1886.1 on Thomaa Young. 575 



in what appeared to be the library of a palace near Portici. They 

 had been covered to a depth of 120 feet with the mixed ashes, sand, 

 and lava of Vesuvius. The inscriptions were for the most part 

 written in Greek, but some of them were in Latin. The leaves were 

 carbonised and hard, being glued together by heat to an almost 

 homogeneous mass. 



Learned Italians — Father Antonio, a writer of the Vatican, in 

 particular — had devoted great labour and ingenuity to the separating 

 of the leaves and the deciphering of the inscriptions. To the credit 

 of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., let it be recorded 

 that he manifested from the first an enlightened, a liberal, and truly 

 practical interest in these researches. He wrote to the Neapolitan 

 Government, offering to defray all the expenses of unrolling and 

 deciphering the papyri ; and he sent out Mr. Hayter, a classical 

 scholar of repute, to act as co-director with Eossini in the super- 

 intendence of the work. Mr. Hayter appears to have been unequal to 

 the task committed to him. His translations were defective ; his 

 lacunse serious and numerous, and he finally abandoned the manu- 

 scripts when he fled from Naples, with the Eoyal family, on the 

 French invasion in 1806. Some of the rolls, which had been pre- 

 sented to the Prince of Wales, were committed to the care of the 

 Eoyal Society, and placed by the Society in the hands of Dr. Young. 

 He spent many months in devising and applying means for the 

 opening of the leaves ; and, though only partially successful in this 

 respect,* he was able to correct many important errors, and to fill 

 many serious gaps in the work of his predecessors. 



The ' Quarterly Eeview ' was established in 1809, and Young was 

 intimate with its leading contributors. One of these, George Ellis, 

 " a man of ardent affections," had resented, almost as personal to 

 himself, the attacks on Young in the ' Edinburgh Eeview,' and 

 Young's pen was soon invoked to enrich and adorn the pages of its 

 rival. A great work, the Herculanensia, had been published, contain- 

 ing learned dissertations by the Eev. Eobert Walpole, Sir William 

 Drummond, and others, on the ancient condition of Herculaneum and 

 its neighbourhood. The review of this work was committed to 

 Young, and his article upon it, embodying his own views and 

 researches, was published in 1810. " The appearance of the article," 

 says Peacock, " equally remarkable for its critical acuteness and 

 vigorous writing, at once placed its author, in the estimation of the 

 public, in the first class of the scholars of the age." Gifford, the 

 editor of the ' Quarterly,' described the article as " certainly beyond 

 all praise." Ellis, at the same time, wrote thus to Young : — " It is a 

 consolation to know that Brougham, who took advantage of the growing 

 circulation of the ' Edinburgh Eeview ' to disseminate his vile abuse 

 of you, and Jefirey, who permitted him to do so, should be condemned 

 to hear your praises upon all sides." The tide had clearly turned in 



* Davy afterwards tried his hand upon the rolls, with imperfect success. 

 Vol. XL (No. 80.) 2 p 



