It would be extremely ill-bred in us to suppose that our readers are not acquainted with the facts of Young’s life; they are among the things that “every one knows;” but we have observed that, with regard to these universally known matters, the majority of readers like to be treated after the plan suggested by Monsieur Jourdain. When that distinguished _bourgeois_ was asked if he knew Latin, he implied, “Oui, mais faîtes comme si je ne le savais pas.” Assuming, then, as a polite writer should, that our readers know everything about Young, it will be a direct _sequitur_ from that assumption that we should proceed as if they knew nothing, and recall the incidents of his biography with as much particularity as we may without trenching on the space we shall need for our main purpose—the reconsideration of his character as a moral and religious poet.
Judging from Young’s works, one might imagine that the preacher had been organized in him by hereditary transmission through a long line of clerical forefathers—that the diamonds of the “Night Thoughts” had been slowly condensed from the charcoal of ancestral sermons. Yet it was not so. His grandfather, apparently, wrote himself _gentleman_, not _clerk_; and there is no evidence that preaching had run in the family blood before it took that turn in the person of the poet’s father, who was quadruply clerical, being at once rector, prebendary, court chaplain, and dean. Young was born at his father’s rectory of Upham in 1681. We may confidently assume that even the author of the “Night Thoughts” came into the world without a wig; but, apart from Dr. Doran’s authority, we should not have ventured to state that the excellent rector “kissed, _with dignified emotion_, his only son and intended namesake.” Dr. Doran doubtless knows this, from his intimate acquaintance with clerical physiology and psychology. He has ascertained that the paternal emotions of prebendaries have a sacerdotal quality, and that the very chyme and chyle of a rector are conscious of the gown and band.