Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/375

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ment of a favour, should not always print it.

Is it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a poet, that of his "Night Thoughts" the French are particularly fond?

Of the "Epitaph on Lord Aubrey Beauclerk," dated 1740, all I know is, that I find it in the late body of English Poetry, and that I am sorry to find it there.

Notwithstanding the farewell which he seemed to have taken in the "Night Thoughts" of every thing which bore the least resemblance to ambition, he dipped again in politics. In 1745 he wrote "Reflections on the publick Situation of the Kingdom, addressed to the Duke of Newcastle;" indignant, as it appears, to behold

—a pope-bred Princeling crawl ashore,
And whistle-cut throats, with those swords that scrap'd
Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
To cut his passage to the British throne.

This political poem might be called a "Night Thought." Indeed it was originally printed as the conclusion of the "Night Thoughts,"

though