COUNTRY LIFE
Two Centuries Young Two hundred years ago this month was born the man who has been called " the first of English agricultural writers." Arthur Young, born in London, was the younger son of a Suffolk rector. Before he was nineteen he had written four novels and a couple of political pamphlets. Before he died he had surveyed 7,000 miles of British soil, a good deal of France and Ireland and had written between 200 and 25o volumes. " He was the soul and inspiration of the progressive movement," Lord Ernie has said. " To him, more than any other individual, were due the dis- semination of new ideas on farming, the diffusion of the latest results of observation and experiment, the creation of new agencies for the interchange of experiences, the establishment of farmers' clubs, ploughing-matches and agricultural societies and shows." His time, dislocated by revolution both here and in France, has a parallel in our own. Young, too, saw a widespread " inability to put the land to its best use," and wrote about it with appropriate indignation. France made him, according to one of his trans- lators, an adopted child ; George III, who delighted in calling himself " Farmer George," carried Young's Annals about with him and declared himself to be more indebted to him than any man in his dominions ; Napoleon is said to have read him on St. Helena. We, too, can read Young today with a good deal of profit ; and at least one writer wishes there were time, as in Young's day, for an outspoken six months' tour of agricultural England.
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