The rapid performance of intellectual operations was a talent which displayed itself at every period of his life. We have heard with what extraordinary rapidity he read at the age of five years; and we now learn that his chemical enquiries were conducted with similar facility and quickness.
His early friend Mr. Poole bears his testimony to the existence of the same quality in the following passage, extracted from a letter I had lately the favour of receiving from him. "From my earliest knowledge of my admirable friend, I consider his most striking characteristic to have been the quickness and truth of his apprehension. It was a power of reasoning so rapid, when applied to any subject, that he could hardly be himself conscious of the process; and it must, I think, have been felt by him, as it appeared to me, pure intuition. I used to say to him, 'You understand me before I half understand myself?'
"I recollect on our first acquaintance, he knew but little of the practice of agriculture. I was at that time a considerable farmer, and very fond of the occupation. During his visits in those days, I was at first something like his teacher, but my pupil soon became my master both in theory and practice."
The chemical manipulations of Wollaston and Davy offered a singular contrast to each other, and might be considered as highly characteristic of the temperaments and intellectual qualities of these remarkable men. Every process of the former was regulated with the most scrupulous regard to microscopic accuracy, and performed with the utmost neatness of detail. It has been already stated with what turbulence and apparent confusion the experiments of the latter were conducted; and yet each was equally excellent in his own style; and, as artists, they have not unaptly been compared to Teniers and Michael Angelo. By long discipline, Wollaston had acquired such power in commanding and fixing his attention upon minute objects, that he was able to recognise resemblances, and to distinguish differences, between precipitates produced by re-agents, which were invisible to ordinary observers, and which enabled him to submit to analysis the minutest particle of matter with success. Davy, on the other hand, obtained his results by an intellectual process, which may be said to have consisted in the extreme rapidity with which he seized upon, and applied, appropriate means at appropriate moments.
Many anecdotes might be related in illustration of the curiously different structure of the minds of these two ornaments of British Science. The reader will, in the course of these memoirs, be furnished with sufficient evidence of the existence of those qualities which I have assigned to Davy; another biographer will no doubt ably illustrate those of Dr. Wollaston.
I shall only observe, that to this faculty of minute observation, which Dr. Wollaston applied with so much advantage, the chemical world is indebted for the introduction of more simple methods of experimenting,—for the substitution of a few glass tubes, and plates of glass, for capacious retorts and receivers, and for the art of making grains give the results which previously required pounds. A foreign philosopher once called upon Dr. Wollaston with letters of introduction, and expressed an anxious desire to see his laboratory. "Certainly," he replied; and immediately produced a small tray containing some glass tubes, a blow-pipe, two or three watch-glasses, a slip of platinum, and a few test bottles.
Wollaston appeared to take great delight in showing by what small means he could produce great results. Shortly after he had inspected the grand galvanic battery constructed by Mr. Children, and had witnessed some of those brilliant phenomena of combustion which its powers produced, he accidentally met a brother chemist in the street, and seizing his button, (his constant habit when speaking on any subject of interest,) he led him into a secluded corner; when taking from his waistcoat pocket a tailor's thimble, which contained a galvanic arrangement, and pouring into it the contents of a small phial, he instantly heated a platinum wire to a white heat.
There was another peculiarity connected with Wollaston's habit of minute observation: it enabled him to press into his service, at the moment, such ordinary and familiar materials as would never have occurred to less observing chemists. Mr. Brande relates an anecdote admirably calculated to exemplify this habit. He had called upon Dr. Wollaston to consult him upon the subject of a calculus;—it will be remembered that neither phosphate of lime, constituting the 'bone earth' species, nor the ammoniaco-magnesian phosphate, commonly called the 'triple phosphate,' is $1fusible; but that when mixed, these constitute the 'fusible calculus' which readily melts before the blow-pipe. Dr. Wollaston, on finding the substance under examination refractory, took up his paper-folder, and scraping off a fragment of the ivory, placed it on the specimen, when it instantly fused.[39]
Having contrasted the manipulations of Davy, as exhibited in the theatre, with those performed by him in the laboratory, it may, in this place, be interesting to offer a few remarks upon the difference of his style as a lecturer and as a writer. Whatever diversity of opinion may have been entertained as to the former, I believe there never was but one sentiment with respect to the latter. There is an ethereal clearness of style, a simplicity of language, and, above all, a freedom from technical expression, which render his philosophical memoirs fit studies and models for all future chemists. Mr. Brande, in a late lecture delivered before the members of the Royal Institution, very justly alluded to this latter quality of his writings, and forcibly contrasted it with the system of Berzelius, of whom it is painful to speak but in terms of the most profound respect, and yet it is impossible not to express a deep regret at this distinguished chemist's introduction of a system of technical expressions, which from its obscurity is calculated to multiply rather than to correct error, and from its complications, to require more labour than the science to which it administers: to apply the quaint metaphor of Locke, "it is no more suited to improve the understanding, than the move of a jack is to fill our bellies."
From the readiness with which some continental chemists have adopted such terms, and from the spirit in which they have defended them, one might almost be led to suspect that they believed them, like the words used by the Magi of Persia, to possess a cabalistic power. Davy foresaw the injury which science must sustain from such a practice, and endeavoured, both by precept and example, to discountenance it.