400 FKAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



distrust of his memory reveals itself in his first letter 

 to Abbott. To a proposition that no new enquiry 

 should be started between them before the old one had 

 been exhaustively, discussed, Faraday objects. ' Your 

 notion/ he says, ' I can hardly allow, for the following 

 reason: ideas and thoughts spring up in my mind 

 which are irrevocably lost for want of noting at the 

 time.' Gentle as he seemed, he wished to have his own 

 way, and he had it throughout his life. Differences of 

 opinion sometimes arose between the two friends, and 

 then they resolutely faced each other. ' I accept your 

 offer to fight it out with joy, and shall in the battle of 

 experience cause not pain, but, I hope, pleasure/ 

 Faraday notes his own impetuosity, and incessantly 

 checks it. There is at times something almost mechan- 

 ical in his self-restraint. In another nature it would 

 have hardened into mere ' correctness ' of conduct; 

 but his overflowing affections prevented this in his 

 case. The habit of self-control became a second nature 

 to him at last, and lent serenity to his later years. 



In October, 1812, he was engaged by a Mr. De la 

 Eoche as a journeyman bookbinder; but the situation 

 did not suit him. His master appears to have been an 

 austere and passionate man, and Faraday was to the 

 last degree sensitive. All his life he continued so. He 

 suffered at times from dejection; and a certain grim- 

 ness, too, pervaded his moods. ' At present/ he writes 

 to Abbott, ' I am as serious as you can be, and would 

 not scruple to speak a truth to any human being, what- 

 ever repugnance it might give rise to. Being in this 

 state of mind, I should have refrained from writing to 

 you, did I not conceive from the general tenor of your 

 letters that your mind is, at proper times, occupied upon 

 serious subjects to the exclusion of those that are 

 frivolous/ Plainly he had fallen into that stern Puri- 



