innocent. What is said in Night the second, will at least keep them so,

"Guard well thy thoughts; our thoughts are heard in heaven."

And thought is often a prelude to action. It certainly has an influence over our opinions, and, therefore, over our discourse. Both these we have some power over, and therefore responsibility for, the formation and utterance of. This responsibility will be best secured by self-examination. By this,

"At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ;
In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same."

If this is accompanied with any degree of self-indulgence that is inconsistent with our "plans of reformation," we are proportionately responsible; but if the purposed "resolution" has the effect of securing to us the " vitium fugere," we may trust that it will be counted for something, if done with a good intent, which must be in a wish to please God.

Young ends this "Night" with a lamentation on Pope, not for his death but for his omissions, which Young has, I believe, much better supplied. Pope's description of religious feeling, that,

"When lengthen'd on to faith, and unconfin'd,

It

pours

the bliss that fills up all the mind," (with what?)

does not promise the close, strong, and persevering defence of it that Young has given: Pope's is the reasoning of a philosopher, Young's that of a Christian.

NIGHT THE SECOND.

After returning to his lamentations, he quits them to exhort Lorenzo not to

"Think it folly to be wise too soon,"

but to consider that,

"When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes
Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight,

Then toys will not amuse, thrones will be toys,
And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale."

Which then may well “kick the beam.”

"Redeem we time?-its loss we dearly buy.
What pleads Lorenzo for his high-priz'd sports?
He pleads time's numerous blanks; he loudly pleads
The straw-like trifles on life's common stream.

From whom those blanks and trifles, but from thee?

No blank, no trifle, nature made, or meant.
Virtue, or purpos'd virtue, still be thine;

This cancels thy complaint at once, this leaves
In act no trifle, and no blank in time."

This is a further intimation of the necessity of the wish "to please God;" without the hope (whether we are conscious of it or not) of doing that, "virtue" would not be "its own reward;" the present satisfaction that it gives, must lead to the hope of more in future. What other incentive will there be? and, as is said in the seventh Night,

"Virtue's a combat; and who fights for nought?

Or for precarious, or for small reward?

Who virtue's self-reward so loud resound,

Would take degrees angelic here below,
And virtue, while they compliment, betray,
By feeble motives, and unfaithful guards.

The crown, the unfading crown, her soul inspires :
'Tis that, and that alone, can countervail

The body's treacheries, and the world's assaults;"

which require a "Herculean" force to resist, better done in "Christian armour."

The encouragements of religion are built upon a natural disposition; and that, fostered by them, looks forward to another world.

To return to the second Night, Young says, that when time is well employed,

"Jouez avec les heures, mais economisez les moments."

For the value of moments consists in the habit they give. Moments, well spent, pay a high interest; they pay it in the spending, and sometimes double it in the reversion.

Young says,

"Time, the supreme! time is eternity;

Pregnant with all eternity can give." &c. &c.

The stress that Young here gives to the value of time justifies his saying that

"Life's cares are comforts; such by heaven design'd;
He that has none, must make them, or be wretched.
Cares are employments, and without employ
The soul is on the rack, the rack of rest,
To souls most adverse; action all their joy."

So Pope, with a more scenic representation :

"Thee, too, my Paridel, she saw thee there,
Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair;
And heard thy everlasting yawn confess
The pains and penalties of idleness.”

And Young, in a severer tone,

"If time past,

And time possest both pain us, what can please?
That which the Deity to please ordain'd,

Time us'd. The man who consecrates his hours
By vigorous effort, and an honest aim,

At once he draws the sting of life and death;
He walks with Nature; and her paths are peace."

While these "efforts" are made by the body, the mind need not be inactive, though the fixture of the eyes upon one object may sometimes circumscribe her range. Constant bodily employment, and on the same object, deprives the mind of much of its activity, as is seen in labourers, &c. Impressed with the value of time, the poet says,

"Hast thou ne'er heard of Time's omnipotence?
For, or against, what wonders can he do?
And will; to stand blank neuter he disdains.
Not on those terms was Time (heaven's stranger!) sent
On his important embassy to man.

Lorenzo! no: on the long-destin'd hour,
From everlasting ages growing ripe,
That memorable hour of wond'rous birth,
When the dread Sire, on emanation bent,
And big with nature, rising in his might,
Call'd forth creation (for then Time was born)

By Godhead streaming through a thousand worlds;
Not on those terms, from the great days of heaven,
From old Eternity's mysterious orb,

Was Time cut off, and cast beneath the skies;
The skies, which watch him in his new abode,
Measuring his motion by revolving spheres,
That horologe machinery divine."

(As magnificent as it is true.)

If action, however produced, is necessary to satisfy the mind, it may also be necessary to excite and keep alive the desire of rest, which affords a temporary relief. Sed non in terrâ quies.

The whole scope, or at least the main object of this poem, is to shew the importance of time, in our use of it here, as a preparation for eternity, along with the dispositions which should accompany and direct it, under a still higher direction. For this, he says,

""Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours,

And ask them what report they bore to heaven!

And how they might have borne more welcome news.

Their answers form what men experience call,

If wisdom's friend, her best; if not, worst foe."

Without this,

"There's nothing here, but what as nothing weighs;
The more our joy, the more we know it vain;
And by success are tutor'd to despair."

Young's antitheses and flights of imagination will, I think, be often found to add force to his arguments, if our feelings are capable of being so excited; for which a small share of sensibility is required.

For this great purpose, the poet reminds us, that