342 THOMAS YOUNG. 



those scientific labours which ought to add so much to 

 its glory, is a rare anomaly, of which it would be curious 

 to trace the causes. I should be wanting in frankness, 

 I should be the panegyrist, not the historian, if I did not 

 avow, that in general Young did not sufficiently accom- 

 modate himself to the capacity of his readers ; that the 

 greater part of the writings for which the sciences are 

 indebted to him, are justly chargeable with a certain 

 obscurity. But the neglect to which they were long 

 consigned did not depend solely on this cause. 



The exact sciences have an advantage over the works 

 of art or imagination, which has been often pointed out. 

 The truths of which they consist remain constant through 

 ages without suffering in any respect from the caprices of 

 fashion or the decline of taste : but thus, when once these 

 researches rise into more elevated regions of thought, 

 on how many competent judges of their merits can we 

 reckon ? When Richelieu let loose against the great 

 Corneille a crowd of that class of men whom envy of the 

 merit of others renders furious, the Parisians vehemently 

 hissed the partisans of the despot Cardinal and applauded 

 the poet. This reparation is denied to the geometer, the 

 astronomer, or the physicist, who cultivate the highest 

 parts of science. Those who can competently appreciate 

 them throughout the whole extent of Europe never rise 

 above the number of eight or ten. Imagine these unjust, 

 indifferent, or even jealous, (for I suppose that may some- 

 times be the case,) and the public, reduced to believe on 

 hearsay, would be ignorant that IHAlembert had con- 

 nected the great phenomenon of precession of equinoxes 

 with the principle of universal gravitation ; that Lagrange 

 had arrived at the discovery of the physical cause of the 

 libration of the moon ; that since the researches of La- 



