FOOTNOTES
[1]The Gregorian Calendar was not adopted in Great Britain until 1751. In 1752 eleven days were left out of the Calendar, September 3rd being counted the 14th. The change of style probably accounts for the confusion in the various dates of Priestley’s birth given by different writers. In Chalmers’s General Biographical Dictionary the date is given as March 18; in Allen’s American Biographical and Historical Dictionary and in Thomson’s History of the Royal Society as March 24; Corry, in his Life of Priestley, gives March 24; Hoefer, in his Histoire de la Chimie, gives March 30, probably following Dumas’s Philosophie de Chimie; Cuvier, in his Eloge, says that he was born near Bristol in 1728! In a letter to Wedgwood, dated March 23, 1783, Priestley says in a postscript “This day I complete my half century.”
[2]T. Wemyss Reid, Memoir of John Deskin Heaton, p. 7 et seq.
[3]The “Great Frost,” as it was called, which, beginning on December 26, 1739, continued with the greatest intensity till February 17, 1740. Above London Bridge the Thames was completely frozen over, and numerous booths were erected on it for selling liquor, etc., to the multitudes who daily flocked there.
[4]The Inquirer, January 16, 1904.
[5]Dr Andrew Kippis, an eminent Presbyterian, was the minister of the Prince’s Street Chapel, Westminster, and had at his disposal funds which he could employ in assisting young ministers in their education and first settlement. Priestley enjoyed his friendship through life. Kippis, who was the editor of the Biographia Britannia, was elected into the Royal Society in 1779, and served on its council.
[6]William Eyres of Warrington, who was one of the most remarkable printers of his day, produced a number of works noted for their typographic excellence and beauty. He printed, in addition to the works above mentioned, the first editions of Mrs Barbauld’s poems, Gilbert Wakefield’s Lucretius, and other well-known classics.
[7]She was then sixty-two, and lived twenty years longer.
[8]The lines were the well-known stanza:—
“Life! We’ve been long together
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
’Tis hard to part when friends are dear,
Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear;
Then steal away, give little warning.
Choose thine own time;
Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me good-morning.”
[9]He lies buried near Castlehead, in Cartmel, Lancashire, where his monument, a pyramidal mausoleum containing some twenty tons of iron, is a notable feature in the landscape. On it is the following epitaph written by himself:—
“Delivered from persecution of malice and envy here rests John Wilkinson, Iron Master, in certain hopes of a better state and heavenly mansion, as promulgated by Jesus Christ, in whose Gospel he was a firm believer. His life was spent in action for the benefit of man, and he trusts in some degree to the glory of God.”
[10]This portrait was formerly in the possession of Mrs Crouch, Priestley’s youngest sister, and, according to Mrs Bilbrough of Gildersome (née Ellen Priestley), was brought by Mrs Crouch, “along with the old family clock from her father’s, Fieldhead, when she came to live here in 1787.” The picture was once placed in the window of a carver and gilder’s shop at Leeds, when Priestley stopped to look at it in passing by. A woman happened to be doing the same, and, on seeing him, exclaimed, “Why, here’s the fellow himself!” A photographic copy of it was presented to the subscribers to the Stephen Statue in the Oxford Museum.
[11]There is a pencil-drawing of the house, made by the son of Dr Kenrick of Warrington, among the Yates papers in the possession of the Royal Society.
[12]The Chapel, or “Meeting House” as it was called in Priestley’s time, adjoined the Alms House Garth and was erected in 1673, after the passage of the Act of Indulgence. It was pulled down in 1847 and the present Mill Hill Chapel erected on its site.
[13]“Lectures on the Memory of the Just. A Series of Discourses on the Lives and Times of the Ministers of Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds.”
[14]He had in John Lee, a native of Leeds and a man of about his own age, who became Solicitor-General in 1782, a friend who offered to further his interests in that matter. Priestley, in his autobiography, says: “Mr Lee showed himself particularly my friend at the time I left Lord Shelburne, assisting me in the difficulties with which I was then pressed, and continuing to befriend me afterwards by seasonable benefactions.”
[15]Richard Brinsley Sheridan at that time represented Stafford in the House of Commons. Both he and Fox sympathised with Priestley and sought to secure him compensation for his losses.
[16]Withering’s Botanical Arrangement, 2nd Ed. 3 vols. 1792.
[17]Mercuric oxide made by heating quicksilver in air.
[18]Nitrous oxide: see [p. 182].
[19]Mercuric oxide made by heating mercuric nitrate.
[20]See the author’s Essays in Historical Chemistry—“Priestley, Cavendish, Lavoisier and La Révolution Chimique.”