[ [101] Boulton to Wedgwood, January, 1769.—Wedgwood was one of his most intimate friends; the two alike aiming at excellence in their respective branches of production. Their kindred efforts seem to have excited the ire of some satirist, whose effusion against them in the ‘Public Ledger’ is thus referred to in the postscript of a letter from Wedgwood to Boulton, dated 19th February, 1771:—“If you take in the ‘Public Ledger’ you’ll see that Mr. Antipuffado has done me the honour to rank me with the most stupendous geniuses of the age, and has really cut me up very cleanly. He talks, too, that he should not wonder if some surprising genius at Birmingham should be tempted to make Roman medals and tenpenny nails, or Corinthian knives and daggers, and style himself Roman medal and Etruscan tenpenny nail-maker to the Empress of Abyssinia. But see the paper: I believe it is the first week in February, and is one of the better sort of this class.”—Boulton MSS.
[ [102] The clocks, with several other articles, were sent out to Russia, and submitted to the Empress through the kindness of Earl Cathcart. His lordship, in communicating the result to Mr. Boulton, said—“I have the pleasure to inform you that her Imperial Majesty not only bought them all, last week, but did me the honour to tell me that she was extremely pleased with them, and thought them superior in every respect to the French, as well as cheaper, which entitled them in all lights to a preference.”
[ [103] Pet names of his two children, Matthew Robinson and Anne Boulton.
[ [104] These letters are without date, but we infer that they were written in the summer of 1767.
[ [105] Boulton to the Duke of Richmond, April 8, 1770. The Duke was engaged at the time in preparing a set of machines for making the various experiments in Natural Philosophy described in S’Gravande’s book. The Duke was himself a good turner and worker in metal.
[ [106] The manufactory was complete so far as regarded the hardware manufacture. But additions were constantly being made to it; and, as other branches of industry were added, it became more than doubled in extent and accommodation.
[ [107] Boulton to John Taylor, 23rd January, 1769. Boulton MSS.
[ [108] When the canal came to be constructed at the point at which it passed Soho, it occasioned him great anxiety through the leakage of the canal banks and loss of water for the purposes of his manufactory. The supply, especially in dry summers, was already too limited; but the canal threatened to destroy it altogether. Writing to Mr. Thomas Gilbert, M.P., on the subject in February, 1769, he said, “The very holes which Mr. Smeaton hath dug to try the ground, drink up the water nearly as fast as you can pour it in.... Let Smeaton or Brindley, or all the engineers upon earth give what evidence they will before Parliament, I am convinced by last summer’s experience that if the proprietors of the canal continue to take the two streams on which my mill depends, it is ruined. I might as well have built it upon the summit of the hill.” After the act had passed he wrote his friend Garbett, “I have seen the testimony of the two engineers, Smeaton and Yeoman, but I value the opinions of neither of them, nor of Brindley nor Simcox (in this case), nor of the whole tribe of jobbing ditchers, who are retained as evidence on any side which first applies for them.” His alarms, however, proved unfounded, as the leakage of the canal was eventually remedied; and in November, 1772, we find him writing to the Earl of Warwick, “Our navigation goes on prosperously; the junction with the Wolverhampton Canal is complete; and we already sail from Birmingham to Bristol and to Hull.”—Boulton MSS.
[ [109] Among Boulton’s scientific memoranda, we find some curious speculations, bearing the date of 1765, relative to improvements which he was trying to work out in gunnery. He proposed the truer boring of the guns, the use of a telescopic sight, and a cylindrical shot with its end of a parabolic form as presenting in his opinion the least resistance to the air.
[ [110] On the 22nd May, 1765, Franklin writes Boulton,—“Mr. Baskerville informs me that you have lately had a considerable addition to your fortune, on which I sincerely congratulate you. I beg leave to introduce my friend Doctor Small to your acquaintance, and to recommend him to your civilities. I would not take this freedom, if I were not sure it would be agreeable to you; and that you will thank me for adding to the number of those who from their knowledge of you must respect you, one who is both an ingenious philosopher and a most worthy honest man. If anything new in magnetism or electricity, or any other branch of natural knowledge, has occurred to your fruitful genius since I last had the pleasure of seeing you, you will by communicating it greatly oblige me.”