Night Thoughts has inscribed no
monument to the memory of his lamented wife? Yet, what marble will
endure as long as the poems?

Such, my good friend, is the account which I have been able to collect
of the great Young. That it may be long before any thing like what I
have just transcribed be necessary for you, is the sincere wish of,

Dear sir,
Your greatly obliged friend,
HERBERT CROFT, Jun.
Lincoln's Inn, Sept. 1780.

P.S. This account of Young was seen by you in manuscript, you know, sir;
and, though I could not prevail on you to make any alteration, you
insisted on striking out one passage, because it said, that, if I did
not wish you to live long, for your sake, I did for the sake of myself
and of the world. But this postscript you will not see before the
printing of it; and I will say here, in spite of you, how I feel myself
honoured and bettered by your friendship: and that, if I do credit to
the church, after which I always longed, and for which I am now going to
give in exchange the bar, though not at so late a period of life as
Young took orders, it will be owing, in no small measure, to my having
had the happiness of calling the author of the Rambler my friend[191].

H.C.
Oxford, Oct. 1782.

Of Young's poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he
has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has no great resemblance
to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at
different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His
numbers are sometimes smooth, and sometimes rugged; his style is
sometimes concatenated, and sometimes abrupt; sometimes diffusive, and
sometimes concise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the
present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes
adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.

He was not one of those writers whom experience improves, and who,
observing their own faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the
Last Day, his first great performance, has an equability and propriety,
which he afterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many
paragraphs are noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid: the
plan is too much extended, and a succession of images divides and
weakens the general conception; but