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He has none of these felicitious epithets, none of those pregnant lines, by which Pope’s Satires have enriched the ordinary speech of educated men. Young’s wit will be found in almost every instance to consist in that antithetic combination of ideas which, of all the forms of wit, is most within reach of a clever effort.
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.
He sometimes implies no more than what is the truth—that the love of fame is the cause, not of all follies, but of many. Young’s satires on women are superior to Pope’s, which is only saying that they are superior to Pope’s greatest failure. We can more frequently pick out a couplet as successful than an entire sketch.
“P.S. I have some hope that my Lord Townshend is my friend; if therefore soon, and before he leaves the court, you had an opportunity of mentioning me, with that favor you have been so good to show, I think it would not fail of success; and, if not, I shall owe you more than any.”—“Suffolk Letters,” vol. i. p. 285. Young’s wife died in 1741, leaving him one son, born in 1733.
Young’s biographers and critics have usually set out from the position that he was a great religious teacher, and that his poetry is morally sublime; and they have toned down his failings into harmony with their conception of the divine and the poet.
“Divine Instructor! Thy first volume this For man’s perusal! all in CAPITALS!” It is this pedagogic tendency, this sermonizing attitude of Young’s mind, which produces the wearisome monotony of his pauses. After the first two or three nights he is rarely singing, rarely pouring forth any continuous melody inspired by the spontaneous flow of thought or feeling.
To Sterne’s further enunciation of this joyous theory of life, Young naturally replies in characteristic terms, emphasizing life’s evanescence and joy’s certain blight. But Sterne, though acknowledging the transitoriness of life’s pleasures, denies Young’s deductions. Yorick’s conception of death is quite in contrast to Young’s picture and one must admit that it has no justification in Sterne’s writings. On the contrary, Yorick’s life was one long flight from the grim enemy. The idea of death cherished by Asmus in his “Freund Hein,” the welcome guest, seems rather the conception which Wezel thrusts on Sterne. Death comes to Yorick in full dress, a
Sterne’s period of literary activity falls in the sixties, the very heyday of British supremacy in Germany. The fame of Richardson was hardly dimmed, though Musäus ridiculed his extravagances in “Grandison der Zweite” at the beginning of the decade. In 1762-66 Wieland’s Shakespeare translation appeared, and his original works of the period, “Agathon,” begun in 1761, and “Don Silvio von Rosalva,” published in 1764, betray the influence of both Richardson and Fielding. Ebert (1760 ) revised and republished his translation of Young’s “Night Thoughts,” which had attained popularity in the previous decade. Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” aroused admiration and enthusiasm. To this time too belongs Ossian’s mighty voice. As early as 1762 the first bardic translations appeared, and Denis’s work came out in 1768. Percy’s “Reliques,” published in England in 1765, were extensively read and cited, a
The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment lingers about many a page of the “Night Thoughts,” and even of the “Last Day,” giving an extrinsic charm to passages of stilted rhetoric and false sentiment; but the sober and repeated reading of maturer years has convinced us that it would hardly be possible to find a more typical instance than Young’s poetry, of the mistake which substitutes interested obedience for sympathetic emotion, and baptizes egoism as religion.
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.
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