ere is no evidence that he filled
either his leisure or his purse by taking pupils. His career as an
author did not commence till he was nearly thirty, even dating from the
publication of a portion of the "Last Day," in the _Tatler_; so that he
could hardly have been absorbed in composition. But where the fully
developed insect is parasitic, we believe the larva is usually parasitic
also, and we shall probably not be far wrong in supposing that Young at
Oxford, as elsewhere, spent a good deal of his time in hanging about
possible and actual patrons, and accommodating himself to the habits with
considerable flexibility of conscience and of tongue; being none the less
ready, upon occasion, to present himself as the champion of theology and
to rhapsodize at convenient moments in the company of the skies or of
skulls. That brilliant profligate, the Duke of Wharton, to whom Young
afterward clung as his chief patron, was at this time a mere boy; and,
though it is probable that their intimacy had commenced, since the Duke's
father and mother were friends of the old dean, that intimacy ought not
to aggravate any unfavorable inference as to Young's Oxford life. It is
less likely that he fell into any exceptional vice than that he differed
from the men around him chiefly in his episodes of theological advocacy
and rhapsodic solemnity. He probably sowed his wild oats after the
coarse fashion of his times, for he has left us sufficient evidence that
his moral sense was not delicate; but his companions, who were occupied
in sowing their own oats, perhaps took it as a matter of course that he
should be a rake, and were only struck with the exceptional circumstance
that he was a pious and moralizing rake.

There is some irony in the fact that the two first poetical productions
of Young, published in the same year, were his "Epistles to Lord
Lansdowne," celebrating the recent creation of peers--Lord Lansdowne's
creation in particular; and the "Last Day." Other poets besides Young
found the device for obtaining a Tory majority by turning twelve
insignificant commoners into insignificant lords, an irresistible
stimulus to verse; but no other poet showed so versatile an
enthusiasm--so nearly equal an ardor for the honor of the new baron and
the honor of the Deity. But the twofold nature of the sycophant and the
psalmist is not more strikingly shown in the contrasted themes of the two
poems than in the transitions from bombast about