the addition, "that Poetry, like Love,

is a little fubject to blindnefs, which "makes her mistake her way to prefer

ments and honours; and that the re"tains a dutiful admiration of her fa"ther's family; but divides her favours,. "and generally lives with her mother's "relations." Poetry, it is true, did not lead Young to preferments or to honours; but was there not fomething like blindness fometimes in the flattery which he forced her, and her fifter Profe, to utter? He always,. indeed, made her entertain a moft dutiful admiration of riches; but furely Young, though nearly related to Poetry, had no connexion: with her whom Plato makes the mother of Love. The frequent bounties his

gratitude records, and the fortune he left behind him, clearly fhow that he could not complain of being related to Poverty. By The Univerfal Paffion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than three thousand pounds. A fum not much less had already been fwallowed

up

in the South Sea.. For this lofs he took the vengeance of an author.. His. Mufe makes poetical ufe more than: ence of a South-fea Dream..

It is related by Mr. Spence, in his Manufcript Anecdotes,. on the authority of Mr.. Rawlinfon, that Young, upon the publication of his Univerfal Paffion, received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand pounds; and that,

when

when one of his friends exclaimed, Two thousand pounds for a poem! he faid it was the best bargain he ever made in his life, for the poem was worth four thoufand.

This story may be true; but it seems to have been raised from the two anfwers of Lord Burghley and Sir Philip Sidney in Spenfer's Life.

When Young was writing a tragedy, Grafton is faid to have sent him a human fkull, with a candle in it, as a proper lamp *.

After infcribing his Satires, not in the hope of not finding preferments and honours, to the Duke of Dorfet, Mr. Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady

Spence,

Elizabeth Germain, and Sir Robert Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. In 1726 he addreffed a poem to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title, The Inftalment, fufficiently explains the intention. If Young was a ready celebrator, he did not endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lafting one. The Instalment is among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his excufcable writings. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the power of beftowing im

mortality:

Oh how I long, enkindled by the theme, In deep Eternity to launch thy name!

The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, poffibly increased,

1

creased, in this. Whatever it was, the poet thought he deferved it;-for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what,. without his acknowledgement, would now perhaps never have been known: My breaft, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.

The ftreams of royal bounty, turn'd by

thee,

Refresh the dry domains of poefy..

If the purity of modern patriotism.term: Young a penfioner, it must at leaft be. confeffed he was a grateful one.

The reign of the new monarch was ufhered in by Young with Ocean, an Ode.. The hint of it was taken from the royal fpeech, which recommended the increase

and.