t ashamed to be patronised by the
infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the poet,
and particularly the tragedian. If virtuous authors must be patronised
only by virtuous peers, who shall point them out?

Yet Pope is said, by Ruffhead, to have told Warburton, that "Young had
much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his
genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into
bombast. This made him pass a _foolish youth_, the sport of peers and
poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the
clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, and
afterwards with honour."

They who think ill of Young's morality in the early part of his life
may, perhaps, be wrong; but Tindal could not err in his opinion of
Young's warmth and ability in the cause of religion. Tindal used to
spend much of his time at All Souls. "The other boys," said the atheist,
"I can always answer, because I always know whence they have their
arguments, which I have read a hundred times; but that fellow Young is
continually pestering me with something of his own."[186]

After all, Tindal and the censurers of Young may be reconcilable. Young
might, for two or three years, have tried that kind of life, in which
his natural principles would not suffer him to wallow long. If this were
so, he has left behind him not only his evidence in favour of virtue,
but the potent testimony of experience against vice.

We shall soon see that one of his earliest productions was more serious
than what comes from the generality of unfledged poets.

Young, perhaps, ascribed the good fortune of Addison to the Poem to His
Majesty, presented, with a copy of verses, to Somers; and hoped that he
also might soar to wealth and honour on wings of the same kind. His
first poetical flight was when queen Anne called up to the house of
lords the sons of the earls of Northampton and Aylesbury, and added, in
one day, ten others to the number of peers. In order to reconcile the
people to one, at least, of the new lords, he published, in 1712, an
Epistle to the right honourable George lord Lansdowne. In this
composition the poet pours out his panegyrick with the extravagance of a
young man, who thinks his present stock of wealth will never be
exhausted.

The poem seems intended also to reconcile the publick to the late peace.
This is endeavoured to be done by showing that men are slain in war, and
that in