SKETCH OF DR. THOMAS YOUNG, 361 



croscopes, telescopes, and electrical machines, and the use of the lathe. 

 In an autobiographical sketch, he says that, after returning home from 

 tliis school, he devoted himself almost entirely to the study of Hebrew, 

 and to the practice of turning and telescope-making. He borrowed and 

 studied with great diligence the Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan, and Per- 

 sian grammars, and, having got hold of the Lord's Prayer in a hundred 

 different languages, was greatly interested. At fourteen years of age 

 Young became tutor to Mr. Hudson Gurney, who was a year and a 

 half older, and who continued his friend through life, and wrote a biog- 

 raphy of him. He wrote a beautiful hand, and, when once requested 

 by a friend of his uncle. Dr. Brocklesby, an eminent London physician, 

 to exhibit a specimen of his handwriting, he wrote a sentence in four- 

 teen different languages. His precocity reminds us of that of J. S. 

 Mill, but it had a far more spontaneous and varied exercise. He went 

 on with his mathematical, botanical, and entomological studies with 

 great ardor, but he was left to entire freedom in their pursuit, and 

 believed that " whoever would arrive at excellence must be self- 

 taught;" and that there was "in reality very little that a person, seri- 

 ously and industriously disposed to improve, may not obtain from 

 books with more advantage than from the living instructor." Upon 

 this principle, as his biographer remarks, he was self-taught. "He 

 read nothing hastily or cursorily, and his memory was so tenacious that 

 he never forgot what he had once mastered. He wrote exercises and 

 composed in the languages in which he studied. His journals were 

 w^ritten in Latin, and his criticisms on French authors in French, and 

 on Italian authors in Italian. His mathematical studies were carried 

 on in a similar manner. He began the six books of Euclid on such a 

 day, and finished them on another; and we hear no more of them. 

 Algebra, trigonometry, and fluxions were dispatched in the same way. 

 He read the 'Principia' deliberately through ; and it appears from the 

 remarks in his journals that he had fully comprehended them." 



At nineteen years of age, in obedience to the wishes of his uncle, 

 Mr. Young entered upon the study of anatomy and medicine, and from 

 the outset he became an original investigator in this Held, his first 

 researches being into the structure of the eye as an optical instrument. 

 At the age of twenty-one, the Duke of Richmond oftered him the ap- 

 pointment of his private secretary, at $1,000 a year, and " a place at the 

 duke's table." This he declined on the ground of Quaker scruples, and 

 wrote to his mother that he " was not ashamed to allege his regard for 

 the Society as a principal reason for not accepting the proposal. . . . 

 This event in his life led him, no doubt, to consider how far his po- 

 sition as a Quaker might interfere with his future prosjDccts. He had 

 hitherto adopted their garb and phraseology, but he now began to 

 divest himself of these characteristics, and to mix largely with society. 

 In Edinburgh, where he went at the close of 1V94 to prosecute his 

 medical education, he did not scruple to violate the principles of his 



