Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (608 page)

A more creditable relation of Young’s was his friendship with Tickell, with whom he was in the habit of interchanging criticisms, and to whom in 1719 — the same year, let us note, in which he took his doctor’s degree — he addressed his “Lines on the Death of Addison.”  Close upon these followed his “Paraphrase of part of the Book of Job,” with a dedication to Parker, recently made Lord Chancellor, showing that the possession of Wharton’s patronage did not prevent Young from fishing in other waters.  He know nothing of Parker, but that did not prevent him from magnifying the new Chancellor’s merits; on the other hand, he
did
know Wharton, but this again did not prevent him from prefixing to his tragedy, “The Revenge,” which appeared in 1721, a dedication attributing to the Duke all virtues, as well as all accomplishments.  In the concluding sentence of this dedication, Young
naïvely indicates that a considerable ingredient in his gratitude was a lively sense of anticipated favors.  “My present fortune is his bounty, and my future his care; which I will venture to say will always be remembered to his honor; since he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to merit, through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears him so sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive the benefit of it.”  Young was economical with his ideas and images; he was rarely satisfied with using a clever thing once, and this bit of ingenious humility was afterward made to do duty in the “Instalment,” a poem addressed to Walpole:

“Be this thy partial smile, from censure free, ‘Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.”

It was probably “The Revenge” that Young was writing when, as we learn from Spence’s anecdotes, the Duke of Wharton gave him a skull with a candle fixed in it, as the most appropriate lamp by which to write tragedy.  According to Young’s dedication, the Duke was “accessory” to the scenes of this tragedy in a more important way, “not only by suggesting the most beautiful incident in them, but by making all possible provision for the success of the whole.”  A statement which is credible, not indeed on the ground of Young’s dedicatory assertion, but from the known ability of the Duke, who, as Pope tells us, possessed

      ”each gift of Nature and of Art, And wanted nothing but an honest heart.”

The year 1722 seems to have been the period of a visit to Mr. Dodington, of Eastbury, in Dorsetshire — the “pure Dorsetian downs” celebrated by Thomson — in which Young made the acquaintance of Voltaire; for in the subsequent dedication of his “Sea Piece” to “Mr. Voltaire,” he recalls their meeting on “Dorset Downs;” and it was in this year that Christopher Pitt, a gentleman-poet of those days, addressed an
“Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire,” which has at least the merit of this biographical couplet:

“While with your Dodington retired you sit, Charm’d with his flowing Burgundy and wit.”

Dodington, apparently, was charmed in his turn, for he told Dr. Wharton that Young was “far superior to the French poet in the variety and novelty of his
bon-mots
and repartees.”  Unfortunately, the only specimen of Young’s wit on this occasion that has been preserved to us is the epigram represented as an extempore retort (spoken aside, surely) to Voltaire’s criticism of Milton’s episode of sin and death:

“Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, At once, we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin;” —

an epigram which, in the absence of “flowing Burgundy,” does not strike us as remarkably brilliant.  Let us give Young the benefit of the doubt thrown on the genuineness of this epigram by his own poetical dedication, in which he represents himself as having “soothed” Voltaire’s “rage” against Milton “with gentle rhymes;” though in other respects that dedication is anything but favorable to a high estimate of Young’s wit.  Other evidence apart, we should not be eager for the after-dinner conversation of the man who wrote:

“Thine is the Drama, how renown’d! Thine Epic’s loftier trump to sound; —
But let Arion’s sea-strung harp be mine
;
But where’s his dolphin
? 
Know’st thou where
?
May that be found in thee
,
Voltaire
!”

The “Satires” appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, of course, with its laudatory dedication and its compliments insinuated among the rhymes.  The seventh and last is dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, is very short, and contains nothing in particular except lunatic flattery of George the First and his prime
minister, attributing that royal hog’s late escape from a storm at sea to the miraculous influence of his grand and virtuous soul — for George, he says, rivals the angels:

“George, who in foes can soft affections raise, And charm envenom’d satire into praise. Nor human rage alone his pow’r perceives, But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves, Ev’n storms (Death’s fiercest ministers!) forbear, And in their own wild empire learn to spare. Thus, Nature’s self, supporting Man’s decree, Styles Britain’s sovereign, sovereign of the sea.”

As for Walpole, what
he
felt at this tremendous crisis

“No powers of language, but his own, can tell, His own, which Nature and the Graces form, At will, to raise, or hush, the civil storm.”

It is a coincidence worth noticing, that this seventh Satire was published in 1726, and that the warrant of George the First, granting Young a pension of £200 a year from Lady-day, 1725, is dated May 3d, 1726.  The gratitude exhibited in this Satire may have been chiefly prospective, but the “Instalment,” a poem inspired by the thrilling event of Walpole’s installation as Knight of the Garter, was clearly written with the double ardor of a man who has got a pension and hopes for something more.  His emotion about Walpole is precisely at the same pitch as his subsequent emotion about the Second Advent.  In the “Instalment” he says:

“With invocations some their hearts inflame;
I need no muse
,
a Walpole is my theme
.”

And of God coming to judgment, he says, in the “Night Thoughts:”

“I find my inspiration is my theme;
The grandeur of my subject is my muse
.”

Nothing can be feebler than this “Instalment,” except in the strength of impudence with which the writer professes to scorn the prostitution of fair fame, the “profanation of celestial fire.”

Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more than three thousand pounds by his “Satires” — a surprising statement, taken in connection with the reasonable doubt he throws on the story related in Spence’s “Anecdotes,” that the Duke of Wharton gave Young £2000 for this work.  Young, however, seems to have been tolerably fortunate in the pecuniary results of his publications; and, with his literary profits, his annuity from Wharton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to mention other bounties which may be inferred from the high merits he discovers in many men of wealth and position, we may fairly suppose that he now laid the foundation of the considerable fortune he left at his death.

It is probable that the Duke of Wharton’s final departure for the Continent and disgrace at Court in 1726, and the consequent cessation of Young’s reliance on his patronage, tended not only to heighten the temperature of his poetical enthusiasm for Sir Robert Walpole, but also to turn his thoughts toward the Church again, as the second-best means of rising in the world.  On the accession of George the Second, Young found the same transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated them in a style of poetry previously unattempted by him — the Pindaric ode, a poetic form which helped him to surpass himself in furious bombast.  “Ocean, an Ode: concluding with a Wish,” was the title of this piece.  He afterward pruned it, and cut off, among other things, the concluding Wish, expressing the yearning for humble retirement, which, of course, had prompted him to the effusion; but we may judge of the rejected stanzas by the quality of those he has allowed to remain.  For example, calling on Britain’s dead mariners to rise and meet their “country’s full-blown glory” in the person of the new King, he says:

      
”What powerful charm       Can Death disarm? Your long, your iron slumbers break?      
By Jove
,
by Fame
,      
By George’s name
, Awake! awake! awake! awake!”

Soon after this notable production, which was written with the ripe folly of forty-seven, Young took orders, and was presently appointed chaplain to the King.  “The Brothers,” his third and last tragedy, which was already in rehearsal, he now withdrew from the stage, and sought reputation in a way more accordant with the decorum of his new profession, by turning prose writer.  But after publishing “A True Estimate of Human Life,” with a dedication to the Queen, as one of the “most shining representatives” of God on earth, and a sermon, entitled “An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Government,” preached before the House of Commons, his Pindaric ambition again seized him, and he matched his former ode by another, called “Imperium Pelagi, a Naval Lyric; written in imitation of Pindar’s spirit, occasioned by his Majesty’s return from Hanover, 1729, and the succeeding Peace.”  Since he afterward suppressed this second ode, we must suppose that it was rather worse than the first.  Next came his two “Epistles to Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age,” remarkable for nothing but the audacity of affectation with which the most servile of poets professes to despise servility.

In 1730 Young was presented by his college with the rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, and, in the following year, when he was just fifty, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a widow with two children, who seems to have been in favor with Queen Caroline, and who probably had an income — two attractions which doubtless enhanced the power of her other charms.  Pastoral duties and domesticity probably cured Young of some bad habits; but, unhappily, they did not cure him either of flattery or of fustian.  Three more odes followed,
quite as bad as those of his bachelorhood, except that in the third he announced the wise resolution of never writing another.  It must have been about this time, since Young was now “turned of fifty,” that he wrote the letter to Mrs. Howard (afterward Lady Suffolk), George the Second’s mistress, which proves that he used other engines, besides Pindaric ones, in “besieging Court favor.”  The letter is too characteristic to be omitted:

“Monday Morning.

“Madam: I know his Majesty’s goodness to his servants, and his love of justice in general, so well, that I am confident, if his Majesty knew my case, I should not have any cause to despair of his gracious favor to me.

These
, madam, are the proper points of consideration in the person that humbly hopes his Majesty’s favor.

“As to
Abilities
, all I can presume to say is, I have done the best I could to improve them.

“As to
Good manners
, I desire no favor, if any just objection lies against them.

“As for
Service
, I have been near seven years in his Majesty’s and never omitted any duty in it, which few can say.

“As for
Age
, I am turned of fifty.

“As for
Want
, I have no manner of preferment.

“As for
Sufferings
, I have lost £300 per ann. by being in his Majesty’s service; as I have shown in a
Representation
which his Majesty has been so good as to read and consider.

“As for
Zeal
, I have written nothing without showing my duty to their Majesties, and some pieces are dedicated to them.

“This, madam, is the short and true state of my case.  They that make their court to the ministers, and not their Majesties, succeed better.  If my case deserves some consideration, and you can serve me in it, I humbly hope and believe you will: I shall, therefore, trouble you no farther; but beg leave to subscribe myself, with truest respect and gratitude,

“Yours, etc., Edward Young.