152 SIR HUMPHREY DAVY. 



rapid arrangement of ideas from their various anal- 

 ogies to the equally rapid comparisons of these 

 analogies, with facts uniformly occurring during 

 the progress of discovery, have existed only in those 

 minds where the agency of strong and various 

 motives is perceived of motives modifying each 

 other, mingling with each other, and producing that 

 fever of emotion which is the joy of existence and 

 the consciousness of life." 



Coleridge used to say, " I attend Davy's lectures 

 to increase my stock of metaphors." 



In the spacious and well supplied laboratory of 

 the Institution, in making his experiments, says 

 his brother, "his zeal amounted to enthusiasm, 

 which he more or less imparted to those around 

 him. With cheerful voice and countenance, and a 

 hand as ready to manipulate as his mind was quick 

 to contrive, he was indefatigable in his exertions. 

 He was delighted with success, but not discouraged 

 by failure ; and he bore failures and accidents in 

 experiments with a patience and forbearance, even 

 when owing to the awkwardness of assistants, which 

 could hardly have been expected from a person of 

 his ardent temperament." 



He was very happy in these years of work. Says 

 his brother: "In going to bed, and rising, and 

 sometimes in the dead of night, I used to hear him, 

 in a loud voice, reciting favorite passages in prose 

 or verse, or declaiming some composition of his 

 own, or humming some angler's song." 



He spent his evenings often in society, but wrote 



