It is well known that Mr. Croft entertained a high respect for that celebrated Prelate, the late Dr. Hurd, who after duly discharging his episcopal functions for almost twenty-seven years, and refusing the primacy, expired in his sleep May 28, 1808, in the 89th year of his age.

The following epitaph, com

posed long before that period has been uniformly attributed to the pen of the subject of these memoirs :

"PASSENGER !

THE URN YOU HAVE VISITED CONTAINS THE HEART
OF RICHARD HURD, BISHOP OF WORCESTER:

A PRELATE DISTINGUISHED BY EVERY VIRTUE,

AND

IMMORTALIZED BY EVERY QUALIFICATION,

THAT

COULD ADORN THE CHRISTIAN,

THE GENTLEMAN, AND THE SCHOLAR.
THE ROYAL PUPILS*, WHOSE CONFIDENCE

HE

GAINED BY THE ELEGANCE OF HIS MANNERS,
AND THE SINCERITY OF HIS COUNSELS,
KNEW, AND ADMIRED THE WORTH, AND
INTEGRITY OF THEIR PRECEPTOR.

THEY CHERISHED THE MAN WHO HAD TAUGHT THEM

THE IMPORTANT LESSON HOW TO BE BELOVED,
WHILE THE ARROW OF DEATH FORBORE TO

VINDICATE ITS ERRAND, AND DIRECTED

THIS

TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY, WHEN ROBBED

OF THE FELICITY OF CONTEMPLATING
HIS LIVING PERFECTIONS."

Mr. Croft being disappointed in his expectations of clerical preferment, now addicted himself wholly to literature. His pursuits naturally led him to form an acquaintance with those who pursued the same track with himself; and he was lucky enough to reckon many celebrated and respectable characters among the number of his friends.

* The Prince Regent and Duke of York.

At a period when the name of Dr. Samuel Johnson had attained high and universal fame, he deemed it his peculiar good fortune to be one of those who lived in familiar and unreserved intimacy with the great lexicographer. While the former was employed on the lives of the poets, he experienced great difficulties in respect to materials, particularly in regard to Young, a name of considerable note both at home and abroad. To conciliate the Editor, his friend, on this occasion, appears to have exerted himself with considerable effect; and from Mrs. Montague and others, learned a number of particulars, which, but for his labours and communications, might have been for ever forgotten. He also appears to have been personally acquainted with the son of the author of the " Night Thoughts;" a circumstance which doubtless enabled him to refute a variety of errors, prejudices, and misconceptions concerning that much-injured gentleman. To acquire To acquire a more intimate acquaintance with the private life of the author, he actually took a journey into Hertfordshire, to interrogate the Poet's housekeeper in person, but he arrived too late, for she had been buried two or three days!

66

It is the general fault of biographers to bring forward all the virtues and talents of those whose lives they write, and at the same time keep all their foibles and vices in the back ground; but Mr. Croft did not, on this occasion, feel any necessity to follow the beaten track. His friend, Dr. Johnson, not only allows that his information was of a superior kind, but adds, "the Public will perhaps wish that I had solicited and obtained more such favours from him." The vehicle, nowever, is not perhaps of the best kind; for this biographical sketch is conveyed under the form of an epistolary correspondence, that disfigures the uniformity of the work of which it is destined to constitute a part. This letter, dated September 1780, commences thus:

"Dear Sir,

"In consequence of our different conversations about authentic materials for the life of Young, I send you the follow

ing detail. Of great men something must always be said to gratify curiosity. Of the illustrious author of the Night Thoughts,' much has been told of which there never could have been proofs; and little care appears to have been taken to tell that, of which proofs with little trouble might have been procured.

"Edward Young was born at Upham, near Winchester, in June 1681. He was the son of Edward Young, at that time fellow of Winchester College, and rector of Upham, &c. The father became dean of Sarum, and we are told that Bishop Burnet commemorated his death, in a sermon preached in the cathedral of Salisbury, on the Sunday after his demise.

"The son was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and afterwards repaired to Oxford, without the reward provided for merit by William of Wykeham.' There are who relate," adds Mr. Croft, "that when first Young found himself independent, and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became ! The authority of his father, indeed, had ceased sometime before by his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronized by the infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps the poet, and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronized only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out? Yet Pope is said by Ruff head to have told Warburton, that Young had much of a sublime genius, though without common sense;' so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets; but his having a very good heart, enabled him to support the clerical character, first with decency, and afterwards with honour.

"They who think ill of Young's morality, in the early part of his life, may perhaps be wrong; but Tindall could not err in his opinion of Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindall used to spend much of his time at All Souls: The other boys,' said the atheist, I can always answer,

because I always know whence they have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is continually pestering me with something of his own.'

"After all, Tindall and the censurers of Young may be reconcileable. Young might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life in which his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were so, he has left behind him, not only his evidence in favour of virtue, but the potent testimony of experience against vice."

Our biographer allows that some of Dr. Young's works, particularly his dedications, abound with flattery; but he shows how the author was ashamed of, and suppressed many of them; after which, he asks, "Shall the gates of repentance be shut only against literary sinners ?" Mr. C., little dreaming at the time that he himself should ever be in exactly the same predicament, seems to cast many doubts on the assertion conveyed by Swift in his " Rhapsody," that his author had a pension from the court!

We are told that while Young was in Ireland, most probably in the suite of the Duke of Wharton, the Dean one afternoon pointed out a noble elm, which in its uppermost branches was much withered and decayed, to which pointing, he said to him, "I shall be like that tree, I shall die at top!" "It will surprise you," adds he, addressing himself to Dr. Johnson, 66 to see me cite second of Atkins, case 136, Ailes versus the Attorney-General, March 14, 1740, as authority for the life of a poet. But biographers do not always find such certain guides as the oaths of the persons whom they record. Chancellor Hardwicke was to determine, whether two annuities granted by the Duke of Wharton to Young, were for legal considerations. One was dated the 24th of March, 1719, and accounted for his Grace's bounty in a style princely and commendable, if not legal; considering that the public good is advanced by the encouragement of learning and the polite arts, and being pleased therein with the attempts of Dr. Young, in consideration thereof, and of the love I bear him, &c.' The other was dated the 10th of July, 1722."

Mr. Herbert Croft records, that Voltaire having ridiculed Milton's allegory of Sin and Death, in the company of his author, (most probably at the celebrated Bub Doddington's,) the following extempore epigram was the punishment to which this celebrated Frenchman exposed himself on this occasion:

"You are so witty, profligate, and thin,

At once we think thee, Milton, Death, and Sin! "

He also seems to prove that the following celebrated lines abound with the poetica licentia, as Lady Elizabeth Young, her daughter and husband, are the persons supposed to be alluded to in the Night Thoughts; all of whom died at far more distant periods:

“Insatiate Archer! could not one suffice?

Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain ;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn."

We are told soon after this, that "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."

After stating, that it is unfair to bring the gloominess of "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, he remarks, that his parish was indebted to his good humour for an assembly and a bowling-green.

son.

"Whether you think with me, I know not," adds he; but "the favourite inaxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, always appeared to me to savour more of female weakness than of manly reaHe 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 fortune, the reputation of the living. Yet censure is not heard beneath the tomb any more than praise.