He was the great physicist of his time, and yet ‘at no period of his life was he fond of repeating experiments or even of originating new ones. He considered that, however necessary to the advancement of science, they demanded a great sacrifice of time; and that, when a 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.’ He was kind by nature and a Quaker by education, and yet he was always at war for his discoveries. He never was free from a scientific or literary controversy. As a professor at the Royal Institution, as a hospital physician at St. George’s, and still more as a practitioner of medicine in London and Worthing, his powers were entirely misdirected. With a culture like that of Newton what noble fruit might not Young have brought forth! The work he did for science was undervalued during his life; nevertheless he was content; and nothing shows that he foresaw or wished for that great reputation which has gradually gathered round his name. Two years before his death, writing to his sister-in-law regarding the praise which Herschel had given him in his ‘Treatise on Light,’ he said:
I think he has divided the prize very fairly, and I dare say poor Fresnel, if he had lived, would have preferred his share of the honour as much as I do mine. It was before I knew you that mine was earned, and acute suggestion was then—and indeed always—more in the line of my ambition than experimental illustration. But surely one that is conscious that such things may be said with some truth (or who imagines it) has no further temptation to be President of the Royal Society even if he could.
His character was drawn by Sir Humphry Davy thus: ‘A man of universal erudition and almost universal accomplishments. Had he limited himself to any one department of knowledge he must have been first in that department. But as a mathematician, a scholar, and hieroglyphist he was eminent; and he knew so much that it is difficult to say what he did not know. He was a most amiable and good-tempered man; too fond, perhaps, of the society of persons of rank for a true philosopher.’
Mr. Davies Gilbert, the President of the Royal Society, in his speech from the chair on the death of Young, said:
He came into the world with a confidence in his own talents, growing out of an expectation of excellence entertained in common by all his friends, which expectation was more than realised in the progress of his future life. The multiplied objects which he pursued were carried to such an extent, that each might have been supposed to have exclusively occupied the full powers of his mind; knowledge in the abstract, the most enlarged generalisations, and the most minute and intricate details were equally effected by him; but he had most pleasure in that which appeared to be most difficult of investigation. The example is only to be followed by those of equal perseverance.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE PROGRESS OF THE INSTITUTION TO THE TIME OF FARADAY.
1804 to 1814.
In 1804 the change in the original management and objects of the Royal Institution was completed. The place which Rumford, with the help of Sir Joseph Banks, had held was taken by Mr. Bernard, who was supported by Sir John Hippesley. He knew nothing of science but much of the world, and his aim for the Institution can be given in his own words. ‘The object has been great and important, not less than that of giving fashion to science.’