irit of my theme
Extracting for your ease,
Will leave to me the dreg, in thoughts
Too common; such as these."

By the same lady I was enabled to say, in her own words, that Young's
unbounded genius appeared to greater advantage in the companion than
even in the author; that the Christian was in him a character still more
inspired, more enraptured, more sublime, than the poet; and that, in his
ordinary conversation--

"--letting down the golden chain from high,
He drew his audience upward to the sky."

Notwithstanding Young had said, in his "Conjectures on Original
Composition," that "blank verse is verse unfallen, uncursed--verse
reclaimed, re-enthroned in the true language of the gods;"
notwithstanding he administered consolation to his own grief in this
immortal language, Mrs. Boscawen was comforted in rhyme.

While the poet and the Christian were applying this comfort, Young had
himself occasion for comfort, in consequence of the sudden death
of Richardson, who was printing the former part of the poem. Of
Richardson's death he says--

"When heaven would kindly set us free,
And earth's enchantment end;
It takes the most effectual means,
And robs us of a friend."

To "Resignation" was prefixed an apology for its appearance, to which
more credit is due than to the generality of such apologies, from
Young's unusual anxiety that no more productions of his old age should
disgrace his former fame. In his will, dated February, 1760, he desires
of his executors, IN A PARTICULAR MANNER, that all his manuscript books
and writings, whatever, might be burned, except his book of accounts.
In September, 1764, he added a kind of codicil, wherein he made it his
dying entreaty to his housekeeper, to whom he left 1,000 pounds, "that
all his manuscripts might be destroyed as soon as he was dead, which
would greatly oblige her deceased FRIEND."

It may teach mankind the uncertainty of wordly friendships to know
that Young, either by surviving those he loved, or by outliving
their affections, could only recollect the names of two FRIENDS, his
housekeeper and a hatter, to mention in his will; and it may serve to
repress that testamentary pride, which too often seeks for sounding
names and titles, to be informed that the author of the "Night Thoughts"
did not blush to leave a legacy to his "friend Henry Stevens, a hatter
at the Temple-gate." Of these two remaining friend