’I set on foot a periodical publication, entitled the Universal Museum, which came out monthly, printed with glorious imprudence on my own account.  I waited on Dr. Johnson, who was sitting by the fire so half-dressed and slovenly a figure as to make me stare at him.  I stated my plan, and begged that he would favour me with a paper once a month, offering at the same time any remuneration that he might name.’

Here we see dimly prefigured a modern editor prematurely soliciting the support of Great Names.  But the Cham of literature, himself the son of a bookseller, would have none of it.

   ’"No, sir,” he replied; “such a work would be sure to fail if the
   booksellers have not the property, and you will lose a great deal
   of money by it.”

   ’"Certainly, sir,” I said, “if I am not fortunate enough to induce
   authors of real talent to contribute.”

’"No, sir, you are mistaken; such authors will not support such a work, nor will you persuade them to write in it.  You will purchase disappointment by the loss of your money, and I advise you by all means to give up the plan.”

   ‘Somebody was introduced, and I took my leave.’

The Universal Museum, none the less, appeared, but after five numbers Young ’procured a meeting of ten or a dozen booksellers, and had the luck and address to persuade them to take the whole scheme upon themselves.’  He then calmly adds, ’I believe no success ever attended it.’  It was, indeed, 100 years before its time.  Literature abandoned, Young took one of his mother’s farms.  ’I had no more idea of farming than of physic or divinity,’ nor did he, man of European reputation as a farmer though he soon became, ever make farming pay.  He had an itching pen, and after four years’ farming (1763-1766) he published the result of his experience.  Never, surely, before has an author spoken of his first-born as in the autobiography Young speaks of this publication: 

’And the circumstance which perhaps of all others in my life I most deeply regretted and considered as a sin of the blackest dye was the publishing of my experience during these four years, which, speaking as a farmer, was nothing but ignorance, folly, presumption, and rascality.’

None the less, it was writing this rascally book that seems to have given him the idea of those agricultural tours which were to make his name famous throughout the world.  His Southern tour was in 1767, his Northern in 1768, and his Eastern in 1770.  The subject he specially illuminated in these epoch-making books was the rotation of crops, though he occasionally diverged upon deep-ploughing and kindred themes.  The tours excited, for the first time, the agricultural spirit of Great Britain, and their author almost at once became a celebrated man.