Many thanks for your kind letter. I have seen your friend Mr. B—— for a minute, and, to use a geological term, I like his aspect, and shall endeavour to cultivate his acquaintance.
I am exceedingly busy; my health is re-established; and I am entering again into the career of experiment.
The prize which you congratulate me upon was given for my paper of 1806, and not for my last discoveries, which will probably excite more interest.
C——, 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 as 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 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.
It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the universal interest which was excited by the lectures on Electro-chemical Science, to which an allusion has been just made. The Theatre of the Institution overflowed; and each succeeding lecture increased the number of candidates for admission.
It is unnecessary, after what has been already stated, to describe the masterly style in which he demonstrated and explained those general laws which his genius had developed, or to enumerate the beautiful and diversified experiments by which he illustrated their application, in simplifying the more complex forms of matter.
His evening lectures on Geology were equally attractive; and by a method as novel as it was beautiful, he exhibited, by the aid of transparencies, the structure of mountains, the stratification of rocks, and the arrangements of mineral veins.
The Easter recess afforded him a few days of leisure, which from the following note he appears to have devoted to his favourite amusement.