While with your Dodington retir’d you sit,
Charm’d with his flowing Burgundy and wit, &c.
Thomson in his Autumn, addressing Mr. Dodington calls his seat the seat of the muses,
Where, in the secret bow’r and winding walk,
For virtuous Young and thee they twine the bay.
The praises Thompson bestows but a few lines before on Philips, the second
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfetter’d verse,
With British freedom sing the British song,
added to Thomson’s example and success, might, perhaps, induce Young, as we shall see presently, to write his great work without rhyme.
In 1734 he published the Foreign Address, or the best Argument for Peace, occasioned by the British Fleet and the Posture of Affairs. Written in the character of a sailor. It is not to be found in the author’s four volumes.
He now appears to have given up all hopes of overtaking Pindar, and, perhaps, at last resolved to turn his ambition to some original species of poetry. This poem concludes with a formal farewell to Ode, which few of Young’s readers will regret:
My shell, which Clio gave, which kings applaud,
Which Europe’s bleeding genius call’d abroad,
Adieu!
In a species of poetry altogether his own, he next tried his skill, and succeeded.