NOTES. 515 



It must once more be repeated, that I never charged or 

 thought of charging Mr. Cavendish with having obtained 

 from Mr. Watt's paper his knowledge of the composition of 

 water, and having knowingly borrowed it, however suspicious 

 a case Mr. Harcourt's publication may seem to make. Both 

 those great men, in my opinion, made the discovery apart 

 from each other, and ignorant each of the other's doctrine. 

 Mr. Cavendish was a man of the strictest integrity, and the 

 most perfect sense of justice. His feelings were very far 

 inferior to his principles. He was singularly callous to the 

 ordinary calls of humanity, as there exist positive proofs 

 sufficient to satisfy the polemical writer upon whose paper I 

 have been commenting if he has any mind to see them. Nor 

 do they rest on my assertion, for I never had any intercourse 

 with him except in society. But the pursuits of a philoso- 

 pher and the life of a recluse, which had so entirely hardened 

 his heart, had not in the least degree impaired his sense 

 of justice ; and my own belief is, that he as entirely supposed 

 himself to have alone made the discovery in question, as Sir 

 Isaac Newton believed himself to be the sole discoverer of 

 the nature of light, and the theory of the solar system. 



Mr. J. Watt and M. Arago may now safely be left to 

 carry on the controversy, whether with the reverend author, 

 or with his able and ingenious, though somewhat over-zealous 

 critic. The subject left in their hands is safe, and the truth 

 is sure to prevail. In these circumstances I am far from 

 feeling any anxiety as to the result, or any desire to anti- 

 cipate the arguments and the statements which must so soon 

 be brought forward. But as I have been freely and most 

 rashly charged with inaccuracy, with inattention to facts, 

 even with having omitted to read the original papers on which 

 the question turns, and charged, in company with my friends 

 M. Arago and Mr. J. Watt, (one of the most careful, labo- 

 rious, and scrupulously exact of men,) I may simply assert, 

 that as regards myself no imputation can well be more 

 groundless ; for there is not a single one of the whole papers 

 which I have not repeatedly and sedulously examined, both 

 alone and in company with others who took an interest in 

 the controversy. I might add, that never was a charge made 



