514 NOTES. 



distortion, I cannot comprehend, nor can the learned Pro- 

 fessor himself, whom I have consulted. I say nothing of a 

 similar charge respecting the Torricellian experiment, except 

 to observe, that my reference to it is most studiously framed 

 to exclude the very construction put upon it by the critic, as 

 the sentence beginning "unless" must plainly shew to any 

 candid reader. 



Now 1 write with great and unfeigned personal respect for 

 the learned critic, who, had his work been given under the 

 sanction of his name, would have been more careful in all 

 likelihood. But one discovery having been mentioned, 1 must 

 add, that he also has made another, a discovery which, I 

 think, would have surprised my friend Mr. Vernon Harcourt 

 himself, as much as it did his other readers, " that there are 

 very few amongst the most distinguished of our countrymen 

 superior to" that reverend and exceUent person, "either as a 

 writer or as a man of science ;" so great a length will zeal for 

 his friend and fellow polemic carry a critic engaged in a 

 controversy. 



But this zeal is readily explained by the reflection that 

 fellow-combatants in any controversy which heats their 

 tempers, are blind to each other's deficiencies, and exaggerate 

 each other's perfections; they are also prone to exaggerate 

 the services rendered by each other to the common cause. 

 "The unanswerable arguments of my noble, or my honourable 

 friend," is a very familiar expression on every side in Parlia- 

 mentary debates, which one thus finds are conducted on both 

 sides by combatants equally invincible, and therefore ought 

 always to prove drawn battles. So the critic holds Mr. Vernon 

 Harcourt's publication from Mr. Cavendish's Journals, to be 

 decisive in favour of his contention ; whereas those extracts 

 demonstrate, that Mr. Cavendish never had, even privately, 

 given the explanation of his experiment until after Mr. 

 Watt's theory was in the hands of the Royal Society. I am 

 very far from arguing upon this important publication of Mr. 

 Vernon Harcourt's, that Mr. Cavendish borrowed the hint 

 from Mr. Watt; but at least it demonstrates that Mr. Watt 

 had reduced his theory to writing before Mr. Cavendish, and 

 could not by possibility have borrowed it from him. 



