gnation; in which he made, as he was accustomed,
an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded better than in his
Ocean or his Merchant. It was very falsely represented as a proof of
decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, such as he often was
in his highest vigour.

His tragedies, not making part of the collection, I had forgotten, till
Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he seemed
to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three plays all concluded with
lavish suicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet easily
rids his scene of persons whom he wants not to keep alive. In Busiris
there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination: but the pride of
Busiris is such as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote
from known life to raise either grief, terrour, or indignation. The
Revenge approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and,
therefore, keeps possession of the stage: the first design seems
suggested by Othello; but the reflections, the incidents, and the
diction, are original. The moral observations are go introduced, and so
expressed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of the
Brothers I may be allowed to say nothing, since nothing was ever said of
it by the publick.

It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but
without much accuracy or selection. When he lays hold of an
illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, sometimes happily, as in
his parallel of Quicksilver with Pleasure[192] which I have heard
repeated at the approbation by a lady, of whose praise he would have
been justly proud, and which is very ingenious, very subtile, and almost
exact: but sometimes he is less lucky, as when, in his Night Thoughts,
having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs floating in space might
be called the _cluster_ of creation, he thinks of a cluster of grapes,
and says, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectareous
juice of immortal life."

His conceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the Last Day he hopes
to illustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at
the "trump of doom" by the collection of bees into a swarm at the
tinkling of a pan.

The prophet says of Tyre, that "her merchants are princes." Young says
of Tyre, in his Merchant,

Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.

Let burlesque try to go beyond him.

He has the trick of joining the