YOUNG. 147 



1797, he came back to England, and was almost immediately after 

 his return admitted a Fellow -Commoner of Emmanuel College, 

 Cambridge ; the Master of the College, Dr. Farmer, saying as he 

 introduced Young to the fellows, " I have brought you a pupil 

 qualified to read lectures to his tutors." 



In December 1797 Young's uncle, Dr. Brocklesby, died, bequeath- 

 ing to his nephew the sum of 10,OOOZ., besides his house, furniture, 

 and a choice collection of pictures. Dr. Young was now entirely at 

 liberty to form his own scheme of life, and he determined to com- 

 mence practice as a physician, for which purpose, after having 

 completed his terms of residence at Cambridge, he took a house in 

 Welbeck Street (No. 48), which he continued to occupy for five- 

 and-twenty years. His practice as a physician, although respectable, 

 was never large. He wanted that confidence or assurance which is 

 so necessary to the successful exercise of the profession. He was 

 perhaps too deeply informed, and therefore too sensible of the diffi- 

 culty of arriving at true knowledge in the science of medicine ever 

 to form a hasty judgment; while his great love of, and adherence 

 to truth, made him often hesitate where others would have felt no 

 difficulty in expressing an opinion. It was perhaps a happy circum- 

 stance for the fame of Dr. Young that this should be the case, as he 

 was thereby enabled to devote a considerable portion of his time to 

 those literary and scientific studies in which so few could compete 

 with him. In 1799 he published his memoir entitled ' Outlines and 

 Experiments respecting Sound and Light,' which was read before 

 the Royal Society and printed in their ' Transactions.' Other papers, 

 1 On the Theory of Light and Colours,' followed, which the council 

 of the Royal Society selected for the Bakerian lectures. In the 

 year 1801 Dr. Young accepted the office of Professor of Natural 

 Philosophy at the Royal Institution, which had been established 

 the year previously. The conducting of the journal of the Institu- 

 tion was also entrusted to his care, in conjunction with his colleague 

 Sir Humphry Davy, at that time Professor of Chemistry. Dr. Young 

 remained at the Royal Institution two years, during which period 

 he gave a course of lectures on ' Natural and Experimental Philo- 

 sophy,' a syllabus of which he published in 1802, announcing for 

 the first time his great discovery of the general law of the inter- 

 ference of the undulations of light. His lectures were not, however, 

 popular ; they embodied too much knowledge to be intelligible to 



y considerable portion of his hearers ; and the matter was so 



undant and the style so condensed, that students tolerably versed 

 i science might have found it extremely difficult to follow him in 

 his masterly discussions. 



Dr. Young had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as 

 early as the year 1794, when he had just completed his twenty-first 

 year; he was now appointed (1802) Foreign Secretary to the same 

 Society, an office which he held during the remainder of his life, 



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