SOURCE: Edward Young, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1969, pp. 111-48.

In the following excerpt from her full-length study of Young, Bliss summarizes and analyzes Young's Night Thoughts, and Conjectures on Original Composition.

The Night Thoughts constitutes Young's greatest achievement; and widely read in England, on the Continent, and in America, it exerted a good deal of influence, was highly admired, and much quoted. While the initial popular reception came in some measure from the familiarity of much of the subject matter and the widespread interest in it, the main interest came from the sense of freshness, newness, and originality and from the feeling of personal immediacy. On the whole, Young's achievement was not in enunciating new doctrines: he was not an original theologian nor philosopher. Well versed in contemporary ideas, he was a poet; and he gave expression to those ideas in a language striking in effective figures and imagery...