In what purports to be a definitive life of the poet Young, H. C. Shelley remarks that the question of the identity of Philander, Lucia, and Narcissa, raised by the peculiar chronology of their deaths, as recorded in the Night Thoughts, forms “the most puzzling problem of Young's biography.” Part of the problem had already been solved by M. Walter Thomas, to whom Sir Leslie Stephen refers at the close of his article on Young in the D. N. B., an article referred to by Mr. Shelley himself. M. Thomas shows pretty conclusively that Philander was no other than Thomas Tickell, the lifelong intimate friend of Young, whose death occurred suddenly at Bath on April 23, 1740. Lucia was the poet's wife, the “poor Lady Betty Lee” of Mrs. Pendarves's letter, who was left “with three children to maintain and not a farthing to support her.” The identity of Narcissa, however (which Mr. Shelley makes no attempt to solve), offers greater difficulty. Professor Thomas suggests that she may have been an illegitimate daughter “reconnue par le père, acceptée par sa femme, mais désavouée par le moraliste. Peut-être,” he continues, “encore l'enfant est-elle née trop tôt, Young ayant anticipé en quelque sort sur les droits du mariage.”