This chapter addresses the extractive logic of the poet Edward Young. It shows how his late masterpiece Night Thoughts at once extends and complicates the imperialism of his earlier work. At the heart of the analysis is Young’s notion that movement somehow generates depth, so that the mobility of a gold coin produces inner value, immaterial worth ready to be drawn out by its user. The treasure, on Young’s strange view, lies within the gold. Night Thoughts applies this thinking to the spiritual realm. Instead of assuming that it is God who extracts souls from bodies—as workers remove ore from mines—the poem suggests that souls can extract themselves from materiality through religious and poetic inspiration. Then they can delve into the interiorities of other angelic beings and exchange thoughts and feelings with them. Closing the chapter are a comparison to Charles Johnstone’s popular it-narrative Chrysal (1760–5) and a reading of Ignatius Sancho’s gushing praise for Night Thoughts.
The Life and Letters of Edward Young.
