Michael Faraday, Man of Science. Walter Jerrold

At them, Faraday became acquainted with Benjamin Abbott, a confidential clerk in the City—an acquaintance that ripened into life-long friendship; here also he met Huxtable, a medical student, to whom he addressed the earliest note of his which is extant. Other kindred spirits with whom Faraday entered into friendly relations at the Dorset Street lectures, were Magrath, Newton, Nichol, and many more. There is a perverted and ridiculous story told of Faraday's first hearing Davy lecture, to the effect that "Magrath happening, many years ago, to enter the shop of Mr. Riebau, observed one of the bucks of the paper bonnet zealously studying a book which he ought to have been binding. He approached; it was a volume of the old Britannica, open at 'Electricity.' He entered into talk with the journeyman, and was astonished to find in him a self-taught chemist, of no slender pretensions. He presented him with a set of tickets for Davy's lectures at the Royal Institution; and daily thereafter might the nondescript be seen perched, pen in hand, and his eyes starting out of his head, just over the clock opposite the chair. At last the course terminated; but Faraday's spirit had received a new impulse, which nothing but dire necessity could have restrained." This circumstantial yet exaggerated story, couched as it is in the worst of tastes, is yet quoted with approval in a recent work supposed of some authority.

      Magrath, as we have seen, Faraday had met earlier, and, as he tells us himself, the kindness of giving him tickets for Davy's lectures was done him by Mr. Dance.[2] The story quoted above says also that he might be seen daily, and that "at last" the course terminated. To show us how garbled is this account and in what it is true, we will turn to an account of this incident—this important incident—in his life, which Faraday himself wrote out later at the request of a correspondent. "During my apprenticeship," he says, "I had the good fortune, through the kindness of Mr. Dance, who was a customer of my master's shop, and also a member of the Royal Institution, to hear four of the last lectures of Sir H. Davy in that locality. The dates of these lectures were February 29th, March 14th, April 8th and 10th, 1812. Of these I made notes, and then wrote out the lectures in a fuller form, interspersing them with such drawings as I could make. The desire to be engaged in scientific occupation, even though of the lowest kind, induced me, whilst an apprentice, to write, in my ignorance of the world and simplicity of my mind, to Sir Joseph Banks, then President of the Royal Society. Naturally enough, 'no answer' was the reply left with the porter."

      The four lectures which Faraday heard during the spring of 1812 were, as we shall see in the next chapter, to mark an epoch in his life. At each of these lectures, we are told, the delighted youth listened to Sir Humphry Davy, from a seat in the gallery immediately over the clock directly facing the illustrious lecturer;[3] both speaker and listener being unaware of the close inter-connection there was destined to be between their two careers. But of this in the next chapter, for between Faraday's hearing Davy's lectures and his correspondence with that great man, there are one or two other interesting facts in connection with the life of our bookbinder's apprentice and would-be philosopher. In July of this year it was that Michael commenced his long and interesting series of letters to Benjamin Abbott, letters that show us how keenly alive Faraday was to all things connected with the work with which he was anxious to become more intimately connected, and at the same time how anxious he was to make up for his deficiencies of education.

      In all his letters we find a charm in the simple earnestness of the man, in his straightforward search for truth, in the unreserved openness which characterised him when corresponding with one whom he not only called a friend, but treated as such on all occasions. Simplicity, in its best and highest meaning, was, if we can in one word sum up the character of a man, the chief feature of Faraday in all his relations throughout life. Through all his letters to his intimate friends, too, there runs a vein of unaffected pleasantry which shows us at once that he was no "mere scientist," no "dry-as-dust" philosopher, which is a character too often given by thoughtless and careless persons to men who earn their laurels in any special field of research. We find that the great chemist or philosopher is not only a great scientist, but that he is also, as Faraday undoubtedly was, a man of a simple, earnest, reverent nature, a man whose married life was one series of years of love-making, who was a cheerful, pleasant friend and companion, and intense and earnest lover of children.

      Perhaps I cannot better conclude this chapter than by giving a few passages from his early letters, passages that will fully bear out much of what is said in the preceding paragraph. It was in July, 1812, three months before the articles of his apprenticeship ran out, that Faraday began his letters to Abbott; he was not as yet twenty-one years of age, his early education, as we have seen, had been chiefly the three R's, yet we find these letters eminently remarkable for their correctness and fluency, not less than for their kindness, courtesy, and candour. His first letter to Abbott is, indeed, doubly interesting, for it gives us the earliest account we have of any of his experiments. After writing a good deal on what he considers to be the advantage of a correspondence, he continues: "I have lately made a few simple galvanic experiments, merely to illustrate to myself the first principles of the science. … I, sir, I my own self, cut out seven discs of the size of halfpennies each! I, sir, covered them with seven halfpence, and I interposed between seven, or rather six, pieces of paper soaked in a solution of muriate of soda!!! But laugh no longer, dear A.; rather wonder at the effects this trivial power produced. It was sufficient to produce the decomposition of sulphate of magnesia—an effect which extremely surprised me; for I did not, could not, have any idea that the agent was competent to the purpose."

      Again, to the same friend, he writes: "What? affirm you have little to say, and yet a philosopher? What a contradiction! What a paradox! 'tis a circumstance I till now had no idea of, nor shall I at any time allow you to advance it as a plea for not writing. A philosopher cannot fail to abound in subjects, and a philosopher can scarcely fail to have a plentiful flow of words, ideas, opinions, etc., etc., when engaged on them; at least, I never had reason to suppose you deficient there. Query by Abbott: 'Then pray, Mike, why have you not answered my last before now since subjects are so plentiful?' 'Tis neither more nor less, dear A., than a want of time. Time, sir, is all I require, and for time will I cry out most heartily. Oh that I could purchase at a cheap rate some of our modern gents' spare hours, nay, days; I think it would be a good bargain both for them and me. As for subjects, there is no want of them. I could converse with you, I will not say for ever, but for any finite length of time. Philosophy would furnish us with matter; and even now, though I have said nothing, yet the best part of a page is covered."

      A little later he writes, acknowledging a letter from his friend, a letter which found him paper-hanging—"but what a change of thought it occasioned; what a concussion, confusion, conglomeration; what a revolution of ideas it produced—oh! 'twas too much; away went cloths, shears, paper, paste, and brush, all—all was too little, all was too light to keep my thoughts from soaring high, connected close with thine."

      This letter, after referring to his friend's electrical experiments, he finishes somewhat sadly, "You know I shall shortly enter on the life of a journeyman, and then I suppose time will be more scarce than it is even now." Little did he dream how great a change in his prospects one short half year would make.

CHAPTER II.

       The Turning Point.

       Table of Contents

      "And Nature, the old nurse, took

      The child upon her knee,

      Saying: 'Here is a story-book

      Thy Father has written for thee.'

      'Come, wander with me,' she said,

      'Into regions yet untrod;

      And read what is still unread

      In the manuscripts of God!'"

      Longfellow.

      There is a story told of Sir Humphry Davy,