And well might Davy be grateful. With all his immense ability, he
was a man almost destitute of the faculties of order and method. He
had little self-control, and the fashionable dissipations which he
permitted himself lessened that little. Faraday not only kept his
experiments going, but made himself responsible for their records. He
preserved every note and manuscript of Davy’s with religious care.
He copied out Davy’s scrawled researches in a neat clear delicate
handwriting, begging only for his pains to be allowed to keep the
originals, which he bound in two quarto volumes. Faraday has been known
to remark to an intimate friend that amongst his advantages he had had
before him a model to teach him what he should avoid. But he was ever
loyal to Davy, earnest in his praise, and frank in his acknowledgment
of his debt to his master in science. Still there arose the little rift
within the lute. The safety lamp, great as was the practical advantage
it brought to the miner, is not safe in all circumstances. Davy did
not like to admit this, and would never acknowledge it. Examined before
a Parliamentary Committee as to whether under a certain condition
the safety lamp would become unsafe, Faraday admitted that this was
the case. Not even his devotion to his master would induce him to
hide the truth. He was true to himself in making the acknowledgment,
though it angered his master. One Friday evening at the Royal
Institution--probably about 1826--there was exhibited an improved Davy
lamp with a eulogistic inscription; Faraday added in pencil the words:
“The opinion of the inventor.”
At this time he began to give private lessons in chemistry to a pupil
to whom he had been recommended by Davy. His lectures at the City
Society in Dorset Street were continued in 1818, and at the conclusion
of those on chemistry he delivered one on “Mental Inertia,” which has
been recorded at some length by Bence Jones.
In 1818 he attended a course of lessons on oratory by the elocutionist
Mr. B. H. Smart, paying out of his slender resources half a guinea a
lesson, so anxious was he to improve himself, even in his manner of
lecturing. His notes on these lessons fill 133 manuscript pages.
His other notes now begin to partake less of the character of
quotations and excerpts, and more of the nature of queries or problems
for solution. Here are some examples:--
“Do the pith balls diverge by the disturbance of electricity in
consequence of mutual induction or not?”
“Distil oxalate of ammonia. Query, results?”
“Query, the nature of the body Phillips burns in his spirit
lamp?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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