xii Travels in France 



Burneys, Lord Somers, Dr. Roper, Samuel Whitbread, Howard, 

 Justice Wills, Wilberforce, the Duke of Bedford, Priestley, and 

 indeed almost every social and political celebrity of his day. 

 Flirtations, too, with the handsome Lady Mary Mordaunt, 

 Hester Bumey, and others of the fair, relieved the gloom, 

 dejection, and failure he complains of in his diary. In 1773, 

 friends obtained for him a commission to report the parlia- 

 mentary debates for the Morning Post at a weekly renumera- 

 tion of five guineas, a task which he satisfactorily accomplished 

 for a few months, walking the seventeen miles from his farm 

 to London every Monday, and as many miles back on Saturday. 

 His fame increased, so did his debts. In 1776, 1777, and 1778 

 he was touring in Ireland or acting as agent to Lord Kings- 

 borough on his estate in County Cork at a salar^'^ of ^^500, a 

 retaining fee of a like sum, and free quarters. These generous 

 conditions were a welcome change from the ravenous North 

 Mimms farm and a decision was made to settle in Ireland with 

 wife and books. But Young was an entertaining companion ; 

 an hour's post-prandial chess with Lady Kingsborough had 

 its attractions, feminine jealousy was stirred, and in 1779 

 the discharged agent was once more at Bradfield with the 

 handsome solatium of an annuity of £y2 from Lord Kings- 

 borough. The concluding enti-y in the diaiy for this year runs : 

 " Note of my being thirty-eight and poetry in my head." 



On his mother's death in 1785 Young took over the Home 

 Farm, adding to it other acres as leases fell in. He was 

 elected a fellow of the Royal Society ; he made lionising visits 

 to London; experimented on soils in collaboration with Dr. 

 Priestley; wrote poetry, and visited Lowestoft where he 

 enjoyed a month of continual flow of high spirits " which 

 received no slight addition by the society of a very handsome 

 and agreeable young girl whose name I have forgotten." 

 These were the happiest years of the traveller's life. Pupils 

 were sent and honours poured in on him from the Continent; 

 his circle of friends and admirers in town and country widened ; 

 once a week he dined with the wealthy and eccentric Earl of 

 Bristol and Bishop of Derry at whose table he met famous 

 scholars, generals, and antiquaries. 



In 1783 the vast and comprehensive project of publishing 

 the Annals of Agriculture, which had long been fermenting in 

 Young's mind, took shape; King George III., under a pseudo- 

 nym, contributed to one of the issues and royal lips on the 

 Terrace at Windsor assured the happy editor that his sovereign 



