Clerical Career
Young was nearly fifty when he decided to take holy orders. It was reported that the author of Night Thoughts was not, in his earlier days, "the ornament to religion and morality which he afterwards became," and his friendships with the Duke of Wharton and with Dodington did not improve his reputation. A statement attributed to Alexander Pope probably gives the correct view. "He had much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets; but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency and afterwards with honour " (O Ruffhead, Life of A. Pope, p. 291).
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