145 

 THOMAS YOUXG, M.D., F.R.S., &c. 



MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 



Born June 13, 1773. Died May 10, 1829. 



Dr. Thomas Young, celebrated for his universal attainments, was 

 born at Milverton, in Somersetshire. He was the eldest of ten 

 children of Thomas and Sarah Young ; his mother was a niece of 

 Dr. Richard Brocklesby, a physician of considerable eminence in 

 London. Both of his parents were members of the Society of 

 Friends, and to the tenets of that sect, which recognizes the imme- 

 diate influence of a Supreme Intelligence as a guide in the ordinary 

 conduct of life, Dr. Young was accustomed in after years to attri- 

 bute, in no slight degree, the formation of those determined habita 

 of perseverance which gave him the power of effecting any object 

 upon which he was engaged, and by which he was enabled to work 

 out his own education almost from infancy, and with little compara- 

 tive assistance from others. At the age of two years Young could 

 read with considerable fluency, and before he was four years old had 

 read the Bible through twice, and also Watts' hymns. He was 

 likewise from his earliest years in the habit of committing to me- 

 mory pieces of poetry, in proof of which there exists a memorandum, 

 written by Young's grandfather, on the margin of a copy of Gold- 

 smith's ' Deserted Village,' to the effect that his grandson Thomas 

 had repeated to him the whole poem, with the exception of a word 

 or two, before he was five years old. In 1780 he was placed at a 

 boarding-school at Stapleton, near Bristol, and here the deficiency 

 of the instructor appears to have advanced the studies of the pupil, 

 as Young now became his own teacher, and used to study by him- 

 self the last pages of the book taught almost before he had reached 

 the middle under the eye of the master. 



In the year 1782 he became an inmate of the school kept by Mr. 

 Thompson, at Crompton, in Dorsetshire, remaining there nearly four 

 years, during which period he rapidly acquired knowledge upon 

 various subjects. Having commenced the study of botany, he was 

 led to attempt the construction of a microscope, with the assistance 

 of an usher in the school of the name of Benjamin Martin, in order 

 to examine the plants he was in the habit of gathering. In his 

 endeavours to make the microscope Young found it necessary to 

 procure a lathe, and for a time everything gave way to a passion 

 for turning. This was, however, at length succeeded by a desire to 

 become acquainted with the nature of fluxions, and after reading 

 through and mastering a treatise upon this subject, he turned his 

 attention to the study of Hebrew and other Oriental languages. 

 Ultimately at the age of fourteen Thomas Young was more or lesa 



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