216 Biographical Memoir ofDr Thomas Young. 



every thing which was mysterious to disappear. From this mo- 

 ment in his Sunday walks the quadrant took the place of the 

 paper kite ; and, in the evening, by way of relaxation, the young 

 engineer calculated the distances which he had measured in the 

 morning. 



From the age of nine to fourteen, Young lived at Compton 

 in Dorsetshire, with a master of the name of Thomson, whose 

 memory was always dear to him. During these five years all 

 his fellow-scholars were exclusively occupied, according to the 

 custom of English schools, with a minute study of the principal 

 Grecian and Roman authors. Young invariably maintained the 

 first place in his class, and, at the same time, learnt the French, 

 Italian, Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic languages. His acquisi- 

 tion of the two former was occasioned by his desire to satisfy the 

 curiosity of one of his associates, who had in his possession many 

 books which were printed in Paris, with the contents of which 

 he was unacquainted ; he learnt the Hebrew that he might read 

 the Bible in the original ; and the Persian and Arabic with the 

 design of answering a question which had been started at the 

 dinner-table — Whether there were as marked differences amongst 

 the Eastern languages as there were amongst European. 



I feel it necessary to state, that I am now writing from au- 

 thentic documents, before I add that, whilst he was making such 

 unheard of progress in the languages, Ycung, during his walks 

 around Compton, was seized with a violent passion for botany, 

 and that destitute of those means of magnifying, which naturalists 

 are in the habit of using when they wish to examine the more 

 delicate parts of plants, he undertook himself to construct a mi- 

 croscope, wiihout any other help than a description of this in- 

 strument which is given by Benjamin Martin ; and that to ar- 

 rive at the accomplishment of his wishes, he had first to acquire 

 much dexterity in the art of turning ; and then, the algebraical 

 formulas of the optician having presented to him symbols of 

 which he had no idea (the symbols of fluxions), he was for a 

 time in great perplexity ; but that, finally, not wishing to give 

 up the magnifying of the pistils and stamina, he found it easier 

 to apprehend the differential calculus, and so to understand the 

 unlucky formula, than to send to the neighbouring town to buy 

 a microscope. 



