Residence 
at Edin- 
burgh ; 
(447.) 
at Gottin- 
gen and at 
Cam- 
bridge. 
(448.) 
Character 
of his in- 
vestiga- 
tions, 
894 
(which would have been his natural destination), and 
entered the university of Edinburgh as a medical stu- 
dent at the age of twenty-one. He had already de- 
clined the overtures of such distinguished patrons as 
Windham and Burke, resolving to devote himself to 
the pursuit of science, for which a medical education 
seemed to him a fit entrance ;—his studies being made 
under the more immediate advice of his uncle, Dr 
Brocklesby. He attended Black’s lectures in Edin- 
burgh ; whether he was known to Robison I am not 
aware, though I should be inclined to infer.that he 
was from the terms in which Robison speaks of 
Young when criticising his strictures upon Smith’s 
Harmonics. Robison disagreed with him on this 
point, and also about the nature of light, yet he 
speaks of Young and of his paper on Sound with 
very marked respect. More than a year before his 
enrolment at Edinburgh (which took place in autumn 
1794), he communicated to the Royal Society of 
London a paper on vision, of which we shall pre- 
sently give some further account; and was elected a 
fellow of the Society when just of age. 
From Edinburgh he proceeded to Gottingen where 
he graduated ; acquiring the German language, and 
leaving a vivid impression of his astonishing versa- 
tility of talent and powers of memory. Early in 
1797 he returned to England, and soon after en- 
tered himself at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 
order to comply with the requisitions of the London 
College of Physicians, and thus to obtain a license 
to practice. For the next few years his time was 
divided much between Cambridge and London. He 
was now twenty-three years of age, and his mental 
habits too much formed to bend to the rules of Cam- 
bridge study. When the master of his college intro- 
duced him to the fellows, he is reported to have said, 
“‘T have brought you a pupil qualified to read lec- 
tures to his tutors,’’ and such, no doubt, was the fact. 
We hear little of his occupations at Cambridge, but 
we can hardly doubt that his private studies then 
ranged over the vast fields of erudition which he af- 
terwards proved that he had made so completely his 
own ; and we cannot doubt that he was then preparing 
the groundwork of his theory of optics, although his 
discovery of interference was certainly not made at 
Cambridge, and probably in London after his settle- 
ment therein 1800,! His first paper on sound and 
light is dated from Cambridge in July 1799. 
I have entered into these details because they 
throw light on the peculiarities of Young's cha- 
racter and attainments. He was to a great degree 
self-educated ; and his studies in consequence may 
be called desultory, though none would dare to call 
MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 
[Diss. VI. 
them superficial. Mathematicians may consider his 
acquaintance with their science as not technically 
complete, yet one of them admits that “ he could 
make a small amount of mathematics go farther than 
any one else.” Had he been a consummate analyst 
it is unlikely that we should have had in him the 
author of the undulatory theory, the difficulties of 
which in its earlier stages made it unpalatable to 
Laplace, Poisson, and the most considerable French 
mathematicians. Having thought out for himself 
every one of the multifarious subjects with which he 
grappled, his writings have a striking force and ori- 
ginality, and his reports of the labours of others are 
almost invariably drawn from a study of their original 
works. His earliest principle was, that what one 
man has done another may accomplish; and one of 
the many respects in which he resembled his great 
predecessor Newton, was unbounded confidence in 
the powers of “ patient thought.” Not that he con- 
fined the desire to excel to purely intellectual matters. 
What he found it worth while to do at all, he thought 
it worth doing well. He chose to be first-rate in 
dancing and in equitation ;—his penmanship was (in 
his early days) as scrupulously elegant as his scho- 
larship. 
In 1801 Young was appointed Professor of Natu- 
ral Philosophy at the Royal Institution, where he was 
the colleague of Davy. Young had not the qualifi- 
result of his short connection of two years with the 
Royal Institution was the publication in 1807 of his 
Leetures on Natural Philosophy, in two large quarto 
volumes, It is a work peculiarly characteristic of the 
author; and is rather adapted for reference by the 
scholar, than to be studied as an elementary trea- 
tise. Its condensation is such as to render it in 
many places obscure; though when read by one 
conversant with the subject, its ecomprehensiveness 
and precision are surprising. It is a truly admi- 
rable monument of labour and genius combined. 
Embracing the arts as well as the whole of natural 
philosophy, it seems to include the mention of every- 
thing connected with his vast subject from the 
simplest tool of the artisan to the highest speeu- 
lations of Newton and Lagrange; and yet it is evi- 
dent, by the masterly manner in which he handles 
it, that the author had made all this mass of know- 
ledge completely his own. The catalogue of refer- 
ences with which it closes indicates an extent of bib- 
liographical research which would have done honour 
to any one who had made that an exclusive object of 
study, Even the plates are drawn with a studious 
care, betokening well his own mechanical talent. 
enabled me to improve the text I have not hesitated to use it. 
The facility of consultation afforded by the collection of Dr 
Young’s widely scattered writings is a most important aid to all future students of science, and one which cannot fail to raise 
still higher the great reputation of their author. 
1 See Sect. vi 
Dr Young, he speaks of this fundamental experiment being m 
This must have been in Welbeck Street, London, 
of the article PoLaRrization in this Encyclo 
aie “in the room and at the table on which he is now writing.” 
dia, where, in a bracketted interpolation by the translator, 
(449.) 
Young’s 
Lectures on 
A : Natural 
cations of a popular lecturer, and the most important Philosophy, 
a 
ath Aa 
—— 
— 
