468 HISTORY OF OPTICS. 



even taking into account all these considerations. 

 But there was in England no visible body of men, 

 fitted by their knowledge and character to pro- 

 nounce judgment on such a question, or to give the 

 proper impulse and bias to public opinion. The 

 Royal Society, for instance, had not, for a long 

 time, by custom or institution, possessed or aimed 

 at such functions. The writers of "Reviews" alone, 

 self-constituted and secret tribunals, claimed this 

 kind of authority. Among these publications, by 

 far the most distinguished about this period was 

 the Edinburgh Review ; and, including among its 

 contributors men of eminent science and great 

 talents, employing also a robust and poignant style 

 of writing (often certainly in a very unfair manner), 

 it naturally exercised great influence. On abstruse 

 doctrines, intelligible to few persons, more than on 

 other subjects, the opinions and feelings expressed 

 in a Review must be those of the individual re- 

 viewer. The criticism on some of Young's early 

 papers on optics was written by Mr. (afterwards 

 Lord) Brougham, who, as we have seen, had experi- 

 mented on diffraction, following the Newtonian view, 

 that of inflexion. Mr. Brougham was perhaps at 

 this time young enough 1 to be somewhat intoxi- 

 cated with the appearance of judicial authority in 

 matters of science, which his office of anonymous 

 reviewer gave him : and even in middle-life, he was 

 sometimes considered to be prone to indulge him- 

 1 His age was twenty-four. 



