this statement, although the gossipping and heartless tone of his letters about such a man cannot be too strongly condemned. Young was subject to fits of inspiration, which stupid people confounded with madness. At times his poetry rushed upon him like a whirlwind, and caught him up

and when he came down he seemed weak, panting, and powerless. Mrs Boscawen and others describe his conversation as still more remarkable than his writings, although occasionally disfigured by conceits and bad puns.

We come now to speak of his genius, especially as manifested in the “Night Thoughts.” The subject of this wonderful strain was one which, in its novelty, dignity, and depth, challenged the very highest exercise of the very highest faculties; and had Young risen to the full height of his great argument, he had become the greatest of all poets. This we by no means affirm he did; but we do assert, that many of the aspects of his magnificent theme have been fully and eloquently expressed by him, and that some of his passages are unsurpassed in the language of men.

The poem demands a brief critical consideration as to its season, its argument, its imagery, its style, its versification, its comparative place and merit, and, lastly, the genius of its author. First, of its season—the Night—and the use to which he turns it. Night had never before found a worthy laureate. Its profound silence, as if it were listening to catch the accents of some supernal voice—the shadowy grandeur and mysterious newness it gives to objects on the earth—the divine hues into which its moon discolours all things—the deep sleep which then falleth upon men, and changes the world into one hushed grave—the supernatural shapes and mystic sounds which have been supposed to walk in its darkness, or to echo through its depths—the voices scarce less solemn, which often break its silence, of howling winds, and wailing rivers, and shrieking tempests, and groaning thunders, and the wild cries of human misery and despair—and last and highest, its withdrawal of the bright mist and mantle of day from the starry universe, and the pomp with which it unrols and exhibits its “great map” of suns and systems—its silvery satellites—its meek planets, each shining in its own degree of reflected splendour—its oceans of original and ever-burning fire called suns—its comets, those serpents of the sky, trailing their vast volumes of deadly glory through the shuddering system—its fantastic and magnificent shapes and collocations of stars, the constellations—its firmaments rising above firmaments, like rounds in a ladder, at the top of which is the throne of God—and those two awful arms into which its Milky Way diverges, and which seem uplifted to heaven in silent prayer, or in some deep and dread protest,—all these elements of interest and grandeur had existed from the beginning of the world in Night, and yet had never, till Young arose, awakened any consecutive and lofty strain of poetic adoration. Many beautiful and many sublime sentiments had been uttered by poets about particular features of Night, but there had been no attempt to represent it as a whole. There were many single thoughts, but no large and sounding Hymn. The views of the Pagan poets about astronomy were, of course, warped by the absurd systems of their day; and this served to damp their fire, and to render their poetic tributes rather fantastic than truly powerful. Even Dante and Milton are somewhat embarrassed by the Ptolemaic system, although it proves the strength of their genius that they have extracted so much poetry from it. But before Young arose,

and he has set the Newtonian system to his own martial music.

We are far from contending that Young has exhausted the poetry of the theme. Since his time the telescopes of Herschell and Lord Rosse have been turned to the skies, and have greatly extended the size and splendour of that vast midnight Apparition—the starry scheme. Our recent poets have availed themselves of these discoveries, as witness the eloquent rhapsodies about the stars by Bailey, A. Smith, and Bigg. And there is even yet room for another great poem on the subject, entitled “Night,” were the author come. But Young deserves praise for the following things:—

1st, He has nobly sung the magnitude and unutterable glory of the starry hosts. His soul kindles, triumphs, exults under the midnight canopy. As the Tartar horse when led forth from his stable to the free steppes and free firmament of the desert, bounds, prances, and caracoles for joy, so does Young, in the last part of his poem. Escaped from dark and mournful contemplations on Man, Death, Infidelity, and Earth’s “melancholy map,” he sees the stars like bright milestones on the way to heaven, and his spirit is glad within him, and tumultuous is the grandeur, and fierce and rapid the torrent, of his song.

2dly, He has brought out, better than any other poet, the religion of the stars. “Night,” says Isaac Taylor, “has three daughters, Atheism, Superstition, and Religion.” Following out this fine thought, we see Atheism looking up with impudent eye, brazen brow, and naked figure, to the midnight sky, as if it were only a huge toy-shop of glittering gew-gaws; Superstition shrouding herself in a black mantle, and falling down prostrate and trembling before these innumerable fires, as if they were the eyes of an infinite enemy; while Religion turns aloft her humble, yet fearless form, her tear-trembling yet radiant visage, and murmurs, “My Father made them all.” Young, we need scarcely say, finds in the nocturnal heavens lessons neither of Atheism nor of Superstition, but of Religion, and reads in the face of Old Night her divine origin, the witness she bears to the existence of God, her dependence upon her Author, and her subordination to His purposes. He had magnified, as Newton himself could not so eloquently have done, the extent of the universe; and yet his loyalty to Scripture compels him to intimate that this system, so far from being God, or infinite, or, strictly speaking, Divine, is to perish and pass away. One look from the angry Judge, one uplifting of His rod, and its voluminous waves of glory, like another Red Sea, are to be dried up, that the people of God may pass through and enter on the land of the real Immortality, the “inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that shall never fade away.” We refer our readers to that most eloquent picture, near the beginning of the Ninth Night, of the Last Day. We once heard a lecturer on chemistry close a superb description of the material universe, with the words, “And it is to shine on for ever.” We thought of the words of Peter, “All these things shall be dissolved.” And then we fancied an invisible animalcule inhabiting one of the mountain peaks of a furnace, looking abroad from one of its surging spires, and saying, “This wondrous blaze is to burn for ever,” and yet, ere a few hours have passed, the flame is sunk in ashes, and the animalcule is gone. So the Heavens shall pass away with a great noise. They shall perish, but Thou God remainest; nay, thou Man, too, art destined to survive this splendid nursery, and to enter on new Heavens and a new Earth!

The argument of the “Night Thoughts” may be stated in general to be as follows:—It is to shew the vanity of man as mortal; to inculcate the lowness, misery, and madness of the sensual life; to prove the superiority