Johnson's Lives of the Poets Volume Ii Part 9

That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet the surest guide to his new profession left him little doubt whether poetry was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long indeed after he took orders he published in prose (1728) "A True Estimate of Human Life," dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin quotations with which it abounds, to the Queen; and a sermon preached before the House of Commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of King Charles, ent.i.tled, "An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Government." But the "Second Course," the counterpart of his "Estimate," without which it cannot be called "A True Estimate," though in 1728 it was announced as "soon to be published," never appeared, and his old friends the Muses were not forgotten. In 1730 he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world "Imperium Pelagi: a Naval Lyric, written in imitation of Pindar's Spirit, occasioned by his Majesty's return from Hanover, September, 1729, and the succeeding peace." It is inscribed to the Duke of Chandos.

In the Preface we are told that the Ode is the most spirited kind of poetry, and that the Pindaric is the most spirited kind of Ode. "This I speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour at my own very great peril.

But truth has an eternal t.i.tle to our confession, though we are sure to suffer by it." Behold, again, the fairest of poets. Young's "Imperium Pelagi" was ridiculed in Fielding's "Tom Thumb;" but let us not forget that it was one of his pieces which the author of the "Night Thoughts"

deliberately refused to own. Not long after this Pindaric attempt he published two Epistles to Pope, "Concerning the Authors of the Age,"

1730. Of these poems one occasion seems to have been an apprehension lest, from the liveliness of his satires, he should not be deemed sufficiently serious for promotion in the Church.

In July, 1730, he was presented by his College to the Rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfords.h.i.+re. In May, 1731, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of Colonel Lee. His connection with this lady arose from his father's acquaintance, already mentioned, with Lady Anne Wharton, who was co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee of Ditchley in Oxfords.h.i.+re. Poetry had lately been taught by Addison to aspire to the arms of n.o.bility, though not with extraordinary happiness. We may naturally conclude that Young now gave himself up in some measure to the comforts of his new connection, and to the expectations of that preferment which he thought due to his poetical talents, or, at least, to the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.

The next production of his muse was "The Sea-piece," in two odes.

Young enjoys the credit of what is called an "Extempore Epigram on Voltaire," who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of "Sin and Death:"

"You are so witty, profligate and thin, At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin."

From the following pa.s.sage in the poetical dedication of his "Sea-piece"

to Voltaire it seems that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved any reproof), was something longer than a distich, and something more gentle than the distich just quoted.

"No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.

On DORSET Downs, when Milton's page, With Sin and Death provoked thy rage, Thy rage provoked who soothed with GENTLE rhymes?"

By "Dorset Downs" he probably meant Mr. Dodington's seat. In Pitt's Poems is "An Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsets.h.i.+re, on the Review at Sarum, 1722."

"While with your Dodington retired you sit, Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit," etc.

Thomson, in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat of the Muses,

"Where, in the secret bower and winding walk, For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay."

The praises Thomson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the second,

"Who n.o.bly durst, in rhyme-unfettered verse, With British freedom sing the British song,"

added to Thomson's example and success, might perhaps induce Young, as we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.

In 1734 he published "The Foreign Address, or the best Argument for Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.

Written in the Character of a Sailor." It is not to be found in the author's four volumes. He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and perhaps at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few of Young's readers will regret:

"My sh.e.l.l, which Clio gave, which KINGS APPLAUD, Which Europe's bleeding genius called abroad, Adieu!"

In a species of poetry altogether his own he next tried his skill, and succeeded.

Of his wife he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of Lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time to a daughter of Sir John Barnard's, whose son is the present peer.

Mr. and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and Narcissa. From the great friends.h.i.+p which constantly subsisted between Mr. Temple and Young, as well as from other circ.u.mstances, it is probable that the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these characters; though, at the same time, some pa.s.sages respecting Philander do not appear to suit either Mr. Temple or any other person with whom Young was known to be connected or acquainted, while all the circ.u.mstances relating to Narcissa have been constantly found applicable to Young's daughter-in-law. At what short intervals the poet tells us he was wounded by the deaths of the three persons particularly lamented, none that has read the "Night Thoughts" (and who has not read them?) needs to be informed.

"Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain; And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn."

Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and Lady Elizabeth Young could be these three victims, over whom Young has. .h.i.therto been pitied for having to pour the "Midnight Sorrows" of his religious poetry? Mrs.

Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the poet's wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, "ere thrice the moon had filled her horn." But in the short preface to "The Complaint" he seriously tells us, "that the occasion of this poem was real, not fict.i.tious, and that the facts mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of the writer." It is probable, therefore, that in these three contradictory lines the poet complains more than the father-in-law, the friend, or the widower. Whatever names belong to these facts, or if the names be those generally supposed, whatever heightening a poet's sorrow may have given the facts; to the sorrow Young felt from them religion and morality are indebted for the "Night Thoughts." There is a pleasure sure in sadness which mourners only know! Of these poems the two or three first have been perused perhaps more eagerly and more frequently than the rest. When he got as far as the fourth or fifth his original motive for taking up the pen was answered; his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted.

We still find the same pious poet, but we hear less of Philander and Narcissa, and less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.

Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, on her way to Nice, the year after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, "in her bridal hour." It is more than poetically true that Young accompanied her to the Continent:

"I flew, I s.n.a.t.c.hed her from the rigid North, And bore her nearer to the sun."

But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in such animated colours in "Night the Third." After her death the remainder of the party pa.s.sed the ensuing winter at Nice. The poet seems perhaps in these compositions to dwell with more melancholy on the death of Philander and Narcissa than of his wife. But it is only for this reason. He who runs and reads may remember that in the "Night Thoughts"

Philander and Narcissa are often mentioned and often lamented. To recollect lamentations over the author's wife the memory must have been charged with distinct pa.s.sages. This lady brought him one child, Frederick, now living, to whom the Prince of Wales was G.o.dfather.

That domestic grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these ornaments to our language it is impossible to deny. Nor would it be common hardiness to contend that worldly discontent had no hand in these joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means sure that, at any rate, we should not have had something of the same colour from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires. In so long a life causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have occurred. It is not clear to me that his Muse was not sitting upon the watch for the first which happened. "Night Thoughts" were not uncommon to her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his "Last Day," almost his earliest poem, he calls her "The Melancholy Maid,"

"whom dismal scenes delight, Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night."

In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he says:

"Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night To sacred thought may forcibly invite.

Oh! how divine to tread the milky way, To the bright palace of Eternal Day!"

When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have sent him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp, and the poet is reported to have used it. What he calls "The TRUE Estimate of Human Life," which has already been mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of the tapestry, and being asked why he did not show the right, he is said to have replied that he could not. By others it has been told me that this was finished, but that, before there existed any copy, it was torn in pieces by a lady's monkey. Still, is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the "Night Thoughts" to prove the gloominess of Young, and to show that his genius, like the genius of Swift, was in some measure the sullen inspiration of discontent? From them who answer in the affirmative it should not be concealed that, though "Invisibilia non decipiunt" appeared upon a deception in Young's grounds, and "Ambulantes in horto audierunt vocem Dei" on a building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good humour of the author of the "Night Thoughts" for an a.s.sembly and a bowling green.

Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead, who, if they cannot defend themselves, are at least ignorant of his abuse, will not hesitate by the most wanton calumny to destroy the quiet, the reputation, the fortune of the living. Yet censure is not heard beneath the tomb, any more than praise. "De mortuis nil nisi verum--De vivis nil nisi bonum" would approach much nearer to good sense. After all, the few handfuls of remaining dust which once composed the body of the author of the "Night Thoughts" feel not much concern whether Young pa.s.s now for a man of sorrow or for "a fellow of infinite jest." To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick. His immortal part, wherever that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this head.

But to a son of worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence whether contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that his debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening of his father's days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character completely detestable, and succeeded at last in bringing his "grey hairs with sorrow to the grave." The humanity of the world, little satisfied with inventing perhaps a melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next to invent an argument in support of their invention, and chooses that Lorenzo should be Young's own son. "The Biographia," and every account of Young, pretty roundly a.s.sert this to be the fact; of the absolute impossibility of which, the "Biographia" itself, in particular dates, contains undeniable evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will hereafter peruse the "Night Thoughts"

with less satisfaction; who will wish they had still been deceived; who will quarrel with me for discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo ever yet disgraced human nature or broke a father's heart. Yet would these admirers of the sublime and terrible be offended should you set them down for cruel and for savage? Of this report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.

From the first line to the last of the "Night Thoughts" no one expression can be discovered which betrays anything like the father.

In the "Second Night" I find an expression which betrays something else--that Lorenzo was his friend; one, it is possible, of his former companions; one of the Duke of Wharton's set. The poet styles him "gay friend;" an appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his son. But let us see how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the sight of some of whose features the artist himself must have turned away with horror.

A subject more shocking, if his only child really sat to him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told of which Young composed a short poem of fourteen lines in the early part of his life, which he did not think deserved to be republished. In the "First Night"

the address to the poet's supposed son is:--

"Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee."

In the "Fifth Night:"--

"And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?"

Is this a picture of the son of the Rector of Welwyn? "Eighth Night:"--

"In foreign realms (for thou hast travelled far)"--

which even now does not apply to his son. In "Night Five:"--

"So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate, Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes, And died to give him, orphaned in his birth!"

At the beginning of the "Fifth Night" we find:--

"Lorenzo, to recriminate is just, I grant the man is vain who writes for praise."

But, to cut short all inquiry; if any one of these pa.s.sages, if any pa.s.sage in the poems, be applicable, my friend shall pa.s.s for Lorenzo.

The son of the author of the "Night Thoughts" was not old enough, when they were written, to recriminate or to be a father. The "Night Thoughts" were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The first "Nights" appear, in the books of the Company of Stationers, as the property of Robert Dodsley, in 1742. The Preface to "Night Seven" is dated July 7th, 1744. The marriage, in consequence of which the supposed Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till June, 1733. In 1741, this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father to whose education Vice had for some years put the last hand, was only eight years old. An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to contradiction, so impossible to be true, who could propagate? Thus easily are blasted the reputation of the living and of the dead. "Who, then, was Lorenzo?" exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If we cannot be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely terrible, was he not his nephew, his cousin? These are questions which I do not pretend to answer. For the sake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo to have been only the creation of the poet's fancy: like the Quintus of Anti Lucretius, "quo nomine," says Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige."

That this was the case many expressions in the "Night Thoughts" would seem to prove, did not a pa.s.sage in "Night Eight" appear to show that he had somebody in his eye for the groundwork at least of the painting.