college for a time, at one of the universities? The author of Paradise
Lost is by some supposed to have been disgracefully ejected from the
other. From juvenile follies who is free? But, whatever the Biographia
chooses to relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his
college, either lasting or temporary.

Yet, were nature to indulge him with a second youth, and to leave him at
the same time the experience of that which is past, he would probably
spend it differently--who would not?--he would certainly be the occasion
of less uneasiness to his father. But, from the same experience, he
would as certainly, in the same case, be treated differently by his
father.

Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make the
best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from their
heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common duties.
Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight beyond the ken of
mortals, and descend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The
prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets.

He who is connected with the author of the Night Thoughts, only by
veneration for the poet and the christian, may be allowed to observe,
that Young is one of those, concerning whom, as you remark in your
account of Addison, it is proper rather to say "nothing that is false,
than all that is true."

But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo,
than see himself vindicated, at the expense of his father's memory, from
follies which, if it may be thought blamable in a boy to have committed
them, it is surely praiseworthy in a man to lament, and certainly not
only unnecessary but cruel in a biographer to record.

Of the Night Thoughts, notwithstanding their author's professed
retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names. He had not
yet weaned himself from earls and dukes, from speakers of the house of
commons, lords commissioners of the treasury, and chancellors of the
exchequer.

In Night Eight the politician plainly betrays himself:

Think no post needful that demands a knave:
When late our civil helm was shifting hands,
So P---- thought; think better if you can.

Yet it must be confessed, that at the conclusion of Night Nine, weary,
perhaps, of courting earthly patrons, he tells his soul,

Henceforth
Thy _patron_ he, whose diadem has dropt
Yon gems of heaven; eternity