follies who is free? But, whatever the "Biographia" chooses to
relate, the son of Young experienced no dismission from his college,
either lasting or temporary. Yet, were nature to indulge him with a
second youth, and to leave him at the same time the experience of
that which is past, he would probably spend it differently--who
would not?--he would certainly be the occasion of less uneasiness to
his father. But, from the same experience, he would as certainly,
in the same case, be treated differently by his father.

Young was a poet: poets, with reverence be it spoken, do not make
the best parents. Fancy and imagination seldom deign to stoop from
their heights; always stoop unwillingly to the low level of common
duties. Aloof from vulgar life, they pursue their rapid flight
beyond the ken of mortals, and descend not to earth but when
compelled by necessity. The prose of ordinary occurrences is
beneath the dignity of poets. He who is connected with the author
of the "Night Thoughts" only by veneration for the Poet and the
Christian may be allowed to observe that Young is one of those
concerning whom, as you remark in your account of Addison, it is
proper rather to say "nothing that is false than all that is true."
But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo
than see himself vindicated, at the expense of his father's memory,
from follies which, if it may be thought blameable in a boy to have
committed them, it is surely praiseworthy in a man to lament and
certainly not only unnecessary, but cruel in a biographer to record.

Of the "Night Thoughts," notwithstanding their author's professed
retirement, all are inscribed to great or to growing names. He had
not yet weaned himself from earls and dukes, from the Speakers of
the House of Commons, Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, and