Court favour, yet untaken, I BESIEGE.
* *
If this song lives, Posterity shall know
One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred,
Who thought, even gold might come a day too late;
Nor on his subtle deathbed planned his scheme
For future vacancies in Church or State."

Deduct from the writer's age "twice told the period spent on
stubborn Troy," and you will still leave him more than forty when he
sate down to the miserable siege of court-favour. He has before
told us--

"A fool at forty is a fool indeed."

After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence
of what the general thought his "deathbed." By these extraordinary
poems, written after he was sixty, of which I have been led to say
so much, I hope, by the wish of doing justice to the living and the
dead, it was the desire of Young to be principally known. He
entitled the four volumes which he published himself, "The Works of
the Author of the Night Thoughts." While it is remembered that from
these he excluded many of his writings, let it not be forgotten that
the rejected pieces contained nothing prejudicial to the cause of
virtue or of religion. Were everything that Young ever wrote to be
published, he would only appear perhaps in a less respectable light
as a poet, and more despicable as a dedicator; he would not pass for
a worse Christian or for a worse man. This enviable praise is due
to Young. Can it be claimed by every writer? His dedications,
after all, he had perhaps no right to suppress. They all, I