_Some_ theatrical impulses never abandoned him. During his retirement at Brighton, he was a constant attendant on the ministry of Mr. Sortain. ‘Mr. Bernal Osborne told me he was one day shown into the same pew with my father, whom he knew. He was struck with his devotional manner during the prayers and by his rapt attention during the sermon. But he found himself unable to maintain his gravity when, as the preacher paused to take breath after a long and eloquent outburst, the habits of the actor’s former life betrayed themselves, and he uttered in a deep undertone, the old familiar “_Bravo!_”’ As a sample of his cheerfulness of character, we may quote what Mr. Cole says of Young, in the life of Charles Kean:--‘Not long before he left London for his final residence at Brighton, he called, with one of his grandsons, to see the writer of these pages, who had long enjoyed his personal friendship, and who happened at the moment to be at dinner with his family. “Tell them,” he said to the servant, “not to hurry; but when they are at leisure, there are two little boys waiting to see them.”’ A quiet humour seems to have been among the characteristics of a life which generally was marked by unobtrusive simplicity and moral purity. A man who, when a boy, had been at Eton and Merchant Taylors’ could not have been ignorant of such a fact as the Punic War, though he may have forgotten the date. He was once turned to by a lady at table (she had been discussing history with the guest on her other side), and she suddenly asked Young to tell her the date of the Second Punic War. Young frankly replied in one of his most tragic tones; ‘Madam, I don’t know anything about the Punic War, and what is more, I never did! My inability to answer your question has wrung from me the same confession which I once heard made by a Lancashire farmer, with an air of great pride, when appealed to by a party of his friends in a commercial room, “I tell you what, in spite of all your bragging, I’ll wedger (wager) I’m th’ ignorantest man in t’ coompany!”’ There can be little doubt that many of the stories of mistakes made by actors may be traced to him. Among them, perhaps, that of the player who, invariably, for ‘poisoned cup,’ said ‘coisoned pup;’ and who, once pronouncing it correctly, was hissed for his pains. Thence too perhaps came the tale of him who, instead of saying, How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, To have a thankless child, exclaimed: How sharper than a serpent’s _thanks_ it is, To have a _toothless_ child.