Of his wife, he was deprived in 1741. Lady Elizabeth had lost, after her marriage with Young, an amiable daughter, by her former husband, just after she was married to Mr. Temple, son of lord Palmerston. Mr. Temple did not long remain after his wife, though he was married a second time to a daughter of sir John Barnard, whose son is the present peer. Mr. and Mrs. Temple have generally been considered as Philander and Narcissa. From the great friendship which constantly subsisted between Mr. Temple and Young, as well as from other circumstances, it is probable that the poet had both him and Mrs. Temple in view for these characters; though, at the same time, some passages respecting Philander do not appear to suit either Mr. Temple or any other person with whom Young was known to be connected or acquainted, while all the circumstances relating to Narcissa have been constantly found applicable to Young’s daughter-in-law.
At what short intervals the poet tells us he was wounded by the deaths of the three persons particularly lamented, none that has read the Night Thoughts (and who has not read them?) needs to be informed.
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.
Yet how is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Temple and lady Elizabeth Young could be these three victims, over whom Young has hitherto been pitied for having to pour the Midnight Sorrows of his religious poetry; Mrs. Temple died in 1736; Mr. Temple four years afterwards, in 1740; and the poet’s wife seven months after Mr. Temple, in 1741. How could the insatiate archer thrice slay his peace, in these three persons, “ere thrice the moon had fill’d her horn?”
But, in the short preface to the Complaint, he seriously tells us, “that the occasion of this poem was real, not fictitious; and that the facts mentioned did naturally pour these moral reflections on the thought of the writer.” It is probable, therefore, that in these three contradictory lines, the poet complains more than the father-in-law, the friend, or the widower.
Whatever names belong to these facts, or, if the names be those generally supposed, whatever heightening a poet’s sorrow may have given the facts; to the sorrow Young felt from them, religion and morality are indebted for the Night Thoughts. There is a pleasure sure in sadness which mourners only know!
Of these poems, the two or three first have been perused, perhaps more eagerly and more frequently than the rest. When he got as far as the fourth or fifth, his original motive for taking up the pen was answered; his grief was naturally either diminished or exhausted. We still find the same pious poet; but we hear less of Philander and Narcissa, and less of the mourner whom he loved to pity.
Mrs. Temple died of a consumption at Lyons, in her way to Nice, the year after her marriage; that is, when poetry relates the fact, “in her bridal hour.” It is more than poetically true, that Young accompanied her to the Continent:
I flew, I snatch’d her from the rigid north, And bore her nearer to the sun.
But in vain. Her funeral was attended with the difficulties painted in such animated colours in Night the Third. After her death, the remainder of the party passed the ensuing winter at Nice.