on of
fair fame, the "profanation of celestial fire."

Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more than three thousand pounds by
his "Satires"--a surprising statement, taken in connection with the
reasonable doubt he throws on the story related in Spence's "Anecdotes,"
that the Duke of Wharton gave Young 2000 pounds for this work. Young,
however, seems to have been tolerably fortunate in the pecuniary results
of his publications; and, with his literary profits, his annuity from
Wharton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to mention other bounties
which may be inferred from the high merits he discovers in many men of
wealth and position, we may fairly suppose that he now laid the
foundation of the considerable fortune he left at his death.

It is probable that the Duke of Wharton's final departure for the
Continent and disgrace at Court in 1726, and the consequent cessation of
Young's reliance on his patronage, tended not only to heighten the
temperature of his poetical enthusiasm for Sir Robert Walpole, but also
to turn his thoughts toward the Church again, as the second-best means of
rising in the world. On the accession of George the Second, Young found
the same transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated
them in a style of poetry previously unattempted by him--the Pindaric
ode, a poetic form which helped him to surpass himself in furious
bombast. "Ocean, an Ode: concluding with a Wish," was the title of this
piece. He afterward pruned it, and cut off, among other things, the
concluding Wish, expressing the yearning for humble retirement, which, of
course, had prompted him to the effusion; but we may judge of the
rejected stanzas by the quality of those he has allowed to remain. For
example, calling on Britain's dead mariners to rise and meet their
"country's full-blown glory" in the person of the new King, he says:

"What powerful charm
Can Death disarm?
Your long, your iron slumbers break?
_By Jove_, _by Fame_,
_By George's name_,
Awake! awake! awake! awake!"

Soon after this notable production, which was written with the ripe folly
of forty-seven, Young took orders, and was presently appointed chaplain
to the King. "The Brothers," his third and last tragedy, which was
already in rehearsal, he now withdrew from the stage, and sought
reputation in a way more accordant with the decorum of his new
profession, by turning prose writer. Bu