276 THOMAS YOUNG. 



sonal feelings were, it was not Young that he assailed 

 so much as those sublime natural truths of which Young 

 at the time was the foremost exponent. Through the 

 undulatory theory he attacked Young without scruple 

 or remorse. He sneered at his position in the Royal 

 Institution, and tried hard to have his papers excluded 

 from the "Philosophical Transactions." "Has the Royal 

 Society," he says, " degraded its publications into bulle- 

 tins of new and fashionable theories for the ladies of the 

 Royal Institution? Let the Professor continue to amuse 

 his audience with an endless variety of such harmless 

 trifles, but in the name of science let them not find 

 admittance into that venerable repository which con- 

 tains the works of Newton and Boyle and Cavendish 

 and Maskelyne and Herschel." The profound, compli- 

 cated, and novel researches on which Young was then 

 engaged rendered an occasional change of view neces- 

 sary. How does the reviewer interpret this praise- 

 worthy loyalty to truth ? " It is difficult," he says, " to 

 deal with an author filled with a medium of so fickle 

 and vibratory a nature. Were -we to take the trouble 

 of refuting him, he might tell us, ' my opinion is 

 changed, and I have abandoned that hypothesis. 

 But here is another for you.' We demand if the 

 world of science which Newton once illuminated is to 

 be as changeable in its modes as the world of fashion, 

 which is directed by the nod of a silly woman or a 



pampered fop? We have a right to demand 



that the hypothesis shall be so consistent with itself as 

 not to require perpetual mending and patching; that 

 the child we stoop to play with shall be tolerably 

 healthy, and not of the puny and sickly nature of Dr. 

 Young's productions, which have scarcely stamina to 

 subsist until the fruitful parent has furnished us with a 

 new litter, to make way for which he knocks on the 



