H. Davy.
Before he quitted Dublin, the Provost and Fellows of Trinity College conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., as an expression of the high admiration which his eminent scientific merits had so universally commanded.
In the month of August, in the same year, his opinion was requested by a committee, as to the best method to be adopted for ventilating the House of Lords; to which circumstance he alludes in the following note to his friend Mr. Pepys.
August 10, 1811.
MY DEAR PEPYS,
I find that I am engaged on Wednesday, to meet Lord Liverpool, at the House of Lords, to consider a mode of ventilating it.
This business, most unluckily, will prevent my accompanying you; but I shall be glad to go with you on some other day, and to touch up the trout at Cheynies, and afterwards to proceed to Serge Hill.
Very affectionately yours,
H. Davy.
This undertaking, it must be allowed, was on Davy's part a most complete failure: whether he had miscalculated the diameter and number of the apertures necessary for establishing a current, it is difficult to say, but it was obvious that the stream of fresh air thus introduced was by no means adequate to the demand for it.[98]
The failure, so vexatious to Davy, became to others a fertile source of pleasantry, and numerous epigrams, not exactly of a character to meet the public eye, were very generally circulated, and which, in recording the miscarriage of science, displayed the triumph of wit.