96 



MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



[Diss. VI. 



Residence 

 at Edin- 

 burgh ; 



(447.) 

 at Gottin- 

 gen and at 

 Cam- 

 bridge. 



(448.) 

 Character 

 of his in- 

 vestiga- 

 tions. 



(which would have been his natural destination), and 

 entered the university of Edinburgh as a medical stu- 

 dent at the age of twenty-one. He had already de- 

 clined the overtures of such distinguished patrons as 

 Windham and Burke, resolving to devote himself to 

 the pursuit of science, for which a medical education 

 seemed to him a fit entrance ; his studies being made 

 under the more immediate advice of his uncle, Dr 

 Brocklesby. He attended Black's lectures in Edin- 

 burgh ; whether he was known to Robison I am not 

 aware, though I should be inclined to infer that he 

 was from the terms in which Robison speaks of 

 Young when criticising his strictures upon Smith's 

 Harmonics. Robison disagreed with him on this 

 point, and also about the nature of light, yet he 

 speaks of Young and of his paper on Sound with 

 very marked respect. More than a year before his 

 enrolment at Edinburgh (which took place in autumn 

 1794), he communicated to the Royal Society of 

 London a paper on vision, of which we shall pre- 

 sently give some further account ; and was elected a 

 fellow of the Society when just of age. 



From Edinburgh he proceeded to Gb'ttingen where 

 he graduated ; acquiring the German language, and 

 leaving a vivid impression of his astonishing versa- 

 tility of talent and powers of memory. Early in 

 1797 he returned to England, and soon after en- 

 tered himself at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 

 order to comply with the requisitions of the London 

 College of Physicians, and thus to obtain a license 

 to practice. For the next few years his time was 

 divided much between Cambridge and London. He 

 was now twenty-three years of age, and his mental 

 habits too much formed to bend to the rules of Cam- 

 bridge study. When the master of his college intro- 

 duced him to the fellows, he is reported to have said, 

 " I have brought you a pupil qualified to read lec- 

 tures to his tutors," and such, no doubt, was the fact. 

 We hear little of his occupations at Cambridge, but 

 we can hardly doubt that his private studies then 

 ranged over the vast fields of erudition which he af- 

 terwards proved that he had made so completely his 

 own ; and we cannot doubt that he was then preparing 

 the groundwork of his theory of optics, although his 

 discovery of interference was certainly not made at 

 Cambridge, and probably in London after his settle- 

 ment there in 1800. l His first paper on sound and 

 light is dated from Cambridge in July 1799. 



I have entered into these details because they 

 throw light on the peculiarities of Young's cha- 

 racter and attainments. He was to a great degree 

 self-educated ; and his studies in consequence may 

 be called desultory, though none would dare to call 



them superficial. Mathematicians may consider his 

 acquaintance with their science as not technically 

 complete, yet one of them admits that " he could 

 make a small amount of mathematics go farther than 

 any one else." Had he been a consummate analyst 

 it is unlikely that we should have had in him the 

 author of the undulatory theory, the difficulties of 

 which in its earlier stages made it unpalatable to 

 Laplace, Poisson, and the most considerable French 

 mathematicians. Having thought out for himself 

 every one of the multifarious subjects with which he 

 grappled, his writings have a striking force and ori- 

 ginality, and his reports of the labours of others are 

 almost invariably drawn from a study of their original 

 works. His earliest principle was, that what one 

 man has done another may accomplish ; and one of 

 the many respects in which he resembled his great 

 predecessor Newton, was unbounded confidence in 

 the powers of " patient thought." Not that he con- 

 fined the desire to excel to purely intellectual matters. 

 What he found it worth while to do at all, he thought 

 it worth doing well. He chose to be first-rate in 

 dancing and in equitation ; his penmanship was (in 

 his early days) as scrupulously elegant as his scho- 

 larship. * 



In 1801 Young was appointed Professor of Natu- (449.) 

 ral Philosophy at the Royal Institution, where he was Youn g' 8 

 the colleague of Davy. Young had not the qualifi- Natural 

 cations of a popular lecturer, and the most important Philosophy 

 result of his short connection of two years with the 

 Royal Institution was the publication in 1807 of his 

 Lectures on Natural Philosophy, in two large quarto 

 volumes. It is a work peculiarly characteristic of the 

 author ; and is rather adapted for reference by the 

 scholar, than to be studied as an elementary trea- 

 tise. Its condensation is such as to render it in 

 many places obscure ; though when read by one 

 conversant with the subject, its comprehensiveness 

 and precision are surprising. It is a truly admi- 

 rable monument of labour and genius combined. 

 Embracing the arts as well as the whole of natural 

 philosophy, it seems to include the mention of every- 

 thing connected with his vast subject from the 

 simplest tool of the artisan to the highest specu- 

 lations of Newton and Lagrange ; and yet it is evi- 

 dent, by the masterly manner in which he handles 

 it, that the author had made all this mass of know- 

 ledge completely his own. The catalogue of refer- 

 ences with which it closes indicates an extent of bib- 

 liographical research which would have done honour 

 to any one who had made that an exclusive object of 

 study. Even the plates are drawn with a studious 

 care, betokening well his own mechanical talent. 



enabled tne to improve the text I have not hesitated to use it. The facility of consultation afforded by the collection of Dr 

 Young's widely scattered writings is a most important aid to all future students of science, and one which cannot fail to raise 

 still higher the great reputation of their author. 



1 See Sect. vii. of the article POLARIZATION in this Encyclopaedia, where, in a bracketted interpolation by the translator, 

 Dr Young, he speaks of this fundamental experiment being made " in the room and at the table on which he is now writing." 

 This must have been in Welbeck Street, London. 



