434: JAMES WATT. 



Blagden s own style, would not be all the truth. About 

 the same time decides nothing : questions of priority 

 might depend on weeks, on days, on hours, on minutes. 

 To be clear and precise, as had been promised, he should 

 have said whether the verbal communication made by 

 Cavendish, to several members of the Royal Society, 

 preceded or followed the arrival in London of the news 

 of Watt s experiments. Can it be supposed that Blag- 

 den would not have explained himself on a fact of this 

 importance, if he could have quoted an authentic date in 

 favour of his friend. 



To render the complication complete, the correctors of 

 the press, the compositors, the printers, of the Philosoph 

 ical Transactions, all took part in this affair. Several 

 dates are incorrectly given. On the separate copies of 

 his memoir which Cavendish distributed among various 

 learned men, I perceive an error of a whole year.* By 

 a sad fatality, for it is a real misfortune unwillingly to 

 give rise to painful and undeserved suspicions, not one 

 of these numerous errors of the type was favourable to 

 Watt ! God forbid that I should mean, by these re 

 marks, to criminate the literary probity of the illustrious 

 philosophers whose names I have cited : they only prove 

 that in matters of discovery, strict justice is all that ought 



* Our author must have been excited here, for he thinks that not 

 only the high-minded Cavendish and Blagden, but even the printers 

 of the*papers, were in a conspiracy against Watt; and, though he 

 calls God to witness that he means nothing against their probity, he 

 makes a very bold insinuation that they were leagued against truth. 

 The separate copies of Cavendish s paper, pulled off for private dis 

 tribution, were dated 1783 instead of 1784; as soon as the error was 

 discovered, means were taken to correct it. Such an accidental error 

 occurs in Watt s own communication in the seventy- fourth volume of 

 Transactions; it being there said to have been read in April, 1784, 

 though stated to have been written in November, 1784. Translator. 



