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342 THOMAS YOUNG. 
those scientific labours which ought to add so much to 
its glory, is a rare anomaly, of which it would be curious 
to trace the causes. JI should be wanting in frankness, 
I should be the panegyrist, not the historian, if I did not 
avow, that in general Young did not sufficiently accom- 
modate himself to the capacity of his readers; that the 
greater part of the writings for which the sciences are 
indebted to hing, are justly chargeable with a certain 
obscurity. But the neglect to which they were long 
consigned did not depend solely on this cause. 
The exact sciences have an advantage over the works 
of art or imagination, which has been often pointed out. 
The truths of which they consist remain constant through 
ages without suffering in any respect from the caprices of 
fashion or the decline of taste : but thus, when once these 
researches rise into more elevated regions of thought, 
on how many competent judges of their merits can we 
reckon? When Richelieu let loose against the great 
Corneille a crowd of that class of men whom envy of the 
merit of others renders furious, the Parisians vehemently 
hissed the partisans of the despot Cardinal and applauded 
the poet. This reparation is denied to the geometer, the 
astronomer, or the physicist, who cultivate the highest 
parts of science. Those who can competently appreciate 
them throughout the whole extent of Europe never rise 
above the number of eight or ten. Imagine these unjust, 
indifferent, or even jealous, (for I suppose that may some- 
times be the case,) and the public, reduced to believe on 
hearsay, would be ignorant that D’Alembert had con- 
nected the great phenomenon of precession of equinoxes 
with the principle of universal gravitation ; that Lagrange 
had arrived at the discovery of the physical cause of the 
libration of the moon; that since the researches of La- 
