164 BIOGRAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 



with only the advantages of a remote country town, his 

 talent appeared in the earnestness with which he cultivated 

 at once the most various branches of knowledge and 

 speculation. He was fond of metaphysics ; he was fond 

 of experiment ; he was an ardent student of Nature ; and 

 he possessed at an early age poetic powers which, had 

 they been cultivated, would, in the opinion of com- 

 petent judges, have made him eminent in literature as 

 he became in science. All these tastes endured through- 

 out life. Business could not stifle them even the ap- 

 proach of death was unable to extinguish them. The 

 reveries of his boyhood on the sea- worn cliffs of Mount's 

 Bay may yet be traced in many of the pages dictated 

 during the last year of his life amidst the ruins of the 

 Colosseum." 



Davy's first paper, published while at Bristol, was 

 on heat, light, and respiration. The memoir laid the 

 foundations of the present dynamical theory of heat. 

 At this period he showed great abilities, was young, 

 enthusiastic, energetic, and ambitious. He was bound 

 to succeed. 



While at Dr Beddoes', Davy was introduced to Samuel 

 Taylor Coleridge (poet and philosopher) and Robert 

 Southey (poet, essayist, and historian), and there is no 

 doubt that meeting such men helped to develop his 

 genius and erudition. Davy was one of the most 

 remarkable chemists of his or any age. Chemistry in 



