e man. This enviable praise is due to
Young. Can it be claimed by every writer? His dedications, after all, he
had, perhaps, no right to suppress. They all, I believe, speak, not a
little to the credit of his gratitude, of favours received, and I know
not whether the author, who has once solemnly printed an acknowledgment
of a favour, should not always print it.

Is it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a poet, that of his
Night Thoughts the French are particularly fond?

Of the Epitaph on lord Aubrey Beauclerk, dated 1740, all I know is, that
I find it in the late body of English poetry, and that I am sorry to
find it there.

Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to have taken in the Night
Thoughts of every thing which bore the least resemblance to ambition, he
dipped again in politicks. In 1745 he wrote Reflections on the publick
Situation of the Kingdom, addressed to the duke of Newcastle; indignant,
as it appears, to behold

A pope-bred princeling crawl ashore,
And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scrap'd
Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
To cut his passage to the British throne.

This political poem might be called a Night Thought. Indeed it was
originally printed as the conclusion of the Night Thoughts, though he
did not gather it with his other works.

Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's Devout Meditations, is a
letter from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald
Macaulay, esq. thanking him for the book, which he says "he shall never
lay far out of his reach; for a greater demonstration of a sound head
and a sincere heart he never saw."

In 1753, when the Brothers had lain by him above thirty years, it
appeared upon the stage. If any part of his fortune had been acquired by
servility of adulation, he now determined to deduct from it no
inconsiderable sum, as a gift to the society for the propagation of the
Gospel. To this sum he hoped the profits of the Brothers would amount.
In his calculation he was deceived; but by the bad success of his play
the society was not a loser. The author made up the sum he originally
intended, which was a thousand pounds, from his own pocket.

The next performance which he printed was a prose publication, entitled,
the Centaur not fabulous, in six Letters to a Friend on the Life in
Vogue. The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third letter is
described the deathbed of the "gay, young, n