Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/372

368 of the great advantage of your advice about it, I shall not be so absurd as to make any further step without it. I know you are much engaged, and only hope to hear of you at your entire leisure.

"I am, Sir, your most faithful "and obedient servant,

Nay, even after Pope's death, he says, in "Night" Seven:

Either the "Essay," then, was dedicated to a patron who disapproved its doctrine, which I have been told by the author was not the case; or Young appears, in his old age, to have bartered for a dedication an opinion entertained of his friend through all that part of life when he must have been best able to form opinions.

From this account of Young, two or three short passages, which stand almost together in "Night" Four, should not be excluded. They afford a picture, by his own hand, from the study of which my readers may choose to form Rh