cess in it. He that has an idea of perfection in the work he undertakes may fail in it; he that has not, must: and yet he will be vain, for every little degree of beauty, how short or improper soever, will be looked on fondly by him, because it is more than he promised himself." Hence our author infers that the poetic class are more obnoxious to vanity than others, from which emanates that great sensibility of disrespect, that quick resentment which justly marks them out for the "genus irritabile" among mankind.

Of his earlier productions, the Last Day, Vanquished Love, and Paraphrase on Job, have deservedly obtained the greatest popularity. They have all their brighter passages; particularly the Last Day, and the Paraphrase. But many lines are stiff and incorrect. The author in his too great care to fabricate the ornaments of wit and thus to please the fancy, often sacrifices a more important object, that of reaching and moulding the heart.

His Universal Passion (or Satires) was published before the appearance of Pope's satirical epistles; and has therefore the merit of giving the lead to that kind of writing. It contains much appropriate satire, good verse, and laughable humour.

In the foregoing Memoir of the author some specimens of the satires are introduced, from which their general character may be discovered. They have, says one, the fault of Seneca, of Ovid, of Cowley; a profusion and an unseasonable application of wit. A lover of originality, he did not study or regard models. Had he endeavoured to imitate Juvenal and Persius, this fault would have been avoided. Those great masters, it is further said, were too much engrossed by the importance of their subjects, to fall into the puerility of witticism. But here, in defence of Dr. Young, it may be replied, that in depicting the foibles, and follies, and absurdities of human character and conduct, his witticisms for the most part seem not to be at all out of place. It is true that they may be wanting in dignity, and stateliness, and gravity: but so are the things he satirizes. It is a good rule of rhetoric that the style be suited to the subject: and it was Dr. Young's opinion, as we learn from the preface to those satires, that to smile at vice and folly and turn them into ridicule, as it gives them the greatest offence, is to be preferred to other treatment of them. He asserts, moreover,

that laughing satire bids the fairest for success.

The world is too

proud to be fond of a serious tutor; and when the author is in a passion, the laugh generally, as in conversation, turns against him. Of this delicate satire, he adds, Horace is the best master: he appears in good humour while he censures; and therefore his censure has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment, not from passion. Juvenal, on the other hand, is ever in a passion; he has little valuable except his eloquence and morality; the last of which (says our author) I have had in my eye, but rather for emulation than imitation, through my whole work.

The remarks of Dr. Aikin, which we subjoin, upon the production now under review, seem to be discriminating, just, and candid.

Like all other theorists on the mind, who aim at simplicity in their explanation of the varieties of human character, he has laid more stress upon his fundamental principle (love of fame) than it will properly bear; and in many of the portraits which he draws, the love of fame can scarcely be recognized as a leading feature. In reality, Young was a writer of much more fancy than judgment. He paints with a brilliant touch and strong colouring, but with little attention to nature; and his satires are rather exercises of wit and invention than grave exposures of human follies and vices. He, indeed, runs through the ordinary catalogue of fashionable excesses, but in such a style of whimsical exaggeration that his examples have the air of mere creatures of the imagination. His pieces are, however, entertaining, and are marked with the stamp of original genius. Having but less egotism than those of Pope, they have a less splenetic air; and the author's aim seems to be so much more to show his wit than to indulge his rancour, that his severest strokes give little pain.

It has been observed that Young's satires are strings of epigrams. His sketches of characters are generally terminated by a point, and many of his couplets might be received as proverbial maxims or sentences. A common figure of speech with him is the antithesis, where two members of a sentence, apparently in opposition to each other, are connected by a subtile turn in the sense. Thus,

"A shameless woman is the worst of men.
Because she's right she's ever in the wrong."

With wit, or the association of distant ideas by some unexpected resemblance, he abounds. Almost every page affords instances of his inventive powers in this respect; some, truly beautiful; others, odd and quaint. For example:

"Like cats in air-pumps, to subsist we strive

On joys too thin to keep the soul alive."

There is little of the majestic or dignified in Young's satires: not that he was incapable of sublimity, but because the view he took of men and manners generally excluded it. His second satire is on Women; for his politeness did not prevent him from employing the lash with even peculiar force on the tender sex. They will feel themselves, however, little hurt by these attacks, for his ridicule consists in presenting a series of caricatures, drawn rather from fancy than observation; and he does not treat the whole sex with that contempt which is perpetually breaking out in the writings of Pope and Swift.

Dr. Young, in his preface to the "Love of Fame," has made some observations on the use of satire as a means of reformation, which deserve a place here,

"It is possible that satire may not do much good; men may rise in their affections to their follies, as they do to their friends, when they are abused by others. It is much to be feared that misconduct will never be chased out of the world by satire; all therefore that is to be said for it is, that misconduct will certainly never be chased out of the world by satire, if no satires are written; nor is that term unapplicable to graver compositions. Ethics, heathen and _christian, and the Scriptures themselves, are in a great measure a satire on the weakness and iniquity of men; and some part of that satire is in verse too; nay, in the first ages, philosophy and poetry were the same thing wisdom wore no other dress, so that I hope these satires will be the more easily pardoned that misfortune by the severe. If they like not the fashion, let them take them by the weight; for some weight they have, or the author has failed in his aim. Nay, historians themselves may be considered as satirists, and satirists most severe; since such are most human actions, that to relate is to expose them.

It is somewhat surprising that none of the distinguished critics

from whom we have quoted, animadvert upon one marked feature of these satires, which must offend every person of refined education and religious culture: it is the grossness and vulgarity to which the author occasionally descends. In this respect the satires were better suited to the taste of the degenerate period in which they were written than to our own, which has been improved by the influences of a more spiritual and thorough Christianity than was then inculcated. They are too conformed to the style of compositions that sprung up under the corrupting auspices of the court of Charles II., and seem indeed to have been designed by our author to gratify most a class of people that were familiar with the loose moralities and indelicate vocabulary of a court: and hence the reading of the satires may, on the whole, with much profit be dispensed with, especially by persons of immature minds.

It is proper to say, not in justification of the author's introducing such expressions as we here censure, but in explanation of his being led into the use of them, that unfortunately he had sought and acquired a very familiar acquaintance with men of courtly habits and of courtly vices: that he was familiar with such men as Pope, and Swift, and others who indulged freely in such ideas and expressions in their published writings. And lest the censure here pronounced upon certain limited portions of these satires should prejudice any mind against the "Night Thoughts," it is proper to add that the former production was written some years before the latter; it was written before the author entered upon the sacred office, and before he had felt the salutary influence of deep affliction in causing him to chasten his mind and heart before the doctrines of the Cross. The "Night Thoughts" are of a very different order of composition from the satires, being entirely free from the taint of grossness and vulgarity which characterize some of the expressions and allusions which we have felt it our duty to expose, as found in the earlier production.

The following general observations on Dr. Young's poetry are from the pen of Dr. Johnson :—

"It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but without much accuracy of selection. When he lays hold of an illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, some

times 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 what is very ingenious, very subtile, 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 dust 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.' The parallel adverted to above, runs as follows:

"Pleasures are few, and fewer we enjoy ;
Pleasure, like quicksilver, is bright and coy;
We strive to grasp it with our utmost skill,
Still it eludes us, and it glitters still :
If seized at last, compute your mighty gains;
What is it, but rank poison in your veins ?"

"His conceits are sometimes quite valueless. In the 'Last Day,' he hopes to illustrate the re-assembling of the atoms that compose he human body at the 'trump of doom,' by the collection of bees nto 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 favorite: 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 of diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous suggestions of the present moment: yet I have reason to believe that when 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