A short sketch of his life will bring this period of the history of the Institution to a close.
Thomas Young was born in Somersetshire on June 13, 1773. Both his parents were Quakers, and to their tenets he was accustomed to attribute his resolution to effect any object on which he was engaged. This determination he brought to bear on all he did, and by this he educated himself almost from infancy ‘with little comparative assistance or direction from others.’
His earliest years were passed with a grandfather, a merchant at Minehead, who had some classical taste. He encouraged his precocious grandchild and often repeated to him that—
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.
From 1780 to 1787 (7 to 14) he was chiefly at school. He gives an account of his acquirements in an autobiography written in Latin at this time—writing, arithmetic, Latin, Greek, mathematics, natural philosophy, introduction to the Newtonian philosophy, turning, telescope making, bookbinding, colour making, drawing, Hebrew, botany, fluctions, Priestly on Air, Italian, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan. He was a prodigy at fourteen.
His father had a neighbour, a man of great ingenuity, by profession a land-surveyor, in whose office during the holidays the boy was given the use of mathematical and philosophical instruments and the perusal of three volumes of a dictionary of arts and science. He got some practical knowledge of land-surveying. This led him to botany; and to examine his plants he made a microscope. This required a knowledge of optics, and thence he went to mathematics and fluctions.
From 1787 to 1792 (14 to 19) his studies and his position were equally extraordinary. He became classical tutor to a boy a year and a half his junior. Mr. Barclay, of Youngsbury, took him as companion to his grandson, Hudson Gurney, who had a tutor. Young taught the tutor Greek, and taught his companion Latin and Greek, whilst he taught himself Latin, French, Italian, mathematics, natural philosophy, botany, and entomology.
When 16 (1789) he was threatened with consumption. His uncle, Dr. Brocklesby, the friend of Burke, attended him, and through him Burke and Porson and others became interested in the great classical knowledge of the youth, and encouraged him in his translations of Shakespear into Greek iambics.
It was at this period that his character was most strongly formed: