emaining dust which once composed
the body of the author of the "Night Thoughts" feel not much concern
whether Young pass now for a man of sorrow or for "a fellow of infinite
jest." To this favour must come the whole family of Yorick. His immortal
part, wherever that now dwells, is still less solicitous on this head.
But to a son of worth and sensibility it is of some little consequence
whether contemporaries believe, and posterity be taught to believe, that
his debauched and reprobate life cast a Stygian gloom over the evening
of his father's days, saved him the trouble of feigning a character
completely detestable, and succeeded at last in bringing his "grey hairs
with sorrow to the grave." The humanity of the world, little satisfied
with inventing perhaps a melancholy disposition for the father, proceeds
next to invent an argument in support of their invention, and chooses
that Lorenzo should be Young's own son. "The Biographia," and every
account of Young, pretty roundly assert this to be the fact; of the
absolute impossibility of which, the "Biographia" itself, in particular
dates, contains undeniable evidence. Readers I know there are of a
strange turn of mind, who will hereafter peruse the "Night Thoughts"
with less satisfaction; who will wish they had still been deceived; who
will quarrel with me for discovering that no such character as their
Lorenzo ever yet disgraced human nature or broke a father's heart. Yet
would these admirers of the sublime and terrible be offended should you
set them down for cruel and for savage? Of this report, inhuman to the
surviving son, if it be true, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo
is diabolical, where are we to find the proof? Perhaps it is clear from
the poems.

From the first line to the last of the "Night Thoughts" no one
expression can be discovered which betrays anything like the father.
In the "Second Night" I find an expression which betrays something
else--that Lorenzo was his friend; one, it is possible, of his former
companions; one of the Duke of Wharton's set. The poet styles him "gay
friend;" an appellation not very natural from a pious incensed father
to such a being as he paints Lorenzo, and that being his son. But let us
see how he has sketched this dreadful portrait, from the sight of some
of whose features the artist himself must have turned away with horror.
A subject more shocking, if his only child really sat to him, than the
crucifixion of Michael