ade haste to salute the rising sun in an epistle _On the Late
Queen's Death and His Majesty's Accession to the Throne_. Passing over a
number of years, we find him, in 1730, publishing a so-called Pindaric
ode, _Imperium Pelagi; a Naval Lyric_, in the preface to which he declares
with characteristic italics: "_Trade_ is a very _noble_ subject in itself;
more _proper_ than any for an Englishman; and particularly _seasonable_ at
this juncture." Add to this that he was the son of a dean, that he married
the daughter of an earl, and that, other means of advancement having
failed, he became a clergyman at the age of between forty and fifty, and
the suggested portrait is that of a prudent hanger-on rather than a fiery
man of genius. His prudence was rewarded with a pension of L200 a year, a
Royal Chaplaincy, and the position (after George III.'s accession) of
Clerk of the Closet to the Princess Dowager. In the opinion of Young
himself, who lived till the age of 82, the reward was inadequate. At the
age of 79, however, he had conquered his disappointment to a sufficient
degree to write a poem on _Resignation_.

Readers who, after a hasty glance at his biography, are inclined to look
satirically on Young as a time-server, oily with the mediocrity of
self-help, will have a pleasant surprise if they read his _Conjectures on
Original Composition_ for the first time. It is a bold and masculine essay
on literary criticism, written in a style of quite brilliant, if
old-fashioned, rhetoric. Mrs. Thrale said of it: "In the _Conjectures upon
Original Composition_ ... we shall perhaps read the wittiest piece of
prose our whole language has to boast; yet from its over-twinkling, it
seems too little gazed at and too little admired perhaps." This is an
exaggerated estimate. Dr. Johnson, who heard Young read the _Conjectures_
at Richardson's house, said that "he was surprised to find Young receive
as novelties what he thought very common maxims." If one tempers Mrs.
Thrale's enthusiasms and Dr. Johnson's scorn, one will have a fairly just
idea of the quality of Young's book.

It is simply a shot fired with a good aim in the eternal war between
authority and liberty in literature. This is a controversy for which, were
men wise, there would be no need. We require in literature both the
authority of tradition and the liberty of genius to such new conquests.
Unfortunately, we cannot agree as to the proportions in which each of them
is required.