Young's Night Thoughts / With Life, Critical Dissertation and Explanatory Notes

Opening of the book

YOUNG’S
NIGHT THOUGHTS.
YOUNG’S
NIGHT THOUGHTS.
With Life, Critical Dissertation, and
Explanatory Notes,
BY THE
REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN.
EDINBURGH:
JAMES NICHOL, 9 NORTH BANK STREET.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO.
DUBLIN: W. ROBERTSON.
M.DCCC.LIII.
ON THE LIFE AND POETIC GENIUS OF
EDWARD YOUNG.
Between the period of George Herbert, and that of Edward
Young, some singular changes had taken place in British
poetry as well as in British manners, politics, and
religion. There had passed over the land the thunderstorm
of the Puritanic Revolt, which had first clouded and then
cleared, for a season, the intellectual and moral horizon.
The effect of this on poetry was, for such fugitive though
felicitous hymns as those of Herbert, to substitute the
epic unities and grand choral harmonies of Milton. Then
came
the
Restoration—the
Apotheosis
of
falsehood;
including in that term false principles, false politics,
and false taste. Britain became the degraded slave of

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