Young, EDWARD, author of the Night Thoughts, was born at Upham rectory, Hampshire, in June 1681. Later his father rose to be dean of Salisbury and chaplain to William and Mary. He was educated at Winchester, entered New College, Oxford, in 1703, but after a few months migrated to Corpus Christi College, and in 1708 received a law fellowship in All Souls College from Archbishop Tenison. Here he seems not to have been righteous overmuch, to have passed, in Pope's words, 'a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets.' Yet we are told he used to stand up to Tindal and more than hold his own in the struggle. He came before the world as a poet in 1712 with an Epistle to George Granville on being created Lord Lansdowne—a characteristic beginning for Young, who continued through life one of the most persevering and shameless toadies that ever flattered a patron or a king's mistress. His Last Day and Force of Religion, or Vanguished Love, followed in 1713; the poem on the Death of Queen Anne, written with one eye on her successor, the year after. In 1719 he ventured on the more ambitious effort of a tragedy, which, under the title of Busiris, was brought out at Drury Lane. Its inflated style was made fun of most happily by Fielding in his mock tragedy of Tom Thumb. About the end of 1716 Young seems to have been in Ireland in attendance on the hare-brained and dissolute young Marquis of Wharton (made duke in 1718). For some time also he resided in the family of the Marquis of Exeter as private tutor to Lord Burghley. But about 1719 we find him again in the train of Wharton, who gave him in 1721 a bond for £600 in consideration of his expenses in travelling and his losses in unsuccessfully contesting Cirencester. The duke seems to have entertained for him a real kindness, but the pious author of the Night Thoughts must have bowed low and often in the House of Rimon to have retained it, as well as to have been a friend of that wretched reprobate Bubb Dodington, at whose seat at Eastbury in Dorsetshire he saw much of Voltaire in 1722. At Wharton's death in 1731 Young set forth certain claims against his estates, which he succeeded in making good to the extent of an annuity of £200. In 1721 was produced his tragedy The Revenge, which, though unsuccessful at the time, is still occasionally acted. The dedication to Wharton is a disgusting piece of flattery, which he could not but have known to be a lie. His third and last attempt in this field, The Brothers, was produced in 1753. Between 1725 and 1728 appeared in succession his satires, under the title of The Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. These had a great success, and brought to their fortunate author money as well as fame. Spence says Wharton alone gave him £2000. These satires show wit and talent, and even yet will repay perusal. For The Instalment (1726), a poem addressed to Sir Robert Walpole on his being made a Knight of the Garter, he was rewarded with a pension of £200. In 1727 Young took holy orders, and was appointed one of the royal chaplains; and in 1730 he became, by favour of his college, rector of Welwyn in Hertfordshire, a living worth £300 a year. The year after he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, the daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, and widow of Colonel Lee. He may be taken to have been happy with her, for out of his grief at her death (1741), together with that of her daughter and her daughter's husband, grew the Night Thoughts (1742-44), which, in spite of much fustian sublimity and artificial melancholy, bear the stamp of genuineness. He never received any further preferment in spite of his frequent complaints of being neglected, and he had not the honour to be the original of Parson Adams. His only son, a sen- sible young man, disliked the influence of his father's housekeeper, and for some years saw little of him. Young superintended in 1762 a collected edition of his works in 4 vols., from which he excluded certain of the most fulsome of his dedications. He died April 12, 1765.
Young's Night Thoughts has never since ceased to be popular, and many of its sententious lines have passed into common and almost proverbial use. Many passages show point and force, soaring sometimes into the region of real poetry; many more, however, degenerate into flat verbiage, or sink into profound and hopeless bathos. His besetting mannerism is antithesis and grandiloquence, a pair which hang but indifferently together. But indeed fatal faults throughout all his work are the lack of genuine human sympathy, and a constant and radical insincerity as a poetic artist.
See the edition, with a poor Life, by Dr Doran (2 vols. 1854). The best life is that in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, written by Herbert Croft, junior, in October 1782, and inserted by Johnson in his work. For a severe but justifiable enough attack on Young's character, see 'Worldliness and Other-Worldliness,' by George Eliot, in the Westminster Review for 1857, reprinted in her Essays and Leaves from a Notebook (1884).