Memoir of the Life of Dr. Thomas Young. 323 



retained without difficulty, although unacquainted with their meaning. 

 Before he was six years old, he was sent to a school kept by a dis- 

 senting minister at Bristol, where he remained about a year and a 

 half, and became essentially his own instructor, and had generally 

 studied the last pages of the books used before he had reached the 

 middle under the eye of his inefficient master. 



It has been remarked, * that the early quickness with which learn- 

 ing is imbibed, is not always the indication of permanent ability; 

 facility of acquiring does not in general establish a power of reten- 

 tion ; whilst what is received with difficulty, is frequently preserved 

 and digested in the mind.' The case of Dr. Young, however, was 

 one of those happy exceptions to this remark ; and in none of those 

 extraordinary instances recorded by Baillet in his work ' sur les 

 Enfans c61ebres par leurs Etudes,' is there a more remarkable in- 

 stance of the promise of youth being realized in the man. 



To one of those accidental circumstances, which, though they do 

 not create a peculiar genius, yet very often determine its bent, may 

 be attributed that love of science which distinguished Dr. Young, and 

 which (says his biographer) ' had probably no small influence on the 

 issues of his future life.' ' His father had a neighbour, a man of 

 great ingenuity, by profession a land-surveyor ; and in his office, 

 during his holidays, he was indulged with the use of mathematical 

 and philosophical instruments, and the perusal of three volumes of a 

 Dictionary of Arts and Science. These were to him sources of in- 

 struction and delight of which he seemed never to be weary.' 



In his visits to this neighbour, Young had acquired some know- 

 ledge of the art of land-surveying, and used to amuse himself in his 

 walks by measuring heights with a quadrant. In 1782 he was 

 placed at the school of Mr. Thompson, at Compton, in Dorsetshire, 

 where he went through the ordinary course of Greek and Latin, with 

 the elements of mathematics ; here also he had access to a mode- 

 rate miscellaneous library, and by rising earlier and sitting up later 

 than his companions, with the assistance of a schoolfellow, he ac- 

 quired some knowledge of the French and Italian languages. 



Botany having about this time engaged his attention, and desiring 

 to possess a microscope for the purpose of examining plants, he 

 attempted the construction of one from the descriptions of Benjamin 

 Martin. This led him to optics ; and having procured a lathe in 

 order to make his microscope, like most young experimenters, he 

 forgot or neglected science, for a time applied himself to the ac- 

 quirement of manual dexterity, and every thing gave way to a passion 

 for turning, until, falling upon a demonstration in Martin's Philo- 

 sophy, which exhibited some fluxional symbols, he was not satisfied 

 until he had read and mastered a short introduction to the doctrine 

 of fluxions. 



Before he quitted school, a Hebrew Bible being left in his way, 

 he began by enabling himself to read a few chapters ; this led him 

 to the study of the other principal oriental languages ; and on quit- 



