THE ROYAL INSTITUTION.
The Royal Institution, as originally conceived, was an establishment
for the benefit of the poor. It was founded at the close of the last
century by Benjamin Thomson, a Royalist American in the service of
the Elector Palatine of Bavaria, by whom he was created a Count of
the Holy Roman Empire. Count Rumford, as he is commonly called, was a
practical philanthropist and a man of science, best known to this age
by his association with the present-day doctrine of the nature of heat;
and to his contemporaries, by his constant efforts to apply science to
domestic economy. In 1796 Rumford put forth a “proposal for forming
in London by private subscription an establishment for feeding the
poor, and giving them useful employment, and also for furnishing food
at a cheap rate to others who may stand in need of such assistance,
connected with an institution for introducing and bringing forward
into general use new inventions and improvements, particularly such
as relate to the management of heat and the saving of fuel, and to
various other mechanical contrivances by which domestic comfort and
economy may be promoted.” Rumford, as he says in one of his letters
to Thomas Bernard--another practical philanthropist, and one of his
earliest associates in the undertaking here referred to--was “deeply
impressed with the necessity of rendering it _fashionable_ to care for
the poor and indigent.” The immediate result was the foundation of
the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor; but as regards
the associated Institution, it was eventually considered that it would
be “too conspicuous, and too interesting and important, to be made _an
appendix_ to any other existing establishment, and consequently it must
stand alone, and on its own proper basis.”
In 1799, Rumford conferred with the Committee of the Society for
Bettering the Condition of the Poor as to the steps to be taken to
found, “by private subscription, a public institution for diffusing
the knowledge and facilitating the general and speedy introduction of
new and useful mechanical inventions and improvements; and also for
teaching, by regular courses of philosophical lectures and experiments,
the applications of the new discoveries in science to the improvement
of arts and manufactures, and in facilitating the means of procuring
the comforts and conveniences of life.” The Institution was duly
launched in March, 1799, with Sir Joseph Banks as Chairman of Managers,
Count Rumford as Secretary, and Mr. Thomas Bernard, the promoter of
the Institution for the Protection and Instruction of Climbing Boys,
and of the Society for the Relief of Poor Neighbours in Distress,
as Treasurer. The second volume of the “Reports of the Society for
Bettering the Condition of the Poor” contains a long account of the
Institution, “so far as it may be expected to affect the poor,” from
the pen of Mr. Bernard, concerning which Dr. Bence Jones, a former
Secretary of the Institution, drily remarks, “It is difficult to
believe that the Royal Institution of the present day was ever intended
to resemble the picture given of it in this Report.”
Rumford, from the outset, threw himself with great zeal and ardour
into the work of organising and starting the Institution, and it was
mainly by his energy and administrative ability that so speedy a
beginning was made. Mr. Mellish’s house in Albemarle Street was bought,
and its apartments were quickly transformed into lecture rooms, model
rooms, library, offices, etc. In May “a good cook was engaged for the
improvement of culinary advancement--one object, and not the least
important--for the Royal Institution.” Rumford was requested by the
Managers to live in the house, to superintend the servants, to preserve
order and decorum, and to control the expenses of housekeeping.
Towards the end of 1799 Dr. Garnett was secured as Lecturer and
Scientific Secretary. Thomas Garnett, a physician, who at one time
practised at Harrogate, and who is known to chemists for his researches
into the composition of the Harrogate mineral waters, was at the time
Professor of Chemistry and Experimental Philosophy at Anderson’s
Institution in Glasgow. He had a considerable reputation as a lecturer,
on the strength of which he was invited by Rumford to come to London.
Garnett’s lectures began in March, 1800, in what is now the upper
Library of the Institution, and which had been fitted up to accommodate
the greatest possible number of auditors “with a greater deference to
their curiosity than to their convenience.”
Although not altogether unsuccessful at the Institution, Garnett--in
spite of “the Northern accent which he still retained in a slight
degree, and which rendered his voice somewhat inharmonious to a London
audience”--was hardly the type of man required for such a place,
and differences soon arose between him and Rumford. To add to his
difficulties he had, just prior to his removal from Glasgow, lost
his wife, and the event seems to have wholly unnerved him. He grew
listless and melancholy; and eventually, in 1801, he was called upon
to resign. After leaving the Institution, he struggled on for a time,
giving courses of scientific lectures in his own house, and at Tom’s
Coffee-House in the City, and seeking for practice as a physician. Sick
in mind and weak in body, he soon broke down, and died in 1802, at the
age of thirty-six, leaving his children penniless. The Managers so far
bettered the condition of the poor as to subscribe, on behalf of the
Institution, £50 towards the publication of his posthumous work on the
“Laws of Animal Life,” and to allow the book to be dedicated to them.
The accompanying illustration (p. 70), from a drawing by Gillray,
entitled “Pneumatic Experiments at the Royal Institution,” shows the
theatre during a lecture by Garnett, with Davy acting as assistant. Sir
John Hippesley is represented as breathing the “pleasure-giving air.”
The standing figure near the door is Rumford, and among the audience
are Isaac Disraeli, Lord Stanhope, Earl Pomfret, and Sir H. Englefield.
Accounts differ as to the precise means by which Davy was brought to
the notice of Count Rumford, nor is it very important to know whether
it was through the intervention of Davies Gilbert, or Dr. Hope, or Mr.
Underwood, or, as was most probably the case, of all three.
In a letter to Hope now before me Davy writes:--
“I believe it is in a great measure owing to your kind mention
of me to Count Rumford, that I occupy my present situation in
the Royal Institution. I ought to be very thankful to you; for
most of my wishes through life are accomplished, as I am enabled
to pursue my favourite study, and at the same time to be of some
little utility to Society.”
[Illustration: PNEUMATIC EXPERIMENT AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. (_After
Gillray._)]
This much, at least, is certain: there was an absolute agreement among
those who had the best means of judging that no better appointment
was possible. And yet, if we are to credit Dr. Paris, the first
impression produced on Rumford by Davy’s personal appearance was
highly unfavourable, and the Count would not allow him to lecture in
the theatre until he had given a specimen of his abilities in the
smaller lecture-room, which old _habitués_ of the Royal Institution
well remember. Dr. Paris adds that his first lecture entirely removed
every prejudice, and at its conclusion Rumford exclaimed, “Let him
command any arrangements which the Institution can afford.” And he was
accordingly on the next day promoted to the theatre.
Six weeks after his arrival, he gave his first public lecture. How he
acquitted himself, may be gleaned from the following account, given
under the heading of the “Royal Institution of Great Britain” in the
_Philosophical Magazine_, vol. x., p. 281 (1801):--
“It must give pleasure to our readers to learn that this new and
useful institution, the object of which is the application of
science to the common purposes of life, may be now considered as
settled on a firm basis....
“We have also to notice a course of lectures, just commenced
at the institution, on a new branch of philosophy--we mean the
Galvanic Phenomena. On this interesting branch Mr. Davy (late
of Bristol) gave the first lecture on the 25th of April. He
began with the history of Galvanism, detailed the successive
discoveries, and described the different methods of accumulating
galvanic influence.... He showed the effects of galvanism on the
legs of frogs, and exhibited some interesting experiments on the
galvanic effects on the solutions of metals in acids....
“Sir Joseph Banks, Count Rumford, and other distinguished
philosophers were present. The audience were highly gratified,
and testified their satisfaction by general applause. Mr. Davy,
who appears to be very young, acquitted himself admirably well;
from the sparkling intelligence of his eye, his animated manner,
and the _tout ensemble_, we have no doubt of his attaining a
distinguished eminence.”
The Managers were so far satisfied, that at a meeting held on June 1st
they passed the following resolutions:--
“Resolved--That Mr. Humphry Davy, Director of the Chemical
Laboratory, and Assistant Lecturer in Chemistry, has, since he
has been employed at the Institution, given satisfactory proofs
of his talents as a Lecturer.”
“Resolved--That he be appointed, and in future denominated,
Lecturer in Chemistry at the Royal Institution, instead of
continuing to occupy the place of Assistant Lecturer, which he
has hitherto filled.”
In the following July, Dr. Young (“Phenomenon Young,” as he was called
at Cambridge), the great exponent of the Undulatory Theory of Light,
was engaged as Professor of Natural Philosophy, Editor of the Journals,
and General Superintendent of the House.[D]
[D] Young’s connection with the Royal Institution was
comparatively brief. On July 4th, 1803, it was resolved
“That Dr. Young be paid the balance of two years’ complete
salary, and that his engagement with the Institution
terminate from this time.”
At a meeting held in the same month, the Managers
“Resolved--That a Course of Lectures on the Chemical Principles
of the Art of Tanning be given by Mr. Davy. To commence the
second of November next; and that respectable persons of
the trade, who shall be recommended by Proprietors of the
Institution, be admitted to these lectures gratis.”
To order a young man of twenty-two, who had probably never seen the
inside of tannery, to give an account of the art and mystery of
leather-making, would seem to savour somewhat of what Coleridge would
style “_ultra-crepidation_,” and accordingly the Managers further
“Resolved--That Mr. Davy have permission to absent
himself--during the months of July, August, and September for
the purpose of making himself more particularly acquainted
with the practical part of the business of tanning, in order
to prepare himself for giving the above-mentioned course of
lectures.”
Lectures on “The Chemical Principles of the Process of Tanning
Leather, and of the objects that must particularly be had in view in
attempts to improve that most useful art” are mentioned in Rumford’s
first prospectus, and the foregoing resolutions were probably passed
in consequence. Davy did a considerable amount of experimental work
in connection with these lectures, and the Journal of the Royal
Institution contains several short communications from him on the
chemistry of the subject, but the main facts he discovered are
contained in a memoir read to the Royal Society on February 24th,
1803, and published in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of that year,
under the title of an “Account of Some Experiments and Observations on
the constituent Parts of certain astringent Vegetables; and on their
Operation in Tanning.”
Although Davy, by his earnestness, his knowledge, his felicity of
expression, and by a certain dignity of treatment which seemed to
invest even the homeliest subjects with unlooked-for importance, could
interest an audience on almost any subject he brought before them,
we may be sure that his soul soon sighed for a loftier theme than
leather. He found it on the occasion of his lecture of January 21st,
1802, when he delivered the introductory discourse of that session. The
date, indeed, is a red-letter day not only in Davy’s history but also
in that of the Royal Institution. From that time the position of the
Institution in the scientific and social world of London would seem to
be assured.
Its affairs up to this time had been gradually going from bad to worse.
The enthusiasm with which it was started a couple of years back had
apparently spent itself, and Rumford, by his _hauteur_ and high-handed
management, had alienated many powerful friends. The subscriptions,
which in 1800 had reached £11,047, had fallen in 1802 to £2,999, whilst
the expenses were annually increasing. The outlook was gloomy in the
extreme, and everything seemed to portend that the latest scheme for
the amelioration of humanity was about to share the too common fate of
such projects. The young man of twenty-three, however, changed all this
as if by the stroke of a magician’s wand. No Prince Fortunatus could
have done more.
His theme was not too ambitious; it would be considered even trite
and commonplace to-day, and the man would be very bold or very simple
who would now attempt to deal with it in the theatre of the Royal
Institution; for this introductory lecture was nothing more than an
exordium on the worth of science as an agent in the improvement of
society. It was, and was felt to be, however, an _apologia_ for the
very existence of the Institution. Rumford and his fellow managers
would seem to have staked everything on a single throw. Davy’s power as
a lecturer had been noised abroad, and we may be sure that Coleridge
and his other friends did not keep their tongues still. Coleridge,
indeed, told the literary world that he assiduously attended Davy’s
lectures, to increase his stock of metaphors. The youth who had
discovered “the pleasure-producing air” was talked about in fashionable
circles; and Mr. Bernard and the Count used their persuasiveness, and
Sir Joseph Banks his social power, to secure for him the most cultured
audience in London. If we may credit Dr. Paris, other influences, too,
were at work. Davy’s association with Beddoes had probably gained for
him the goodwill of the Tepidarians, even if it did not actually
give him the _entrée_ to the Society; and these Red Republicans,
whose “pious orgies” at Old Slaughter’s Coffee-House in St. Martin’s
Lane consisted mainly in libations of tea, vied with the Royalists in
their efforts to pave his triumphal way. His success was instant and
complete. In a series of lofty and impassioned periods he traced the
services of science to humanity; he dwelt upon its dignity and nobility
as a pursuit, upon its value as a moral and educational force. The
small, spare youth, with his earnestness, his eloquence, his unaffected
manner, the play of his mobile features, his speaking eyes--“eyes
which,” as one of his fair auditors was heard to remark, “were made for
something besides poring over crucibles”--held his hearers spellbound
as he declaimed such sentences as these:--
“Individuals influenced by interested motives or false views may
check for a time the progress of knowledge;--moral causes may
produce a momentary slumber of the public spirit;--the adoption
of wild and dangerous theories, by ambitious or deluded men, may
throw a temporary opprobrium on literature; but the influence of
true philosophy will never be despised; the germs of improvement
are sown in minds, even where they are not perceived; and
sooner or later the springtime of their growth must arrive. In
reasoning concerning the future hopes of the human species, we
may look forward with confidence to a state of society, in which
the different orders and classes of men will contribute more
effectually to the support of each other than they have hitherto
done. This state, indeed, seems to be approaching fast; for, in
consequence of the multiplication of the means of instruction
the man of science and the manufacturer are daily becoming more
assimilated to each other. The artist, who formerly affected
to despise scientific principles, because he was incapable of
perceiving the advantages of them, is now so far enlightened as
to favour the adoption of new processes in his art, whenever
they are evidently connected with the diminution of labour;
and the increase of projectors, even to too great an extent,
demonstrates the enthusiasm of the public mind in its search
after improvement....
“The unequal division of property and of labour, the differences
of rank and condition amongst mankind, are the sources of power
in civilised life--its moving causes, and even its very soul.
In considering and hoping that the human species is capable of
becoming more enlightened and more happy, we can only expect
that the different parts of the great whole of society should be
intimately united together, by means of knowledge and the useful
arts; that they should act as the children of one great parent,
with one determinate end, so that no power may be rendered
useless--no exertions thrown away.
“In this view, we do not look to distant ages, or amuse ourselves
with brilliant though delusive dreams, concerning the infinite
improveability of man, the annihilation of labour, disease,
and even death, but we reason by analogy from simple facts, we
consider only a state of human progression arising out of its
present condition,--we look for a time that we may reasonably
expect--FOR A BRIGHT DAY, OF WHICH WE ALREADY BEHOLD THE DAWN.”
Those who may read these sentences will either smile at their seeming
archaism, or wonder at the antiquity of their argument; for the lesson
which Davy inculcated at the beginning of the century is still at its
close dinned into our ears, and practically all the stock reasons urged
by latter-day writers and platform speakers on technical education and
the abstract value of science are to be found in his lectures. But the
circumstances of 1802 were widely different from those of 1896. The
birth of the century was a singularly auspicious time for science; and
many cultured men who knew nothing of science, yet felt in a dim sort
of way that it was destined to be a mighty factor in civilisation.
Davy’s words struck a sympathetic chord; they served to formulate and
define ideas of which all who lived in the spirit of the times and
shared in its movement must have been conscious. Speaking to willing
and receptive ears, and with every attribute of manner, speech,
and interest in his favour, he saw his chance: and with a practical
sagacity beyond his years, he seized it.
Davy’s triumph is recorded in many contemporary notices, and it lives
as one of the traditions of the Royal Institution.
Francis Horner thus records his impressions in his journal, under date
March 31st, 1802:--
“I have been once to the Royal Institution and heard Davy
lecture to a mixed and large assembly of both sexes, to the
number perhaps of three hundred or more. It is a curious scene;
the reflections it excites are of an ambiguous nature, for the
prospect of possible good is mingled with the observation of
much actual folly. The audience is assembled by the influence of
fashion merely; and fashion and chemistry form a very incongruous
union....
“Davy’s style of lecturing is much in favour of himself, though
not, perhaps, entirely suited to the place; it has rather a
little awkwardness, but it is that air which bespeaks real
modesty and good sense; he is only awkward because he cannot
condescend to assume that theatrical quackery of manner which
might have a more imposing effect. This was my impression from
his lecture. I have since (April 2nd) met Davy in company, and
was much pleased with him; a great softness and propriety of
manner, which might be cultivated into elegance; his physiognomy
struck me as being superior to what the science of chemistry, on
its present plan, can afford exercise for; I fancied to discover
in it the lineaments of poetical feeling.” (“Memoirs of Horner,”
vol. i., p. 182.)
Davy’s friend Purkis has left us the following still more glowing
account:--
“The sensation created by his first [second] course of Lectures
at the Institution, and the enthusiastic admiration which they
obtained, is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the
first rank and talent,--the literary and the scientific, the
practical and the theoretical, blue stockings, and women of
fashion, the old and the young, all crowded--eagerly crowded
the lecture-room. His youth, his simplicity, his natural
eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations, and
well-conducted experiments, excited universal attention and
unbounded applause. Compliments, invitations, and presents were
showered upon him in abundance from all quarters; his society was
courted by all, and all appeared proud of his acquaintance.... A
talented lady, since well-known in the literary world, addressed
him anonymously in a poem of considerable length, replete with
delicate panegyric and genuine feeling.... It was accompanied
with a handsome ornamental appendage for the watch, which he
was requested to wear when he delivered his next lecture, as a
token of having received the poem and pardoned the freedom of the
writer.”
The anonymous poem “replete with delicate panegyric and genuine
feeling” is before me as I write. It is signed “Fidelissima,” and
is one of several which the same talented lady addressed to him at
different times, and which were found among his papers at his death.
Some of them, as sonnets, are of considerable merit, and, had space
permitted, are well worthy of reproduction.
The Tepidarians--again on the authority of Dr. Paris--were delighted.
Sanguine in the success of their child--for so they considered
Davy--they purposely appointed their anniversary festival on the day of
his anticipated triumph. Their dinner was marked by every demonstration
of hilarity, and the day was ended by a masquerade at Ranelagh.
Dr. John Davy, it should be said, rather sniffs at the Tepidarians and
their “ultra-principles,” and doubts if his brother ever belonged to
their society. Be this as it may, it is certain that the “Royalists”
and the fashionable world into which he was drawn soon influenced
Davy’s social and political views. Dr. Davy, whilst willing enough to
appreciate at their proper value his brother’s natural and intellectual
advantages as contributing to his success, points out that other
circumstances connected with the Institution and the period conspired
to help him:--
“The Royal Institution was a new experiment. Novelty in itself
is delightful, especially to people of rank and fortune, who at
that time in consequence of the Continent being closed, and owing
to the war, must have been delighted to have had opened to them
a new and unexpected source of interest, fitted to amuse those
who were suffering from _ennui_, and to instruct those who were
anxious for instruction. The Royal Institution, moreover, was the
creation of a large number of influential persons, both in the
higher ranks of society and of science. This alone might have
sufficed to render it fashionable, and, if fashionable, popular.
The period, morally and politically considered, aided the effect;
a time of great political excitement had just terminated; a time
of gloom and despondency was then commencing. Whatever diverted
the public mind and afforded new objects of contemplation, pure
and independent sources of amusement and gratification, must
have been very welcome to all reflecting persons, even without
taking into account the possible and probable good which might be
conferred by the Institution on society, in accordance with the
intentions with which it was first established.”
Davy thus expressed his own feeling of satisfaction to his mother:--
“London.
“MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have been very busy in the preparation for
my lectures; and for this reason I have not written to you. I
delivered my second lecture to-day, and was very much flattered
to find the theatre overflowing at this, as well as at the first.
I am almost surprised at the interest taken by so many people of
rank, in the progress of chemical philosophy; and I hope I am
doing a great deal of good, in being the means of producing and
directing the taste for it.
“I have been perfectly well since I visited Cornwall; and I enter
upon my campaign in high health and spirits. After four months of
hard but pleasant labour, I shall again be free!
“I hope you are all well. I very often reflect upon the times
that are past; and my mind is always filled with gratitude to the
Supreme Being, who has made us all happy; and that, in placing us
in distant parts, and in different circles, neither our feelings
or affections have been disturbed....
“I shall be very glad to see you again. I intend in June to pass
through Scotland and to visit the Western Isles; but I hope I
shall spend a part of the autumn with you.
“Pray write to me and give me a little news. Beg Kitty and Grace
and Betsy and John to recollect me.
“I am, my dear mother, your very affectionate son
“H. DAVY.”
The interest and spirit of enthusiasm thus roused was sedulously
cultivated by Davy, and turned to the purposes of the Institution which
he served. Rumford was no longer its moving and controlling spirit:
his duty to the Elector of Bavaria, and his ill-starred devotion to
Madame Lavoisier, had gradually drawn him away from London, and in 1803
he ceased to take any active part in the fortunes of his offspring.
Shortly afterwards Sir Joseph Banks also withdrew. In a letter written
April, 1804, he tells Rumford that his continued absence from England
is a great detriment to the Institution:--
“It is now entirely in the hands of the profane. I have declared
my dissatisfaction at the mode in which it is carried on, and my
resolution not to attend in future. Had my health and spirits not
failed me, I could have kept matters in their proper level, but
sick, alone, and unsupported, I have given up what cannot now
easily be recovered.”
Sir John Hippesley, who became treasurer, strove to make the
Institution above all things fashionable. He had a project for placing
private boxes in the theatre, and was concerned about its want of a
proper coat-of-arms. Mr. Bernard still continued to hope that Sydney
Smith’s lectures on Moral Philosophy might somehow better the condition
of the poor. They would, at least, said Horner, “make the real
blue-stockings a little more disagreeable than ever, and sensible women
a little more sensible.” But the real directing power was Davy, and
he gradually stamped upon the place the character it now possesses.
How he felt his power and used it, may be gleaned from the following
extract from a lecture in 1809, in reference to a fund which had been
raised to supply him with a great voltaic battery:--
“In a great country like this, it was to be expected that a
fund could not long be wanting for pursuing or perfecting any
great scientific object. But the promptitude with which the
subscription filled was so great, as to leave no opportunity to
many zealous patrons of science for showing their liberality. The
munificence of a few individuals has afforded means more ample
and magnificent than those furnished by the Government of a rival
nation; and I believe we have preceded them in the application of
the means. In this kind of emulation, our superiority, I trust,
will never be lost; and I trust that the activity belonging to
our sciences will always flow from the voluntary efforts of
individuals, from whom the support will be an honour--to whom it
will be honourable....
“Without facilities for pursuing his object, the greatest genius
in experimental research may live and die useless and unknown.
Talents of this kind cannot, like talents for literature and
the fine arts, call forth attention and respect. They can
neither give popularity to the names of patrons, nor ornament
their houses. They are limited in their effects, which are
directed towards the immutable interests of society. They
cannot be made subservient to fashion or caprice; they must
forever be attached to truth, and belong to nature. If we merely
consider _instruction_ in physical science, this even requires
an expensive apparatus to be efficient; for without proper
ocular demonstrations, all lectures must be unavailing,--things
rather than words should be made the objects of study. A
certain knowledge of the beings and substances surrounding us
must be felt as a want by every cultivated mind. It is a want
which no activity of thought, no books, no course of reading
or conversation, can supply. That a spirit for promoting
experimental science is not wanting in the country, is proved
by the statement which I have just made, by the foundation in
which I have the honour of addressing you, and by the number of
institutions rising in different parts of the metropolis and in
the provinces. But it is clear that this laudable spirit may
produce little effect from want of just direction. To divide and
to separate the sources of scientific interest, is to destroy
all their just effect. To attempt, with insufficient means, to
support philosophy, is merely to humiliate her and render her an
object of dirision. Those who establish foundations for teaching
the sciences ought, at least, to understand their dignity. To
connect pecuniary speculation, or commercial advantages, with
schemes for promoting the progress of knowledge, is to take
crops without employing manure; is to create sterility, and to
destroy improvement. A scientific institution ought no more to
be made an object of profit than an hospitable, or a charitable
establishment. Intellectual wants are at least as worthy of
support as corporeal wants, and they ought to be provided for
with the same feeling of nobleness and liberality. The language
expected by the members of a scientific body from the directors
ought not to be, ‘We have increased your property, we have raised
the value of your shares.’ It ought rather to be, ‘We have
endeavoured to apply your funds to useful purposes, to promote
the diffusion of science, to encourage discovery, and to exalt
the scientific glory of your country.’
“What this institution has done, it would ill become a person
in my place to detail; but that it has tended to the progress
of knowledge and invention, will not, I believe, be questioned.
Compare the expenditure with the advantages. It would not support
the least of your public amusements; and the income of an
establishment, which, in its effects, may be said to be national,
is derived from annual subscriptions scarcely greater than those
which a learned professor of Edinburgh obtains from a single
class....
“The progression of physical science is much more connected with
your prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental
philosophy some of the most important and peculiar of your
advantages. It is not by foreign conquests chiefly that you are
become great, but by a conquest of nature in your own country.
It is not so much by colonization that you have attained your
preeminence or wealth, but by the cultivation of the riches
of your own soil. Why, at this moment, are you able to supply
the world with a thousand articles of iron and steel necessary
for the purposes of life? It is by arts derived from chemistry
and mechanics, and founded purely upon experiments. Why is the
steam engine now carrying on operations which formerly employed,
in painful and humiliating labour, thousands of our robust
peasantry, who are now more nobly or more usefully serving
their country either with the sword or with the plough? It was
in consequence of experiments upon the nature of heat and pure
physical investigations.
“In every part of the world manufactures made from the mere
clay and pebbles of your soil may be found; and to what is this
owing? To chemical arts and experiments. You have excelled all
other people in the products of industry. But why? Because you
have assisted industry by science. Do not regard as indifferent
what is your true and greatest glory. Except in these respects,
and in the light of a pure system of faith, in what are you
superior to Athens or to Rome? Do you carry away from them the
palm in literature and the fine arts? Do you not rather glory,
and justly too, in being, in these respects, their imitators?
Is it not demonstrated by the nature of your system of public
education, and by your popular amusements? In what, then, are you
their superiors? In every thing connected with physical science;
with the experimental arts. These are your characteristics. Do
not neglect them. You have a Newton, who is the glory, not only
of your own country, but of the human race. You have a Bacon,
whose precepts may still be attended to with advantage. Shall
Englishmen slumber in that path which these great men have
opened, and be overtaken by their neighbours? Say, rather, that
all assistance shall be given to their efforts; that they shall
be attended to, encouraged, and supported.”
On a subsequent occasion, when the subjugation of Europe was threatened
by the restless military spirit of France, he thus dilated upon the
influence of experimental philosophy in strengthening the desire for
rational freedom:--
“The scientific glory of a country may be considered, in some
measure, as an indication of its innate strength. The exaltation
of reason must necessarily be connected with the exaltation of
the other noble faculties of the mind; and there is one spirit of
enterprise, vigour, and conquest, in science, arts, and arms.
“Science for its progression requires patronage,--but it must
be a patronage bestowed, a patronage received, with dignity.
It must be preserved independent. It can bear no fetters, not
even fetters of gold, and least of all those fetters in which
ignorance or selfishness may attempt to shackle it.
“And there is no country which ought so much to glory in its
progress, which is so much interested in its success, as this
happy island. Science has been a prime cause of creating for us
the inexhaustible wealth of manufactures, and it is by science
that it must be preserved and extended. We are interested as a
commercial people,--we are interested as a free people. The age
of glory of a nation is likewise the age of its security. The
same dignified feeling, which urges men to endeavour to gain a
dominion over nature, will preserve them from the humiliation of
slavery. Natural, and moral, and religious knowledge, are of one
family; and happy is that country, and great its strength, where
they dwell together in union.”
It was, of course, to be expected that amidst the general chorus of
approval some discordant notes should be heard. People who preferred
the severe and formal manner of his colleague, Dr. Young, who, in spite
of his profound knowledge, could never keep an audience together, said
that Davy’s style was too florid and imaginative; that his imagery
was inappropriate, and his conceits violent; that he was affected and
swayed by a mawkish sensibility. Dr. Paris would have us believe there
was some show of justice in this accusation, but he thinks that “the
style which cannot be tolerated in a philosophical essay may under
peculiar circumstances be not only admissible but even expedient in a
popular lecture.” The “peculiar circumstance” in Davy’s case was, in
Dr. Paris’s opinion, the Royal Institution audience.
“Let us consider for a moment,” he says, “the class of persons
to whom Davy addressed himself. Were they students prepared to
toil with systematic precision, in order to obtain knowledge as
a matter of necessity?--No--they were composed of the gay and
the idle, who could only be tempted to admit instruction by the
prospect of receiving pleasure,--they were children, who could
only be induced to swallow the salutary draught by the honey
around the rim of the cup.”
That Davy himself was not wholly unconscious of this fact may be
gathered from a letter which he wrote to Mr. Davies Gilbert at about
this time. He says:--
“My labours in the Theatre of the Royal Institution have been
more successful than I could have hoped from the nature of them.
In lectures, the effect produced upon the mind is generally
transitory; for the most part, they amuse rather than instruct,
and stimulate to enquiry rather than give information. My
audience has often amounted to four and five hundred, and
upwards; and amongst them some promise to become permanently
attached to chemistry. This science is much the fashion of the
day.”
Whatever may be urged against Davy’s style of lecturing, his purely
scientific memoirs are unquestionably models of their kind. His
language is so simple, and his mode of expression so uniformly clear,
and so free from technicality, that even an ordinary reader can follow
them with delight. In this respect he was consistently faithful to the
direction he gives in his “Last Days”:--
“In detailing the results of experiments, and in giving them to
the world, the chemical philosopher should adopt the simplest
style and manner; he will avoid all ornaments, as something
injurious to his subject, and should bear in mind the saying of
the first King of Great Britain, respecting a sermon which was
excellent in doctrine, but overcharged with poetical allusions
and figurative language,--‘that the tropes and metaphors of the
speaker were like the brilliant wild flowers in a field of corn,
very pretty, but which did very much hurt the corn.’”
Dr. Paris’s remarks concerning Davy’s personal manner and his style of
lecturing were warmly controverted at the time of their publication
by several of Davy’s friends. Dr. John Davy’s account is so clear and
explicit, and so obviously based upon personal observation, for which
he had ample opportunities, that, even after making every allowance
for brotherly bias, we prefer to regard it as giving a more just
impression of Davy’s bearing in the lecture-theatre, and of the care
and pains he took to ensure success.
“He was,” says Dr. Davy, “always in earnest; and when he amused
most, amusement appeared most foreign to his object. His great
and first object was to instruct, and, in conjunction with
this, maintain the importance and dignity of science; indeed
the latter, and the kindling a taste for scientific pursuits,
might rather be considered his main object, and the conveying
instruction a secondary one.”
His lecture was almost invariably written expressly for the occasion,
and usually on the day before he delivered it.
“On this day he generally dined in his own room, and made a light
meal on fish. He was always master of his subject; and composed
with great rapidity, and with a security of his powers never
failing him.... It was almost an invariable rule with him, the
evening before, to rehearse his lecture in the presence of his
assistants, the preparations having been made and everything in
readiness for the experiments; and this he did, not only with
a view to the success of the experiments, and the dexterity of
his assistants, but also in regard to his own discourse, the
effect of which, he knew, depended upon the manner in which it
was delivered. He used, I remember, at this recital, to mark the
words which required emphasis and study the effect of intonation;
often repeating a passage two or three different times, to
witness the difference of effect of variations in the voice. His
manner was perfectly natural, animated and energetic, but not in
the least theatrical. In speaking, he never seemed to consider
himself as an object of attention; he spoke as if devoted to his
subject, and as if his audience were equally devoted to it and
their interest concentrated in it. The impressiveness of his
oratory was one of its great charms ... and his eloquence,--the
declamation, as it might be called by some, in which he indulged
on the beauty and order of Nature ... was so well received
because it was not affected; merely his own strong impressions
and feelings embodied in words, and delivered with an earnestness
which marked their sincerity.”
It must, however, be admitted that this extraordinary success was not
without its evil influence on Davy’s moral qualities. Considering his
age, and his temperament, his ambition and love of applause, he would
have been something more than human if he could have remained wholly
unaffected by the conditions in which he was placed. “The bloom of
his simplicity was dulled by the breath of adulation.” He assumed
the garb and the airs of a man of fashion, and courted the society
of the rich and the aristocratic. Time which would have been more
profitably spent in the study, or in the society of his intellectual
fellows, was frittered away in the frivolities of London society, or
in the _salons_, or at the _soirées_ of leaders of the “smart” people
of the period. The peculiar circumstances of the Royal Institution,
and the necessity for the continued adhesion to it of persons of rank
and wealth, may to some extent have led him away from the quieter and
serener joys of the philosophic life.
“In the morning,” says Paris, “he was the sage interpreter of
Nature’s laws; in the evening, he sparkled in the galaxy of
fashion; and not the least extraordinary point in the character
of this great man, was the facility with which he could cast
aside the cares of study, and enter into the trifling amusements
of society.--‘_Ne otium quidem otiosum_,’ was the exclamation
of Cicero; and it will generally apply to the leisure of men
actively engaged in the pursuits of science; but Davy, in closing
the door of his laboratory, opened the temple of pleasure.... In
ordinary cases, the genius of evening dissipation is an arrant
Penelope; but Davy, on returning to his morning labours, never
found that the thread had been unspun during the interruption.”
The following letter from Coleridge will serve to show how this change
was foreseen and deplored by his truest friends:--
“Nether Stowey, _Feby. 17, 1803_.
“MY DEAR PURKIS, ... I have been here nearly a fortnight; and in
better health than usual. Tranquillity, warm rooms and a dear old
friend, are specifics for my complaints. Poole is indeed a very,
very good man. I like even his incorrigibility in small faults
and deficiencies; it looks like a wise determination of Nature to
let well alone; and is a consequence, a necessary one perhaps, of
his immutability in his important good qualities....
“I rejoice in Davy’s progress. There are three suns recorded
in Scripture:--Joshua’s, that stood still; Hezekiah’s, that
went backward; and David’s that went forth, and hastened on his
course, like a bridegroom from his chamber. May our friend’s
prove the latter! It is a melancholy thing to see a man, like
the Sun in the close of the Lapland summer, meridional in his
horizon; or like wheat in a rainy season, that shoots up well in
the stalk, but does not _kern_. As I have hoped, and do hope,
more proudly of Davy than of any other man; and as he has been
endeared to me more than any other man, by the being a Thing
of Hope to me (more, far more than my self to my own self in
my most genial moments,)--so of course my disappointment would
be proportionally severe. It were falsehood, if I said that I
think his present situation most calculated, of all others, to
foster either his genius, or the clearness and incorruptness
of his opinions and moral feelings. I see two Serpents at the
cradle of his genius: Dissipation with a perpetual increase
of acquaintances, and the constant presence of Inferiors and
Devotees, with that too great facility of attaining admiration
which degrades Ambition into Vanity--but the Hercules will
strangle both the reptile monsters. I have thought it possible
to exert talents with perseverance, and to attain true greatness
wholly pure, even from the impulses; but on this subject Davy and
I always differed.... Yours sincerely
“S. T. COLERIDGE.”
It would seem that Coleridge’s doubts and fears were shared also by
his host, and were communicated by him to the object of them. This, at
least, may be inferred from the following extract from a letter from
Davy to Poole:--
“London, _May 1, 1803_.
“MY DEAR POOLE, ... Be not alarmed, my dear friend, as to the
effect of worldly society on my mind. The age of danger has
passed away. There are in the intellectual being of all men,
permanent elements, certain habits and passions that cannot
change. I am a lover of Nature, with an ungratified imagination.
I shall continue to search for untasted charms--for hidden
beauties.
“My _real_, my _waking_ existence is amongst the objects of
scientific research: common amusements and enjoyments are
necessary to me only as dreams, to interrupt the flow of thoughts
too nearly analogous to enlighten and to vivify.
“Coleridge has left London for Keswick; during his stay in
town, I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him, it was
generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image
of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired; perhaps it
is softer and stronger. His will is probably less than ever
commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness
float upon his mind: like the images of the morning clouds
upon the waters, their forms are changed by the motion of the
waves, they are agitated by every breeze, and modified by every
sunbeam. He talked in the course of one hour, of beginning three
works, and he recited the poem of Christabel unfinished, and as
I had before heard it. What talent does he not waste in forming
visions, sublime, but unconnected with the real world! I have
looked to his efforts, as to the efforts of a creating being; but
as yet, he has not even laid the foundation for the new world of
intellectual form....
“Your affectionate friend
“HUMPHRY DAVY.”
Space will not permit of any more detailed account of Davy’s career
as a lecturer at the Royal Institution. During the twelve years he
occupied its Chair of Chemistry he held undisputed sway as the greatest
living expositor of chemical doctrine, and session after session saw
the theatre crowded with eager and expectant audiences.
This continued and increasing success was due not merely to his art and
skill as a speaker, but to the remarkable and astonishing character of
what he had to tell--of work which made the laboratory of the Royal
Institution even more famous than its lecture-rooms.