EARLY LIFE AND STUDIES. 249 



age of four years, he had read the Bible twice through. 

 At the age of six he learnt by heart the whole of Gold- 

 smith's " Deserted Village." His first formal teachers 

 were not successful, and an aunt in those early days 

 appears to have been more useful to him than anybody 

 else. When not quite seven years of age, he was placed 

 at what he calls a miserable boarding-school at Staple- 

 ton, near Bristol. But he soon became his own tutor, 

 distancing in his studies those who were meant to teach 

 him. 



In March, 1782, he was sent to the school of Mr. 

 Thompson, at Compton, in Dorsetshire, of whose 

 liberality and largeness of mind Young spoke after- 

 wards with affectionate recognition. Here he worked 

 at Greek and Latin, and read a great many books in 

 both languages. He also studied mathematics and 

 book-keeping. Of pregnant influence on his future 

 life was the reading of Martin's " Lectures on Natural 

 Philosophy," and Kyland's " Introduction to the Xew- 

 tonian Philosophy." He read with particular delight 

 the optical portions of Martin's work. An usher of the 

 school, named Jeffrey, taught him how to make tele- 

 scopes and to bind books. The early years of Young 

 and Faraday thus inosculate, the one, however, pursuing 

 bookbinding as an amusement, and the other as a 

 profession. Young borrowed a quadrant from an in- 

 telligent saddler named Atkins, and with it determined 

 the principal heights in his neighbourhood. He took 

 to botany for a time, but was more and more drawn 

 towards optics. He constructed a microscope. The 

 disentangling of difficult problems was his delight. 

 Seeing some flexional symbols in Martin's work, he at- 

 tacked the study of fluxions. Priestley on Air was read 

 and understood, while the Italian language was mastered 

 by the aid of one of his schoolfellows named Fox. 



