DAVY. 121 



Their complaint against him for having interfered, as 

 they termed it, with their recent discovery of iodine, 

 on which, having obtained a specimen, he chose, natu- 

 rally enough, to make experiments, appears incompar- 

 ably absurd. He had never complained of their in- 

 terference, during his illness in 1807, with the process 

 of deoxygenation by means of galvanic action; on the 

 contrary, he had availed himself thankfully of the lights 

 shed by their ingenuity on his process, and had im- 

 mediately after made new discoveries, at which they 

 had failed to arrive. It may be more true that his 

 manners were unpleasing ; and, as ever happens when 

 a great man is also a shy one, he was charged with 

 being supercilious and cold. They who knew him will 

 at once acquit him of any such charge ; but he was 

 painfully timid by nature when mixing with society ; 

 and hence the mistake of our neighbours, who, though 

 great critics in manner, are far from being infallible, 

 and are exceedingly susceptible fully as susceptible 

 as he was shy. Possibly they looked down upon him 

 in consequence of a peculiarity which he no doubt had. 

 He was fond of poetry, and an ardent admirer of 

 beauty in natural scenery. But of beauty in the arts 

 he was nearly insensible. They used to say in Paris 

 that on seeing the Louvre, he exclaimed that one of its 

 statues was " a beautiful stalactite ;" and it is possible 

 that this callousness, or this jest, whichever it might 

 be, excited the scorn or the humour of men not more 

 sincere lovers of sculpture than himself, or more able 

 judges of its merits, but better disposed to conceal 

 their want of taste or want of skill. 



When Sir Joseph Banks terminated his long and re- 

 spectable course in 1820, Davy was unanimously chosen 

 to succeed him as President of the Koyal Society, and 

 continued to fill that distinguished office until, his 

 health having failed, he resigned it in 1827, and was 

 succeeded by his early patron Davies Giddy To- 

 wards the end of 1825 he had an apoplectic seizure, 

 which, though slight (if any such attack can be so 



