M. Arago's Biographical Memoir of James Watt. 259 



that in a very short time they would not have occurred to all 

 the world ? According to this reasoning, neither days nor 

 months, nor years of priority, should confer the slightest privi- 

 lege. These opinions, which there is now no occasion for my 

 criticising here, had, from mere repetition, acquired a sort of 

 prescriptive establishment. Men of genius, and the manu- 

 facturers of idea^, it seemed, ought to remain strangers to any 

 thing like material enjoyments ; and their history, forsooth, 

 should continue to resemble the legends of the martyrs. 



Whatever may be thought of notions like these, it is cer- 

 tain that the Cornish miners continued, with augmenting re- 

 pugnance, to pay from year to year the gratuity they owed 

 to the Soho engineers. They availed themselves of the first 

 pretences which plagiarism afforded, to insist that their en- 

 gagements were dissolved. The dispute was a serious one ; 

 it might have compromised Mr Watt's social position ; and 

 he therefore devoted much of his attention to it, and became 

 quite a lawyer. The circumstances of the long and expensive 

 processes which Boulton and Watt had to carry on, and 

 which they ultimately gained, do not merit particular remark ; 

 but as we have just cited Burke among the opponents of the 

 gi'eat mechanist, it seems just, on the other hand, to state that 

 Roy, Mylne, Herschel, Deluc, Ramsden, Robison, Murdoch, 

 Rennie, Gumming, More, and Southern, publicly and powerfully 

 defended the rights of persecuted genius. It may not be useless 

 to add, as a curious trait in the history of the human mind, that 

 the advocates, who are sometimes accused of superfluity of 

 words, reproached Watt, against whom they were leagued 

 in great numbers, that he had invented nothing but ideas. 

 This sentiment drew upon them, in open court, that chastise- 

 ment of Rous, " Away, gentlemen ! fret as you list against 

 these untangible combinations, as you call Mr Watt's ma- 

 chines ; but know that these pretended abstract ideas could 

 crush you like so many gnats, and shoot you out of sight into 

 the air." 



The persecutions to which a man of sensibility is exposed, 

 where the strictest justice would lead him to expect the unani- 

 mous expression of gratitude, rarely fail to discourage and 

 sour his temper ; and the amiability of VVatt did not with- 



