Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/360

356 child, Frederick, now living, to whom the Prince of Wales was godfather.

That domestick grief is, in the first instance, to be thanked for these ornaments to our language, it is impossible to deny. Nor would it be common hardiness to contend, that worldly discontent had no hand in these joint productions of poetry and piety. Yet am I by no means sure that, at any rate, we should not save had something of the same colour from Young's pencil, notwithstanding the liveliness of his satires. In so long a life, causes for discontent and occasions for grief must have occurred. It is not clear to me that his Muse was not fitting upon the watch for the first which happened. "Night Thoughts" were not uncommon to her, even when first she visited the poet, and at a time when he himself was remarkable neither for gravity nor gloominess. In his "Last Day," almost his earliest poem, he calls her "the melancholy Maid,"

In the prayer which concludes the second book of the same poem, he says— Rh