In 1753, when The Brothers had lain by him above thirty years, it
appeared upon the stage. If any part of his fortune had been
acquired by servility of adulation, he now determined to deduct from
it no inconsiderable sum, as a gift to the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel. To this sum he hoped the profits of The
Brothers would amount. In his calculation he was deceived; but by
the bad success of his play the Society was not a loser. The author
made up the sum he originally intended, which was a thousand pounds,
from his own pocket.

The next performance which he printed was a prose publication,
entitled "The Centaur Not Fabulous, in Six Letters to a Friend on
the Life in Vogue." The conclusion is dated November 29, 1754. In
the third letter is described the death-bed of the "gay, young,
noble, ingenious, accomplished, and most wretched Altamont." His
last words were--"My principles have poisoned my friend, my
extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness has murdered my
wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were the twin production of
fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two characters who bore
no little resemblance to each other in perfection of wickedness.
Report has been accustomed to call Altamont Lord Euston.

"The Old Man's Relapse," occasioned by an Epistle to Walpole, if
written by Young, which I much doubt, must have been written very
late in life. It has been seen, I am told, in a Miscellany
published thirty years before his death. In 1758 he exhibited "The
Old Man's Relapse," in more than words, by again becoming a
dedicator, and publishing a sermon addressed to the king.

The lively letter in prose, on "Original Composition," addressed to