300 THOMAS YOUNG. 



pression of the real facts bearing upon an important 

 discovery.' 



And yet the Dean of Ely is by no means stingy in 

 his praise of Champoilion. It would be unjust, he 

 says, to refuse to Champoilion the honour due to his 

 rare skill and sagacity, not merely in the application 

 of a principle already known, but in its rapid exten- 

 sion to a multitude of other cases, so as not merely to 

 point out its character and use, but also to determine 

 the principal elements of a phonetic alphabet. His 

 long-continued studies, Peacock remarks, had fitted 

 him more than any other living man, Young himself 

 hardly excepted, to deal with this subject, 'and the 

 rapidity of his progress, when once fully started on his 

 career of discovery, was worthy of the highest admi- 

 ration.' Peacock, moreover, describes his work as ever 

 memorable in the history of hieroglyphical research, 

 not only from the vast range of knowledge which it 

 displays, but from the clear and lucid order in which it 

 is arranged. * It was,' he continues, ' singularly un- 

 fortunate that one who possessed so much of his own 

 should have been so much wanting in a proper sense of 

 justice to those who had preceded him in these inves- 

 tigations as materially to lessen his claims to the re- 

 spect and reverence which would otherwise have been 

 most willingly conceded to him.' 



With regard to the lack of literary candour, thus 

 so strongly commented on, it is of interest to note the 

 views concerning Champoilion held by one of his own 

 countrymen. Soon after the researches of Young had 

 begun, an extremely interesting correspondence was 

 established between him and De Sacy. As early as 

 October 1814 Young was able to submit to his cor- 

 respondent a 'conjectural translation' into Latin of 

 the Egyptian Kosetta inscription. He subsequently 



