Age.

Zeal

}

These, madam, are the proper points of consideration in the person that humbly hopes his Majesty’s favor.

“As to Abilities, all I can presume to say is, I have done the best I could to improve them.

“As to Good manners, I desire no favor, if any just objection lies against them.

“As for Service, I have been near seven years in his Majesty’s and never omitted any duty in it, which few can say.

“As for Age, I am turned of fifty.

“As for Want, I have no manner of preferment.

“As for Sufferings, I have lost £300 per ann. by being in his Majesty’s service; as I have shown in a Representation which his Majesty has been so good as to read and consider.

“As for Zeal, I have written nothing without showing my duty to their Majesties, and some pieces are dedicated to them.

“This, madam, is the short and true state of my case. They that make their court to the ministers, and not their Majesties, succeed better. If my case deserves some consideration, and you can serve me in it, I humbly hope and believe you will: I shall, therefore, trouble you no farther; but beg leave to subscribe myself, with truest respect and gratitude,

“Yours, etc.,
Edward Young.

“P.S. I have some hope that my Lord Townshend is my friend; if therefore soon, and before he leaves the court, you had an opportunity of mentioning me, with that favor you have been so good to show, I think it would not fail of success; and, if not, I shall owe you more than any.”—“Suffolk Letters,” vol. i. p. 285.

Young’s wife died in 1741, leaving him one son, born in 1733. That he had attached himself strongly to her two daughters by her former marriage, there is better evidence in the report, mentioned by Mrs. Montagu, of his practical kindness and liberality to the younger, than in his lamentations over the elder as the “Narcissa” of the “Night Thoughts.” “Narcissa” had died in 1735, shortly after marriage to Mr. Temple, the son of Lord Palmerston; and Mr. Temple himself, after a second marriage, died in 1740, a year before Lady Elizabeth Young. These, then, are the three deaths supposed to have inspired “The Complaint,” which forms the three first books of the “Night Thoughts:”

“Insatiate archer, could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice: and thrice my peace was slain:
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill’d her horn.”

Since we find Young departing from the truth of dates, in order to heighten the effect of his calamity, or at least of his climax, we need not be surprised that he allowed his imagination great freedom in other matters besides chronology, and that the character of “Philander” can, by no process, be made to fit Mr. Temple. The supposition that the much-lectured “Lorenzo” of the “Night Thoughts” was Young’s own son is hardly rendered more absurd by the fact that the poem was written when that son was a boy, than by the obvious artificiality of the characters Young introduces as targets for his arguments and rebukes. Among all the trivial efforts of conjectured criticism, there can hardly be one more futile than the attempts to discover the original of those pitiable lay-figures, the “Lorenzos” and “Altamonts” of Young’s didactic prose and poetry. His muse never stood face to face with a genuine

living human being; she would have been as much startled by such an encounter as a necromancer whose incantations and blue fire had actually conjured up a demon.

The “Night Thoughts” appeared between 1741 and 1745. Although he declares in them that he has chosen God for his “patron” henceforth, this is not at all to the prejudice of some half dozen lords, duchesses, and right honorables who have the privilege of sharing finely-turned compliments with their co-patron. The line which closed the Second Night in the earlier editions—

“Wits spare not Heaven, O Wilmington!—nor thee”—