an three thousand pounds. A considerable sum had already
been swallowed up in the South Sea. For this loss he took the vengeance
of an author. His Muse makes poetical use more than once of a South Sea
Dream.

It is related by Mr. Spence, in his "Manuscript Anecdotes," on the
authority of Mr. Rawlinson, that Young, upon the publication of his
"Universal Passion," received from the Duke of Grafton two thousand
pounds; and that, when one of his friends exclaimed, "Two thousand
pounds for a poem!" he said it was the best bargain he ever made in his
life, for the poem was worth four thousand. This story may be true; but
it seems to have been raised from the two answers of Lord Burghley and
Sir Philip Sidney in Spenser's Life.

After inscribing his Satires, not perhaps without the hopes of
preferments and honours, to such names as the Duke of Dorset, Mr.
Dodington, Mr. Spencer Compton, Lady Elizabeth Germain, and Sir Robert
Walpole, he returns to plain panegyric. In 1726 he addressed a poem
to Sir Robert Walpole, of which the title sufficiently explains the
intention. If Young must be acknowledged a ready celebrator, he did not
endeavour, or did not choose, to be a lasting one. "The Instalment"
is among the pieces he did not admit into the number of his EXCUSABLE
WRITINGS. Yet it contains a couplet which pretends to pant after the
power of bestowing immortality:--

"Oh! how I long, enkindled by the theme,
In deep eternity to launch thy name!"

The bounty of the former reign seems to have been continued, possibly
increased, in this. Whatever it might have been, the poet thought he
deserved it; for he was not ashamed to acknowledge what, without his
acknowledgment, would now perhaps never have been known:--

"My breast, O Walpole, glows with grateful fire.
The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee,
Refresh the dry remains of poesy."

If the purity of modern patriotism will term Young a pensioner, it must
at least be confessed he was a grateful one.

The reign of the new monarch was ushered in by Young with "Ocean, an
Ode." The hint of it was taken from the royal speech, which recommended
the increase and the encouragement of the seamen; that they might be
"invited, rather than compelled by force and violence, to enter into the
service of their country"--a plan which humanity must lament that
policy has not even yet been able, or willing, to carry into execution.
Prefixed to the original pu