Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/342

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338
YOUNG.

since the grateful poet tells us, in the next couplet, to

Her favour is diffus'd to that degree,
Excess of goodness! it has dawn'd on me.

Her Majesty had stood godmother and given her name to a daughter of the Lady whom Young married in 1731; and had perhaps shown some attention to Lady Elizabeth's future husband.

The fifth Satire, "On Women," was not published till 1727; and the sixth not till 1728.

To these Poems, when, in 1728, he gathered them into one publication, he prefixed a Preface; in which he observes, that "no man can converse much in the world but at what he meets with, he must either be insensible or grieve, or be angry or smile. Now to smile at it, and turn it into ridicule," he adds, "I think most eligible, as it hurts ourselves least, and gives vice and folly the greatest offence. Laughing at the misconduct of the world, will, in a great measure, ease us of any more disagreeable passion about it. One passion is more effectually driven out by another than by reason, whatever some

teach."