To the Author of " Don Juan," "Cain, a Mystery," &c.

The Believer's Ode

401

On receiving an autograph Poem by HENRY KIRKE WHITE 403

THE Editors have been favoured with a Reply to the Charges preferred by the Rev. Mr. PLUMPTRE against DEAN MILNER, late President of QUEEN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, from the Rev. GEORGE CORNELIUS GORHAM, B. D. A FELLOW OF THAT COLLEGE; and whilst they deeply regret that this valuable communication did not come to hand in time for insertion in the present Number, they doubt not but that their readers will have the justice to suspend their judgment upon those charges, until the appearance of these observations upon them, in their next publication.

THE INVESTIGATOR.

APRIL, 1822.

Biographical Sketch of ARTHUR YOUNG, Esq. F. R. S. &c. &c. &c.

IT is seldom that a person, who, in a christian country, has imbibed and deliberately maintained the principles of an infidel philosophy, becomes a genuine friend and supporter of evangelical religion. Such instances, though rare, have, however, occurred; and a striking one is afforded in the individual here selected for more particular notice, in our necrological retrospect of the year eighteen hundred and twenty, which this article brings to a close.

Arthur Young, Esq. celebrated as an agriculturist, was a younger son of the Rev. Arthur Young, D.D. prebendary of Canterbury, and chaplain to the right honourable Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, from whom he derived his baptismal name. He was born on the 7th of September, 1741, at Bradfield Hall, between Long Melford and Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, on the estate of his father, who was rector of Bradfield, and possessed in that parish about two hundred acres of land, which had been in the family upwards of two centuries. Dr. Young not being able to provide very liberally for his younger children, designed Arthur for trade, and accordingly apprenticed him to a wine-merchant, at Lynn, in Norfolk; but having evinced an early attachment to agricultural pursuits, on his father's death in 1761, he returned home, and managed the farm at Bradfield, for the benefit of his widowed mother and her family. His first essays in agriculture were not successful; for, trying experiments before he had sufficient practical knowledge to form any accurate judgment of their probable results, his failure in them produced disputes which caused him to leave his maternal roof in the year 1767, having during his five years' farming there kept a register of his experiments, which formed the basis of his Course of Experimental Agriculture,' published anonymously in 1770, and well received by practical farmers, and by the public; though its author was unduly wroth with the Reviewers, for insinuating that he had highly coloured experiments, which certainly were not productive to those for whose benefit they were made. Yet when years and

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experience had matured his judgment, he himself entertained the same opinion with his critics on the merits of his book. He was also, during the same period, a frequent contributor to the Museum Rusticum,' a periodical work on husbandry; upon whose discontinuance, he adapted several essays, intended for its pages, to a separate publication in the "Farmer's Letters," and "Rural Economy," two works anonymously printed, a few years after his removal from Bradfield. On quitting that village, he hired a farm called Sampford Hall, in Essex; but after six months' trial was obliged to relinquish it for want of funds; a relation, who had led him to expect an advance of money, having failed in the performance of his promise, in consequence of which Mr. Young was forced to pay a farmer a hundred pounds to take the house and land off his hands. Travelling afterwards to find a spot more suitable to his means, he formed in his mind a plan for an agricultural survey of England, which was afterwards executed, in a great measure under his direction, by the national society, to which he became secretary. He at last fixed himself near North Mimms, in Hertfordshire, where he continued for about nine years, repeating his experiments on land not very favourable to them, and, like many other ingenious speculators, losing his money well nigh as often as he did so. So warmly, however, was he still attached to his favourite pursuits, that he determined to promote and recommend them by his pen, and before he had completed his thirtieth year, published several works for the improvement of agriculture, particularly his Farmer's Letters, Rural Economy, (already alluded to,) and Tours through the Southern, Northern, and Eastern Parts of England; all of them replete with useful information. These Tours were performed in the years 1767, 1768, 1770, and 1771; and in the account which Mr. Young gave of them to the public, he mingled much interesting description of the country through which he passed, the seats which he visited, and other objects of curiosity, with the invaluable hints on rural economy carefully gleaned in his progress. During his visit to the north of England, an opportunity was afforded him of rendering essential service to a most extraordinary self-taught agriculturist, in humble life, a miner, at Swinton, named James Crofts, who, by the almost incredible devotion of twenty hours a day to hard labour, had, with his own hands, reclaimed ten acres of moor land, on which he kept three milch cows, an heifer, and a galloway. To encourage such

a rare instance of industry and application in the lower orders, Mr. Young set on foot a subscription for the benefit of this humble, but most valuable member of society, the produce of which freed him from his subterranean employment, and enabled him to direct his attention exclusively to the improvement of waste lands, an occupation for which he had, under every possible disadvantage, evinced an extraordinary adaptation of untutored genius. The tour occupied six months; and the account of its incidents, and of the information collected in the course of it, fills four goodsized octavo volumes, though their bulk might have advantageously been diminished, by the omission of such trite notices of paintings, which its author had hastily examined in his way, as " Dead partridge; very natural: Dead Christ; very fine: A dog; excellent: Alderman Hewett; very fine." Notwithstanding these, and several defects of a similar nature, its general merit was, however, so correctly appreciated, that the name of Arthur Young, Esq. of North Mimms, Herts,' was, soon after its publication, affixed to the advertisement, as its author; the book itself, as well as his preceding works, having appeared before the public anonymously. Whilst residing in Hertfordshire, he also printed an Essay on Hogs, to which the gold medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts had been awarded. This was in 1769; and in the course of the following year he gave to the world his very valuable practical treatise, "The Farmer's Guide in hiring and stocking Farms;" and so indefatigably did he pursue his favourite object, that in the summer of 1770 he made his tour through the eastern counties of England, in continuance of his plan, imperfectly as he had then formed it, of an agricultural survey of the kingdom. The observations made during this journey were published in May 1771, and it is no small proof of their author's industry that they were printed so soon, as in the course of the year 1770, half of which at least was spent in travelling, and of the spring of 1771 he must have found time to print and publish his "Farmer's Guide," in_two volumes octavo; his "Eastern Tour," in four; "Rural Economy," in one; a second volume of the "Farmer's Letters;" and "A Course of Experimental Aguriculture," in two quarto volumes, besides superintending through the press the second edition, in four volumes octavo, of his Northern Tour. With so much to do, in so short a space of time, what wonder that Mr. Young should not have performed every thing he

undertook equally well. Who can be surprised at many defects in the style of works which, ex necessitate, must have been written in prodigious haste? Yet for pointing out some such defects, for questioning some of his experiments, this voluminous and rapid writer animadverted on some of his critics with a virulence and a coarseness which abundantly proves, that in the "genus irascabile," other authors are included than the irascabiles vates. Through life Mr. Young was certainly somewhat too prone to speculation, in the early part of it at least, not much to his own advantage; for after nine years' trial of his Hertfordshire farm, and the publication of nearly as many practical books upon his art, as he had cultivated it years, he was forced to confess,-in the bitterness of his wrath against those who, because he wrote so fast, not very unnaturally insinuated that he wrote for gain, that, what with his writing and his farming, he was at least a thousand guineas the poorer man, than when he first endeavoured to combine the very different characters of the practical and experimental agriculturist. From the further pursuit of this ruinous course, he was saved, however, by the death of his mother, which, by a previous agreement with his elder brother, put him in possession of the family farm at Bradfield; though before he took possession of it he had to raise twelve hundred pounds by mortgage, his brother having generously agreed to take that sum, instead of two thousand pounds, to which by the family arrangement he was entitled. He soon afterwards met with another instance of liberality, in one of his cousins, who refused to take advantage of a flaw in his aunt's will, vitiating a legacy which she had bequeathed to our agriculturist. With this, and what he obtained from the remnant of the fortune of another sister of his mother, after it had been frittered through a chancery suit, he was enabled to stock his farm. At the period of his entering on it, he had for some time been a married man, with a large and increasing family; considerations which should have taught him economy and retrenchment, though they did not; for he himself afterwards confessed his error, in living on his limited income like an independent gentleman, instead of contenting himself with the substantial comforts of the plodding practical farmers of the old school, a race now rapidly disappearing, if not, in some parts, utterly extinct. Here he settled for the remainder of his life, cultivating his paternal acres, though never, it is said, putting them in the condition which might be expected