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 ANALYSIS OF BOOKS, 



Memoir of the Life of Thomas Young, M.D., F.R.S., Foreign 

 Associate of the Royal Institute of France, -c., *c., with a Cata- 

 logue of his fForks and Essays. London, 1831. 8vo. 



tribute to the memory of one of the most gifted men and 

 distinguished philosophers of the age, has been printed solely 

 for private distribution. It has almost the interest of an autobio- 

 graphy, having been drawn up by a gentleman who had the advan- 

 tage of a long and intimate acquaintance with him, from some short 

 memoranda of Dr. Young's own writing, in the possession of a near 

 connexion. The author modestly states, that ' having never been 

 engaged in the pursuits of accurate science, he feels himself incom- 

 petent to give more than an imperfect sketch, which he trusts to see 

 filled up hereafter by an abler hand.' 



No apology, it is presumed, will be necessary for transferring to 

 these pages the substance of this account of Dr. Young, who, from 

 his connexion with the Royal Institution, as one of its professors, 

 and as the editor of the first series of its Journal, independent of his 

 claims as a scholar and philosopher of the first class, especially 

 merits distinguished notice in this work. 



Thomas Young was born at Milverton, in Somersetshire, on the 

 13th of June, 1773. His parents were both of them Quakers, and 

 of the strictest of that sect ; his mother was a niece of Dr. Richard 

 Brocklesby, a physician of eminence, well known from his con- 

 nexion with the distinguished literary and political characters of his 

 time, and who numbered among his most intimate friends, Johnson, 

 Burke, and Windham. 



To the influence of the early impressions of the Quaker tenets, Dr. 

 Young ' was accustomed to attribute, in some degree, the power he 

 so eminently possessed of an imperturbable resolution to effect any 

 object on which he was engaged, which he brought to bear on every- 

 thing he undertook, and by which he was enabled to work out his 

 own education almost from infancy, with little comparative assistance 

 or direction from others.' The earliest years of Dr. Young were 

 chiefly passed in the family of his maternal grandfather, Mr. Robert 

 Davis, of Minehead, who, in the midst of mercantile avocations, had 

 cultivated a taste for classical literature, with which, by earnest en- 

 deavour, he seems to have imbued the mind of his grandson, who 

 appears to have been a forward if not a precocious child. It is said 

 that he could read with fluency when he was two years old; and soon 

 after this, in the intervals of his attendance on a village schoolmis- 

 tress, he committed to memory a number of English verses, and even 

 was taught to recite some Latin poems, the words of which he 



