be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly
have on some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set
you above the need of advancement; and your sentiments, above that
concern for it, on your own account, which, on that of the publick,
is sincerely felt by

"Your loving brother,
"THO. CANT."

At last, at the age of fourscore, he was appointed, in 1761, clerk of
the closet to the princess dowager.

One obstacle must have stood not a little in the way of that preferment,
after which his whole life seems to have panted. Though he took orders,
he never entirely shook off politicks. He was always the lion of his
master Milton, "pawing to get free his hinder parts." By this conduct,
if he gained some friends, he made many enemies.

Again: Young was a poet; and again, with reverence be it spoken, poets
by profession, do not always make the best clergymen. If the author of
the Night Thoughts composed many sermons, he did not oblige the publick
with many.

Besides, in the latter part of life, Young was fond of holding himself
out for a man retired from the world. But he seemed to have forgotten
that the same verse which contains "oblitus meorum," contains also
"obliviscendus et illis." The brittle chain of worldly friendship and
patronage is broken as effectually, when one goes beyond the length of
it, as when the other does. To the vessel which is sailing from the
shore, it only appears that the shore also recedes; in life it is truly
thus. He who retires from the world will find himself, in reality,
deserted as fast, if not faster, by the world. The publick is not to be
treated as the coxcomb treats his mistress; to be threatened with
desertion, in order to increase fondness.

Young seems to have been taken at his word. Notwithstanding his frequent
complaints of being neglected, no hand was reached out to pull him from
that retirement of which he declared himself enamoured. Alexander
assigned no palace for the residence of Diogenes, who boasted his surly
satisfaction with his tub.

Of the domestick manners and petty habits of the author of the Night
Thoughts, I hoped to have given you an account from the best authority:
but who shall dare to say, to-morrow I will be wise or virtuous, or
to-morrow I will do a particular thing? Upon inquiring for his
house-keeper, I learned that she was buried two days before I reached
the town of her abode.

In a letter from Tscharne