332 Analysis of Books, 8fc. 



Secretary to the Board of Longitude, with the charge of the super- 

 vision of the Nautical Almanack, having been before named one of 

 the Commissioners without his previous knowledge. This appoint- 

 ment was to him a very desirable one, though the labour in which it 

 involved him was great. His anxiety to increase his medical prac- 

 tice henceforth ceased, and it made that the business of his life which 

 had always been congenial to his inclination. 



For the first sixteen years after his marriage, Dr. Young had been 

 accustomed to pass his summers at Worthing, with a view to the 

 practice of his profession. He now discontinued his visits, and de- 

 voted the summer of 1819 to a hasty tour into Italy. In about five 

 months he visited the most remarkable places, and examined the 

 Egyptian monuments preserved in the museums of that country, re- 

 turning to England by Switzerland and the Rhine. 



From the year 1820 to the close of his life, Dr. Young continued 

 to furnish a variety of astronomical and nautical collections to Mr. 

 Brande's 4 Journal of Science,' together with some philological 

 papers. 



'In 1821 he published anonymously an " Elementary Illustration of 

 the Celestial Mechanics of La Place, with some additions relating to 

 the motion of Waves and of Sound, and to the Cohesion of Fluids." 

 This volume, and the article " Tides " in the Supplement to the Encyclo- 

 paedia, Dr. Young considered as containing the most fortunate results 

 of his mathematical labours.' * He proceeds (says his biographer) in 

 his own course and manner of investigation, and uses his own processes, 

 and the great reach of mind displayed in these works seems universally 

 acknowledged ; but whether he have sufficiently established all the points 

 which he considered himself to have proved, remains matter of dispute 

 amongst those most qualified to judge. They were spoken of in the highest 

 terms of praise by Mr. Davies Gilbert from the chair of the Royal So- 

 ciety ; but there are some amongst the most distinguished of surviving 

 English philosophers, who still think that his theory of the Tides rests 

 too exclusively on analogies, and that many of the elements of the com- 

 putation are too much out of human reach to render the boldness of the 

 original thought susceptible of being subjected to the severity of mathe- 

 matical deduction.' 



Dr. Young, as a mathematician, was of an elder school, and was 

 possibly somewhat prejudiced against the system now obtaining amongst 

 the continental and English philosophers ; as he thought the powers of 

 intellect exercised by a preceding race of mathematicians were in no 

 small danger of being lost or weakened by the substitution of processes 

 in their nature mechanical.' 



He again visited Paris in 1823, and in the same year published 

 his * Account of some Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature and 

 Egyptian Antiquities/ in which he gave his own original alphabet, 

 his translations from papyri, and the extensions which his alphabet 

 had received from M. Champollion. This was his first acknowledged 

 non-professional publication since 1804, having attained his fif- 

 tieth year, as he states in his preface, and determined to throw off 

 the shackles by which he had considered himself bound by the eti- 

 quette of a medical practitioner. 



