428 Notices respecting New Books. 



After the numerous and long extracts which we have made from 

 Dr. Paris's work, we can allot but little space for further remarks, 

 though there are various subjects of high interest upon which we 

 have not bestowed a single observation ; they are noticed by the 

 biographer with a minuteness and an accuracy worthy of the illus- 

 trious philosopher whose discoveries he has undertaken to record. 

 For an account of the share which Davy had in developing the na- 

 ture and pi'operties of iodine; of his method of protecting copper 

 sheathing ; his experiments on electro-magnetism, and the paper on 

 the phaenomena of volcanoes, we must refer the reader either to the 

 memoirs themselves*, or to Dr. Paris's account of them. Alluding 

 to his retirement from the office of President of the Royal Society, 

 Dr. Paris remarks: " To assert that Davy retained his popularity, or 

 to deny that he retired from the office under the frown of a consi- 

 derable party, would be dishonest. I would willingly dismiss this 

 part of his life without too nice an examination j but I am writing 

 a history, not an eloge. 



" As a philosopher, his claims to admiration and respect were 

 allowed in all their latitude ; but when he sought for the homage due 

 to patrician distinction, they were denied with indignation. How 

 strange it is, tliat those whom Nature has placed above their fellow 

 men by the god-like gift of genius, should seek from their inferiors 

 those distinctions which are generally the rewards of fortune. When 

 we learn that Congreve, in his interview with Voltaire, prided him- 

 self upon his fashion rather than upon his wit; that Byron was more 

 vain of his heraldry than of his ' Pilgrimage of Childe Harold;' that 

 Racine pined into an atrophy, because the monarch passed him 

 without a recognition in the ante-room of the palace, and that Davy 

 sighed for patrician distinction in the chair of Newton, we can only 

 lament the weakness from which the choicest spirits of our nature 

 are not exempt. Will philosophers never feel, with Walpole, that 

 * a genius transmits more honour by blood than he can receive' ? 

 Had the blood of forty generations of nobility flowed in the veins 

 of Davy, would his name have commanded higher homage, or his 

 discoveries have excited greater admiration ? But great minds have 

 ever had their points of weakness : an inordinate admiration of 

 hereditary rank was the cardinal deformity of Davy's character ; it 

 was the centre from which all his defects radiated, and continually 

 placed him in false positions ; for the man who rests his claims upon 

 doubtful or ill-defined pretensions, from a sense of his insecurity, 

 naturally becomes jealous at every apparent inattention, and he is 

 suspicious of the sincerity of that respect which he feels may be the 

 fruit, of usurpation. If with these circumstances we take into con- 

 sideration the existence of a natural timidity of character, which he 

 sought to conquer by effiDrts that betrayed him into awkwardness 

 of manner, and combine with it an irritability of temperament which 

 occasionally called up expressions of ill-humour, we at once possess 

 a clue by which we may unravel the conduct of our philosopher, 



* See also Phil. Mag. vol. Iviii. p. 43, 406; l.\iv. p. 30 ; Ixv.p. 203; and 

 Phil. Mag. and Annals, N.S. vol. iv. p. 85. 



and 



