e was not equal certainly to his other faculties, and he was
guilty of occasional extravagances, and stumbled not unfrequently over
the brink of the bathos; but his genius possessed the following
qualities:--It was original. He had read much, but he copies little, and
never slavishly. His mind looks at everything--at skulls and
stars--through a medium of its own. It was subtle as well as native and
strong, and in its movements it is broadly based on a vigorous intellect.
It was progressive and prophetic in its spirit, and many of our recent
speculations or semi-speculations on the relations of man and nature, are
to be found in Young--ay, in the mere spray his mind threw off on its way
to an ulterior result. Think of this, for instance, and then remember a
similar expression in Carlyle:--

"Man's grief is but his grandeur in disguise;
And discontent is immortality."

Finally, his genius, with all its compass and daring, was reverent and
religious. He gloried in the universe; he swam, as it were, and circled
like a strong swimmer, in that starry sea; but he bent before the Cross,
and, instead of looking up, looked down, and cried out, "God be merciful
to me a sinner."

We commend his masterpiece to readers, partly, indeed, for its power,--a
power that has hitherto rather been felt than acknowledged, rather
admired in silence than analysed; but principally because, like "The
Temple" of Herbert, it is holy ground. The author, amid his elaborate
ingenuities, and wilful though minor perversities, never ceases to love
and to honour truth; in pursuit of renown, he is never afraid to glory in
the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; and if his flights of fancy be at
times too wild, and if his thoughts be often set to the tune of the
tempest, it is a tempest on whose wings, to use his own simple but
immortal words, "The Lord is abroad."

THE COMPLAINT:
OR,
NIGHT THOUGHTS.

PREFACE.

As the occasion of this Poem was real, not fictitious; so the method
pursued in it was rather imposed by what spontaneously arose in the
Author's mind on that occasion, than meditated or designed. Which will
appear very probable from the nature of it. For it differs from the
common mode of poetry, which is, from long narrations to draw short
morals. Here, on the contrary, the narrative is short, and the mo