192 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VIII. 



Watt and Cavendish in respect to it. It was at the request 

 of the council of the Cavendish Society which includes 

 nearly all the chemists of the country, and many of its 

 natural philosophers that Dr. Wilson undertook this bio- 

 graphy, and how thoroughly he identified himself with the 

 subject of his memoir, we find from a letter written while 

 engaged in the work : " I read all biographies with intense 

 interest. Even a man without a heart, like Cavendish, I 

 think about, and read about, and dream about, and picture 

 to myself in all possible ways, till he grows into a living 

 being beside me, and I put my feet into his shoes, and be- 

 come for the time Cavendish, and think as he thought, and 

 do as he did." It was no light task he had undertaken, and 

 at its close his feeling was, " Had I foreseen the labour and 

 time it was destined to occupy, I should have declined it. 

 A burden is now off my shoulders, which has lain on them 

 for some two years. I never wrote anything with less free- 

 dom and unction than this book, for reasons which the 

 preface will explain. Much of it has been dictated even in 

 my laboratory, in the midst of confusion, and the style is 

 horribly rough and rugged in many places. The book will 

 be a very dry one, in spite of all the water in it. I look 

 upon the whole with a remorseful conviction, that I cannot 

 answer to God for the expenditure of so great an amount of 

 time and thought on so small a matter. To me, however, 

 the past is always bleak and dark." 



Spontaneous help was unexpectedly received from Mr. 

 Charles Tomlinson, London, who furnished many of those 

 graphic details, that make this remarkable man stand out 

 vividly from his fellows. The friendship thus originated 

 with Mr. Tomlinson proved deep and lasting. The long- 

 debated question of priority as to the discovery of the 

 composition of water, seems by this volume to have been 



