rhetoric of revenge. Iago has nothing but intellect, wit, and malignity. Zanga has an imagination worthy of the hot and lion-peopled land of his birth. Iago, after his detection, sinks into obstinate silence; he stiffens into the statue of a demon. Zanga dies, using lofty imagery.

Indeed, “The Revenge” owes all its interest to the flames of poetic genius which burst out at every pore of its otherwise coarse and copied structure. It was dedicated to Wharton, with whom Young continued to be intimate; whom he taught to speak good Latin in the space of six weeks; and who lent him money to reimburse him for the expenses of an unsuccessful attempt to get into Parliament. This was in 1721; the place was Cirencester. The election, however, was contested, and fortunately, perhaps, both for Young and the world, he was unsuccessful. Had he gained the seat, he had very probably,

and what comparison between a series of eloquent, forgotten speeches, and the starry, ever-burning splendours of the “Night Thoughts”?

His disappointment in this attempt, coupled, probably, with remorse for the follies and vices of a misspent youth, seems to have soured Young, and ripened him to the point when satire becomes the unavoidable expression of the irritated yet unsubdued spirit. In 1725 appeared the first part of his “Universal Passion;” the rest came out in successive satires between that and 1728, when they were collected and published, along with a somewhat querulous preface, in which he hints that he had not found poetry very favourable to preferment. He gained, however, £3000 by these poems, of which, according to Spence, £2000 was contributed by the Duke of Grafton, who did not, however, regret the price. His inscriptions of the several satires were, as usual at the time, stuffed with fulsome praise of such men as Dorset, Dodington, Campton, and Sir Robert Walpole, all of whom appreciated and rewarded the compliments. We reserve our criticism on these remarkable productions till afterwards, noticing only at present, that they were published before the satires of Pope, and that they became instantly popular.

As if to propitiate the Nemesis, who always stands behind the chariot of the popular writer, Young next issued two of the poorest of all his unequal productions. The first of these, entitled “The Instalment,” was addressed to Sir Robert Walpole, and is, perhaps, although the word be a wide one, the most nonsensical and trashy lie in verse ever addressed to a prime minister. The second is an “Ode to Ocean,” a compound of doggrel and stilted dulness—which, indeed, any sailor of education might have composed, if “half-seas-over.”

At length, sick of dissipation, of the stage, of bad odes, and good satires, Young determined to become wise, and enter into orders. An irresistible current had long been carrying him on, with many a convulsive recalcitration on his part, to this determination. That great intellect and heart, over which, already, the shadow of the “Night Thoughts” was beginning to gather, could not be satisfied with the society of “peers, poets,” and demireps; with the applause of sweltering crowds collected in theatres; or with the ebullitions of its own giant spleen, in the shape of epigrammatic satires. The world, which once seemed to his eye so fresh and fair, had withered gradually to a skeleton, with sockets for eyes, with eternal baldness for hair, with a “stench instead of a sweet savour, and burning instead of beauty.” He resolved to proclaim the particulars of this painful yet blessed disenchantment to the ends of the earth, and to all classes of mankind. And for this purpose, he first of all mounted the pulpit, and then began to wield what was even then the mightier engine of the press. He was no novice when he entered the ministry. Would that we had more who, like Young, do not go up by a mechanical ladder, and the mere force of custom, to the pulpit, but who come down upon it from long and vain wanderings elsewhere, and with a conviction, as the result of mature experience, that God there still desires to dwell, and that it constitutes even yet a pinnacle of prospect, and power, and promise! Thus came Herbert, and Chalmers, and Foster, to their real work as ministers of the gospel. It is not a boy, but a Boanerges-ministry that introduces the Word with most effect to a gainsaying world. Young was full forty-seven—mature in years, in acquirements, in experience, and in reputation—when he began to publish the “News that it is well.” Like the eminent men we have just mentioned, and like others whom we might mention, his motives in entering the Church have been calumniated. He has been compared to a lady disappointed in love, taking the veil; and, rather inconsistently with this figure, to a sated sensualist becoming an anchorite. How can both be true? If Young was disappointed, how could he be sated? and if sated, how could he be chagrined by the want of satisfaction? The fact is, that such men as Young, Chalmers, Herbert, and Foster, are altogether superior to common standards of judgment, and must be tried by their peers. All had their own share of the disgusts and dissatisfactions connected with life, and all felt them keenly. But all had a deeper reason still—a reason, we grant, probably stirred by circumstances into action, for renouncing the empty arena of this world’s honours and wealth, and devoting themselves to a higher and nobler purpose. They all saw into the hollowness of society, into the misery of the human heart; and felt that the gospel alone could fill that aching void, and satisfy those dreary cravings. Hence, Herbert quitted the pleasures of a court; Chalmers dropped his air-pump and his telescope; Foster resigned his philosophic speculations; and Young shook off the blandishments of peers, and forgot the claps of multitudes, to proclaim the glad tidings to perishing sinners; and verily all, in different measures, had their reward.

In April 1728 he was appointed chaplain to George II. His tragedy, “The Brothers,” which had been in rehearsal, was prudently withdrawn. It is a play superior to “Busiris,” but very much inferior to “The Revenge.” Full of passion and poetry, of startling scenes, and vivid images, its subject is unpleasing, and the various perplexities of the plot are not skilfully disentangled.

In the same year he published “A True Estimate of Human Life,” written with force and ingenuity; and a long and very loyal sermon, preached before the House of Commons, on the Martyrdom of Charles I. It was entitled, “An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Governments.”

Hitherto Young had lived on the proceeds of his fellowship, and on presents from Wharton, who, at his death, too, left him a pension. He became now, however, very naturally anxious for promotion in that new sphere on which he had entered, and was compelled, proh pudor! to lay his case before Mrs Howard, the favourite mistress of George II.—that identical “good Howard,” who figures so curiously in the famous scene between Jeanie Deans and Queen Caroline. The fact of the application, as well as the terms of the letter he wrote her, renders this the most humiliating incident in all Young’s history. In 1730, he published “Imperium Pelagi,” another naval lyric, as bad and much longer than his “Ode to Ocean.” In the same year he wrote an epistle to Pope, which resembles a coarser and more careless production of the little man of Twickenham.

In July 1730, Young was presented by his college to the rectory of Welwyn in Hertfordshire. We refer our readers, for