mes he insists, as we have seen, that the
belief in a future life is the only basis of morality; but elsewhere he
tells us--

"In self-applause is virtue's golden prize."

Virtue, with Young, must always squint--must never look straight toward
the immediate object of its emotion and effort. Thus, if a man risks
perishing in the snow himself rather than forsake a weaker comrade, he
must either do this because his hopes and fears are directed to another
world, or because he desires to applaud himself afterward! Young, if we
may believe him, would despise the action as folly unless it had these
motives. Let us hope he was not so bad as he pretended to be! The tides
of the divine life in man move under the thickest ice of theory.

Another indication of Young's deficiency in moral, _i.e._, in sympathetic
emotion, is his unintermitting habit of pedagogic moralizing. On its
theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches science; on its emotional
side, Art. Now, the products of Art are great in proportion as they
result from that immediate prompting of innate power which we call
Genius, and not from labored obedience to a theory or rule; and the
presence of genius or innate prompting is directly opposed to the
perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is imperious,
and excludes the reflection _why_ it should act. In the same way, in
proportion as morality is emotional, _i.e._, has affinity with Art, it
will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling and action, and not as
the recognition of a rule. Love does not say, "I ought to love"--it
loves. Pity does not say, "It is right to be pitiful"--it pities.
Justice does not say, "I am bound to be just"--it feels justly. It is
only where moral emotion is comparatively weak that the contemplation of
a rule or theory habitually mingles with its action; and in accordance
with this, we think experience, both in literature and life, has shown
that the minds which are pre-eminently didactic--which insist on a
"lesson," and despise everything that will not convey a moral, are
deficient in sympathetic emotion. A certain poet is recorded to have
said that he "wished everything of his burned that did not impress some
moral; even in love-verses, it might be flung in by the way." What poet
was it who took this medicinal view of poetry? Dr. Watts, or James
Montgomery, or some other singer of spotless life and ardent piety? Not
at all. It was _Waller_. A s