246 Memoir of Dr. Thomas Young. 



nesses of esteem and gratitude, which the public rarely fails 

 to pay to intellectual labours of a high order. And, if it 

 should happen, that in the illusions of inexperience, they 

 should find too dull a sacrifice prescribed to them, we would 

 request them to receive a lesson of ambition from the 

 great captain, whose ambition knew no bounds, to meditate 

 on these words which the first consul, the victor of Marengo, 

 addressed to one of our most honourable colleagues (M. 

 Lemercier), when the latter refused the very important 

 situation at that time, of state counsellor. " I understand, 

 Sir, you are fond of learning, and you wish to devote your- 

 self entirely to it. I have no opposition to offer to this 

 resolution. Yes! Do you think that if I had not become 

 commander-in-chief, and the instrument of the destiny of a 

 great people, I should have passed through offices and halls 

 to be dependent on a person in power, in quality of minister 

 or ambassador? No, No! I should have entered on the 

 study of the exact sciences. I should have traversed the 

 path of Galileo and Newton ; and since I have constantly 

 succeeded in my great enterprizes, Ah, well ! I should have 

 been highly distinguished also by my scientific works ; I 

 should have left the remembrance of fine discoveries. No 

 other glory would have invited my ambition." 



Young made choice of the career of medicine, in which 

 he hoped to find fortune and independence. His medical 

 studies began at London under Baillie and Cruickshank. 

 He continued them at Edinburgh, where then Drs. Black, 

 Munro and Gregory were highly distinguished ; but it was 

 only at Goettingen in the following year (1795) that he 

 took his degree. 



Before submitting to this vain formality, yet so decidedly 

 required, Young had scarcely exceeded his boyhood ; he 

 had already distinguished himself before the scientific 

 world by an observation relating to gum Ladanum; by a 

 controversy winch he had carried on with Dr. Beddoes 

 on Crawford's Theory of heat ; by a memoir concerning the 

 habits of spiders, and the system of Fabricius, the whole 

 enriched with erudite researches ; and lastly, by a work 

 which I shall notice at greater length on account of its 

 great merit, of the unusual favour which it produced, and 

 of the oblivion into which it has since fallen. 



