140 WATT. 



showing the modest dignity of his character : " It matters not," 

 said he, " whether Cavendish discovered this or I, it is discovered." 

 In the year 1800 Mr. Watt, having acquired an ample competency, 

 ceased to take an active part in the business of the firm, and the 

 remainder of his life was spent in retirement ; but his active mind, 

 still unwearied, continued to follow its natural bent. On two occa- 

 sions afterwards, in 1811 and 1812, he gave proofs of the undi- 

 minished powers of his inventive genius. In the one instance he 

 was induced, by his grateful recollections of his residence in 

 Glasgow, to assist the proprietors of the waterworks there with a 

 plan for supplying the town with better water, by means of a 

 suction pipe laid across the Clyde to reach to the other side, where 

 water of a very superior quality might be procured. This pipe was 

 formed of cast iron, with flexible joints, after the manner of a 

 lobster's tail, so as to accommodate itself to the bed of the river, 

 and fully answered the purpose for which it was designed. In the 

 other instance he was prevailed upon, by the earnest solicitation of 

 the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, to attend a deputation 

 of the Navy Board, and to give, with his friend Captain Huddart 

 and Mr. J. Jessop, an opinion upon the works then carrying on at 

 Sheerness Dockyard, and the further ones projected by Messrs. 

 Rennie and Whitby. On this occasion he no less gratified the 

 gentlemen associated with him by the clearness of his general 

 views, than by his knowledge of the details ; and he received the 

 thanks of the Admiralty for his services. In 1814 he yielded to the 

 wishes of his friends, of Dr. Brewster especially, and undertook a 

 revision of Professor Robison's articles on steam and steam-engines 

 for an early edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which he en- 

 riched with valuable notes, containing his own experiments on 

 steam, and a short history of his principal improvements upon the 

 engine itself. Among other mechanical contrivances of Mr. Watt's 

 may be mentioned : a machine for copying letters ; an instrument 

 for measuring the specific gravity of fluids ; a regulator lamp ; a 



Elan for heating buildings by steam ; and a contrivance for drying 

 nen. In his eighty-third year, Mr. Watt was still occupied in 

 inventing a machine for copying statues, but this remained unfi- 

 nished, death arrested his hand ; he died in the year 1819, at 

 Heathfield, in Staffordshire ; and thus, full of years and honours, 

 ended the life of a man who, though born in a secluded village 

 town, and reared in comparative poverty, was yet enabled, by per- 

 severing industry and the happy gifts of nature) to contribute so 

 greatly to the commercial prosperity of the world. 



Mr. Watt was elected a member of the Royal Society of Edin- 

 burgh in 1784, of the Royal Society of London in 1785, and a cor- 

 responding member of the Batavian Society in 1787. In 1806 the 

 honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by tlic sponta- 

 neous and unanimous vote of the Senate of the University erf 



