1801. J2r. 28.] PROFESSOR YOUNG. 237 



Professor continue to amuse his audience with an endless 

 variety of such harmless trifles, but, in the name of science, 

 let them not find admittance into that venerable repository 

 which contains the works of Newton, and Boyle, and 

 Cavendish, and Maskelyne, and Herschel. 



Young's most famous experiment of stopping the rays 

 which passed on one side of a thin card exposed to a 

 sunbeam in a dark chamber Brougham threw aside, 

 with the assertion that the experiment was inaccurately 

 made. Dr. Young replied : 



The reviewer has here afforded me an opportunity for 

 a triumph, as gratifying as any triumph can be where an 

 enemy is so contemptible. Conscious of inability to explain 

 the experiment, too ungenerous to confess that inability, 

 and too idle to repeat the experiment, he is compelled to 

 advance the supposition that it was incorrect. ' Let him 

 make the experiment, and then deny the result if he can.' 



He took no special means to make his answer 

 known, and only one copy of his reply was sold. The 

 poison sank deep into the public mind, and Dr. Young's 

 researches remained comparatively unnoticed until 

 Arago, in 1815, when reporting upon the optical dis- 

 coveries of Fresnel, showed that a greater discoverer 

 than Newton had anticipated the researches of the 

 French philosopher. 



Dr. Young gives the following account of his dis- 

 covery of the general law of the interference of light : 



It was in May 1801 that I discovered, by reflecting on 

 the beautiful experiments of Newton, a law which appears 

 to me to account for a greater variety of interesting phe- 

 nomena, than any other optical principle that has yet been 



