“Mr. Davy, whose frequent and powerful addresses from this place, supported by his ingenious experiments, have been so long and so well known to you, has for the last five weeks been struggling between life and death. The effects of these experiments recently made in illustration of his late splendid discovery, added to consequent bodily weakness, brought on a fever so violent as to threaten the extinction of life. Over him it might emphatically be said in the language of our immortal Milton, that ‘... Death his dart Shook, but delayed to strike.’ “If it had pleased Providence to deprive the world of all further benefit from his original talents and intense application there has certainly been sufficient already effected by him to entitle him to be classed among the brightest scientific luminaries of his country.” After having given an outline of Davy’s investigations “at the particular request of the Managers,” Dr. Dibdin proceeds:-- “These may justly be placed amongst the most brilliant and valuable discoveries which have ever been made in chemistry, for a great chasm in the chemical system has been filled up; a blaze of light has been diffused over that part which before was utterly dark; and new views have been opened, so numerous and interesting, that the more any man who is versed in chemistry reflects on them, the more he finds to admire and to heighten his expectation of future important results. “Mr. Davy’s name, in consequence of these discoveries, will be always recorded in the annals of science amongst those of the most illustrious philosophers of his time. His country with reason will be proud of him, and it is no small honour to the Royal Institution that these great discoveries have been made within its walls; in that laboratory, and by those instruments, which from the zeal of promoting useful knowledge have, with so much propriety, been placed at the disposal and for the use of its most excellent professor of chemistry.” Dr. Dibdin then informs his auditors that Davy’s illness, severe as it had been, was now beginning to abate, and that it may be reasonably hoped that the period of convalescence was not very remote. His bodily weakness, however, continued for some time, and it was not until the middle of March that he was able to resume his duties as lecturer. His mind, as his note-books show, much more quickly recovered its wonted vigour. Perhaps it was in that condition of melancholy and debility produced by sickness, which he regarded as favourable to intellectual exertion, when, as he says, “the mind necessarily becomes contemplative when the body is no longer active, and the empire of sensation yields to that of imagination,” that he finished the poem beginning:--