mely of this poem. The
"Last Day" was published soon after the peace. The Vice-Chancellor's
imprimatur (for it was printed at Oxford) is dated the 19th, 1713. From
the exordium, Young appears to have spent some time on the composition
of it. While other bards "with Britain's hero set their souls on fire,"
he draws, he says, a deeper scene. Marlborough HAD BEEN considered by
Britain as her HERO; but, when the "Last Day" was published, female
cabal had blasted for a time the laurels of Blenheim. This serious poem
was finished by Young as early as 1710, before he was thirty; for part
of it is printed in the Tatler. It was inscribed to the queen, in a
dedication, which, for some reason, he did not admit into his works. It
tells her that his only title to the great honour he now does himself is
the obligation which he formerly received from her royal indulgence. Of
this obligation nothing is now known, unless he alluded to her being his
godmother. He is said indeed to have been engaged at a settled stipend
as a writer for the Court. In Swift's "Rhapsody on Poetry" are these
lines, speaking of the Court:--

"Whence Gay was banished in disgrace,
Where Pope will never show his face,
Where Y---- must torture his invention
To flatter knaves, or lose his pension."

That Y---- means Young seems clear from four other lines in the same
poem:--

"Attend, ye Popes, and Youngs, and Gays,
And tune your harps and strew your bays;
Your panegyrics here provide;
You cannot err on flattery's side."

Yet who shall say with certainty that Young was a pensioner? In all
modern periods of this country, have not the writers on one side been
regularly called Hirelings, and on the other Patriots?

Of the dedication the complexion is clearly political. It speaks in the
highest terms of the late peace; it gives her Majesty praise indeed for
her victories, but says that the author is more pleased to see her rise
from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and
second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose
her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the boundless
spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards eternal
bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving
and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his imagination,
which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.

The queen was s