“and obedient servant,
“E. YOUNG.”
Nay, even after Pope’s death, he says, in Night Seven,
Pope, who couldst make immortals, art thou dead?
Either the Essay, then, was dedicated to a patron, who disapproved its doctrine, which I have been told by the author was not the case; or Young appears, in his old age, to have bartered for a dedication, an opinion entertained of his friend through all that part of life when he must have been best able to form opinions.
From this account of Young, two or three short passages, which stand almost together in Night Four, should not be excluded. They afford a picture by his own hand, from the study of which my readers may choose to form their own opinion of the features of his mind, and the complexion of his life:
Ah me! the dire effect
Of loit’ring here, of death defrauded long;
Of old so gracious (and let that suffice)
My very master knows me not.
I’ve been so long remember’d, I’m forgot.
When in his courtiers’ ears I pour my plaint,
They drink it as the nectar of the great;
And squeeze my hand, and beg me come to-morrow.
Twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,
Court-favour, yet untaken, I besiege.
If this song lives, posterity shall know
One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,
Who thought e’en gold might come a day too late;
Nor on his subtle deathbed plann’d his scheme
For future vacancies in church or state.
Deduct from the writer’s age “twice told the period spent on stubborn Troy,” and you will still leave him more than forty when he sat down to the miserable siege of court-favour. He has before told us,
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence of what the General thought his “deathbed.”