Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/403

 Inventors as Martyrs to Science.

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��But honor, and wealth, and appre- ciation came to liim in the cahn sun- set of iiis stormy life. He was fas- cinating in conversation ; equally at home among philosophers, women, and children. In his -S2d year he formed one of a distinguished }nuty assembled in Edinhurgh, at which !Sir AValter Scott and Francis Jeffrey were present.

"This potent commander of the elements," says Scott, •'• this abridger of time and space, this magician whose machinery has produced a change in the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhai)s only beginning to be felt, was not only the most profound man of science, the most successful com- biner of powers and comliiner of numbers as adapted to [tactical jiur- poses, was not only one of the most generally well informed, but one of the best and kindest, of human beings. There he stood, surrounded by the little band of northern Literati, men generally very tenacious of their own opinions. Methinks I yet see and hear what I shall never see or hear again. The alert, kind, benevolent old man had his attention alive to every one's question, his information at every one's command. His talent and fancy overflowed on every sub- ject. One gentleman was a deep philologist ; he talks with him on the origin of the alphabet, as if he had been coeval with Cadmus ; another, a celebrated critic, you would have said the old man had studied political economy and belle lettres all his life ; of science it is unnecessary to speak, it was his own distinguished walk."

"It seemed," said Jeffrey, " as if every subject that bad been casually

��started had been that which he had been occu[)ied in studying."

A lady relates how he took her upon his knee, when a little girl, and explained to her the principles of the hurdy-gurdy, the piano, the Pan's pipe, and the organ, teaching her how to make a dulcimer and improve a jevvs-harp. To a Swedish artist he communicated the information that the most pliant and elastic painting brush was made with cats' whisk- ers. He advised ladies how to cure smoky chimneys, how to warm and ventilate dwellings, and how to ob- tain fast colors, while he would will- ingly instruct a servant as to the best way of cleaning a grate.

Campbell, the poet, who paid Watt a visit in February, 1819, only six months before his death, describes him as so full of anecdote that he spent one of the most amusing davs he had ever enjoyed with a man of science and a stranger to his own pursuits.

His sculpture copying machine was his last invention, and he was em- ployed on it when the hand of the cunning workman was stopped by death — almost his only unfinished in- vention. It has been revised and completed, and is used extensively in this country. I have given a full ac- count of this marvellous man, because every event seemed too interesting to be omitted. Lord Jaffrey, in a" eulo- gy on Watt, said justly, — "By his admirable contrivances the steam en- gine has become a thing stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power it can exert, and the ease and precision and duc- tility with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk

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