after he went to Oxford he discovered, it is said, an inclination
for pupils. Whether he ever commenced tutor is not known. None has
hitherto boasted to have received his academical instruction from
the author of "Night Thoughts." It is probable that his College was
proud of him no less as a scholar than as a poet; for in 1716, when
the foundation of the Codrington Library was laid, two years after
he had taken his bachelor's degree, Young was appointed to speak the
Latin oration. This is at least particular for being dedicated in
English "To the Ladies of the Codrington Family." To these ladies
he says "that he was unavoidably flung into a singularity, by being
obliged to write an epistle dedicatory void of commonplace, and such
an one was never published before by any author whatever; that this
practice absolved them from any obligation of reading what was
presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of it, because
it would make people stare, was absurd enough and perfectly right."
Of this oration there is no appearance in his own edition of his
works; and prefixed to an edition by Curll and Tonson, in 1741, is a
letter from Young to Curll, if we may credit Curll, dated December
the 9th, 1739, wherein he says that he has not leisure to review
what he formerly wrote, and adds, "I have not the 'Epistle to Lord
Lansdowne.' If you will take my advice, I would have you omit that,
and the oration on Codrington. I think the collection will sell
better without them."

There are who relate that, when first Young found himself
independent, and his own master at All Souls, he was not the
ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became. The
authority of his father, indeed, had ceased, some time before, by
his death; and Young was certainly not ashamed to be patronised by
the infamous Wharton. But Wharton befriended in Young, perhaps, the