JAMES WATT. 47 



elected a Fellow of the Royal Society ; the degree of Doctor of 

 Laws was conferred upon him by the University of Glasgow in 

 1806; and in 1808 he was elected a member of the French 

 Institute. He died on the 25th of August, 1819, in the 84th 

 year of his age. 



We cannot better conclude our sketch of the life of this great 

 inventor than by the following extract from the character that 

 has been drawn of him by the eloquent writer (Lord Jeffrey) 

 whom we have already quoted : — 



" Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr 

 Watt was an extraordinary, and in many respects a wonderful 

 man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and 

 such varied and exact information, — had read so much, or 

 remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He had 

 infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a 

 certain rectifying and methodising power of understanding, which 

 extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. 

 His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense, and yet 

 less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them. 

 It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in conver- 

 sation had been that which he had been last occupied in study- 

 ing and exhausting; such was the copiousness, the precision, 

 and the admirable clearness of the information which he poured 

 out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor was this prompti- 

 tude and compass of knowledge confined in any degree to the 

 studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That he should 

 have been minutely and extensively skilled in chemistry and the 

 arts, and in most of the branches of physical science, might per- 

 haps have been conjectured ; but it could not have been inferred 

 from his usual occupations, and probably is not generally known, 

 that he was curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, meta- 



