year, and apprehending he might have carried the jest too far,
sought after him, and found him just in time to prevent what
Ruffhead calls "an irretrievable derangement."

That attachment to his favourite study, which made him think a poet
the surest guide to his new profession left him little doubt whether
poetry was the surest path to its honours and preferments. Not long
indeed after he took orders he published in prose (1728) "A True
Estimate of Human Life," dedicated, notwithstanding the Latin
quotations with which it abounds, to the Queen; and a sermon
preached before the House of Commons, 1729, on the martyrdom of King
Charles, entitled, "An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to
Government." But the "Second Course," the counterpart of his
"Estimate," without which it cannot be called "A True Estimate,"
though in 1728 it was announced as "soon to be published," never
appeared, and his old friends the Muses were not forgotten. In 1730
he relapsed to poetry, and sent into the world "Imperium Pelagi: a
Naval Lyric, written in imitation of Pindar's Spirit, occasioned by
his Majesty's return from Hanover, September, 1729, and the
succeeding peace." It is inscribed to the Duke of Chandos. In the
Preface we are told that the Ode is the most spirited kind of
poetry, and that the Pindaric is the most spirited kind of Ode.
"This I speak," he adds, "with sufficient candour at my own very
great peril. But truth has an eternal title to our confession,
though we are sure to suffer by it." Behold, again, the fairest of
poets. Young's "Imperium Pelagi" was ridiculed in Fielding's "Tom
Thumb;" but let us not forget that it was one of his pieces which
the author of the "Night Thoughts" deliberately refused to own. Not
long after this Pindaric attempt he published two Epistles to Pope,
"Concerning the Authors of the Age," 1730. Of these poems one