232 Memour of the Life of Dr. Thomas Young. 
Art. I].—Memoir of the Life of Tuomas Youne, M.D. F.R.S., 
Foreign Associate of the Royal Institute of France, &c. &c., with 
a Catalogue of his Works and Essays. 
(From the Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.) 
Turs tribute to the memory of one of the most gifted men and 
distinguished philosophers of the age, has been printed solely for 
private distribution. It has almost the interest of an autobiography, 
having been drawn up by a gentleman who had the advantage of a 
long and intimate acquaintance, with him, from some short memoranda 
of Dr. Young’s own writing, in the possession of a near connexion. 
The author modestly states, that ‘having never been engaged in the 
pursuits of accurate science, he feels himself incompetent to give 
more than an imperfect sketch, which he trusts to see filled up here- 
after by an abler hand.’ 
No apology, it is presumed, will be necessary for transferring to 
these pages the substance of this account of Dr. Young, who, from 
his connexion with the Royal Institution, as one of its professors, and 
as the editor of the first series of its Journal, independent of his 
claims as a scholar and philosopher of the first class, especially mer- 
its distinguished notice in this work. 
Thomas Young was born at Milverton, in Somersetshire, on the 
13th of June, 1773. His parents were both of them Quakers, and 
of the strictest of that sect; his mother was a niece of Dr. Richard 
Brocklesby, a physician of eminence, well .known from his connex- 
ion with the distinguished literary and political characters of his time, 
and who numbered among his most intimate friends, Johnson, Burke, 
and Windham. 
To the influence of the early impressions of the Quaker tenets, Dr. 
Young ‘was accustomed to attribute, in some degree, the power he 
so eminently possessed of an imperturbable resolution to effect any 
object on which he was engaged, which he brought to bear on every- 
thing he undertook, and by which he was enabled to work out his 
own education almost from infancy, with little comparative assistance 
or direction from others.’ The earliest years of Dr. Young were 
chiefly passed in the family of his maternal grandfather, Mr. Robert 
Davis, of Minehead, who, in the midst of mercantile avocations, had 
cultivated a taste for classical literature, with which, by earnest en- 
deavor, he seems to have imbued the mind of his grandson, who 
