Their good is good entire, unmixed, unmarred ; On boughs forbidden, where no curses hang: By previous dread, or murmur in the rear : When the worst comes, it comes unfeared; one stroke Proud man, who rules the globe, and reads the stars, There is a certain resemblance, and also a certain contrast between the style of Young and that of the English "metaphysical" poets of the seventeenth century. The resemblance is obvious. The difference is accentuated in Night Thoughts. Young never aims, like Donne, at paradoxical conclusions: his reasoning is founded on universal experience and common sense: "wit," as he exercises it, lies in the novelty and ingenuity of the ideas with which established truths are illustrated. His most marked characteristic is the adoption of blank verse," as fittest for discourse." No one but a man conscious of great powers of thought would have ventured to dispense with the natural advantages afforded by the couplet for controversial purposes, but the closeness and pregnancy of Young's reasoning in blank verse seem to justify the experiment. His style in this measure is peculiar to himself. It is mainly determined by the dramatic, or rather melodramatic, form into which the argument, addressed to the imaginary Lorenzo, is cast; but this is modified by the poet's love of epigram and antithesis. The periods and clauses are for the most part limited by the close of the line; but Young's exuberant fertility of thought leads to prolific generation of images and words. That mixture of melodrama and epigrammatic metaphor which he affected is well illustrated in the "Night" devoted to reflections on the death of his much-loved Narcissa : Live ever here, Lorenzo? Shocking thought! 1 Night Thoughts, Night vii. 290-309. Disown from shame what they from folly crave. And yawn our joys? or thank a misery For change though sad? to see what we have seen? To taste the tasted, and at each return Still streaming throughfares of dull debauch; Trembling each gulp lest Death should snatch the bowl.2 It will readily be understood that a style so striking and forcible produces mannerism, and lends itself to parody. Young's theatrical leanings often betray him into bad taste, when he means to be elevated: for example : Souls truly great dart forward on the wing Of just Ambition to the grand result, The curtain's fall; there see the buskined chief Reduced to his own stature, low or high, As vice or virtue sinks him or sublimes.3 Another marked feature in the blank verse of Night Thoughts is the linking of periods by the iteration of words. Sometimes, in the elegiac parts, very happy effects are thus produced; as in the pathetic passage alluding to the death of Narcissa, where we may also note the manner in which Young is accustomed to prolong a thought by the elaboration of metaphors : Sweet harmonist! and beautiful as sweet! And young as beautiful! and soft as young! 1 This and the following lines are plainly suggested by Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Book iii. 956-962. 2 Night Thoughts, Night iii. 325-346. 3 Ibid. Night vi. 367-372. And gay as soft! and innocent as gay! But by the frequent repetition of this device in such phrases as Canst thou, O Night! indulge one labour more? One labour more indulge! 2 its artificiality becomes too apparent; and, as a whole, the use of blank verse in Night Thoughts must be regarded as a tour de force, not as a model for imitation. Young overcomes difficulties of expression by strength of thought, rather than by propriety of art. His verse is so near prose that it often passes the boundary line, leaving the reader with a feeling that the wrong instrument of diction has been chosen. Still genius everywhere predominates, and when the art of Young is considered in its evident descent from the school of Milton, and in the influence which it exercised on minds so various as Goldsmith and Cowper, few capable judges will be disposed to deny to Night Thoughts (popular as it also was on the Continent) a high and permanent place in the history of English Poetry.3 1 Night Thoughts, Night iii. 81-93. 2 Ibid. Night ix. 20-21. 3 Young's references to Milton are frequent, and his direct obligations to him sometimes striking, notably in the lines: From that first fire, Fountain of animation, whence descends (Night v. 208-211.) Goldsmith has imitated in The Deserted Village, 91-94, his lines beginning: "As some tall tower" (Night ii. 683); and in Edwin and Angelina he borrows directly from Young (Night iv. 118)— Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long. The influence of Young on Cowper, both in his Satires and in The Task, is obvious everywhere. If in Young the genius of the satirist is always apparent, the intellectual temper of English society in the reign of George II.-its sense of material security; its consequent tendency to contemplate with self-satisfaction the works of Nature and the state of less favoured nations; its indolence; its benevolence; its enjoyment of art and luxury-is more directly reflected in the poetry of James Thomson. In the absence of motives to strenuous action, poetry tended to become descriptive and reflective; and the attention given to the principles of Natural Religion turned imagination aside from the passions of men to trace the mind of God in the order of external Nature. Thomson spoke for many when he said : I solitary court Th' inspiring breeze, and meditate the book Warm from the heart to pour the moral song. From thoughts like these the transition was easy to such didactic reflections, aroused by foreign travel, on the fate of Empires, as are embodied in Liberty; while in The Castle of Indolence we find an expression, not only of the poet's own sluggish temperament, but of the peaceful, contemplative, artistic character of his times. James Thomson was born on 11th September 1700, at Ednam, near Kelso, in Roxburghshire, of which place his father was minister. His mother was Beatrix Trotter, the daughter and co-heiress of a small proprietor of Fogo in Berwickshire, who, by the death of her husband about 1716, was left with straitened means to support a family of nine children. Her brave struggle in these hard circumstances is alluded to by the poet in his Elegy on the Death of his Mother (in 1725): No more the orphan train around her stands, He was himself at the time of his father's death at the University of Edinburgh, preparing for ordination. Having in the course of his probation to expound a psalm, his diction was so ornate that he is said to have been reproved by the professor of Divinity for using language which could not be understood by the people; it seems, however, that Johnson exaggerates when he says that Thomson hence became disgusted with theology, and determined to devote himself to poetry. He had composed in verse from his early boyhood, and he was encouraged by Lady Grizzel Baillie, a friend of his mother, who advised him to try his fortune in London, and promised him assistance. Thomson came there, accordingly, in 1725, bringing with him the disjecta membra of his Winter which he showed to his friend Mallet, who advised him to cast them into a single poem. This he did, and found for his work a publisher in Millan, a bookseller, who undertook the venture in 1726, after several other members of the trade had declined it. It was dedicated to Spencer Compton, but remained unnoticed by him, till his neglect was publicly rebuked by Aaron Hill in a copy of verses addressed to Thomson. Compton then made Thomson a present of twenty guineas, and Winter gradually acquired reputation. Thomson's advance was afterwards rapid. He became a friend of Pope, and his acquaintance was sought, among others, by Rundle, Bishop of Derry, who introduced him to the Solicitor-General, Sir Charles Talbot. In 1727 he published Summer, inscribing it to Bubb Dodington; Spring followed in 1728, under the patronage of the Countess of Hertford, afterwards Duchess of Somerset. Thomson also wrote in 1727 an elegiac poem in memory of Sir Isaac Newton, whose various discoveries he celebrated in the same kind of blank verse that he employed in describing the Seasons. Autumn, the last of this series to be published, appeared in 1730, as part of Thomson's collected works, being dedicated to the Speaker, Onslow. In this year he was engaged by the SolicitorGeneral to travel with his son on the Continent, and 1 Poetical Works of James Thomson (D. C. Tovey), p. xx. |