ons for grief must have
occurred. It is not clear to me that his Muse was not sitting upon the
watch for the first which happened. "Night Thoughts" were not uncommon
to her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he
himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his "Last
Day," almost his earliest poem, he calls her "The Melancholy Maid,"

"whom dismal scenes delight,
Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night."

In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he says:

"Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night
To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
To the bright palace of Eternal Day!"

When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is said by Spence to have
sent him a human skull, with a candle in it, as a lamp, and the poet
is reported to have used it. What he calls "The TRUE Estimate of Human
Life," which has already been mentioned, exhibits only the wrong side of
the tapestry, and being asked why he did not show the right, he is said
to have replied that he could not. By others it has been told me that
this was finished, but that, before there existed any copy, it was torn
in pieces by a lady's monkey. Still, is it altogether fair to dress
up the poet for the man, and to bring the gloominess of the "Night
Thoughts" to prove the gloominess of Young, and to show that his genius,
like the genius of Swift, was in some measure the sullen inspiration
of discontent? From them who answer in the affirmative it should not
be concealed that, though "Invisibilia non decipiunt" appeared upon a
deception in Young's grounds, and "Ambulantes in horto audierunt vocem
Dei" on a building in his garden, his parish was indebted to the good
humour of the author of the "Night Thoughts" for an assembly and a
bowling green.

Whether you think with me, I know not; but the famous "De mortuis nil
nisi bonum" always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than
of manly reason. He that has too much feeling to speak ill of the dead,
who, if they cannot defend themselves, are at least ignorant of his
abuse, will not hesitate by the most wanton calumny to destroy the
quiet, the reputation, the fortune of the living. Yet censure is not
heard beneath the tomb, any more than praise. "De mortuis nil nisi
verum--De vivis nil nisi bonum" would approach much nearer to good
sense. After all, the few handfuls of r