284 THOMAS YOUNG. 
Young was only eight years of age, when chance, 
whose influence in the events of man’s life is more con- 
siderable than our vanity often allows us to admit, took 
him from studies exclusively literary, and revealed his 
real vocation. A surveyor of much merit in the neigh- 
bourhood took a great fancy for him; he took him out 
into the country sometimes on holidays, and permitted 
him to amuse himself with his instruments of surveying 
and natural philosophy. The operations, by whose aid 
the young scholar saw the distances and elevations of 
inaccessible objects determined, powerfully struck his 
imagination. But soon several chapters of a mathe- 
matical dictionary made all that seemed mysterious in 
the matter disappear. From. this moment, in his Sun- 
day excursions, the quadrant took the place of the kite. 
In the evening, by way of amusement, the engineering 
novice calculated the heights measured in the morning. 
From the age of nine to fourteen, Young went toa 
school at Compton in Dorsetshire, kept by Mr. Thom- 
son, whose memory he always cherished. During these 
five years all the pupils of the school were occupied 
exclusively, according to the practice of English Schools, 
in a minute study of the principal writers of Greece and 
Rome.* Young continually maintained his place at the 
head of his class: and yet he learned at the same time 
French, Italian, Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic: French 
and Italian, from the chance object of satisfying the 
curiosity of a schoolfellow who possessed some works 
* It would appear from Young’s own account, that a far more 
liberal system was really pursued in this school. Also, the praises 
of the usher, Josiah Jeffery, should never be omitted, who initiated 
Young at leisure hours into a variety of experimental and practical 
subjects, which contributed materially to his future success. See 
Peacock’s Life, p. 6.— Translator. 
