In my own pursuits I have found abundance of novelty to interest me, both the scientific and literary departments of the Institute happening at this moment to be particularly engaged with my investigations, and a Frenchman having in each of them been engaged in going over my own ground without being fully acquainted with what I had done, and having had to exclaim, ‘Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.’ Fresnel, a young mathematician of the civil engineers, has really been doing some good things in the extension and application of my theory of light, and Champollion, the author of the book you brought over, has been working still harder upon the Egyptian characters. He devotes his whole time to the pursuit, and he has been wonderfully successful in some of the documents which he has obtained.
How far he will acknowledge everything which he has either borrowed or might have borrowed from me, I am not quite confident, but the world will be sure to remark que c’est le premier pas qui coûte, though the proverb is less true in this case than in most others, for here every step is laborious.
The best comparative estimate of the value of the work of Young and Fresnel on light was given by Sir John Herschel, in 1827, at the end of his view of the undulating theory of light in the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana’:
Such is the beautiful theory of Fresnel and Young, for we must not, in our regard for one great name, forget the justice which is due to the other; and to separate them, and to assign to each his share, would be as impracticable as invidious, so intimately are they blended together throughout every part of this system—early, acute, and pregnant suggestion characterising the one, and maturity of thought, fulness of systematic development, and decisive experimental illustration equally distinguishing the other.
During the last five years of Dr. Young’s life, when he was between fifty-one and fifty-six years old, he ceased to be a practising physician, and occupied himself with science and literature only.
In 1827, at the anniversary of the Royal Society, after the resignation of the presidency by Sir Humphry Davy, the claims of Dr. Young were too strong to be altogether neglected.
Writing to his sister he says:
I find there has been pretty general conversation about making me President of the Royal Society, and I really think if I were foolish enough to wish for the office, I am at this moment popular enough to obtain it; but you well know that nothing is further from my wishes.
Davies Gilbert was chosen. ‘I told him,’ says Young, ‘that he had not quite enough of the devil in him, that Sir Joseph Banks should have left his eyebrows to go with his cocked hat, if he had left the Society nothing else.’
In the summer of 1828 he visited Paris for the last time on his way to Geneva. He was then one of the eight foreign associates of the Academy. To Mr. Gurney he wrote:
My principal object was Champollion, and with him I have been completely successful as far as I wanted his assistance, for, to say the truth, our conferences have not been very gratifying to my vanity. He has done so much more and so much better than I had any reason to believe he would or could have done, and, as he feels his own importance more, he feels less occasion to be tenacious of any trifling claims which may justly be denied him, and in this spirit he has borne my criticisms with perfect good humour, though Arago has charged me with some degree of undue severity, and wanted to pass the matter over as not having been published as mine; but to this I could not consent: and, supposing that Champollion might have been unacquainted with the remarks, I thought it a matter of conscience to carry them to him this morning, before I allowed him to continue his profuse liberality in furnishing me with more than I want.