"The caterpillar, in being converted into an inert scaly mass, does not appear to be fitting itself for an inhabitant of air, and can have no consciousness of the brilliancy of its future being. We are masters of the earth, but perhaps we are the slaves of some great and unknown beings. The fly that we crush with our finger, or feed with our viands, has no knowledge of man, and no consciousness of his superiority. We suppose that we are acquainted with matter, and with all its elements, and yet we cannot even guess at the cause of electricity, or explain the laws of the formation of the stones which fall from meteors. There may be beings,—thinking beings, near us, surrounding us, which we do not perceive, which we can never imagine. We know very little; but, in my opinion, we know enough to hope for the immortality, the individual immortality of the better part of man.
"I have been led into all this speculation, which you may well think wild, in reflecting upon the fate of Gregory! my feeling has given erring wings to my mind. He was a noble fellow, and would have been a great man.—Oh! there was no reason for his dying—he ought not to have died.
"Blessings wait on you, my good fellow! Pray remember me to Tobin, and, if you read this letter to him, protest, the moment he begins to argue against the immortality of man!
"I came yesterday from the borders of Dorsetshire, where I have been since Monday, seduced to travel by a friend. I was within sixty miles of you, and saw divers fair trout-streams: let the fish beware of me,—I shall be at them on Monday."
I have included this latter sentence in my extract, as being highly characteristic of the writer. His passion for angling betrayed itself upon all occasions; and the sport was alike his relief in toil, and his solace in sorrow. To his conversation, as well as to his letters, we may aptly apply the words of the Augustan poet:—
"Desinit in piscem——formosa superne."
Whenever I had the honour of dining at his table, the conversation, however it might have commenced, invariably ended on fishing; and when a brother of the angle happened to be present, you had the pleasure of hearing all his encounters with the finny tribe—how he had lured them by his treachery, and vanquished them by his perseverance. He would occasionally strike into a most eloquent and impassioned strain upon some subject which warmed his fancy; such, for example, as the beauties of mountain scenery; but before you could fully enjoy the prospect which his imagination had pictured, down he carried you into some sparkling stream, or rapid current, to flounder for the next half hour with a hooked salmon!
I remember witnessing, upon one of these occasions, a very amusing scene, which may be related as illustrative of some peculiarities of his temper. I believe all those who have accompanied Davy in his fishing excursions, will allow that no sportsman was ever more ambitious to appear skilful and lucky. Nothing irritated him so much as to find that his companions had caught more fish than himself; and if, during conversation, a brother fisherman surpassed him in the relation of his success, he betrayed similar impatience.
There happened to be present, on the occasion to which I allude, a skilful angler, and an enterprising chemist. The latter commenced on some subject connected with his favourite science; but Davy, who, generally speaking, disliked to make it a subject of conversation, suddenly turned to the angler, and related what he considered a very surprising instance of his success: his sporting friend, however, mortified him by the relation of a still more marvellous anecdote; upon which Davy as quickly returned to the chemist, who, in turn, again sent him back to the angler:—and thus did he appear to endure the unhappy fate of the flying fish, who no sooner escapes from an enemy in the regions of air, than he is pursued by one equally rapacious in the waters.—But to return to the thread of our history.
In referring to the records of the Institution, it appears that in January 1805, Davy greatly enriched the cabinets of the Institution by a present of minerals. The following are the Minutes of the Committee upon this occasion: