eemed
always to be haunted by the fear of French criticism. Pope, especially,
lent all his influence to confirm and seal the power of a foreign code of
literary laws; and so general and so deep was the submission, that it is
to us one of the strongest proofs of Edward Young's genius, that he
ventured, in that polished but powerless era, to uplift a native voice of
song, and not to uplift it in vain; for, if he did not absolutely make a
revolution, or found a school, he yet established himself, and left his
poetry as a glorious precedent to all who should afterwards be 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. His father was rector of
the parish, and is represented as a man of great learning and abilities.
He was the author of some volumes of sermons, and, on account of their
merit, and through the patronage of Lord Bradford, he was appointed
chaplain to King William, and Dean of Salisbury. He died in 1705, in the
sixty-third year of his age, and Bishop Burnet, the Sunday after his
decease, pronounced a glowing panegyric on his character, in a funeral
sermon delivered in the Cathedral.

Edward was sent to Winchester School, and thence to Oxford, where he
obtained a law fellowship in All-Souls College, and afterwards took
successively the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Civil Law, besides
obtaining a fellowship in 1706. When the Codrington Library was founded,
he was appointed to deliver the Latin oration. It was published, but met
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 to have blended fits of study with
frequent dissipation. When he relaxed, it was in the company of the
infamous Duke of Wharton, who patronised, corrupted, and laughed at him.
When he studied, he would shut his windows, create around him an
artificial night, and make it more hideous by piling up skulls,
cross-bones, and instruments of death in his room. His talent was then as
well known as his eccentricity. Tindal the sceptic bore a striking
testimony to this when he said, "The other boys I can always answer,
because I always know where they have their arguments, which I have read
a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually pestering me with
something of his own."

He seems to have been nearly th