Dodington, apparently, was charmed in his turn, for he told Dr. Wharton that Young was “far superior to the French poet in the variety and novelty of his _bon-mots_ and repartees.” Unfortunately, the only specimen of Young’s wit on this occasion that has been preserved to us is the epigram represented as an extempore retort (spoken aside, surely) to Voltaire’s criticism of Milton’s episode of sin and death: “Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, At once, we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin;”— an epigram which, in the absence of “flowing Burgundy,” does not strike us as remarkably brilliant. Let us give Young the benefit of the doubt thrown on the genuineness of this epigram by his own poetical dedication, in which he represents himself as having “soothed” Voltaire’s “rage” against Milton “with gentle rhymes;” though in other respects that dedication is anything but favorable to a high estimate of Young’s wit. Other evidence apart, we should not be eager for the after-dinner conversation of the man who wrote: “Thine is the Drama, how renown’d! Thine Epic’s loftier trump to sound;— _But let Arion’s sea-strung harp be mine_; _But where’s his dolphin_? _Know’st thou where_? _May that be found in thee_, _Voltaire_!” The “Satires” appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, of course, with its laudatory dedication and its compliments insinuated among the rhymes. The seventh and last is dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, is very short, and contains nothing in particular except lunatic flattery of George the First and his prime minister, attributing that royal hog’s late escape from a storm at sea to the miraculous influence of his grand and virtuous soul—for George, he says, rivals the angels: “George, who in foes can soft affections raise, And charm envenom’d satire into praise. Nor human rage alone his pow’r perceives, But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves, Ev’n storms (Death’s fiercest ministers!) forbear, And in their own wild empire learn to spare. Thus, Nature’s self, supporting Man’s decree, Styles Britain’s sovereign, sovereign of the sea.” As for Walpole, what _he_ felt at this tremendous crisis “No powers of language, but his own, can tell, His own, which Nature and the Graces form, At will, to raise, or hush, the civil storm.” It is a coincidence worth noticing, that this seventh Satire was published in 1726, and that the warrant of George the First, granting Young a pension of £200 a year from Lady-day, 1725, is dated May 3d, 1726. The gratitude exhibited in this Satire may have been chiefly prospective, but the “Instalment,” a poem inspired by the thrilling event of Walpole’s installation as Knight of the Garter, was clearly written with the double ardor of a man who has got a pension and hopes for something more. His emotion about Walpole is precisely at the same pitch as his subsequent emotion about the Second Advent. In the “Instalment” he says: