and brightening with illustrious action the dark avenue and all-awful confines of an eternity! When his soul scarce animated his body, strong faith and ardent charity animated his soul into divine ambition of saving more than his own. It is for our honor and our advantage to hold him high in our esteem; for the better men are, the more they will admire him; and the more they admire him, the better will they be.

By undrawing the long-closed curtain of his death-bed, have I not showed you a stranger in him whom you knew so well? Is not this of your favorite author,

-Notâ major imago?— Virg.

His compositions are but a noble preface, the grand work is his death: that is a work which is read in heaven. How has it joined the final approbation of angels to the previous applause of men! How gloriously has he opened a splendid path, through fame immortal, into eternal peace! How has he given religion to triumph amidst the ruins of his nature; and, stronger than death, risen higher in virtue when breathing his last!

If all our men of genius had so breathed their last,-if all our men of genius, like him, had been men of genius for eternals, then had we never been pained by the report of a latter end-0, how unlike to this! But a little to balance our pain, let us consider that such reports as make us at once adore and tremble, are of use, when too many there are who must tremble before they will adore; and who convince us, to our shame, that the surest refuge of our endangered virtue is in the fears and terrors of the disingenuous human heart.

"But reports," you say, "may be false," and you farther ask me, "If all reports were true, how came an anecdote of so much honor to human nature as mine to lie so long unknown? What inauspicious planet interposed to lay its lustre under so lasting and so surprising an eclipse?"

The fact is indisputably true; nor are you to rely on me for the truth of it. My report is but a second edition; it was published before, though obscurely, and with a cloud before it. As clouds before the sun are often beautiful, so this of which I speak. How finely pathetic are those two lines which this so solemn and affecting scene inspired!

"He taught us how to live; and, O, too high

A price for knowledge, taught us how to die." Tickell. With truth wrapped in darkness, so sung our oracle to the public, but explained himself to me. He was present at his patron's death; and that account of it here given, he gave to me before his eyes were dry.

By what means Addison taught us how to die, the poet left to be known by a late and less able hand; but one more zealous for his patron's glory: zealous and impotent, as the poor Egyptian who gathered a few splinters of a broken boat as a funeral-pile for the great Pompey, studious of doing honor to so renowned a name. Yet had not this poor plank (permit me here so to call this imperfect page) been thrown out, the chief article of his patron's glory would probably have been sunk forever, and late ages have received but a fragment of his fame: a fragment glorious indeed, for his genius how bright! But to commend him for composition, though immortal, is distraction now, if there our encomium ends; let us look farther to that concluding scene, which spoke human nature not unrelated to the Divine. To that let us pay the long and large arrear of our greatly posthumous applause.

This you will think a long digression; and justly: if that may be called a digression, which was my chief inducement for writing at all. I had long wished to deliver up to the public this sacred deposit, which by Providence was lodged in my hands; and I entered on the present undertaking partly as an introduction to that which is more worthy to see the light; of which I gave an intimation in the beginning of my letter: for this is the monumental marble there mentioned, to which I promised to conduct you; this is the sepulchral lamp, the long hidden lustre of our accomplished countryman, who now rises, as from his tomb, to receive the regard so greatly due to the dignity of his death: a death to be distinguished by tears of joy; a death which angels beheld with delight.

And shall that which would have shone conspicuous amid the resplendent lights of Christianity's glorious morn, by these dark days be dropped into oblivion? Dropped it is; and dropped by our sacred, august, and ample register of renown, which has entered in its marble memoirs the dim splendor of far inferior worth. Though so lavish of praise, and so talkative of the dead, yet is it silent on a subject which (if any) might have taught its unlettered stones to speak. If powers were not wanting, a monument more durable than those of marble should proudly rise in this ambitious page, to the new and far nobler Addison than that which you and the public have so long and so much admired. Nor this nation only; for it is Europe's Addison, as well as ours; though Europe knows not half his title to her esteem; being as yet unconscious that the dying Addison far outshines her Addison immortal. Would we resemble him? Let us not limit our ambition to the least illustrious part of his character; heads, indeed, are crowned on earth;

^

but hearts only are crowded in heaven; a truth which, in such an age of authors, should not be forgotten.

It is piously to be hoped that this narrative may have some effect, since all listen when a death-bed speaks; and regard the person departing as an actor of a part which the great Master of the drama has appointed us to perform to-morrow. This was a Roscius on the stage of life; his exit how great! Ye lovers of virtue, plaudite; and let us, my friend, ever "remember his end, as well as our own, that we may never do amiss." I am,

Dear Sir,

Your most obliged,

humble servant.

P.S. How far Addison is an original, you will see in my next; where I descend from this consecrated ground into his sublunary praise: and great is the descent, though into noble heights of intellectual power.

APPENDIX I

THE IDEAS CONTAINED IN THE "CONJECTURES" COMPARED WITH THEIR PARALLELS FOUND IN EARLIER WRITINGS

In any argument or discussion much of the final impression may depend upon the point of view. Such will be the case at least with the following compilation. A word of explanation by way of preface will therefore be in place.

Nearly every passage in the Conjectures that is of literary significance is collated here with a limited number of similar statements made by Young himself or by others before he wrote his Conjectures. The similarity in question consists in resemblance or identity as to thought or terminology. In the first group of quotations, for example, Young's claim that he was writing on a new subject, on a subject on which he had not yet seen anything written, is compared with instances where he makes the same claim for his Night Thoughts and his True Estimate of Human Life, and with various instances where other authors make the same claim for their own or other works. Thus it is made obvious that it was common practice with Young and others before and during his days to recommend literary works by claiming originality for them. In the second group his precept that the pen ought to be employed above all in the "sacred interests of virtue, and real service of mankind” is compared with passages that anticipate it more or less strikingly. The third group of quotations, finally, was collated to show the remarkable resemblance in thought and terminology between the statements made by Young as to genius and originality and certain earlier ones made by other writers. And such parallel passages are quoted in a chronological, but retrogressive, order. Thus, a passage from the Conjectures is placed closest to those parallels which are most closely related to it as to time and contents.

Out of regard for space and because this study is not meant as a complete history of the origin, development, and spread of each term and idea in question, the reader will find here only a certain portion of the evidence which I have gathered to show where and how Young repeats in his Conjectures either better or worse what had been said before by himself or others. The data here given will suffice, however, to show that almost everything that Young says in his treatise was available in quite a number of sources. They tend further to substantiate my view that Young employed his own precept when writing this essay.

According to this precept one should read everything that others have said on one's topic before proceeding to write. These data prove furthermore that the Conjectures were not a new phenomenon in literary criticism, and they indicate the sources from which they may have been derived, while it has been pointed out in a preceding chapter that Young had actually read many such writings as are quoted here. It is nevertheless not to be denied that Young may have worked out many of his arguments and conclusions independently of all similar statements already in existence. Whoever wishes to see and judge for himself in this matter, will find the following compilation a convenient aid. Conjectures (p. 43): I begin with original composition; and the more willingly, as it seems an original subject to me, who have seen nothing hitherto written on it.

1756: "I do not know whether my poem will have all the qualities requisite to satisfy a reader: but I dare flatter myself, that it will at least be allowed to have the grace of novelty." Joseph Warton, Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 206. 1742: Why doubt me then, the glorious truth to sing,

Though yet unsung, as deem'd perhaps too bold?

1741: I may be looked upon as an original in my way.

Young, Vol. I, p. 59.

Samuel Richardson, Oxf. Dic., vid. Original. 1728: The design [speaking of his "True Estimate of Human Life"] is of great consequence, and, I think, new. Young, Vol. II, p. 323.

1711: My design in this paper is to consider what is properly a great genius, and to throw some thoughts together on so uncommon a subject. Spectator, No. 160. 1695: I believe the subject [concerning Humor in Comedy] is entirely new, and was never touched upon before.

William Congreve, Concerning Humor in Comedy, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 251. 1685: 'Tis sufficient to observe that his [Lord Rochester's] poetry, like himself, was all original, and has a stamp so particular, so unlike anything that has been writ before, that, as it disclaimed all servile imitation and copying from others, so neither is it capable, in my opinion, of being copied, any more than the manner of his discourse could be copied.

Robert Wolseley, Preface to Valentinian, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 8. 1683: Of this treatise, I shall only add, 'tis an original.

D. A. Art of Converse, Pref., Oxf. Dic., vid. Original.

1677-79 (?) Whom refin'd Etherege copies not at all,

But is himself a sheer original.

John Wilmot, An Allusion to Horace, ed. Spingarn, Vol. III, p. 283.

1676: I hate imitation, to do anything like other people. All that know me do me the honor to say, I am an original.

Wycherley, Plain Dealer, Oxf. Dic., vid. Original.