238 Biographical Memoir of Dr Thomas Young. 



known merit, thus acquire, in certain matters, an influence which 

 often becomes highly injurious. It is thus, I think, we must 

 qualify that which the Edinburgh Review has sometimes ex- 

 ercised. 



Among the contributors of this celebrated Journal, there ap- 

 peared, from the commencement, in the first rank, a young writer 

 in whom the discoveries of Newton had excited the most ardent 

 admiration. This feeling, so natural and fair, made him unfor- 

 tunately disown whatever the doctrine of interferences contained 

 of what was plausible, ingenious, and useful. The author of 

 this theory had not always, perhaps, been careful to clothe his 

 decisions, his decrees, and his criticisms in those poHshed terms 

 from which merit can never suffer, and which, besides, were an 

 imperative duty when he treated of the immortal author of " Na- 

 tural Philosophy y' The penalty of retaliation was inflicted upon 

 him with usury ; the Edinburgh Review attacked the scholar, the 

 writer, the geometrician, the experimentahst, with a vehemence 

 and asperity of expression, almost without example in scientific dis- 

 cussion. The public is generally thrown upon its guard when it 

 hearssuch impassioned language; but, on this occasion, it adopted, 

 on the moment, theopinion of the reviewer, without however giving 

 us reason to accuse it of levity. The reviewer, in truth, was not a 

 beardless Aristarchus, whose commission was not justified by any 

 previous study; many excellent papers, preserved in the Transac- 

 tions of the Ro}'al Society, testified to his mathematical know- 

 ledge, and had already assigned him a distinguished place among 

 the philosophers to whom experimental optics was indebted ; the 

 English bar had proclaimed him one of its most distinguished 

 ornaments ; the Whigs in the House of Commons saw in him the 

 sarcastic orator who, in their parliamentary struggles, was often 

 the successful antagonist of Canning ; it was, in fact, the future 

 Chairman of the House of Lords, the late Lord Chancellor 

 Brougham.* 



* The newspapers having sometimes done me the honour to state the many 

 testimonies of kindness and friendship which Lord Brougham bestowed upon 

 me in 1834, both in Scotland and in Paris, a few words in explanation appear 

 here to be indispensable. The eloge of Dr Young was read in a public meeting 

 of the Academie des Sciences on the 26th of November 1 832 ; at that time I had 

 never had any personal intercourse with the author of these articles in the 

 Edinburgh Review; thus I can never, with the slightest propriety, be accused 



