
undertook the "Life of Marlborough," Warburton remarked that he
might perhaps forget that Marlborough was a general, as he had
forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher.

When the Prince of Wales was driven from the palace, and, setting
himself at the head of the opposition, kept a separate court, he
endeavoured to increase his popularity by the patronage of
literature, and made Mallet his under-secretary, with a salary of
two hundred pounds a year; Thomson likewise had a pension; and they
were associated in the composition of The Masque of Alfred, which in
its original state was played at Cliefden in 1740; it was afterwards
almost wholly changed by Mallet, and brought upon the stage at Drury
Lane in 1751, but with no great success. Mallet, in a familiar
conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the diligence which he was
then exerting upon the "Life of Marlborough," let him know that in
the series of great men quickly to be exhibited he should FIND A
NICHE for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to wonder by
what artifice he could be introduced: but Mallet let him know that,
by a dexterous anticipation, he should fix him in a conspicuous
place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick, in his gratitude of exultation,
"have you left off to write for the stage?" Mallet then confessed
that he had a drama in his hands. Garrick promised to act it; and
"Alfred" was produced.

The long retardation of the life of the Duke of Marlborough shows,
with strong conviction, how little confidence can be placed on
posthumous renown. When he died, it was soon determined that his
story should be delivered to posterity; and the papers supposed to
contain the necessary information were delivered to Lord Molesworth,
who had been his favourite in Flanders. When Molesworth died, the
same papers were transferred with the same design to Sir Richard
Steele, who, in some of his exigencies, put them in pawn. They
remained with the old duchess, who in her will assigned the task to
Glover and Mallet, with a reward of a thousand pounds, and a
prohibition to insert any verses. Glover rejected, I suppose, with
disdain, the legacy, and devolved the whole work upon Mallet; who
had from the late Duke of Marlborough a pension to promote his
industry, and who talked of the discoveries which he had made; but
left not, when he died, any historical labours behind him. While he
was in the Prince's service he published Mustapha with a prologue by
Thomson, not mean, but far inferior to that which he had received
from Mallet for Agamemnon. The epilogue, said to be written by a
friend, was composed in haste by Mallet, in the place of one
promised, which was never given. This tragedy was dedicated to the
Prince his master. It was acted at Drury Lane in 1739, and was well
received, but was never revived. In 1740 he produced, as has been
already mentioned, The Masque of Alfred, in conjunction with
Thomson. For some time afterwards he lay at rest. After a long
interval his next work was "Amyntor and Theodora" (1747), a long
story in blank verse; in which it cannot be denied that there is
copiousness and elegance of language, vigour of sentiment, and
imagery well adapted to take possession of the fancy. But it is
blank verse. This he sold to Vaillant for one hundred and twenty
pounds. The first sale was not great, and it is now lost in
forgetfulness.

Mallet, by address or accident, perhaps by his dependence on the
Prince, found his way to Bolingbroke, a man whose pride and
petulance made his kindness difficult to gain or keep, and whom
Mallet was content to court by an act which I hope was unwillingly
performed. When it was found that Pope clandestinely printed an
unauthorised pamphlet called the "Patriot King," Bolingbroke in a
fit of useless fury resolved to blast his memory, and employed
Mallet (1749) as the executioner of his vengeance. Mallet had not
virtue, or had not spirit, to refuse the office; and was rewarded,
not long after, with the legacy of Lord Bolingbroke's works.

Many of the political pieces had been written during the opposition
to Walpole, and given to Francklin, as he supposed, in perpetuity.
These, among the rest, were claimed by the will. The question was
referred to arbitrators; but, when they decided against Mallet, he
refused to yield to the award; and, by the help of Millar the
bookseller, published all that he could find, but with success very
much below his expectation.

In 1775[sic], his masque of Britannia was acted at Drury Lane, and
his tragedy of Elvira in 1763; in which year he was appointed keeper
of the book of entries for ships in the port of London. In the
beginning of the last war, when the nation was exasperated by ill
success, he was employed to turn the public vengeance upon Byng, and
wrote a letter of accusation under the character of a "Plain Man."
The paper was with great industry circulated and dispersed; and he,
for his seasonable intervention, had a considerable pension bestowed
upon him, which he retained to his death. Towards the end of his
life he went with his wife to France; but after a while, finding his
health declining, he returned alone to England, and died in April,
1765. He was twice married, and by his first wife had several
children. One daughter, who married an Italian of rank named
Cilesia, wrote a tragedy called Almida, which was acted at Drury
Lane. His second wife was the daughter of a nobleman's steward, who
had a considerable fortune, which she took care to retain in her own
hands. His stature was diminutive, but he was regularly formed; his
appearance, till he grew corpulent, was agreeable, and he suffered
it to want no recommendation that dress could give it. His
conversation was elegant and easy. The rest of his character may,
without injury to his memory, sink into silence. As a writer, he
cannot be placed in any high class. There is no species of
composition in which he was eminent. His dramas had their day, a
short day, and are forgotten: his blank verse seems to my ear the
echo of Thomson. His "Life of Bacon" is known, as it is appended to
Bacon's volumes, but is no longer mentioned. His works are such as
a writer, bustling in the world, showing himself in public, and
emerging occasionally from time to time into notice, might keep
alive by his personal influence; but which, conveying little
information, and giving no great pleasure, must soon give way, as
the succession of things produces new topics of conversation and
other modes of amusement.

AKENSIDE.

Mark Akenside was born on the 9th of November, 1721, at Newcastle-
upon-Tyne. His father Mark was a butcher, of the Presbyterian sect;
his mother's name was Mary Lumsden. He received the first part of
his education at the grammar-school of Newcastle; and was afterwards
instructed by Mr. Wilson, who kept a private academy. At the age of
eighteen he was sent to Edinburgh that he might qualify himself for
the office of a dissenting minister, and received some assistance
from the fund which the dissenters employ in educating young men of
scanty fortune. But a wider view of the world opened other scenes,
and prompted other hopes: he determined to study physic, and repaid
that contribution, which being received for a different purpose, he
justly thought it dishonourable to retain. Whether, when he
resolved not to be a dissenting minister, he ceased to be a
dissenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unnecessary and
outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which
sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind
which it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or
degrading greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is
innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and
confound, with very little care what shall be established.

Akenside was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions
of genius, and one of those students who have very early stored
their memories with sentiments and images. Many of his performances
were produced in his youth; and his greatest work, "The Pleasures of
Imagination," appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodsley, by whom it
was published, relate that when the copy was offered him, the price
demanded for it, which was a hundred and twenty pounds, being such
as he was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to
Pope, who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a
niggardly offer; for "this was no every-day writer."

In 1741 he went to Leyden in pursuit of medical knowledge; and three
years afterwards (May 16, 1744) became Doctor of Physic, having,
according to the custom of the Dutch Universities, published a
thesis or dissertation. The subject which he chose was "The
Original and Growth of the Human Foetus;" in which he is said to
have departed, with great judgment, from the opinion then
established, and to have delivered that which has been since
confirmed and received.

Akenside was a young man, warm with every notion that by nature or
accident had been connected with the sound of liberty, and, by an
eccentricity which such dispositions do not easily avoid, a lover of
contradiction, and no friend to anything established. He adopted
Shaftesbury's foolish assertion of the efficacy of ridicule for the
discovery of truth. For this he was attacked by Warburton, and
defended by Dyson; Warburton afterwards reprinted his remarks at the
end of his dedication to the Freethinkers. The result of all the
arguments which have been produced in a long and eager discussion of
this idle question may easily be collected. If ridicule be applied
to any position as the test of truth it will then become a question
whether such ridicule be just; and this can only be decided by the
application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men fearing, one
a real, and the other a fancied danger, will be for a while equally
exposed to the inevitable consequences of cowardice, contemptuous
censure, and ludicrous representation; and the true state of both
cases must be known before it can be decided whose terror is
rational and whose is ridiculous; who is to be pitied, and who to be
despised. Both are for a while equally exposed to laughter, but
both are not therefore equally contemptible. In the revisal of his
poem, though he died before he had finished it, he omitted the lines
which had given occasion to Warburton's objections. He published,
soon after his return from Leyden (1745), his first collection of
odes; and was impelled by his rage of patriotism to write a very
acrimonious epistle to Pulteney, whom he stigmatises, under the name
of Curio, as the betrayer of his country. Being now to live by his
profession, he first commenced physician at Northampton, where Dr.
Stonehouse then practised, with such reputation and success, that a
stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him. Akenside tried the
contest a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for
liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than two years,
and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of
accomplishments like his. At London he was known as a poet, but was
still to make his way as a physician; and would perhaps have been
reduced to great exigencies but that Mr. Dyson, with an ardour of
friendship that has not many examples, allowed him three hundred
pounds a year. Thus supported, he advanced gradually in medical
reputation, but never attained any great extent of practice or
eminence of popularity. A physician in a great city seems to be the
mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is, for the most
part, totally casual--they that employ him know not his excellence;
they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer
who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a
century a very curious book might be written on the "Fortune of
Physicians."

Akenside appears not to have been wanting to his own success: he
placed himself in view by all the common methods; he became a Fellow
of the Royal Society; he obtained a degree at Cambridge; and was
admitted into the College of Physicians; he wrote little poetry, but
published from time to time medical essays and observations; he
became physician to St. Thomas's Hospital; he read the Gulstonian
Lectures in Anatomy; but began to give, for the Croonian Lecture, a
history of the revival of learning, from which he soon desisted; and
in conversation he very eagerly forced himself into notice by an
ambitious ostentation of elegance and literature. His "Discourse on
the Dysentery" (1764) was considered as a very conspicuous specimen
of Latinity, which entitled him to the same height of place among
the scholars as he possessed before among the wits; and he might
perhaps have risen to a greater elevation of character but that his
studies were ended with his life by a putrid fever June 23, 1770, in
the forty-ninth year of his age.

Akenside is to be considered as a didactic and lyric poet. His
great work is the "Pleasures of Imagination," a performance which,
published as it was at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations
that were not amply satisfied. It has undoubtedly a just claim to
very particular notice as an example of great felicity of genius,
and uncommon aptitude of acquisitions, of a young mind stored with
images, and much exercised in combining and comparing them. With
the philosophical or religious tenets of the author I have nothing
to do; my business is with his poetry. The subject is well chosen,
as it includes all images that can strike or please, and thus
comprises every species of poetical delight. The only difficulty is
in the choice of examples and illustrations; and it is not easy in
such exuberance of matter to find the middle point between penury
and satiety. The parts seem artificially disposed, with sufficient
coherence, so as that they cannot change their places without injury
to the general design. His images are displayed with such
luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, like Butler's Moon,
by a "Veil of Light;" they are forms fantastically lost under
superfluity of dress. Pars minima est ipsa puella sui. The words
are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts
the mind, and settles in the ear. The reader wanders through the
gay diffusion, sometimes amazed, and sometimes delighted; but, after
many turnings in the flowery labyrinth, comes out as he went in. He
remarked little, and laid hold on nothing. To his versification
justice requires that praise should not be denied. In the general
fabrication of his lines he is perhaps superior to any other writer
of blank verse; his flow is smooth, and his pauses are musical; but
the concatenation of his verses is commonly too long continued, and
the full close does not occur with sufficient frequency. The sense
is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated clauses,
and, as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.

The exemption which blank verse affords from the necessity of
closing the sense with the couplet betrays luxuriant and active
minds into such self-indulgence that they pile image upon image,
ornament upon ornament, and are not easily persuaded to close the
sense at all. Blank verse will therefore, I fear, be too often
found in description exuberant, in argument loquacious, and in
narration tiresome. His diction is certainly poetical, as it is not
prosaic; and elegant, as it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as
having fewer artifices of disgust than most of his brethren of the
blank song. He rarely either recalls old phrases, or twists his
metre into harsh inversions. The sense, however, of his words is
strained when "he views the Ganges from Alpine heights"--that is,
from mountains like the Alps. And the pedant surely intrudes (but
when was blank verse without pedantry?) when he tells how "Planets
ABSOLVE the stated round of Time."

It is generally known to the readers of poetry that he intended to
revise and augment this work, but died before he had completed his
design. The reformed work as he left it, and the additions which he
had made, are very properly retained in the late collection. He
seems to have somewhat contracted his diffusion; but I know not
whether he has gained in closeness what he has lost in splendour.
In the additional book the "Tale of Solon" is too long. One great
defect of this poem is very properly censured by Mr. Walker, unless
it may be said in his defence that what he has omitted was not
properly in his plan. "His picture of man is grand and beautiful,
but unfinished. The immortality of the soul, which is the natural
consequence of the appetites and powers she is invested with, is
scarcely once hinted throughout the poem. This deficiency is amply
supplied by the masterly pencil of Dr. Young, who, like a good
philosopher, has invincibly proved the immortality of man from the
grandeur of his conceptions and the meanness and misery of his
state; for this reason a few passages are selected from the 'Night
Thoughts,' which, with those from Akenside, seem to form a complete
view of the powers, situation, and end of man."--"Exercises for
Improvement in Elocution," p. 66.

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