It is by no means necessary that one be a man of letters in order to
write a good book. Some very admirable books have been written by men
who gave no especial thought to literature as an art. They wrote
because they were so fortunate as to find themselves in possession of
ideas, and not because they had determined to become authors.
Literature as such implies sophistication, and people who devote
themselves to literature do so from a variety of motives. But these
writers of whom I now speak have a less complex thought back of their
work. They do not, for example, propose pleasure to the reader as an
object in writing. Their aim is single. They recount an experience, or
plead a cause. Literature with them is always a means to an end. They
are like pedestrians who never look upon walking as other than a
rational process for reaching a given place. It does not occur to them
that walking makes for health and pleasure, and that it is also an
exercise for displaying a graceful carriage, the set of the shoulders,
the poise of the head.
To be sure one runs the risk of being deceived in this matter. The
actress who plays the part of an unaffected young girl, for aught that
the spectator knows to the contrary may be a pronounced woman of the
world. Not every author who says to the public 'excuse my untaught
manner' is on this account to be regarded as a literary ingénu. His
simplicity awakens distrust. The fact that he professes to be a layman
is a reason for suspecting him. He is probably an adept, a master of
the wiles by which readers are snared.
But aside from the cases in which deception is practiced, or at least
attempted, there is in the world a respectable body of literature
which is not the work of literary men. Its chief characteristic is
sincerity. The writers of these books are so busy in telling the truth
that they have no time to think of literature.
Among the more readable of these pieces is that unpretentious volume
in which Dr. Joseph Priestley relates the story of his life. For in
classing this book with the writings of authors who are not men of
letters one surely does not go wide of the mark. There is a sense in
which it is entirely proper to say that Priestley was not a literary
man. He produced twenty-five volumes of 'works,' but they were for use
rather than for art. He wrote on science, on grammar, on theology, on
law. He published controversial tracts: 'Did So-and-So believe
so-and-so or something quite different?' and then a discussion of the
'grounds' of this belief. He made 'rejoinders,' 'defenses,'
'animadversions,' and printed the details of his _Experiments on
Different Kinds of Air_. This is distinctly uninviting. Let me propose
an off-hand test by which to determine whether or no a given book is
literature. _Can you imagine Charles Lamb in the act of reading that
book?_ If you can; it's literature; if you can't, it isn't. I find it
difficult to conceive of Charles Lamb as mentally immersed in the
_Letter to an Anti-pædobaptist_ or the _Doctrine of Phlogiston
Established_, but it is natural to think of him turning the pages of
Priestley's Memoir, reading each page with honest satisfaction and
pronouncing the volume to be worthy the title of A BOOK.
It is a plain unvarnished tale and entirely innocent of those arts by
the practice of which authors please their public. There is no
eloquence, no rhetoric, no fine writing of any sort. The two or three
really dramatic events in Priestley's career are not handled with a
view to producing dramatic effect. There are places where the author
might easily have become impassioned. But he did not become
impassioned. Not a few paragraphs contain unwritten poems. The
simple-hearted Priestley was unconscious of this, or if conscious,
then too modest to make capital of it. He had never aspired to the
reputation of a clever writer, but rather of a useful one. His aim was
quite as simple when he wrote the Memoir as when he wrote his various
philosophical reports. He never deviated into brilliancy. He set down
plain statements about events which had happened to him, and people
whom he had known. Nevertheless the narrative is charming, and the
reasons of its charm are in part these:--
In the first place the book belongs to that department of literature
known as autobiography. Autobiography has peculiar virtues. The
poorest of it is not without some flavor of life, and at its best it
is transcendent. A notable value lies in its power to stimulate. This
power is very marked in Priestley's case, where the self-delineated
portrait is of a man who met and overcame enormous difficulties. He
knew poverty and calumny, both brutal things. He had a thorn in the
flesh,--for so he himself characterized that impediment in his speech
which he tried more or less unsuccessfully all his life to cure. He
found his scientific usefulness impaired by religious and political
antagonisms. He tasted the bitterness of mob violence; his house was
sacked, his philosophical instruments destroyed, his manuscripts and
books scattered along the highway. But as he looked back upon these
things he was not moved to impatience. There is a high serenity in his
narrative as becomes a man who has learned to distinguish between the
ephemeral and the permanent elements of life.
Yet it is not impossible that autobiography of this sort has an effect
the reverse of stimulating upon some people. It is pleasanter to read
of heroes than to be a hero oneself. The story of conquest is
inspiring, but the actual process is apt to be tedious. One's nerves
are tuned to a fine energy in reading of Priestley's efforts to
accomplish a given task. 'I spent the latter part of every week with
Mr. Thomas, a Baptist minister, ... who had no liberal education. Him
I instructed in Hebrew, and by that means made myself a considerable
proficient in that language. At the same time I learned Chaldee and
Syriac and just began to read Arabic' This seems easy in the telling,
but in reality it was a long, a monotonous, an exhausting process.
Think of the expenditure of hours and eyesight over barbarous
alphabets and horrid grammatical details. One must needs have had a
mind of leather to endure such philological and linguistic wear and
tear. Priestley's mind not only cheerfully endured it but actually
toughened under it. The man was never afraid of work. Take as an
illustration his experience in keeping school.
He had pronounced objections to this business, and he registered his
protest. But suppose the alternative is to teach school or to starve.
A man will then teach school. I don't know that this was quite the
situation in which Priestley found himself, though he needed money. He
may have hesitated to enter a profession which in his time required a
more extensive muscular equipment than he was able to furnish. The old
English schoolmasters were 'bruisers.' They had thick skins, hard
heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their office were a Greek
grammar and a flexible rod. They were skillful either with the book or
the birch. It has taken many years to convince the world that the
short road to the moods and tenses does not necessarily lie through
the valley of the shadow of flogging. Perhaps Priestley objected to
school-mastering because it was laborious. It was indeed laborious as
he practiced it. One marvels at his endurance. His school consisted of
about thirty boys, and he had a separate room for about half-a-dozen
young ladies. 'Thus I was employed from seven in the morning until
four in the afternoon, without any interval except one hour for
dinner; and I never gave a holiday on any consideration, the red
letter days excepted. Immediately after this employment in my own
school-rooms I went to teach in the family of Mr. Tomkinson, an
eminent attorney, ... and here I continued until seven in the
evening.' Twelve consecutive hours of teaching, less one hour for
dinner! It was hardly necessary for Priestley to add that he had 'but
little leisure for reading.'
He laid up no money from teaching, but like a true man of genius spent
it upon books, a small air-pump, an electrical machine. By training
his advanced pupils to manipulate these he 'extended the reputation'
of his school. This was playing at science. Several years were yet to
elapse before he should acquire fame as an original investigator.
This autobiography is valuable because it illustrates the events of a
remarkable time. He who cares about the history of theological
opinion, the history of chemical science, the history of liberty, will
read these pages with keen interest. Priestley was active in each of
these fields. Men famous for their connection with the great movements
of the period were among his friends and acquaintance. He knew
Franklin and Richard Price. John Canton, who was the first man in
England to verify Franklin's experiments, was a friend of Priestley.
So too were Smeaton the engineer, James Watt, Boulton, Josiah
Wedgewood, and Erasmus Darwin. He knew Kippis, Lardner, Parr, and had
met Porson and Dr. Johnson. His closest friend for many years was
Theophilus Lindsey. One might also mention the great Lavoisier,
Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and a dozen other scientific,
ecclesiastical, and political celebrities. The Memoir, however, is
almost as remarkable for what it does not tell concerning these people
as for what it does. Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a
little less reticent about himself than he is about others. He does
indeed describe his early struggles as a dissenting minister, but the
reader would like a little more expansiveness in the account of his
friendships and his chemical discoveries. These discoveries were made
during the time that he was minister at the Mill-hill Chapel, Leeds.
Here he began the serious study of chemistry. And that without
training in the science as it was then understood. At Warrington he
had heard a series of chemical lectures by Dr. Turner of Liverpool, a
gentleman whom Americans ought to regard with amused interest, for he
was the man who congratulated his fellows in a Liverpool debating
society that while they had just lost the _terra firma_ of thirteen
colonies in America, they had gained, under the generalship of Dr.
Herschel, a _terra incognita_ of much greater extent _in nubibus_.
Priestley not only began his experiments without any great store of
knowledge, but also without apparatus save what he devised for himself
of the cheapest materials. In 1772 he published his first important
scientific tract, 'a small pamphlet on the method of impregnating
water with fixed air.' For this he received the Copley medal from the
Royal Society. On the first of August, 1774, he discovered oxygen.
Nobody in Leeds troubled particularly to inquire what this dissenting
minister was about with his vials and tubes, his mice and his plants.
Priestley says that the only person who took 'much interest' was Mr.
Hey, a surgeon. Mr. Hey was a 'zealous Methodist' and wrote answers to
Priestley's theological papers. Arminian and Socinian were at peace if
science was the theme. When Priestley departed from Leeds, Hey begged
of him the 'earthen trough' in which all his experiments had been
made. This earthen trough was nothing more nor less than a washtub of
the sort in common local use. So independent is genius of the
elaborate appliances with which talent must produce results.
The discoveries brought fame, especially upon the Continent, and led
Lord Shelburne to invite Priestley to become his 'literary companion.'
Dr. Price was the intermediary in effecting this arrangement.
Priestley's nominal post was that of 'librarian,' and he now and then
officiated as experimentalist extraordinary before Lord Shelburne's
guests. The compensation was not illiberal, and the relation seems to
have been as free from degrading elements as such relations can be.
Priestley was not a sycophant even in the day when men of genius
thought it no great sin to give flattery in exchange for dinners. It
was never his habit to burn incense before the great simply because
the great liked the smell of incense and were accustomed to it. On the
other hand, Shelburne appears to have treated the philosopher with
kindness and delicacy, and the situation was not without difficulties
for his lordship.
Among obvious advantages which Priestley derived from this residence
were freedom from financial worry, time for writing and experimenting,
a tour on the Continent, and the privilege of spending the winter
season of each year in London.
It was during these London visits that he renewed his acquaintance
with Dr. Franklin. They were members of a club of 'philosophical
gentlemen' which met at stated times at the London Coffee House,
Ludgate Hill. There were few days upon which the Father of Pneumatic
Chemistry and the Father of Electrical Science did not meet. When
their talk was not of dephlogisticated air and like matters it was
pretty certain to be political. The war between England and America
was imminent. Franklin dreaded it. He often said to Priestley that 'if
the difference should come to an open rupture, it would be a war of
_ten years_, and he should not live to see the end of it.' He had no
doubt as to the issue. 'The English may take all our great towns, but
that will not give them possession of the country,' he used to say.
Franklin's last day in England was given to Priestley. The two friends
spent much of the time in reading American newspapers, especially
accounts of the reception which the Boston Port Bill met with in
America, and as Franklin read the addresses to the inhabitants of
Boston, from the places in the neighborhood, 'the tears trickled down
his cheeks.' He wrote to Priestley from Philadelphia just a month
after the battle of Lexington, briefly describing that lively episode,
and mentioning his pleasant six weeks voyage with weather 'so moderate
that a London wherry might have accompanied us all the way.' At the
close of his letter he says: 'In coming over I made a valuable
philosophical discovery, which I shall communicate to you when I can
get a little time. At present I am extremely hurried.' In October of
that year, 1775, Franklin wrote to Priestley about the state of
affairs in America. His letter contains one passage which can hardly
be hackneyed from over-quotation. Franklin wants Priestley to tell
'our dear good friend,' Dr. Price, that America is 'determined and
unanimous.' 'Britain at the expense of three millions has killed 150
yankees this campaign, which is 20,000 l. a head; and at Bunker's
Hill, she gained a mile of ground, all of which she lost again, by our
taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the same time 60,000 children
have been born in America.' From these data Dr. Price is to calculate
'the time and expense necessary to kill us all, and conquer the whole
of our territory.' Then the letter closes with greetings 'to the club
of honest whigs at the London Coffee House.'
Seven years later Franklin's heart was still faithful to the club. He
writes to Priestley from France: 'I love you as much as ever, and I
love all the honest souls that meet at the London Coffee House.... I
labor for peace with more earnestness that I may again be happy in
your sweet society.' Franklin thought that war was folly. In a letter
to Dr. Price, he speaks of the great improvements in natural
philosophy, and then says: 'There is one improvement in moral
philosophy which I wish to see: the discovery of a plan that would
induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first
cutting one another's throats.'
Priestley lamented that a man of Franklin's character and influence
'should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as
much as he did to make others unbelievers.' Franklin acknowledged that
he had not given much attention to the evidences of Christianity, and
asked Priestley to recommend some 'treatises' on the subject 'but not
of great length.' Priestley suggested certain chapters of Hartley's
_Observations on Man_, and also what he himself had written on the
subject in his _Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_. Franklin
had promised to read whatever books his friend might advise and give
his 'sentiments on them.' 'But the American war breaking out soon
after, I do not believe,' says Priestley, 'that he ever found himself
sufficiently at leisure for the discussion.'
Priestley valued his own scientific reputation not a little for the
weight it gave, among skeptics, to his arguments in support of his
religious belief. He found that all the philosophers in Paris were
unbelievers. They looked at him with mild astonishment when they
learned that he was not of the same mind. They may even have thought
him a phenomenon which required scientific investigation. 'As I chose
on all occasions to appear as a Christian, I was told by some of them
that I was the only person they had ever met with, of whose
understanding they had any opinion, who professed to believe
Christianity.' Priestley began to question them as to what they
supposed Christianity was, and with the usual result,--they were not
posted on the subject.
In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In the summer of 1791 occurred
that remarkable riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the
philosopher's not unpicturesque career. This storm had long been
gathering, and when it broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I
verily believe, more astonished than frightened. The Dissenters were
making unusual efforts to have some of their civil disabilities
removed. Feeling against them was especially bitter. In Birmingham
this hostility was intensified by the public discourses of Mr. Madan,
'the most respectable clergyman of the town,' says Priestley. He
published 'a very inflammatory sermon ... inveighing against the
Dissenters in general, and myself in particular.' Priestley made a
defense under the title of _Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of
Birmingham_. This produced a 'reply' from Madan, and 'other letters'
from his opponent. Being a conspicuous representative of that body
which was most 'obnoxious to the court' it is not surprising that
Priestley should have been singled out for unwelcome honors. The
feeling of intolerance was unusually strong. It was said--I don't know
how truly--that at a confirmation in Birmingham tracts were
distributed against Socinianism in general and Priestley in
particular. Very reputable men thought they did God service in
inflaming the minds of the rabble against this liberal-minded
gentleman. Priestley's account of the riot in the Memoir is singularly
temperate. It might even be called tame. He was quite incapable of
posing, or of playing martyr to an audience of which a goodly part was
sympathetic and ready to believe his sufferings as great as he chose
to make them appear. One could forgive a slight outburst of
indignation had the doctor chosen so to relieve himself. 'On occasion
of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution, on
July 14, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little
to do, a mob, encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the
meeting-house in which I preached, then another meeting-house in the
town, and then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library, apparatus,
and as far as they could everything belonging to me.... Being in some
personal danger on this occasion I went to London.'
A much livelier account from Priestley's own hand and written the next
day after the riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay. 'The
company were hardly gone from the inn before a drunken mob rushed into
the house and broke all the windows. They then set fire to our
meeting-house and it is burned to the ground. After that they gutted,
and some say burned the old meeting. In the mean time some friends
came to tell me that I and my house were threatened, and another
brought a chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had not presence of
mind to take even my MSS.; and after we were gone the mob came and
demolished everything, household goods, library, and apparatus.' The
letter differs from the Memoir in saying that 'happily no fire could
be got.' Priestley afterwards heard that 'much pains was taken, but
without effect, to get fire from my large electrical machine which
stood in the Library.'
It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was not at the inn where
the anniversary was celebrating. While the company there were chanting
the praises of liberty he was at home playing backgammon with his
wife, a remarkably innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr. Arthur
Young visited the scene of the riot a few days later and had thoughts
upon it. 'Seeing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I found
that it was Dr. Priestley's. I alighted from my horse, and walked over
the ruins of that laboratory which I had left home with the
expectation of reaping instruction in; of that laboratory, the labours
of which have not only illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere of
science itself; which has carried its master's fame to the remotest
corner of the civilized world; and will now with equal celerity convey
the infamy of its destruction to the disgrace of the age and the
scandal of the British name.' It is not necessary to supplement Arthur
Young's burst of indignation with private bursts of our own. We can
afford to be as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was. That
feeling was hot against him even in London is manifest from the fact
that the day after his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning
with the words: 'Dr. Priestley is a damned rascal, an enemy both to
the religious and political constitution of this country, a fellow of
a treasonable mind, consequently a bad Christian.' The 'bad Christian'
thought it showed 'no small degree of courage' in Mr. William Vaughan
to receive him into his house. 'But it showed more in Dr. Price's
congregation at Hackney to invite me to succeed him.' The invitation
was not unanimous, as Priestley with his characteristic passion for
exactness is at pains to tell the reader. Some of the members
withdrew, 'which was not undesirable.'
People generally looked askance at him. If he was upon one side of the
street the respectable part of the world made it convenient to pass by
on the other side. He even found his relations with his philosophical
acquaintance 'much restricted.' 'Most of the members of the Royal
Society shunned him,' he says. This seems amusing and unfortunate.
Apparently one's qualifications as a scientist were of little avail if
one happened to hold heterodox views on the Trinity, or were of
opinion that more liberty than Englishmen then had would be good for
them. Priestley resigned his fellowship in the Royal Society.
One does not need even mildly to anathematize the instigators of that
historic riot. They were unquestionably zealous for what they believed
to be the truth. Moreover, as William Hutton observed at the time,
'It's the right of every Englishman to walk in darkness if he
chooses.' The method employed defeated its own end. Persecution is an
unsafe investment and at best pays a low rate of interest. No
dignified person can afford to indulge in it. There's the danger of
being held up to the laughter of posterity. It has happened so many
times that the unpopular cause has become popular. This ought to teach
zealots to be cautious. What would Madan have thought if he could have
been told that within thirty years one of his own coadjutors in this
affair would have publicly expressed regret for the share he had in
it? Madan has his reward, three quarters of a column in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_. But to-day Priestley's statue
stands in a public square of Birmingham opposite the Council House.
Thus do matters get themselves readjusted in this very interesting
world.
Rutt's Life of Priestley (that remarkable illustration of how to make
a very poor book out of the best materials) contains a selection of
the addresses and letters of condolence which were forthcoming at this
time. Some of them are stilted and dull, but they are actual
'documents,' and the words in them are alive with the passion of that
day. They make the transaction very real and close at hand.
Priestley was comparatively at ease in his new home. Yet he could not
entirely escape punishment. There were 'a few personal insults from
the lowest of the rabble.' Anxiety was felt lest he might again
receive the attentions of a mob. He humorously remarked: 'On the 14th
of July, 1792, it was taken for granted by many of my neighbors that
my house was to come down just as at Birmingham the year before.' The
house did not come down, but its occupant grew ill at ease, and within
another two years he had found a new home in the new nation across the
sea.
It is hardly exact to say that he was 'driven' from England, as some
accounts of his life have it. Mere personal unpopularity would not
have sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man hasn't as much fight in
him as at forty-five. He is not averse to quiet. Priestley's three
sons were going to America because their father thought that they
could not be 'placed' to advantage in a country so 'bigoted' as their
native land was then. 'My own situation, if not hazardous, was become
unpleasant, so that I thought my removal would be of more service to
the cause of truth than my longer stay in England.'
The sons went first and laid the foundations of the home in
Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound
to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell
discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex
Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the
journey one must go to his correspondence.
His last letters were written from Deal and Falmouth, April 9 and 11.
The vessel was six weeks in making the passage. The weather was bad
and the travelers experienced everything 'but shipwreck and famine.'
There was no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was fantastic and
spectacular. Not alone were there the usual exhibitions of
flying-fish, whales, porpoises, and sharks, but also 'mountains of ice
larger than the captain had ever seen before,'--for thus early had
transatlantic captains learned the art of pronouncing upon the
exceptional character of a particular voyage for the benefit of the
traveler who is making that voyage. They saw water-spouts, 'four at
one time.' The billows were 'mountain-high, and at night appeared to
be all on fire.' They had infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to
use it. Mrs. Priestley wrote 'thirty-two large pages of paper.' The
doctor read 'the whole of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible as
far as the first book of Samuel.' He also read through Hartley's
second volume, and 'for amusement several books of voyages and Ovid's
Metamorphoses.' 'If I had [had] a Virgil I should have read him
through, too. I read a great deal of Buchanan's poems, and some of
Petrarch's _de remediis_, and Erasmus's Dialogues; also Peter Pindar's
poems, ... which pleased me much more than I expected. He is Paine in
verse.'
On June 1 the ship reached Sandy Hook. Three days later Dr. and Mrs.
Priestley 'landed at the Battery in as private a manner as possible,
and went immediately to Mrs. Loring's lodging-house close by.' The
next morning the principal inhabitants of New York came to pay their
respects and congratulations; among others Governor Clinton, Dr.
Prevoost, bishop of New York; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great Britain;
the heads of the college; most of the principal merchants, and many
others; for an account of which amenities one must read Henry Wansey's
_Excursion to the United States in the Summer of 1794_, published by
Salisbury in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.
Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John Adams by one day. Adams
had sailed for Boston on the third. But he left word that Boston was
'better calculated' for Priestley than any other part of America, and
that 'he would find himself very well received if he should be
inclined to settle there.'
Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says: 'Dr. P. is wonderfully pleased
with everything, and indeed I think he has great reason from the
attentions paid him.' The good people became almost frivolous with
their dinner-parties, receptions, calls, and so forth. Then there were
the usual addresses from the various organizations,--one from the
Tammany Society, who described themselves as 'a numerous body of
freemen, who associate to cultivate among them the love of liberty,
and the enjoyment of the happy republican government under which they
live.' There was an address from the 'Democratic Society,' one from
the 'Associated Teachers in the City of New York,' one from the
'Republican Natives of Great Britain and Ireland,' one from the
'Medical Society.'
The pleasure was not unmixed. Dr. Priestley the theologian had a less
cordial reception than Dr. Priestley the philosopher and martyr. The
orthodox were considerably disturbed by his coming. 'Nobody asks me to
preach, and I hear there is much jealousy and dread of me.' In
Philadelphia at a Baptist meeting the minister bade his people beware,
for 'a Priestley had entered the land.' But the heretic was very
patient and earnest to do what he might for the cause of 'rational'
Christianity. The widespread infidelity distressed him. He mentioned
it as a thing to be wondered at that in America the lawyers were
almost universally unbelievers. He lost no time in getting to work. On
August 27, when he had been settled in Northumberland only a month, he
wrote to a friend that he had just got Paine's _Age of Reason_, and
thought to answer it. By September 14 he had done so. 'I have
transcribed for the press my answer to Mr. Paine, whose work is the
weakest and most absurd as well as most arrogant of anything I have
yet seen.'
Priestley was fully conscious of the humor of his situation. He was
trying to save the public, including lawyers, from the mentally
debilitating effects of reading Paine's _Age of Reason_, while at the
same time all the orthodox divines were warning their flocks of the
danger consequent upon having anything to do with _him_.
Honors and rumors of honors came to him. He was talked of for the
presidency of colleges yet to be founded, and was invited to
professorships in colleges that actually were. He went occasionally to
Philadelphia, a frightful journey from Northumberland in those days.
Through his influence a Unitarian society was established. He gave
public discourses, and there was considerable curiosity to see and
hear so famous a man. 'I have the use of Mr. Winchester's pulpit every
morning ... and yesterday preached my first sermon.' He was told that
'a great proportion of the members of Congress were present,' and we
know that 'Mr. Vice-President Adams was a regular attendant.'
In company with his friend Mr. Russell, Priestley went to take tea
with President Washington. They stayed two hours 'as in any private
family,' and at leavetaking were invited 'to come at any time without
ceremony.'
About a year later Priestley saw again Washington, who had finished
his second term of office. 'I went to take leave of the late
president. He seemed not to be in very good spirits. He invited me to
Mt. Vernon, and said he thought he should hardly go from home twenty
miles as long as he lived.'
Priestley was not to have the full measure of the rest which he
coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution
followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet
at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was
objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had
opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,--a habit he
had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he
should ever break himself of it. Cobbett's virulence was so great as
to excite the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to Priestley, 'I
wonder why the man abuses you;' when a hint from Adams, Priestley
thought, would have prevented it all. But it was not easy to control
William Cobbett. Adams may have thought that Cobbett was a being
created for the express purpose of being let alone. There are such
beings. Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton
Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods.
William Cobbett, too, had his moods.
Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters between 1798 and 1801
without indignation against those who preyed upon his peace of mind.
He writes to Lindsay: 'It is nothing but a firm faith in a good
Providence that is my support at present: but it is an effectual one.'
His 'never failing resource' was the 'daily study of the Scriptures.'
In moments of depression he loved to read the introduction to
Hartley's second volume, those noble passages beginning: 'Whatever be
our doubts, fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social, whether
for time or eternity, our only hope and refuge must be in the infinite
power, knowledge and goodness of God.'
Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His services to science were
very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which,
however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had
he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his
greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine
of 'philogiston' after it had been abandoned by nearly every other
chemist of repute. For this he has been ridiculed. But he was not
ridiculous, he was singularly open-minded. He knew that his reputation
as a philosopher was under a cloud. 'Though all the world is at
present against me, I see no reason to despair of the old system; and
yet, _if I should see reason to change my opinion, I think I should
rather feel a pride in making the most public acknowledgment of it_.'
These are words which Professor Huxley might well have quoted in his
beautiful address on Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are
the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded man.
He was as modest as he was fair-minded. When it was proposed that he
should accompany Captain Cook's expedition to the South Seas, and the
arrangements were really completed, he was objected to because of his
political and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold Foster was appointed in
his stead. He was a person 'far better qualified,' said Priestley.
Again when he was invited to take the chair of Chemistry at
Philadelphia he refused. This for several reasons, the chief of which
was that he did not believe himself fitted for it. One would naturally
suppose that the inventor of soda-water and the discoverer of oxygen
would have been able to give lectures to young men on chemistry. But
Priestley believed that he 'could not have acquitted himself in it to
proper advantage.' 'Though I have made discoveries in some branches of
chemistry, I never gave much attention to the common routine of it,
and know but little of the common processes.'
Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two thick volumes compiled by
Rutt more than sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted, nor are
they likely to be. But a life so precious in its lessons should be
recorded in just terms. It would be an inspiring book, and its title
might well be 'The Story of a Man of Character.' Not the least of its
virtues would consist in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley's
unwavering confidence that all things were ordered for the best; and
then of his piety, which prompted him to say, as he looked back upon
his life: 'I am thankful to that good Providence which always took
more care of me than ever I took of myself.'