OF THE FOUNDATION AND PROGRESS OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY IN GREAT BRITAIN.
While Mr. Cavendish was extending the bounds of pneumatic chemistry, with the caution and precision of a Newton, Dr. Priestley, who had entered on the same career, was proceeding with a degree of rapidity quite unexampled; while from his happy talents and inventive faculties, he contributed no less essentially to the progress of the science, and certainly more than any other British chemist to its popularity.
Joseph Priestley was born in 1733, at Fieldhead, about six miles from Leeds in Yorkshire. His father, Jonas Priestley, was a maker and dresser of woollen cloth, and his mother, the only child of Joseph Swift a farmer in the neighbourhood. Dr. Priestley was the eldest child; and, his mother having children very fast, he was soon committed to the care of his maternal grandfather. He lost his mother when he was only six years of age, and was soon after taken home by his father and sent to school in the neighbourhood. His father being but poor, and encumbered with a large family, his sister, Mrs. Keighley, a woman in good circumstances, and without children, relieved him of all care of his eldest son, by taking him and bringing him up as her own. She was a dissenter, and her house was the resort of all the dissenting clergy in the country. Young Joseph was sent to a public school in the neighbourhood, and, at sixteen, had made considerable progress in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Having shown a passion for books and for learning at a very early age, his aunt conceived hopes that he would one day become a dissenting clergyman, which she considered as the first of all professions; and he entered eagerly into her views: but his health declining about this period, and something like phthisical symptoms having come on, he was advised to turn his thoughts to trade, and to settle as a merchant in Lisbon. This induced him to apply to the modern languages; and he learned French, Italian, and German, without a master. Recovering his health, he abandoned his new scheme and resumed his former plan of becoming a clergyman. In 1752 he was sent to the academy of Daventry, to study under Dr. Ashworth, the successor of Dr. Doddridge. He had already made some progress in mechanical philosophy and metaphysics, and dipped into Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic. At Daventry he spent three years, engaged keenly in studies connected with divinity, and wrote some of his earliest theological tracts. Freedom of discussion was admitted to its full extent in this academy. The two masters espoused different sides upon most controversial subjects, and the scholars were divided into two parties, nearly equally balanced. The discussions, however, were conducted with perfect good humour on both sides; and Dr. Priestley, as he tells us himself, usually supported the heterodox opinion; but he never at any time, as he assures us, advanced arguments which he did not believe to be good, or supported an opinion which he did not consider as true. When he left the academy, he settled at Needham in Suffolk, as an assistant in a small, obscure dissenting meeting-house, where his income never exceeded 30l. a-year. His hearers fell off, in consequence of their dislike of his theological opinions; and his income underwent a corresponding diminution. He attempted a school; but his scheme failed of success, owing to the bad opinion which his neighbours entertained of his orthodoxy. His situation would have been desperate, had he not been occasionally relieved by sums out of charitable funds, procured by means of Dr. Benson, and Dr. Kippis.
Several vacancies occurred in his vicinity; but he was treated with contempt, and thought unworthy to fill any of them. Even the dissenting clergy in the neighbourhood thought it a degradation to associate with him, and durst not ask him to preach: not from any dislike to his theological opinions; for several of them thought as freely as he did; but because the genteeler part of their audience always absented themselves when he appeared in the pulpit. A good many years afterwards, as he informs us himself, when his reputation was very high, he preached in the same place, and multitudes flocked to hear the very same sermons, which they had formerly listened to with contempt and dislike.
His friends being aware of the disagreeable nature of his situation at Needham, were upon the alert to procure him a better. In 1758, in consequence of the interest of Mr. Gill, he was invited to appear as a candidate for a meeting-house in Sheffield, vacant by the resignation of Mr. Wadsworth. He appeared accordingly and preached, but was not approved of. Mr. Haynes, the other minister, offered to procure him a meeting-house at Nantwich in Cheshire. This situation he accepted, and, to save expenses, he went from Needham to London by sea. At Nantwich he continued three years, and spent his time much more agreeably than he had done at Needham. His opinions were not obnoxious to his hearers, and controversial discussions were never introduced. Here he established a school, and found the business of teaching, contrary to his expectation, an agreeable and even interesting employment. He taught from seven in the morning, till four in the afternoon; and after the school was dismissed, he went to the house of Mr. Tomlinson, an eminent attorney in the neighbourhood, where he taught privately till seven in the evening. Being thus engaged twelve hours every day in teaching, he had little time for private study. It is, indeed, scarcely conceivable how, under such circumstances, he could prepare himself for Sunday. Here, however, his circumstances began to mend. At Needham it required the utmost economy to keep out of debt; but at Nantwich, he was able to purchase a few books and some philosophical instruments, as a small air-pump, an electrical machine, &c. These he taught his eldest scholars to keep in order and manage: and by entertaining their parents and friends with experiments, in which the scholars were generally the operators, and sometimes the lecturers too, he considerably extended the reputation of his school. It was at Nantwich that he wrote his grammar for the use of his school, a book of considerable merit, though its circulation was never extensive. This latter circumstance was probably owing to the superior reputation of Dr. Lowth, who published his well-known grammar about two years afterwards.
Being boarded in the house of Mr. Eddowes, a very sociable and sensible man, and a lover of music, Dr. Priestley was induced to play a little on the English flute; and though he never was a proficient, he informs us that it contributed more or less to his amusement for many years. He recommends the knowledge and practice of music to all studious persons, and thinks it rather an advantage for them if they have no fine ear or exquisite taste, as they will, in consequence, be more easily pleased, and less apt to be offended when the performances they hear are but indifferent.
The academy at Warrington was instituted while Dr. Priestley was at Needham, and he was recommended by Mr. Clark, Dr. Benson, and Dr. Taylor, as tutor in the languages; but Dr. Aiken, whose qualifications were considered as superior, was preferred before him. However, on the death of Dr. Taylor, and the advancement of Dr. Aiken to be tutor in divinity, he was invited to succeed him: this offer he accepted, though his school at Nantwich was likely to be more gainful; for the employment at Warrington was more liberal and less painful. In this situation he continued six years, actively employed in teaching and in literary pursuits. Here he wrote a variety of works, particularly his History of Electricity, which first brought him into notice as an experimental philosopher, and procured him celebrity. After the publication of this work, Dr. Percival of Manchester, then a student at Edinburgh, procured him the title of doctor in laws, from that university. Here he married a daughter of Mr. Isaac Wilkinson, an ironmonger in Wales; a woman whose qualities he has highly extolled, and who died after he went to America.
In the academy he spent his time very happily, but it did not flourish. A quarrel had broken out between Dr. Taylor and the trustees, in consequence of which all the friends of that gentleman were hostile to the institution. This, together with the smallness of his income, 100l. a-year, and 15l. for each boarder, which precluded him from making any provision for his family, induced him to accept an invitation to take charge of Millhill chapel, at Leeds, where he had a considerable acquaintance, and to which he removed in 1767.
Here he engaged keenly in the study of theology, and produced a great number of works, many of them controversial. Here, too, he commenced his great chemical career, and published his first tract on air. He was led accidentally to think of pneumatic chemistry, by living in the immediate vicinity of a brewery. Here, too, he published his history of the Discoveries relative to Light and Colours, as the first part of a general history of experimental philosophy; but the expense of this book was so great, and its sale so limited, that he did not venture to prosecute the undertaking. Here, likewise, he commenced and published three volumes of a periodical work, entitled "The Theological Repository," which he continued after he settled in Birmingham.
After he had been six years at Leeds, the Earl of Shelburne (afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne), engaged him, on the recommendation of Dr. Price, to live with him as a kind of librarian and literary companion, at a salary of 250l. a-year, with a house. With his lordship he travelled through Holland, France, and a part of Germany, and spent some time in Paris. He was delighted with this excursion, and expressed himself thoroughly convinced of the great advantages to be derived from foreign travel. The men of science and politicians in Paris were unbelievers, and even professed atheists, and as Dr. Priestley chose to appear before them as a Christian, they told him that he was the first person they had met with, of whose understanding they had any opinion, who was a believer of Christianity; but, upon interrogating them closely, he found that none of them had any knowledge either of the nature or principles of the Christian religion.—While with Lord Shelburne, he published the first three volumes of his Experiments on Air, and had collected materials for a fourth, which he published soon after settling in Birmingham. At this time also he published his attack upon Drs. Reid, Beattie, and Oswald; a book which, he tells us, he finished in a fortnight: but of which he afterwards, in some measure, disapproved. Indeed, it was impossible for any person of candour to approve of the style of that work, and the way in which he treated Dr. Reid, a philosopher certainly much more deeply skilled than himself in metaphysics.