516 NOTES. 



with a worse grace than this by the ingenious, and most care- 

 less, and very moderately-informed critic who has mixed in 

 the discussion: for assuredly he has not taken the trouble 

 to read the papers, or to make himself acquainted with the 

 works which every chemist, even every student of chemistry 

 familiarly knows. What shall we say of a writer who under- 

 takes to discuss this question, with no better provision for 

 handling it, than is betokened by his broadly affirming that 

 Mr. Watt himself never preferred the disputed claim, when 

 there exists his own paper of 1784 in the 'Philosophical 

 Transactions/ referring to and indeed containing his letter 

 of April, 1783? Nay, what shall we again say of the same 

 critic as broadly asserting, that no one ever in Mr. Caven- 

 dish's lifetime brought it forward, when Professor Robison in 

 the Encyclopaedia, Dr. John Thomson in his celebrated Trans- 

 lation of Fourcroy, Dr. Thomas Thomson and Mr. Murray, 

 each in their ' Elements of Chemistry,' and Mr. W. Nicholson 

 in both his e Dictionary 5 and his other works, all state Mr. 

 Watt's claim in the very words in which M. Arago and 

 myself now have urged it, nay, Sir C. Blagden states it in 

 his letter to Crell, and all these long and long before Mr. 

 Cavendish's death,* to say nothing of others, as Dr. Thom- 

 son, in his 'History of the Royal Society, 1 published since? 

 As to Mr. Vernon Harcourt's appealing boldly to -Dr. Henry's 

 authority, and preserving a profound silence when I quoted 

 his letter, expressly negativing that confident statement, I 

 say nothing; because it is a matter not easily handled, con- 

 sistently with the respect and esteem in which I have ever 

 held my reverend friend. 



* Professor Robison in 1797; the Translation of Fourcroy earlier. 



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