• For Her Majesty the Queen's private secretary see Edward Young (Royal Household).
• For the HMS Bounty midshipman and Pitcairn Island leader Edward Young, see Ned Young.

Edward Young

Edward Young (1683 - April 5, 1765) was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts. Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen, in the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom from September 2004. ... Edward Young (1766–1800), also known as Ned Young, was a British sailor and co-founder of the Pitcairn Island settlement. ... Image File history File links Edward_Young_Poet. ... Image File history File links Edward_Young_Poet. ... Events June 6 - The Ashmolean Museum opens as the worlds first university museum. ... April 5 is the 95th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (96th in leap years). ... 1765 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ... A poet is someone who writes poetry. ...

He was the son of Edward Young, afterwards dean of Salisbury, and was born at his father's rectory at Upham, near Winchester, where he was baptized on July 3, 1683. He was educated at Winchester College, and matriculated in 1702 at New College, Oxford. He later moved to Corpus Christi, and in 1708 was nominated by Archbishop Tenison to a law fellowship at All Souls'. He took his degree of D.C.L. in 1719. His first publication was an Epistle to ... Lord Lansdoune (1713). It was followed by a Poem on the Last Day (1713), dedicated to Queen Anne; The Force of Religion: or Vanquished Love (1714), a poem on the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, dedicated to the Countess of Salisbury; and an epistle to Joseph Addison, On the late Queen's Death and His Majesty's Accession to the Throne (1714), in which he rushed to praise the new king. The fulsome style of the dedications jars with the pious tone of the poems, and they are omitted from his own edition of his works. The rectory is the title usually given to the building inhabited, or formerly inhabited, by the rector of a parish. ... Upham may refer to: Upham, Wisconsin Upham, North Dakota This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Winchester Cathedral as seen from the Cathedral Close Arms of Winchester City Council Winchester is a city in southern England, and the administrative capital of the county of Hampshire, with a population of around 35,000. ... July 3 is the 184th day of the year (185th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 181 days remaining. ... Winchester College is a well-known boys independent school, and an example of a British public school, in the city of Winchester in Hampshire, England. ... College name New College of St Mary Collegium Novum Oxoniensis/Collegium Sanctae Mariae Wintoniae Named after Mary, mother of Jesus Established 1379 Sister College Kings College Warden Prof. ... College name Corpus Christi College Named after Corpus Christi, Body of Christ Established 1517 Sister College Corpus Christi College President Sir Tim Lankester JCR President Binyamin Even Undergraduates 239 Graduates 126 Homepage Corpus Christi College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... All Souls College (in full: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... Anne (6 February 1665 – 1 August 1714) became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. ... Lady Jane Grey (1537 – February 12, 1554), a great-grand-daughter of Henry VII of England, reigned as uncrowned queen regnant of the Kingdom of England for nine days in 1553. ... Joseph Addison, the Kit-cat portrait, circa 1703–1712, by Godfrey Kneller. ...

About this time he came into contact with Philip, Duke of Wharton, whom he accompanied to Dublin in 1717. In 1719 his play, Busiris was produced at Drury Lane, and in 1721 his Revenge. The latter play was dedicated to Wharton, to whom it owed, said Young, its "most beautiful incident." Wharton promised him two annuities of £100 each and a sum of £600 in consideration of his expenses as a candidate for parliamentary election at Cirencester. In view of these promises Young refused two livings in the gift of All Souls' College, Oxford, and sacrificed a life annuity offered by the marquess of Exeter if he would act as tutor to his son. Wharton failed to discharge his obligations, and Young, who pleaded his case before Lord Chancellor Hardwicke in 1740, gained the annuity but not the £600. Between 1725 and 1728 Young published a series of seven satires on The Universal Passion. They were dedicated to the Duke of Dorset, George Bubb Dodington, Sir Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain and Sir Robert Walpole, and were collected in 1728 as Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. This is qualified by Samuel Johnson as a "very great performance," and abounds in striking and pithy couplets. Herbert Croft asserted that Young made £3000 by his satires, which compensated losses he had suffered in the South Sea Bubble. In 1726 he received, through Walpole, a pension of £200 a year. To the end of his life he continued to seek preferment, but the king regarded his pension as an adequate settlement. Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton (21 December 1698 – 31 May 1731) was one of the few people in English history, and the first since the 15th century, to have been raised to a Dukedom whilst still a minor and not closely related to the monarch. ... WGS-84 (GPS) Coordinates: 53. ... // Events January 4 — The Netherlands, Britain & France sign Triple Alliance February 26-March 6 What is now the northeastern United States was paralyzed by a series of blizzards that buried the region. ... // Events January 23 - The Principality of Liechtenstein is created within the Holy Roman Empire April 25 - Daniel Defoe publishes Robinson Crusoe June 10 - Battle of Glen Shiel Prussia conducts Europes first systematic census Miners in Falun, Sweden find an apparently petrified body of Fet-Mats Israelsson in an unused... Drury Lane is a street in the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. ... Cirencester is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, 93 miles (150 km) west northwest of London. ... All Souls College (in full: The College of All Souls of the Faithful Departed, of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. ... George Bubb Dodington, 1st Baron Melcombe (1691-July 28, 1762) was an English politician and nobleman. ... Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington PC,KBE (c. ... The Right Honourable Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), usually known as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. ... Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ... Sir Herbert Croft, Bart. ... 1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire. ... Hogarthian image of the South Sea Bubble by Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery More well known than The South Sea Company is perhaps the South Sea Bubble (1711 - September 1720) which is the name given to the economic bubble that occurred through overheated speculation in the company shares during 1720. ...

Young, living in a time when patronage was slowly fading out, was notable for urgently seeking patronage for his poetry, his theatrical works, and his career in the church: he failed in each area. He never received the degree of patronage that he felt his work had earned, largely because he picked patrons whose fortunes were about to turn downward.

Though his praise was often unearned, often fulsome, he could write, "False praises are the whoredoms of the pen / And prostitute fair fame to worthless men."

Young was nearly fifty when he decided to take holy orders. It was reported that the author of Night Thoughts was not, in his earlier days, "the ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became," and his friendships with the Duke of Wharton and with Dodington did not improve his reputation. A statement attributed to Alexander Pope probably gives the correct view. "He had much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets; but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency and afterwards with honour " (O Ruffhead, Life of A. Pope, p. 291). Alexander Pope, an English poet best known for his Essay on Criticism and Rape of the Lock Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) is generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the early eighteenth century, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. ...

In 1728 Young became a royal chaplain, and in 1730 obtained the college living of Welwyn, Hertfordshire. He married in 1731 Lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter of the 1st Earl of Lichfield. Her daughter, by a former marriage with her cousin Francis Lee, married Henry Temple, son of the 1st Viscount Palmerston. Mrs Temple died at Lyons in 1736 on her way to Nice. Her husband and Lady Elizabeth Young died in 1740. These successive deaths are supposed to be the events referred to in the Night Thoughts as taking place "ere thrice yon moon had filled her horn". In the preface to the poem Young states that the occasion of the poem was real, and Philander and Narcissa have been rather rashly identified with Mr and Mrs Temple. It has also been suggested that Philander represents Thomas Tickell, an old friend of Young's, who died three months after Lady Elizabeth Young. The infidel Lorenzo was thought by some to be a sketch of Young's own son, but he was only eight years old at the time of publication. The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, was published in 1742, and was followed by other "Nights," the eighth and ninth appearing in 1745. In 1753 his tragedy of The Brothers, written many years before, but suppressed because he was about to enter the Church, was produced at Drury Lane. Night Thoughts had made him famous, but he lived in almost uninterrupted retirement. He was made clerk of the closet to the Princess Dowager, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, in 1761. He never recovered from his wife's death. He fell out with his son, who had apparently criticised the excessive influence exerted by his housekeeper Mrs Hallows. The old man refused to see his son until shortly before he died, but left him everything. A description of him is to be found in the letters of his curate and executor, John Jones, to Dr Thomas Birch (in Brit. Lib. Addit. M/s 4311). He died at Welwyn, reconciled with his spendthrift son: "he expired a little before 11 of the clock at the night of good-friday last, the 5th instant, and was decently buried yesterday about 6 in the afternoon" (Jones to Birch). City flag City coat of arms Motto: [1] (Latin: Nice the city) Location Coordinates Time Zone CET (GMT +1) Administration Country France Région Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur Département Alpes-Maritimes (06) Intercommunality Community of Agglomeration Nice Côte dAzur Mayor Jacques Peyrat  (UMP) (since 1995... Thomas Tickell (1686 - April 23, 1740) was an English poet and man of letters. ... Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (November 30, 1719-February 8, 1772) was Princess of Wales from May 8, 1736 to March 31, 1751. ...

Young is said to have been a brilliant talker. Although Night Thoughts is long and disconnected, it abounds in brilliant isolated passages. Its success was enormous. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Magyar. In France it became a classic of the romantic school. Questions as to the "sincerity" of the poet did arise in the 100 years after his death. The publication of fawning letters from Young seeking preferment led many readers to question the poet's sincerity. In a famous essay, Worldliness and Other-Worldliness, George Eliot discussed his "radical insincerity as a poetic artist". If Young did not invent "melancholy and moonlight" in literature, he did much to spread the fashionable taste for them. Madame Klopstock thought the king ought to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, and some German critics preferred him to John Milton. Young's essay, Conjectures on Original Composition, was popular and influential on the continent, especially among Germans, as a testament advocating originality over neoclassical imitation. Young wrote good blank verse, and Samuel Johnson pronounced Night Thoughts to be one of "the few poems" in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The poem was a poetic treatment of sublimity and had a profound influence on the young Edmund Burke, who's philosophic investigations and writings on the Sublime and the Beautiful were a pivotal turn in Eighteenth-Century aesthetic theory. Hungarian (magyar nyelv  ) is a Finno-Ugric language, and more specifically a Ugric language, unrelated to the other languages of Central Europe. ... George Eliots birthplace at South Farm, Arbury George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Anne Evans[1] (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), who was an English novelist. ... Arms of the see of Canterbury The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior clergyman of the established Church of England and symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. ... Milton redirects here. ... Blank verse is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. ... In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis (exalted)) is the quality of transcendent greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual or artistic. ... Edmund Burke (January 12, 1729 – July 9, 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher, who served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of the Whig party. ... Many see natural beauty in the folded petals of a rose Beauty is a quality of a person, object, place, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, affirmation, meaning, or goodness. ... The Parthenons facade showing an interpretation of golden rectangles in its proportions. ...

Young's masterpiece Night Thoughts reemerged from obscurity for some readers by being mentioned in the poet Edmund Blunden's World War One memoir,Undertones of War (1928), as a source of comfort during his time in the trenches. This latter work, little known in the US itself, emerged from the darkness of the more recent past thanks to its mention and discussion in Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), in which Blunden's reliance on Night Thoughts is discussed. Blunden's mention of Young's poem reintroduced an interesting, sometimes bombastic precursor to the early Romantics to students of English literature. Edmund Charles Blunden (November 1, 1896 - January 20, 1974), although not one of the top trio of English World War I writers, was an important and influential poet, author and critic. ... Paul Fussell (born 1924, Pasadena, California) is a cultural historian and a professor emeritus of English literature of the University of Pennsylvania. ...

Other works by Young are:

• The Instalment (to Sir R. Walpole, 1726)
• Cynthio (1727)
• A Vindication of Providence ... (1728), a sermon
• An Apology for Punch (1729), a sermon
• Imperium Pelagi, a Naval Lyrick ... (1730)
• Two Epistles to Mr Pope concerning the Authors of the Age (1730)
• A Sea-Piece ... (1733)
• The Foreign Address, or The Best Argument for Peace (1734)
• The Centaur not Fabulous; in Five Letters to a Friend (1755)
• An Argument ... for the Truth of His [Christ's] Religion (1758), a sermon preached before the king
• Conjectures on Original Composition ... (1759), addressed to Samuel Richardson
• Resignation ... (1762), a poem.

Night Thoughts was illustrated by William Blake in 1797, and by Thomas Stothard in 1799. The Poetical Works of the Rev. Edward Young ... were revised by himself for publication, and a completed edition appeared in 1778. The Complete Works, Poetry and Prose, of the Rev. Edward Young ..., with a life by John Doran, appeared in 1854. Sir Herbert Croft wrote the life included in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, but the critical remarks are by Johnson. William Blake in an 1807 portrait by Thomas Phillips William Blake (November 28, 1757–August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. ... 1797 (MDCCXCVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 11-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Thomas Stothard (August 17, 1755 - April 27, 1834) was an English painter and engraver. ... 1799 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Sir Herbert Croft, 5th Baronet (November 1, 1751 – April 26, 1816), English author, was born at Dunster Park, Berkshire, son of Bishop Croft of Stifford, Essex. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

External links

• Works by Edward Young at Project Gutenberg

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