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

S >> Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable.
Young might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life,
in which his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long.
If this were so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in
favour of virtue, but the potent testimony of experience against
vice. We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was
more serious than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets.

Young perhaps ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the "Poem to
his Majesty," presented with a copy of verses, to Somers: and hoped
that he also might soar to wealth and honours on wings of the same
kind. His first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to
the House of Lords the sons of the Earls of Northampton and
Aylesbury, and added, in one day, ten others to the number of Peers.
In order to reconcile the people to one, at least, of the new lords,
he published, in 1712, "An Epistle to the Right Honourable George
Lord Lansdowne." In this composition the poet pours out his
panegyric with the extravagance of a young man, who thinks his
present stock of wealth will never be exhausted. The poem seems
intended also to reconcile the public to the late peace. This is
endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and
that in peace "harvests wave, and commerce swells her sail." If
this be humanity, for which he meant it, is it politics? Another
purpose of this epistle appears to have been to prepare the public
for the reception of some tragedy he might have in hand. His
lordship's patronage, he says, will not let him "repent his passion
for the stage;" and the particular praise bestowed on Othello and
Oroonoko looks as if some such character as Zanga was even then in
contemplation. The affectionate mention of the death of his friend
Harrison of New College, at the close of this poem, is an instance
of Young's art, which displayed itself so wonderfully some time
afterwards in the "Night Thoughts," of making the public a party in
his private sorrow. Should justice call upon you to censure this
poem, it ought at least to be remembered that he did not insert it
in his works; and that in the letter to Curll, as we have seen, he
advises its omission. The booksellers, in the late body of English
poetry, should have distinguished what was deliberately rejected by
the respective authors. This I shall be careful to do with regard
to Young. "I think," says he, "the following pieces in FOUR volumes
to be the most excusable of all that I have written; and I wish LESS
APOLOGY was less needful for these. As there is no recalling what
is got abroad, the pieces here republished I have revised and
corrected, and rendered them as PARDONABLE as it was in my power to
do."

Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?

When Addison published "Cato" in 1713, Young had the honour of
prefixing to it a recommendatory copy of verses. This is one of the
pieces which the author of the "Night Thoughts" did not republish.

On the appearance of his poem on the "Last Day," Addison did not
return Young's compliment; but "The Englishman" of October 29, 1713,
which was probably written by Addison, speaks handsomely of this
poem. The "Last Day" was published soon after the peace. The Vice-
Chancellor's imprimatur (for it was printed at Oxford) is dated the
19th, 1713. From the exordium, Young appears to have spent some
time on the composition of it. While other bards "with Britain's
hero set their souls on fire," he draws, he says, a deeper scene.
Marlborough HAD BEEN considered by Britain as her HERO; but, when
the "Last Day" was published, female cabal had blasted for a time
the laurels of Blenheim. This serious poem was finished by Young as
early as 1710, before he was thirty; for part of it is printed in
the Tatler. It was inscribed to the queen, in a dedication, which,
for some reason, he did not admit into his works. It tells her that
his only title to the great honour he now does himself is the
obligation which he formerly received from her royal indulgence. Of
this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded to her being
his godmother. He is said indeed to have been engaged at a settled
stipend as a writer for the Court. In Swift's "Rhapsody on Poetry"
are these lines, speaking of the Court:--

"Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face,
Where Y---- must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension."

That Y---- means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same
poem:--

"Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyrics here provide;
You cannot err on flattery's side."

Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all
modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side
been regularly called Hirelings, and on the other Patriots?

Of the dedication the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in
the highest terms of the late peace; it gives her Majesty praise
indeed for her victories, but says that the author is more pleased
to see her rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds,
passing the first and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars
behind her; nor will he lose her there, he says, but keep her still
in view through the boundless spaces on the other side of creation,
in her journey towards eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of
heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her still onward
from the stretch of his imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and
falls back again to earth.

The queen was soon called away from this lower world, to a place
where human praise or human flattery, even less general than this,
are of little consequence. If Young thought the dedication
contained only the praise of truth, he should not have omitted it in
his works. Was he conscious of the exaggeration of party? Then he
should not have written it. The poem itself is not without a glance
towards politics, notwithstanding the subject. The cry that the
Church was in danger had not yet subsided. The "Last Day," written
by a layman, was much approved by the ministry and their friends.

Before the queen's death, "The Force of Religion, or Vanquished
Love," was sent into the world. This poem is founded on the
execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Guildford, 1554, a
story chosen for the subject of a tragedy by Edmund Smith, and
wrought into a tragedy by Rowe. The dedication of it to the
Countess of Salisbury does not appear in his own edition. He hopes
it may be some excuse for his presumption that the story could not
have been read without thoughts of the Countess of Salisbury, though
it had been dedicated to another. "To behold," he proceeds, "a
person ONLY virtuous, stirs in us a prudent regret; to behold a
person ONLY amiable to the sight, warms us with a religious
indignation; but to turn our eyes to a Countess of Salisbury, gives
us pleasure and improvement; it works a sort of miracle, occasions
the bias of our nature to fall off from sin, and makes our very
senses and affections converts to our religion, and promoters of our
duty." His flattery was as ready for the other sex as for ours, and
was at least as well adapted.

August the 27th, 1714, Pope writes to his friend Jervas, that he is
just arrived from Oxford; that every one is much concerned for the
queen's death, but that no panegyrics are ready yet for the king.
Nothing like friendship has yet taken place between Pope and Young,
for, soon after the event which Pope mentions, Young published a
poem on the queen's death, and his Majesty's accession to the
throne. It is inscribed to Addison, then secretary to the Lords
Justices. Whatever were the obligations which he had formerly
received from Anne, the poet appears to aim at something of the same
sort from George. Of the poem the intention seems to have been, to
show that he had the same extravagant strain of praise for a king as
for a queen. To discover, at the very onset of a foreigner's reign,
that the gods bless his new subjects in such a king is something
more than praise. Neither was this deemed one of his excusable
pieces. We do not find it in his works.

Young's father had been well acquainted with Lady Anne Wharton, the
first wife of Thomas Wharton, Esq., afterwards Marquis of Wharton; a
lady celebrated for her poetical talents by Burnet and by Waller.

To the Dean of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were
added some verses "by that excellent poetess, Mrs. Anne Wharton,"
upon its being translated into English, at the instance of Waller by
Atwood. Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of
his old friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found
a patron, and in his dissolute descendant a friend and a companion.
The marquis died in April, 1715. In the beginning of the next year,
the young marquis set out upon his travels, from which he returned
in about a twelvemonth. The beginning of 1717 carried him to
Ireland: where, says the Biographia, "on the score of his
extraordinary qualities, he had the honour done him of being
admitted, though under age, to take his seat in the House of Lords."
With this unhappy character it is not unlikely that Young went to
Ireland. From his letter to Richardson on "Original Composition,"
it is clear he was, at some period of his life, in that country. "I
remember," says he, in that letter, speaking of Swift, "as I and
others were taking with him an evening walk, about a mile out of
Dublin, he stopped short; we passed on; but perceiving he did not
follow us, I went back, and found him fixed as a statue, and
earnestly gazing upward at a noble elm, which in its uppermost
branches was much withered and decayed. Pointing at it, he said, 'I
shall be like that tree, I shall die at top.'" Is it not probable,
that this visit to Ireland was paid when he had an opportunity of
going thither with his avowed friend and patron?

From "The Englishman" it appears that a tragedy by Young was in the
theatre so early as 1713. Yet Busiris was not brought upon Drury
Lane stage till 1719. It was inscribed to the Duke of Newcastle,
"because the late instances he had received of his grace's
undeserved and uncommon favour, in an affair of some consequence,
foreign to the theatre, had taken from him the privilege of choosing
a patron." The Dedication he afterwards suppressed.

Busiris was followed in the year 1721 by The Revenge. He dedicated
this famous tragedy to the Duke of Wharton. "Your Grace," says the
Dedication, "has been pleased to make yourself accessory to the
following scenes, not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident
in them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the
whole." That his grace should have suggested the incident to which
he alludes, whatever that incident might have been, is not unlikely.
The last mental exertion of the superannuated young man, in his
quarters at Lerida, in Spain, was some scenes of a tragedy on the
story of Mary Queen of Scots.

Dryden dedicated "Marriage a la Mode" to Wharton's infamous relation
Rochester, whom he acknowledges not only as the defender of his
poetry, but as the promoter of his fortune. Young concludes his
address to Wharton thus--"My present fortune is his bounty, and my
future his care; which I will venture to say will be always
remembered to his honour, since he, I know, intended his generosity
as an encouragement to merit, though through his very pardonable
partiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty and respect, I
happen to receive the benefit of it." That he ever had such a
patron as Wharton, Young took all the pains in his power to conceal
from the world, by excluding this dedication from his works. He
should have remembered that he at the same time concealed his
obligation to Wharton for THE MOST BEAUTIFUL INCIDENT in what is
surely not his least beautiful composition. The passage just quoted
is, in a poem afterwards addressed to Walpole, literally copied:

"Be this thy partial smile from censure free!
'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me."

While Young, who, in his "Love of Fame," complains grievously how
often "dedications wash an AEthiop white," was painting an amiable
Duke of Wharton in perishable prose, Pope was, perhaps, beginning to
describe the "scorn and wonder of his days" in lasting verse. To
the patronage of such a character, had Young studied men as much as
Pope, he would have known how little to have trusted. Young,
however, was certainly indebted to it for something material; and
the duke's regard for Young, added to his lust of praise, procured
to All Souls College a donation, which was not forgotten by the poet
when he dedicated The Revenge.

It will surprise you to see me cite second Atkins, Case 136, Stiles
versus the Attorney-General, March 14, 1740, as authority for the
life of a poet. But biographers do not always find such certain
guides as the oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor
Hardwicke was to determine whether two annuities, granted by the
Duke of Wharton to Young, were for legal considerations. One was
dated the 24th March, 1719, and accounted for his grace's bounty in
a style princely and commendable, if not legal--"considering that
the public good is advanced by the encouragement of learning and the
polite arts, and being pleased therein with the attempts of Dr.
Young, in consideration thereof, and of the love I bear him, etc."
The other was dated the 10th of July, 1722.

Young, on his examination, swore that he quitted the Exeter family,
and refused an annuity of 100 pounds which had been offered him for
life if he would continue tutor to Lord Burleigh, upon the pressing
solicitations of the Duke of Wharton, and his grace's assurances of
providing for him in a much more ample manner. It also appeared
that the duke had given him a bond for 600 pounds dated the 15th of
March, 1721, in consideration of his taking several journeys, and
being at great expenses, in order to be chosen member of the House
of Commons, at the duke's desire, and in consideration of his not
taking two livings of 200 pounds and 400 pounds in the gift of All
Souls College, on his grace's promises of serving and advancing him
in the world.

Of his adventures in the Exeter family I am unable to give any
account. The attempt to get into Parliament was at Cirencester,
where Young stood a contested election. His grace discovered in him
talents for oratory as well as for poetry. Nor was this judgment
wrong. Young, after he took orders, became a very popular preacher,
and was much followed for the grace and animation of his delivery.
By his oratorical talents he was once in his life, according to the
Biographia, deserted. As he was preaching in his turn at St.
James's, he plainly perceived it was out of his power to command the
attention of his audience. This so affected the feelings of the
preacher, that he sat back in the pulpit, and burst into tears. But
we must pursue his poetical life.

In 1719 he lamented the death of Addison, in a letter addressed to
their common friend Tickell. For the secret history of the
following lines, if they contain any, it is now vain to seek:

"IN JOY ONCE JOINED, in sorrow, now, for years--
Partner in grief, and brother of my tears,
Tickell, accept this verse, thy mournful due."

From your account of Tickell it appears that he and Young used to
"communicate to each other whatever verses they wrote, even to the
least things."

In 1719 appeared a "Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job." Parker,
to whom it is dedicated, had not long, by means of the seals, been
qualified for a patron. Of this work the author's opinion may be
known from his letter to Curll: "You seem, in the Collection you
propose, to have omitted what I think may claim the first place in
it; I mean 'a Translation from part of Job,' printed by Mr. Tonson."
The Dedication, which was only suffered to appear in Mr. Tonson's
edition, while it speaks with satisfaction of his present
retirement, seems to make an unusual struggle to escape from
retirement. But every one who sings in the dark does not sing from
joy. It is addressed, in no common strain of flattery, to a
chancellor, of whom he clearly appears to have had no kind of
knowledge.

Of his Satires it would not have been possible to fix the dates
without the assistance of first editions, which, as you had occasion
to observe in your account of Dryden, are with difficulty found. We
must then have referred to the poems, to discover when they were
written. For these internal notes of time we should not have
referred in vain. The first Satire laments, that "Guilt's chief foe
in Addison is fled." The second, addressing himself, asks:--

"Is thy ambition sweating for a rhyme,
Thou unambitious fool, at this late time?
A fool at FORTY is a fool indeed."

The Satires were originally published separately in folio, under the
title of "The Universal Passion." These passages fix the appearance
of the first to about 1725, the time at which it came out. As Young
seldom suffered his pen to dry after he had once dipped it in
poetry, we may conclude that he began his Satires soon after he had
written the "Paraphrase on Job." The last Satire was certainly
finished in the beginning of the year 1726. In December, 1725, the
King, in his passage from Helvoetsluys, escaped with great
difficulty from a storm by landing at Rye; and the conclusion of the
Satire turns the escape into a miracle, in such an encomiastic
strain of compliment as poetry too often seeks to pay to royalty.
From the sixth of these poems we learn,

"'Midst empire's charms, how Carolina's heart
Glowed with the love of virtue and of art."

Since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet,

"Her favour is diffused to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawned on me."

Her Majesty had stood godmother, and given her name, to the daughter
of the lady whom Young married in 1731; and had perhaps shown some
attention to Lady Elizabeth's future husband.

The fifth Satire, "On Women," was not published till 1727; and the
sixth not till 1728.

To these poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one
publication, he prefixed a Preface, in which he observes that "no
man can converse much in the world, but at what he meets with he
must either be insensible or grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to
smile at it, and turn it into ridicule," he adds, "I think most
eligible, as it hurts ourselves least, and gives vice and folly the
greatest offence. Laughing at the misconduct of the world will, in
a great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about it.
One passion is more effectually driven out by another than by
reason, whatever some teach." So wrote, and so of course thought,
the lively and witty satirist at the grave age of almost fifty, who,
many years earlier in life, wrote the "Last Day." After all, Swift
pronounced of these Satires, that they should either have been more
angry or more merry.

Is it not somewhat singular that Young preserved, without any
palliation, this Preface, so bluntly decisive in favour of laughing
at the world, in the same collection of his works which contains the
mournful, angry, gloomy "Night Thoughts!" At the conclusion of the
Preface he applies Plato's beautiful fable of the "Birth of Love" to
modern poetry, with the addition, "that Poetry, like Love, is a
little subject to blindness, which makes her mistake her way to
preferments and honours; and that she retains a dutiful admiration
of her father's family; but divides her favours, and generally lives
with her mother's relations." Poetry, it is true, did not lead
Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not something like
blindness in the flattery which he sometimes forced her, and her
sister Prose, to utter? She was always, indeed, taught by him to
entertain a most dutiful admiration of riches; but surely Young,
though nearly related to Poetry, had no connection with her whom
Plato makes the mother of Love. That he could not well complain of
being related to Poverty appears clearly from the frequent bounties
which his gratitude records, and from the wealth which he left
behind him. By "The Universal Passion" he acquired no vulgar
fortune--more than three thousand pounds. A considerable sum had
already been swallowed up in the South Sea. For this loss he took
the vengeance of an author. His Muse makes poetical use more than
once of a South Sea Dream.

It is related by Mr. Spence, in his "Manuscript Anecdotes," on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
"Universal Passion," received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "Two thousand
pounds for a poem!" he said it was the best bargain he ever made in
his life, for the poem was worth four thousand. This story may be
true; but it seems to have been raised from the two answers of Lord
Burghley and Sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.

After inscribing his Satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferments and honours, to such names as the Duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain, and Sir
Robert Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. In 1726 he addressed
a poem to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently
explains the intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready
celebrator, he did not endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting
one. "The Instalment" is among the pieces he did not admit into the
number of his EXCUSABLE WRITINGS. Yet it contains a couplet which
pretends to pant after the power of bestowing immortality:--

"Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!"

The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued,
possibly increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet
thought he deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what,
without his acknowledgment, would now perhaps never have been
known:--

"My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee,
Refresh the dry remains of poesy."

If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it
must at least be confessed he was a grateful one.

The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with "Ocean, an
Ode." The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which
recommended the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that
they might be "invited, rather than compelled by force and violence,
to enter into the service of their country"--a plan which humanity
must 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 Patriae," and an "Essay on Lyric Poetry."
It is but justice to confess that he preserved neither of them; and
that the Ode itself, which in the first edition, and in the last,
consists of seventy-three stanzas, in the author's own edition is
reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted passages is a "Wish," that
concluded the poem, which few would have suspected Young of forming;
and of which few, after having formed it, would confess something
like their shame by suppression. It stood originally so high in the
author's opinion, that he entitled the poem, "Ocean, an Ode.
Concluding with a Wish." This wish consists of thirteen stanzas.
The first runs thus:--

"O may I STEAL
Along the VALE
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!"

The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but,
altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of
Young:--

"Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I HAVE,
And live, not LEAVE,
Enamoured of the present day!

"My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one BEAM
Of honest FAME!
And scorn the laboured monument!

"Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty Nature's self shall die,
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!"

It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should
fix upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this
he said, in his "Essay on Lyric 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." Yet the moderns surely deserve not much censure for their
fondness of what, by their own confession, affords pleasure, and
abounds in harmony. The next paragraph in his Essay did not occur
to him when he talked of "that great turn" in the stanza just
quoted. "But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is
overcome. That is, he must make rhyme consistent with as perfect
sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly free
from that shackle." Another part of this Essay will convict the
following stanza of what every reader will discover in it
"involuntary burlesque:--

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13