Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/382

 ginning in 1758 with ‘The Theatre of the Present War in North America,’ London, 8vo, for which he received 10l. in books. He also wrote four novels, ‘The Fair American,’ ‘Sir Charles Beaufort,’ ‘Lucy Watson,’ and ‘Julia Benson, or the Innocent Sufferer.’ In 1759 appeared his ‘Reflections on the present State of Affairs at Home and Abroad,’ London, 8vo. The same year his father died, much in debt. Young now left Lynn ‘without education, profession, or employment.’ The death of Mrs. Tomlinson had upset the scheme of his entering upon a mercantile career, and in 1761 he betook himself to London, went into society, and started at his own expense a monthly magazine, ‘The Universal Museum,’ in January 1762. Dr. Johnson refused to write for it, and advised him to give up a scheme which was certain to fail ‘if the booksellers have not the property.’ After five months of experiment he found this advice sound; and, persuading the booksellers ‘to take the whole scheme upon themselves,’ he abandoned it to a luckless fate. In 1763 he broke a blood-vessel, and was ordered to the Hotwells at Bristol, where he met Sir Charles Howard, who offered him a commission in his own cavalry regiment, but Young's mother vetoed the proposal. Returning home to Bradfield, he found his sole resources to consist of a copyhold farm of twenty acres, worth about 20l. a year. His mother proposed that he should take one of her own farms of eighty acres at Bradfield and farm it. He had no idea of farming, but accepted the offer, took yet another farm, and applied himself to agriculture from 1763 to 1766.

In 1765 he married Martha Allen of Lynn, and, after a brief residence at that place, removed with his wife to Bradfield. The marriage was unhappy from the outset. In a very short time we find him complaining of his wife's intractable temper. A loving son, a devoted father, Young was an indifferent husband. The faults were perhaps not all on his wife's side. His letters to Mrs. Oakes from 1785 to her death in 1811, full of playfulness and deep affection, and the references to Mrs. Oakes in his diary are in painful contrast to the references to his wife. The only tribute Young paid to his wife when she died in 1815 was to record on a tablet in Bradfield church that she was ‘the great-grand-daughter of John Allen, esq., of Lyng House in the county of Norfolk, the first person, according to the Comte de Boulainvilliers, who there used marl.’ In February 1766 Walter Harte [q. v.] wrote to thank Young for his letters to the ‘Museum Rusticum’ in praise of Harte's ‘Essays.’ This laid the foundation of a lifelong friendship. Harte advised him to publish his contributions to the ‘Museum Rusticum’ with additions in a separate volume, ‘which might be entitled “Sylvæ, or occasional Tracts on Husbandry and Rural Economics.”’ In 1767 Young followed this advice. He had hardly in four years gained sufficient experience to realise his ignorance. ‘The circumstance,’ he writes, ‘which perhaps of all others in my life I most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye, was the publishing the result of my experience during these four years, which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, presumption, and rascality.’ The publication was ‘The Farmer's Letters to the People of England,’ which appeared anonymously in 1767 (London, 8vo; 2nd ed. 1768; 3rd with additions, in 2 vols. 1777), the ‘Museum’ papers being appended under the title ‘Sylvæ, or occasional Tracts,’ as suggested by Harte.

In 1766 his daughter Mary was born. ‘Finding a mixture of families inconsistent with comfortable living,’ writes Young, ‘I determined to quit Bradfield, and advertised in the London papers for such a house and farm as would suit my views and fortune, that is to say, 1,000l. which I received with my wife, the remainder being settled upon her.’ He took ‘a very fine farm’ of three hundred acres in Essex, called Samford Hall, tried experiments, lost money, and paid 100l. to a farmer to take it off his hands. His successor ‘made a fortune’ out of the place. Young was at this time in great straits. He advertised for new farms, and, as a result of viewing several, collected the notes of his first tour, ‘A Six Weeks' Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales’ (London, 8vo, 1768; 2nd edit. 1769; 3rd edit. 1772), in which ‘for the first time the facts and principles of Norfolk husbandry were laid before the public.’ He now took a farm of a hundred acres at North Mimms in Hertfordshire, the only one he could find with a suitable house. It was, he says, not merely sterile land. ‘A hungry, vitriolic gravel. I occupied for nine years the jaws of a wolf. A nabob's fortune would sink in the attempt to raise a good arable crop upon any extent in such a country.’ This year (1768) his daughter Bessy was born, and the following year his only son, Arthur. In 1769 he published ‘Letters concerning the present State of the French Nation’ (London, 8vo); ‘Essay on the Management of Hogs’ (London, 8vo; 2nd edit., with additions, in 1770, London, 12mo); and ‘The Expediency of a Free Exportation of Corn at this time’ (London,