Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/473

 WATSON

tion. In 1831 he narrowly escaped prison for organizing a feast on the day on which the Government had ordered a fast. In the same year he began to publish, and in 1833 spent six further months in prison. He returned to the work at his release, and with the aid of a subsidy from Julian Hibbert he (with his own hand) printed and bound works of Paine, Volney, Mira- baud, etc., which he sold at one shilling each. He was again in prison for six months in 1834. Watson, a very sober and earnest man, worked also in the moderate Chartist and the Trade Union movements, and was one of the most ardent opponents of &quot; the taxes on know ledge.&quot; D. Nov. 29, 1874.

WATSON, Sir William, LL.D., poet. B. Aug. 2, 1858. Watson is the son of a Yorkshire merchant who had settled in Liverpool which is all that he cares to tell about his early life. He opened his dis tinguished literary career with The Prince s Quest in 1880, followed by Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature in 1884. He, as is the lot of poets, obtained little recognition for his early work, and until he published Words worth s Grave (1892) and Lachrymce Musa- rum (on the death of Tennyson, 1893) he was comparatively unknown. He is now in the front rank, if not in a rank of his own, among living British poets. Gladstone awarded him the Civil List pension vacated by Tennyson. He has an honorary degree from Aberdeen University, and was knighted in 1917. Sir William is not only one of the few poets who take account of science, but he is also rare in the definiteness of his Agnostic creed. The Hope of the World (1897) is a fine Agnostic poem on man s evolution and situation, abjuring the dream of immortality. &quot; The Unknown God &quot; (in The Hope of the World and Other Poems, 1898) is equally drastic and more beautiful. To Watson &quot; God &quot; is merely &quot; the mystery we make darker with a name.&quot; He treats severely the God of the Churches

&quot; A God for ever hearkening Unto his self-appointed laud.&quot;

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WATT, James, LL.D., F.E.S., F.E.S.E., engineer. B. Jan. 19, 1736. Ed. Greenock Grammar School. At the age of seventeen he was sent to London to learn the making of mathematical instruments. Ho was back in Glasgow in 1757, and was appointed mathematical instrument maker to the University. It was while he was repairing the model of a Newcomen steam engine (which he did not invent) for the University that Watt conceived the germ of his great improvement of the engine, which he patented in 1769. He had meantime gone as engineering adviser to the Carron Foundry, and in 1774 he joined Boulton in establishing a firm at Birmingham. Watt was not only a fertile inventor &quot; his many and most valuable inventions must always place him among the leading benefactors of mankind&quot; (Diet. Nat. Biog.) but a good chemist and very fair general scholar. He knew Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian. He was admitted to the Eoyal Society in 1785, and received his honorary degree from Glasgow Univer sity in 1806. He was also a corresponding member of the French Institut (1808) and a foreign associate of the Academie des Sciences (1814). He declined the offer of a baronetcy, and died a plain man. Watt was an intimate friend of Lavoisier and Berthollet, and he adopted the advanced ideas of the French. Mr. Andrew Carnegie makes it plain in his life of the great engineer (Life of J. Watt, 1905, p. 202) that he was a Deist. He did not attend church or chapel, and one of the earliest biographers, Williamson, a Christian, darkly hints that it would be interesting to know more about his &quot; disposition to the supreme truths of Revelation.&quot; D. Aug. 25, 1819.

WATTS, Charles, lecturer and writer. B. Feb. 27, 1836. The son of a Wesleyan minister, he was at an early age converted to Freethought by Southwell and G. J. Holyoake. Within a year or two of his arrival in London he came under the influ ence of E. Cooper, Bradlaugh, and other prominent men in the Secularist movement. 874