TheUniverfal Paffion" is indeed a very great performance. It is faid to be a series of Epigrams : but, if it be, it is what the author intended: his endeavour was at the production of striking distichs and pointed fentences; and his diftichs have the weight of folid fentiments, and his points the fharpness of refiftlefs truth.

His characters are often felected with difcernment, and drawn with nicety; his illuftrations are often happy, and his reflections often juft. His fpecies of fatire is between those of Horace and Juvenal; and he has the gaiety of Horace without his laxity of numbers, and the morality of Juvenal with greater variation of images. He plays, indeed, only on the furface of life; he never penetrates the receffes of the mind, and therefore the whole power of his poetry is exhausted by a single perusal; his conceits please only when they surprise.

To translate he never condescended, unless his "Paraphrafe on Job" may be confidered as a verfion in which he has not, I think, been unfuccefsful; he indeed favoured himself, by chufing those parts which moft eafily admit the ornaments of English poetry.

He had leaft fuccefs in his lyrick attempts, in which he feems to have been under fome malignant influence: he is always labouring to be great, and at laft is only turgid.

"

In his Night Thoughts" he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and ftriking allufions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy fcatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one

of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffufion of the fentiments, and the digreffive fallies of imagination, would have been compreffed and reftrained by confinement to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactnefs, but copioufnefs; particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and in the whole there is a magnificence like that afcribed to Chinefe plantation, the magnificence of vaft extent and endless diverfity.

His laft poem was "Refignation;" in which he made, as he was accustomed, an experiment of a new mode of writing, and fucceeded better than in his Ocean" or his "Merchant." It was very falfely represented as a proof of decayed faculties. There is Young in every ftanza, fuch as he often was in the highest vigour.

His tragedies, not making part of the Collection, I had forgotten, till Mr. Steevens recalled them to my thoughts by remarking, that he feemed to have one favourite catastrophe, as his three plays all concluded with lavifh fuicide; a method by which, as Dryden remarked, a poet eafily rids his fcene of perfons whom he wants not to keep alive. In "Bufiris" there are the greatest ebullitions of imagination: but the pride of Bufiris is fuch as no other man can have, and the whole is too remote from known life to raise either grief, terror, or indignation. The "Revenge" approaches much nearer to human practices and manners, and therefore keeps poffeffion of the ftage: the firft defign feems fuggefted by "Othello;" but the reflections, the incidents, and the diction, are origipal. The moral obfervations are fo introduced, and

fo

fo expreffed, as to have all the novelty that can be required. Of" The Brothers" I may be allowed to fay nothing, fince nothing was ever faid of it by the ' publick.

It must be allowed of Young's poetry, that it abounds in thought, but without much accuracy or felection. When he lays hold of an illustration, he pursues it beyond expectation, fometimes happily, as in his parallel of Quickfilver with Pleafure, which I have heard repeated with approbation by a Lady, of whofe praife he would have been juftly proud, and which is very ingenious, very fubtle, and almost exact; but fometimes he is lefs lucky, as when, in his " Night

Thoughts," having it dropped into his mind, that the orbs, floating in fpace, might be called the cluster of creation, he thinks of a clufter of grapes, and fays, that they all hang on the great vine, drinking the "nectareous juice of immortal life."

His conceits are fometimes yet lefs valuable. In the "Laft Day" he hopes to illuftrate the re-affembly of the atoms that compofe the human body at the Trump of Doom" by the collection of bees into a fwarm at the tinkling of a pan.

The Prophet fays of Tyre, that "her Merchants " are Princes." Young fays of Tyre in his "Mer"chant,"

Her merchants Princes, and each deck a Throne.

Let burlefque try to go beyond him.

He has the trick of joining the turgid and familiar: to buy the alliance of Britain, "Climes were paid "down." Antithefis is his favourite, "They for "kindness hate:" and "because she's right, fhe's ever in the wrong."

His

His verfification is his own; neither his blank nor his rhyming lines have any resemblance to those of former writers; he picks up no hemifticks, he copies no favourite expreffions; he seems to have laid up no ftores of thought or diction, but to owe all to the fortuitous fuggeftions of the present moment. Yet I have reafon to believe that, when once he had formed a new defign, he then laboured it with very patient industry; and that he compofed with great labour, and frequent revifions.

His verfes are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in his different productions than he is like others. He feems never to have ftudied profody, 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.

MAL

MALLET.

OF DAVID MALLET, having no written memorial, I am able to give no other account than fuch as is fupplied by the unauthorised loquacity of common fame, and a very flight personal knowledge.

He was by his original one of the Macgregors, a clan, that became, about fixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, fo formidable and fo infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was unnulled by a legal abolition; and when they were all to denominate themselves anew, the father, I fuppofe, of this author, called himself Malloch.

David Malloch was, by the penury of his parents, compelled to be Janitor of the High School at Edinburgh; a mean office, of which he did not afterwards delight to hear. But he furmounted the disadvantages of his birth and fortune; for, when the Duke of Montrose applied to the College of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his fons, Malloch was

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