Career
He matriculated in Glasgow University in 1764, graduating Master of Arts in 1769. On 9 June 1774 he was installed professor of Greek in Glasgow University, and proved a very efficient and popular teacher. Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) remembered him as "a man of great humour", ready to laugh heartily with his students over the whimsicalities of Lucian and Aristophanes (Beattie, Life and Letters of Campbell, i 159).
Captain Hamilton eulogises his scholarship and oratory, comparing his energetic sympathy with that of Burke (Cyril Thornton, chap vii).
A large portion of Letter lxviii. in "Peter"s Letters to his Kinsfolk", volunteer iii., is a eulogy of Young, with whose reading of Greek and his enthusiasm over the value of a particle or the sublimity of a poetical passage the writer was deeply impressed. A similar tribute occurs in Gleig"s "Quarterly" article on Lockhart"s "Life of Scott" (see Quarterly Review, lxxxv 37, and Language, Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, i 22).
Young was devoted to the classical stage and enamoured of Kean (Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs, p 193). After filling his chair for nearly half a century, Young died in Glasgow on 18 November 1820.
On 25 September 1780 Young married Jean Lamont, daughter of Colin Lamont of Knockdow, Argyleshire, who survived him with seven children.
Charles, the fourth son (1796–1822), a classical scholar of great promise, died at Glasgow on 17 December 1822 (Foster, Alumni Oxfordshire. Gent Magazine 1823, pt i). Although Young"s ripe scholarship was mainly utilised in his class-room, he contributed some valuable notes to Dalziel"s "Collectanea Græca Majora" (1820).
His metrical translation of the "Odes" of Tyrtæus, and his jeu d"esprit after Doctor Johnson on Gray"s "Elegy", are not of much accountant
