AETHUE YOUNG AND THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE 63 



M. Lesage, his latest translator and editor, she has made an 

 adopted child of his work. Young was born in September 

 1741, at Bradfield Hall, near Bury St. Edmunds. His 

 father was a Prebendary of Canterbury. From Lavenham 

 School he passed, at the age of seventeen, into a wine 

 merchant's office at Lynn. On the death of his father, in 

 1763, he returned home as his mother's bailiff; but his 

 ■experiments proved so unsuccessful that he was removed 

 from the management of the estate. From various causes 

 he failed twice in farming on his own account before he 

 ■devoted himself to those tours, in the course of which he 

 has drawn his spirited sketches of England, Ireland, and 

 France. He first visited France in 1787, on the invitation 

 of the Due de la Eochefoucauld-Liancourt, whose two sons 

 had been partly educated in his neighbourhood at Bury St. 

 Edmunds. Young was a man of keen observation and 

 considerable culture, familiar not only with the writings of 

 English agricultural writers, but with those of De Seres, 

 De Chateauvieux, and Du Hamel. He possessed great 

 talents for description, but little power of generalisation. 

 His arguments in favour of corn bounties, and his depre- 

 ciation of science, prove him to have shared the prejudices 

 of the day. Yet he was one of the most enlightened and 

 useful pioneers of agricultural improvement that the cen- 

 tury produced. His enthusiasm is always genuine if it 

 is sometimes extravagant, as when he praises the plump- 

 ness of Rubens's female portraits with the eye of a grazier, 

 or remarks of a fine Correggio, ' A fine picture is a good 

 thing, but I had rather it had been a fine tup.' In 1793 

 he was appointed secretary to the new Board of Agricul- 

 ture. He died in London in February 1820, having been 

 for ten years totally blind. 



