Dr. Young wrote to a friend:
I believe your pheasants have assisted in bringing my friend Davy into a hundred a year and the office of secretary of the Royal Society. It had never occurred to him to offer himself till I suggested it to him one day when he dined with me. The next day he heard of poor Gray’s death, and, upon applying to the President, he was, after some deliberation, approved, although another person had before been encouraged. If I had not been a member of an illiberal profession I should have liked the situation myself, but perhaps the public is right in discouraging a divided attention.
At the end of August Davy wrote to Mr. Poole:
I am obliged to be in the neighbourhood of town during the greater part of the summer for the purpose of correcting the proofs for the ‘Philosophical Transactions.’
If Coleridge is still with you, be kind enough to say to him that I wrote nearly a week ago two letters about lectures, and, not knowing where he was, I addressed them to him at different places. I wish very much he would seriously determine on this point. The managers of the Royal Institution are very anxious to engage him, and I think he might be of material service to the public and of benefit to his own mind, to say nothing of the benefit his purse might also receive. In the present condition of society his opinions in matters of taste, literature, and metaphysics must have a healthy influence; and, unless he soon becomes an active member of the living world, he must expect to be hereafter brought to judgment for hiding his light.
Seven months afterwards Davy again wrote to Mr. Poole:
Coleridge, after disappointing his audience twice from illness, is announced to lecture again this week. He has suffered greatly from excessive sensibility, the disease of genius. His mind is a wilderness in which the cedar and the oak, which might aspire to the skies, are stunted in their growth by underwood, thorns, briars, and other parasitical plants. With the most exalted genius, enlarged views, sensitive heart, and enlightened mind he will be the victim of want of order, precision, and regularity. I cannot think of him without experiencing the mingled feelings of admiration, regard, and pity.
Why do you not come to London? Many would be happy to see you, but no one more so than your very sincere Friend, my dear Poole,
H. Davy.
The Laboratory Books show that the last week in September 1807 he exposed magnesia upon a glass plate at the positive pole with distilled water. Four days afterwards he put oxide of zinc in a coagulated state round the positive pole.
On October 6 he began ‘a new series of experiments on polarity.’
From the account he gives of one experiment, it appears that he exposed different substances on a glass plate to the action of the platinum wires from a galvanic battery of 100 plates of 6 inches.