When heav'n would kindly set us free,
And earth's enchantment end;
It takes the most effectual means,
And robs us of a friend.

To Resignation was prefixed an apology for its appearance; to which more
credit is due than to the generality of such apologies, from Young's
unusual anxiety that no more productions of his old age should disgrace
his former fame. In his will, dated February, 1760, he desires of his
executors, "in a particular manner," that all his manuscript books and
writings whatever might be burned, except his book of accounts.

In September, 1764, he added a kind of codicil, wherein he made it his
dying intreaty to his house-keeper, to whom he left 100_l_. "that all
his manuscripts might be destroyed, as soon as he was dead, which would
greatly oblige her deceased _friend_."

It may teach mankind the uncertainty of worldly friendships, to know
that Young, either by surviving those he loved, or by outliving their
affections, could only recollect the names of two _friends_, his
house-keeper and a hatter, to mention in his will; and it may serve to
repress that testamentary pride, which too often seeks for sounding
names and titles, to be informed, that the author of the Night Thoughts
did not blush to leave a legacy to "his friend Henry Stevens, a hatter
at the Temple-gate." Of these two remaining friends, one went before
Young. But, at eighty-four, "where," as he asks in the Centaur, "is that
world into which we were born?"

The same humility which marked a hatter and a house-keeper for the
friends of the author of the Night Thoughts had before bestowed the same
title on his footman, in an epitaph in his Church-yard upon James
Barker, dated 1749; which I am glad to find in the late collection of
his works.

Young and his house-keeper were ridiculed, with more ill-nature than
wit, in a kind of novel published by Kidgell, in 1755, called the Card,
under the names of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.

In April, 1765, at an age to which few attain, a period was put to the
life of Young.

He had performed no duty for three or four years, but he retained his
intellects to the last.

Much is told in the Biographia, which I know not to have been true, of
the manner of his burial; of the master and children of a
charity-school, which he founded in his parish, who neglected to attend
their benefactor's corpse; and of a bell which was not caused to toll so
often as upon those occasions bells u