Sir l3uinpln*\? S)ax> 197 



and a man of wealth to boot, with a fine estate in 

 Cornwall, where he was residing when he thus 1 

 with Humphry Davy. He soon discovered that the 

 extraordinary-looking boy swinging on the gate was 

 a genius in the rough, and offered him the use of his 

 library, with any other assistance in his chemical studies 

 of which the lad might care to avail himself. Young 

 Humphry jumped at the offer, which squared exactly 

 with his desires, and from that moment was started on 

 the career which led him to fame and fortune. 



Hitherto no one had understood the boy or given 

 him credit for the possession of any talents likely to be 

 of the least use in getting him on in the world. His 

 father, Robert Davy, was a wood-carver, but followed 

 that occupation rather for amusement than profit, for 

 he had sufficient patrimony to support himself and his 

 family in modest comfort. The Davys had been estab- 

 lished in Cornwall as far back as the commencement of 

 the seventeenth century, and Robert Davy could point 

 with pride to monuments of his ancestors in Ludgvan 

 Church bearing the date of 1635. 



Humphry was born at Penzance on December i/th, 

 1778. If his parents had not been unusually dull they 

 should have discovered that the boy was something 

 quite out of the common. His memory at the age of 

 five was phenomenal. He could master the contents 

 of a book by merely turning over the leaves rapidly, 

 and knew almost by heart what one of his biographers 

 Dr. Paris, calls "that pleasing work, 'The Pilgrim's 

 Progress.' " But it was as a teller of romantic tales that 

 he chiefly excelled. He would get a circle of boys, 



