a 
SCOTT’S ESTIMATION OF WATT. 445 
Whole hours of discussion did not seem too much to him, 
if the object was to do justice to diffident inventors, either 
robbed by plagiarists, or only forgotten by an ungrateful 
public. 
Watt’s memory might be cited as prodigious, even 
by the side of all that is related of this faculty in some 
highly endowed men. Its extent, however, was its least 
merit; it imbibed all that was of any value; and it en- 
tirely rejected, almost instinctively, the superfluities that 
it would have been useless to preserve. 
| The variety of knowledge possessed by our academi- 
cian would be truly incredible, if not attested by many 
eminent men. Lord Jeffrey, in an eloquent biographical 
notice, happily characterized, both the strong and subtle 
intelligence of his friend, when he compared it to the 
elephant’s trunk, so wonderfully organized, that the 
animal uses it with equal facility either to “pick upa 
pin” or “to rénd an oak.” 
Sir Walter Scott speaks of his countryman in the fol- 
lowing terms, in the preface to The Monastery :— * 
‘Tt was only once my fortune to meet him, whether in body or in 
spirit it matters not. There were assembled about half a score of our 
Northern Lights. , . . . Amidst this company stood Mr. Watt, the 
man whose genius discovered the means of multiplying our national 
resources to a degree perhaps even beyond his own stupendous pow- 
ers of calculation and combination; bringing the treasures of the 
abyss to the summit of the earth; giving thefeeble arm of man the 
momentum of an Afrite; commanding manufactures to rise, as the 
rod of the prophet produced water in the desert; affording the means 
of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man; and of 
sailing without that wind which defied the commands and threats of 
Xerxes himself. This potent commander of the elements, the abridger 
* We have thought it better to give the whole passage from Sir 
Walter Scott, than to reproduce it from our author’s French; nor 
have we adopted his omissions.— Translator. 
