sense and expression as could be expected if he was perfectly
free from that shackle." Another part of this Essay will convict the
following stanza of what every reader will discover in it "involuntary
burlesque:--

"The northern blast,
The shattered mast,
The syrt, the whirlpool, and the rock,
The breaking spout,
The STARS GONE OUT,
The boiling strait, the monster's shock."

But would the English poets fill quite so many volumes if all their
productions were to be tried, like this, by an elaborate essay on each
particular species of poetry of which they exhibit specimens?

If Young be not a lyric poet, he is at least a critic in that sort of
poetry; and, if his lyric poetry can be proved bad, it was first proved
so by his own criticism. This surely is candid.

Milbourne was styled by Pope "the fairest of critics," only because
he exhibited his own version of "Virgil" to be compared with Dryden's,
which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in
his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets
for prefixing to a lyric composition an "Essay on Lyric Poetry," so just
and impartial as to condemn himself.

We shall soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical
essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest
critic; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it
contains some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the
language.

Soon after the appearance of "Ocean," when he was almost fifty, Young
entered into orders. In April, 1728, not long after he had put on the
gown, he was appointed chaplain to George II.

The tragedy of The Brothers, which was already in rehearsal, he
immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it with some
reluctance to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The Epilogue to The
Brothers, the only appendages to any of his three plays which he
added himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an
historical Epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow
scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the Epilogue,
and relates how Rome revenged the shade of Demetrius, and punished
Perseus "for this night's deed."

Of Young's taking orders something is told by the biographer of Pope,
which places the easiness and simplicity of the poet in a singular
light. When he determined on the Ch