Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 4.djvu/377

Rh clusion is dated November 29, 1754. In the third Letter is described the death-bed of the "gay, young, noble, ingenious, accomplished, and most wretched Altamont." His last words were—"My principles have poisoned my friend, my extravagance has beggared my boy, my unkindness has murdered my wife!" Either Altamont and Lorenzo were the twin production of fancy, or Young was unlucky enough to know two characters who bore no little resemblance to each other in perfection of wickedness. Report has been accustomed to call Altamont Lord Euston.

"The Old man's Relapse," occasioned by an Epistle to Walpole, if written by Young, which I much doubt, must have been written very late in life. It has been seen, I am told, in a Miscellany published thirty years before his death. In 1758, he exhibited "The Old Man's Relapse" in more than words, by again becoming a dedicator, and publishing a sermon addressed to the King.

The lively Letter in prose on "Original Composition," addressed to Richardson the author of Clarissa, appeared in 1759. Though he despair "of breaking through the frozen obstructions of age and care's incumbent Rh