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.'

"After all, Tindall and the censurers of Young may be reconcileable. 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."

Our biographer allows that some of Dr. Young's works, particularly his dedications, abound with flattery; but he shows how the author was ashamed of, and suppressed many of them; after which, he asks, "Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners?" Mr. C., little dreaming at the time that he himself should ever be in exactly the same predicament, seems to cast many doubts on the assertion conveyed by Swift in his " Rhapsody," that his author had a pension from the court!

We are told that while Young was in Ireland, most probably in the suite of the Duke of Wharton, the Dean one afternoon pointed out a noble elm, which in its uppermost branches was much withered and decayed, to which pointing, he said to him, "I shall be like that tree, I shall die at top!"

"It will surprise you," adds he, addressing himself to Dr. Johnson, "to see me cite second of Atkins, case 136, Ailes 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 of 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, &c.' The other was dated the 10th of July, 1722.”

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Mr. Herbert Croft records, that Voltaire having ridiculed Milton's allegory of Sin and Death, in the company of his author, (most probably at the celebrated Bub Doddington's,) the following extempore epigram was the punishment to which this celebrated Frenchman exposed himself on this occasion:

"You are so witty, profligate, and thin,

At once we think thee, Milton, Death, and Sin!

He also seems to prove that the following celebrated lines abound with the poetica licentia, as Lady Elizabeth Young, her daughter and husband, are the persons supposed to be alluded to in the Night Thoughts; all of whom died at far more distant periods:

"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.”

We are told soon after this, that "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."

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After stating, that it is unfair to bring the gloominess of 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, he remarks, that his parish was indebted to his good humour for an assembly and a bowling-green.

66 Whether you think with me, I know not," adds he; but "the favourite maxim, 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 fortune, the reputation of the living. Yet censure is not heard beneath the tomb any more than

"De mortuis nil nisi verum - De vivis nil nisi bonum, would

approach much nearer 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 pass now for a man of sorrow, or for a 'fellow of infinite jest.' To this savour must come the whole family of Yorick. His immortal part, wherever that now dwells, is still less solicitous on that head."

Our author next enters on the task of proving, that the character of Lorenzo was not pourtrayed for Dr. Young's own son; and, by repeated references to the text, he establishes this beyond a possibility of doubt. Dates, too, are called in by way of evidence, with a force and effect that put doubt and suspicion to silence. "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 (when the poem was commenced), this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this youth, to whose education vice had for some time 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 reputations of the living and of the dead."

66

Mr. Croft, while on this subject, hazards the following strange assertion : Young was a poet; poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the best parents; fancy and imagination," adds he, "seldom deign to stoop from their heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties. Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets."

Notwithstanding all this, we now distinctly learn, that Young, who died at the age of eighty-four, was actually a bad father, or had a bad son for his offspring!

It ought not to be here forgotten, that Dr. Johnson never parted with Mr. Croft, during the time he was collecting materials for this life, without recurring to the adventure already

hinted at, which occurred at All Souls, and exclaiming,"Don't forget that rascal Tindall, Sir! Be sure to hang up the atheist !"

Soon after this period, Mr. Croft, as has been already mentioned, entertained serious thoughts of quitting the law, and entering into holy orders. Had he persevered, and been fortunate, the highest honours of the bar were now open to his ambition; and the road to the Woolsack and the Chancery bench was both straighter and shorter, perhaps, than that to Canterbury and Lambeth. However, there is no arguing against prepossessions; more especially, when an individual thinks he、 has a vocation for any particular calling; and the subject of this memoir, after having thrown away the labours of many years, and spent a considerable sum of money, at length discovered, that his taste had always been for the church, rather than the bar.

He accordingly disposed of his chambers in Lincoln's-Inn, and repaired once more to Oxford. While there, in the Autumn of 1782, he wrote a postscript to the life of Young, in which he tells Dr. Johnson," how much he is honoured and bettered by his friendship; and if I do credit to the church," adds he, “after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to give in exchange the bar, though not at as late a period as Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure, to my having had the happiness of calling the author of The Rambler' my friend.

"H. C."

To have been the coadjutor of Dr. Johnson, was creditable of itself; and, to have obtained the esteem of that great man, who could not be persuaded to alter any thing but a single sentence bestowed in his own praise, will be deemed by most, a rare instance of felicity on the part of a person then wholly unknown. And yet, after all, this life abounds with doubt, ambiguity, and indecision. A great degree of hesitation is used, both in respect to the author of the Night Thoughts and his son; and the biographer seems to think, like his friend, in re

6

spect to Addison, "that it is proper rather to say nothing that is false, than all that is true."

So early as 1775, Mr. Croft had commenced his literary career by means of a small volume, entitled "A Brother's Advice to his Sisters." His "Love and Madness," published about 1780, containing the story of the unfortunate Miss Ray, who was shot by her lover, the Reverend Mr. Hackman, in a series of letters*, produced considerable sensation in the public mind; and occasioned great enquiry after the anonymous author.

As he was a man of indefatigable industry, after the demise of our great Lexicographer, Mr. Croft conceived the idea of publishing an improved edition of Johnson's Dictionary.† Proposals were actually published in 1792, but the list of subscribers was not sufficiently encouraging to hazard so ponderous and expensive an undertaking. This must have operated as a great discouragement to Mr. Croft's literary pursuits for he had purchased a number of books, &c. and actually studied the northern languages, with an express view to this undertaking.

Meanwhile, his cousin, Sir John, the fourth Baronet, having died in 1797, the title devolved on the subject of this memoir; but as it was unaccompanied with the ancient patrimony, it proved no great subject of gratulation. At this time too he

*These letters are given as a correspondence supposed to have passed between Miss Ray, mistress to the Earl of Sandwich, and the unfortunate Mr. Hackman, who was deeply smitten with her charms; and by whom she was assassinated. They are very well written, and contain a very pathetic and interesting account of the story of Chatterton; indeed, we are of opinion, that this author is the only one who has done real justice to Chatterton's memory.

"Mr. Hackman figures as the historian of Chatterton, and the whole, though borrowed personages' (as the late Lord Orford expresses it), is a most ingenious fiction." ተ "A new edition of Johnson's Dictionary, corrected, without the smallest omission; considerably improved, and enlarged with more than twenty thousand words; illustrated by examples from the books quoted by Dr. Johnson, and from others of the best authority in our own, and former times."—Advert.

It appears from the proposals circulated on this occasion, that the subscription was to be 12 guineas: half to be paid at the time of subscribing, and half on the delivery of the third volume. This splendid design was rendered abortive for want of management, as he could not secure a sufficient number of subscribers, after long and ineffectual attempts even to secure an indemnification for the expences of paper and printing; without any remuneration for his own labours!