Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher

by T. E. Thorpe

[D] Young’s connection with the Royal Institution was comparatively brief. On July 4th, 1803, it was resolved “That Dr. Young be paid the balance of two years’ complete salary, and that his engagement with the Institution terminate from this time.”

At a meeting held in the same month, the Managers

“Resolved—That a Course of Lectures on the Chemical Principles of the Art of Tanning be given by Mr. Davy. To commence the second of November next; and that respectable persons of the trade, who shall be recommended by Proprietors of the Institution, be admitted to these lectures gratis.”

To order a young man of twenty-two, who had probably never seen the inside of tannery, to give an account of the art and mystery of leather-making, would seem to savour somewhat of what Coleridge would style “ultra-crepidation,” and accordingly the Managers further

“Resolved—That Mr. Davy have permission to absent himself—during the months of July, August, and September for the purpose of making himself more particularly acquainted with the practical part of the business of tanning, in order to prepare himself for giving the above-mentioned course of lectures.”

Lectures on “The Chemical Principles of the Process of Tanning Leather, and of the objects that must particularly be had in view in attempts to improve that most useful art” are mentioned in Rumford’s first prospectus, and the foregoing resolutions were probably passed in consequence. Davy did a considerable amount of experimental work in connection with these lectures, and the Journal of the Royal Institution contains several short communications from him on the chemistry of the subject, but the main facts he discovered are contained in a memoir read to the Royal Society on February 24th, 1803, and published in the Philosophical Transactions of that year, under the title of an “Account of Some Experiments and Observations on the constituent Parts of certain astringent Vegetables; and on their Operation in Tanning.”

Although Davy, by his earnestness, his knowledge, his felicity of expression, and by a certain dignity of treatment which seemed to invest even the homeliest subjects with unlooked-for importance, could interest an audience on almost any subject he brought before them, we may be sure that his soul soon sighed for a loftier theme than leather. He found it on the occasion of his lecture of January 21st, 1802, when he delivered the introductory discourse of that session. The date, indeed, is a red-letter day not only in Davy’s history but also in that of the Royal Institution. From that time the position of the Institution in the scientific and social world of London would seem to be assured.

Its affairs up to this time had been gradually going from bad to worse. The enthusiasm with which it was started a couple of years back had apparently spent itself, and Rumford, by his hauteur and high-handed management, had alienated many powerful friends. The subscriptions, which in 1800 had reached £11,047, had fallen in 1802 to £2,999, whilst the expenses were annually increasing. The outlook was gloomy in the extreme, and everything seemed to portend that the latest scheme for the amelioration of humanity was about to share the too common fate of such projects. The young man of twenty-three, however, changed all this as if by the stroke of a magician’s wand. No Prince Fortunatus could have done more.

His theme was not too ambitious; it would be considered even trite and commonplace to-day, and the man would be very bold or very simple who would now attempt to deal with it in the theatre of the Royal Institution; for this introductory lecture was nothing more than an exordium on the worth of science as an agent in the improvement of society. It was, and was felt to be, however, an apologia for the very existence of the Institution. Rumford and his fellow managers would seem to have staked everything on a single throw. Davy’s power as a lecturer had been noised abroad, and we may be sure that Coleridge and his other friends did not keep their tongues still. Coleridge, indeed, told the literary world that he assiduously attended Davy’s lectures, to increase his stock of metaphors. The youth who had discovered “the pleasure-producing air” was talked about in fashionable circles; and Mr. Bernard and the Count used their persuasiveness, and Sir Joseph Banks his social power, to secure for him the most cultured audience in London. If we may credit Dr. Paris, other influences, too, were at work. Davy’s association with Beddoes had probably gained for him the goodwill of the Tepidarians, even if it did not actually give him the entrée to the Society; and these Red Republicans, whose “pious orgies” at Old Slaughter’s Coffee-House in St. Martin’s Lane consisted mainly in libations of tea, vied with the Royalists in their efforts to pave his triumphal way. His success was instant and complete. In a series of lofty and impassioned periods he traced the services of science to humanity; he dwelt upon its dignity and nobility as a pursuit, upon its value as a moral and educational force. The small, spare youth, with his earnestness, his eloquence, his unaffected manner, the play of his mobile features, his speaking eyes—“eyes which,” as one of his fair auditors was heard to remark, “were made for something besides poring over crucibles”—held his hearers spellbound as he declaimed such sentences as these:—

“Individuals influenced by interested motives or false views may check for a time the progress of knowledge;—moral causes may produce a momentary slumber of the public spirit;—the adoption of wild and dangerous theories, by ambitious or deluded men, may throw a temporary opprobrium on literature; but the influence of true philosophy will never be despised; the germs of improvement are sown in minds, even where they are not perceived; and sooner or later the springtime of their growth must arrive. In reasoning concerning the future hopes of the human species, we may look forward with confidence to a state of society, in which the different orders and classes of men will contribute more effectually to the support of each other than they have hitherto done. This state, indeed, seems to be approaching fast; for, in consequence of the multiplication of the means of instruction the man of science and the manufacturer are daily becoming more assimilated to each other. The artist, who formerly affected to despise scientific principles, because he was incapable of perceiving the advantages of them, is now so far enlightened as to favour the adoption of new processes in his art, whenever they are evidently connected with the diminution of labour; and the increase of projectors, even to too great an extent, demonstrates the enthusiasm of the public mind in its search after improvement....

“The unequal division of property and of labour, the differences of rank and condition amongst mankind, are the sources of power in civilised life—its moving causes, and even its very soul. In considering and hoping that the human species is capable of becoming more enlightened and more happy, we can only expect that the different parts of the great whole of society should be intimately united together, by means of knowledge and the useful arts; that they should act as the children of one great parent, with one determinate end, so that no power may be rendered useless—no exertions thrown away.

“In this view, we do not look to distant ages, or amuse ourselves with brilliant though delusive dreams, concerning the infinite improveability of man, the annihilation of labour, disease, and even death, but we reason by analogy from simple facts, we consider only a state of human progression arising out of its present condition,—we look for a time that we may reasonably expect—FOR A BRIGHT DAY, OF WHICH WE ALREADY BEHOLD THE DAWN.”