ung's
notion of what is lofty he casts a shadow by which we can measure him
without further trouble. For example, in arguing for human immortality,
he says:

"First, what is _true ambition_? The pursuit
Of glory _nothing less than man can share_.

* * * *

The Visible and Present are for brutes,
A slender portion, and a narrow bound!
These Reason, with an energy divine,
O'erleaps, and claims the Future and Unseen;
The vast Unseen, the Future fathomless!
When the great soul buoys up to this high point,
Leaving gross Nature's sediments below,
Then, and then only, Adam's offspring quits
The sage and hero of the fields and woods,
Asserts his rank, and rises into man."

So, then, if it were certified that, as some benevolent minds have tried
to infer, our dumb fellow-creatures would share a future existence, in
which it is to be hoped we should neither beat, starve, nor maim them,
our ambition for a future life would cease to be "lofty!" This is a
notion of loftiness which may pair off with Dr. Whewell's celebrated
observation, that Bentham's moral theory is low because it includes
justice and mercy to brutes.

But, for a reflection of Young's moral personality on a colossal scale,
we must turn to those passages where his rhetoric is at its utmost
stretch of inflation--where he addresses the Deity, discourses of the
Divine operations, or describes the last judgment. As a compound of
vulgar pomp, crawling adulation, and hard selfishness, presented under
the guise of piety, there are few things in literature to surpass the
Ninth Night, entitled "Consolation," especially in the pages where he
describes the last judgment--a subject to which, with naive
self-betrayal, he applies phraseology, favored by the exuberant
penny-a-liner. Thus, when God descends, and the groans of hell are
opposed by "shouts of joy," much as cheers and groans contend at a public
meeting where the resolutions are _not_ passed unanimously, the poet
completes his climax in this way:

"Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise,
The _charmed spectators_ thunder their applause."

In the same taste he sings:

"Eternity, the various sentence past,
Assigns the sever'd throng distinct abodes,
_Sulphureous_ or _ambrosial_."

Exquisite delicacy of indication! He is too nice to be specific as to
the interior of the "sulphureous" abode; but when once half the human
race are