Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/350

346 power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets for prefixing to a lyrick composition an Essay on Lyrick Poetry, so just and impartial as to condemn himself.

We shall soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical Essay, but which disdains to shrink from the touchstone of the severest critick; and which certainly, as I remember to have heard you say, if it contain some of the worst, contains also some of the best things in the language.

Soon after the appearance of "Ocean," when he was almost fifty, Young entered into orders. In April 1728, not long after he put on the gown, he was appointed chaplain to George the Second.

The tragedy of "The Brothers," which was already in rehearsal, he immediately withdrew from the stage. The managers resigned it with some reluctance to the delicacy of the new clergyman. The Epilogue to "The Brothers," the only appendages to any of his three plays which he added himself, is, I believe, the only one of the kind. He calls it an historical Epilogue. Finding that "Guilt's dreadful close his narrow scene denied," he, in a manner, continues the tragedy in the Rh