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YOU N G.

YOUNG.

HE following Life was written, at

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my request, by a gentleman who had better information than I could easily have obtained; and the publick will perhaps wish that I had folicited and obtained more fuch favours from him.

"Dear Sir,

"In confequence of our different converfations about authentick materials for the Life of Young, I fend you the following detail. It is not, I confefs, immediately in the line of my profession; but hard indeed is our fate at the bar, if we may not call a few hours now-and-then our own,

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Of great men fomething must always be faid to gratify curiofity. Of the great author of the Night Thoughts much has been told of which there never could have been proofs; and little care appears to have been taken to tell that of which proofs, with little trouble, might have been procured.

EDWARD YOUNG was born at Upham, near Winchefter, in June 1681. He was the fon of Edward Young, at that time Fellow of Winchester College and Rector of Upham; who was the fon of Jo. Young of Woodhay in Berkshire, ftyled by Wood gentleman. In September 1682 the Poet's father was collated to the prebend of Gillingham Minor, in the church of Sarum, by bishop Ward. On the childishness of Ward, his duties were neceffarily performed by others. We learn from Wood, that, at a visitation of Sprat, July the 12th, 1686, the Prebendary preached a Latin fermon, afterwards published, with which the Bifhop was fo pleased, that he told the Chapter he was concerned to find the preacher had one of the worst prebends in their church. In confequence of

his merit and reputation, or of the interest of Lord Bradford (to whom, 1702, he dedicated two volumes of fermons), he was, fome time after, appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary, and preferred to the deanry of Sarum. Jacob, who wrote in 1720, says, he was chaplain and clerk of the closet to the late Queen, who honoured him by ftanding godmother to the Poet. His fellowship of Winchefter he refigned in favour of one Mr. Harris, who married his only daughter. The Dean died at Sarum, after a fhort illness, in 1705, in the fixty-third year of his age. On the Sunday after his decease Bishop Burnet preached at the cathedral, and began his fermon with faying, "Death has been of late walking round

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us, and making breach upon breach up

on us, and has now carried away the head "of this body with a ftroke; fo that he, "whom you faw a week ago distributing "the holy myfteries, is now laid in the duft. "But he still lives in the many excellent di"rections he has left us, both how to live and how to die."

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