tensions to pertinacity and reserve."

Mr. Langton, however, who was also a frequent visitor of Young's,
informed Boswell--

"That there was an air of benevolence in his manner; but that he
could obtain from him less information than he had hoped to receive
from one who had lived so much in intercourse with the brightest men
of what had been called the Augustan age of England; and that he
showed a degree of eager curiosity concerning the common occurrences
that were then passing, which appeared somewhat remarkable in a man
of such intellectual stores, of such an advanced age, and who had
retired from life with declared disappointment in his expectations."

The same substance, we know, will exhibit different qualities under
different tests; and, after all, imperfect reports of individual
impressions, whether immediate or traditional, are a very frail basis on
which to build our opinion of a man. One's character may be very
indifferently mirrored in the mind of the most intimate neighbor; it all
depends on the quality of that gentleman's reflecting surface.

But, discarding any inferences from such uncertain evidence, the outline
of Young's character is too distinctly traceable in the well-attested
facts of his life, and yet more in the self-betrayal that runs through
all his works, for us to fear that our general estimate of him may be
false. For, while no poet seems less easy and spontaneous than Young, no
poet discloses himself more completely. Men's minds have no hiding-place
out of themselves--their affectations do but betray another phase of
their nature. And if, in the present view of Young, we seem to be more
intent on laying bare unfavorable facts than on shrouding them in
"charitable speeches," it is not because we have any irreverential
pleasure in turning men's characters "the seamy side without," but
because we see no great advantage in considering a man as he was _not_.
Young's biographers and critics have usually set out from the position
that he was a great religious teacher, and that his poetry is morally
sublime; and they have toned down his failings into harmony with their
conception of the divine and the poet. For our own part, we set out from
precisely the opposite conviction--namely, that the religious and moral
spirit of Young's poetry is low and false, and we think it of some
importance to show that the "Night Thoughts" are the reflex of the mind
in which the