Humphry Davy was born at Penzance, in Cornwall, on the 17th of December,
1778, and died at Geneva on the 29th of May, 1829, at the age of fifty.
He was a philosopher who turned knowledge to wisdom; he was one of the
foremost of our English men of science; and this book, written when he
was dying, which makes Reason the companion of Faith, shows how he passed
through the light of earth into the light of heaven.
His father had a small patrimony at Varfell, in Ludgvan. His mother had
lost in early childhood both her parents within a few hours of each
other, and had been adopted by John Tonkin, an eminent surgeon in
Penzance, to whom, therefore, so to speak, Humphry Davy became grandson
by adoption. There were five such grandchildren--Humphry, the elder of
two boys, the other boy being named John, and three girls.
At a preparatory school and at the Penzance Grammar School Humphry Davy
was a noticeable boy. He read eagerly and showed great quickness of
imagination, delighted in legends, when eight years old told stories to
his companions, and as a boy wrote verse. There was a Quaker saddler who
made for himself an electrical machine and mechanical models, in which
young Davy took keen interest, and from that saddler, Robert Dunkin, came
the first impulse towards experiments in science. At fifteen Davy was
placed for further education at a school in Truro. A year later his
father died, and John Tonkin apprenticed him, on the 10th of February,
1795, to Dr. Borlase, a surgeon in large practice at Penzance. Medical
practitioners in those days dispensed their own medicines, and the
inquiring mind of this young apprentice being let loose upon a store-room
of chemicals, experimental chemistry became his favourite pursuit. His
grandfather, by adoption, allowed him to fit up a garret as a laboratory,
notwithstanding the fears of the household that "This boy, Humphry, will
blow us all into the air."
Activity and originality of mind, with a persistent habit of inquiry and
experiment, brought Davy friends who could appreciate and help him. When
Dr. Beddoes, of Bristol, was examining the Cornish coast, in 1798, he
came upon young Humphry Davy, was told of researches made by him, and
urged to engage him as laboratory assistant in a Pneumatic Institution
that he was then establishing in Bristol. Davy went in October, 1798,
then in his twentieth year; but his good friend, and grandfather by
adoption, had set his heart upon Humphry's becoming an eminent burgeon,
and even altered his will when his boy yielded to the temptation of a
laboratory for research. Men also know something of the trouble of the
hen who has a chance duckling in her brood, and sees that contumacious
chicken run into the water deaf to all the warnings of her love.
At Bristol Humphry Davy came into companionship with Coleridge and
Southey, who were then also at the outset of their career, and there are
poems of his in the Poetical Anthology then published by Southey. But at
the same time Davy contributed papers on "Heat, Light, and the
Combinations of Light," on "Phos-Oxygen and its Combinations," and on
"The Theory of Respiration," to a volume of West Country Collections,
that filled more than half the volume. He was experimenting then on
gases and on galvanism, and one day by experiment upon himself, in the
breathing of carburetted hydrogen, he almost put an end to his life.
In 1799 Count Rumford was founding the Royal Institution, and its home in
Albemarle Street was then bought for it. The first lecturer appointed
was in bad health, and in 1801 he was obliged to resign. Young Davy was
now known to men of science for the number and freshness of his
experiments, and for the substantial value of his chemical discoveries.
It was resolved by the managers, in July, 1801, that Humphry Davy be
appointed Assistant-Lecturer in Chemistry, Director of the Chemical
Laboratory, and assistant-editor of the journals of the Royal
Institution. His first remuneration was a room in the house, coals and
candles, and 100 pounds a year. Count Rumford held out the prospect of a
professorship with 300 pounds a year, and the certainty of full support
in the use of the laboratory for his own private research. His age then
was twenty-three. He at once satisfied men of science and amused people
of fashion. His energy was unbounded; there was a fascination in his
personal character and manner. He was a genial and delightful lecturer,
and his inventive genius was continually finding something new. A first
suggestion of the process of photography was dropped incidentally among
the records of researches that attracted more attention. Davy had been
little more than a year at the Royal Institution when he was made its
Professor of Chemistry. After another year he was made a Fellow. Dr.
Paris, his biographer, says that "the enthusiastic admiration which his
lectures obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the
first rank and talent--the literary and the scientific, the practical,
the theoretical--blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the
young, all crowded--eagerly crowded--the lecture-room." At the beginning
of the year 1805 his salary was raised to 400 pounds a year. In May of
that year the Royal Society awarded to him the Copley Medal. Within the
next two years he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. Since 1800
he had been advancing knowledge by experiments with galvanism. The Royal
Institution raised a special fund to place at his disposal a more
powerful galvanic battery than any that had been constructed. The fame
of his discoveries spread over Europe.
The Institute of France gave Davy the Napoleon Prize of three thousand
francs for the best experiments in galvanism. Dublin, in 1810, paid Davy
four hundred guineas for some lectures upon his discoveries. The Farming
Society of Ireland gave him 750 pounds for six lectures on chemistry
applied to agriculture. In the following year he received more than a
thousand pounds for two courses of lectures at Dublin, and was sent home
with the honorary degree of LL.D. In April, 1812, he was knighted,
resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution, and "in order more
strongly to mark the high sense of his merits" he was elected Honorary
Professor of Chemistry. In the same month Davy married a young and rich
widow, who had charmed all Edinburgh by her beauty and her wit. Two
months after marriage Sir Humphry Davy dedicated to his wife his
"Elements of Chemical Philosophy." In March, 1813, he published his
"Elements of Agricultural Chemistry." He travelled abroad, and was
received with honour by the chief men of science in all places that he
visited. When, at Pavia, he first met Volta: he found that Volta had put
on full-dress to receive him.
In August, 1815, Davy's attention was drawn to the loss of life by
explosions of fire-damp, and by the end of the year he had devised his
safety-lamp. The coal owners subscribed 1,500 pounds for a testimonial,
gave him also a dinner and a service of plate. In October, 1818, he was
made a baronet. In November, 1820, he was elected President of the Royal
Society.
His next researches were chiefly on electro-magnetism and the protection
of the copper sheathing on ships' bottoms. At the end of 1826 his health
failed seriously. He went to Italy; resigned, in July, 1827, the
Presidency of the Royal Society; came back to England, longing for "the
fresh air of the mountains;" wrote and published his "Salmonia, or Days
of Fly-fishing." In the spring of 1828 he left England again. He was at
Rome in the winter of 1829, still engaged in quiet research, and it was
then that he wrote his "Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a
Philosopher." His wife, who shone in London society, did not go with him
upon this last journey, but travelled day and night to reach him when
word came to her and to his brother John, who was a physician, that he
had again been struck with palsy and was dying. That stroke of palsy
followed immediately upon the finishing of the book now in the reader's
hand. Davy lived to see again his wife and brother, rallied enough to
leave Rome with them, and had got as far as Geneva on the 28th of May,
1829. He died in the next night.