Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher (Thorpe)
52 quotes
"For the details of Sir Humphry Davy's personal history, as set forth in this little book, I am mainly indebted to the well-known memoirs by Dr. Paris and Dr. John Davy. As biographies, these works are of very unequal value."
"Dr. Paris is not unfrequently inaccurate in his statements as to matters of fact, and disingenuous in his inferences as to matters of conduct and opinion. The very extravagance of his laudation suggests a doubt of his judgment or of his sincerity, and this is strengthened by the too evident relish with which he dwells upon the foibles and frailties of his subject. The insincerity is reflected in the literary style of the narrative, which is inflated and over-wrought.<!--pv-->"
"Sir Walter Scott, who knew Davy well and who admired his genius and his many social gifts, characterised [Paris'] book as "ungentlemanly" in tone; and there is no doubt that it gave pain to many of Davy's friends who, like Scott, believed that justice had not been done to his character.<!--pv-->"
"Dr. Davy's book... whilst perhaps too partial at times... is written with candour, and a sobriety of tone and a directness and simplicity of statement far more effective than the stilted euphuistic periods of Dr. Paris, even when he seeks to be most forcible.<!--pv-->"
"When... I have had to deal with conflicting or inconsistent statements in the two works on matters of fact, I have generally preferred to accept the version of Dr. Davy, on the ground that he had access to sources of information not available to Dr. Paris.<!--pv-->"
"Davy played such a considerable part in the social and intellectual world of London... that... his name frequently occurs in the personal memoirs and biographical literature... and a number of journals and diaries, such as those of Horner, Ticknor, , Lockhart, Maria Edgeworth, and others that might be mentioned, make reference to him and his work, and indicate what his contemporaries thought of his character and achievements. Some of these references will be found in the following pages.<!--ppv-vi-->"
"Londoners... owe the Zoological Gardens, in large measure, to a Professor of Chemistry in Albemarle Street, and that the magnificent establishment in the Cromwell Road, South Kensington, is the outcome of the representations, unsuccessful for a time, which he made to his brother trustees of the as to the place of natural history in the national collections. Davy had a leading share also in the foundation of the Athenæum Club, and was one of its first trustees.<!--pvi-->"
"I am... indebted to Dr. Rollenston for the loan of a portrait representing Davy in Court dress and in the presidential chair of the Royal Society, which, reproduced in , forms the frontispiece to this book. The original is a small highly finished work by Jackson, and was painted about 1823. The picture originally belonged to Lady Davy, who refers to it in the letter to (quoted by Weld in his "History of the Royal Society"), in which she offers Lawrence's well-known portrait to the Society, and which... the Society nearly lost through the subsequent action of the painter.<!--pvi-->"
"For the references to the early history of the I am mainly indebted to Dr. Bence Jones's book.<!--pvi-->"
"It is not necessary to belittle Davy in order to exalt Faraday; and writers who, like Dr. Paris, unmindful of George Herbert's injunction, are prone to adopt an antithetical style in biographical narrative have, I am convinced, done Davy's memory much harm.<!--pvii-->"
"With the exception of a rapid journey into Cornwall, for the sake of seeing his family, he spent the greater part of the summer and autumn of 1807 in town. He had been made Secretary of the in succession to Gray, and was obliged to be in or near London in order to see the Philosophical Transactions through the press. From the Laboratory Journal it would appear that he was occupied at this time on a variety of disconnected investigations such as the nature of Antwerp Blue, and the effect of electricity on flame. In a letter to , dated September 12th, he states that he has been a good deal engaged in experiments on distillation for revenue purposes.<!--pp112-113-->"
"Towards the end of this month, or during the first week of October, he resumed his experiments with the voltaic battery, and he was led to study its action on the alkalis. There is some evidence that he had attacked the same question at Bristol.<!--p113-->"
"In a note-book of that period, under date August 6th, 1800, is the following sentence: "I cannot close this notice without feeling grateful to M. Volta, Mr. Nicholson, and Mr. Carlisle, whose experience has placed such a wonderful and important instrument of analysis in my power"...<!--p113-->"
"This is immediately followed by "Query: Would not potash, dissolved in spirits of wine, become a conductor?" And he then gives an account of some experiments on the action of voltaic electricity on aqueous solutions of , caustic potash, and , which apparently led to the same result as that already obtained by Nicholson and Carlisle in the case of water.<!--p113-->"
"[H]e said of the alchemists that "even their failures developed some unsought-for object partaking of the marvellous"—and the statement in this case is even more true of himself.<!--p114-->"
"Each phase in the story of this discovery indeed partakes of the marvellous. Sometime during the first fortnight in October, 1807, he obtained his first decisive result; and on the 19th of November he delivered what is generally regarded as the most memorable of all his Bakerian lectures, "On some new Phenomena of chemical Changes produced by Electricity, particularly the Decomposition of the fixed Alkalies, and the Exhibition of the new substances which constitute their bases; and on the general Nature of alkaline Bodies."<!--p114-->"
"Few discoveries of like magnitude have been made and perfected in so short a time, and few memoirs have been more momentous in result than that which Davy put together in a few hours, and in which he announced his results to the world.<!--p114-->"
"The whole work was done under conditions of great mental excitement. His cousin ,.. his assistant, relates that when he [Humphrey Davy] saw the minute globules of the quicksilver-like metal burst through the crust of potash and take fire, his joy knew no bounds; he actually danced about the room in ecstasy, and it was some time before he was sufficiently composed to continue his experiments. The rapidity with which he accumulated results after this first feeling of delirious delight had passed was extraordinary.<!--p114-115-->"
"Before the middle of November he had obtained most of the leading facts. In a letter dated November 13th he tells W. H. Pepys—"
"[H]e seldom entered the laboratory before ten or eleven in the morning, and rarely left it later than four, and he was scarcely ever known to visit it after he had dressed for dinner.<!--p115-->"
"Except when preparing a lecture, he seldom dined in his rooms at the Institution: his brother tells us that his invitations to dinner were so numerous that he was, or might have been, constantly engaged; and after dinner he was much in the habit of attending evening parties, and devoting the evening to amusement, "so that to the mere frequenters of such parties he must have appeared a votary of fashion rather than of science."<!--p115-->"
"The Bakerian lecture in which Davy announces the discovery of the compound nature of the fixed alkalis opens with a reference to the concluding remarks of his lecture of the previous year, "that the new methods of investigation promised to lead to a more intimate knowledge than had hitherto been obtained concerning the true elements of bodies. This conjecture, then sanctioned only by strong analogies, I am now happy to be able to support by some conclusive facts."<!--p116-->"
"In the first attempts he made to decompose the fixed alkalis he acted upon concentrated aqueous solutions of potash and soda with the highest electrical power he could then command at the Royal Institution—viz. from voltaic batteries containing 24 plates of copper and zinc of 12 inches square, 100 plates of 6 inches, and 150 of 4 inches, charged with solutions of alum and nitric acid; but although there was high intensity of action nothing but and oxygen was disengaged.<!--pp116-117-->"
"He next tried potash in igneous fusion, and here the results were more encouraging: there were obvious and striking signs of decomposition; combustible matter was produced accompanied with flame and a most intense light.<!--p117-->"
"He had observed that although potash when dry is a nonconductor, it readily conducts when it becomes damp by exposure to air, and in this state "fuses and decomposes by strong electrical powers."<!--p117-->"