Edward Young

Edward Young (c. 3 July 1683 – 5 April 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night-Thoughts, a series of philosophical writings in blank verse, reflecting his state of mind following several bereavements.

This was followed by a Poem on the Last Day (1713), dedicated to Queen Anne; The Force of Religion: or Vanquished Love (1714), a poem on the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, dedicated to the Countess of Salisbury; and an epistle to Joseph Addison, On the late Queen's Death and His Majesty's Accession to the Throne (1714), in which he rushed to praise the new king.

In view of these promises Young refused two livings in the gift of All Souls College, Oxford, and sacrificed a life annuity offered by the Marquess of Exeter if he would act as tutor to his son.

Wharton failed to discharge his obligations, and Young, who pleaded his case before Lord Chancellor Hardwicke in 1740, gained the annuity but not the £600.

Herbert Croft asserted that Young made £3000 by his satires, which compensated losses he had suffered in the South Sea Bubble.

He never received the degree of patronage that he felt his work had earned, largely because he picked patrons whose fortunes were about to turn downward.

These successive deaths are supposed to be the events referred to in the Night-Thoughts as taking place "ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn.

"[3] In the preface to Night-Thoughts Young states that the occasion of the poem was real, and Philander and Narcissa have been rather rashly identified with Mr and Mrs Temple.

He died at Welwyn, reconciled with his spendthrift son: "he expired a little before 11 of the clock at the night of Good Friday last, the 5th instant, and was decently buried yesterday about 6 in the afternoon" (Jones to Birch).

The publication of fawning letters from Young seeking preferment led many readers to question the poet's sincerity.

Madame Klopstock thought the king ought to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, and some German critics preferred him to John Milton.

Blunden's mention of Young's poem reintroduced an interesting, sometimes bombastic precursor to the early Romantics to students of English literature.

[4] William Hutchinson included a gloss on Night-Thoughts in his series of lectures The Spirit of Masonry (1775), underlining the masonic symbolism of the text.

As virtue without much riches can give happiness, so genius without much learning can give renown... Learning is borrowed knowledge; genius is knowledge innate, and quite our own.In 1759, at the age of 76, he published a piece of critical prose under the title of Conjectures on Original Composition which put forward the vital doctrine of the superiority of "genius," of innate originality being more valuable than classic indoctrination or imitation, and suggested that modern writers might dare to rival or even surpass the "ancients" of Greece and Rome.

The Conjectures was a declaration of independence against the tyranny of classicism and was at once acclaimed as such becoming a milestone in the history of English, and European, literary criticism.

[5] It was reported that the author of Night-Thoughts was not, in his earlier days, "the ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became", and his friendships with the Duke of Wharton and with Dodington did not improve his reputation.

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 when he assumed it, first with decency and afterwards with honour" (O Ruffhead, Life of A. Pope, p. 291).