Edward Young

See also: Young

Edward Young , born the July 3rd 1683 with Upham and dead the April 12th 1765 with Welwyn (Hertfordshire), is a romantic Poète English.

Author of the poem Felt sorry for or Thoughts night on the life, the death and the immortality (1742-1745), known under the name of Nuits which inaugurate the dark kind and melancholic person of the romanticism, his tormented heart leaves with the posterity a personal and deep work.

Wire of a vice-chancellor of Upham, since senior of Salisbury, it was informed with the college of Winchester and hardly left the college All Souls to Oxford in 1719, which it began, with its Epistle to… Lord Lansdoune ( Épître with Lord Lansdoune , 1713) followed by a Poem one the Last Day dedicated to the queen Anne ( Poème over the day of the last judgment , 1713), a career of poet courtier whom it continued up to eighty years spent, multiplying the flattering dedications and poetries, putting at the service the large ones, ministers, the whole with a poor profit; a pension of 200 pounds and, when it had entered the orders at forty six years, the cure of Welwyn, were its reward. There was The Force off Religion: however Vanquished Coils ( the Force of the religion: or love overcome , 1714), poem on the execution of Jane Grey and his/her husband, dedicated to the countess of Salisbury; and an epistle with Joseph Addison, One the late Queen' S Death and His Majesty' S Accession to the Throne ( On the death of the Queen and the accession of its majesty to the throne , 1714), in which it precipitated to congratulate the new king. The excessive model of the dedications clashes so much with the pious tone of the poems that Young omitted them of his edition of his works.

About this time, it came into contact with the duke Philip de Wharton, whom it accompanied with Dublin in 1717. Four years before its death, it obtained finally a place of secretary of the cabinet of the princess dowager of Wales. Besides these productions of circumstance not very important, one quotes of him two tragedies, Busiris , played with much success has Druy Lane in theater, and Revenge , imitated Othello ( Revenge , 1721 and which passes for one of best the drama S English of time. This part had been dedicated to Wharton which promised to him two pensions of 100 pounds and a sum of 600 pounds in consideration of its expenses as to the parliamentary election of Cirencester. These promises led Young to refuse two stations in Oxford and to sacrifice an offer of perpetual pension by the marchioness of Exeter louse the station of tutor of its son. When Wharton missed upon these engagements, Young had to plead his case in front of the Hardwicke chancellor in 1740, obtained the pension, but not the 600 pounds.

From 1725 and 1728 Young published a succession of seven satires morals in the kind of Pope a series of satires on universal passion, dedicated to the duke of Dorset, in George Bubb Dodington, Spencer Compton, Elizabeth Germain and Robert Walpole. Published under the title of Coils off Famed, the Universal Passion ( the Love of the Fame, universal passion ; London, 1725 - 28, 2 share.), this continuation not unworthy of its model, which abounds in seizing and vigorous verses, was qualified by Samuel Johnson of “very great realization”. Herbert Croft affirmed that this Satire had paid: 3000 pounds with Young, allowing him to compensate for the losses which it had undergone in the Krach of 1720.

In 1726, Young accepted an annual pension of 200 pounds Walpole, but it continued, until the end of its days, to seek to obtain a nomination at a station. The king regarded nevertheless his pension as a suitable remuneration. Living at one time when the patronage was in the process of disappearance, Young is remarkable for his been obstinated search for support for his poetry, his works theatrical, and his ecclesiastical career. He failed in each sphere, never not obtaining the degree of support that he estimated that his work was to obtain to him, mainly because of his choice of patrons whose fortune was on the decline. That did not prevent it from writing that “them false praises are the prostitution of the feather. ” With nearly fifty years, Young decided to enter the orders. It was indicated that, in his youths, Young was far from being “the ornament of the religion and the morality which it became thereafter”. Its friendships with the duke of Wharton and Dodington did not do surely anything to improve its reputation. Pope was right probably to say that “It had much sublime genius, but without good sense, so that its genius, without guide, was perpetually exposed to degenerate in the assignment”, but which it “once had an excellent heart which enabled him to support, it had assumed it, ecclesiastical character initially with decency and then with honor. ”

In 1728, Young became royal chaplain and obtained, in 1730 a cure with Welwyn. Married in 1731, in Elizabeth Lee whose girl whom she of a preceding marriage with Francis Lee, had married in Henry Temple, died in Lyon in 1736 in way for Nice, followed by his/her husband and his mother in 1740. These redoubled blows that death struck around him are supposed being the domestic pains which gave place to the Night thoughts ( night Pensées ), poem divided into nine nights, published 1742 with 1746, often reprinted, and known in France under the title of the Nuits . These successive losses threw the poet in a lugubrious provision which resulted in this religious poem, moral, romantic, where one finds a Christian which appears sincere, a satirical of school of Pope, skilful moralist to balance the Antithèse S, and a sentimental declamator deploying his sorrows with a put out of order abundance of images. The immortality of the heart, the truth of Christianity, the need for a religious and moral life, such are the topics that Young endeavors to renew while adding to it of the characters and the incidents of novel, who represented real facts and beings. Young declares, in the foreword of this work, to which its celebrity remained attached, who the subject of the poem was real. Philandre and Narcisse were identified rather with light with Henry and Elizabeth Temple. One also suggested that Philandre represented Thomas Tickell, an old friend of dead Young three months after his wife. Some also wanted to see a bond between the Lorenzo infidel and the son of Young, but this one was only eight years old at the time of the publication of the Nuits . Published in 1742, the Complaint, or thought night on the life, death and immortality , was followed other Nuits, the eighth and the ninth appearing in 1745. In 1753 Its tragedy The Brothers ( the brothers , written several years before was removed whereas it was about to enter the church, was produced in Drury Lane. Young was described like a brilliance talker. Although the Nuits long and are disorganized, work abounds in brilliant passages. Success was enormous. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Hungarian. Into France, Pierre the Turner translated the Nuits into prose emphatique and more lugubrious than the worms of the original. This version (1769, 2 vol. in-8°) had an immense success and ensured, in this country where it became traditional romantic school, a reputation higher than that even which Young in his country enjoyed. In Germany, some critics preferred it with John Milton. It was reprinted about fifty times. Pierre the Turner gave a translation of the complete Œuvres (Paris, 1796,6 vol. in-18) of Young.

The questions touching with the “sincerity” of the poet were raised one century after its death. The publication of the letters of adulation of Young and its research of employment led many readers to call into question the sincerity of the poet. George Eliot discussed her “radical lack of sincerity as a poetic artist” in a famous test. Even if it is clear that Young is not the inventor of the melancholy and the moonlight in literature, it made much to spread the taste of it.

The test of Young, addressed to Samuel Richardson, Conjectures one Original Composition ( Conjectures about the original composition , 1759), was popular and influential in continental Europe, particularly in Germany, like will recommending the originality on the neo-classic imitation. Despite everything its imperfections, its work remained one of principal of the English poetry of.

In spite of the celebrity that the Nuits brought to him, Young lived in an quasi-uninterrupted retirement. In 1761, it was named made cabinet of the princess Augusta dowager of Saxony-Gotha. Not having never recovered death of his wife, it was scrambled with his son who had apparently criticized the excessive influence exerted by his housekeeper, Mrs. Hallows. Refusing to see his son until little before his death, the old man reconciled himself nevertheless with his son and all bequeathed to him that it had.

Other works

The Installment , in Sir R. Walpole, 1726
Cynthio , 1727
has Vindication off Providence… , sermon, 1728
An Apology for Punch , sermon, 1729
Imperium Pelagi, has Naval Lyrick… , 1730
Two Epistles to Mr. Pope concerning the Authors off the Age , 1730
has Sea-Part… , 1733
The Foreign Address, gold The Best Argument for Peace , 1734
The Centaur not Fabulous; in Five Letters to has Friend , 1755
An Argument… for the Truth off His Religion , 1758, sermon preached in front of the king
Resignation… , poem, 1762

Source

Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 2087

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