the miserable siege of court-favour. He has before told us--

"A fool at forty is a fool indeed."

After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence of
what the general thought his "deathbed." By these extraordinary poems,
written after he was sixty, of which I have been led to say so much, I
hope, by the wish of doing justice to the living and the dead, it
was the desire of Young to be principally known. He entitled the four
volumes which he published himself, "The Works of the Author of the
Night Thoughts." While it is remembered that from these he excluded
many of his writings, let it not be forgotten that the rejected pieces
contained nothing prejudicial to the cause of virtue or of religion.
Were everything that Young ever wrote to be published, he would
only appear perhaps in a less respectable light as a poet, and more
despicable as a dedicator; he would not pass for a worse Christian or
for a worse man. This enviable praise is due to Young. Can it be claimed
by every writer? His dedications, after all, he had perhaps no right to
suppress. They all, I believe, speak, not a little to the credit of his
gratitude, of favours received; and I know not whether the author, who
has once solemnly printed an acknowledgment of a favour, should not
always print it. Is it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a
poet, that of his "Night Thoughts" the French are particularly fond?

Of the "Epitaph on Lord Aubrey Beauclerk," dated 1740, all I know is,
that I find it in the late body of English poetry, and that I am sorry
to find it there. Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to
have taken in the "Night Thoughts" of everything which bore the least
resemblance to ambition, he dipped again in politics. In 1745 he wrote
"Reflections on the Public Situation of the Kingdom, addressed to the
Duke of Newcastle;" indignant, as it appears, to behold

"---a pope-bred Princeling crawl ashore,
And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scraped
Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
To cut his passage to the British throne."

This political poem might be called a "Night Thought;" indeed, it was
originally printed as the conclusion of the "Night Thoughts," though he
did not gather it with his other works.

Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's "Devout Meditations" is a
letter from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald
Macauly, Esq., thanking him