Born at Penzance, Cornwall, England, Dec. 17, 1778; died at Geneva, May 29, 1829. A celebrated English chemist. He was the son of a woodcarver at Penzance, studied at the Penzance grammar-school, and finished his education under the Rev. Dr. Cardew at Truro. In 1795 he was apprenticed to John Bingham Borlase, a prominent surgeon at Penzance. He was appointed an assistant in the laboratory of Beddoe’s Pneumatic Institution at Bristol in 1798; became assistant lecturer in chemistry at the Royal Institution, London, in 1801; was promoted professor in 1802; was made director of the laboratory in 1805; discovered the decomposition of the fixed alkalis in 1807; was knighted in 1812; resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution in 1813; invented the safety-lamp in 1815; was created a baronet in 1818; and was elected as president of the Royal Society in 1820. His chief works are “Elements of Chemical Philosophy” (1812), and “Elements of Agricultural Chemistry” (1813).

Personal

  I have been once to the Royal Institution, and heard Davy lecture on animal substances 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. At the same time, it is a trophy to the sciences; one great advance is made towards the association of female with masculine minds in the pursuit of useful knowledge; and another domain of pleasing and liberal inquiry is included within the range of polished conversation. 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.

  I breakfasted this morning with Sir Humphry Davy, of whom we have heard so much in America. He is now about thirty-three, but with all the freshness and bloom of five-and-twenty, 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 fishing or philosophy, that he should find the struggle of his choice pretty severe.

  After having introduced your safety lamp into general use in all the collieries under my direction, where inflammable air prevails, and after using them daily in every variety of explosive mixture, for upwards of three months, I feel the highest possible gratification in stating to you that they have answered to my entire satisfaction. The safety of the lamps is so easily proved by taking them into any part of a mine charged with fire-damp, and all the explosive gradations of that dangerous element are so easily and satisfactorily ascertained by their application, as to strike the minds of the most prejudiced with the strongest conviction of their high utility; and our colliers have adopted them with the greatest eagerness. Besides the facilities afforded by this invention to the working of coal mines abounding in fire-damp, it has enabled the directors and superintendents to ascertain, with the utmost precision and expedition, both the presence, the quantity, and the correct situation of the gas. Instead of creeping inch by inch with a candle, as is usual, along the galleries of a mine suspected to contain fire-damp, in order to ascertain its presence, we walk firmly in with the safe lamps, and with the utmost confidence prove the actual state of the mine. By observing attentively the several appearances upon the flame of the lamp, in an examination of this kind, the cause of accidents which have happened to the most experienced and cautious miners is completely developed; and this has been, in a great measure, matter of mere conjecture.

  Dr. Paris gave us the history of Sir Humphry Davy. His father, a carver of wooden chimney-pieces: Davy put apprentice to an apothecary; sent away because he blew the apothecary’s garret window out with a clyster pipe that he had charged with gas. Davy’s discovery of the decomposition of alkalis ought, he said, to immortalise him. Had broached the theory a year before, and people cavilled at it; but, at last, he applied it to this great discovery.

  A long discussion after breakfast about the necessity of one’s husband being clever. Ma foi je n’en vois pas la nécessité. People don’t want to be entertaining each other all day long; very clever men don’t grow on every bush, and middling clever men don’t amount to anything. I think I should like to have married Sir Humphry Davy.

  He was of middle stature, about five feet seven inches high; but appeared shorter, perhaps from the just proportions and symmetry of his make. His hands and feet were small, and his bones in general small; but his muscles were comparatively large, especially of the lower extremities, in consequence of which he was well adapted for those exercises and sports of the field and river in which he delighted. He could walk well and bear fatigue for a long time; his arms and shoulders were, he used to say, less able than his legs; yet their strength was perfectly adequate to the management of the salmon rod, and the laborious amusement of salmon fishing; and there were few anglers who could throw the fly further on the water, or with greater steadiness and delicate precision; and he was quick in the use of his gun, and amongst good shots a very tolerable one, especially in that kind of shooting which requires an active hand and eye, as snipe shooting…. His neck was rather long and slender: his head was rather small, its surface smooth and rounded, without any striking protuberances; the occipital part was small, the forehead ample and elevated, and very beautifully rising, wide and gently arched. His face was oval and rather small; but, owing to the expansion of forehead, not apparently so. His features were not perfectly regular; the nose aquiline, and broad at its base; the mouth rather large, the under lip prominent and full; the teeth not large, but irregular; his eyes were light hazel, and well formed; his hair and eyebrows were also light brown; the latter were scanty, the former abundant, and very fine and glossy, with a tendency to curl. I remember once a gentleman speaking to me about it, and expressing his admiration of its quality, very much in the manner he might use in speaking of a lady’s hair. His skin was delicate, and his complexion fair, with a good deal of colour. His countenance was very expressive, and responsive to the feelings of his mind; and when these were agreeable, it was eminently pleasing, I might say beautiful, for his smile was so; and his eyes were wonderfully bright, and seemed almost to emit a soft light when animated. His voice was full-toned and melodious, with something in it which impressed his hearers, and made it remembered…. His temperament was what is commonly called the sanguine, in which there is a tendency to excess of sensibility and irritability, and of vital action, combined with corresponding activity of mind, and a certain warmth and impetuosity of temper.

  I was much struck with the intellectual character of his face. His eye was piercing, and when not engaged in converse, was remarkably introverted, amounting to absence, as though his mind had been pursuing some severe trains of thought scarcely to be interrupted by external objects; and, from the first interview also, his ingenuousness impressed me as much as his mental superiority.

  Of all eminent persons whom I have ever seen even by a casual glimpse—was the most agreeable to know on the terms of a slight acquaintance…. I must say that nowhere, before or since, have I seen a man who had so felicitously caught the fascinating tone of high-bred urbanity which distinguishes the best part of the British nobility…. Davy was not a favorite with Coleridge; and yet Coleridge, who grasped the whole philosophy of Chemistry perhaps better than any man except Schelling, admired him, and praised him much; and often he went so far as to say that he might have been a great poet, which perhaps few people will be disposed to think, from the specimens he has left in the Bristol Anthology…. Davy was then supposed to be making a fortune by some manufactory of gunpowder, from which he drew a large share of profit, not for capital contributed, or not for that originally, but for chemical secrets communicated. Soon afterwards, he married a widow with a very large income (as much as £4000 a year by common report); was made a baronet; was crowned with the laureateship of science, viz., the President’s chair in the London Royal Society; withdrew in consequence from further lecturing in kid gloves of any color; drank moderately, as a man of elegant tastes, of the cup of human enjoyment; throve into a prosperous leader of a circle; sickened; travelled for health, unavailingly for himself, not altogether for others; died; and left a name which, from the necessity of things, must grow fainter in its impression under each revolving sun, but which, at one time, was by much the most resounding name—the most splendid in the estimate of the laity, if not of the clerus in science—which has arisen since the days of Newton.

  The care with which Faraday has preserved every note-book and manuscript of Davy’s at the Royal Institution, the remarks regarding Davy, in his letters, the earnestness of his praise of Davy’s scientific work, show that he fully acknowledged all the debt which he owed to his master. But, with all his genius, Davy was hurt by his own great success. He had very little self-control, and but little method and order. He gave Faraday every opportunity of studying the example which was set before him during the journey abroad, and during their constant intercourse in the laboratory of the Royal Institution; and Faraday has been known to say that the greatest of all his great advantages was that he had a model to teach him what he should avoid.

  Personally he was a somewhat vain and irritable man, whom early success had made haughty to his inferiors. Indeed, in the recollections of Faraday, who as a young man attended upon him in his travels, we have a rather disagreeable picture of the savant who had forgotten the “pit out of which he was digged.” He was not very popular among his colleagues, as he was regardless of minor etiquette, and had in consequence to bear the chagrin of frequent snubs, such as the refusal of the ribbon of the bath, which he fully expected. Yet those who knew him best have attributed his haughty consciousness of superiority not so much to his arrogance as to his timidity, his dread of being patronised as a parvenu.

  The love of angling amounted to a passion with him; and he told Ticknor that he thought if he were obliged to renounce either fishing or philosophy he should find the struggle of his choice pretty severe. Whenever he could escape from town he would hie him to some favorite stream and spend the day in the practice of his beloved art. He was known to have posted a couple of hundred miles for the sake of a day’s fishing, and to have returned contented, although he had never a rise. When confined to Albermarle Street, and chafing at his inability to get away, he would sometimes turn over the leaves of his fly-book and derive much consolation from the sight of his hackles and harles, his green-tails, dun cuts, red spinners, and all the rest of the deadly paraphernalia associated in his mind with the memories of pleasant days and exciting combats. He greatly prided himself on his skill, and his friends were often secretly amused to notice his ill-concealed chagrin when a brother-angler outvied him in the day’s catch or in the narration of some piscatorial triumph. They were amused, too, at the costume which he was wont to don on such occasions—his broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat, lined with green and garnished with flies; his grey-green jacket, with a multitude of pockets for the various articles of his angling gear; his wading-boots and knee-caps—all made up an attire as original as it was picturesque. In these fishing expeditions he enjoyed some of the happiest hours of his life; at such times he threw off his cares and annoyances; he was cheerful even to hilarity, and never was his conversation more sprightly or more entertaining.

General

  Yet how very few are there whom I esteem and (pardon me for this seeming deviation from the language of friendship) admire equally with yourself. It is indeed, and has long been, my settled persuasion, that of all men known to me I could not justly equal any one to you, combining in one view powers of intellect, and the steady moral exertion of them to the production of direct and indirect good.

  This is a book [“Salmonia”] on a very delightful subject, by a very distinguished man. But although it is occasionally rather a pleasant book than otherwise, it is not by any means worthy either of the subject or the man—the one being Angling, and the other Sir Humphry Davy.

  We are informed in the preface, that many months of severe and dangerous illness have been partially occupied and amused by the present treatise, when the author was incapable of attending to more useful or more serious pursuits. While we regret that the current of scientific investigation, which has led to such brilliant results, should be, for a moment, interrupted, we have here an example, and a pleasing one, that the lightest pursuits of such a man as our angler—nay, the productions of those languid hours, in which lassitude succeeds to pain, are more interesting and instructive than the exertion of the talents of others whose mind and body are in the fullest vigour—illustrating the scriptural expression that the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim are better than the vintage of Abiezer.

  Davy was imbued with the spirit, and was a master of the practice, of the inductive logic; and he has left us some of the noblest examples of the efficacy of that great instrument of human reason in the discovery of truth. He applied it not only to connect classes of facts of more limited extent and importance but to develop great and comprehensive laws, which embrace phenomena that are almost universal to the natural world. In explaining these laws, he cast upon them the illuminations of his own clear and vivid conceptions;—he felt an intense admiration of the beauty, order and harmony which are conspicuous in the perfect chemistry of Nature;—and he expressed these feelings with a force of eloquence which could issue only from a mind of the highest powers and of the finest sensibilities.

  I was by no means in the same relation as to scientific communication with Sir Humphry Davy after I became a Fellow of the Royal Society as before that period; but whenever I have ventured to follow in the path which Sir Humphry Davy has trod, I have done so with respect and with the highest admiration of his talents; and nothing gave me more pleasure, in relation to my last published paper, the eighth series (of “Experimental Researches”), than the thought that, whilst I was helping to elucidate a still obscure branch of science, I was able to support the views advanced twenty-eight years ago, and for the first time, by our great philosopher.

  The book [“Elements of Agricultural Chemistry”] enjoyed some little popularity; but scarcely added anything to our previous stock of knowledge. It was hailed as a grand beginning; but nearly half a century has not shown any advancement. And this deficiency may not be owing to any lack of exertion, or remissness in using and connecting the knowledge that exists on both sides; but from the impossible nature of the enjoyment that has been projected. Agriculture and chemistry are connected in the single article of manures only; the other uses are very widely different.

  Of Davy, it has been said that he was born a poet and became a chemist by accident. It was indeed a happy accident which gave to the sciences a man who united so many qualifications to adorn them—great skill and promptitude in performing, varying and devising, experiments; great speculative boldness tempered by the true spirit of inductive philosophy, and united to a power of exposition both as a lecturer and a writer which has rarely been equalled, unless by the eminent chemist, who, once his pupil, has since succeeded to his office and his honours.

  Whoever has perused the history of his great exploits in science, with a due knowledge of the subject, has already discerned his place, highest among all the great discoverers of his time. Even he who has little acquaintance with the subjects of his labours may easily perceive how brilliant a reputation he must have enjoyed, and how justly; while he who can draw no such inference from the facts would fail to obtain any knowledge of Davy’s excellence from all the panegyrics with which general description could encircle his name.

  Much has been said of Davy as a poet, and Paris somewhat hastily says that his verses “bear the stamp of lofty genius.” His first production preserved bears the date 1795. It is entitled “The Sons of Genius,” and is marked by the usual immaturity of youth. The poems, produced in the following years, especially those “On the Mount’s Bay” and “St. Michael’s Mount,” are pleasingly descriptive verses, showing sensibility, but no true poetic imagination.

  On the whole, however, Davy is most interesting as a member of the school of scientific writers who came between those of the eighteenth century proper, and those wholly of the nineteenth—the former, men of letters whose subject was “natural philosophy,” the latter, men of science who only in rare instances pay deliberate attention to literary cultivation and form. His own attention to and achievement in these were more than respectable, and he added to these good taste, and a pleasant, if rather thin, humour.