upon public life almost contemporary with Addison, Steele and Gay, when every opportunity of patronage was offered to young men of genius. The famous and very dissolute Duke of Wharton, whom Macaulay so well describes, became his patron, settled an annuity upon him and tried to get him into parliament. Meantime Young began to publish his poems. Then he essayed tragedy and wrote two plays for the theater

Busiris,” acted in 1719, and “The Revenge,” brought out at Drury Lane in 1721. These plays met with a good degree of success, and possessed very considerable merit. From any point of view they may be said to rank quite as high as Addison's "Cato." Next he published under the title of "Love of Fame" a series of satires which abound in acute observation, pregnant reflection and polished wit. They show knowledge of books, experience of society, and acquaintance with human life. One epigram after another may be culled from them, as for instance:

None think the great unhappy but the great.

Be wise with speed,

A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Some for renown on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.

How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.

In 1728 Young took holy orders, as that seemed to offer him the best inducement for a livelihood, and was then appointed chaplain to George II., a virtual sinecure. If there was one official more than another that old George didn't care to see, it was his chaplain, so that the Rev. Edward Young's duties were very light.

He married somewhat late in life and soon thereafter lost his wife and stepdaughter, and it was after their death that he wrote the poem which has given him his fame. In 1742 the first part of "Night Thoughts" was published and from that day till this, despite the critics, the poem has been popular and widely read.

Many persons are driven from the poem because they esteem it sad or gloomy. It is not this precisely, but it is somber. It expresses, and it expresses deeply, the thoughts that come to the reflective soul in the watches of the night, when he looks out upon the stars of heaven or when he contemplates the fleeting aspects of human life. The poem is full of striking metaphors, and in a sense of epigrams that fasten themselves in the memory never to be forgotten. Who is

there, after looking out upon the starry space, can challenge such a line as this:

An undevout astronomer is mad?

One may not be convinced by the arguments for immortality that Young presents in the course of his poem, and yet how strongly and compactly he puts the case:

All on earth is shadow, all beyond
Is substance.

The spider's most attenuated thread
Is cord, is cable, to man's slender tie

On earthly bliss.

All men think all men mortal but themselves.

These and a thousand other similar phrases, never to be forgotten, show how naturally Young struck the level of human thought. His poem is somber, as we have said, is even mournful at times, for he dwells profoundly on death and the grave, but there runs through it all a cheerful theology, and there may be found at times a benevolence and a sunny temper that lightens up much gloom.

"Night Thoughts" is an "In Memoriam," and the sorrows of humanity and the bitter partings that must come to every human soul have

seldom been described in strains of greater consolation. They cheer the despondent heart and inspire a tenderness that soothes and sustains the

mourner.

Young's poetry met with praise from Dr. Johnson, who accorded it a large degree of originality, varied with deep reflections and striking allusions.

HORACE WALPOLE.

(1717-1797.)

FEW men in our literary history have been more discussed than Horace Walpole, particularly since Macaulay's famous essay in 1833. Like all of Macaulay's portraits, Walpole is drawn in the most vivid of colors and in a style at once popular and striking. The result is that notwithstanding the dissent of other critics from portions of the portraiture it remains the accepted one in every substantial feature.

Andrew Lang and Leslie Stephen have both attempted to modify and correct Macaulay's criticism, but without much success. Austin Dobson, who has written one of the best and most interesting memoirs of Walpole that we have, does not widely differ from the great essayist.

In truth Walpole is a subject peculiarly adapted to Macaulay's pen, abounding as he does in the strangest inconsistencies. The following paragraph