From Berlin he wrote, December 12, to his uncle: ‘You say my Thesis (for his medical degree, on the conservative forces of the human body) is caviare to the general; but do not you think people have a greater respect for anything out of the common way? It seems a fatality that almost everything I do, or produce, should be termed stiff; in this case it may arise from my having been obliged to treat the subject in a short compass.’ 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.