112 HISTORY OF OPTICS. 



the hypothesis of emission was so easily conceived, that, when recom- 

 mended by high authority, it easily became popular; while the 

 hypothesis of luminiferous undulations, unavoidably difficult to compre- 

 hend, even by the aid of steady thought, was neglected, and all but 

 forgotten. 



Yet the reception which Young's opinions met with was more harsh 

 than he might have expected, even taking into account all these con- 

 siderations. But there was in England no visible body of men, fitted 

 by their knowledge and character to pronounce judgment on such a 

 question, or to give the proper impulse and bias to public opinion. 

 The Royal Society, for instance, had not, for a long time, by custom or 

 institution, possessed or aimed at such functions. The writers of 

 "Reviews" alone, self-constituted and secret tribunals, claimed this 

 kind of authority. Among these publications, by far the most distin- 

 guished about this period was the Edinburgh Review ; and, including 

 among its contributors men of eminent science and great talents, 

 employing also a robust and poignant style of writing (often certainly 

 in a very unfair manner), it naturally exercised great influence. On 

 abstruse doctrines, intelligible to few persons, more than on other sub- 

 jects, the opinions and feelings expressed in a Review must be those 

 of the individual reviewer. The criticism on some of Young's early 

 papers on optics was written by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Brougham, who, 

 as we have seen, had experimented on diffraction, following the New- 

 tonian view, that of inflexion. Mr. Brougham was perhaps at this 

 time young enough 1 to be somewhat intoxicated with the appearance 

 of judicial authority in matters of science, which his office of anony- 

 mous reviewer gave him and even in middle-life, he was sometimes 

 considered to be prone to indulge himself in severe and sarcastic 

 expressions. In January, 1803, was published 2 his critique on Dr. 

 Young's Bakerian Lecture, On the Theory of Light and Colors, in 

 which lecture the doctrine of undulations and the law of interferences 

 w r as maintained. This critique was an uninterrupted strain of blame 

 and rebuke. " This paper," the reviewer said, " contains nothing which 

 deserves the name either of experiment or discovery." He charged 

 the writer with " dangerous relaxations of the principles of physical 

 logic." " We wish," he cried, " to recall philosophers to the strict and 

 severe methods of investigation," describing them as those pointed out 

 by Bacon, Newton, and the like. Finally, Dr. Young's speculations 



1 His nge was twenty-four. * Edin. Review, vol. i. p. 450. 



