It is altogether unnecessary to pronounce a panegyric on the character and achievements of James Watt. This has already been done by Lord Jeffrey in language that cannot be surpassed. Sir James Macintosh placed him “at the head of all inventors in all ages and nations;” and Wordsworth the poet, twenty years after his death, said, “I look upon him, considering both the magnitude and the universality of his genius, as perhaps the most extraordinary man that this country ever produced: he never sought display, but was content to work in that quietness and humility, both of spirit and of outward circumstances, in which alone all that is truly great and good was ever done.”
Watt was himself accustomed to speak of his inventions with the modesty of true genius. To a nobleman who expressed to him his wonder at the greatness of his achievements, he said, “the public only look at my success, and not on the intermediate failures and uncouth constructions which have served as steps to enable me to climb to the top of the ladder.” Watt looked back upon his twenty long years of anxiety and labour before the engine succeeded, and heaved a sigh. “Without affecting any maidenly coyness,” he wrote to Dr. Darwin, who proposed to eulogise him in his ‘Botanic Garden,’ “you really make me appear contemptible in my own eyes by considering how far short my pretensions, or those of the invention, were of the climax of human intellect,—I that know myself to be inferior to the greatest part of enlightened men in most things. If I have excelled, I think now it has been by chance, and by the neglects of others. Preserve the dignity of a philosopher and historian; relate the facts, and leave posterity to judge. If I merit it, some of my countrymen, inspired by the amor patriæ, may say, ‘Hoc a Scoto factum fuit.’”
Although the true inventor, like the true poet, is born, not made,—and although Watt pursued his inventions because he found his highest pleasure in inventing,—yet his greatest achievements were accomplished by unremitting application and industry. He was a keen observer and an incessant experimenter. “Observare” was the motto he deliberately adopted; and it expresses the principle and success of his life. He was always on the watch for facts, noting and comparing them. He took nothing for granted; and accepted no conclusions save on experimental evidence. “Nature can be conquered,” he said, “if we can but find out her weak side.” His patience was inexhaustible. He was never baffled by failure, from which he declared that he learnt more than from success. “It is a great thing,” he once observed to Murdock, “to find out what will not do: it leads to one finding out what will do.”
“Give me facts,” he once said to Boulton, “I am sick of theory: give me actual facts.” Yet, indispensable though facts are, theory is scarcely less so in invention; and it was probably because Watt was a great theorist, that he was a great inventor. His invention of the separate condenser was itself the result of a theory, the soundness of which he proved by experiment. So with the composition of water, the theory of which he at once divined from the experiments of Priestley. He continued theorising during the whole progress of his invention of the steam-engine. New facts suggested new arrangements and the application of entirely new principles, until in course of time the engine of Newcomen became completely transformed.
Watt’s engine was not an invention merely—it might almost be called a creation. “The part which he played,” says M. Bataille, “in the mechanical application of the force of steam, can only be compared to that of Newton in astronomy, and of Shakspeare in poetry. And is not invention the poetry of science? It is only when we compare Watt with other mechanicians that we are struck by his immense superiority,—when we compare him, for example, with Smeaton, who was, perhaps, after him, the man who had advanced the farthest in industrial mechanism. Smeaton began, about the same time as Watt, his inquiries as to the best means of improving the steam-engine. He worked long and patiently, but in an entirely technical spirit. While he was working out his improvements, Watt had drawn forth from his fertile imagination all those brilliant inventions to which we owe the effective working steam-engine. In a word, Smeaton knew how to improve, but Watt knew how to create.”[425]
As for the uses of the steam-engine, they are too widely known to stand in need of illustration. Had Watt, at the outset of his career, announced to mankind that he would invent a power that should drain their mines, blow their furnaces, roll and hammer their metals, thrash and grind their corn, saw their timber, drive their looms and spindles, print their books, impel ships across the ocean, and perform the thousand offices in which steam is now regularly employed, he would have been regarded as an enthusiast, if not as a madman. Yet all this the steam-engine has done and is now doing. It has widely extended the dominion of man over inanimate nature, and given him an almost unbounded supremacy over the materials which enter into his daily use. It has increased his power, his resources, and his enjoyments. It is the most universal and untiring of labourers,—the steam-power of Great Britain alone being estimated as equal to the manual labour of upwards of four hundred millions of men, or more than double the number of males supposed to inhabit the globe.[426] It is, indeed, no exaggeration to say that the steam-engine of Watt is, without exception, the greatest invention of modern times; and that it has been instrumental in effecting the most remarkable revolution in all departments of industry that the world has ever seen.
Some months since, we visited the little garret at Heathfield in which Watt pursued the investigations of his later years. The room had been carefully locked up since his death, and had only once been swept out. Everything lay very much as he left it. The piece of iron he was last employed in turning lay on the lathe. The ashes of the last fire were in the grate, the last bit of coal was in the scuttle. The Dutch oven was in its place over the stove, and the frying-pan in which he cooked his meal was hanging by its accustomed nail. Many objects lay about or in the drawers, indicating the pursuits which had been interrupted by death,—busts, medallions, and figures, waiting to be copied by the sculpture-machine,—many medallion moulds, a store of plaster of Paris, and a box of plaster casts from London, the contents of which do not seem to have been disturbed. Here are Watt’s ladles for melting lead, his foot-rule, his glue-pot, his hammer. Reflecting mirrors, an extemporised camera with the lenses mounted on pasteboard, and many camera-glasses laid about, indicate interrupted experiments in optics. There are quadrant-glasses, compasses, scales, weights, and sundry boxes of mathematical instruments, once doubtless highly prized. In one place a model of the governor, in another of the parallel motion, and in a little box, fitted with wooden cylinders mounted with paper and covered with figures, is what we suppose to be a model of his proposed calculating machine. On the shelves are minerals and chemicals in pots and jars, on which the dust of nearly half a century has settled. The moist substances have long since dried up, the putty has been turned to stone, and the paste to dust. On one shelf we come upon a dish in which lies a withered bunch of grapes. On the floor, in a corner, near to where Watt sat and worked, is a hair-trunk—a touching memorial of a long past love and a long dead sorrow. It contains all poor Gregory’s school-books,—his first attempts at writing, his boy’s drawings of battles, his first school exercises down to his College themes, his delectuses, his grammars, his dictionaries, and his class books,—brought into this retired room, where the father’s eye could rest upon them. Near at hand is the sculpture-machine, on which he continued working to the last. Its wooden framing is worm-eaten and dropping into dust, like the hands which made it. But though the great workman has gone to rest, with all his griefs and cares, and his handiwork is fast crumbling to decay, the spirit of his work, the thought which he put into his inventions, still survives, and will probably continue to influence the destinies of his race for all time to come.
HANDSWORTH CHURCH.