ts rising above firmaments, like rounds
in a ladder, at the top of which is the throne of God--and those two
awful arms into which its Milky Way diverges, and which seem uplifted to
heaven in silent prayer, or in some deep and dread protest,--all these
elements of interest and grandeur had existed from the beginning of the
world in Night, and yet had never, till Young arose, awakened any
consecutive and lofty strain of poetic adoration. Many beautiful and many
sublime sentiments had been uttered by poets about particular features of
Night, but there had been no attempt to represent it as a whole. There
were many single thoughts, but no large and sounding Hymn. The views of
the Pagan poets about astronomy were, of course, warped by the absurd
systems of their day; and this served to damp their fire, and to render
their poetic tributes rather fantastic than truly powerful. Even Dante
and Milton are somewhat embarrassed by the Ptolemaic system, although it
proves the strength of their genius that they have extracted so much
poetry from it. But before Young arose,

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, Let Newton be, and all was light;"

and he has set the Newtonian system to his own martial music.

We are far from contending that Young has exhausted the poetry of the
theme. Since his time the telescopes of Herschell and Lord Rosse have
been turned to the skies, and have greatly extended the size and
splendour of that vast midnight Apparition--the starry scheme. Our recent
poets have availed themselves of these discoveries, as witness the
eloquent rhapsodies about the stars by Bailey, A. Smith, and Bigg. And
there is even yet room for another great poem on the subject, entitled
"Night," were the author come. But Young deserves praise for the
following things:--

_1st_, He has nobly sung the magnitude and unutterable glory of the
starry hosts. His soul kindles, triumphs, exults under the midnight
canopy. As the Tartar horse when led forth from his stable to the free
steppes and free firmament of the desert, bounds, prances, and caracoles
for joy, so does Young, in the last part of his poem. Escaped from dark
and mournful contemplations on Man, Death, Infidelity, and Earth's
"melancholy map," he sees the stars like bright milestones on the way to
heaven, and his spirit is glad within him, and tumultuous is the
grandeur, and fierce and rapid the torrent, of his song.

_2dly_, He has brought out, better