'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,
Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;
Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,
And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,
Lest still some intervening chance should rise,
Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,
Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,
And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'
His next poem, The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, was suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a gloomy hall:
'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes—
Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise
An empire lost; I fling away the crown;
Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;
But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,
Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?
Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand
In full possession of thy snowy hand!
And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye
The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!
Till rapture reason happily destroys,
And my soul wanders through immortal joys!
Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?
I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'
Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is of interest to the student of literature, since in Young's day it passed current for poetry. But in accepting his claims as a poet the faith of the age must have been often strained.
Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and cared nothing for literature, had by some strange chance awarded to Young a pension of £200 a-year, whereupon in a piece called The Instalment, addressed to Sir Robert, Britain is called upon to behold
'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'
and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:
'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee
Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,
What slender worth forbids us to despair:
Be this thy partial smile from censure free,
'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'
Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior power, and in a less racy diction, Young performed the vain task of paraphrasing part of the Book of Job, one of the noblest poems the world possesses, and translated in our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for dignity and simplicity.
In 1719 his Busiris was performed. The Revenge, a better known tragedy, written on the French model, followed in 1721, and kept the stage for some time. Seven years later The Brothers, his third and last tragedy, was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies, which are full of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic power. The Revenge, in which Zanga acts the part of an Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so, despite much rant and fustian, has Busiris. Plenty of blood is shed, of course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own hands. Tragedy is supposed to exercise an elevating influence, but to counteract this happy result, Busiris and The Revenge are followed by indecent epilogues, in which the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays may have excited. For The Brothers Young wrote his own epilogue. It is decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for satire than for the drama, and The Universal Passion, which consists of seven satires published in a collected form in 1728, brought him reputation and money. The poet Crabbe was never more surprised in his life than when John Murray (the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him £3,000 for the copyright of his poems; Young received the same sum for work immeasurably inferior in value, and in a less legitimate way. Two thousand pounds, it is stated, was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who said it was the best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth £4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a satirist. He is more generous and humane, and has none of the venomous attacks on living persons by which Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision, the subtle wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the couplets of Pope so memorable. The Dunciad, the Moral Essays, and the Imitations are read by all lovers of literature, but The Universal Passion is forgotten. Of the six satires, the two on women are the most spirited, and may be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of that day are exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally with a Pope-like terseness. Take the following, for example: