The History of Chemistry, Volume 2 (of 2)

THOMAS THOMSON, M. D. F.R.S. L. & E.; F.L.S.; F.G.S., &c.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1831.
C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.
HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY.
OF THE FOUNDATION AND PROGRESS OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY IN GREAT BRITAIN.
While Mr. Cavendish was extending the bounds of pneumatic chemistry, with the caution and precision of a Newton, Dr. Priestley, who had entered on the same career, was proceeding with a degree of rapidity quite unexampled; while from his happy talents and inventive faculties, he contributed no less essentially to the progress of the science, and certainly more than any other British chemist to its popularity.
Joseph Priestley was born in 1733, at Fieldhead, about six miles from Leeds in Yorkshire. His father, Jonas Priestley, was a maker and dresser of woollen cloth, and his mother, the only child of Joseph Swift a farmer in the neighbourhood. Dr. Priestley was the eldest child; and, his mother having children very fast, he was soon committed to the care of his maternal grandfather. He lost his mother when he was only six years of age, and was soon after taken home by his father and sent to school in the neighbourhood. His father being but poor, and encumbered with a large family, his sister, Mrs. Keighley, a woman in good circumstances, and without children, relieved him of all care of his eldest son, by taking him and bringing him up as her own. She was a dissenter, and her house was the resort of all the dissenting clergy in the country. Young Joseph was sent to a public school in the neighbourhood, and, at sixteen, had made considerable progress in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Having shown a passion for books and for learning at a very early age, his aunt conceived hopes that he would one day become a dissenting clergyman, which she considered as the first of all professions; and he entered eagerly into her views: but his health declining about this period, and something like phthisical symptoms having come on, he was advised to turn his thoughts to trade, and to settle as a merchant in Lisbon. This induced him to apply to the modern languages; and he learned French, Italian, and German, without a master. Recovering his health, he abandoned his new scheme and resumed his former plan of becoming a clergyman. In 1752 he was sent to the academy of Daventry, to study under Dr. Ashworth, the successor of Dr. Doddridge. He had already made some progress in mechanical philosophy and metaphysics, and dipped into Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic. At Daventry he spent three years, engaged keenly in studies connected with divinity, and wrote some of his earliest theological tracts. Freedom of discussion was admitted to its full extent in this academy. The two masters espoused different sides upon most controversial subjects, and the scholars were divided into two parties, nearly equally balanced. The discussions, however, were conducted with perfect good humour on both sides; and Dr. Priestley, as he tells us himself, usually supported the heterodox opinion; but he never at any time, as he assures us, advanced arguments which he did not believe to be good, or supported an opinion which he did not consider as true. When he left the academy, he settled at Needham in Suffolk, as an assistant in a small, obscure dissenting meeting-house, where his income never exceeded 30 l. a-year. His hearers fell off, in consequence of their dislike of his theological opinions; and his income underwent a corresponding diminution. He attempted a school; but his scheme failed of success, owing to the bad opinion which his neighbours entertained of his orthodoxy. His situation would have been desperate, had he not been occasionally relieved by sums out of charitable funds, procured by means of Dr. Benson, and Dr. Kippis.