poet, and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be
patronised only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out? Yet
Pope is said by Ruffhead to have told Warburton that "Young had much
of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his
genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into
bombast. This made him pass a FOOLISH YOUTH, the sport of peers and
poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the
clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, and
afterwards with honour."

They who think ill of Young's morality in the early part of his life
may perhaps be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of
Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to
spend much of his time at All Souls. "The other boys," said the
atheist, "I can always answer, because I always know whence they
have their arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that
fellow Young is continually pestering me with something of his own."

After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable.
Young might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life,
in which his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long.
If this were so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in
favour of virtue, but the potent testimony of experience against
vice. We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was
more serious than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets.

Young perhaps ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the "Poem to
his Majesty," presented with a copy of verses, to Somers: and hoped
that he also might soar to wealth and honours on wings of the same
kind. His first poetical flight was when Queen Anne called up to