No poet affected to deplore the decease of Anne with such profundity of jingling grief as Young. He had not then achieved a name, and he was eagerly desirous to build up a fortune. His threnodia on the death of Queen Anne is a fine piece of measured maudlin; but the author appears to have bethought himself, before he had expended half his stock of sorrows, that there would be more profit in welcoming a living than bewailing a defunct monarch. Accordingly, wiping up his tears, and arraying his face in the blandest of smiles, he addressed himself to the double task of recording the reception of George and registering his merits. He first, however, apologetically states, as his warrant for turning from weeping for Anne to cheering for George, that all the sorrow in the world cannot reverse doom, that groans cannot ‘unlock th’ inexorable tomb’; that a fond indulgence of woe is sad folly, for, from such a course, he exclaims, with a fine eye to a poet’s profit—
What fruit can rise or what advantage flow!
So, turning his face from the tomb of Anne to the throne of George, he grandiosely waves his hat, and thus he sings:—
Welcome great stranger to Britannia’s throne!
Nor let thy country think thee all her own.
Of thy delay how oft did we complain!
Our hope reach’d out and met thee on the main.
With pray’r we smooth the billows for thy feet,
With ardent wishes fill thy swelling sheet;
And when thy foot took place on Albion’s shore,