518 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. 



AS A SCIENTIFIC HISTORIAN AND BIOGRAPHER. 



In the preface to his ' Life of Cavendish/ Dr. Wilson says : 

 " During the enforced leisure of a long illness, I commenced 

 in 1842 to collect materials for a projected work on the lives of 

 the chemists of Great Britain, in which Cavendish should occupy 

 a prominent place, and I had made some progress in my task 

 when the Cavendish Society was founded. . . . When, however, 

 at the call of the Society, I laid aside the more general under- 

 taking in which I was engaged, and turned my attention solely 

 to the works and character of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, 

 circumstances had occurred which gave him an importance in 

 the eyes of the lettered public such as no other chemist at the 

 time possessed." And well and laboriously did Dr. Wilson 

 portray the great philosopher, and unravel the mysteries of the 

 water controversy. His description of the man isolated from 

 his fellows is quite photographic ; and after once reading it, we 

 have always a mental portrait of him wandering about the house 

 at Clapham, inspecting his thermometers and rain-gauges, 

 dining his few friends off the invariable leg of mutton, and in- 

 different to objects that excite or gratify the imagination, emo- 

 tions, or higher affections. " His theory of the universe seems 

 to have been, that it consisted solely of a multitude of objects 

 which could be weighed, numbered, and measured ; and the 

 vocation to which he considered himself called was, to weigh, 

 number, and measure, as many of those objects as his allotted 

 threescore years and ten would permit." From a lengthy re- 

 view of all the documents bearing upon the subject, Dr. Wilson 

 came to the conclusion that as far as the discovery of the com- 

 position of water by synthesis is concerned, Cavendish has 

 the highest claim ; and when, some years afterwards, other 

 documents came to light, he had the satisfaction of finding 

 that his view of the case was fully established ; and this more 

 complete vindication of the priority of Cavendish he brought 

 before the public in the 'Athenaeum,' and before the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh. 



Dr. Wilson never carried out his projected work on the lives 

 of the chemists, but he has left behind various monographs on 



