VARIOUS PURSUITS. 359 



porations of arts and of trades regarded the young artist 

 from London as an intruder, and obstinately refused him 

 permission to open even the most humble workshop. 

 Every means of conciliation failing, the University of 

 Glasgow interfered, and ceded to young Watt a small 

 locality in their own buildings, allowing him to open a 

 shop there and honouring him moreover with the title of 

 their Engineer.* There still exist some small instru- 

 ments of that epoch, of exquisite workmanship, made 

 entirely by Watt's own hands. I will add that his son 

 has lately placed before me the first essays of a steam- 

 engine, and that they are truly remarkable by the high 

 finish of the work, the firmness, the precision of the 

 form. It was not then without reason, whatever may 

 have been said of it, that Watt spoke with complacency 

 of his own manual dexterity. 



Perhaps you have some reason to think, that I carry 

 my scruples rather far, in claiming for our associate a 

 species of merit which cannot add to his glory. But I 

 will acknowledge that I never intend to make a pedantic 

 enumeration of the qualities with which superior men 

 have been endowed, without recollecting that wretched 

 general in the age of Louis XIV. who always carried 

 one shoulder very high, because Prince Eugene of Savoy 

 was rather deformed, and thought that this sufficed with- 

 out his endeavouring to extend the likeness any farther. 



Watt had scarcely reached his one and twentieth year 

 when the University of Glasgow attached him to their 



* This was not all. According to Stuart's Narrative, Watt picked 

 up a practical acquaintance with machines from an industrious me- 

 chanic at Glasgow ; a person " who was by turns a cutler and a white- 

 smith, a repairer of fiddles, a tuner of spinets, and a mender of fish- 

 ing tackle," in a word, a very useful man at almost every thing. 

 Translator. 



