no woman where there's no reserve,
And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'

'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;
Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'

'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'

'Naked in nothing should a woman be,
But veil her very wit with modesty.'

It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed of the
preferment he sought, took holy orders, and in 1730 accepted the college
living of Welwyn, in Herts, which he held till his death.

In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of
the Earl of Lichfield, a union that lasted ten years. One son was the
offspring of this marriage. Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former
marriage, who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston, and
shortly before her own death she lost both daughter and son-in-law, who,
there can be little doubt, are the Philander and Narcissa of the _Night
Thoughts_, the earlier books of which were published in 1742. This once
celebrated poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of Young's
genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It suited well an age which,
while far from moral, delighted in moral treatises and in didactic
verse. In the _Night Thoughts_ Young remembers that he is a clergyman,
and puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing robes, and
shows the reader what none of his earlier poems prove, that he is in the
presence of a poet.

The _Night Thoughts_ is remarkable in its finest passages for a strong,
but sombre imagination, and for a command of his instrument that puts
Young at times nearly on a level with the greatest masters of blank
verse. On this height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in
great thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were, while
the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms uttered generally in
single lines which are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to
injure the harmony of its versification. The theme of Life, Death, and
Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops
the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false
sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the
writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous
expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality
of that book, howe