‘The sensation created by his lectures at the Institution and the enthusiastic admiration which they obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the first rank and talent, the literary and the scientific, the practical and the theoretical, blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the young, all crowded, eagerly crowded, the lecture room. His youth, his simplicity, his natural eloquence, his chemical knowledge, his happy illustrations and well-conducted experiments excited universal attention and unbounded applause.
‘Compliments, invitations, and presents were showered upon him in abundance from all quarters. His society was courted by all, and all appeared proud of his acquaintance.’
On February 5 he again dined with Sir H. Englefield at his house at Blackheath. Eighteen long years afterwards, looking back through Davy’s career, Sir H. Englefield said of this evening, ‘It was the last flash of expiring nature.’
On May 31, 1802, at the managers’ meeting, it was resolved that Mr. Humphry Davy be for the future styled Professor of Chemistry to the Royal Institution. In July ‘he respectfully requested leave of the managers that he may be permitted to spend a few weeks during the summer in the country. It is not amusement alone that he hopes to gain during his short absence, but he believes that he may be able to collect some information that may be useful in the lectures to be given on Agriculture in the spring, and which may be in other ways connected with the views of the Institution. He will take care that his absence shall not interfere with the regular publication of the Journals, and he will never be so far from town but that he can speedily return whenever his presence may be necessary.’
He wrote to Davies Gilbert, October 26:
Dear Friend,—The anxieties and hopes connected with a new occupation have prevented me from paying sufficient attention even to the common duties and affections of life.... Your correspondence is to me a real source of pleasure, and, believe me, I would suffer no opportunity to escape of making it more frequent and regular.
My labours in the theatre of the Royal Institution have been more successful than I could have hoped from the nature of them. In lectures the effect produced upon the mind is generally transitory; for the most part they amuse rather than instruct, and stimulate to inquiry rather than give information. My audience has often amounted to four or five hundred and upwards, and amongst them some promise to become permanently attached to chemistry. This science is much the fashion of the day.
I mentioned to you in a former letter the great powers of galvanism in effecting the combustion of metals. I have lately had constructed for the laboratory of the Institution a battery of immense size; it consists of four hundred plates of five inches in diameter and forty of a foot in diameter.
I am now examining the agencies of it upon certain substances that have not as yet been decomposed.
Have you seen the theory of my colleague, Dr. Young, on the undulations of an ethereal medium as the cause of light? It is not likely to be a popular hypothesis after what has been said by Newton concerning it. He would be very much flattered if you could offer any observations upon it, whether for or against it.
We are publishing at the Royal Institution a ‘Journal of Science,’ which contains chiefly abridged accounts of what is going on in different parts of Europe, with some original papers; and, in hopes that its diffusion may become more general, we have fixed its price at one shilling.
I am beginning to think of my course of lectures for the winter. In addition to the common course of the Institution, I have to deliver a few lectures on Vegetable Substances, and on the Connexion of Chemistry with Vegetable Physiology, before the Board of Agriculture.
I am, dear Sir, with affection and respect, yours,
H. Davy.
In April Davy joined Dr. Young in editing the eighth number of the Journal. Count Rumford had edited the three first and Dr. Young the four following numbers. In the third number Davy had given an account of a new eudiometer, and in the fourth outlines of a view of galvanism. In another number he gave an account of a method of copying paintings upon glass, and of making profiles by the agency of light upon nitrate of silver, invented by T. Wedgwood, Esq. He says, ‘Nothing but a method of preventing the unshaded parts of the delineation from being coloured by exposure to the day is wanting to render the process as useful as it is elegant.’
On February 24, 1803, an account of some experiments and observations on the constituent parts of certain astringent vegetables, and on their operation in tanning, was read by Davy at the Royal Society.
He was proposed as a Fellow of the Royal Society on April 20, and elected on November 17.
A letter from Coleridge to Mr. Purkis, dated February 17, 1803, from Nether Stowey, thus speaks of Davy at this time: