ng his "grey
hairs with sorrow to the grave."

The humanity of the world, little satisfied with inventing perhaps a
melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds next to invent an
argument in support of their invention, and chooses that Lorenzo should
be Young's own son. The Biographia and every account of Young pretty
roundly assert this to be the fact; of the absolute impossibility of
which the Biographia itself, in particular dates, contains undeniable
evidence. Readers I know there are of a strange turn of mind, who will
hereafter peruse the Night Thoughts with less satisfaction; who will
wish they had still been deceived; who will quarrel with me for
discovering that no such character as their Lorenzo ever yet disgraced
human nature, or broke a father's heart. Yet would these admirers of the
sublime and terrible be offended, should you set them down for cruel and
for savage.

Of this report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in
proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to
find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.

From the first line to the last of the Night Thoughts no one expression
can be discovered which betrays any thing like the father. In the Second
Night I find an expression which betrays something else; that Lorenzo
was his friend; one, it is possible, of his former companions; one of
the duke of Wharton's set. The poet styles him "gay friend;" an
appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father to such a
being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his son.

But let us see how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the
sight of some of whose features the artist himself must have turned away
with horrour. A subject more shocking, if his only child really sat to
him, than the crucifixion of Michael Angelo; upon the horrid story told
of which, Young composed a short poem of fourteen lines in the early
part of his life, which he did not think deserved to be republished.

In the First Night, the address to the poet's supposed son is,

Lorenzo, fortune makes her court to thee.

In the Fifth Night;

And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?

Is this a picture of the son of the rector of Welwyn?

Eighth Night;

In foreign realms (for thou hast travell'd far;)
which even now does not apply to his son.

In Night Five;

So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate;
Who gave that an