388 JAMES WATT. 
work, has reduced them to be mere instruments of demon- 
stration. ‘This would have been the final fate.of New- 
comen’s machine, in localities at least not rich in combus- 
tibles, if Watt’s efforts, of which I must now present you 
with an analysis, had not come in to give it an unhoped- 
for degree of perfection. This perfection must not be 
considered as the result of some fortuitous observation, or 
of a single inspiration of genius ; the inventor achieved it 
by assiduous labour, by experiments of extreme delicacy 
and correctness. One would say that Watt had adopted 
as his guide that celebrated maxim of Bacon’s—“'To 
write, speak, meditate, or act, when we are not sufficiently 
provided with facts to stake out our thoughts, is like navi- 
gating without a pilot along a coast strewed with dangers, 
or rushing out on the immense ocean without compass or 
rudder.” 
In the collection belonging to the University of Glas- 
gow, there was a little model of a steam-engine by New- 
comen that had never worked well. The Professor of 
Physics, Anderson, desired Watt to repair it. In the 
hands of this powerful workman the defects of its con- 
struction disappeared ; from that time the apparatus was 
made to work annually under the inspection of the aston- 
ished students. A man of common mind would have 
rested satisfied with this success. Watt, on the contrary, 
as usual with him, saw cause in it for deep study. His 
researches were successively directed to all the points 
that appeared likely to clear up the theory of the ma- 
chine. He ascertained the proportion in which water 
dilates in passing from a state of fluidity into that of 
vapour ; the quantity of water that a certain weight of 
coal can convert into vapour ; the quantity and weight 
of steam expended at each oscillation by one of Newco- 
