"There was one quality in Mr. Watt which most honourably distinguished him from too many inventors, and was worthy of all imitation—he was not only entirely free from jealousy, but he exercised a careful and scrupulous self-denial, and was anxious not to appear, even by accident, as appropriating to himself that which he thought belonged to others. I have heard him refuse the honour universally ascribed to him, of being the inventor of the steam engine, and call himself simply its improver; though, in my mind, to doubt his right to that honour, would be as inaccurate as to question Sir Isaac Newton's claim to his greatest discoveries, because Descartes in mathematics, and Galileo in astronomy and mechanics, had preceded him; or to deny the merits of his illustrious successor, because galvanism was not his discovery, though, before his time, it had remained as useless to science as the instrument called a steam engine was to the arts before Mr. Watt. The only jealousy I have known him to betray, was with respect to others, in the nice adjustment he was fond of giving to the claims of inventors. Justly prizing scientific discovery above all other possessions, he deemed the title to it so sacred, that you might hear him arguing by the hour to settle disputed rights; and if you ever perceived his temper ruffled, it was when one man's invention was claimed by, or given to another; or when a clumsy adulation pressed upon himself that which he knew to be not his own." In the preface to the _Monastery_ Sir Walter Scott speaks of Watt in the following terms:— "There were assembled about half a score of our northern lights. * * Amidst this company stood Mr. Watt, the man whose genius discovered the means of multiplying our national resources to a degree, perhaps, even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation and combination; bringing the treasures of the abyss to the summit of the earth—giving the feeble arm of man the momentum of an Afrite—commanding manufactures to arise as the rod of the prophet produced water in the desert—affording the means of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man—and of sailing without that wind which defied the command and threats of Xerxes himself. This potent commander of the elements—this abridger of time and space—this magician, whose cloudy [Pg315] machinery has produced a change on the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are, perhaps, only now beginning to be felt—was not only the most profound man of science—the most successful combiner of powers, and calculator of numbers, as adapted to practical purposes—was not only one of the most generally well informed, but one of the best and kindest of human beings.