imself _gentleman_, not _clerk_;
and there is no evidence that preaching had run in the family blood
before it took that turn in the person of the poet's father, who was
quadruply clerical, being at once rector, prebendary, court chaplain, and
dean. Young was born at his father's rectory of Upham in 1681. We may
confidently assume that even the author of the "Night Thoughts" came into
the world without a wig; but, apart from Dr. Doran's authority, we should
not have ventured to state that the excellent rector "kissed, _with
dignified emotion_, his only son and intended namesake." Dr. Doran
doubtless knows this, from his intimate acquaintance with clerical
physiology and psychology. He has ascertained that the paternal emotions
of prebendaries have a sacerdotal quality, and that the very chyme and
chyle of a rector are conscious of the gown and band.

In due time the boy went to Winchester College, and subsequently, though
not till he was twenty-two, to Oxford, where, for his father's sake, he
was befriended by the wardens of two colleges, and in 1708, three years
after his father's death, nominated by Archbishop Tenison to a law
fellowship at All Souls. Of Young's life at Oxford in these years,
hardly anything is known. His biographer, Croft, has nothing to tell us
but the vague report that, when "Young found himself independent and his
own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and morality
that he afterward became," and the perhaps apocryphal anecdote, that
Tindal, the atheist, confessed himself embarrassed by the originality of
Young's arguments. Both the report and the anecdote, however, are borne
out by indirect evidence. As to the latter, Young has left us sufficient
proof that he was fond of arguing on the theological side, and that he
had his own way of treating old subjects. As to the former, we learn
that Pope, after saying other things which we know to be true of Young,
added, that he passed "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets;"
and, from all the indications we possess of his career till he was nearly
fifty, we are inclined to think that Pope's statement only errs by
defect, and that he should rather have said, "a foolish youth and
_middle_ age." It is not likely that Young was a very hard student, for
he impressed Johnson, who saw him in his old age, as "not a great
scholar," and as surprisingly ignorant of what Johnson thought "quite
common maxims" in literature; and th