happened. "Night Thoughts" were not uncommon to her, even when
first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself was
remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his "Last Day,"
almost his earliest poem, he calls her "The Melancholy Maid,"

"whom dismal scenes delight,
Frequent at tombs and in the realms of Night."

In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he
says:

"Oh! permit the gloom of solemn night
To sacred thought may forcibly invite.
Oh! how divine to tread the milky way,
To the bright palace of Eternal Day!"

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. What he calls "The TRUE Estimate of
Human Life," which has already been mentioned, exhibits only the
wrong side of the tapestry, and being asked why he did not show the
right, he is said to have replied that he could not. By others it
has been told me that this was finished, but that, before there
existed any copy, it was torn in pieces by a lady's monkey. Still,
is it altogether fair to dress up the poet for the man, and to bring
the gloominess of the "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? From them who
answer in the affirmative it should not be concealed that, though
"Invisibilia non decipiunt" appeared upon a deception in Young's