108 DAVY. 



graphy. He does not appear to have given any early 

 indications of superior genius, or even of unusual 

 quickness ; but he showed all along, in following the 

 bent of his intellectual taste, the perseverance, the 

 firm purpose, which is inseparable from a capacity of 

 the higher order, and is an indispensable condition, as 

 it is a sure pledge, of success in every pursuit. 



It must be observed of the biographers both of Davy 

 and Scheele, that they seem to have made too much 

 of the difficulties interposed in the path of their early 

 studies by the want of apparatus, to which want, and 

 to their ingenious contrivances for finding substitutes, 

 a good deal of their experimental skill has been 

 ascribed. It should be recollected that an apothecary's 

 shop is not by any means so destitute of helps, espe- 

 cially for the study of chemistry, as a workshop of 

 almost any other description. Crucibles, phials, mor- 

 tars, gallipots, scales and weights, liquid measures, 

 acids, alkalis, and neutral salts, are all to be found 

 there, even if a furnace and still be not a necessary 

 appendage. It may be allowed that nothing like an 

 air-pump might be there expected, unless cupping 

 chanced to be performed by the druggist. Accord- 

 ingly Davy was glad to obtain, in a case of surgical 

 instruments from a practitioner on board a French 

 vessel wrecked on the Cornish coast, to whom he had 

 done some kind service, the means of making some 

 approximation to an exhausting engine. 



It happened, fortunately for him, that Gregory 

 Watt, youngest son of the great engineer, and whom, 

 having had the happiness of knowing him, I have 

 already mentioned, came to reside in the house of 

 Davy's mother at Penzance, where he was ordered to 

 pass the winter for the benefit of his health. Being- 

 five years older than the young chemist, and eminently 

 accomplished both in science and in letters, his con- 

 versation and advice was a great advantage, of which 

 Davy gladly availed himself. Another accident threw 



