Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/274

NO. 6. One, whom you loved of all mankind, Had some heroic action done, A champion killed, or trophy won. Rather than be so overtopt. Would you not wish his laurels cropt?—

The answer may be safely in the negative here. Graham, no doubt, would have been glad to achieve the Longitude, had he been equal to it: whether he wished his laurels cropt, as an abstract question is perfectly immaterial, while such was his conduct towards a rival, whom he could not be supposed to love most of all mankind, for he had never seen him before. Pope and Addison, and divers other celebrated men, were quite unequal to such a conquest over themselves, of which there is even official evidence in the present case.

At a Board of Longitude, 16th January, 1741.—

'A certificate being read, of the usefulness of a machine invented by Mr. John Harrison, for finding the Longitude at sea, by measuring time; it being an improvement which he hath made on two others which were before contrived by him, but of a different construction and considerably less than either of them, and Mr. Graham informing the Board that Mr. Harrison hath been ten years from first to last employed on the said machine, and been at very great expense in employing several persons to assist him in making the same, and that, in his opinion, it may in all probability effect when completed, the finding of the Longitude at sea. But Mr. Harrison representing that his circumstances are such, that he shall not be able to complete his said machine, unless he can be supplied with the sum of £500; but that with such encouragement he will undertake to put his machine together, and in motion, by the first day of August next, and in a condition by the first day of August, 1743, to be placed on board one of his Majesty's ships, in order to the making a trial thereof.—And the Board being satisfied that the said machine may be of advantage to navigation, in finding out the Longitude, and that therefore experiments thereof ought to be made: Resolved, &c.'