Memoir of the Lafe of Dr. Thomas Young. 239 
been said that it would hardly have been possible for men of science 
to have followed him at the moment without considerable difficulty. 
At this period Dr. Young became, jointly with Davy, editor of the 
Journal of the Royal Institution ; the first volume, and part of the 
second, were published under his superintendence. , It was also at 
this time that he gave his two Bakerian Lectures on the subject of 
Light and Colors, to the Royal Society. Developing the law of 
interference, and entering into all the details of the theory to which 
it leads; dwelling upon the difficult points, at the same time, with 
more candor than might have been consistent with his object, had 
he been anxious to, obtain proselytes. 
‘In the summer of 1802, he accompanied the present Duke of 
Richmond, and his brother Lord G. Lennox, in his medical capaci- 
ty, to Rouen, and in an excursion from thence to Paris, was first 
present at the sittings of the National Institute, at that time attended 
by Napoleon; where he made the acquaintance of several leading 
members of that distinguished bedy, into which he himself was even- 
tually elected. On his return, he was constituted Foreign Secretary 
to the Royal Society, an office which he held during life, being long 
their senior officer, and always one of the leading and most efficient 
members of their council.’ 
In 1804, he married Eliza, daughter of J: P. Maxwell, Esq., of 
Cavendish Square,—an union to him productive of uninterrupted hap- 
piness during the remainder of his life. At this time he resigned 
his professorship in the Royal Institution, from an erroneous im- 
pression that it would be likely to interfere with his success as a 
medical practitioner. The remarks of his biographer on this occasion 
must not be withheld. 
‘ His resolution at that juncture was to confine himself for the most 
part to medical pursuits, and to make himself known to the public in no 
other character. But he had resolved on that which to him was im- 
possible. He never slackened either in his literary or philosophical 
researches. He was always aiding, and always willing to be the coun- 
sellor of any one engaged in similar investigations. He was living in 
the first circles of London, amongst all who were the most eminent. 
The nature of his habitual avocations was necessarily well known; 
and, therefore in putting forth his non-medical papers separately and 
anonymously, he was making a fruitless as well as voluntary sacrifice 
of the general celebrity to which he was entitled; and shrinking, as 
it were, from the cumulative reputation which he must otherwise have 
