CAVENDISH 31 



apprehension more than pure intellect, or required the 

 exercise of fancy, imagination, affection or faith, was dis- 

 tasteful to Cavendish. An intellectual head thinking, a pair 

 of wonderfully acute eyes observing, and a pair of very 

 skilful hands experimenting, or recording, are all that I 

 realize in reading his memorials," wrote his biographer 

 sixty years ago. 



Cavendish was a profound chemist, mathematician, 

 astronomer, electrician, geologist, and meteorologist ; and 

 for fifty years he constantly published important papers 

 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. 

 Priestley and Cavendish were contemporaries. The work 

 of the former was brilliant and quick ; that of the latter 

 was slow and thorough. Although Cavendish wrote much, 

 he had an innate dislike to publicity. He published few 

 papers, destroyed many, and therefore some of his brilliant 

 researches were lost to science. His dread of popularity, 

 want of laudable ambition, lack of enthusiasm, and morbid 

 shyness compelled him to refrain from publishing many 

 important scientific papers. Will there ever be an adequate 

 life of Cavendish ? Never. This remarkable man of 

 solitary habits destroyed more papers than he ever pub- 

 lished. No doubt the world lost much, for as Sir 

 Humphry Davy said of Cavendish's researches, " they were 

 all of a finished nature, and though many of them were 

 performed in the very infancy of chemical science, yet their 

 accuracy and their beauty have remained unimpaired." 



