believe, speak, not a little to the credit of his gratitude, of
favours received; and I know not whether the author, who has once
solemnly printed an acknowledgment of a favour, should not always
print it. Is it to the credit or to the discredit of Young, as a
poet, that of his "Night Thoughts" the French are particularly fond?

Of the "Epitaph on Lord Aubrey Beauclerk," dated 1740, all I know
is, that I find it in the late body of English poetry, and that I am
sorry to find it there. Notwithstanding the farewell which he
seemed to have taken in the "Night Thoughts" of everything which
bore the least resemblance to ambition, he dipped again in politics.
In 1745 he wrote "Reflections on the Public Situation of the
Kingdom, addressed to the Duke of Newcastle;" indignant, as it
appears, to behold

"---a pope-bred Princeling crawl ashore,
And whistle cut-throats, with those swords that scraped
Their barren rocks for wretched sustenance,
To cut his passage to the British throne."

This political poem might be called a "Night Thought;" indeed, it
was originally printed as the conclusion of the "Night Thoughts,"
though he did not gather it with his other works.

Prefixed to the second edition of Howe's "Devout Meditations" is a
letter from Young, dated January 19, 1752, addressed to Archibald
Macauly, Esq., thanking him for the book, "which," he says, "he
shall never lay far out of his reach; for a greater demonstration of
a sound head and a sincere heart he never saw."