Said Professor Silliman's "American Journal of Science and Arts:" "His reputation is too intimately associated with the eternal laws of nature to suffer decay; and the name of Davy, like those of Archimedes, Galileo, and Newton, which grow greener by time, will descend to the latest posterity."
Davy was poor and self-taught, but he triumphed over obstacles, and died universally lamented.
SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.
The eldest son in a family of five children, Humphrey Davy was born at Penzance, Cornwall, England, December 17, 1778, the year in which Carl Linnæus died. He was a bright, active child, making rhymes when he was five years old, and reciting them at the Christmas gatherings. In consequence of his retentive memory, he could repeat a great part of "Pilgrim's Progress" before he could read it. This book and "Æsop's Fables" were his favorites.
When Humphrey was six, he was sent to a grammar school kept by Rev. Mr. Coryton, a man who had the vicious habit of punishing by pulling the pupils' ears. On one occasion, Humphrey came to school with a large plaster on each ear. Upon being asked what was the matter, he said, with a grave face, that he had "put the plasters on to prevent a mortification!"
As he grew older, he composed Latin and English verses easily, and was in great demand among the boys as a writer of valentines and love-letters. Though shy in manner, with his vivid imagination and flow of language, he told stories remarkably well, and might have been seen, often, in a cart at the Star Inn, addressing a most attentive audience.
Says his brother, Dr. John Davy, "Humphrey, when a boy, was fond of declaiming, and indulged in it in his solitary walks and rambles. On one occasion it is recorded of him, that, on his way to visit a poor patient in the country (during his apprenticeship), in the fever of declamation, he threw out of his hand a vial of medicine which he had to administer, and that when he arrived at the bedside of the poor woman he was surprised at the loss of it. The potion was found the next day in a hay-field adjoining the path."
When Humphrey was fourteen he attended the Truro Grammar School for a year, where he was greatly liked for his good-humor, affectionate disposition, and originality. Says Mr. Nicholls, a school friend, "I can never forget that as boys we knew and loved each other. I recollect a visit he paid in company with his aunt at my father's, who then resided at Lanarth. He was a great favorite; but there was even then an original mode of thinking and acting observable in him,—one instance of which I well remember;—it was on rather a hot day, when my father, mother, your aunt, Humphrey, and myself, were to walk to a place a mile or two distant, I forget for what purpose. Whilst others complained of the heat, and whilst I unbuttoned my waistcoat, Humphrey appeared with his great-coat close-buttoned up to his chin, for the purpose, as he declared, of keeping out the heat. This was laughed at at the time, but it struck me then, as it appears to me now, as evincing originality of thought and an indisposition to be led by the example of others."
At fifteen his school education was considered complete. The next year he studied French, gave a good deal of time to fishing, of which he was always fond, and apparently had little definite purpose. About this time his father died, and the straitened circumstances of the family now seemed to awaken all the energy and nobility of his nature. Seeing his mother in deep affliction, he begged her not to grieve, saying that "he would do all he could for his brothers and sisters." And he never forgot this promise.