ABSTRACT
Between the Augustan period typified by Alexander Pope and the Romantic one exemplified by William Wordsworth, in what Shaun Irlam deems the “black hole of English poetry between neoclassicism and romanticism,” “poetry of sensibility” of the eighteenth century or of “enthusiasm” flourished.1 The age of “sensibility,” along with its poetic expression, earned its name by its reaction against the aesthetic and epistemological prejudices produced by the Enlightenment, the age of “reason.” Many of this epoch’s brightest lights, for instance James Thomson, Christopher Smart, and Edward Young (1683-1765), have not enjoyed the posthumous fame, nor their works the canonical status, of a Pope or a Wordsworth, but, taken together, their works nevertheless constitute a transitional period without which Romanticism would scarcely be thinkable. In Germany as well as in England, the Romantic poets looked to Young in particular as a source of inspiration as well as a literary point of departure for their own work. Not more than a few decades after Young’s death, Samuel Johnson articulated the challenge facing anyone endeavoring to summarize the poet’s work: “Of Young’s Poems it is difficult to give any general character; for he has no uniformity of manner: one of his pieces has not great resemblance to another. He began to write early, and continued long; and at different times had different modes of poetical excellence in view.”2 Indeed, Young employed several different poetic modes at various points during his long career, beginning as a dramatist (e.g., The Brothers), then authoring a number of satirical works (for example, Love of Fame) before composing the long moral-didactic poem for which he is most well known, Night Thoughts. His last major work is a lively piece of literary criticism addressed to the famous eighteenth-century prose writer, Samuel Richardson (16891761), Conjectures on Original Composition.
