444 Life of Count Rumford. 



pancy as a writer at that time in its intensest form,* on 

 Dr. Young's Bakerian Lecture on Light and Colors, 

 and his paper on " Colors not before described," the 

 critic, going, as it proved, beyond his depth, exposed 

 himself, rather than his subject, to ridicule. Dr. 

 Young, who in the productions thus contemptuously 

 assailed is said, by his biographer, to have established 

 the bases of the most important advancement which the 

 science of physical optics had made since the time of 

 Newton, published a masterly "Reply," in 1804, of 

 which, however, the author reports that only a single 

 copy was sold. Mention is here made of the matter, 

 simply because in this reply Dr. Young introduced the 

 following reference to his connection with the Royal 

 Institution : 



" The reviewer has thought proper to unite, in several in- 

 stances, with his invectives against me some ridicule of the 

 objects of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, an Institu- 

 tion in which its managers have studied to concentrate all that 

 is useful in science or elegant in literature. This connection 

 appears to him to add so much weight to his arguments that he 

 has chosen, without further provocation, to insinuate its ex- 

 istence more than a year after it has been dissolved. I accepted 

 the appointment of Professor of Natural Philosophy in the 

 Royal Institution as an occupation which would fill up agree- 

 ably and advantageously such leisure hours as a young prac- 

 titioner of physic must expect to be left free from professional 

 cares. I was led to hope that I should be able to impress an 

 audience, formed of the most respectable inhabitants of the 

 metropolis, with such a partiality as the moderately well-in- 

 formed are inclined to entertain for those who appear to know 

 even a little more than themselves of matters of science. 

 While I held the situation, I wished to make my lectures as 



* Edinburgh Review, Nos. II. and IX., 1803, 1804. 



