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The Narcissa Episode in Young's Night Thoughts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Horace W. O'Connor
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Extract

In what purports to be a definitive life of the poet Young, H. C. Shelley remarks that the question of the identity of Philander, Lucia, and Narcissa, raised by the peculiar chronology of their deaths, as recorded in the Night Thoughts, forms “the most puzzling problem of Young's biography.” Part of the problem had already been solved by M. Walter Thomas, to whom Sir Leslie Stephen refers at the close of his article on Young in the D. N. B., an article referred to by Mr. Shelley himself. M. Thomas shows pretty conclusively that Philander was no other than Thomas Tickell, the lifelong intimate friend of Young, whose death occurred suddenly at Bath on April 23, 1740. Lucia was the poet's wife, the “poor Lady Betty Lee” of Mrs. Pendarves's letter, who was left “with three children to maintain and not a farthing to support her.” The identity of Narcissa, however (which Mr. Shelley makes no attempt to solve), offers greater difficulty. Professor Thomas suggests that she may have been an illegitimate daughter “reconnue par le père, acceptée par sa femme, mais désavouée par le moraliste. Peut-être,” he continues, “encore l'enfant est-elle née trop tôt, Young ayant anticipé en quelque sort sur les droits du mariage.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , 1919 , pp. 130 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1919

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References

1 Le Poète Edward Young, Paris, 1901.

2 Op. cit., chap, vi, pp. 147–9.

3 Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delaney, vol. i, p. 253.

4 Op. cit., chap. vi, p. 169.

5 Croft's Life of Young, in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets.

6 Le Poète Edward Young, chap. vi, p. 150.

7 N. & Q., vol. v, p. 252 (March 13, 1852).

8 Op. cit., chap. vi, p. 168.

9 Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc., pp. 305–6. Quoted by H. C. Shelley.

10 L. c., chap. vi, pp. 151–61.

11 Ibid., chap. vi, p. 150.

12 Ibid., chap. vi, pp. 164–7.

13 Ibid., chap. vi, pp. 167.

14 Ibid., chap. vi, pp. 167–8 and note.

15 Op. cit., chap. i, pp. 6–7, 34, 40.

16 See Notes and Queries, vol. iii, 1st Series, p. 422, and vol, iv, pp. 22 and 110, quoted above.

17 See Thomas, op. cit., chap. vi, pp. 147–8.

18 Dramatic Works of George Farquhar, ed. A. C. Ewald, p. viii.

19 H. C. Shelley's Life and Letters of Edward Young, chap. iii, p. 44.

20 Ibid., chap. iii, p. 51.

21 Emily J. Climenson, Elizabeth Montague, 1720–1761, vol. i, chap. iii, p. 92.

22 Ibid., p. 93.

23 Letters of Mrs. E. R. Montague, ed. Matthew Montague, Esq., vol. ii, p. 169.

24 H. C. Shelley, op. cit., chap. v, p. 116.

25 Letters of Mrs. E. R. Montague, vol. ii, pp. 57–58.

26 Ibid., p. 63.

27 Ibid., p. 65. The Night Thoughts had not yet been published. Young was known principally for his lively satires.

28 Emily J. Climenson, Elizabeth Montague, vol. i, chap, iii, p. 90.

29 Comedy Queens of the Georgian Era, p. 116.

30 His Brothers was not produced until 1750. See H. C. Shelley, op. cit., chap. iii, p. 67.

31 See M. Thomas, op. cit., chap. vi, pp. 164–6.

32 This point H. C. Shelley declares has escaped the notice of all of Young's previous biographers, with how much justice the above citation from M. Thomas clearly shows. See the former's Life of Young, chap. V, pp. 107–8. The fact is likewise recorded in Mrs. Temple's epitaph.

33 M. Thomas, op. cit., chap. v, p. 141. Temple died in 1744–5.

34 See Night Thoughts, iii, ll. 62–63.

35 See Young's Conjectures on Original Composition, 2nd Ed., 1759, pp. 107–8.

36 Letter of Benjamin Victor, quoted in Ralph Straus's Robert Dodsley, chap. iv, p. 76.

37 “I believe I told you the judgment of this house about the Fifth Night; 'tis not so dark as some of his former, but has not so much merit as his last, though many thoughts and lines in it are charming.” Mrs. Delaney to her sister, Mrs. Dewes, Bulstrode, Jan. 4, 1743–4. Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delaney, vol. ii, 1st Series p. 243.

“I have an old aunt that visits me sometimes, whose conversation is the perfect counterpart of them [Shenstone's letters]. She shall fetch a long-winded sigh with Dr. Young for a wager; though I see his Suspiria are not yet finished. He has relapsed into ‘Night the Fifth.‘ I take his case to he wind in great measure, and would advise him to take rhubarb in powder, with a little nutmeg amongst it.” W. Shenstone to Mr. Graves, Dec. 23, 1743. Shenstone's Works (J. Dodsley, 1791), vol. iii, p. 94.

38 E. Straus, op. ait., chap. iv, p. 76.

39 George Eliot: Worldliness and Other-Worldliness, Complete Works (St. James Edition), vol. iii, pp. 235–6.

40 Op. cit., chap. vi, p. 161.

41 See summary of Mr. Taylor's letter quoted above from Notes and Queries.

42 Op. cit., chap. vi, pp. 157–61.

43 H. C. Shelley's Life of Young, chap. vi, p. 62.