Memoir of the Life of Dr. Thomas Young. 245 
are some amongst the most distinguished of surviving English phi- 
losophers, who still think that this theory of the Tides rests too ex- 
clusively on analogies, and that many of the elements of the com- 
putation are too much out of human reach to render the boldness of 
the original thought susceptible of being subjected to the severity of 
mathematical deduction.’ 
‘Dr. Young, as a mathematician, was of an elder school, and was 
possibly somewhat prejudiced against the system now obtaining 
amongst the continental and English philosophers; as he thought 
the powers of intellect exercised by a preceding race of mathemati- 
cians were in no small danger of being lost or weakened by the sub- 
stitution of processes in their nature mechanical.’ 
He again visited Paris in 1823, and in the same year published 
his ‘ Account of some Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature and 
Egyptian Antiquities,’ in which he gave his own original alphabet, 
his translations from papyri, and the extensions which his alphabet 
had received from M.Champollion. This was his first acknowledg- 
ed non-professional publication since 1804,—having attained his fif- 
tieth year, as he states in his preface, and determined to throw off 
the shackles by which he had considered himself bound by the eti- 
quette of a medical practitioner. 
He made an excursion to Spa and to Holland in 1821, and in 
this year undertook the medical responsibility and the mathematic- 
al direction of a Society for Life Insurance, and declined all par- 
ticipation in the speculation, but had the disinterested satisfaction of 
Witnessing its prosperity. ‘This connexion led him into researches 
in which he took great interest, and “produced his ‘ Formula for Ex- 
pressing the Decrement of Human Life,’ published in the Philo- 
sophical Transactions for 1826; and a ‘ Practical Application of the 
Doctrine of Chances,’ published i in the Journal of Science for Oc- 
tober in the same year. 
In the previous year he had removed from Welbeck Street to a 
house which he had built in Park Square, in the Regent’s Park, 
where he led the life of a philosopher, and expressed himself as 
having now attained all the main objects he had looked forward to in 
life—of his ‘hopes or his wishes; this end being, to use his own 
words, ‘the pursuit of such fame as he valued, or such acquire- 
ments as he might think to deserve it.’ In 1827, he was elected 
one of the eight foreign members of the Royal Institute of France. 
With the exception of the consumptive tendency by which his 
youth had been visited, his health had hitherto been uninterrupted by 
Vol. XXII.—No. 2. 32 
