Biographical Memoir of' Dr Thomas Young. 231 



rate and satisfactory answer upon questions of every kind which 

 might be proposed to him. 



Young was deeply conversant with the arts. Many of his 

 memoirs testify the profound knowledge he had early acquired 

 of the theory of music. He was also an excellent performer, 

 and I believe there was not a couple of known instruments, even 

 including the Scotch bagpipe, on which he could not play. His 

 taste for painting appeared during his stay in Germany. It 

 was there that the magnificent collection of Dresden wholly ab- 

 sorbed him, for he did not only aspire to the easy acquirements 

 of knowing to a certainty the name of the painter of every pic- 

 ture, but the characteristic features and defects of all the great 

 masters, their frequent changes of style, the material objects 

 with which they worked, and all the modifications which these 

 objects, and amongst others the colours, underwent in the course 

 of time, occupied him in their turn. In a word. Young studied 

 painting in Saxony, as formerly he had studied languages in his 

 own country ; and as afterwards he studied all the sciences. 

 Every thing was in his view a subject of meditation and research. 

 His college companions used to narrate a laughable example of 

 this tendency of his mind. They state that one day on going 

 into his room at Edinburgh, after he had for the first time re- 

 ceived his dancing master's instructions on the minuet, they 

 found him engaged in tracing, with rule and compass, the va- 

 rious crossings of the two dancers, and the various improve- 

 ments which he thought might be introduced. 



Young very early borrowed from the Quakers, to whose sect 

 he then belonged, the opinion that the intellectual faculties of 

 children usually differ far less than is usually supposed. That 

 which one man has done another may do, had become his favour- 

 ite maxim, and never did he decline any personal proofs to 

 which he was desired to submit his system. The first time he 

 mounted on horseback, in company with the grandson of Mr 

 Barclay, the groom who followed them cleared a six-bar gate. 

 Young immediately tried to follow him, but was thrown to the 

 distance of ten feet. He got up without saying a word, made 

 a second attempt, was again unseated, but stuck to his steed ; a 

 third time he tried it, and as his favourite thesis required, suc- 



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