1807 Humphry Davy 225 



the Royal Society when the cabal against Sir Joseph Banks 

 was gathering force, and who joined the Club in 1787 when 

 the recollection of the dispeace was still fresh, cannot have 

 forgotten that the Bishop had been formally " discon- 

 tinued " by the Club, and for twenty years had been no 

 longer a member. The Club records contain no trace of 

 any proposal for his re-election, and such re-election would 

 have been necessary before he could take his place as a 

 member. It is conceivable that the cordiality with which 

 he was received may have led the Treasurer into the assump- 

 tion that he had been practically taken back into member- 

 ship. But it is difficult to account for the deliberate insertion 

 of the mistake in the Minutes and for the failure to have 

 it corrected if the statement was read to the Club at this 

 Anniversary. 



Another ex officio member now entered the Club owing 

 to a change in the official staff of the Royal Society. On 

 the 22nd January 1807 Humphry Davy was elected one 

 of the Secretaries of the Society. By the brilliance of his 

 chemical discoveries and his remarkably attractive powers 

 of exposition this young man had rapidly gained a place 

 among the foremost men of science in the country. The 

 Royal Society had elected him into its ranks in 1803 when 

 he was only twenty-five years of age and had awarded him 

 its greatest prize, the Copley Medal, in 1807, on the same 

 day on which it chose him as one of its Secretaries. Yet 

 he was only on the threshold of his remarkable career of 

 discovery and invention. Upwards of twenty strenuous and 

 fruitful years were before him until, worn out with toil, 

 he died when only in the fifty-first year of his age. Sir 

 Henry Holland, who watched him in his early years, has left 

 a recollection of him as he appeared at Sir Joseph Banks' 

 assemblies and at the lecture theatre in Albemarle Street. 

 " At those parties, the youthful and more elastic genius 

 of Davy came in striking contrast to the inflexibility of 

 Wollaston and the umbratilis vita and hereditary taciturnity 

 of Cavendish. His early successes in science had embold- 

 ened a mind naturally ardent and speculative ; and I well 



