480 NOTES. 



all likelihood. But one discovery having been mentioned, 

 I must add, that he also has made another, a discovery 

 which, I think, would have surprised my friend Mr. Vernon 

 Harcourt himself, as much as it did his other readers, " that 

 there are very few amongst the most distinguished of 

 our countrymen superior to" that reverend and excellent 

 person, "either as a writer or as a man of science;" so 

 great a length will zeal for his friend and fellow polemic 

 carry a critic engaged in a controversy. 



But this zeal is readily explained by the reflection that 

 fellow-combatants in any controversy which heats their 

 tempers, are blind to each other's deficiencies, and exagge- 

 rate each other's perfections ; they are also prone to exagge- 

 rate the services rendered by each other to the common 

 cause. " The unanswerable arguments of my noble, or my 

 honourable friend," is a very familiar expression on every 

 side in Parliamentary debates, which one thus finds are 

 conducted on both sides by combatants equally invincible, 

 and therefore ought always to prove drawn battles. So 

 the critic holds Mr. Vernon Harcourt's publication from 

 Mr. Cavendish's Journals, to be decisive in favour of his 

 contention ; whereas those extracts demonstrate, that Mr. 

 Cavendish never had, even privately, given the explanation 

 of his experiment until after Mr. Watt's theory was in the 

 hands of the Royal Society. I am very far from arguing 

 upon this important publication of Mr. Vernon Harcourt's, 

 that Mr. Cavendish borrowed the hint from Mr. Watt ; 

 but at least it demonstrates that Mr. Watt had reduced 

 his theory to writing before Mr. Cavendish, and could not 

 by possibility have borrowed it from him. 



It must once more be repeated, that I never charged 

 or thought of charging Mr. Cavendish with having ob- 

 tained from Mr. Watt's paper his knowledge of the 

 composition t)f water, and having knowingly borrowed it, 

 however suspicious a case Mr. Harcourt's publication may 

 seem to make. Both those great men, in my opinion, 

 made the discovery apart from each other, and ignorant 

 each of the other's doctrine. Mr. Cavendish was a man of 

 the strictest integrity, and the most perfect sense of justice. 

 His feelings were very far inferior to his principles. He 

 was singularly callous to the ordinary calls of humanity, as 



