348 Analysis of Books. 



birds, which he stuffed with no ordinary skill. From Penzance he 

 went to Truro, in 1793, and finished his education under Dr. 

 Cardew, who did not discern in him the faculties by which he was 

 afterwards distinguished. ' I discovered,' says Dr. Cardew, * his 

 taste for poetry, which I did not omit to encourage.' Davy's own 

 opinion of the influence of his early school career is interesting. 

 * After all,' he says, * the way in which we are taught Latin and 

 Greek does not much influence the important structure of our 

 minds. I consider it fortunate that I was left much to myself as a 

 child, and put upon no particular plan of study, and that I enjoyed 

 much idleness at Mr. Coryton's school. I perhaps owe to these 

 circumstances the little talents I have, and their peculiar applica- 

 tion. What I am I have made myself. I say this without vanity, 

 and in pure simplicity of heart.' His father died in 1794, and his 

 mother (who had taken up her residence at Penzance, and entered 

 into business as a milliner) apprenticed him to Mr. Borlace, a sur- 

 geon and apothecary, who afterwards practised as a physician in 

 that town. Davy seems not to have had much predilection for 

 this profession, and though he had long been engrossed with 

 experimental philosophy, he now first manifested his decided turn 

 for chemistry, the study of which he commenced with all the ardour 

 of his temperament. He still continued to write verses, and several 

 of his minor productions were printed in the Annual Anthology, 

 edited by Southey and James Tobin, in 1799. Some of these Dr. 

 Paris has reprinted. We know not whether it was upon the evi- 

 dence of these effusions, or from the general character of Davy's 

 writings, that it has been said, * If Davy had not been the first 

 chemist, he would have been the first poet of his age ;' but Dr. 

 Paris inquires, ' Where is the modern Esau who would exchange 

 his Bakerian Lecture for a poem, though it should equal in design 

 and execution the Paradise Lost ? ' 



Davy's first original experiments in chemistry are said to have 

 been made to ascertain the quality of the air contained in the 

 bladders of sea-weed, in order to obtain results in support of a 

 favourite theory of light ; and to ascertain whether sea-vegetables 

 might not be the preservers of the equilibrium of the atmosphere of 

 the ocean ; and he came to the conclusion that the marine crypto- 

 gamia were capable of decomposing water when assisted by the 

 attraction of light for oxygen. His instruments of research were of 

 the rudest description, made by himself out of the motley materials 

 which chance threw in his way. Dr. Paris suggests, that from hence 

 we may date his wonderful tact of manipulation, and that ability in 

 suggesting expedients, arid contriving apparatus, to meet and sur- 

 mount difficulties 1n the unbeaten tracts of science, for which he 

 was afterwards distinguished. At seventeen he had formed and 

 promulgated an opinion adverse to the general belief in the exist- 

 ence of caloric, or the materiality of heat. 



' No sooner,' says Dr. Paris, had he formed his opinion, than his 

 eagle spirit urged him to put it to the test, Having procured a piece of 



