n his lightest satire, one might imagine that he
had set himself to work out the problem, how much antithesis might be got
out of a given subject. And there he completely succeeds. His neatest
portraits are all wrought on this plan. "Narcissus," for example, who

"Omits no duty; nor can Envy say
He miss'd, these many years, the Church or Play:
He makes no noise in Parliament, 'tis true;
But pays his debts, and visit when 'tis due;
His character and gloves are ever clean,
And then he can out-bow the bowing Dean;
A smile eternal on his lip he wears,
Which equally the wise and worthless shares.
In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief,
Patient of idleness beyond belief,
Most charitably lends the town his face
For ornament in every public place;
As sure as cards he to th' assembly comes,
And is the furniture of drawing-rooms:
When Ombre calls, his hand and heart are free,
And, joined to two, he fails not--to make three;
Narcissus is the glory of his race;
For who does nothing with a better grace?
To deck my list by nature were designed
Such shining expletives of human kind,
Who want, while through blank life they dream along,
Sense to be right and passion to be wrong."

It is but seldom that we find a touch of that easy slyness which gives an
additional zest to surprise; but here is an instance:

"See Tityrus, with merriment possest,
Is burst with laughter ere he hears the jest,
What need he stay, for when the joke is o'er,
His _teeth_ will be no whiter than before."

Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with a psychological mistake as
the basis of his satire, attributing all forms of folly to one
passion--the love of fame, or vanity--a much grosser mistake, indeed,
than Pope's, exaggeration of the extent to which the "ruling passion"
determines conduct in the individual. Not that Young is consistent in
his mistake. He sometimes implies no more than what is the truth--that
the love of fame is the cause, not of all follies, but of many.

Young's satires on women are superior to Pope's, which is only saying
that they are superior to Pope's greatest failure. We can more
frequently pick out a couplet as successful than an entire sketch. Of
the too emphatic "Syrena" he says:

"Her judgment just, her sentence is too strong;
Because she's right, she's ever in the wrong."

Of the diplomatic "Ju