Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/409

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prevent any copy from seeing the light, on account of its supposed heterodoxy.’ The imputation may have been grounded upon Young's opinion, expressed in his preface, that ‘the most probable means to ascertain the true meaning is to endeavour to discover the primitive and original sense, without mixing or confounding it with that which is merely secondary or figurative;’ also, perhaps, on his denial that Psalms xxii. and xl. can be interpreted as prophetic of Christ. He was none the less a firm believer in Christianity, and at the time of his death was preparing an essay on ‘Sophisms,’ illustrated by examples from antichristian writers. A more important work in preparation, which must have been of great value, was his ‘Method of Prime and Ultimate Ratios, illustrated by a Comment on the “Principia,”’ in Latin. Its publication was expected after his death, but it never appeared. Two portraits of Young are in the provost's house at Trinity College, Dublin, and a bust is preserved in the library.

[Mant's Hist. of the Church of Ireland, ii. 742–5; Gent. Mag. December 1800; Funeral Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Elrington; Memoirs of Sydney, Lady Morgan; private information from the Rev. W. Ball Wright.]

R. G.

YOUNG, PATRICK (1584–1652), biblical writer, fifth son of Sir Peter Young [q. v.] of Seaton, and of his first wife, Elizabeth Gibb, was born at Seaton, Forfarshire (not Haddingtonshire, as is stated in Chambers's ‘Eminent Scotsmen’), on 29 Aug. 1584. He was educated at St. Andrews, graduating M.A. in 1603. In that year he accompanied his father to London in the train of James VI, and was appointed librarian and secretary to Dr. George Lloyd [q. v.], bishop of Chester. On 9 July 1605 he was incorporated at Oxford, and, taking holy orders, was made a chaplain of All Souls' College. Following the example of his granduncle Henry Scrymgeour [q. v.], he devoted himself specially to the study of Greek, and became one of the most proficient scholars of his time in that language. Removing to London, he was employed at the court as correspondent with foreign rulers, the diplomatic language then being Latin. On 1 Aug. 1609 he wrote to Isaac Casaubon in Paris, sending him books and urging him to study Strabo (Casauboni Epistolæ, No. ciii.). Through the interest of Dr. Richard Montagu [q. v.], bishop of Bath and Wells, he obtained an annual pension of 50l., and held the office successively of librarian to Prince Henry (Birch, p. 164), James I, and Charles I. In 1613 he held a prebend in Chester Cathedral under his patron, Bishop Lloyd (Le Neve, Fasti, iii. 270). In 1617 he went to Paris, furnished with letters from Camden the historian (his father's intimate friend) to the leading French literary men. On 9 Jan. 1618 he was made a burgess of Dundee along with his younger brother, Dr. John Young (1585–1655), dean of Winchester, the entry in burgess-roll describing him as ‘superintendent of the king's library,’ and recording that the freedom of the burgh was given to him ‘on account of his zeal for the commonweal, and for the mode in which he has munificently increased the library of the burgh.’ It has been reasonably supposed that many of the books and manuscripts which Henry Scrymgeour had bequeathed to Sir Peter Young were conferred upon Dundee at this time, and were placed in the vestry of the church of St. Mary at Dundee; but, as that edifice was totally destroyed by fire in 1841, all these valuable documents and books were lost.

About this time Young was engaged in making a Latin translation of the works of King James, but how far the Latin edition of James I's works that appeared in 1619 (London, fol.) was Young's work is uncertain. In 1620 he was incorporated M.A. of Cambridge, and in 1621 he became prebendary and treasurer of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in 1624 was appointed Latin secretary by Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) John Williams [q. v.] He was also made rector of Hayes, Middlesex, in 1623, holding the benefice until his sequestration in 1647 by the Westminster assembly, and rector of Llanynys, Denbighshire.

Young was one of the learned men selected by Selden for the examination of the Arundelian marbles, and his reputation as a scholar was so great that he was entrusted with the revision of the Alexandrian codex of the Septuagint, and suggested various readings to Grotius and Ussher. He proposed to publish an edition of this manuscript, and issued specimen pages, but was compelled to abandon the project, though in 1657 his ‘annotationes’ were published in vol. 6 of Brian Walton's ‘Polyglot Bible.’ In 1633 he published at Oxford ‘Clementis ad Corinthios epistola prior,’ dedicated to Charles I. The Greek text is from a manuscript Sir Thomas Roe [q. v.] brought from the East and gave to Charles I, and Young adopted the excellent plan of printing in red the additions necessary to fill in the lacunæ in the MS.; other editions appeared in 1654, 4to, and 1870, 8vo. He also prepared an edition of Clement's two epistles, with a Latin translation, which appeared in 1687 and again in