With Life, Critical Dissertation, andExplanatory Notes,
BY THE
REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.
EDINBURGH:
JAMES NICHOL, 9 NORTH BANK STREET.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO.
DUBLIN: W. ROBERTSON.
M.DCCC.LIII.
Between the period of George Herbert, and that ofEdward Young, some singular changes had taken place inBritish poetry as well as in British manners, politics, andreligion. There had passed over the land the thunderstormof the Puritanic Revolt, which had first clouded andthen cleared, for a season, the intellectual and moral horizon.The effect of this on poetry was, for such fugitive thoughfelicitous hymns as those of Herbert, to substitute the epicunities and grand choral harmonies of Milton. Then came theRestoration—the Apotheosis of falsehood; including in thatterm false principles, false politics, and false taste. Britainbecame the degraded slave of France, at once in laws and inliterature. Dryden, indeed, maintained, in some measure, thecharacter and the taste of his nation, but he stood almost alone.To him succeeded Addison and Pope, both gifted but bothtimid men, whose genius, great as it was, never, or rarely,ventured on original and daring flights, and who seemedalways to be haunted by the fear of French criticism. Pope,especially, lent all his influence to confirm and seal the powerof a foreign code of literary laws; and so general and so deepwas the submission, that it is to us one of the strongest proofsof Edward Young’s genius, that he ventured, in that polishedbut powerless era, to uplift a native voice of song, and not touplift it in vain; for, if he did not absolutely make a revolution,[vi]or found a school, he yet established himself, and lefthis poetry as a glorious precedent to all who should afterwardsbe so hardy as to “go and do likewise.”
Edward Young was born in June 1681 (according to some,two years earlier), in the village of Upham, Hampshire. Hisfather was rector of the parish, and is represented as a man ofgreat learning and abilities. He was the author of some volumesof sermons, and, on account of their merit, and through thepatronage of Lord Bradford, he was appointed chaplain toKing William, and Dean of Salisbury. He died in 1705, inthe sixty-third year of his age, and Bishop Burnet, the Sundayafter his decease, pronounced a glowing panegyric on hischaracter, in a funeral sermon delivered in the Cathedral.
Edward was sent to Winchester School, and thence toOxford, where he obtained a law fellowship in All-Souls College,and afterwards took successively the degrees of Bachelorand Doctor of Civil Law, besides obtaining a fellowship in1706. When the Codrington Library was founded, he wasappointed to deliver the Latin oration. It was published, butmet with a frigid reception, being full of conceits and puerilities,and the author wisely omitted it from his collected works.Little else is known of his career at College. He is said tohave blended fits of study with frequent dissipation. Whenhe relaxed, it was in the company of the infamous Duke ofWharton, who patronised, corrupted, and laughed at him.When he studied, he would shut his windows, create aroundhim an artificial night, and make it more hideous by pilingup skulls, cross-bones, and instruments of death in his room.His talent was then as well known as his eccentricity. Tindalthe sceptic bore a striking testimony to this when he said,“The oth