SOURCE: "The Making of a Minor Poet: Edward Young and Literary Taxonomy," in English Studies, Netherlands, Vol. 72, No. 4, August, 1991, pp. 355-67.

In the following essay Wanko describes critical reception of Young's works and argues that his critical reputation has suffered because of the development of a literary taxonomy into which he does not neatly fit.

All literary historians recognize the extraordinary success of Edward Young's Night Thoughts (1742-6) and the poem's influence both in England and on the Continent. George Saintsbury, Oliver Elton, George Sherburn, and John Butt each devote several pages of their histories to describing Young's immense popularity during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet the space Young occupies in these volumes is often grudgingly allotted. While admitting the poem's importance. Sherburn declares Night Thoughts to be now unreadable. Others deprecate Young more overtly: William Bowman Piper labels Young a 'fallible, a minor poet'; Eric...