“My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee,
Refresh the dry remains of poesy.”
If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must at least be confessed he was a grateful one.
The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with “Ocean, an Ode.” The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be “invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the service of their country”—a plan which humanity must lament that policy has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution. Prefixed to the original publication were an “Ode to the King, Pater Patriæ,” and an “Essay on Lyric Poetry.” It is but justice to confess that he preserved neither of them; and that the Ode itself, which in the first edition, and in the last, consists of seventy-three stanzas, in the author’s own edition is reduced to forty-nine. Among the omitted passages is a “Wish,” that concluded the poem, which few would have suspected Young of forming; and of which few, after having formed it, would confess something like their shame by suppression. It stood originally so high in the author’s opinion, that he entitled the poem, “Ocean, an Ode. Concluding with a Wish.” This wish consists of thirteen stanzas. The first runs thus:—
“O may I steal
Along the vale
Of humble life, secure from foes!
My friend sincere,
My judgment clear,
And gentle business my repose!”
The three last stanzas are not more remarkable for just rhymes; but, altogether, they will make rather a curious page in the life of Young:—
“Prophetic schemes,
And golden dreams,
May I, unsanguine, cast away!
Have what I have,
And live, not leave,
Enamoured of the present day!“My hours my own!
My faults unknown!
My chief revenue in content!
Then leave one beam
Of honest fame!
And scorn the laboured monument!“Unhurt my urn
Till that great TURN
When mighty Nature’s self shall die,
Time cease to glide,
With human pride,
Sunk in the ocean of eternity!”
It is whimsical that he, who was soon to bid adieu to rhyme, should fix upon a measure in which rhyme abounds even to satiety. Of this he said, in his “Essay on Lyric Poetry,” prefixed to the poem—“For the more harmony likewise I chose the frequent return of rhyme, which laid me under great difficulties. But difficulties overcome give grace and pleasure. Nor can I account for the pleasure of rhyme in general (of which the moderns are too fond) but from this truth.” Yet the moderns surely deserve not much censure for their fondness of what, by their own confession, affords pleasure, and abounds in harmony. The next paragraph in his Essay did not occur to him when he talked of “that great turn” in the stanza just quoted. “But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is overcome. That is, he must make rhyme consistent with as perfect sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly free from that shackle.” Another part of this Essay will convict the following stanza of what every reader will discover in it “involuntary burlesque:—
“The northern blast,
The shattered mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock,
The breaking spout,
The stars gone out,
The boiling strait, the monster’s shock.”
But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes if all their productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?
If Young be not a lyric poet, he is at least a critic in that sort of poetry; and, if his lyric poetry can be proved bad, it was first proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.