One result was the offer of an appointment, when he was about nineteen years old, as assistant in Dr. Beddoes's Pneumatic Hospital, at Dowry Square, Clifton,[105]—an establishment founded for the purpose of investigating the nature of the gases, with especial reference to their remedial influences.
This was an appointment after the young chemist's own heart. The salary was sufficient for his modest wants, and he forthwith renounced all claims to his share of the small family property, in favour of his mother and sisters. He threw himself at once with ardour into his work, and originated those celebrated but highly dangerous experiments on the effects of nitrous oxide, which indeed nearly cost him his own life, but which in their result have alleviated the sufferings of tens of thousands of his fellow-creatures. The description of one of the 'séances,' when experiments were tried on many different persons—including Southey, then Poet Laureate—were described by Davy in an amusing little poem.
The friendship with Southey was not only on a scientific basis;—the Poet recognised his brother-poet's faculty: and accordingly Southey submitted to Davy the proofs of his mystic poem 'Thalaba,' for criticism; whilst the younger bard contributed to the 'Anthology' of the elder. And while on this subject it may be added that Coleridge (another of his Clifton acquaintances), who often referred to Davy's enchanting manners, used to say, so Barrow tells us, that he was in the habit of attending Davy's lectures at the Royal Institution, 'in order to increase his stock of metaphors.' On another occasion Coleridge remarked: 'There is an energy and elasticity in Davy's mind which enables him to seize on and analyze all questions, pushing them to their legitimate consequences. Every subject in Davy's mind has the principle of vitality—living thoughts spring up, like the turf under his feet.' And Davy, of course, could not fail to admire the genius of Coleridge—it was he who persuaded the dreamy poet to give his well-known series of eighteen lectures on Shakespeare at the Royal Institution in 1808. Horne Tooke was another of Davy's admirers, and was so enchanted with him early in his career that he engaged Chantry to make a bust of the Cornish philosopher.
It is further evident that Southey had the highest possible opinion of Davy's talents, for he wrote thus to Taylor:
'Davy is proceeding in his chemical career with the same giant strides as at his outset. His book upon the nitrous oxyd will form an epoch in the science. I never witnessed such indefatigable activity in any other man, nor ardour so regulated by cool judgment.'
In fact our poet-chemist must have been altogether a most fascinating man. An old personal acquaintance of his writes in the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' 1845, that 'when Davy is at ease, and excited in conversation, his splendid eyes irradiate his whole countenance, and he looks almost inspired.' But perhaps the best analysis of Davy's powers is that given in Good Words for 1879, by Professor Ferguson, who has also written by far the most generally interesting account of the great chemist's discoveries:
'Davy's mind,' he says, 'presents so many characteristics, that one cannot help thinking of it when perusing the narrative of his life and discoveries. It is that of the highest type of experimentalists. There is never any straining after either facts or laws. If there was a practical problem to solve, there was an instinctive perception required of the means to be employed. He asked his questions; Nature replied gently, kindly. How could she keep silent when the being she had made to learn from her inquired? There was never anything superfluous, for he always saw the aim of the replies no less than of the questions, and knew what to do next.
'Was it a question in science? the same instinct guided him to the means. The intensest perception of real analogies led either to the discovery of new bodies, and to the unravelling of obscure and perplexed phenomena, or to the enunciation of views of general action, which are only now adopted in all their extent and recognised as true. It was thus that he declared against the oxygen theory of acids—that he was never a devoted convert to Dalton's atomic views—and that he was so thoroughly a dynamician in a science which is still almost entirely statical. The laboratory, rather than the study, was the scene of his triumphs; it was there where his strength lay. No phenomenon was too minute to escape him; no consequence too improbable not to be brought into connection with the premises; no law too wide to be grasped in its known entirety. In all his work, in all his thinking, there is a magnificence, an ever-burning light which makes us lift up the head and gaze with purified vision upon the world, and a wild freshness, a provocative thought which, while we recur to it again and again, and are never sent away empty, are no less proofs of this man's vivid and enduring individuality.'
Davy's note-books now became rapidly filled with the Results of his studies, with Reflexions, with Resolutions, and with the most ambitious prospectuses of his future labours. Dr. Davy gives, in his 'Life' of his brother, an interesting specimen, written in 1799, when Davy had taken a house in Dowry Square, Clifton. Two hours before breakfast were to be devoted to his 'Lover of Nature,' or the 'Feelings of Eldon'—the five hours from nine to two to experiments—the time from four to six was to be spent in reading, and from seven to ten p.m. in the study of metaphysics. So passed the time away at Clifton, amidst the most congenial pursuits, thoroughly sympathetic friends, and in the enjoyment of an income which, modest as it was, enabled him to assist his mother in the education of his younger brother. But for one thing he bargained—John was not to be placed under Mr. Coryton.