' _Ib._ ii. 135.
[729] Horace Walpole is speaking of this work, when he wrote on May 16,
1759 (_Letters_, iii. 227):--'Dr. Young has published a new book, on
purpose, he says himself, to have an opportunity of telling a story that
he has known these forty years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord
Warwick, as he was dying, to shew him in what peace a Christian could
die--unluckily he died of brandy--nothing makes a Christian die in
peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath, where you are.'
[730] 'His [Young's] plan seems to have started in his mind at the
present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes
adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment....
His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in
his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have
studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear. But
with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.' Johnson's
_Works_, viii. 458, 462. Mrs. Piozzi (_Synonymy_, ii. 371) tells why
'Dr. Johnson despised Young's quantity of common knowledge as
comparatively small. 'Twas only because, speaking once upon the subject
of metrical composition, he seemed totally ignorant of what are called
rhopalick verses, from the Greek word, a club--verses in which each word
must be a syllable longer than that which goes before, such as:
Spes deus aeternae stationis conciliator.
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