eading," says one witness. "She was a very coarse woman," says Dr.
Johnson; and we shall presently find some indirect evidence that her
temper was perhaps not quite so much improved as her piety. Servants, it
seems, were not fond of remaining long in the house with her; a satirical
curate, named Kidgell, hints at "drops of juniper" taken as a cordial
(but perhaps he was spiteful, and a teetotaller); and Young's son is said
to have told his father that "an old man should not resign himself to the
management of anybody." The result was, that the son was banished from
home for the rest of his father's life-time, though Young seems never to
have thought of disinheriting him.

Our latest glimpses of the aged poet are derived from certain letters of
Mr. Jones, his curate--letters preserved in the British Museum, and
happily made accessible to common mortals in Nichols's "Anecdotes." Mr.
Jones was a man of some literary activity and ambition--a collector of
interesting documents, and one of those concerned in the "Free and Candid
Disquisitions," the design of which was "to point out such things in our
ecclesiastical establishment as want to be reviewed and amended." On
these and kindred subjects he corresponded with Dr. Birch, occasionally
troubling him with queries and manuscripts. We have a respect for Mr.
Jones. Unlike any person who ever troubled _us_ with queries or
manuscripts, he mitigates the infliction by such gifts as "a fat pullet,"
wishing he "had anything better to send; but this depauperizing vicarage
(of Alconbury) too often checks the freedom and forwardness of my mind."
Another day comes a "pound canister of tea," another, a "young fatted
goose." Clearly, Mr. Jones was entirely unlike your literary
correspondents of the present day; he forwarded manuscripts, but he had
"bowels," and forwarded poultry too. His first letter from Welwyn is
dated June, 1759, not quite six years before Young's death. In June,
1762, he expresses a wish to go to London "this summer. But," he
continues:

"My time and pains are almost continually taken up here, and . . . I
have been (I now find) a considerable loser, upon the whole, by
continuing here so long. The consideration of this, and the
inconveniences I sustained, and do still experience, from my late
illness, obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor (Young) with my
case, and to assure him that I plainly perceived the duty and
confineme