dates, contains undeniable evidence. Readers I know there are of a
strange turn of mind, who will hereafter peruse the "Night Thoughts"
with less satisfaction; who will wish they had still been deceived;
who will quarrel with me for discovering that no such character as
their Lorenzo ever yet disgraced human nature or broke a father's
heart. Yet would these admirers of the sublime and terrible be
offended should you set them down for cruel and for savage? Of this
report, inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in proportion
as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to find the
proof? Perhaps it is clear from the poems.

From the first line to the last of the "Night Thoughts" no one
expression can be discovered which betrays anything like the father.
In the "Second Night" I find an expression which betrays something
else--that Lorenzo was his friend; one, it is possible, of his
former companions; one of the Duke of Wharton's set. The poet
styles him "gay friend;" an appellation not very natural from a
pious incensed father to such a being as he paints Lorenzo, and that
being his son. But let us see how he has sketched this dreadful
portrait, from the sight of some of whose features the artist
himself must have turned away with horror. A subject more shocking,
if his only child really sat to him, than the crucifixion of Michael
Angelo; upon the horrid story told of which Young composed a short
poem of fourteen lines in the early part of his life, which he did
not think deserved to be republished. In the "First Night" the
address to the poet's supposed son is:--

"Lorenzo, Fortune makes her court to thee."

In the "Fifth Night:"--