Memoir of Arthur Young, Esq. 281 



Arthur Young received a grammatical education at Lavenham, 

 a school about six miles distant from Bradfield Hall, whither 

 he was sent in 1748, and, had not maternal fondness interposed 

 her edicts, he would subsequently have gone to Eton, and from 

 thence to the University to receive an academical education 

 like that bestowed upon his elder brother. He gave, it is said, 

 very early prognostics of his future eminence, and was much 

 esteemed by his early friends and preceptors, as a boy of very 

 superior talents, and indefatigable industry ; he left school in 

 1758, and was placed, by the anxious desire of his mother, 

 in the house of Messrs. Robertson, merchants at Lynn, in 

 Norfolk, in order that he might be qualified for entering into 

 business with his brother-in-law, Mr. Tomlinson, of London ; 

 his sister however died in the interval, and his father's intention 

 was in consequence relinquished. It has ever been a matter 

 of serious regret, with Mr. Arthur Young, through life, that 

 the premium paid by his father to the Lynn merchant, had not 

 been applied in supporting him at college, when, by taking 

 orders, he might have held the rectory of Bradfield, a piece 

 of preferment which was afterwards bestowed upon his ol^ 

 preceptor of Langham school : posterity will hardly sympathize 

 with him at this circumstance ; his mind was cast in a very 

 peculiar and original mould, and it is a question, whether the 

 refinements of literature might not have changed its texture 

 and composition, and repressed that vigour, and boldness of 

 thought, and strength of expression, which so prominently 

 characterize his writings, and which break the even surface of his 

 ordinary details, with an inequality of feeling, that is ever 

 opposed to that insipidity, which we so frequently experience 

 in the writings of more polished scholars. 



During his residence at Lynn, his time seems to have been 

 divided between dancing and reading ; he was a young man 

 possessed of more than an ordinary share of personal attrac- 

 tions, and he became so great a favourite with those who knew 

 him, that he was a welcome guest at every entertainment : but 

 the allurements of dissipation never interfered with the more 

 solid pleasureb which he derived from study ; he read with an 



