LAVOISIER. 229 



such titles are, and have shewn the most singular anxiety 

 to compare and to adjust their relative claims. Of these 

 illustrious men I have known two, Black and Watt, and 

 I can safely say that when the question was raised of 

 priority in discovery among either their predecessors or 

 their coternporaries, they were wont to be particular and 

 minute, even to what seemed superfluous carefulness, in 

 assigning to each his just share, very far more anxious in 

 making this distribution than they ever shewed them- 

 selves to secure the admission of their titles in their 

 own case. By a singular injustice of fortune these two 

 philosophers have been treated themselves with a more 

 scanty measure of the like justice than perhaps any 

 of their cotemporary discoverers. * It is proposed to 

 examine with the same minuteness the particulars in 

 M. Lavoisier's history, upon which some controversy has 

 at different times arisen. 



Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born at Paris, 13th of 

 August, 1743, the son of an opulent family, his father 

 having been a fermier-general. No expense was spared 

 upon his education ; and in the college of Mazarin, where 

 he studied, he gained many prizes for proficiency in clas- 

 sical acquirements. It was, however, to the sciences that 

 he soon devoted himself, and first to the severer ones, 

 having made considerable proficiency in the mathematics 

 and astronomy under La Oaille, in whose observatory he 

 studied upon leaving the college. He studied botany 

 under Jussieu, and chemistry under Rouelle. As from 



* When any reference is made to the Eloges of the French Aca- 

 demy, justice requires me to add that those of M. Arago form a most 

 striking exception. They are strictly historical, as. well as philoso- 

 phical. That of Watt is a model. 



