Finding, when he came back from Germany, that the College of Physicians of London required two years’ continuous attendance at one university for a licence to practise, and shut out from the Fellowship all who were not graduates at Cambridge or Oxford, he went as fellow-commoner to Emmanuel College, Cambridge; and the account given by one who was afterwards tutor of the college brings the Professor of the Royal Institution most clearly into view.
When the Master [says the writer] introduced Young to his tutors, he jocularly said, ‘I have brought you a pupil qualified to read lectures to his tutors.’ This, however, as might be concluded, he did not attempt; and the forbearance was mutual: he was never required to attend the common duties of the College.
He had a high character for classical learning before he came to Cambridge; but I believe he did not pursue his classical studies in the latter part of his life—he seldom spoke of them, but I remember his meeting Dr. Parr in the College Combination Room; and when the Doctor had made, as was not unusual with him, some dogmatical observation on a point of scholarship, Young said firmly, ‘Bently, sir, was of a different opinion,’ immediately quoting his authority and showing his intimate knowledge of the subject. Parr said nothing, but when Dr. Young retired asked who he was, and, though he did not seem to have heard his name before, he said, ‘A smart young man that.’
He had a great talent for Greek verse, and on one occasion I remember a young lady had written on the walls of the summer-house in the garden the following lines:—
Where are these hours on airy pinions borne,
That brought to every guiltless wish success,
When pleasure gladdened each succeeding morn,
And every evening closed with dreams of peace?
On the next morning appeared a translation in Greek elegiacs, written under them in Young’s beautiful characters.
It may be here mentioned that when his mode of writing Greek was laid before Porson, he said that if he had seen it before he would have adopted it.
The views, objects, character, and arguments of our mathematicians were very different then to what they are now, and Young, who was certainly beforehand with the world, perceived their defects. Certain it is that he looked down upon the science, and would not cultivate the acquaintance of any of our philosophers. Wood’s books I have heard him speak of with approbation, but Vince he treated with contempt, and Vince afterwards returned the compliment.
He never obtruded his various learning in conversation, but if appealed to on the most difficult subject he answered in a quick, flippant, derisive way, as if he was speaking of the most easy; and in this mode of talking he differed from all the clever men that I ever saw. His reply never seemed to cost him an effort, and he did not appear to think there was any credit in being able to make it. He did not assert any superiority, or seem to suppose that he possessed it, but spoke as if he took it for granted that we all understood the matter as well as he did. He never spoke in praise of any of the writers of the day, even in his own particular department, and could not be persuaded to discuss their merits. He was never personal; he would speak of knowledge in itself of what was known or what might be known, but never of himself or any other as having deserved anything, or as likely to do so.
His language was correct, his utterance rapid, and his sentences, though without any affectation, never left unfinished; but his words were not those in familiar use, and the arrangement of his ideas seldom the same as those he conversed with. He was, therefore, worse calculated than any man I ever knew for the communication of knowledge.
I remember his taking me with him to the Royal Institution to hear him lecture to a number of silly women and dilettante philosophers. But nothing could show less judgment than the method he adopted; for he presumed, like many other lecturers and preachers, on the knowledge, and not on the ignorance, of his hearers.
In his manners he had something of the stiffness of the Quaker remaining, and, though he never said or did a rude thing, he never made use of any of the forms of politeness. Not that he avoided them through affectation; his behaviour was natural, without timidity, and easy without boldness. He rarely associated with the young men of the College, who called him, with a mixture of derision and respect, ‘Phenomenon Young,’ but he lived on familiar terms with the Fellows in the Common Room. He had few friends of his own age or pursuits in the University, and not having been introduced to many of those who were distinguished either by their situation or talent, he did not seek their society, nor did they seek him; they did not like to admit the superiority of anyone in statu pupillari, and he would not converse with anyone but as an equal.
It is difficult to say how he employed himself; he read little, and though he had access to the College and University libraries he was seldom seen in them. There were no books piled on his floor, no papers scattered on his table, and his room had all the appearance of belonging to an idle man.
I once found him blowing smoke through long tubes, and I afterwards saw a representation of the effect in the ‘Transactions of the Royal Society,’ to illustrate one of his papers upon sound; but he was not in the habit of making experiments. He walked little and rode less; but, having learnt to ride the great horse abroad, he used to pace round Parker’s Piece on a hackney: he once made an attempt to follow the hounds, but a severe fall prevented any future exhibition.
He seldom gave an opinion, and never volunteered one. He never laid down the law like other learned doctors, or uttered apophthegms or sayings to be remembered. Indeed, like most mathematicians (though we hear of abstract mathematics), he never seemed to think abstractedly. A philosophical fact, a difficult calculation, an ingenious instrument, or a new invention, would engage his attention; but he never spoke of morals, of metaphysics, or of religion. Of the last I never heard him say a word, nothing in favour of any sect, or in opposition to any doctrine; at the same time, no sceptical doubt, no loose assertion, no idle scoff, ever escaped him.
On July 8, 1799, he sent from Emmanuel College a paper to the Royal Society, entitled ‘Outlines of Experiments and Inquiries respecting Sound and Light.’ In it he established the great principle of the interference of sounds, and he wrote one section on the analogy of sound and light. In 1800 he referred, in the ‘British Magazine,’ to a young gentleman of Edinburgh ‘who certainly promises, in the course of time, to add considerably to our knowledge of the works of nature, but who had a paper in the “Philosophical Transactions” for 1798, in which what was new was not true, and what was true was not new.’ Dr. Robison, in his article on Music in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ criticised Young’s papers. In Nicholson’s ‘Philosophical Journal’ for 1801 Young answered Robison, and published an extension of the principles of interferences from sound to light. This was the preliminary announcement of his views regarding the undulatory theory of light.
His first paper on the ‘Theory of Light and Colours’ was read to the Royal Society, November 12, 1801. His second paper on this subject was read July 1, 1802, and his third November 24, 1803. His ‘Syllabus of Lectures at the Royal Institution,’ dated January 19, 1802, p. 116, gives the first printed account of his views. He says, ‘Speaking of Newton’s views, it will be sufficient for our present purpose to enumerate the respective explanations of the principal phenomena of light as they are furnished by the Newtonian system, and by the theory lately submitted to the Royal Society’; and (p. 117) he says, ‘The colours of thin and of thick plates, and the fringes produced by inflection, are referred by Newton to the very complicated effects of an undulating medium on the corpuscles of light, but without any attempt to accommodate the explanations to the measures obtained from his own accurate and elegant experiments; those of striated surfaces he has not noticed. But the general law by which all these appearances are governed may be very easily deduced from the interference of two coincident undulations which either co-operate or destroy each other in the same manner as two musical notes produce an alternate intermission and remission in the beating of an imperfect unison.’
‘The young gentleman of Edinburgh,’ afterwards known as Lord Brougham, in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ January 1803, criticised the Royal Society papers.
It is difficult [he said] to argue with an author whose mind is filled with a medium of so fickle and vibratory a nature. Were we to take the trouble to refute him, he might tell us, My opinion is changed, and I have abandoned that hypothesis, but here is another for you. We demand if the world of science which Newton once illuminated is to be as changeable in its modes as the world of taste, which is directed by the nod of a silly woman or a pampered fop? Has the Royal Society degraded its publications into bulletins of new and fashionable theories for the ladies who attend the Royal Institution? Proh pudor! Let the Professor continue to amuse his audience with an endless variety of such harmless trifles, but, in the name of science, let them not find admittance into that venerable repository which contains the works of Newton, and Boyle, and Cavendish, and Maskelyne, and Herschel.
Young’s most famous experiment of stopping the rays which passed on one side of a thin card exposed to a sunbeam in a dark chamber Brougham threw aside, with the assertion that the experiment was inaccurately made. Dr. Young replied:
The reviewer has here afforded me an opportunity for a triumph, as gratifying as any triumph can be where an enemy is so contemptible. Conscious of inability to explain the experiment, too ungenerous to confess that inability, and too idle to repeat the experiment, he is compelled to advance the supposition that it was incorrect. ‘Let him make the experiment, and then deny the result if he can.’
He took no special means to make his answer known, and only one copy of his reply was sold. The poison sank deep into the public mind, and Dr. Young’s researches remained comparatively unnoticed until Arago, in 1815, when reporting upon the optical discoveries of Fresnel, showed that a greater discoverer than Newton had anticipated the researches of the French philosopher.
Dr. Young gives the following account of his discovery of the general law of the interference of light: