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find our minds, when applied to some favorite theme, as naturally and as easily quieted and refreshed as a peevish child (and peevish children are we all till we fall asleep) when laid to the breast! Our happiness no longer lives on charity; nor bids fair for a fall, by leaning on that most precarious and thorny pillow, another's pleasure for our repose. How independent of the world is he, who can daily find new acquaintance, that at once entertain and improve him in the little world, the minute but fruitful creation of his own mind!

"These advantages composition affords us, whether we write ourselves, or in more humble amusement, peruse the works of others. While we bustle through the thronged walks of public life, it gives us a respite, at least from care, a pleasing pause of refreshing recollection. If the country is our choice, or fate, there it rescues us from sloth and sensuality, which like obscene vermin, are apt gradually to creep unperceived into the delightful bowers of our retirement, and to poison all its sweets. Conscious guilt robs the rose of its scent, the lily of its lusture, and makes an Eden a deflowered and dismal scene.

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"Moreover, if we consider life's endless evils, what can be more prudent than to provide for consolation under them? A consolation under them, the wisest of men have found in the pleasures of the pen; witness, among many more, Thucydides, Xenophon, Tully, Ovid, Seneca, Pliny the younger, who says, " in uxoris infirmitate & amicorum periculo, aut morte turbatus ad studia, unicum doloris levamentum, confugio." And why not add to these "their modern equals, Chaucer, Raleigh, Bacon, Milton, Clarendon, under the same shield, unwounded by misfortune, and nobly smiling in distress?

"Composition was a cordial to these under the frowns of fortune, but evils there are, which her smiles cannot prevent, or cure. Among these are the langours of old age." If those are held honorable, who in a hand benumbed by time, have grasped the just sword in defence of their country; shall they be less esteemed, whose unsteady pen vibrates to the last in the cause of religion, of virtue, of learning? Both these are happy in this, that by fixing their attention on objects most important, they escape numberless

little anxieties, and that tadium vite which often hangs so heavy on its evening hours."

Dr. Young's last performance was a poem, entitled, "The Resignation;" which is inferior to his other works, and was published not long before his death, which happened at Welwyn, on the 12th of April, 1765. He was buried under the altar-piece of that parish-church, by the side of his wife. His fortune, which was considerable, he left to his only son, with some parts of whose conduct he had been much displeased, but to whom he was at last reconciled. It has been said, that the character of Lorenzo in the Night Thoughts, was intended by Dr. Young for his son; but this appears to be entirely without foundation; for the doctor's son was only seven years of age, when the character of Lorenzo, in the Night Thoughts, was first published. In justice to Dr. Young's son, it should also be observed, that whatever might be the faults or foibles of his youth, he now bears a very respectable character.

Dr. Young was a man of considerable genius, of great piety, and of amiable and virtuous manners in private life. The turn of his mind was naturally solemn; and during his residence in the country, he commonly spent some hours in a day amongst the tombs in his own church-yard. His conversation, as well as his writings, generally had a reference to the life after this; and the same disposition discovered itself even in the improvement of his rural abode. And yet notwithstanding this natural gloominess of temper, he was so fond of innocent amusements, that he instituted an assembly and a bowling-green in his parish, which he frequently honored with his presence.

In the earlier part of his life, he had been intimately acquainted with some of the first persons in the polite and learned world; ut he survived almost all of them many years.

Dr. Young's greatest fault was, too great a propensity to flatter persons in high stations, and those from whom there was any probability of his obtaining preferment. He rose betimes, and obliged his domestics to join with him in the duty of morning-prayer. In his youth, as well as afterwards, he was often distinguished by somewhat of singularity in his manners. It is a traditionary report at Oxford, that when he was composing, he would shut up

his windows, and sit by a lamp even at mid-day; and that sculls; bones, and instruments of death, were among the ornaments of his study.

In 1762, Dr. Young published a collection of such as he thought the best of his works, in four vols. 12mo. under the title of "The Works of the Author of the Night Thoughts." A fifth volume was published after his death. Authorities. Biographia Britannica.

8vo. vol. ix. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Dramatica.

British Biography,
Baker's Biographia

THE LIFE OF

SAMUEL RICHARDSON.

[A. D. 1689, to 1761.]

THIS ingenious writer was born in 1689, and is said to have been the son of a farmer in Derbyshire. Of the earlier part of his life few particulars are preserved. He appears not to have received much instruction in the learned languages; but being brought up to the profession of a printer, he carried on that business for a long series of years with great reputation, in Salisbury-court, Fleet-street. When the duke of Wharton, about the year 1723, was active in opposition to the court; and in order to make himself popular in the city, became a member of the Wax-chandlers company. Mr Richardson was his printer, and was much favoured by hi, though he differed from the duke in his principles. He printed for that nobleman for a short time a political paper, called, “The True Briton," which was published twice a week; but he soon declined having any concern in that publication, from an unwillingness to subject himself to any prosecution from the government. He printed for some time a news-paper called, "The Daily Journal;" and afterwards, "The Daily Gazetteer," He was patronized by Mr. Onslow, speaker of the house of commons, and by his interest, was appointed to print the first edition of

The Journals of the House of Commons." Mr. Onslow had an high esteem for him; and it is said, that he would have procured for him some honorable and profitable office under the government; but Mr. Richardson, whose business was extensive and lucrative, neither desired, nor would accept of any thing of that kind.

In the year 1740, he published his celebrated romance entitled, Pamela, which procured him both fame and profit. It appears from a letter of Mr. Aaron Hill's to David Mallet, that the latter had suspected that Mr. Hill had a hand in this performance. The passage in Mr. Hill's letter, which is dated January 23, 1741, is as follows, "You ask me in your postcript, whether you are right in guessing, there are some traces of my hand in Pamela ? No, sir, upon my faith, I had not any (the minutest share) in that delightful nursery of virtues. The sole and absolute author is Mr. Richardson, of Salisbury-court; and such an author too he is, that hardly mortal ever matched him for his ease of natural power. He seems to move like a calm summer sea, that swelling upward, with unconscious deepness, lifts the heaviest weights into the skies, and shews no sense of their incumbency. He would, perhaps, in every thing he says or does, be more in nature than all men before him, but that he has one fault to an unnatural excess-and that is, modesty. The book was published many months before I saw or heard of it; and when he sent it me, among some other pieces, it came without the smallest hint that it was his, and with a grave apology, as for a trifle of too light a species. I found out whose it was, by the resembling turn of Pamela's expressions, weighed with some which I had noted as peculiar in his letters: yet very loath he was, a long time, to confess it. And to say the least I can of qualities, which he conceals with as much fear as if they were ignoble ones, he is so honest, open, generous and great a thinker, that he cannot in his writings paint a virtue that he needs look farther than his heart to find a pattern for. Let me not therefore rob him for a moment, in so just a mind as yours, by interception of his praises. The glory is, and ought to be, his only. And I am much mistaken in the promise of his genius, or Pamela (all lovely as she is, in her unheeded hasty dress) is Lut a dawning to the day he is to give us."

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In 1749, he published his most celebrated performance, his Clarrissa, in seven volumes, 8vo. In one of Mr. Hill's letters to Mr. Richardson, on the publication of this work, are the following passages: "Your Clarissa is full of varied and improving beauties, of such striking force, that they monopolize my thoughts, and every thought throughout my family.They give a body, and material tangibility to fancy! take possession of the sleep, and dwell like bird-lime on the memory !-We are acquainted with, and see, and know, with the completest intimacy, each man, maid, woman, tree, house, field, step, incident, and place, throughout this exquisite creation!-We agree, and every day afresh remark to one another, that we can find no difference at all in the impression of things really done, and past, and recollected by us-and the things we read of in this intellectual world, which you have naturalized us into.

"I never open you, without new proof of what I have a thou, sand times asserted, that you are a species in your single self, that never had, nor never will have, equal; such a glowing skill you have to call out life, and paint the features of the soul so speak. ingly!-to conjure up into the compass of so small a circle, such innumerable specimens of every humour, every passion !—all the representative displays of nature!

"Instead of viewing you engrossed by a diurnal round of the same business, one would think you had been verifying the story of the wandering Jew, and gathering all the fruits of seventeen active ages, in all climates, and through all diversities of conversation. But you have peculiarly, a nameless strength, in locally impressive imagery, that goes beyond whatever was conceived by a poetic fancy! A certain happy force of starting life from some quick transient glance, that opens its whole likeness at a flash, and stamps it with a not to be resisted permanency. Your mortal hints are sudden, like short lighting! and they strike with the same force and subtlety!"

In 1753, he published his "History of sir Charles Grandison," in eight volumes; which possesses a very high degree of merit, though it is thought not quite equal to his Clarissa. Dr. Wharton says, "Of all representations of madness, that of Clementina, in the History of sir Charles Grandison, is the most deeply interest

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