Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/232

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218
STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

in travelling with nothing but a postchaise, a cabriolet for his servants, and a courier to order horses. 'A plague on a blind mare!' exclaims Young; 'but I have worked through life, and he (that is, Fox) talks!' Young had talked a good deal too, especially on paper; but his momentary grumble was pardonable. His '3000 experiments,' and his various attempts to get out of perpetual anxiety had brought him little but reputation. George III., indeed, sent him a merino ram, much to his satisfaction; it proved that the king had just views of glory, and that a period was coming when 'more homage' would be paid to a prince for giving 'a ram to a farmer than for wielding a sceptre.' George III. soon found it necessary to devote more time to his sceptre than to his rams; but Young's career was more affected, happily or otherwise, by another influence. Sir John Sinclair was an ideal representative of the dismal science. He atoned for being an intolerable bore by doing some excellent work. He inherited a large estate in Caithness, and began his reign by assembling his tenants and making in one day a road over an inaccessible hill; and he set to work enclosing, rearranging farms, introducing fisheries, and generally rousing the primitive Gaelic population to a sense of the advantages of civilisation. He