tical talents, or, at
least, to the manner in which they had so frequently been exerted.

The next production of his muse was the Sea-piece, in two odes.

Young enjoys the credit of what is called an Extempore Epigram on
Voltaire; who, when he was in England, ridiculed, in the company of the
jealous English poet, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death:

You are so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin.

From the following passage, in the poetical dedication of his Sea-piece
to Voltaire, it seems, that this extemporaneous reproof, if it must be
extemporaneous (for what few will now affirm Voltaire to have deserved
any reproof,) was something longer than a distich, and something more
gentle than the distich just quoted:

No stranger, sir, though born in foreign climes.
On _Dorset_ downs, when Milton's page
With Sin and Death provok'd thy rage,
Thy rage provok'd, who sooth'd with _gentle_ rhymes?

By Dorset downs, he probably meant Mr. Dodington's seat. In Pitt's poems
is an Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, on the
Review at Sarum, 1722.

While with your Dodington retir'd you sit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.

Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat
of the muses,

Where, in the secret bow'r and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.

The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the
second

Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter'd verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,

added to Thomson's example and success, might, perhaps, induce Young, as
we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.

In 1734 he published the Foreign Address, or the best Argument for
Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs.
Written in the character of a sailor. It is not to be found in the
author's four volumes.

He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and,
perhaps, at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species
of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few
of Young's readers will regret:

My shell, which Clio gave, which _kings applaud_,
Which Europe's bleeding genius call'd abroad,
Adieu!

In a species of poetry altogether his own, he next tried his skill, and
succeeded.

Of his wife, he was deprived in 1741.