Chapter VIII: Part 8

Davy's note-books now became rapidly filled with the Results of his studies, with Reflexions, with Resolutions, and with the most ambitious prospectuses of his future labours. Dr. Davy gives, in his 'Life' of his brother, an interesting specimen, written in 1799, when Davy had taken a house in Dowry Square, Clifton. Two hours before breakfast were to be devoted to his 'Lover of Nature,' or the 'Feelings of Eldon'--the five hours from nine to two to experiments--the time from four to six was to be spent in reading, and from seven to ten p.m. in the study of metaphysics. So passed the time away at Clifton, amidst the most congenial pursuits, thoroughly sympathetic friends, and in the enjoyment of an income which, modest as it was, enabled him to assist his mother in the education of his younger brother. But for one thing he bargained--John was _not_ to be placed under Mr. Coryton.

Clifton, however, ere long became too small a sphere for Davy; and in 1801 an appointment as Assistant Editor of the Journals, Director of the Laboratory, and Assistant Lecturer (with a view to his ultimately becoming the Professor of Chemistry) to the then newly-founded Royal Institution, in London, was joyfully accepted; his salary being fixed at 100 guineas a year, with a room, and coals, and candles. The Duchess of Gordon, amongst other leaders of fashion, attracted by his youth and simplicity, as well as by his enthusiasm and eloquence, took him by the hand; and his success became assured. Compliments, invitations, and presents, Dr. Paris tells us, were showered upon him from all quarters; his society was courted by everybody, and all were proud of his acquaintance. In 1802 he commenced a long series of lectures before the Board of Agriculture, on the connexion of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology, which have been translated into almost every European language: in fact, Sir Humphry has been well named the father of Agricultural Chemistry.[106] In 1803 he obtained the enviable distinction of being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and two years afterwards, having become a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, he found himself a correspondent of all the chief scientific men of the day.

Davy's _début_ as a lecturer at the Royal Institution appears to have been highly successful; 'the sparkling intelligence of his eye,[107] his animated manner,' according to one critic, and 'his youth, his natural eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations, and well-conducted experiments, excited universal attention and unbounded applause.' It has been well said that 'under his touch the coldest realities blossomed into poetry.' But the real secret of his success was this--that he was master of his subject; and that his whole heart was in his work. His mode of life, his brother tells us, was at this time extremely simple, his fare frugal, his rooms slightly furnished, and the only 'thing of beauty' which they contained was an exquisite little porcelain Venus, the gift of his early friend Wedgwood, with whom he was associated in some of the very first attempts made in this country in the art of photography.

In 1806 and 1807 he was selected to deliver the Bakerian Lecture (the subject chosen being the 'Chemical Agencies of Electricity')--an honourable distinction--leading, as it probably did, to his promotion in the latter year to the posts of Secretary to the Royal Society, and Member of the Council. Of this paper Dr. Whewell said, 'It was a great event--perhaps the most important event of the epoch under review,' and as such 'it was recognised at once all over Europe.' Probably no man's life was happier than Davy's at this period; his income was ample, his work was his pleasure, and his disposition was happy and sanguine. Whilst holding constant and friendly intercourse with his brother philosophers at home and abroad,[108] he had also plenty of time for relaxation; and made several pleasant excursions to Scotland[109] and Ireland; everywhere sketching, making notes, fishing, or pursuing his inquiries amongst the natives with a vivid pertinacity and good-nature which at once astonished and delighted them. His brother (who used occasionally to occupy an adjoining bedroom at the Royal Institution) tells how Humphry might frequently have been heard during the night addressing in fervid tones some imaginary audience, or humming aloud an angler's song. Indeed, it might almost be said that during this period one cloud only darkened his horizon. He was seized with typhus fever, caught during an inspection of Newgate Prison, which he visited with a view to arranging for its disinfection; but, as Dr. Dibdin remarked in his introductory lecture to the Institution:

'---- Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike.'

During Davy's visits to Ireland in 1810 and 1811 he lectured before the Dublin Society, and whilst in the Irish metropolis had conferred upon him by Trinity College the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. During the first week 550 tickets for his lectures were sold at 2 guineas each, and the price ultimately rose to from 10 to 20 guineas. His own pecuniary remuneration was also handsome; in the former year he received 500 guineas, and in the latter £750.

The result of his researches during the eleven years whilst he was officially connected with the Royal Institution may, Dr. Davy thinks, be conveniently divided into two portions, viz., the _earlier one_, terminating with his great discovery of the decomposition and recomposition of the fixed alkalies, by the aid of an enormously powerful voltaic pile which he had specially constructed for him, and the cost of which was defrayed by subscription--the reward of his triumphant and all-important electro-chemical researches; and the _later period_, which re-established the simple nature of chlorine. His views on these subjects were adopted by all the leading chemists of the age; and, with few exceptions, were after a short time promulgated in the schools. To the theory of tanning he also gave much attention, experimentally wearing for some time one shoe tanned with oak bark, and the other with catechu. He published the results of his inquiries in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1803.

It is not uninteresting here to note that Davy, on becoming connected with the Royal Society, did not entirely relinquish his intentions of prosecuting--what might probably have been a more lucrative career--his original profession of medicine. But not even such a prospect--nor even that of an illustrious career in the Church--(to which it is said the Bishop of Durham and others, charmed by his eloquence as a lecturer, urged him)--could draw away his affection from science. And he was not without his reward; for he had the satisfaction of reading in Cuvier's address to the French Institute, whose members were of course rival scientists, that--'Davy, not yet thirty-two, in the opinion of all who could judge of his labours, held the first rank among the chemists of this or of any other age.'

The month of April, 1812, was an eventful one in Davy's life. It saw his retirement from the post of Secretary to the Royal Society; it saw him receive the honour of Knighthood, then rarely bestowed upon men of science;[110] and last, but not least, it saw him married to Mrs. Apreece, whose maiden name was Jane Kerr (of Kelso), a wealthy, amiable, and intellectual widow, to whom he appears to have been devotedly attached: he described her, in a letter to his mother, announcing the intended marriage, as 'a woman equally distinguished for virtues, talents, and accomplishments;' and to his brother as 'the most amiable and intellectual woman I have ever known.' To this tribute to her worth it may be added that, when Scott went on his tour to the Hebrides, his 'dear friend and distant relation,' Mrs. Apreece (afterwards Lady Davy), went with the family party: she had been, Scott says in one of his letters, 'a lioness of the first magnitude in Edinburgh' during the preceding winter. And when writing to Byron, inviting him to Abbotsford, Sir Walter mentions as one of the visitors who made his home attractive: 'The fair, or shall I say the sage, Apreece that was, Lady Davy that is, who is soon to show us how much science she leads captive in Sir Humphry.'

But there are 'cabinet' portraits of the lady and her husband in 'The Life of George Ticknor' (p. 57, vol. i.) which may be introduced here.

'_1815, June 13._--I breakfasted this morning with Sir H. Davy, of
whom we have heard so much in America. He is now about thirty-three,
but with all the freshness and bloom of twenty-five, and one of
the handsomest men I have seen in England. He has a great deal of
vivacity--talks rapidly, though with great precision--and is so much
interested in conversation that his excitement amounts to nervous
impatience, and keeps him in constant motion. He has just returned
from Italy, and delights to talk of it; thinks it, next to England,
the finest country in the world, and the society of Rome surpassed
only by that of London, and says he should not die contented without
going there again.

'It seemed singular that his taste in this should be so acute, when
his professional eminence is in a province so different and remote;
but I was much more surprised when I found that the first chemist
of his time was a professed angler; and that he thinks, if he were
obliged to renounce either fishing or philosophy, that he should find
the struggle of his choice pretty severe.

'_15 June._--As her husband had invited me to do, I called this
morning on Lady Davy. I found her in her parlour, working on a dress,
the contents of her basket strewed about the table, and looking more
like home than anything since I left it. She is small, with black eyes
and hair and a very pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile; and
when she speaks, has much spirit and expression in her countenance.
Her conversation is agreeable, particularly in the choice and variety
of her phraseology, and has more the air of eloquence than I have
ever heard before from a lady. But, then, it has something of the
appearance of formality and display, which injures conversation. Her
manner is gracious and elegant; and though I should not think of
comparing her to Corinne, yet I think she has uncommon powers.'

The honeymoon, the greater part of which was spent in Scotland, was scarcely over, before, in the month of June, he dedicated to his wife his 'Elements of Chemical Philosophy,' as a pledge of his continued ardour for science, as well as of his love for her; and Davy returned to his scientific pursuits. In the following November he nearly lost his eyesight, whilst performing the dangerous experiment of effecting the combination of azote, as nitrogen was then called, and chlorine. He soon, however, completely recovered the use of his eyes, and took a trip into his native county; fishing and geologizing on the way. It was about this time also that Davy made the first experiments in electric lighting, by producing the voltaic arc by the use of carbon; the discovery was improved by Foucault, who substituted retort-carbon for wood-charcoal. (Comte du Moncel's 'L'Eclairage Electrique,' Paris, 1880.)

With reference to this, now highly important, subject, a writer in the _Times_ for 22nd October, 1881, points out that 'Sir Humphry Davy showed that when a powerful current passes across the point of contact of two carbon rods, their points become heated; and on separating them to a short distance, an arc of light shoots between them, and the carbons are raised to a white heat.' The writer adds, that 'all lamps (until lately) had this point chiefly in view; namely, to introduce an arrangement which should keep the carbon-points at the fixed distance found to be the most advantageous.' Surely here was the germ of that discovery which is now becoming so rapidly developed.

In the autumn he went with Lady Davy for a long tour on the Continent, accompanied by the illustrious Faraday, who was a bookseller's apprentice when Davy first knew him, as his assistant and secretary; and equipped (as on previous similar occasions) with a portable chemical apparatus. He passed (with a special passport from Napoleon) through Paris--fêted by all the Parisian savants, including Laplace, Gay-Lussac, Thénard, etc., but treating them, it is said, somewhat haughtily--thence through France and Switzerland into Italy, by way of Nice to Genoa, where he rested a few days in order to make some ineffectual experiments on the torpedo; and so on to Florence, visiting _en route_ all the most remarkable extinct volcanoes in the south of France. This year he was elected a Corresponding Member of the 1st class of the French Institute, who had previously awarded to him their prize of 3,000 livres for his treatise on 'Chemical Affinities.' In the spring of 1814 he reached Rome, where he spent a month; and thence visited Naples; all the while filling his note-books with interesting entries, personal, scientific, and poetic. On his return homeward he made the acquaintance of Volta, then seventy years old, at Milan, and he records his pleasure at conferring with the ingenious and amiable old man.

Midsummer found him at his beloved Geneva; and here he spent three delicious months in a villa whose garden sloped down to the cool blue waters of the lake. He wintered at Rome, busily occupied with his scientific pursuits, with shooting wild-fowl in the Campagna, and in the enjoyment of the intellectual society of the Eternal City;--not omitting to transmit the results of his studies for publication in the 'Philosophical Transactions.' It was about this time that the Geological Society of Penzance was started; and it need scarcely be said that it had from the first the best wishes of Davy, who contributed specimens to its cabinets, and subscribed a handsome sum towards its expenses.

This was not the only institution of a scientific nature of which Davy was an early patron, if not indeed an originator. Sir Roderick Murchison, in his 'Biography' by Geikie, mentions that Davy, Croker, and Reginald Heber were the real founders and earliest trustees of the Athenæum Club. And Sir John Rennie, in his 'Autobiography,' says as follows:

'Sir Humphry Davy, in the year 1825, originated the Zoological
Society, and asked me to join, which I did most willingly; and perhaps
it has been the most popular and successful of any modern society
of that kind. It commenced operations by purchasing the well-known
Cross collection of Exeter 'Change, in which, in my early days, I
took an especial delight; for, considering all things, it was a very
wonderful collection, and it is difficult to understand how, in such
a confined and unhealthy spot, it could have been maintained in such
good condition. The only other exhibition of the kind in London was at
the Tower; the collection of animals there consisted of presents from
the sovereigns of different countries. These were afterwards lent to
the Zoological Society, who established their museum in the Regent's
Park; and taking it altogether, it is probably the finest and best
maintained in the world.'

In the spring of 1815 he returned to England, _viâ_ Mayence and Brussels, and bought for his residence a house in Lower Grosvenor Street, No. 28.

There is perhaps no subject connected with the career of Davy with which his name is more inseparably and more honourably associated than that now to be mentioned,--and it was a subject which even the genius of a Humboldt had failed to master--namely, the brilliant and philanthropical discovery of the Safety Lamp (the original lamp in its first and simplest form is preserved in the Royal Institution), which has often been described in detail. His brother goes fully into the train of reasoning and of experiments which led to its construction. It is, as he says, a cage of wire-gauze which actually makes prisoner the flame of the deadly fire-damp, and in its prison consumes it. This grand invention--and it is not the less grand because it is so simple--by which in all probability more lives have been saved than by any other invention of similar character,--Davy nobly refused to patent, lest the sphere of its usefulness should be restricted: indeed, throughout his life he was indifferent to mere money; he was constantly giving away things for which he had no immediate use, and never kept a book after he had once read it. He received for the invention of the Safety Lamp unbounded praise and heartiest thanks from the great body of coal-owners and coal-workers of the Tyne and Wear especially; and was presented by them, on 11th October, 1817, with a magnificent service of plate worth £2,500,[111] at a public dinner at the Queen's Head Hotel, Newcastle, when the Earl of Durham (then Mr. Lambton) said in the course of his speech: 'If your fame had needed anything to make it immortal, this discovery alone would have carried it down to future ages, and connected it with benefits and blessings.'

Of this lamp (which the miners call 'a Davy,') the inventor, with his usual philanthropic spirit, often said, 'I value it more than ANYTHING I EVER DID.' The Emperor of Russia sent him a magnificent silver-gilt vase, the cover of which was surmounted by a figure of the God of Fire weeping over his extinguished torch, and the present was accompanied by an autograph letter. Early in the following year, his services to Science and to Humanity were recognised, somewhat tardily, by his having a baronetcy conferred upon him by the English Sovereign.[112]

In the summer of 1818 he contemplated a second visit, with Lady Davy, to the Continent. The programme included Flanders, Austria, Rome, and Naples,[113] to the two last of which places he went commissioned by the Prince Regent to investigate at Pompeii the bases of the colours employed by the ancients in their frescoes; and to discover, if possible, some chemical process of unrolling the papyric MSS. affected by the fire at Herculaneum: in this, however, he was unsuccessful; and his want of success--a thing so unusual with him--afforded him infinite chagrin. Most of the summer and part of the autumn of 1819 were spent in luxurious repose at the baths of Lucca; but the winter found him again at Rome, all the while making notes and storing up thoughts for his delightful book, 'The Consolations of Travel.'

In the summer of 1820 he returned, by way of the south of France, to his house in Grosvenor Street, and deeply interested himself in an inquiry into the 'Connexion between Magnetism and Electricity,' the result of which he communicated to the Royal Society on the 12th November.

Again he visited Scotland; and Lockhart gives a graphic account of the party at Abbotsford, in the autumn of this year, as they started on a sporting expedition, in which, after sketching the portraits of some members of it, Scott's biographer goes on to say:

'But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor of the
safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and had
been practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling companion,
for two or three days preceding this; but he had not prepared for
coursing fields, or had left Charlie Purdie's troop for Sir Walter's
on a sudden thought; and his fisherman's costume--a brown hat with
flexible brim, surrounded with line upon line, and innumerable
fly-hooks; jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian
surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon--made a fine contrast with
the smart jackets, white cord breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots
of the less distinguished cavaliers about him.'

After a merry lunch at Newark Castle they all moved on towards Blackandro, and, Lockhart continues:

'Davy, next to whom I chanced to be riding, laid his whip about
the fern like an experienced hand, but cracked many a joke, too,
upon his own jack-boots; and, surveying the long eager battalion of
bush-rangers, exclaimed: "Good Heavens, is it thus that I visit the
scenery of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel'!" He then kept muttering
to himself as his glowing eye (the finest and brightest that I ever
saw) ran over the landscape, some of those beautiful lines from the
conclusion of the 'Lay':

"But still
When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill,
And July's eve with balmy breath
Waved the blue bells on Newark heath,
When throstles sang on Hareheadshaw,
And corn was green in Catterhaugh,
And flourished, broad, Blackandro's oak,
The aged harper's soul awoke," etc., etc.

'Mackenzie ("The Man of Feeling"), spectacled though he was, saw
the first sitting hare, gave the word to slip the dogs, and spurred
after them like a boy. All the seniors, indeed, did well as long
as the course was upwards; but when puss took down the declivity,
they halted, and breathed themselves upon the knoll, cheering gaily,
however, the young people who dashed past and below them. Coursing on
such a mountain is not like the same sport over a set of fine English
pastures. There were gulfs to be avoided, and bogs enough to be
threaded; many a stiff nag stuck fast, many a bold rider measured his
length among the peat-hags; and another stranger to the ground besides
Davy plunged neck-deep into a treacherous well-head, which, till they
were floundering in it, had borne all the appearance of a piece of
delicate green turf. When Sir Humphry emerged from his involuntary
bath, his habiliments garnished with mud, slime, and mangled
water-cresses, Sir Walter received him with a triumphant "_Encore!_"
But the philosopher had his revenge; for, joining soon after in a
brisk gallop, Scott put Sibyl Grey to a leap beyond her prowess, and
lay humbled in the ditch, while Davy, who was better mounted, cleared
it and him at a bound. Happily there was little damage done, but no
one was sorry that the "sociable" had been detained at the foot of the
hill.

'I have seen Sir Humphry in many places, and in company of many
descriptions; but never to such advantage as at Abbotsford. His host
and he delighted in each other, and the modesty of their mutual
admiration was a memorable spectacle. Davy was, by nature, a poet;
and Scott, though anything but a philosopher in the modern sense of
that term, might, I think it very likely, have pursued the study of
physical science with zeal and success, had he chanced to fall in
with such an instructor as Sir Humphry would have been to him, in
his early life. Each strove to make the other talk, and they did
so in turn more charmingly than I ever heard either on any other
occasion whatsoever. Scott, in his romantic narratives, touched upon
a deeper chord of feeling than usual, when he had such a listener as
Davy; and Davy, when induced to open his views upon any subject of
scientific interest in Scott's presence, did so with a degree of clear
energetic eloquence, and with a flow of imagery and illustration,
of which neither his habitual tone of table-talk (least of all in
London) nor any of his prose writings (except, indeed, the posthumous
"Consolations of Travel") could suggest an adequate notion. I say his
prose writings, for who that has read his sublime quatrains on the
"Doctrine of Spinoza" can doubt that he might have united, if he had
pleased, in some great didactic form, the vigorous ratiocination of
Dryden and the moral majesty of Wordsworth? I remember William Laidlaw
whispering to me one night, when their "rapt talk" had kept the circle
round the fire until long after the usual bed-time of Abbotsford:
"Gude preserve us! this is a very superior occasion! Eh, sirs!" he
added, cocking his eye like a bird. "I wonder if Shakespeare and Bacon
ever met to screw ilk other up!"'

I am also indebted to Lockhart for the following story:

'When Sir Walter Scott was debating in his mind the Prince Regent's
offer of a baronetcy, he wrote to his friend Morritt: "After all, if
one must speak for themselves, I have my quarters and emblazonments
free of all stain but Border theft and high treason, which I hope are
gentlemanlike crimes; and I hope 'Sir Walter Scott' will not sound
worse than 'Sir Humphry Davy,' though my merits are as much under his,
in point of utility, as can well be imagined. But a name is something,
and mine is the better of the two."' When Mrs. Davy, Dr. Davy's wife,
told Sir Walter Scott, at Malta, that her husband was writing his
brother's life, Sir Walter said, 'I am glad of it; I hope his mother
lived to see his greatness.' And it is pleasant to be able to record
such was the case.

Not only Sir Walter Scott, but even the cold and reserved Poet of the
Lakes, was deeply impressed with Davy's genius. Lockhart tells us
that when Sir Walter and Wordsworth ascended Helvellyn, 'they were
accompanied by an illustrious philosopher, who was also a true poet,
and might have been one of the greatest of poets had he chosen; and I
have heard Mr. Wordsworth say that it would be difficult to express
the feelings with which he, who so often had climbed Helvellyn alone,
found himself standing on its summit with two such men as _Scott_ and
_Davy_.'

The crowning honour of Davy's life now awaited him. His friend Sir Joseph Banks--himself the successor of such men as Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Hans Sloane, and Sir Isaac Newton--who had held the post of President of the Royal Society for forty-two years, died on 19th June, 1820, and Sir Humphry was, almost unanimously, elected on the 30th of the following November. He continued to fill the post for seven successive years, and his annual addresses are very characteristic specimens of his eloquence and suavity. He retained the old practice of delivering his speeches in full court dress,[114] and with the Society's mace (Oliver Cromwell's celebrated 'bauble') laid before him. He also continued his predecessor's practice of having weekly evening gatherings of the most distinguished men of science of the day, so long as he remained in Lower Grosvenor Street; but they were discontinued on his moving, in 1825, to 26, Park Street, Grosvenor Square.

Davy now began to find that

'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.'

He was worried by the numerous small duties which pertained to his prominent position, and was sadly disappointed at not being able to prevail upon the Government of the day to take up his somewhat magnificent views as to the development of the Royal Society, and the subordination of certain other great public establishments to it. He used to complain that the Government were only too glad to get anything they could out of the Society, but were loth to give back anything in return. I gather too, from what Dr. Davy says, that symptoms of failing health began, even thus early, to show themselves. He somewhat relaxed the severity of his labours--made trips to Ireland, Wales, and Scotland (dining at Edinburgh with Sir Walter Scott), chiefly with a view to enjoying the fine scenery, and the fishing and shooting; but, as regards Wales, also with the object of devising means for remedying the results produced by the noxious copper effluvia from the Smelting Works at Swansea.

In the autumn of 1821 he paid a visit to Penzance; always fond--as indeed most Cornishmen seem to be--of embracing an opportunity of revisiting his native place. On this occasion he was entertained at a public dinner; and he left his old home, doubtless expecting to see it again and again: but this was destined to be his last visit.

From 1823 to 1826 may be described as the last period of his scientific labours; and it was in a great measure devoted to investigations, undertaken at the request of the Government, into the best mode of preventing the destruction of the copper-sheathing of vessels by the action of the sea. This Davy to some extent accomplished by coating the copper with tin; but, unfortunately, the tin did not prevent (as the copper did) the fouling of the metal by accretions of seaweeds and shells; and the practical result was nil.

He was much disappointed at this, having taken great pains in the matter, and having even made a voyage to the North Sea for the purpose of conducting his experiments. Of this excursion, which included visits to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, he has left copious records--though, as a general rule, he had now discontinued his diary--and these include his reflexions not only on the scenery, etc., through which he passed, but, according to his custom, his impressions of the distinguished men of science and others with whom he came in contact. Those circumstances which impressed Davy most deeply he often recorded, as was his practice throughout his life, in verse. A specimen may be given here in the following fragment written at Ullswater, which he visited in August, 1825:

'Ye lovely hills that rise in majesty
Amidst the ruddy light of setting suns,
Your tops are bright with radiance, while below
The wave is dark and gloomy, and the vale
Hid in obscurest mist. Such is the life
Of Man: this vale of earth and waters dark
And gloomy--but the mountains range above!
The sky--the heavens are bright!----'

But he could not succeed in shaking off the illness of which he had had more than one warning; and even his elastic spirits began to flag under its depressing influence. The spring of 1826 found him worse; he complained much of rheumatism, and of slight numbness in his limbs; and the death of his mother in the autumn still further affected his health. With great pain and effort he delivered what proved to be his last address to the Royal Society--a body whose mission was so like his own, 'ad inquisitionem et inventionem naturæ veræ et interioris rerum omnium'--on St. Andrew's Day, 1826; and shortly after he suffered a slight attack of paralysis, which, however, did not prevent his revising his discourses, nor even deter him from projecting new scientific treatises. During his recovery he liked nothing better than having novels and romances read to him,--partly I should think to divert his mind from the small worries which were inevitable to one occupying the post which he filled, but which at this juncture pressed upon him with increasing force, and indeed probably conduced to his determining upon another visit to the Continent in January, 1827, accompanied on this occasion only by his brother, Dr. John Davy, an army surgeon.

The winter journey was rough and dreary. Paris was avoided, on account of the too great excitement which it was feared its society might induce; and the roads along which the travellers drove, bad at the best, were now in their very worst condition from the snow. The scenes through which they passed were uninteresting, the occasional roadside churches being the only noteworthy objects; and these they rarely failed to enter, the sick philosopher generally dropping on his knees for a silent prayer.

So they passed on, notwithstanding the severe cold and the snow, over the Mont Cenis, into Italy, reaching Ravenna on the 27th February--Davy, strange to say, rather the better than the worse for his cold and cheerless expedition. Here he rested for some time, occupying himself chiefly in shooting, fishing, and reading Byron, whose acquaintance (with that of the accomplished Countess Guiccioli) he had previously made at this place. His note-book was kept up, and was filled with numerous acute observations on subjects connected with natural history and chemistry, interspersed with expressions of pious humility and of gratitude to 'the Great Cause of all being.' His health improved; and in March, 1827, Dr. Davy returned to Corfu, whilst Sir Humphry shortly afterwards started on a solitary expedition through the Eastern Alps and down the Rhine. But his health now declined; he frequently had to apply leeches and blisters, and he lived so abstemiously as to considerably reduce his strength and spirits. 'Valde miserabilis!' he often exclaimed in his note-book; and once he wrote, 'Dubito fortissime restaurationem meam.' It was no doubt whilst in this mood that he wrote to Mr. Davies Gilbert from Salzburg, on 30th June, 1827, announcing his retirement from the office of President of the Royal Society.[115] Whilst on one of his numerous fishing expeditions, a pursuit[116] which, as we have seen, he passionately followed all his life long, he wrote about this time, the following pensive lines, _more suo_, on contemplating a rapid river:

'E'en as I look upon thy mighty flood,
Absorb'd in thought, it seems that I become
A part of thee, and in thy thundering waves
My thoughts are lost, and pass to future time,
Seeking the infinite, and rolling on
Towards the eternal and unbounded sea
Of the All-Powerful, Omnipresent Mind.'

This was a favourite thought of his. He amplified it in a letter which he addressed from Rome in the following year to his friend Poole:

'I have this conviction full on my mind,' he wrote, 'that intellectual
beings spring from the same breath of Infinite Intelligence, and
return to it again, but by different courses. Like rivers born amid
the clouds of heaven, and lost in the deep and eternal ocean--some in
youth, rapid and short-lived torrents; some in manhood, powerful and
copious rivers; and some in age, by a slow and winding course, half
lost in their career, and making their exit by many sandy and shallow
mouths.'

The current of his own life now carried him back in one of its eddies to London, which he reached on 6th October.

The winter was passed in town, but the state of his health prevented any great exertion, and did not permit his seeing much society; yet the world can scarcely be said to have been the loser; for in his retirement he composed (being now nearly fifty years of age), that delightful book, dear to every angler, 'Salmonia.'[117] Returning spring revived his desire to revisit what he considered the finest scenery in the world, namely, the Alpine valleys of Illyria and Styria; and at the end of March he left England, accompanied by a young medical gentleman (his godson), Mr. Tobin, the son of a much-valued old friend. His pursuits were much as usual, and, living somewhat more generously, he more than once entertained some faint hopes of his ultimate recovery; 'attaching,' as he himself put it, 'a loose fringe, of hope to his tattered garments.' His mind was fully active during this summer, as may be judged from his having now planned his well-known work, 'Consolations of Travel,' which he used to say 'contained the essence of his philosophical opinions;' and from his having sketched out a slight plan for his own memoirs. Stress of weather detained him a short time at Wurzen, and here he occupied the time of his detention by writing his little Irish romance, 'The Last of the O'Donoghues.' He also now sent to press the second edition of his 'Salmonia,' which he thought 'twice as good, as well as twice as big' as the first. At Trieste he resumed his experiments on the electric eel, and at length satisfied himself that under no conditions did the shock affect the magnet. This formed the subject of a paper--the last of a series which continued almost uninterruptedly for a period of twenty-eight years--published by the Royal Society. It was about this time that he made the noble and touching entry in his diary:

'Si moro, spero che ho fatto il mio dovere; e che mia vita non e stato
vano ed inutile.'[118]

The curtain rises on the last act, at Rome, where he passed the winter. Here--where he describes himself, in a letter dated 6th February, 1829, to his friend Poole, as 'a ruin among ruins'--he received, a fortnight after that date, his last and fatal shock of paralysis. It was quite unexpected by him, and he was barely able to write one or two hurried letters to his brother, begging him to come quickly. He now quite made up his mind that he was about to die; but his mind continued calm and clear, and he urged Dr. Davy, when he at length arrived, not to give way to any vain regrets, but to regard the matter philosophically. Even in this extremity, the consideration of the strange powers of the torpedo exercised a fascinating influence over him; and he directed experiments and dissections of the fish from the bed upon which he not only believed himself to be dying, but upon which he thought, more than once, that he had actually died. Only with great difficulty was he persuaded by his wife and surrounding friends that he had not as yet passed the dark portals of the grave.

It will hardly be believed that from such a state as this he rallied. Yet such was the case! Lady Davy had brought with her from England an early copy of the second edition of his 'Salmonia;' and he read it with avidity. Indeed reading--or rather being read to--was now almost his only pursuit. Moore's 'Epicurean,' Shakespeare, 'The Arabian Nights,' and 'Humphrey Clinker,' by turns engaged his attention; and at length he not only thought recovery possible, but by April was actually able to take drives about Rome and its neighbourhood, entering fully, with his companions, into all the enjoyment of the charms of a brilliant Italian spring.

At length, leaving Rome, 'by slow and easy stages,' they came to Geneva, which place they reached on the 28th May, by the Mont Cenis route. Here the little party took up their residence at La Couronne hotel, which overlooks the lake; and Davy expressed an earnest desire once more to throw a fly on it. He was very deeply affected on hearing of the death of his old friend Dr. Thomas Young; but dined heartily with the others at five o'clock. After dinner he was heard joking with the waiter as to the cooking of the fish, and desiring that he might be furnished with a specimen of every variety which the lake contained; and, after being read to as usual, he went to bed at nine. In rising, however, from his chair at the dinner table, for this purpose, he gave his elbow a rather violent blow, the sensations resulting from which frightened him very much, and probably accelerated his decease. At half-past two in the morning the servant aroused Dr. Davy with the information that his illustrious brother was much worse. The doctor flew to the chamber, but only in time to see Sir Humphry expire, just as the morning of the 29th of May, 1829, began to dawn.

His will was proved under £30,000, and Lady Davy was appointed sole executrix. Paris says that he left £100 to the Penzance Grammar School, the interest to be devoted to a prize for the best scholar, provided the school kept holiday on the anniversary of his birthday; but I do not find this in the will. I believe that the interest on the money is still paid, but that the holiday is omitted.

A public funeral was decreed him by the authorities and literati of Geneva, including his friends Decandolle and Sismondi, who highly appreciated him; and his mortal remains were deposited in the cemetery at Plain-Palais, close to those of Professor Pictet.[119] It was Davy's wish, as expressed in his will, to be buried wherever he might die: 'Natura curat suas reliquias,' he wrote; and on his monument will be found the reason of this lofty reliance--namely, because he was

'Summus arcanorum Naturæ indigator.'[120]

Thus died, without issue, and within a few months of his great friends Wollaston and Young, Sir Humphry Davy, poet and philosopher, before he had completed his fifty-first year--a man (to use the words of Dr. Paris) 'whose splendid discoveries illumined the age in which he lived, adorned the country which gave him birth, and obtained from foreign and hostile nations the homage of admiration and the meed of gratitude.'

His genius it would be presumptuous in me to endeavour to analyze or describe. I have attempted a biographical sketch rather than an essay on Davy's proper place in the ranks of science;[121] but he was undoubtedly one of the master-spirits of his age; and I gladly select, from among many other similar accounts, the peroration of the _éloge_ pronounced upon him by Baron Cuvier before the Institute of France:

'Ainsi a fini à cinquante ans, sur une terre étrangère, un génie dont
le nom brillera avec éclat parmi cette foule s'éclatante de noms dont
s'enarguillit la Grande Bretagne. Mais, que dis je, pour un tel homme
aucune terre n'est étrangère; Genève surtout ne pouvait pas l'être,
où, depuis vingt ans, il comptait des amis intimes, des admirateurs
sans cesse occupés de répandre ses decouvertes sur le Continent;
aussi, le deuil n'eût pas été plus grand ni les obsèques plus
honorables pour un de leur concitoyens les plus respectés.'

The talented and indefatigable editors of the 'Bibliotheca Cornubiensis' have observed that, since the formation of the Royal Society, fifty-eight persons, either born in Cornwall or long resident within its borders, have become, through their eminence in mineralogical and other pursuits, Fellows of that body. A full list of their names is printed in the index to Messrs. Boase and Courtney's work; and in it they rightly say that Cornishmen may be pardoned for believing that no such record of distinction in scientific knowledge could be drawn up from any English county of corresponding size and population. I will only add my opinion that, amongst the foremost in that bright roll of honour, stands forth the name of HUMPHRY DAVY.

FOOTNOTES:

[101] He was one of five children, two of whom were boys and three girls.

[102] The Scilly Isles.

[103] Presented to the Royal Society by Lady Davy, after her husband's decease. This picture had a narrow escape from being lost; it was, however, discovered by Mr. Davies Gilbert in the garret of a man named Newton, who was to have engraved it, and was rescued at the cost of £10, paid to the landlady, who was unable to get her rent from her impecunious lodger. There are other portraits of him by Lonsdale, as P.R.S.; by Howard (when Davy was twenty-three); by Jackson (when he was forty-five); a bust; and the statue erected in December, 1878 (after the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in front of the Market-house, Penzance, near Davy's old house in Market Jew Street, (now rebuilt,) and about half-way between it and the Star Inn.) He also appears in the print of the Woburn Sheep-shearing, published by Garrard in 1811.

[104] More than enough has been made by Davy's critics of his admiration for the aristocracy; but 'it is not true' (as George Eliot observed) 'that a man's intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point.'

[105] The house was in the corner which formed the north angle of the square.

[106] Just as another Cornishman--Richard Trevithick--was the first who applied steam to agriculture.

[107] Becker tells us how the ladies so admired his handsome eyes that they vowed they were 'made for something besides poring over crucibles.'

[108] Amongst the former of whom may be mentioned De Quincey, Godwin, and Coleridge, who used frequently to meet at the miserable rooms of the latter, then at the office of the _Courier_ newspaper, in the Strand.

[109] It was on one of these occasions that Davy, when out shooting partridges one day at Rokeby, persuaded Roderick Murchison to come up to town, and '_set to_ at science.'

[110] On 20th October, 1818, he was made a Baronet.

[111] By his will Davy provided that, in certain contingencies, this service should be melted down in order to provide a fund for the reward of original, meritorious discoveries in Science, either 'in Europe or Anglo-America.'

[112] Byron's lines in the first canto of 'Don Juan' will doubtless recur to many of my readers:

'This is the patent age of new inventions
For killing bodies and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best intentions;
Sir Humphry Davy's lantern by which coals
Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions.'

Jackson's account of Timbuctoo; the narrative of Robert Adams, a sailor; Dr. Leyden's 'Discoveries in Africa,' and other works, are then hinted at; and the poet goes on, sardonically, to say that _all these_

'Are ways to benefit mankind, as true
Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.'

[113] Whilst at Naples he made the acquaintance of one of the guides up Vesuvius, whom Davy commissioned to inform him from time to time of the state of the volcano; the man used occasionally to communicate with him, and the letters reached Sir Humphry, notwithstanding their phonetic address:

'Siromfredevi,
'Londra.'

[114] As a rule he is said to have been careless about his costume; it was with the greatest difficulty that he was persuaded to don a quasi-court dress in order to be presented to the Empress Josephine, and his negligent appearance and manners often surprised his Continental acquaintances. About one thing, however, he was rather particular; and that was to wear a wide-brimmed hat whenever he could.

[115] The Davy medal of the Royal Society was, in 1882, presented, in duplicate, to D. Mendelejeff and Lothar Meyer for their discovery of the periodic relations of the atomic weights.

[116] He would often go two or three hundred miles for a day's fishing, and has more than once patiently fished all day long without a rise; he was, however, generally a successful as well as an enthusiastic fisherman, but seems to have been thought somewhat clumsy in his manipulation.

[117] The first edition was genially reviewed by Sir Walter Scott in the _Quarterly Review_, xxxviii. 503. Sir Walter used to say of Davy, in allusion to his well-known preference for his _old_ associates and acquaintances, that 'he never forgot a friend.'

[118] It should, perhaps, be remarked here that Davy was an excellent linguist.

[119] The centenary of his birth was celebrated at Penzance in February, 1879.

[120] There is also a tablet to his memory in the north transept of Westminster Abbey.

[121] Dr. Paris, F.R.S., has appended to his 'Life of Davy' an historical sketch of the revolutions in chemical science produced by his discoveries, and also a list of his chief works, which may conveniently be consulted by those who desire more detailed information as to Davy's scientific triumphs.

_ADMIRAL VISCOUNT EXMOUTH._

_ADMIRAL VISCOUNT EXMOUTH._

'Hearts of oak! our captain cried--
When each gun
From its adamantine lips
Spread a death-shade round the ships,
Like the hurricane eclipse
Of the sun.'

CAMPBELL.

The life of this gallant sailor and good man was told so admirably in 1835, by my late valued friend, Edward Osler, F.L.S.--for many years editor of the _Royal Cornwall Gazette_, and himself one of our Cornish Athenæ--that his memoir must necessarily form the backbone of any account of Lord Exmouth's career. To Mr. Osier's well-known work I would therefore refer those who desire a more detailed account than space allows me to give to the subject of this chapter. I should, however, add that I have been fortunate enough to gather some facts to which even Mr. Osier does not refer in his elaborate memoir.

Lord Exmouth's career was both eventful and distinguished; but, notwithstanding its brilliancy, his chief glory was his unswerving devotion to his country, irrespective of all party feeling (and he was a strong Tory)--his generosity in recognising to the fullest extent the merits of his subordinates--his combined strictness and kindness to his men--and his constant recognition of the Divine Hand in all his victories. No vessel under the orders of Pellew was ever taken by the enemy.

Like many another Cornish worthy, Edward Pellew was a man of comparatively small beginnings. Originally, it is said, of Norman extraction, the Pellews were an old-established West Cornwall family, whose tombs may still be found at Breage. Humphry Pellew, his grandfather, an American merchant, the builder of part of the little town of Flushing in Falmouth harbour, took for his wife, in 1692, Judith Sparnon of Sparnon and Pengelly in Breage, by whom he had six children; but the children of Samuel, the youngest son (who was only eight years old when his father died in 1721), were at length the only male survivors of the family. This Samuel Pellew, Lord Exmouth's father, a man of determined character, commanded a post-office packet on the Dover station. He married in 1752 Constance, daughter of Edward Langford, Esq., of a Herefordshire family, settled at or near Penzance--a woman, Mr. Osier says, 'of extraordinary spirit,' and fitted, as indeed her husband also was, to be a parent of heroes.

In 1765 Samuel Pellew died, leaving a widow and six children; of whom Edward, the second, was born at Dover, 19th April, 1757. In 1765 he removed with his mother to Penzance; and here, when quite a child, gave an early instance of his love of the 'pomp and circumstance of glorious war,' by walking all the way from Penzance to Helston, in order to follow a troop of soldiers; and of his indomitable courage, when somewhat older, by removing from a burning house a quantity of gunpowder which had been stored there. He frequently played truant from school in order to get into a boat at the quay; and was a great favourite with the loafers there, who taught him to box. Bottrell says that Mrs. Pellew and her family lived in a thatched cottage 'near the Alverton entrance to Fox's gardens;' the house still stands, on the left-hand side of the road as the traveller leaves Penzance for the Land's End.

The Truro Grammar School, where the Rev. R. Polwhele was one of his schoolfellows, as appears from his 'Reminiscences,'[122] was the next scene of his combative energy; and here he thrashed so many of his schoolfellows, that, in order to escape a still severer thrashing with which the head-master (then Mr. Conon) threatened him, he ran away, and--against his grandfather's consent, but luckily for English glory, and for his own fame--went to sea. Whilst at Truro, hastening through the courtyard of the Red Lion Hotel to assist in putting out a fire, Pellew found the high back gate shut; but he sprang over it, and I remember the spot being pointed out to me in evidence of his strength and agility. His freaks on the water in after-life were of the most daring kind, and he often set the example on board ship, when no sailor could be found bold and active enough to perform some dangerous act of seamanship.

In the year 1770, being then about thirteen or fourteen years of age, Edward Pellew entered the Navy in the _Juno_, and went his first voyage to the Falkland Islands. Thence, under the same captain (Stott), he sailed in the _Alarm_ to the Mediterranean, where, at Marseilles--a place which he was destined afterwards to save from destruction by its own inhabitants--he left the ship, in consequence of a gross and uncalled-for insult inflicted by the Captain on one of Pellew's brother midshipmen, named Cole.

He next joined the _Blonde_, under Captain Pownoll--who had been trained in the school of another Cornish naval hero, Admiral Boscawen--and with whom he soon became a prime favourite. It was on board the _Blonde_ that he so alarmed and amused General Burgoyne, by standing on his head on the yard-arm when the General came on board to make his ill-starred expedition to America; and from the fore-yard of the same ship Pellew sprang to rescue a man who had fallen overboard. His magnificent physique and perfect courage enabled him to perform similar services on more than one occasion.

A smart engagement with a superior American force on Lake Champlain was his next exploit, in which, though unsuccessful, he found another opportunity of showing his coolness and bravery; and his services on this occasion gained him his lieutenant's commission. Shortly afterwards he very nearly captured, single-handed, the American Commander-in-Chief Arnold. The stock and buckle, which General Arnold left behind him in his flight, were long (and perhaps still are) preserved by the Pellew family.

Joining Burgoyne's unlucky army, and sharing in all the dangers and hardships which it underwent, Pellew, though only twenty years old, was summoned to the council of war at Saratoga, at which (against his own advice) it was resolved, in October, 1777, to capitulate to an American force of double the strength of the English. On his way home to England, in a transport, he fought an American privateer, and beat her off with his usual pluck and skill.

On receiving his commission to a guard-ship, he threatened to throw it up rather than remain at so inactive a post; and it was not until he declared his intention to command a privateer that he obtained his appointment to the _Licorne_, in which he sailed for Newfoundland in the spring of 1779. He returned, however, to England in the following winter, and joined the _Apollo_, under his old friend--his 'only one on earth,' as he said--Captain Pownoll, taking part in an engagement with the French frigate _Stanislaus_, on which occasion the Captain left to Pellew the honour of completing her capture.