Amateur Farming. 335 



he writes in his humorous style to a friend, " I have been 

 washing fixed air and hanging it out to dry." ^ 



The results of this intimacy are everywhere apparent in 

 the forty-five volumes of the Annals. Young never tires of 

 discussing the operations of air and phlogiston on the 

 vegetable economy, until Lavoisier overthrows this fallacy, 

 and then, as editor of the Annals^ he becomes the medium 

 by which the new antiphlogistic theories are applied to 

 English agriculture.^ 



It sounds paradoxical, but it is probably correct to say that the 

 secret of Young's success in literature was an imperfect literary 

 education. He himself always regretted that the money 

 paid as a premium to a Lynn merchant, in whose counting 

 house he resided after the days of his schooling, had not been 

 used in preparing him for the duties of the Bradfield Rectory. 

 But a college education would have just muzzled that 

 audacity of thought and vigour of expression which lifted his 

 powers of composition above those of more refined but insipid 

 writers. When a young man (Dr. Paris tells us) he read with 

 unabated avidity every work which he could procure. The 

 rich store of learning thus acquired, combined with the 

 unusual style of his literary expression, brought to his pen 

 that bountiful harvest of remunerative success which was 

 denied to his practice of husbandry. The French translator 

 of his works exclaims in astonished admiration, " But this 

 person who has written so much and so well is a practical 

 farmer." To Young, asserts Kir wan, " the world is more 

 indebted for the diffusion of agricultural knowledge than to 

 any writer." His books were said to have produced more 

 individual harm and greater public good than those of any 

 person who had ever written ; and this is necessarily the case 

 whenever the introduction of numerous and intricate dis- 

 coveries upsets a long established economy. Young himself 

 believed that no teaching in all his writings had produced 



^ Arthur Young, Biog. Memoir, by J. A. Paris, M.D. Quarterly Review 

 of Science and Art, vol. ix. pp. 279-309, 1820. J. Murray. 



^ Compare, for example, Annals of Agriculture, vol. i. p. 189; vol. iii, 

 p. 476 ; vol. vii. p. 397 ; vol. xxix. p. 222, etc., etc. 



