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MEMOIR
OF THE
LIFE
OF
THOMAS YOUNG, M.D. F.R.S.
FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, ETC. ETC.
WITH
A CATALOGUE
OF HIS
WORKS AND ESSAYS.
LONDON:
JOHN & ARTHUR ARCH, CORNHILL.
MDCCCXXXI.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY J. L. COX, GREAT QUEEN STREET,
Lincoln’s-Inn Fields.
MEMOIR,
&c. &c.
The following slight Memoir of the Life of the late Dr. Young was drawn
up, from some short memoranda of his own writing in the possession of
a near connexion, by one who had the advantage of long and intimate
acquaintance with that distinguished scholar and philosopher; but who,
never having been engaged in the pursuits of accurate science, feels
himself incompetent to give more than an imperfect sketch, which he
trusts to see filled up hereafter by an abler hand.
Dr. Thomas Young, a man eminently distinguished in more departments
of literature and science than any other individual of his age and
country, was born at Milverton in Somersetshire, the 13th of June,
1773. He was the eldest of ten children of Mr. Thomas Young of that
place, and his mother was a niece of Doctor Richard Brocklesby, a
physician of eminence in the metropolis, who was well known both from
his connexion with the first literary societies, and with the highest
political circles of the times in which he lived.
His parents were both of them of the society of Quakers, and of the
strictest of a sect, whose fundamental principle it is, that the
perception of what is right or wrong, to its minutest ramifications, is
to be looked for in the immediate influence of a Supreme intelligence,
and that therefore the individual is to act upon this, lead where it
may, and compromise nothing. To the best of these early impressions he
was accustomed in after-life 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.
From a very early period Dr. Young was chiefly an inmate in the
family of his maternal grandfather, Mr. Robert Davies, of Minehead;
a gentleman who amidst mercantile avocations, though no very deep or
accurate scholar, had cultivated a taste for classical literature,
which it was his earnest endeavour to impress upon the mind of his
grandson. It is stated that whilst domesticated with him, he had learnt
to read with fluency when he was two years old, and that soon after
this, in the intervals of his attendance on a village schoolmistress,
he was made to commit to memory a number of English poems, and even
some Latin ones, the words of which he retained without difficulty,
although at the time unacquainted with their meaning.
Before he was six years old, he attended the seminary of a dissenting
minister, and went afterwards to a school at Bristol, where he remained
about a year and a half, and where the deficiency of the instructor
appears to have advanced the studies of the pupil, as he here first
became his own teacher, and had by himself studied the last pages of
the books used, before he had reached the middle under the eye of the
master.
His father had a neighbour, a man of great ingenuity, by profession a
land surveyor and land steward; and in his office, during his holidays,
he was indulged with the use of mathematical and philosophical
instruments, together with the perusal of three volumes of a Dictionary
of Arts and Sciences, which he also found there. These were to him
sources of instruction and delight of which he seemed never to weary,
and which, thus accidentally thrown in his way, had probably no small
influence on the issues of his future life.
In 1782, he was sent to the school of a Mr. Thompson, at Compton, in
Dorsetshire, of whom he was always accustomed to speak with great
respect, as a person of an enlarged and liberal mind; and who,
possessed of a moderate and miscellaneous library, permitted and
encouraged his scholars to turn it to their profit; the principle which
he adopted in the course of his instructions, being to allow them a
certain degree of discretion in the employment of their time.
Here Young went through the ordinary course of Greek and Latin
Classics, together with the elementary parts of the Mathematics; and
by rising earlier and sitting up later than his companions, with the
assistance of a schoolfellow who had some French and Italian books,
he rendered himself tolerably familiar with those languages. He had
acquired, in his visits to his father’s neighbour, the art of land
surveying, and the amusement of his walks was to measure heights with a
quadrant.
The next study he undertook was Botany, and for the sake of examining
the plants which he gathered, he attempted the construction of a
microscope from the descriptions of Benjamin Martin. This led him to
Optics; but in order to make his microscope, he found it necessary to
procure a lathe. Every thing then gave way to a passion for turning,
and science was forgotten for the acquirement of manual dexterity;
until falling upon a demonstration in Martin which exhibited some
fluxional symbols, he was never satisfied till he had read and mastered
a short introduction to the doctrine of Fluxions.
Mr. Thompson had left in his way a Hebrew Bible. He began by enabling
himself to read a few chapters, and was soon absorbed in the study
of the principal Oriental languages. At the age of fourteen, when he
quitted Mr. Thompson’s school, he was thus more or less versed in
Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, Persic, and Arabic; and in
forming the characters of those languages, he had already acquired
much of the beauty and accuracy of penmanship which was afterwards so
remarkable in his copies of Greek compositions, as well as of those
subjects connected with the literature of ancient Egypt.
In 1787, the friends of Dr. Young were beginning to think seriously of
the line in life which might be most advantageously taken by a youth of
such extraordinary promise. When at the house of one of his relations
he accidentally met a connexion of Mr. David Barclay, of Youngsbury,
in Hertfordshire, who was then wishing to form an arrangement for
the education of his grandson, and through the intervention of Sir
William Watson, it was agreed that Dr. Young and the grandson of Mr.
Barclay should pursue their studies together, under a private tutor,
in Mr. Barclay’s house. The tutor who was engaged, found a situation
of greater permanence, and never came; so that two boys being left
together, whose ages differed only about a year and a half, Young, then
little more than fourteen, took upon himself, provisionally, the office
of preceptor. They were afterwards joined by a gentleman who was then
in progress of perfecting himself in the higher branches of classical
attainment, of somewhat maturer years, and who has since been known to
the world as the author of the “Calligraphia Græca.” But Dr. Young did
not relinquish the task which he had previously undertaken, and already
far advanced beyond the limits of ordinary scholastic attainment, was
the principal director of the studies of the whole party.
When about the age of fourteen, he was attacked by symptoms of what
was feared to be incipient consumption. But under the attendance of
his uncle Dr. Brocklesby, and Baron Dimsdale, he recovered his health,
without suffering any ultimate inconvenience, and was enabled for the
most part, to pursue his labours through the whole duration of his
indisposition, merely relieving his attention by what, to him, stood in
the place of repose—a course of Greek reading in such authors as amused
the weariness of his confinement.
In the five years between 1787 and 1792, residing during the summers
in Hertfordshire, and for some months of the winter in London, with
no other assistance than that of a few occasional masters in the
latter place, he had rendered himself singularly familiar with the
great poets and philosophers of antiquity, keeping ample notes of his
daily studies. Of the various and conflicting opinions of the ancient
philosophers he had drawn up a most admirable analysis; and as his
reading was not merely the gaining words and phrases, and the minuter
distinctions of dialects, but was invariably also directed to what was
the end and object of the works he laboured through, it is probable
that the train of thought into which he was led in this analysis, was
not without its effect, in somewhat mitigating his attachment to the
peculiar views of the sect amongst whom he had been born.
He had acquired a great facility in writing Latin. He composed Greek
verses which stood the test of the criticism of the first scholars of
the day, and read a good deal of the higher mathematics. His amusements
were the studies of botany and zoology, and to entomology in particular
he at that time gave great attention.
In the winters of 1790 and 1791, having prepared himself by previous
reading, he attended the lectures of Dr. Higgins in chemistry, and
began to make some simple experiments of his own on a small scale.
But he was afterwards accustomed to say, that at no period of his
life was he particularly fond of repeating experiments, or even of
very frequently attempting to originate new ones; considering that,
however necessary to the advancement of science, they demanded a great
sacrifice of time, and that when the fact was once established, that
time was better employed in considering the purposes to which it might
be applied, or the principles which it might tend to elucidate.
His uncle Dr. Brocklesby had at this time desired to receive from him
a regular report of his literary and scientific pursuits, intending
to take upon himself the supervision of his further education for the
practice of physic, which was the line he recommended him to adopt; and
having communicated some of his Greek translations to Mr. Burke and Mr.
Windham, with both of whom Dr. Brocklesby had lived in intimacy, an
acquaintance with these two distinguished persons ensued; in the course
of which, Mr. Burke was so greatly struck with the reach of his talents
and the extent of his acquirements, more particularly by his great
and accurate knowledge of the Greek language, that Dr. Young may be
considered as in no small degree indebted to the good offices of that
eminent statesman, for the extent of interest which his uncle took from
this period in his future settlement in life.
It may probably be considered that it was in these years that his
character received its developement. He was never known to relax in
any object which he had once undertaken. During the whole term of
these five years, he never was seen by any one, on any occasion, to be
ruffled in his temper. Whatever he determined on, he did. He had little
faith in any peculiar aptitude being implanted by nature for any given
pursuits. His favourite maxim was, that whatever one man had done,
another might do; that the original difference between human intellects
was much less than it was generally supposed to be; that strenuous and
persevering attention would accomplish almost any thing; and at this
season, in the confidence of youth and consciousness of his own powers,
he considered nothing which had been compassed by others beyond his
reach to achieve, nor was there any thing which he thought worthy to be
attempted, which he was not resolved to master.
This self-conducted education, in the privacy of a singularly regular
family, was not however without its disadvantages. The acquisitions he
was thus making in seclusion were great, but he was not in the way of
gaining that which is acquired insensibly in the conflict of equals in
the commerce of the world—the facility of communicating knowledge in
the form that shall be most immediately comprehended by others, and
the tact in putting it forth, that shall render its value immediately
appreciated. It was in 1791 that he made his first communications to
the press, through the Monthly Review and the Gentleman’s Magazine,
being Greek criticism, chemical theories, and remarks on botany and
entomology.
Towards the end of 1792, Dr. Young established himself in lodgings in
Westminster, in which he resided about two years, for the purpose of
pursuing his medical studies, attending the lectures of Baillie and
Cruickshank in the Hunterian school of anatomy; and he was during that
period amongst the most diligent of the pupils of St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital.
In 1793, he made a tour in the west of England, principally with a view
of studying the mineralogy of Cornwall; and about this time having
been introduced to the acquaintance of Charles Duke of Richmond, who
had long been a friend of his uncle’s, and was then Master-General
of the Ordnance, he was offered by his Grace the situation of
assistant-secretary in his house. He felt that this was an opportunity
for entering into public life which might lead to advantage and
distinction. Mr. Burke and Mr. Windham recommended him rather to
proceed to Cambridge and study the law; but after some consideration of
these conflicting proposals, he determined to adhere to the pursuits of
science, and to proceed to the practice of physic, as most congenial
both to his predilections and his habits, and to which the position
occupied by his uncle appeared to offer a natural introduction.
In this year he gave to the Royal Society his Observations on Vision,
and his Theory of the Muscularity of the Crystalline Lens of the
Eye, which became the subject of much discussion, and John Hunter
immediately laid claim to having previously made the discovery. Dr.
Young was soon afterwards elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, when
he had just completed his twenty-first year.
In the autumn of 1794 he went to Edinburgh, and there attended the
lectures of Doctors Black, Munro, and Gregory. He pursued every branch
of study in that university with his accustomed intensity, but made the
physical sciences more peculiarly the objects of his research. He now
separated himself from the Society of Quakers, and amidst his medical,
scientific, and classical labours, he determined on cultivating some of
those arts in which he considered that his early education had left
him deficient. But every thing, be its nature what it might, was with
him a science; whatever he followed, he followed scientifically. He
was extremely fond of music, and of the science of music he rendered
himself a master. He had at all times great personal activity, and in
youth he delighted in its exercise. But perhaps it may provoke a smile,
though too characteristic an anecdote to omit, that in instructing
himself in the figure of a minuet, he made it the subject of a
mathematical diagram.
Towards the close of 1795 he went to the university of Gottingen,
where he took his doctor’s degree. His extraordinary attainments,
and the almost incredible industry with which he pursued his studies
in all their variety, excited the wonder of the laborious school in
which he had now placed himself. He found their academical library
peculiarly rich in works of reference; and in composing his inaugural
dissertation, “De Corporis Humani Viribus Conservatricibus,” he left
few volumes unconsulted which had any connexion with the subject on
which he was treating.
In all periods of his life Dr. Young was entirely exempt from those
dissipations into which young persons unhappily very generally fall,
and here, as at Edinburgh, he diversified his graver studies by
cultivating skill in bodily exercises. He took lessons in horsemanship,
in which he always had great pleasure, and practised under various
masters all sorts of feats of personal agility, in which he excelled to
an extraordinary degree.
The victories of the French at this time prevented him from visiting
Italy, which he had intended to do previously to his return to England;
and unwilling to be deficient in any species of knowledge, he proceeded
to Dresden; where he spent some time for the purpose of studying the
works of Italian art in the galleries of that city, and to compare what
he saw with that which he had learnt of them from the Lectures of the
professors of Gottingen. Before returning home, he completed his stay
on the Continent by a short visit to Berlin.
Dr. Young, during his residence in Germany, had gained a very general
and accurate acquaintance with the language and literature of that
country, which he kept up throughout his life; but he remarked that he
found in Germany a love of new inventions, singularly, and somewhat
pedantically, combined with the habit of systematizing older ones, and
giving an importance to things in themselves trifling, which in his
case rather confirmed an original habit of dwelling on minutiæ more
than his subsequent experience led him to think was advantageous.
In consequence of some new regulations of the College of Physicians,
which had taken place during his residence abroad, he found himself
precluded from immediately practising as a licentiate in London; he
therefore entered himself as a fellow-commoner in Emanuel College,
Cambridge, of which Dr. Farmer was then master, who was an intimate
friend of his uncle’s. He here proceeded to take his regular degrees in
physic in that university, pursuing, during his residence, the various
studies in which he was engaged; but finding no rival in the variety of
his knowledge, and few competitors in most of its branches, he lived
with those most highly gifted, discussing subjects of science with the
professors, but not attending any of the public lectures, considering
that they were in their nature intended for a junior class of students,
and relating to branches of knowledge with which he had already made
himself acquainted.
Dr. Brocklesby died in December 1797, when the larger part of his
fortune was inherited by his nephew, Mr. Beeby; the remainder, with
his house, his books, and his pictures, was left to Dr. Young. He now
found himself in circumstances of independence, surrounded by a circle
of academical friends and associates, and formed many friendships
in distinguished and highly cultivated society, which he continued to
prize and to enjoy through life.
He had, during his residence at Cambridge, given some papers to the
Royal Society and had amused himself by contributing several essays
on philosophical and other subjects to some periodical publications;
a part of these he afterwards reprinted, but considered others of a
lighter texture than would bear the criticism of severer experience.
When his necessary residence at college was completed, Dr. Young
settled himself as a physician in London, in Welbeck-street, where he
continued to reside during twenty-five years. It was not long, however,
before he accepted the situation of Professor of Natural Philosophy in
the Royal Institution, where he was for two years colleague as lecturer
with Sir Humphrey Davy. The first volume of the Journals of the Royal
Institution and a part of the second were edited, and for the most
part composed by him. He gave two Bakerian lectures on the subjects
of Light and Colours to the Royal Society, and in 1802 he published
a Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Natural and Experimental
Philosophy, with mathematical demonstrations of the most important
theorems in mechanics and optics; and containing the first publication
of his discovery of the general law of the Interference of Light,
being the application of a principle which has since been universally
appreciated as one of the greatest discoveries since the time of
Newton, and which has subsequently changed the whole face of Optical
science.
As a lecturer at the Royal Institution, Dr. Young was apt, in no small
degree, to pass the capacities of his audience, who at this conjuncture
were led to their attendance more as a matter of fashion, than from
a love of research, and who for the most part had little previous
knowledge. His style was compressed and laconic; he went into the
depths of science, and indeed gave more matter than it would perhaps
have been possible for persons really scientific to have followed at
the moment without considerable difficulty.
In the summer of 1802 Dr. Young accompanied the present Duke of
Richmond and his brother, Lord George Lennox, in his medical capacity,
to Rouen in Normandy, with their tutor, Mr. Vincent; and in an
excursion from thence to Paris, was first present at the discussions of
the National Institute of France, at that time attended by Napoleon;
where he made the acquaintance of several leading members of that
distinguished body, into which he himself was eventually 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, Dr. Young married Miss Eliza Maxwell, daughter of James
Primrose Maxwell, Esq., of Cavendish-square, who has lived to lament
his loss, after an union which was attended with uninterrupted
happiness.
At this time he resigned his office as lecturer to the Royal
Institution, it being thought by his friends that his holding it
longer would be likely to interfere with his success as a medical
practitioner. This view, as regarding his continuance in a situation
which would appear to the public to be anomalous to his profession, and
hardly compatible with its duties, was probably a just one. But in
settling in married life Dr. Young carried a deference to the supposed
feelings of the world towards those physicians who distinguished
themselves in lines of research not obviously connected with their
calling, to an excess which, in a man of his extraordinary talents
and attainments, was certainly to be lamented, and possibly even with
reference to those objects proposed to be compassed by it.
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
impossible. He never slackened either in his literary or philosophical
researches. He was always aiding, and always willing to be the
counsellor of any one engaged in similar investigations. He was living
in the first circles of London, amongst all who were 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
enjoyed, he waived, in some degree, the advantage which is given by a
great name towards the pursuit even of professional success.
In 1807 however, Dr. Young published his “Course of Lectures on Natural
Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts,” in two volumes quarto. This
elaborate work he stated to have been the result of the unremitting
application of five years; two having been given to the composition of
the original lectures, and three more to the compilation of the mass
of references in the second volume, to all those works to which the
student might advantageously have recourse who wished to pursue any
more minute enquiry; and to incorporating at the same time with the
Lectures, as at first given, such results as might require insertion.
The booksellers engaged in this publication failed at the moment of
its coming out, which greatly injured the immediate sale of the work;
but it was a mine to which every one has since resorted, and contained
the original hints of more things since claimed as discoveries, than
can perhaps be found in a single production of any known author. For
some years, indeed, it seemed hardly to have made its way to general
use in England, but it was so appreciated by the philosophers of the
Continent, that one of the men most distinguished for science in Europe
has been known to say, that if his library were on fire, and he could
save only one book from the conflagration, it should be the Lectures of
Dr. Young.
For sixteen successive years from the period of his marriage, Dr. Young
passed his winters in London and his summers at Worthing, having been
in 1810 appointed physician to St. George’s Hospital. In his profession
his published labours would prove him to have been of the most learned
of scientific physicians, and his judgment and acuteness were equally
great: but in the practice of medicine Dr. Young was not one of those
who were likely to win the most extended occupation amongst the
multitude. He was averse to some of the ordinary methods by which it
is acquired. He never affected an assurance which he did not feel, and
had perhaps rather a tendency to fear the injurious effects which might
eventually result from the application of powerful remedies, than to
any overweening confidence in their immediate efficacy. His treatises
bear the same impress. That on Consumption, is a most striking instance
of his assiduity in collecting all recorded facts, and his abstinence
in drawing inferences from isolated cases, or putting forth that which
he did not feel was established with certainty. Possibly he herein was
an example, that increase of knowledge does not tend to increase of
confidence, and that those whose acquirements are the greatest, meet in
the progress of their investigations with most that leads to distrust.
However it might be, his practice, though respectable, was never very
extensive.
Dr. Young afterwards published a “Syllabus of Lectures on the Elements
of the Medical Sciences,” as delivered by him at the Middlesex
Hospital, and his “Introduction to Medical literature, including a
System of Practical Nosology”—the latter a work of great labour,
forming like his Natural Philosophy, a text book of the highest
practical utility, and accompanied by a mass of references, which,
to industry and perseverance less than his, it should seem almost
impossible to have accumulated.
The Lectures, like every thing which proceeded from Dr. Young, were,
even in his own estimation, too full of matter and too much compressed
to be conveniently followed by the hearer in a course of oral
instruction. Indeed, in all things he was rather too apt to presume a
knowledge in other persons which they did not possess, and consequently
to fail in his estimate of how much of explanation was needed in
communicating the results of science to those who were comparatively
ignorant.
To the larger of these works he prefixed a “Preliminary Essay on the
Study of Physic;” in which he gives a singular picture of what, in
his opinion, is required to constitute a well-educated physician;
enumerating nearly every possible quality of which man could wish, but
of which few could hope, the attainment.
Dr. Young contributed to the Quarterly Review a variety of articles,
literary and scientific. He first engaged, at the suggestion of Mr.
George Ellis, one of his most intimate and most valued friends, to
furnish those on medical subjects to that work. But his communications
soon branched into other lines, many of them connected with the higher
departments of science, and containing the results of some of his most
laboured researches. The Review of Adelung’s Mithridates, Vol. X.
October 1813, is perhaps the most remarkable, not only from the immense
knowledge it displays of the structure of almost all languages, but as
having been the composition which first led him to the investigation of
the lost literature of ancient Egypt.
In the year 1814, Sir William Rouse Boughton had brought with him
from Egypt some fragments of Papyri, which he put into the hands
of Dr. Young; the fragment of the Rosetta stone having been about
this time deposited in the British Museum, and a correct copy of its
three inscriptions having been engraved and circulated by the Society
of Antiquaries. Dr. Young first proceeded to examine the enchorial
inscription, and afterwards the sacred characters, and after a minute
comparison of these documents, he was enabled to attach some “Remarks
on Egyptian Papyri, and on the inscription of Rosetta,” containing
an _interpretation of the principal parts of both the Egyptian
inscriptions on the pillar_; to a paper of Sir William Boughton’s,
which was published by the Society of Antiquaries in 1815, in the
eighteenth volume of the Archæologia.
Dr. Young now found he had discovered a key to the lost literature of
ancient Egypt. He had occupied himself, though without deriving from it
the assistance he had at first expected, in the study of the Coptic and
Thebaic version of the Scriptures; but having satisfied himself of the
nature and origin of the enchorial character, he produced the result
to the world anonymously in the Museum Criticum of Cambridge, part
the sixth, published in 1815; being then determined to prosecute the
discovery, but at the same time abstaining from claiming it in a more
substantive form, from the resolution he had previously taken to be
known only as a medical author.
The labour he bestowed on these investigations, and the minuteness and
accuracy with which he copied the papyri, and compared the materials
which came into his hands, would be nearly incredible to those who had
not access to him whilst employed on this pursuit.
In 1816, he printed and circulated two additional Letters relating
to his hieroglyphical discoveries, and the inscription of Rosetta;
the first addressed to the Archduke John of Austria, who had recently
been in this country, the other to M. Akerblad. These letters announce
the progress of the discovery of the relation between the Egyptian
characters and hieroglyphics, forming the basis on which Dr. Young
continued his enquiries, as well as of the system afterwards carried
further in its details by M. Champollion, whose attention had long
been directed to similar studies, and in which he has since so greatly
distinguished himself. The letters were _first published_ when
_re-printed_ in the seventh number of the Museum Criticum in 1821;
and were, with the former letters in that work, beyond all question
or dispute, the earliest announcement of the discovery of a key to a
character which had remained uninterpreted for ages.
In the same year he agreed with Mr. M^{c}Vey Napier to furnish various
articles to the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, conducted
under the superintendance of that gentleman; and in this work, under
the head “EGYPT,” he first brought out the whole results of his
discoveries in a perfect and concentrated form.
To the Supplement of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Dr. Young furnished
sixty-three articles, scientific, biographical, and literary; the
signature by which they are marked, being two consecutive letters
of the sentence “_Fortunam ex aliis_.” His adoption of such a motto
appears to have been caused by his considering at this period of his
life, that he had not succeeded to his wish or expectation in the
profession which he had chosen, and that he had reason to complain
of some injustice, in that the extent and utility of his labours in
science, after having been fully appreciated by the philosophers of
the Continent, had not appeared to have met with the same acceptance
amongst his own countrymen. But this feeling, as it was transitory, so
it should seem that it was hardly well-founded. By those competent to
form a judgment, he was known to stand at the head both of the letters
and of the science of England; but from the time of his quitting
the professorship of the Royal Institution, all his philosophical
and literary tracts, with the exception of his Lectures and his
communications to the Royal Society, were scattered through so many and
such diverging channels of publication, as well as branched into such
varied lines, that they never were within the reach of any one class of
readers, nor ever in the aggregate came before the public as proceeding
from him; to which may be added, that the slightest reference to his
non-professional works will shew him, in these years, to have used
expressions studiously to conceal himself.
Of Dr. Young’s philosophical articles in the Supplement to the
Encyclopædia Britannica, some of which contain the results of his most
elaborate investigations, the writer of the present memoir is not
competent to speak. Many of his biographical sketches are admirably
given; but he would refer to the Life of PORSON, not only as being
in itself a most masterly production, but as containing a very
interesting indication of some of Dr. Young’s opinions, both on the
value of classical studies, and on the mechanism of the human mind; and
he would instance the dissertation on “LANGUAGES” as containing the
stupendous collections he had made for the subject, when led to it by
reviewing Adelung’s Mithridates for the Quarterly Review.
Early in 1817, Dr. Young having occasion to visit a patient in Paris,
was greatly pleased with his reception in the scientific circles of
that metropolis. With the Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, Messrs. Arage,
Cuvier, Biot, and Guy Lussac, he had made previous acquaintance in this
country. He found himself happy in renewing his intercourse with these
very eminent men, and after his return to London, he went back to Paris
for a few weeks in the summer of the same year.
In 1818, he was appointed by a commission under the Privy Seal,
together with Sir Joseph Banks, Sir George Clerk, Mr. Davies Gilbert,
Dr. Woollaston, and Captain Kater, a commissioner for taking into
consideration the state of the weights and measures employed throughout
Great Britain. Dr. Young acted as secretary at the meetings of this
Board, and to the three Reports which were laid before Parliament he
furnished both the scientific calculations, and the attached account
of the various measures customarily in use. It seems right to state,
that in pursuing these investigations it was his opinion, that however
theoretically desirable it might be, that all weights and measures
should be reducible to a common standard of scientific accuracy, yet
that, practically, the least possible disturbance of that to which
people had long been habituated was the point to be looked to, and on
this ground he was extremely averse to unnecessary changes.
Towards the end of the year 1818, Dr. Young was appointed secretary
to the Board of Longitude, with the charge of the supervision of the
Nautical Almanack, under a new Act of Parliament brought in by Mr.
Croker and Mr. Davies Gilbert; having in the first instance been
nominated in the Act as one of the Commissioners, without his previous
knowledge. This appointment was to him a very desirable one, though the
labour in which it involved him was great, as his anxiety to increase
his medical practice henceforth ceased, and it made that the business
of his life which had always been his inclination.
He now discontinued his residence at Worthing, and devoted the summer
to a hasty tour into Italy, an object which he always had in view. In
about five months he visited all the most remarkable Italian cities,
and amongst other objects of interest, gave the first place to the
examination of the Egyptian monuments preserved in that country. He
returned to England by Switzerland and the Rhine.
From the year 1820 to the end of his life, Dr. Young continued to
furnish a variety of astronomical and nautical collections to Brande’s
Philosophical Journal, the greater part of which were original, and
others which were translated were accompanied by his own comments.
In 1821, he published anonymously an “Elementary Illustration of the
Celestial Mechanics of La Place, with some additions relating to the
motion of Waves and of Sound, and to the cohesion of Fluids.” This
volume, and the article “Tides,” in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia
Britannica, were considered by him to have contained the most fortunate
of the results of his mathematical labours. He proceeds in his own
course and manner of investigation, and uses his own processes, and
the great reach of mind displayed in these works seems universally
acknowledged; but whether he have sufficiently established all the
points which he considered himself to have proved, remains matter of
dispute amongst those best qualified to judge. They were spoken of in
the highest terms of praise by Mr. Davies Gilbert from the Chair of
the Royal Society; but there are some amongst the most distinguished
of surviving English philosophers, who still think that his theory of
the Tides rests too exclusively on analogies, and that many of the
elements of the computation 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, both amongst the
continental and the English philosophers; as he thought the powers of
intellect exercised by a preceding race of mathematicians, were in no
small danger of being lost or weakened by the substitution of processes
in their nature mechanical.
The next year he went again to Paris, and in 1823 he published his
“Account of some recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature and
Egyptian Antiquities,” in which he gave his own original alphabet, his
translations from papyri, and the extensions which that alphabet had
received from M. Champollion. This was the first non-professional
publication since 1804, to which he had prefixed his name, and made
open claim to his discoveries; having, as stated in his Preface, now
attained his fiftieth year, and having at last determined to throw off
the shackles by which he had hitherto considered himself to be bound by
the etiquette of a medical practitioner.
At this time he attempted to form a society of about fifty subscribers,
for the lithography of a collection of plates of Egyptian antiquities,
subservient to the study of hieroglyphical literature. This work was,
however, entirely carried on by Dr. Young, and was afterwards made over
to the Royal Society of Literature, and continued during the remainder
of his life, to be executed under his supervision.
In 1824, he made an excursion to Spa and to Holland; and on his return
undertook the medical responsibility and mathematical direction of
a society for life insurance. This was established at a moment when
a mania for joint stock companies was springing up in England, and
which at the time was supposed to offer great pecuniary advantages;
but Dr. Young’s most scrupulous regard to what he supposed the
strictest justice, never forsook him: he declined all participation
in the speculation, and confined himself to the performance of the
duties which he undertook. The connexion however with this company
led him into new lines of research, in which he took great interest.
He contributed to the Royal Society a “Formula for expressing the
Decrement of Human Life,” in a letter addressed to Sir Edward Hyde
East, which was published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1826;
and a “Practical Application of the Doctrine of Chances,” to Brande’s
Philosophical Journal for October in the same year; whilst he had a
singular satisfaction in witnessing the prosperity of the concern in
the department under his direction.
The year before this he removed from Welbeck-street to a house which
he had built in Park Square in the Regent’s Park, where he continued
to reside during the remainder of his life, and where, in a situation
to which he was extremely attached, he led the life of a philosopher,
surrounded by every domestic comfort, and enjoying the pleasures of an
extensive and cultivated society, who knew how to appreciate him. He
expressed himself as having now attained all the main objects which he
had looked forward to in life as the subject either of his hopes or his
wishes. This end being, to use his own words, “the pursuit of such fame
as he valued, or of such acquirements as he might think to deserve it.”
In 1827, Dr. Young was elected one of the eight foreign members of the
Royal Institute of France, and was much gratified, not only by the
honour conferred, but by being associated with so many distinguished
persons, with whom he had long been in habits of correspondence and of
friendship.
His health had hitherto, with the exception of the consumptive tendency
which had visited him in youth, been uninterrupted by a day’s serious
illness, and no person would have appeared as giving a promise of
greater longevity; but in 1828 there was a perceptible diminution of
strength. In that summer he went to Geneva, and appeared to suffer what
was to him an unusual degree of fatigue on great bodily exertion, and
his friends from that time could not help remarking symptoms of age
which appeared to be on the increase, and which contrasted strongly
with the singular freedom from complaint which he had hitherto enjoyed.
During the time that Dr. Young was abroad, the general state of the
finances of the country had been submitted to the examination of a
Committee of the House of Commons. Amongst other things, some of
the severer economists had brought under their consideration the
construction and utility of the Board of Longitude as being under the
direction of the Admiralty, and as giving an allowance of a hundred
pounds a year to certain professors of the two universities, whose
attendance was not often called for. The committee did not consist
of members who were much acquainted with science; not one scientific
person was examined before them. The amount of saving by the abolition
of the only salaries which the government of England held forth for the
encouragement of science, little if at all exceeded £500 a year; and
though many projects which might not prove of utility were referred
by Government to this Board, yet the sums actually expended through
them on such as they might conceive to be useful, had been extremely
limited. But on the recommendation of this committee a bill was passed
abolishing the Board, at the same time permitting the Admiralty to
retain the officer entrusted with the calculations of the Nautical
Almanack.
Dr. Young continued to execute these duties; but this singular, and
as it should seem ill-advised proceeding, caused great heart-burnings
and discontent in the scientific bodies, amongst those who considered
themselves or their friends treated unhandsomely as well as
illiberally, in the manner in which their services had been dispensed
with; and the assistance of men of science was soon found to be so
indispensable to many departments connected with the Admiralty, that a
new council of three members, consisting of Dr. Young, Captain Sabine,
and Mr. Farraday, was appointed for the performance of the duties which
had before devolved upon the Board.
The discussions incident to this subject, and the various reports which
Dr. Young had in consequence to draw up, together involved him in more
labour than the situation of his health rendered him competent to
perform without injury, and exacerbated a complaint which it afterwards
appeared must have been long in progress, but which now was bringing
him rapidly to a state of extreme debility.
He had from the month of February 1829, suffered from what he
considered repeated attacks of asthma, and though he said little of
it, as unwilling to alarm those about him, was evidently uneasy at the
situation of his health. This gradually deteriorated. He had in the
beginning of April great difficulty in breathing, with some discharge
of blood habitually from the lungs, and was in a state of great
weakness. His friends and physicians, Doctors Nevinson and Chambers,
considered that there was something extremely wrong in the action of
the heart, as well as that the lungs were very seriously affected.
Though thus under the pressure of severe illness, nothing could be
more striking than the entire calmness and composure of his mind, or
could surpass the kindness of his affections to all around him. He
said that he had completed all the works on which he was engaged, with
the exception of the rudiments of an Egyptian Dictionary, which he had
brought near to its completion, and which he was extremely anxious to
be able to finish. It was then in the hands of the lithographers, and
he not only continued to give directions concerning it, but laboured
at it with a pencil when, confined to his bed, he was unable to hold a
pen. To a friend who expostulated with him on the danger of fatiguing
himself, he replied it was no fatigue, but a great amusement to him;
that it was a work which if he should live it would be a satisfaction
to him to have finished, but that if it were otherwise, which seemed
most probable, as he had never witnessed a complaint which appeared to
make more rapid progress, it would still be a great satisfaction to him
never to have spent an idle day in his life.
His last anxiety concerning the proceedings of one or two persons who
had made him the object of reiterated attacks, in consequences of being
dissatisfied with the arrangements of the Nautical Almanack, was, that
nothing should go forth on his part to increase irritation, and when
papers were sent him which went to enumerate and to prove the errors,
into which these individuals had fallen, his desire was that they
should be suppressed.
In the very last stage of his complaint, in the last lengthened
interview with the writer of the present memoir, his perfect
self-possession was displayed in the most remarkable manner. After some
information concerning his affairs, and some instructions concerning
the hieroglyphical papers in his hands, he said that, perfectly aware
of his situation, he had taken the sacraments of the church on the day
preceding; that whether he should ever partially recover, or whether
he were rapidly taken off, he could patiently and contentedly await
the issue: that he thought he had exerted his faculties through life
as far as they were capable of, but that for the last eight years he
had been careful of straining them to more than he thought they could
compass without injury; that he had settled all his concerns; that if
his health had been continued to him, he might have looked forward to
the prolongation of much that was to be enjoyed; but that though he was
in no other suffering than that of great oppression and weakness, still
that if life were continued in the state he then was of inability to
any of his accustomed employments, he could hardly wish it to be long
protracted.
His illness continued with some slight variations, but he was gradually
sinking into greater and greater weakness till the morning of the 10th
of May, when he expired without a struggle, having hardly completed
his fifty-sixth year. The disease proved to be an ossification of the
aorta, which must have been in progress for many years, and every
appearance indicated an advance of age, not brought on probably by the
natural courses of time, nor even by constitutional formation, but by
unwearied and incessant labour of the mind from the earliest days of
infancy. His remains were deposited in the Vault of his wife’s family,
in the Church of Farnborough in Kent.