H. C.
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xford, Oct., 1782. Of Young’s Poems it is difficult to give any general character, for hehas no uniformity of manner; one of his pieces has no great resemblanceto another. He began to write early and continued long, and at differenttimes had different modes of poetical excellence in view. His numbersare sometimes smooth and sometimes rugged; his style is sometimesconcatenated and sometimes abrupt, sometimes diffusive and sometimesconcise. His plan seems to have started in his mind at the presentmoment, and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes adverseand sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment. He was notone of those writers whom experience improves, and who, observing theirown faults, become gradually correct. His poem on the “Last Day,” hisfirst great performance, has an equability and propriety, which heafterwards either never endeavoured or never attained. Many paragraphsare noble, and few are mean, yet the whole is languid; the plan is toomuch extended, and a succession of images divides and weakens the generalconception, but the great reason why the reader is disappointed is thatthe thought of the LAST DAY makes every man more than poetical byspreading over his mind a general obscurity of sacred horror, thatoppresses distinction and disdains expression. His story of “Jane Grey”was never popular. It is written with elegance enough, but Jane is tooheroic to be pitied. “The Universal Passion” is indeed a very great performance. It is saidto be a series of epigrams, but, if it be, it is what the authorintended; his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs andpointed sentences, and his distichs have the weight of solid sentiments,and his points the sharpness of resistless truth. His characters areoften selected with discernment and drawn with nicety; his illustrationsare often happy, and his reflections often just. His species of satire isbetween those of Horace and Juvenal, and he has the gaiety of Horacewithout his laxity of numbers, and the morality of Juvenal with greatervariation of images. He plays, indeed, only on the surface of life; henever penetrates the recesses of the mind, and therefore the whole powerof his poetry is exhausted by a single perusal; his conceits please onlywhen they surprise. To translate he never condescended, unless his“Paraphrase on Job” may be considered as a version, in which he has not,I think, been unsuccessful; he indeed favoured himself by choosing thoseparts which most easily admit the ornaments of English poetry. He hadleast success in his lyric attempts, in which he seems to have been undersome malignant influence; he is always labouring to be great, and at lastis only turgid. In his “Night Thoughts” he has exhibited a very wide display of originalpoetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, awilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowersof every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in whichblank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. Thewild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies ofimagination would have been compressed and restrained by confinement torhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness but copiousness;particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole, andin the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chineseplantation, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity. His last poem was the “Resignation,” in which he made, as he wasaccustomed, an experiment of a new mode of writing, and succeeded betterthan in his “Ocean” or his “Merchant.” It was very falsely representedas a proof of decaying faculties. There is Young in every stanza, suchas he often was in the highest vigour. His tragedies, not making part ofthe collection, I had forgotten, till Mr. Stevens recalled them to mythoughts, by remarking, that he seemed to have one favourite catastrophe,as his three plays all concluded with lavish suicide, a method by which,as Dryden remarked, a poet easily rids his scene of persons whom he wantsnot to keep alive. In _Busiris_ there are the greatest ebullitions ofimagination, but the pride of _Busiris_ is such as no other man can have,and the whole is too remote from known life to raise either grief,terror, or indignation. The _Revenge_ approaches much nearer to humanpractices and manners, and therefore keeps possession of the stage; thefirst design seems suggested by _Othello_, but the reflections, theincidents, and the diction, are original. The moral observations are sointroduced and so expressed as to have all the novelty that can berequired. Of _The Brothers_ I may be allowed to say nothing, sincenothing was ever said of it by the public. It must be allowed of Young’spoetry that it abounds in thought, but without much accuracy orselection. When he lays hold of an illustration he pursues it beyondexpectation, sometimes happily, as in his parallel of _Quicksilver_ with_Pleasure_, which I have heard repeated with approbation by a lady, ofwhose praise he would have been justly proud, and which is veryingenious, very subtle, and almost exact; but sometimes he is less lucky,as when, in his “Night Thoughts,” having it dropped into his mind thatthe orbs, floating in space, might be called the _cluster_ of creation,he thinks of a cluster of grapes, and says, that they all hang on thegreat vine, drinking the “nectareous juice of immortal life.” Hisconceits are sometimes yet less valuable. In the “Last Day” he hopes toillustrate the reassembly of the atoms that compose the human body at the“Trump of Doom” by the collection of bees into a swarm at the tinkling ofa pan. The Prophet says of Tyre that “her merchants are princes.” Youngsays of Tyre in his “Merchant,” “Her merchants princes, and each _deck a throne_.”
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