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

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DYER.

John Dyer, of whom I have no other account to give than his own
letters, published with Hughes's correspondence, and the notes added
by the editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the second son of
Robert Dyer of Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of
great capacity and note. He passed through Westminster school under
the care of Dr. Freind, and was then called home to be instructed in
his father's profession. But his father died soon, and he took no
delight in the study of the law; but, having always amused himself
with drawing, resolved to turn painter, and became pupil to Mr.
Richardson, an artist then of high reputation, but now better known
by his books than by his pictures.

Having studied a while under his master, he became, as he tells his
friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales and the
parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and about 1727
[1726] printed "Grongar Hill" in Lewis's Miscellany. Being,
probably, unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other
painters, travelled to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the
"Ruins of Rome." If his poem was written soon after his return, he
did not make use of his acquisitions in painting, whatever they
might be; for decline of health and love of study determined him to
the Church. He therefore entered into orders; and, it seems,
married about the same time a lady of the name of Ensor; "whose
grandmother," says he, "was a Shakspeare, descended from a brother
of everybody's Shakspeare;" by her, in 1756, he had a son and three
daughters living.

His ecclesiastical provision was for a long time but slender. His
first patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp in
Leicestershire, of eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten
years, and then exchanged it for Belchford, in Lincolnshire, of
seventy-five. His condition now began to mend. In 1751 Sir John
Heathcote gave him Coningsby, of one hundred and forty pounds a
year; and in 1755 the Chancellor added Kirkby, of one hundred and
ten. He complains that the repair of the house at Coningsby, and
other expenses, took away the profit. In 1757 he published "The
Fleece," his greatest poetical work; of which I will not suppress a
ludicrous story. Dodsley the bookseller was one day mentioning it
to a critical visitor, with more expectation of success than the
other could easily admit. In the conversation the author's age was
asked; and being represented as advanced in life, "He will," said
the critic, "be buried in woollen." He did not indeed long survive
that publication, nor long enjoy the increase of his preferments,
for in 1758 he died.

Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an
elaborate criticism. "Grongar Hill" is the happiest of his
productions: it is not indeed very accurately written; but the
scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they
raise are so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer
so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that
when it is once read, it will be read again. The idea of the "Ruins
of Rome" strikes more, but pleases less, and the title raises
greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some passages,
however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the
neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says,

"The Pilgrim oft
At dead of night, 'mid his orison hears
Aghast the voice of Time, disparting tow'rs
Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,
Rattling around, loud thund'ring to the Moon."

Of "The Fleece," which never became popular, and is now universally
neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to
attention. The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant
natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to COUPLE THE
SERPENT WITH THE FOWL. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical,
has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native
commodity by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental
digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the
writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the
irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him
under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which blank verse,
encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing subject, soon
repels the reader, however willing to be pleased.

Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this
weight of censure. I have been told that Akenside, who, upon a
poetical question, has a right to be heard, said, "That he would
regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's
'Fleece;' for, if that were ill-received, he should not think it any
longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence."

SHENSTONE.

William Shenstone, the son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Pen, was
born in November, 1714, at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, one of those
insulated districts which, in the division of the kingdom, was
appended, for some reason not now discoverable, to a distant county;
and which, though surrounded by Warwickshire and Worcestershire,
belongs to Shropshire, though perhaps thirty miles distant from any
other part of it. He learned to read of an old dame, whom his poem
of the "Schoolmistress" has delivered to posterity; and soon
received such delight from books, that he was always calling for
fresh entertainment, and expected that, when any of the family went
to market, a new book should be brought him, which, when it came,
was in fondness carried to bed and laid by him. It is said, that,
when his request had been neglected, his mother wrapped up a piece
of wood of the same form, and pacified him for the night. As he
grew older, he went for a while to the Grammar-school in Hales-Owen,
and was placed afterwards with Mr. Crumpton, an eminent schoolmaster
at Solihul, where he distinguished himself by the quickness of his
progress.

When he was young (June, 1724) he was deprived of his father, and
soon after (August, 1726) of his grandfather; and was, with his
brother, who died afterwards unmarried, left to the care of his
grandmother, who managed the estate.

From school he was sent in 1732 to Pembroke College in Oxford, a
society which for half a century has been eminent for English poetry
and elegant literature. Here it appears that he found delight and
advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though
he took no degree. After the first four years he put on the
civilian's gown, but without showing any intention to engage in the
profession. About the time when he went to Oxford, the death of his
grandmother devolved his affairs to the care of the Rev. Mr. Dolman,
of Brome in Staffordshire, whose attention he always mentioned with
gratitude. At Oxford he employed himself upon English poetry; and
in 1737 published a small Miscellany, without his name. He then for
a time wandered about, to acquaint himself with life, and was
sometimes at London, sometimes at Bath, or any other place of public
resort; but he did not forget his poetry. He published in 1741 his
"Judgment of Hercules," addressed to Mr. Lyttelton, whose interest
he supported with great warmth at an election: this was next year
followed by the "Schoolmistress."

Mr. Dolman, to whose care he was indebted for his ease and leisure,
died in 1745, and the care of his own fortune now fell upon him. He
tried to escape it awhile, and lived at his house with his tenants,
who were distantly related; but, finding that imperfect possession
inconvenient, he took the whole estate into his own hands, more to
the improvement of its beauty than the increase of its produce. Now
was excited his delight in rural pleasures and his ambition of rural
elegance; he began from this time to point his prospects, to
diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his
waters, which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his
little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the
skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by
designers. Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to
place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the
view, to make the water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate
where it will be seen, to leave intervals where the eye will be
pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to
be hidden, demands any great powers of mind, I will not inquire:
perhaps a sullen and surly spectator may think such performances
rather the sport than the business of human reason. But it must be
at least confessed that to embellish the form of Nature is an
innocent amusement, and some praise must be allowed, by the most
supercilious observer, to him who does best what such multitudes are
contending to do well.

This praise was the praise of Shenstone; but, like all other modes
of felicity, it was not enjoyed without its abatements. Lyttelton
was his neighbour and his rival, whose empire, spacious and opulent,
looked with disdain on the PETTY STATE that APPEARED BEHIND IT. For
a while the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their
acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself
admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into
notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not
suppress by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient
points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to
detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily
complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity; and where
there is vanity there will be folly.

The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye; he valued what he
valued merely for its looks. Nothing raised his indignation more
than to ask if there were any fishes in his water. His house was
mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his grounds. When
he came home from his walks, he might find his floors flooded by a
shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its
reparation. In time his expenses brought clamours about him that
overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song, and his groves
were haunted by beings very different from fauns and fairies. He
spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened
by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It
is said that, if he had lived a little longer, he would have been
assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more
properly bestowed; but that it was ever asked is not certain; it is
too certain that it never was enjoyed. He died at Leasowes, of a
putrid fever, about five on Friday morning, February 11, 1763, and
was buried by the side of his brother in the churchyard of Hales-
Owen.

He was never married, though he might have obtained the lady,
whoever she was, to whom his "Pastoral Ballad" was addressed. He is
represented by his friend Dodsley as a man of great tenderness and
generosity, kind to all that were within his influence; but, if once
offended, not easily appeased; inattentive to economy, and careless
of his expenses; in his person he was larger than the middle-size,
with something clumsy in his form; very negligent of his clothes,
and remarkable for wearing his grey hair in a particular manner, for
he held that the fashion was no rule of dress, and that every man
was to suit his appearance to his natural form. His mind was not
very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for
those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated. His
life was unstained by any crime. The "Elegy on Jesse," which has
been supposed to relate an unfortunate and criminal amour of his
own, was known by his friends to have been suggested by the story of
Miss Godfrey in Richardson's "Pamela."

What Gray thought of his character, from the perusal of his Letters,
was this:--

"I have read, too, an octavo volume of Shenstone's Letters. Poor
man! he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other
distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against
his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned,
but which he only enjoyed when people of note came to see and
commend it. His correspondence is about nothing else but this place
and his own writings, with two or three neighbouring clergymen, who
wrote verses too."

His poems consist of elegies, odes, and ballads, humorous sallies,
and moral pieces. His conception of an Elegy he has in his Preface
very judiciously and discriminately explained. It is, according to
his account, the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes
plaintive, and always serious, and therefore superior to the glitter
of slight ornaments. His compositions suit not ill to this
description. His topics of praise are the domestic virtues, and his
thoughts are pure and simple, but wanting combination; they want
variety. The peace of solitude, the innocence of inactivity, and
the unenvied security of an humble station, can fill but a few
pages. That of which the essence is uniformity will be soon
described. His elegies have, therefore, too much resemblance of
each other. The lines are sometimes, such as Elegy requires, smooth
and easy; but to this praise his claim is not constant; his diction
is often harsh, improper, and affected, his words ill-coined or ill-
chosen, and his phrase unskilfully inverted.

The Lyric Poems are almost all of the light and airy kind, such as
trip lightly and nimbly along, without the load of any weighty
meaning. From these, however, "Rural Elegance" has some right to be
excepted. I once heard it praised by a very learned lady; and,
though the lines are irregular, and the thoughts diffused with too
much verbosity, yet it cannot be denied to contain both
philosophical argument and poetical spirit. Of the rest I cannot
think any excellent; the "Skylark" pleases me best, which has,
however, more of the epigram than of the ode.

But the four parts of his "Pastoral Ballad" demand particular
notice. I cannot but regret that it is pastoral: an intelligent
reader acquainted with the scenes of real life sickens at the
mention of the CROOK, the PIPE, the SHEEP, and the KIDS, which it is
not necessary to bring forward to notice; for the poet's art is
selection, and he ought to show the beauties without the grossness
of the country life. His stanza seems to have been chosen in
imitation of Rowe's "Despairing Shepherd." In the first are two
passages, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no
acquaintance with love or nature:--

"I prized every hour that went by,
Beyond all that had pleased me before:
But now they are past, and I sigh,
And I grieve that I prized them no more.

When forced the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt in my heart!
Yet I thought (but it might not be so)
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.

She gazed, as I slowly withdrew,
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return."

In the second this passage has its prettiness; though it be not
equal to the former:--

"I have found out a gift for my fair:
I have found where the wood pigeons breed:
But let me that plunder forbear,
She will say 'twas a barbarous deed:

For he ne'er could be true, she averred,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I loved her the more when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue."

In the third he mentions the common-places of amorous poetry with
some address:--

"'Tis his with mock passion to glow!
'Tis his in smooth tales to unfold,
How her face is as bright as the snow,
And her bosom, be sure, is as cold:

How the nightingales labour the strain,
With the notes of this charmer to vie:
How they vary their accents in vain,
Repine at her triumphs, and die."

In the fourth I find nothing better than this natural strain of
Hope:--

"Alas! from the day that we met,
What hope of an end to my woes,
When I cannot endure to forget
The glance that undid my repose?

Yet Time may diminish the pain:
The flower, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I reared for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me."

His "Levities" are by their title exempted from the severities of
criticism, yet it may be remarked in a few words that his humour is
sometimes gross, and seldom sprightly.

Of the Moral Poems, the first is the "Choice of Hercules," from
Xenophon. The numbers are smooth, the diction elegant, and the
thoughts just; but something of vigour is still to be wished, which
it might have had by brevity and compression. His "Fate of
Delicacy" has an air of gaiety, but not a very pointed and general
moral. His blank verses, those that can read them, may probably
find to be like the blank verses of his neighbours. "Love and
Honour" is derived from the old ballad, "Did you not hear of a
Spanish Lady?"--I wish it well enough to wish it were in rhyme.

The "Schoolmistress," of which I know not what claim it has to stand
among the Moral Works, is surely the most pleasing of Shenstone's
performances. The adoption of a particular style, in light and
short compositions, contributes much to the increase of pleasure:
we are entertained at once with two imitations of nature in the
sentiments, of the original author in the style, and between them
the mind is kept in perpetual employment.

The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity;
his general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his
mind been better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been
great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable.

YOUNG.

The following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman (Mr.
Herbert Croft) who had better information than I could easily have
obtained; and the public will perhaps wish that I had solicited and
obtained more such favours from him:--

"Dear Sir,--In consequence of our different conversations about
authentic materials for the Life of Young, I send you the following
details:"--

Of great men something must always be said to gratify curiosity. Of
the illustrious author of the "Night Thoughts" much has been told of
which there never could have been proofs, and little care appears to
have been taken to tell that of which proofs, with little trouble,
might have been procured.

Edward Young was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June, 1681. He
was the son of Edward Young, at that time Fellow of Winchester
College, and Rector of Upham, who was the son of Jo. Young, of
Woodhay, in Berkshire, styled by Wood, GENTLEMAN. In September,
1682, the poet's father was collated to the prebend of Gillingham
Minor, in the church of Sarum, by Bishop Ward. When Ward's
faculties were impaired through age, his duties were necessarily
performed by others. We learn from Wood that, at a visitation of
Sprat's, July the 12th, 1686, the prebendary preached a Latin
sermon, afterwards published, with which the Bishop was so pleased,
that he told the chapter he was concerned to find the preacher had
one of the worst prebends in their Church. Some time after this, in
consequence of his merit and reputation, or of the interest of Lord
Bradford, to whom, in 1702, he dedicated two volumes of sermons, he
was appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, and preferred
to the Deanery of Sarum. Jacob, who wrote in 1720, says, "he was
Chaplain and Clerk of the Closet to the late Queen, who honoured him
by standing godmother to the poet." His Fellowship of Winchester he
resigned in favour of a gentleman of the name of Harris, who married
his only daughter. The Dean died at Sarum, after a short illness,
in 1705, in the sixty-third year of his age. On the Sunday after
his decease, Bishop Burnet preached at the cathedral, and began his
sermon with saying, "Death has been of late walking round us, and
making breach upon breach upon us, and has now carried away the head
of this body with a stroke, so that he, whom you saw a week ago
distributing the holy mysteries, is now laid in the dust. But he
still lives in the many excellent directions he has left us both how
to live and how to die."

The dean placed his son upon the foundation at Winchester College,
where he had himself been educated. At this school Edward Young
remained till the election after his eighteenth birthday, the period
at which those upon the foundation are superannuated. Whether he
did not betray his abilities early in life, or his masters had not
skill enough to discover in their pupil any marks of genius for
which he merited reward, or no vacancy at Oxford offered them an
opportunity to bestow upon him the reward provided for merit by
William of Wykeham; certain it is, that to an Oxford fellowship our
poet did not succeed. By chance, or by choice, New College cannot
claim the honour of numbering among its fellows him who wrote the
"Night Thoughts."

On the 13th of October, 1703, he was entered an independent member
of New College, that he might live at little expense in the warden's
lodgings, who was a particular friend of his father's, till he
should be qualified to stand for a fellowship at All Souls. In a
few months the warden of New College died. He then removed to
Corpus College. The president of this society, from regard also for
his father, invited him thither, in order to lessen his academical
expenses. In 1708 he was nominated to a law-fellowship at All Souls
by Archbishop Tenison, into whose hands it came by devolution. Such
repeated patronage, while it justifies Burnet's praise of the
father, reflects credit on the conduct of the son. The manner in
which it was exerted seems to prove that the father did not leave
behind him much wealth.

On the 23rd of April, 1714, Young took his degree of bachelor of
civil laws, and his doctor's degree on the 10th of June, 1719. Soon
after he went to Oxford he discovered, it is said, an inclination
for pupils. Whether he ever commenced tutor is not known. None has
hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from
the author of "Night Thoughts." It is probable that his College was
proud of him no less as a scholar than as a poet; for in 1716, when
the foundation of the Codrington Library was laid, two years after
he had taken his bachelor's degree, Young was appointed to speak the
Latin oration. This is at least particular for being dedicated in
English "To the Ladies of the Codrington Family." To these ladies
he says "that he was unavoidably flung into a singularity, by being
obliged to write an epistle dedicatory void of commonplace, and such
an one was never published before by any author whatever; that this
practice absolved them from any obligation of reading what was
presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of it, because
it would make people stare, was absurd enough and perfectly right."
Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his
works; and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, in 1741, is a
letter from Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December
the 9th, 1739, wherein he says that he has not leisure to review
what he formerly wrote, and adds, "I have not the 'Epistle to Lord
Lansdowne.' If you will take my advice, I would have you omit that,
and the oration on Codrington. I think the collection will sell
better without them."

There are who relate that, when first Young found himself
independent, and his own master at All Souls, he was not the
ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became. The
authority of his father, indeed, had ceased, some time before, by
his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronised by
the infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the
poet, and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be
patronised only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out? Yet
Pope is said by Ruffhead to have told Warburton that "Young had much
of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his
genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into
bombast. This made him pass a FOOLISH YOUTH, the sport of peers and
poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the
clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, and
afterwards with honour."

They who think ill of Young's morality in the early part of his life
may perhaps be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of
Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to
spend much of his time at All Souls. "The other boys," said the
atheist, "I can always answer, because I always know whence they
have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that
fellow Young is continually pestering me with something of his own."

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