Angelo; upon the horrid story told of which Young
composed a short poem of fourteen lines in the early part of his life,
which he did not think deserved to be republished. In the "First Night"
the address to the poet's supposed son is:--

"Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee."

In the "Fifth Night:"--

"And burns Lorenzo still for the sublime
Of life? to hang his airy nest on high?"

Is this a picture of the son of the Rector of Welwyn? "Eighth Night:"--

"In foreign realms (for thou hast travelled far)"--

which even now does not apply to his son. In "Night Five:"--

"So wept Lorenzo fair Clarissa's fate,
Who gave that angel-boy on whom he dotes,
And died to give him, orphaned in his birth!"

At the beginning of the "Fifth Night" we find:--

"Lorenzo, to recriminate is just,
I grant the man is vain who writes for praise."

But, to cut short all inquiry; if any one of these passages, if any
passage in the poems, be applicable, my friend shall pass for Lorenzo.
The son of the author of the "Night Thoughts" was not old enough,
when they were written, to recriminate or to be a father. The "Night
Thoughts" were begun immediately after the mournful event of 1741. The
first "Nights" appear, in the books of the Company of Stationers, as
the property of Robert Dodsley, in 1742. The Preface to "Night Seven" is
dated July 7th, 1744. The marriage, in consequence of which the supposed
Lorenzo was born, happened in May, 1731. Young's child was not born till
June, 1733. In 1741, this Lorenzo, this finished infidel, this father
to whose education Vice had for some years put the last hand, was
only eight years old. An anecdote of this cruel sort, so open to
contradiction, so impossible to be true, who could propagate? Thus
easily are blasted the reputation of the living and of the dead. "Who,
then, was Lorenzo?" exclaim the readers I have mentioned. If we cannot
be sure that he was his son, which would have been finely terrible,
was he not his nephew, his cousin? These are questions which I do not
pretend to answer. For the sake of human nature, I could wish Lorenzo
to have been only the creation of the poet's fancy: like the Quintus of
Anti Lucretius, "quo nomine," says Polignac, "quemvis Atheum intellige."
That this was the case many expressions in the "Night Thoughts" would
seem to prove, did not a passage in "Night Eight" appear to show that
he had somebody in his e