Memoir of the Life of Dr. Thomas Young. 233 
appears to have been a forward if nota precocious child. It is said © 
that he could read with fluency when he was two years old; and soon 
after this, in the intervals of his attendance on a village schoolmis- 
tress, he committed to memory a number of English verses, and even 
was taught to recite some Latin poems, the words of which he re- 
tained without difficulty, although unacquainted with their meaning. 
Before he was six years old, he was sent to a school kept by a dis- 
senting minister at Bristol, where he remained about a year anda 
half, and became essentially his own instructor, and had generally 
studied the last pages of the books used before he had reached the 
middle under the eye of his inefficient master. 
It has been remarked, ‘that the early quickness with which learn- 
ing is imbibed, is not always the indication of permanent ability ; 
facility of acquiring does not in general establish a power of reten- 
tion; whilst what is received with difficulty, is frequently preserved 
and digested in the mind.’ The case of Dr. Young, however, was 
one of those happy exceptions to this remark; and in none of those 
extraordinary instances recorded by Baillet in his work ‘sur les En- 
fans célebres par leurs Etudes,’ is there a more remarkable instance 
of the promise of youth being realized in the man. 
To one of those accidental circumstances, which, though they do 
not create a peculiar genius, yet very often determine its bent, may 
be attributed that love of science which distinguished Dr. Young, and 
which (says his biographer) ‘had probably no small influence on the 
issues of his future life.-—‘ His father had a neighbor, a man of great 
ingenuity, by profession a land-surveyor ; and in his office, during his 
holidays, he was indulged with the use of mathematical and philo- 
sophical instruments, and the perusal of three volumes of'a Dictionary 
of Arts and Science. These were to him sources of instruction and 
delight of which he seemed never to be weary.’ 
In his visits to this neighbor, Young had acquired some knowledge 
of the art of land-surveying, and used to amuse himself in his walks 
by measuring heights with a quadrant. In 1782 he was placed at 
the school of Mr. Thompson, at Compton, in Dorsetshire, where he 
went through the ordinary course of Greek and Latin, with the ele- 
ments of mathematics; here also he had access to a moderate mis- 
cellaneous library, and by rising earlier and sitting up later than his 
companions, with the assistance of a school fellow, he acquired some 
knowledge of the French and Italian languages. 
