504 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



cerning each of which, many seem to have fallen into very great 

 errors; for by invention, I believe, is generally understood a crea- 

 tive faculty, which would indeed prove most romance writers to have 

 the highest pretensions to it ; whereas by invention is meant no more 

 (and so the word signifies) than discovery or finding out; or, to 

 explain it at large, a quick and sagacious penetration into the true 

 essence of all the objects of our contemplation. This, I think, can 

 rarely exist without the concomitancy of judgment, for how we can 

 be said to have discovered the true essence of two things, without 

 discerning their difference, seems to me hard to conceive. Now this 

 last is the undisputed province of judgment; and yet some few men 

 of wit have agreed with all the dull fellows in the world, in repre- 

 senting these two to have been seldom or never the property of one 

 and the same person." 



My own judgment, if of any value, would rank the ability of 

 Henry I do not say his achievements a little below that of 

 Faraday. Indeed, their lives and their manners of working were 

 strangely alike. Each born in humble condition, without any of 

 the adventitious aids of position or influence, was destined appa- 

 rently to mechanical occupation. Faraday was an apprentice to a 

 bookbinder. Henry served in the same capacity under a silver- 

 smith. Each started in life with moral and benevolent habits, well 

 developed and healthy bodies, quick and accurate perceptions, calm 

 judgment and self-reliance tempered with modesty and good man- 

 ners, a good ground surely in which to plant the germs of the 

 scientific life. Each by innate force of taste and intellect, was im- 

 pelled to the pursuit of knowledge under obstacles which would 

 have damped the ardor of ordinary youths. Each, endowed with a 

 lively imagination, was in his younger days fond of romance and the 

 drama; and, by a singular similarity of accidents, each had his 

 attention turned to science by a book which chance threw in his 

 way. This work in the case of Faraday was " Mrs. Marcet's Con- 

 versations on Chemistry ;" and the book which influenced Henry's 

 career was "Gregory's Lectures on Experimental Philosophy, 

 Astronomy, and Chemistry." Of Mrs. Marcet's book Faraday thus 

 writes : " My dear Friend, Your subject interested me deeply every 

 way ; for Mrs. Marcet was a good friend to me, as she must have 



