EDWARD YOUNG, son of Edward Young, a fellow of Winchester College and rector of Upham, was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June, 1681. He received his early education on the foundation of Winchester College, and was afterwards transferred to New College, Oxford. In this university he obtained a Law Fellowship, and subsequently, in 1719, took the degree of Doctor of Civil Laws;-he also wrote poems at this time, and was distinguished for his Latin orations, but had not made himself eminently remarkable for the rigid morality which afterwards characterised his writings. Political connexions, as was usual in those days of party, soon wound themselves around him. He praised Addison, and was abused by Swift, who accused him of being a court pensioner. The truth of this charge is more than doubtful, since Young, shortly before the time to which it refers, had entered the Earl of Exeter's family as tutor to Lord Burleigh. After a year or two, however, it is certain that he resigned this occupation, at the pressing solicitations of the notorious Duke of Wharton, in favour of a dependance much less honourable. He now, for some years, lived upon town, and was understood to have had no small share in some of the actions which have associated the name of his noble patron with the "scorn and wonder of his days." The majority of his tragedies were written and produced during this period, and in the great success of the Revenge his reputation rose considerably. His public notoriety now threatened to remove him for ever from the grave and learned pursuits in which his life had begun. He adventured for a seat in the House of Commons, but, though supported by all the influence of the profligate Wharton, failed. He returned, in consequence, to his poetry, and vented it characteristically enough in the shape of satire. His "Universal Passion," keenly and powerfully written, was soon after given to the world; and was immediately acknowledged with all the attention and respect which were considered due to the holder of so sharp a pen. Young instantly, though now in his fiftieth year, entered into orders, was appointed chaplain to the king, and received a small living from his college. With his new profession his habits underwent a change so extreme as to defeat the purpose he had in view; for, though from this to the close of his life he would seem to have had the constant expectation of a bishopric, the distributors of such preferment took advantage of his professed love of retirement, and his fervent assertions of the vanity of ambitious desire, to bestow their mitres elsewhere. Young's disappointment in this respect was embittered by domestic calamities. In 1731 he had married a young widow, Lady Elizabeth Lee, the daughter of the Earl of Lichfield; and the issue of the marriage was a son, whose after follies "cast a gloom over the evening of his father's days." Nor was this Young's only cause of sorrow. His wife, and two of the children of his first marriage, to whom he was strongly attached, were successively removed from him by death.

"Insatiate archer! could not one suffice!

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain!"

The victim of many sorrows and disappointments, Dr. Young, after publishing in a series of books his famous Night Thoughts, died in April 1765, having lived to his eighty-fourth year upon the small living granted him by his College.

Dr. Young was a man of great general powers of mind. He had an admirable command of language, and may stand in the first rank of gloomy satirists. In also admitting that in his Night Thoughts are to be found numerous passages of lofty and sustained reflection, it should be added that that work, neither in plan nor in execution, deserves the reputation it has acquired. It was not worthy of Young, after the life he had lived, to sit down near its close in a fit of resentful melancholy, and strive to terrify the world with the bugbears of religious horror. This is surely not what a true poet would have done, whose duty and whose pride it is to make poetry shed light and life upon man, not darkness and death, and who never sets himself a rigid task, or shuts himself up in a world of personal and morbid feeling, but goes round worlds universal, actual, infinite, and unseen, in visions of hope and beauty. The real portion of Dr. Young's powers found vent, as we have intimated, in the satirical form, and the general style of his epistles is remarkably terse and epigrammatic. His tragedy of the Revenge has kept possession of the stage; but its character of Zanga has been justly thought a vulgar caricature of Iago.

PROCRASTINATION is the thief of time; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene. If not so frequent, would not this be strange? That 'tis so frequent, this is stranger still. Of man's miraculous mistakes, this bears The palm, "That all men are about to live," For ever on the brink of being born. All pay themselves the compliment to think They one day shall not drivel: and their pride On this reversion takes up ready praise;

At least, their own; their future selves applaud;
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodg'd in their own hands is folly's vails;
That lodg'd in fate's, to wisdom they consign;
The thing they can't but purpose, they postpone;
'Tis not in folly, not to scorn a fool;

And scarce in human wisdom, to do more.
All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage; when young, indeed,
In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same.

And why? Because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal, but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread; But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,

Soon close; where, past the shaft, no trace is found.

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Retire; the world shut out;-thy thoughts call home;— Imagination's airy wing repress ;-

Lock up thy senses;-let no passion stir;-
Wake all to reason ;-let her reign alone;
Then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth
Of Nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire,
As I have done; and shall inquire no more.
In Nature's channel, thus the questions run:—

"What am I? and from whence?—I nothing know
But that I am; and, since I am, conclude
Something eternal: had there e'er been nought,
Nought still had been; eternal there must be.-
But what eternal?-Why not human race?
And Adam's ancestors without an end?-
That's hard to be conceiv'd, since every link
Of that long-chain'd succession is so frail.
Can every part depend, and not the whole?
Yet grant it true; new difficulties rise;
I'm still quite out at sea; nor see the shore.

Whence Earth, and these bright orbs?- Eternal too?
Grant matter was eternal; still these orbs

Would want some other father;-much design
Is seen in all their motions, all their makes;
Design implies intelligence, and art;

That can't be from themselves-or man: that art
Man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow?
And nothing greater yet allow'd than man.—
Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain,
Shot through vast masses of enormous weight?
Who bid brute matter's restive lump assume
Such various forms, and gave it wings to fly?
Has matter innate motion? then each atom,
Asserting its indisputable right

To dance, would form an universe of dust:

Has matter none? Then whence these glorious forms
And boundless flights, from shapeless, and repos'd?
Has matter more than motion? has it thought,
Judgment, and genius? is it deeply learn'd
In mathematics? Has it fram'd such laws,
Which but to guess, a Newton made immortal?
If so, how each sage atom laughs at me,
Who think a clod inferior to a man!

If art, to form; and counsel, to conduct;
And that with greater far than human skill,
Resides not in each block;-a Godhead reigns.

Our dying friends come o'er us like a cloud,
To damp our brainless ardours; and abate
That glare of life which often blinds the wise.
Our dying friends are pioneers, to smooth
Our rugged pass to death; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
Cross our obstructed way; and, thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from every storm.
Each friend by fate snatch'd from us, is a plume
Pluck'd from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aërial heights,
And, dampt with omen of our own decease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Just skim earth's surface, ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust,

And save the world a nuisance. Smitten friends
Are angels sent on errands full of love;

For us they languish, and for us they die:
And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?
Ungrateful, shall we grieve their hovering shades,
Which wait the revolution in our hearts?
Shall we disdain their silent, soft address;
Their posthumous advice, and pious prayer?
Senseless, as herds that graze their hallow'd graves,
Tread under foot their agonies and groans;
Frustrate their anguish, and destroy their deaths?

"Is virtue, then, and piety the same?"
No; piety is more; 'tis virtue's source;
Mother of every worth, as that of joy.
Men of the world this doctrine ill digest:
They smile at piety; yet boast aloud
Good-will to men; nor know they strive to part
What nature joins; and thus confute themselves.
With piety begins all good on earth;
"Tis the first-born of rationality.

Conscience, her first law broken, wounded lies;
Enfeebled, lifeless, impotent to good;

A feign'd affection bounds her utmost power.
Some we can't love, but for the Almighty's sake;
A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man;
Some sinister intent taints all he does;
And, in his kindest actions, he's unkind.
On piety, humanity is built;

And on humanity, much happiness;
And yet still more on piety itself.

A soul in commerce with her God is heaven;
Feels not the tumults and the shocks of life;
The whirls of passions, and the strokes of heart. ·
A Deity believ'd, is joy begun;

A Deity ador'd, is joy advanc'd;

A Deity belov'd, is joy matur'd.

Each branch of piety delight inspires;

Faith builds a bridge from this world to the next, O'er death's dark gulf, and all its horror hides;

Praise, the sweet exhalation of our joy,

That joy exalts, and makes it sweeter still;
Prayer ardent opens heaven, lets down a stream
Of glory on the consecrated hour

Of man, in audience with the Deity.