YOUNG, ARTHUR (1741-1820).—­Writer on agriculture, was b. in London, the s. of a Suffolk clergyman.  In his early years he farmed, making many experiments, which though they did not bring him financial success, gave him knowledge and experience, afterwards turned to useful account.  Various publications had made his name known, and in 1777 he became agent to Lord Kingsborough on his Irish estates.  In 1780 he pub. his Tour in Ireland, and four years later started the Annals of Agriculture, 47 vols. of which appeared.  His famous tours in France were made 1787-90, the results of his observations being pub. in Travels in France (1792).  He was in 1793 appointed sec. to the newly founded Board of Agriculture, and pub. many additional works on the subject.  He is justly regarded as the father of modern agriculture, in which, as in all subjects affecting the public welfare, he maintained an active interest until his death.  In his later years he was blind.

YOUNG, EDWARD (1683-1765).—­Poet, s. of the Rector of Upham, Hampshire, where he was b. After being at Winchester School and Oxf. he accompanied the Duke of Wharton to Ireland.  Y., who had always a keen eye towards preferment, and the cult of those who had the dispensing of it, began his poetical career in 1713 with An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne.  Equally characteristic was the publication in the same year of two poems, The Last Day and The Force of Religion.  The following year he produced an elegy On the Death of Queen Anne, which brought him into notice.  Turning next to the drama he produced Busiris in 1719, and The Revenge in 1721.  His next work was a collection of 7 satires, The Love of Fame, the Universal Passion.  In 1727 he entered the Church, and was appointed one of the Royal Chaplains, and Rector of Welwyn, Herts, in 1730.  Next year he m. Lady Elizabeth Lee, the widowed dau. of the Earl of Lichfield, to whom, as well as to her dau. by her former marriage, he was warmly attached.  Both d., and sad and lonely the poet began his masterpiece, The Complaint, or Night Thoughts (1742-44), which had immediate and great popularity, and which still maintains its place as a classic.  In 1753 he brought out his last drama, The Brothers, and in 1761 he received his last piece of preferment, that of Clerk to the Closet to the Princess Dowager of Wales.  Four years later, in 1765, he d. The poems of Y., though in style artificial and sometimes forced, abound in passages of passion and power which sometimes reach the sublime.  But the feelings and sentiments which he expresses with so much force as a poet form an unpleasantly harsh contrast with the worldliness and tuft-hunting of his life.

APPENDIX OF LIVING WRITERS

The number of writers included in this Appendix, and their bibliographies, are necessarily limited, but it is hoped that despite the difficulties of selection the list will be found fairly representative.