Other evidence apart, we should not be eager for the after-dinner
conversation of the man who wrote:

"Thine is the Drama, how renown'd!
Thine Epic's loftier trump to sound;--
_But let Arion's sea-strung harp be mine_;
_But where's his dolphin_? _Know'st thou where_?
_May that be found in thee_, _Voltaire_!"

The "Satires" appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, of course, with its
laudatory dedication and its compliments insinuated among the rhymes.
The seventh and last is dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, is very short,
and contains nothing in particular except lunatic flattery of George the
First and his prime minister, attributing that royal hog's late escape
from a storm at sea to the miraculous influence of his grand and virtuous
soul--for George, he says, rivals the angels:

"George, who in foes can soft affections raise,
And charm envenom'd satire into praise.
Nor human rage alone his pow'r perceives,
But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves,
Ev'n storms (Death's fiercest ministers!) forbear,
And in their own wild empire learn to spare.
Thus, Nature's self, supporting Man's decree,
Styles Britain's sovereign, sovereign of the sea."

As for Walpole, what _he_ felt at this tremendous crisis

"No powers of language, but his own, can tell,
His own, which Nature and the Graces form,
At will, to raise, or hush, the civil storm."

It is a coincidence worth noticing, that this seventh Satire was
published in 1726, and that the warrant of George the First, granting
Young a pension of 200 pounds a year from Lady-day, 1725, is dated May
3d, 1726. The gratitude exhibited in this Satire may have been chiefly
prospective, but the "Instalment," a poem inspired by the thrilling event
of Walpole's installation as Knight of the Garter, was clearly written
with the double ardor of a man who has got a pension and hopes for
something more. His emotion about Walpole is precisely at the same pitch
as his subsequent emotion about the Second Advent. In the "Instalment"
he says:

"With invocations some their hearts inflame;
_I need no muse_, _a Walpole is my theme_."

And of God coming to judgment, he says, in the "Night Thoughts:"

"I find my inspiration is my theme;
_The grandeur of my subject is my muse_."

Nothing can be feebler than this "Instalment," except in the strength of
impudence with which the writer professes to scorn the prostituti