THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 1
 
 JAMES 
 
 :WATT:
 
 Famous Scots Series 
 
 The following Volumes are now ready 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. By HECTOR C. MACPHERSON. 
 ALLAN RAMSAY. By OLIPHANT SMEATON. 
 HUGH MILLER. By W. KEITH LEASK. 
 JOHN KNOX. By A. TAYLOR INNES. 
 ROBERT BURNS. By GABRIEL SETOUN. 
 THE BALLADISTS. By JOHN GEDDIE. 
 RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor HERKLESS. 
 SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON. 
 THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. GARDEN BLAIKIE. 
 JAMES BOSWELL. By W. KEITH LEASK. 
 TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By OLIPHANT SMEATON. 
 FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. OMOND. 
 THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS. 
 NORMAN MACLEOD. By JOHN WELLWOOD. 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor SAINTSBURY. 
 KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By Louis A. BARBE. 
 ROBERT FERGUSSON. By A. B. GROSART. 
 JAMES THOMSON. By WILLIAM BAYNE. 
 MUNGO PARK. By T. BANKS MACLACHLAN. 
 DAVID HUME. By Professor CALDERWOOD. 
 WILLIAM DUNBAR. By OLIPHANT SMEATON. 
 SIR WILLIAM WALLACE. By Professor MURISON. 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. By MARGARKT MOYES BLACK. 
 THOMAS REID. By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER. 
 POLLOK AND AYTOUN. By ROSALINE MASSON. 
 ADAM SMITH. By HECTOR C. MACPHERSON. 
 ANDREW MELVILLE. By WILLIAM MORISON. 
 JAMES FREDERICK FERRIER. By E. S. HALDANE. 
 KING ROBERT THE BRUCE. By A. F. MURISON. 
 JAMES HOGG. By Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS. 
 THOMAS CAMPBELL. By J. CUTHBERT HADDEN. 
 GEORGE BUCHANAN. By ROBERT WALLACE. 
 
 Completed by J. CAMPBELL SMITH. 
 SIR DAVID WILKIE, AND THE SCOTS SCHOOL OF PAINTERS. 
 
 By EDWARD PINNINGTON. 
 THE ERSKINES, EBENEZER AND RALPH. By A. R. 
 
 MACEWEN. 
 
 THOMAS GUTHRIE. By OLIPHANT SMEATON. 
 
 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. By T. BANKS MACLACHLAN. 
 
 THE ACADEMIC GREGORIES. By AGNES GRAINGER- 
 
 STEWART. 
 
 JOHNSTON OF WARRISTON. By WILLIAM MORISON. 
 HENRY DRUMMOND. By JAMES Y. SIMPSON. 
 PRINCIPAL CAIRNS. By JOHN CAIRNS. 
 VISCOUNT DUNDEE. By Louis A. BARBE. 
 JAMES WATT. By ANDREW CARNEGIE.
 
 JAMES 
 IWATT 
 
 BY 
 
 ANDREW: 
 CARNEGIE 
 
 Dl 
 
 FAMOUS 
 
 SCOTS: 
 
 SERIES 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 OLIPHANT ANDERSON 
 tfFERRIER'EDlNBVRGH 
 AND LONDON ^ 'K*
 
 W3C3-J 
 
 The designs and ornaments of this 
 volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, 
 and the printing is from the press of 
 T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 WHEN the publishers asked if I would write the Life of 
 Watt, I declined, stating that my thoughts were upon other 
 matters. This settled the question, as I supposed ; but in 
 this I was mistaken. Why shouldn't I write the Life of 
 the maker of the steam-engine, out of which I had made 
 fortune? Besides, I knew little of the history of the 
 steam-engine and of Watt himself, and the surest way to 
 obtain knowledge was to comply with the publishers' 
 - highly complimentary request. In short, the subject 
 '* - would not down ; and finally, I was compelled to write 
 ". again, telling the publishers that the idea haunted me, 
 and if they still desired me to undertake it I should do 
 so now with my heart in the task. 
 
 I now know about the steam-engine, and have also had 
 revealed to me one of the finest characters that ever graced 
 j the earth. For all this I am deeply indebted to the 
 publishers. 
 
 I am indebted to friends, Messrs. Angus Sinclair and 
 Edward R. Cooper, for editing my notes upon scientific 
 and mechanical points. 
 
 The result is this volume. If the public, in reading, 
 ^ have one tithe of the pleasure I have had in writing it, I 
 !S i r shall be amply rewarded. 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ..... 5 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 i. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH .... 7 
 
 n. GLASGOW TO LONDON RETURN TO GLASGOW . 20 
 
 in. CAPTURED BY STEAM . . -34 
 
 iv. PARTNERSHIP WITH ROEBUCK . .48 
 
 v. BOULTON PARTNERSHIP . .60 
 
 vi. REMOVAL TO BIRMINGHAM . .81 
 
 vii. SECOND PATENT ... 105 
 
 vin. THE RECORD OF THE STEAM-ENGINE . 132 
 
 ix. WATT IN OLD AGE . ... 142 
 
 x. WATT, THE INVENTOR AND DISCOVERER . . 148 
 
 xi. WATT, THE MAN . . . i$4
 
 LIFE OF JAMES WATT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
 
 JAMES WATT, born in Greenock, January 19, 1736, had 
 the advantage, so highly prized in Scotland, of being of 
 good kith and kin. He had indeed come from a good 
 nest. His great-grandfather was killed in one of the early 
 conflicts in the long struggle of the Covenanters for religious 
 freedom. He had been a farmer in Aberdeenshire, and 
 upon his death the family was driven out of its homestead 
 and forced to leave the district. 
 
 Watt's grandfather, Thomas Watt, was born in 1642, and 
 found his way to Crawford's Dyke, then adjoining, and 
 now part of, Greenock, where he founded a school of 
 mathematics, and taught this branch, and also that of 
 navigation, to the fishermen and seamen of the locality. 
 That he succeeded in this field in so little and poor a 
 community is no small tribute to his powers. He was a 
 man of decided ability and great natural shrewdness, and 
 very soon began to climb, as such men do. The landlord 
 of the district appointed him his Baron Bailie, an office 
 which then had important judicial functions. He rose to 
 high position in the town, being Bailie and Elder, and was 
 highly respected and honoured. He subsequently pur- 
 chased a house in Greenock and settled there, becoming 
 one of its first citizens. Before his death he had estab- 
 lished a considerable business in odds and ends. Such 
 matters as the refitting and provisioning of ships ; the
 
 8 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 repairing of instruments of navigation, compasses, quad- 
 rants, etc., always received special attention at his hands. 
 
 The sturdy son of a sturdy Covenanter, he refused to 
 take the test in favour of prelacy (1683), and was therefore 
 proclaimed to be 'a disorderly schoolmaster officiating 
 contrary to law.' He continued to teach, however, and a 
 few years later the Kirk Session of Greenock, notwith- 
 standing his contumacy, found him ' blameless in life and 
 conversation,' and appointed him an Elder, an office 
 which imposed upon him the oversight not only of 
 religious observances, but of the manners and morals 
 of the people. One of the most important of these 
 duties was to provide for the education of the young, 
 in pursuance of that invaluable injunction of John 
 Knox, 'that no father, of what estate or condition that 
 ever he may be, use his children at his own fantasie, 
 especially in their youthhood, but all must be compelled to 
 bring up their children in learning and virtue? Here we 
 have, at its very birth, the doctrine of compulsory educa- 
 tion for all the people, the secret of Scotland's progress. 
 Great as was the service Knox rendered in the field 
 ecclesiastical, probably what he did for the cause of public 
 education excels it. The man who proclaimed that he 
 would never rest until there was a public school in every 
 parish in Scotland must stand for all time as one of the 
 foremost of her benefactors ; probably, in the extent and 
 quality of the influence he exerted upon the national 
 character through universal compulsory education, the 
 foremost of all. 
 
 The very year after Parliament passed the Act of 1696, 
 which at last fulfilled Knox's aspirations, and during the 
 eldership of Watt's grandfather, Greenock made prompt 
 provision for her parish school, in which we may be sure 
 the old 'teacher of mathematics' did not fail to take a 
 prominent part. 
 
 Thomas Watt's son, the father of the great inventor, 
 followed in his father's footsteps, after his father's death, 
 as shipwright, contractor, provider, etc., becoming famous 
 for his skill in the making of the most delicate instruments. 
 He built shops at the back of his house, and such were
 
 JAMES WATT 9 
 
 the demands upon him that he was able to keep a number 
 of men, sometimes as many as fourteen, constantly at work. 
 Like his father, he became a man of position and influence 
 in the community, and was universally esteemed. Pros- 
 perity attended him until after the birth of his famous son ; 
 but the loss of a valuable ship, succeeded by other mis- 
 fortunes, swept away most of the considerable sum which 
 he had made, and it was resolved that James would have 
 to be taught a trade, instead of succeeding to the business, 
 as had been the intention. 
 
 Fortunate it was for our subject, and especially so for 
 the world, that he was thus favoured by falling heir to the 
 best heritage of all, as Mr. Morley calls it in his address 
 to the Midland Institute ' the necessity at an early age to 
 go forth into the world and work for the means needed for 
 his own support.' President Garfield's verdict was to the 
 same effect : ' The best heritage to which a man can be 
 born is poverty.' The writer's knowledge of the usual 
 effect of the heritage of milliondom upon the sons of 
 millionaires leads him fully to concur with these high 
 authorities, and to believe that it is neither to the rich nor 
 to the noble that human society has to look for its pre- 
 servation and improvement, but to those who, like Watt, 
 have to labour that they may live, and thus make a proper 
 return for what they receive, as working bees, not drones, 
 in the social hive. Not from palace or castle, but from 
 the cottage have come, or can come, the needed leaders of 
 our race, under whose guidance it is to ascend. 
 
 We have a fine record in the three generations of the 
 Watts, great-grandfather, grandfather, and father, all able 
 and successful men, whose careers were marked by steady 
 progress, growing in usefulness to their fellows ; men of 
 unblemished character, kind and considerate, winning the 
 confidence and affection of their neighbours, and leaving 
 behind them records unstained. 
 
 So much for the male branch of the family tree, but this 
 is only half. What of that of the grandmothers and 
 mothers of the line equally important ? For what a 
 Scotch boy born to labour is to become, and how, cannot 
 be forecast until we know what his mother is, who is to
 
 io FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 him nurse, servant, governess, teacher and saint, all in one. 
 We must look to the Watt women as carefully as to the 
 men; and these, fortunately, we find all that can be 
 desired. His mother was Agnes Muirhead, a descendant 
 of the Muirheads of Lachop, who date away back before 
 the reign of King David I., 1122. Scott, in his Minstrelsy 
 of the Scottish Border, gives us the old ballad of ' The 
 Laird of Muirhead,' who played a great part in those 
 unsettled days. 
 
 The good judgment which characterised the Watts for 
 three generations is nowhere more clearly shown than in 
 the lady James Watt's father courted and finally succeeded 
 in securing for his wife. She is described as a gentle- 
 woman of reserved and quiet deportment, 'esteemed by 
 her neighbours for graces of person as well as of mind and 
 heart, and not less distinguished for her sound sense and 
 good manners than for her cheerful temper and excellent 
 housewifery.' Her likeness is thus drawn, and all that we 
 have read elsewhere concerning her confirms the truth of 
 the portrait. Williamson says that 
 
 ' The lady to whom he [Thomas Watt] was early united 
 in marriage was Miss Agnes Muirhead, a gentlewoman of 
 good understanding and superior endowments, whose excel- 
 lent management in household affairs would seem to have 
 contributed much to the order of her establishment, as well 
 as to the everyday happiness of a cheerful home. She is 
 described as having been a person above the common in many 
 respects, of a fine womanly presence, ladylike in appearance, 
 affecting in domestic arrangements according to our tradi- 
 tions what, it would seem was considered for the time, rather 
 a superior style of living. What such a style consisted in, the 
 reader shall have the means of judging for himself. One of 
 the author's informants on such points more than twenty years 
 ago, a venerable lady, then in her eighty-fifth year, was wont 
 to speak of the worthy bailie's wife with much characteristic 
 interest and animation. As illustrative of what has just been 
 remarked of the internal economy of the family, the old lady 
 related an occasion on which she had spent an evening, when 
 a girl, at Mrs. Watt's house, and remembered expressing with 
 much natvett to her mother, on returning home, her childish 
 surprise that " Mrs. Watt had two candles lighted on the
 
 JAMES WATT n 
 
 table !" . Among these and other reminiscences of her youth, 
 one venerable informant described James Watt's mother, in her 
 eloquent and expressive Doric, as, " a braw, braw, woman 
 none now to be seen like her." ' 
 
 There is another account from a neighbour, who also 
 refers to Mrs. Watt as being somewhat of the grand lady, 
 but always so kind, so sweet, so helpful to all her neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 The Watt family for generations steadily improved and 
 developed. A great step upward was made the day Agnes 
 Muirhead was captured. We are liable to forget how little 
 of the original strain of an old family remains in after 
 days. We glance over the record of the Cecils, for 
 instance, to find that the present Marquis has less than 
 one four-thousandth part of the Cecil blood; a dozen 
 marriages have each reduced it one half, and the recent 
 restoration of the family to its pristine greatness in the 
 person of the late Prime Minister, and in his son, the 
 brilliant young Parliamentarian, of whom great things are 
 predicted already, is to be credited equally to the recent 
 infusion into the Cecil family of the entirely new blood of 
 two successive brides, daughters of commoners who made 
 their own way in the world. One was the mother of the 
 late statesman, the other his wife and the mother of his 
 sons. So with the Watt family, of which we have records 
 of three marriages. Our Watt, therefore, had but one- 
 eighth of the original Watt strain ; seven-eighths being 
 that of the three ladies who married into the family. 
 Upon the entrance of a gentlewoman of Agnes Muirhead's 
 qualities hung important results, for she was a remarkable 
 character witn the indefinable air of distinction, was well 
 educated, had a very wise head, a very kind heart, and all 
 the sensibility and enthusiasm of the Celt, easily touched 
 to fine issues. She was a Scot of the Scots and a store- 
 house of border lore, as became a daughter of her house, 
 Muirhead of Lachop. 
 
 Here, then, we have existing in the quiet village of 
 Greenock in 1736, unknown of men, all the favourable 
 conditions, the ideal soil, from which might be expected to
 
 12 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 appear such ' variation of species ' as contained that rarest 
 of elements, the divine spark we call genius. In due time 
 the ' variation ' made its appearance, now known as Watt, 
 the creator of the most potent instrument of mechanical 
 force known to man. 
 
 The fond mother, having lost several of her children 
 born previously, was intensely solicitous in her care of 
 James, who was so delicate that regular attendance at 
 school was impossible. The greater part of his school 
 years he was confined most of the time to his room. This 
 threw him during most of his early years into his mother's 
 company and tender care. Happy chance ! What teacher, 
 what companionship, to compare with that of such a 
 mother ! She taught him to read most of what he then 
 knew, and, we may be sure, fed him on the poetry and 
 romance upon which she herself had fed, and for which he 
 became noted in after life. He was rated as a backward 
 scholar at school, and his education was considered very 
 much neglected. 
 
 Let it not be thought, however, that the lad was not 
 being educated in some very important departments. The 
 young mind was absorbing, though its acquisitions did not 
 count in the school records. Much is revealed of his 
 musings and inward development in the account of a 
 visit which he paid to his grandmother Muirhead in 
 Glasgow, when it was thought that a change would benefit 
 the delicate boy. We read with pleasant surprise that he 
 had to be sent for, at the request of the family, and taken 
 home. He kept the household so stirred up with his 
 stories, recitations, and continual ebullitions, which so 
 fairly entranced his Grannie and Grandpa and the cousins, 
 that the whole household economy was disordered. They 
 lost their sleep, for 'Jamie 'held them spellbound night 
 after night with his wonderful performances. The shy 
 and contemplative youngster who had tramped among the 
 hills, reciting the stirring ballads of the border, had found 
 an admiring though astonished audience at last, and had 
 let loose upon them. 
 
 To the circle at home he was naturally shy and reserved, 
 but to his Grannie, Grandpa, and cousins, free from
 
 JAMES WATT 13 
 
 parental, restraint, he could freely deliver his soul. His 
 mind was stored with the legends of his country, its 
 romance and poetry, and, strong Covenanters as were the 
 Watts for generations, tales of the Martyrs were not want- 
 ing. The heather was on fire within Jamie's breast. But 
 where got you all that perfervidum Scotorum, my wee mannie 
 that store of precious nutriment that is to become part 
 of yourself and remain in the core of your being to the 
 end, hallowing and elevating your life with ever-increasing 
 power ? Not at the grammar school, we trow. No school 
 but one can instil that, where rules the one best teacher 
 you will ever know, genius though you be the school 
 kept at your mother's knee. Such mothers as Watt had 
 are the appointed trainers of genius, and make men good 
 and great, if the needed spark be there to enkindle : 
 ' Kings they make gods, and meaner subjects kings.' 
 
 We have another story of Watt's childhood that pro- 
 claims the coming man. Precocious children are said 
 rarely to develop far in later years, but Watt was pre- 
 eminently a precocious child, and of this several proofs are 
 related. A friend looking at the child of six said to his 
 father, ' You ought to send your boy to a public school, 
 and not allow him to trifle away his time at home.' ' Look 
 how he is occupied before you condemn him,' said the 
 father. He was trying to solve a problem in geometry. 
 His mother had taught him drawing, and with this he was 
 captivated. A few toys were given him, which were con- 
 stantly in use. Often he took them to pieces, and out of 
 the parts sometimes constructed new ones, a source of 
 great delight. In this way he employed and amused him- 
 self in the many long days during which he was confined 
 to the house by ill health. 
 
 It is at this stage the steam and kettle story takes its 
 rise. Mrs. Campbell, Watt's cousin and constant com- 
 panion, recounts, in her memoranda, written in 1798 : 
 
 'Sitting one evening with his aunt, Mrs. Muirhead, at the 
 tea-table, she said : "James Watt, I never saw such an idle 
 boy ; take a book or employ yourself usefully ; for the last 
 hour you have not spoken one word, but taken off the lid of
 
 14 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 that kettle and put it on again, holding now a cup and now a 
 silver spoon over the steam, watching how it rises from the 
 spout, and catching and counting the drops of hot water it 
 falls into. Are you not ashamed of spending your time in 
 this way ? " ' 
 
 To what extent the precocious boy ruminated upon the 
 phenomenon must be left to conjecture. Enough that the 
 story has a solid foundation upon which we can build. 
 This more than justifies us in classing it with ' Newton and 
 the Apple,' ' Bruce and the Spider,' 'Tell and the Apple,' 
 'Galvani and the Frog,' ' Volta and the Damp Cloth,' 
 ' Washington and his Little Hatchet,' a string of gems, 
 amongst the most precious of our legendary possessions. 
 Let no rude iconoclast attempt to undermine one of them. 
 Even if they never occurred, it matters little. They should 
 have occurred, for they are too good to lose. We could 
 part with many of the actual characters of the flesh in 
 history without much loss ; banish the imaginary host of 
 the spirit, and we were poor indeed. So with these inspir- 
 ing legends ; let us accept them and add others gladly as 
 they arise, inquiring not too curiously into their origin. 
 
 While Watt was still in boyhood, his wise father not only 
 taught him writing and arithmetic, but also provided a set 
 of small tools for him in the shop among the workmen a 
 wise and epoch-making gift, for young Watt soon revealed 
 such wonderful manual dexterity, and could do such 
 astonishing things, that the verdict of one of the workmen, 
 ' Jamie has a fortune at his finger-ends,' became a common 
 saying among them. The most complicated work seemed 
 to come naturally to him. One model after another was 
 produced, to the wonder and delight of his older fellow- 
 workmen. Jamie was the pride of the shop, and no doubt 
 of his fond father, who saw with pardonable pride that his 
 promising son inherited his own traits, and gave bright 
 promise of excelling as a skilled handicraftsman. 
 
 The mechanical dexterity of the Watts, grandfather, 
 father, and son, is not to be belittled, for most of the 
 mechanical inventions have come from those who have 
 been cunning of hand and have worked as manual labourers,
 
 JAMES WATT 15 
 
 generally in charge of the machinery or devices which they 
 have improved. When new processes have been invented, 
 these also have usually suggested themselves to the able 
 workmen as they experienced the crudeness of existing 
 methods. Indeed, few important inventions have come 
 from those who have not been thus employed. It is with 
 inventors as with poets : few have been born to the purple 
 or with silver spoons in their mouths, and we shall plainly 
 see later on that had it not been for Watt's inherited and 
 acquired manual dexterity, it is probable that the steam 
 engine would never have been perfected, so often did failure 
 of experiments arise solely because it was in that day im- 
 possible to find men capable of executing the plans of the 
 inventor. His problem was to teach them by example how 
 to obtain the exact work required when the tools of pre- 
 cision of our day were unknown and the men themselves 
 were only workmen of the crudest kind. Many of the 
 most delicate parts, even of working engines, passed through 
 Watt's own hands, and for most of his experimental devices 
 he had himself to make the models. Never was there an 
 inventor who had such reason to thank fortune that in his 
 youth he had learned to work with his hands. It proved 
 literally true, as his fellow-workmen in the shop predicted, 
 that ' Jamie's fortune was at his finger-ends.' 
 
 As before stated, he proved a backward scholar for a 
 time at the grammar school. No one seems to have divined 
 the latent powers smouldering within. Latin and Greek 
 classics moved him not, for his mind was stored with more 
 entrancing classics learned at his mother's knee : his heroes 
 were of nobler mould than the Greek demigods, and the 
 story of his own romantic land more fruitful than that of 
 any other of the past. Busy working man has not time to 
 draw his inspiration from more than one national litera- 
 ture. Nor has any man yet drawn fully from any but 
 that of his native tongue. We can no more draw our 
 mental sustenance from two languages than we can think 
 in two. Man can have but one deep source from whence 
 come healing waters, as he can have but one mother 
 tongue. So it was with Watt. He had Scotland, and that 
 sufficed. When the boy absorbs, or rather is absorbed by,
 
 1 6 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Wallace, the Bruce, and Sir John Graham, is fired by the 
 story of the Martyrs, has at heart page after page of his 
 country's ballads, and also, in more recent times, is at home 
 with Burns's and Scott's prose and poetry, he has little 
 room and less desire, and still less need, for inferior heroes. 
 So the dead languages and their semi-supernatural, quarrel- 
 some, self-seeking heroes passed in review without gaining 
 admittance to the soul of Watt. But the spark that fired 
 him came at last Mathematics. ' Happy is the man who 
 has found his work,' says Carlyle. Watt found his when 
 yet a boy at school. Thereafter never a doubt existed as 
 to the field of his labours. The choice of an occupation 
 is a serious matter with most young men. There was 
 never room for any question of choice with young Watt. 
 The occupation had chosen him, as is the case with genius. 
 1 Talent does what it can, genius what it must.' When the 
 goddess lays her hand upon a mortal dedicated to her 
 shrine, concentration is the inevitable result ; there is no 
 room for anything which does not contribute to her 
 service, or rather all things are made contributory to it, 
 and nothing that the devotee sees or reads, hears or feels, 
 but some way or other is made to yield sustenance for the 
 one great, overmastering task. 'The gods send thread 
 for a web begun,' because the web absorbs everything 
 that comes within reach. So it proved with Watt. 
 
 At fifteen he had twice carefully read The Elements of 
 Philosophy by Gravesande, and had made numerous chemical 
 experiments, repeating them again and again, until satisfied 
 of their accuracy. A small electrical machine was one of 
 his productions with which he startled his companions. 
 Visits to his uncle Muirhead at Glasgow were frequent, and 
 here he formed acquaintance with several educated young 
 men, who appreciated his abilities and kindly nature ; but 
 the visits to the same kind uncle ' On the bonnie, bonnie 
 banks o' Loch Lomond,' where the summer months were 
 spent, gave the youth his happiest days. Indefatigable in 
 habits of observation and research, and devoted to the 
 lonely hills, he extended his knowledge by long excursions, 
 adding to his botanical and mineral treasures. Freely 
 entering the cottages of the people, he spent hours learning
 
 JAMES WATT 17 
 
 their traditions, superstitions, ballads, and all the Celtic 
 lore. He loved nature in her wildest moods, and was a 
 true child of the mist, brimful of poetry and romance, 
 which he was ever ready to shower upon his friends. An 
 omnivorous reader, in after life he vindicated his practice 
 of reading every book he found, alleging that he had ' never 
 yet read a book or conversed with a companion without 
 gaining information, instruction, or amusement.' Scott has 
 left on record that he never had met and conversed with 
 a man who could not tell him something he did not know. 
 Watt seems to have resembled Sir Walter, ' who spoke to 
 every man he met as if he were a brother ' as indeed he 
 was one of the many fine traits of that noble, wholesome 
 character. These two foremost Scots, each supreme in his 
 sphere, seem to have had many social traits in common, 
 and both that fine faculty of attracting others. 
 
 The only 'sport' of the youth was angling, 'the most 
 fitting practice for quiet men and lovers of peace,' the 
 ' Brothers of the Angle,' according to Izaak Walton, ' being 
 mostly men of mild and gentle disposition.' From the 
 ruder athletic games of the school he was debarred, not 
 being robust, and this was a constant source of morbid 
 misery to him, entailing as it did separation from the other 
 boys. The prosecution of his favourite geometry now 
 occupied his thoughts and time, and astronomy also be- 
 came a fascinating study. Long hours were often spent, 
 both night and day, lying on his back in a grove near his 
 home, pondering some problem or studying the stars. 
 
 Watt met his first irreparable loss in 1753, when his 
 mother suddenly died. The relations between them had 
 been such as are only possible between mother and son. 
 Often had the mother said to her intimates that she had 
 been enabled to bear the loss of her daughter only by the 
 love and care of her dutiful son. Home was home no 
 longer for Jamie, and we are not surprised to find him 
 leaving it soon after she who had been to him the light and 
 leading of his life had passed out of it. 
 
 Watt had now reached his seventeenth year. His father's 
 affairs were greatly embarrassed. It was clearly seen that 
 the two brothers, John and James, had to rely for their
 
 1 8 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 support upon their own unaided efforts. John, the elder, 
 some time before this had taken to the sea and been ship- 
 wrecked, leaving only James at home. Of course, there 
 was no question as to the career he would adopt. His 
 fortune ' lay at his finger-ends,' and accordingly he resolved 
 at once to qualify himself for the trade of a mathematical 
 instrument maker, the career which led him directly in 
 the pathway of mathematics and mechanical science, and 
 enabled him to gratify his unquenchable thirst for know- 
 ledge thereof. 
 
 Naturally Glasgow was decided upon as the proper place 
 in which to begin, and Watt took up his abode there with 
 his maternal relatives, the Muirheads, carrying his tools 
 with him. 
 
 No mathematical instrument maker was to be found in 
 Glasgow, but Watt entered the service of a kind of jack- 
 of-all-trades, who called himself an 'optician,' and sold 
 and mended spectacles, repaired fiddles, tuned spinets, 
 made fishing-rods and tackle, etc. Watt, as a devoted 
 brother of the angle, was an adept at dressing trout and 
 salmon flies, and handy at so many things that he proved 
 most useful to his employer ; but there was nothing to be 
 learned by the ambitious youth. 
 
 His most intimate schoolfellow was Andrew Anderson, 
 whose elder brother, John Anderson, became the well-known 
 Professor of Natural Philosophy, the first to open classes 
 for the instruction of working-men in its principles. He 
 bequeathed his property to found an institution for this 
 purpose, which under various designations has given a 
 substantial technical training for more than a century. 
 John Anderson came to know young Watt through his 
 brother, and Watt became a frequent visitor at his house. 
 He was given unrestricted access to Anderson's valuable 
 library, in which he spent many of his evenings. 
 
 One of the chief advantages of the public school is the 
 enduring friendships boys form there, first in importance 
 through their beneficial influence upon character, and, 
 second, as aids to success in after life. The writer has 
 been impressed by this feature, for great is the number of 
 instances he has known where the prized working-boy or
 
 JAMES WATT 19 
 
 man in position has been able, as additional force was 
 required, to say the needed word of recommendation, 
 which gave a start or a lift upward to a dearly cherished 
 schoolfellow. It seems a grave mistake for parents not to 
 educate their sons in the region of home, or in later years 
 in colleges and universities of their own land, so that early 
 friendships may not be broken, but grow closer with the 
 years. Watt at all events was fortunate in this respect. 
 His schoolmate, Andrew Anderson, brought into his life, 
 as we have seen, this helpful elder brother John with all 
 his knowledge, kindness, and influence, and opened to him 
 the kind of library he most needed.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 GLASGOW TO LONDON RETURN TO GLASGOW 
 
 THROUGH Professor Muirhead, a kinsman of Watt's mother, 
 he was introduced to many others of the faculty of the 
 university, and, as usual, attracted their attention, especially 
 that of Dr. Dick, Professor of Natural Philosophy, who 
 strongly advised him to proceed to London, where he 
 could receive better instruction than it was possible to 
 obtain in Scotland at that time. The kind Professor, 
 diviner of latent genius, went so far as to give him a per- 
 sonal introduction, which proved efficient. How true it is 
 that the worthy, aspiring youth rarely goes unrecognised or 
 unaided ! Men with kind hearts, wise heads, and influence 
 strong to aid, stand ready at every turn to take modest 
 merit by the hand and give it the only aid needed oppor- 
 tunity to speak, through results, for itself. So London 
 was determined upon. Fortunately, a distant relative of 
 the Watt family, a sea-captain, was about to set forth upon 
 that then long and toilsome journey. They started from 
 Glasgow, June 7, 1755, on horseback, the journey taking 
 twelve days. 
 
 The writer's parents often referred to the fact that when 
 the leading linen manufacturer of Dunfermline was about 
 to take the journey to London the only man in the town 
 then who ever did so special prayers were always said 
 in church for his safety. 
 
 The member of Parliament in Watt's day from the 
 extreme north of Scotland would have consumed nearly 
 twice twelve days to reach Westminster. To-day, if the 
 capital of the English-speaking race were in America, 
 which Lord Rosebery says he is willing it should be, if
 
 JAMES WATT 21 
 
 thereby the union of our English-speaking race were 
 secured the members of the Great Council from Britain 
 could reach Washington in seven days, the members from 
 British Columbia and California, upon the Pacific, in 
 five days, both land and sea routes soon to be much 
 quickened. 
 
 Those sanguine prophets who predict the reunion of 
 our race on both sides of the Atlantic can at least aver that, 
 in view of the union of Scotland and England, the element 
 of time required to traverse distances to and from the 
 capital is no obstacle, since the most distant points of the 
 new empire, Britain in the east and British Columbia and 
 California in the west, would be reached in less than one- 
 third the time required to travel from the north of Scotland 
 to London at the time of the union. Besides, the telegraph 
 to-day binds the parts together, keeping all citizens in- 
 formed, and stirring their hearts simultaneously thousands 
 of miles apart Glasgow to London, 1755, twelve days; 
 1905, eight hours. Thus under the genius Steam, tamed 
 and harnessed by Watt, the world shrinks into a neighbour- 
 hood, giving some countenance to the dreamers who may 
 perchance be proclaiming a coming reality. We may 
 continue, therefore, to indulge the hope of the coming 
 ' parliament of man, the federation of the world,' or even 
 the older and wider prophecy of Burns, that, 'It's coming 
 yet, for a' that, that man to man the warld o'er, shall 
 brothers be for a' that.' 
 
 There comes to mind that jewel we owe to Plato, which 
 surely ranks as one of the most precious of all our treasures : 
 1 We should lure ourselves as with enchantments, for the 
 hope is great and the reward is noble.' So with this 
 enchanting dream, better than most realities, even if it be 
 all a dream. Let the dreamers therefore dream on. The 
 world, minus enchanting dreams, would be commonplace 
 indeed, and let us remember this dream is only dreamable 
 because Watt's steam-engine is a reality. 
 
 After his twelve days on horseback, Watt arrived in 
 London, a stranger in a strange land, unknowing and un- 
 known. But the fates had been kind ; for, burdened with 
 neither wealth nor rank, this poor would-be skilled
 
 22 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 mechanic was to have a fair chance by beginning at the 
 bottom among his fellows, the sternest yet finest of all 
 schools to call forth and strengthen inherent qualities, and 
 impel a poor young man to put forth his utmost effort 
 when launched upon the sea of life, where he must either 
 sink or swim, no bladders being in reserve for him. 
 
 Our young hero rose to the occasion and soon proved 
 that, Caesar-like, he could ' stem the torrent with heart of 
 controversy.' Thus the rude school of experience calls 
 forth and strengthens the latent qualities of youth, implants 
 others, and forms the indomitable man, fit to endure and 
 overcome. Here, for the first time, alone in swarming 
 London, not one relative, not one friend, not even an 
 acquaintance, except the kind sea-captain, challenged by 
 the cold world around to do or die, fate called to Watt 
 as it calls to every man who has his own way to make : 
 
 ' For this is Coilantogle ford, 
 And thou must keep thee with thy sword.' 
 
 When the revelation first rushes upon a youth, hitherto 
 directed by his parents, that, boy no more, he must act 
 for himself, presto change ! he is a man, he has at last 
 found himself. The supreme test, which proves the man, 
 can come in all its winnowing force only to those born to 
 earn their own support by training themselves to be able 
 to render to society services which command return. 
 This training compels the development of powers which 
 otherwise would probably lie dormant. Scotch boy as 
 Watt was to the core, with the lowland broad, soft accent, 
 and ignorant of foreign literature, it is very certain that he 
 then found support in the lessons instilled at his mother's 
 knee. He had been fed on Wallace and Bruce, and when 
 things looked darkest, even in very early years, his national 
 hero, Wallace, came to mind, and his struggles against 
 fearful odds, not for selfish ends, but for his country's 
 independence. Did Wallace give up the fight, or ever 
 think of giving up ? Never ! It was death or victory. 
 Bruce and the spider! Did Bruce falter? Never! Neither 
 would he. 'Scots wha hae,' ' Let us do or die,' implanted
 
 JAMES WATT 23 
 
 before his teens, has pulled many a Scottish boy through 
 the crises of life when all was dark, as it will pull others 
 yet to come. Although Burns and Scott had yet to 
 appear, to crystallise Scotland's characteristics and plant 
 the talismanic words into the hearts of young Scots, Watt 
 had a copious supply of the national sentiment, to give 
 him the ' stout heart for the stey brae,' when manhood 
 arrived. His mother had planted deep in him, and 
 nurtured, precious seed from her Celtic garden, which was 
 sure to grow and bear good fruit. 
 
 We are often met with the question, ' What is the best 
 possible safeguard for a young man, who goes forth from 
 a pure home, to meet the temptations that beset his path ? ' 
 Various answers are given ; but, speaking as a Scot, reared 
 as Watt was, the writer believes that all the suggested safe- 
 guards combined scarcely weigh so much as preventives 
 against disgracing himself as the thought that it would not 
 be only himself he would disgrace, but that he would also 
 bring disgrace upon his family, and would cause father, 
 mother, sister and brother to hang their heads among their 
 neighbours in secluded village, on far-away moor or in 
 lonely glen. The Scotch have strong traces of the 
 Chinese and Japanese religious devotion to 'the family,' 
 and the filial instinct is intensely strong. The fall of one 
 member is the disgrace of all. Even although Watt's 
 mother had passed, there remained the venerated father 
 in Greenock, and the letters regularly written to him, some 
 of which have fortunately been preserved, abundantly prove 
 that, though far from home, yet in home and family ties 
 and family duties the young man had his strong tower of 
 defence, keeping him from 'all sense of sin or shame.' 
 Watt never gave his father reason for one anxious thought 
 that he would in any respect discredit the good name of 
 his forebears. 
 
 Many London shops were visited ; but the rules of the 
 trade, requiring apprentices to serve for seven years, or, 
 being journeymen, to have served that time, proved an 
 insuperable obstacle to Watt's being employed. His plan 
 was to fit himself by a year's steady work for return to 
 Glasgow, there to begin on his own account. He had not
 
 24 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 seven years to spend learning what he could learn in one. 
 He would be his own master. Wise young man in this 
 he was. There is not much outcome in the youth who 
 does not already see himself captain in his dreams, and 
 steers his barque accordingly, true to the course already 
 laid down, not to be departed from, under any stress of 
 weather. We see the kind of stuff this young Scotch lad 
 was made of in the tenacity with which he held to his 
 plan. At last some specimens of his work having seemed 
 very remarkable to Mr. John Morgan, mathematical in- 
 strument maker, Finch Lane, Cornhill, he agreed to give 
 the conquering young man the desired year's instructions 
 for his services and a premium of twenty pounds, where- 
 upon the plucky fellow, who had kept to his course and 
 made port, wrote to his father of his success, praising his 
 master ' as being of as good character, both for accuracy 
 in his business, and good morals, as any of his way in 
 London.' The order in which this aspiring young man of 
 the world records the virtues will not be overlooked. He 
 then adds, ' If it had not been for Mr. Short, I could not 
 have got a man in London that would have undertaken 
 to teach me, as I now find there are not above five or six 
 who could have taught me all I wanted.' 
 
 Mr. Short was the gentleman to whom Professor Dick's 
 letter of introduction was addressed, who, no more than 
 the Professor himself, nor Mr. Morgan, could withstand 
 the extraordinary youth, whom he could not refuse taking 
 into his service glad to get him, no doubt, and delighted 
 that he was privileged to instruct one so likely to redound 
 to his credit in after years. Thus Watt made his start in 
 London, the twenty pounds premium being duly remitted 
 from home. 
 
 Up to this time, Watt had been a charge on his father, 
 but it was very small, for he lived in the most frugal style 
 at a cost of only eight shillings per week. In one of his 
 letters to his father he regrets being unable to reduce it 
 below that, knowing that his father's affairs were not 
 prosperous. He, however, was able to obtain some re- 
 munerative work on his own account, which he did after 
 his day's task was over, and soon made his position secure
 
 JAMES WATT 25 
 
 as a workman. Specialisation he met with for the first 
 time, and he expresses surprise that 'very few here know 
 any more than how to make a rule, others a pair of dividers, 
 and such like.' Here we see that even at that early day 
 division of labour had won its way in London, though 
 vet unknown in the country. The jack-of-all-trades, the 
 handy-man, who can do everything, gives place to the 
 specialist, who confines himself to one thing in which 
 practice makes him perfect. Watt's mission saved him 
 from this, for to succeed he had to be master, not of one 
 process, but of all. Hence we find him first making brass 
 scales, parallel-rulers and quadrants. By the end of one 
 month in this department he was able to finish a Hadley 
 quadrant. From this he proceeded to azimuth compasses, 
 brass sectors, theodolites, and other delicate instruments. 
 Before his year was finished he wrote his father that he 
 had made ' a brass sector with a French joint, which is 
 reckoned as nice a piece of framing-work as is in the trade,' 
 and expressed the hope that he would soon now be able 
 to support himself and be no longer a charge upon him. 
 
 It is highly probable that this first tool finished by his 
 own hands brought to Watt more unalloyed pleasure than 
 any of his greater triumphs of later years, just as the first 
 week's wages of youth, money earned by service rendered, 
 proclaiming coming manhood, brings with it a thrill and 
 glow of proud satisfaction, compared with which all the 
 millions of later years are as dross. 
 
 Writers upon labour, who have never laboured, gener- 
 ally make the profound mistake of considering labour as 
 one solid mass, when the truth is that it contains orders 
 and degrees as distinct as those in aristocracy. The work- 
 man skilled beyond his fellows, who is called upon by his 
 superintendent to undertake the difficult job in emergencies, 
 ranks high, and probably enjoys an honourable title, a pet 
 name conferred by his shopmates. Men measure each 
 other as correctly in the workshop as in the professions, 
 and each has deserved rank. When the right man is pro- 
 moted, they rally round and enable him to perform 
 wonders. Where favouritism or poor judgment is shown, 
 the reverse occurs, and there is apathy and dissatisfaction,
 
 26 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 leading to poor results and serious trouble. The manual 
 worker is as proud of his work, and rightly so, as men are 
 in other vocations. His life and thought centre in the 
 shop as those of members of Congress or Parliament 
 centre in the House ; and triumph for him in the shop, his 
 world, means exactly the same to him, and appears not less 
 important to his family and friends than what leader- 
 ship is to the public man, or in any of the professions. He 
 has all their pride of profession, and less vanity than most. 
 
 How far this ' pride of profession ' extends is well illus- 
 trated by the Pittsburgh story of the street scrapers at their 
 noon repast. MacCarthy, recently deceased, was the 
 subject of eulogy, one going so far as to assert that he was 
 ' the best man that ever scraped a hoe on Liberty Street.' 
 To this, one who had aspirations c allowed Mac was a good 
 enough man on plain work, but around the gas-posts he 
 wasn't worth a cent.' 
 
 A public character, stopping overnight with a friend in 
 the country, the maid-of-all-work tells her mistress, after 
 the guest departs, ' I have read so much about him, never 
 expecting to see him ; little did I think I should have the 
 honour of brushing his boots this morning.' Happy girl 
 in her work ! knowing that all service is honourable. Even 
 shoe-blacking, we see, has its rewards. 
 
 A Highland laird and lady, visiting some of their crofters 
 on the moors, are met and escorted by a delighted wife to 
 her cot. The children and the husband are duly presented. 
 At an opportune moment the proud wife cannot refrain 
 from informing her visitors that 'it was Donald himsel' the 
 laird had to send for to thatch the pretty golf-house at the 
 Castle. Donald did all that himsel',' with an admiring 
 glance cast at the embarrassed great man. Donald ' sent 
 for by the laird at the Castle ' ranks in Donald's circle and 
 in Donald's own heart with the honour of being sent for by 
 His Majesty to govern the empire in Mr. Balfour's circle 
 and in Mr. Balfour's own heart. Ten to one the proud 
 Highland crofter and his circle reap more genuine, un- 
 alloyed satisfaction from the message than the lowland 
 statesman and his circle could reap from his. But it 
 made Balfour famous, you say. So was Donald made
 
 JAMES WATT 27 
 
 famous, his circle not so wide as that of his colleague 
 that is all. Donald is as much ' uplifted ' as the Prime 
 Minister ; probably more so. Thus is human nature ever 
 the same down to the roots. Many distinctions, few 
 differences in life. We are all kin, members of the one 
 family, playing with different toys. 
 
 So deep down into the ranks of labour goes the salt of 
 pride of profession, preventing rot and keeping all fresh in 
 the main, because on the humblest of the workers there 
 shines the bright ray of hope of recognition and advance- 
 ment, progress and success. As long as this vista is seen 
 stretching before, all is well with labour. There will be 
 friction, of course, between capital and labour, but it will 
 be healthy friction, needed by, and good for, both. There 
 is the higgling of the market in all business. As long as 
 this valuable quality of honest pride in one's work exists, 
 and finds deserved recognition, society has nothing to fear 
 from the ranks of labour. Those who have had most 
 experience of it, and know its qualities and its failings 
 best, have no fear ; on the contrary, they know that all 
 heart labour is sound, and only needs considerate treat- 
 ment. The kindly personal attention of the employer will 
 be found far more appreciated than even a rise in wages. 
 
 Enforced confinement and unremitting labour soon told 
 upon Watt's delicate constitution, yet he persevered with 
 the self-imposed extra work, which brought in a little 
 honest money and reduced the remittances from home. 
 He caught a severe cold during the winter and was 
 afflicted by a racking cough and severe rheumatic pains. 
 With his father's sanction, he decided to return home to 
 recuperate, taking good care, however, forehanded as he 
 always proved himself, to secure some new and valuable 
 tools and a stock of materials to make many others, which 
 ' he knew he must make himself.' A few valuable books 
 were not forgotten, among them Bion's work on the Con- 
 struction and Use of Mathematical Instruments nothing 
 pertaining to his craft but he would know. King he would 
 be in that, so everything was made to revolve around it. 
 That was the foundation upon which he had to build. 
 
 To the old home in Scotland our hero's face was now
 
 28 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 turned in the autumn of 1756, his twentieth year. His 
 native air, best medicine of all for the invalid exile, soon 
 restored his health, and to Glasgow he then went, in pur- 
 suance of his plan of life early laid down, to begin business 
 on his own account. He thus became master before he 
 was man. There was not in all Scotland a mathematical 
 instrument maker, and here was one of the very best 
 begging permission to establish himself in Glasgow. As 
 in London so in Glasgow, however, the rules of the Guild 
 of Hammermen, to which it was decided a mathematical 
 instrument maker would belong, if one of such high calling 
 made his appearance, prevented Watt from entrance if he 
 had not consumed seven years in learning the trade. He 
 had mastered it in one, and was ready to demonstrate his 
 ability to excel by any kind of test proposed. Watt had 
 entered in properly by the door of knowledge and ex- 
 perience of the craft, the only door through which entrance 
 was possible, but he had travelled too quicklv ; besides he 
 was ' neither the son of a burgess, nor had he served an 
 apprenticeship in the borough,' and this was conclusive. 
 How the world has travelled onward since those davs ! and 
 yet our day is likely to be in as great contrast a hundred 
 and fifty years hence. Protective tariffs between nations, 
 and probably wars, may then seem as strangely absurd as 
 the hammermen's rules. Even in 1905 we have still a far 
 road to travel. 
 
 Failing in his efforts to establish himself in business, he 
 asked the guild to permit him to rent and use a small 
 workshop to make experiments, but even this was refused. 
 We are disposed to wonder at this, but it was in strict 
 accordance with the spirit of the times. 
 
 When the sky was darkest, the clouds broke and revealed 
 the university as his guardian angel. Dr. Dick, Professor 
 of Natural Philosophy, knowing of Watt's skill from his first 
 start in Glasgow, had already employed him to repair some 
 mathematical instruments bequeathed to the university by 
 a Scottish gentleman in the West Indies, and the work had 
 been well done, at a cost of five pounds the first contract 
 money ever earned by Watt in Glasgow. Good work 
 always tells. Ability cannot be kept down for ever; if
 
 JAMES WATT 29 
 
 crushed to earth, it rises again. So Watt's ' good work ' 
 brought the Professors to his aid, several of whom he had 
 met and impressed most favourably during its progress. 
 The university charter, gift of the Pope in 1451, gave 
 absolute authority within the area of its buildings, and the 
 Professors resolved to give our hero shelter there the best 
 day's work they ever did. May they ever be remembered 
 for this with feelings of deepest gratitude ! What men these 
 were ! Adam Smith, who did lor the science of economics 
 what Watt did for steam, was one of Watt's dearest friends; 
 Black, discoverer of latent heat, was another ; such too were 
 John Anderson, John Kobison (three years Watt's junior), 
 afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh; 
 Dick, of whom we have spoken, and others. These men 
 were the world's benefactors when they resolved to take 
 Watt under their protection, and thus enabled him to do 
 his appointed work. Glorious university, this of Glasgow, 
 protector and nurse of Watt probably of all its decisions 
 this has been of the greatest service to man ! 
 
 There are universities and universities. Glasgow's 
 peculiar claim to regard lies in the perfect equality of the 
 various schools, the humanities not neglected, the sciences 
 appreciated, neither accorded precedence. Its scientific 
 Professor, Thomson, now Lord Kelvin, was recently elevated 
 to its Chancellorship,, the highest honour in its power to 
 bestow. 
 
 Every important university develops special qualities of 
 its own, for which it is noted. That of Glasgow is re- 
 nowned for devotion to the scientific field. What a record 
 is hers! Protector of Watt, going to extreme measures 
 necessary, not alone to shelter him, but to enable him to 
 labour within its walls and support himself; first university 
 to establish an engineering school and professorship of 
 engineering ; first to establish a chemical teaching labora- 
 tory for students; first to have a physical laboratory for 
 the exercise and instruction of students in experimental 
 work ; nursery from which came the steam-engine of Watt, 
 the discovery of latent heat by Joseph Black, and the 
 successful operation of telegraph cables by its former 
 Professor and present Chancellor (Lord Kelvin). May the
 
 30 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 future of Glasgow University copy fair her glorious past ! 
 Her 'atmosphere' favours and stimulates steady, fruitful 
 work. At all Scottish, as at all American universities, we 
 may rejoice that there is always found a large number of 
 the most distinguished students, who, figuratively speaking, 
 cultivate knowledge upon a little oatmeal, earning money 
 between terms to pay their way. It is highly probable 
 that a greater proportion of these will be heard from in 
 later years than of any other class. 
 
 American universities have, fortunately, followed the 
 Glasgow model, and are giving more attention to the 
 hitherto much neglected needs of science, and the practi- 
 cal departments of education, making themselves real 
 universities, ' where any man can study everything worth 
 studying.' 
 
 A room was assigned to Watt, only about twenty feet 
 square, but it served him as it has done others since for 
 great work. When the well-known author, Samuel Smiles, 
 visited the room, he found in it the galvanic apparatus 
 employed by Professor Thomson (Lord Kelvin) for per- 
 fecting his delicate invention which rendered ocean cables 
 effective. 
 
 'The kind and wise Professors did not stop here. They 
 went pretty far, one cannot but think, when they took the 
 next step in Watt's behalf, giving him a small room, which 
 could be made accessible to the public, and this he was at 
 liberty to open as a shop for the sale of his instruments, 
 for Watt had to make a living by his handiwork. Strange 
 work this for a university, especially in those days ; but our 
 readers, we are sure, will heartily approve the last, as they 
 have no doubt approved the first, action of the faculty in 
 favour of struggling genius. Business was not prosperous 
 at first with Watt, his instruments proving slow of sale. 
 Of quadrants he could make three per week with the help 
 of a lad, at a profit of forty shillings, but as sea-going ships 
 could not then reach Glasgow, few could be sold. A 
 supply was sent to Greenock, then the port of Glasgow, and 
 sold by his father. He was reduced, as the greatest artists 
 have often been, to the necessity of making what are known 
 as ' pot-boilers.' Following the example of his first master
 
 JAMES WATT 31 
 
 in Glasgow, he made spectacles, fiddles, flutes, guitars, and, 
 of course, flies and fishing-tackle, and, as the record tells, 
 1 many dislocated violins, fractured guitars, fiddles also, if 
 intreated, did he mend with good approbation.' Such were 
 his ' pot-boilers ' that met the situation. 
 
 His friend, Professor Black, who, like Professor Dick, 
 had known of Watt's talent, one day asked him if he 
 couldn't make an organ for him. By this time Watt's 
 reputation had begun to spread, and it finally carried him 
 to the height of passing among his associates as ' one who 
 knew most things and could make anything.' Watt knew 
 nothing about organs, but he immediately undertook the 
 work (1762), and the result was an indisputable success that 
 led to his constructing, for a Masonic Lodge in Glasgow, 
 a larger 'finer organ,' 'which elicited the surprise and 
 admiration of musicians.' This extraordinary man im- 
 proved m every thing he touched. For his second organ he 
 devised a number of novelties, a sustained monochord, 
 indicators and regulators of the blast, means for tuning to 
 any system, contrivances for improving the stops, etc. 
 
 Lest we should be led into a sad mistake here, let us stop 
 a moment to consider how Watt so easily accomplished 
 wonders, as if by inspiration. In all history it may be 
 doubted whether success can be traced more clearly to 
 long and careful preparation than in Watt's case. When 
 we investigate, for instance, this seeming sleight-of-hand 
 triumph with the organs, we find that upon agreeing to 
 make the first, Watt immediately devoted himself to a 
 study of the laws of harmony, making science supplement 
 his lack of the musical ear. As usual, the study was 
 exhaustive. Of course he found and took for guide the 
 highest authority, a profound but obscure book on Har- 
 monics, by Professor Robert Smith of Cambridge ; and, 
 mark this, he first made a model of the forthcoming organ. 
 It is safe to say that there was not then a man in Britain 
 who knew more of the science of music and was more 
 thoroughly prepared to excel in the art of making organs 
 than the new organ-builder. 
 
 When he attacked the problem of steam, as we shall 
 soon see, the same course was followed, although it involved
 
 32 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 the mastering of three languages, that he should miss 
 nothing. 
 
 We note that the taking of infinite pains, this fore- 
 arming of himself, this knowing of everytning that was to 
 be known, the note 01 thorough preparation in Watt's 
 career, is ever conspicuous. Tne best proof that he was 
 a man of true genius is that he first made himself master 
 of all knowledge bearing upon his tasks. 
 
 Watt could not have been more happily situated. His 
 surroundings were ideal, the resources of the university 
 were at his disposal, and, being conveniently situated, 
 his workshop soon became the rendezvous of the faculty. 
 He thus enjoyed the constant intimate companionship of 
 one of the most distinguished bodies of educated men of 
 science in the world. Glasgow was favoured in her faculty 
 in those days as now. Two at least of Watt's closest friends, 
 the discoverer of latent heat and the author of The Wealth 
 of Nations, won enduring fame. Others were eminent. 
 He did not fail to realise his advantages, and has left 
 several acknowledgments of his debt to ' those who were 
 all much my superiors, I never having attended a college 
 and being then but a mechanic.' His so-called superiors 
 did not quite see it in this light, as they have abundantly 
 testified, but the modesty of Watt was ever conspicuous all 
 through his life. 
 
 Watt led a busy life, the time not spent upon the indis- 
 pensable 'pot-boilers' being fully occupied in severe 
 studies; chemistry, mathematics, and mechanics all 
 received attention. What he was finally to become no one 
 could so far predict, but his associates expected something 
 great from one who had so deeply impressed them. 
 
 Robison (afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy in 
 Edinburgh University), being nearer Watt's age than the 
 others, became his most intimate friend. His introduction 
 to Watt, in 1758, has been described by himself. After 
 feasting his eyes on the beautifully finished instruments in 
 his shop, Robison entered into conversation with him. 
 Expecting to find only a workman, he was surprised to 
 find a philosopher. Says Robison : 
 ' I had the vanity to think myself a pretty good proficient in
 
 JAMES WATT 33 
 
 my favourite study (mathematical and mechanical philosophy), 
 and was rather mortified at finding Mr. Watt so much my 
 superior. But his own high relish for those things made him 
 pleased with the chat of any person who had the same tastes 
 with himself; or his innate complaisance made him indulge 
 my curiosity, and even encourage my endeavours to form a 
 more intimate acquaintance with him. I lounged much about 
 him, and, I doubt not, was frequently teasing him. Thus our 
 acquaintance began.'
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CAPTURED BY STEAM 
 
 THE supreme hour of Watt's life was now about to strike. 
 He had become deeply interested in the subject of steam, 
 to which young Robison had called his attention, Robison 
 being at this time in his twentieth year, and Watt but three 
 years older. 
 
 Robison's idea was that steam might be applied to wheel 
 carriages. Watt admitted his ignorance of steam then. 
 Nevertheless, he made a model of a wheel carriage with 
 two cylinders of tin-plate, but being slightly and in- 
 accurately made, it failed to work satisfactorily. Nothing 
 more was heard of it. Robison soon thereafter left 
 Glasgow. The demon steam continued to haunt Watt. 
 He, who up to this time had never seen even a model of 
 a steam-engine, strangely discovered in his researches that 
 the university actually owned a model of the latest type, the 
 Newcomen engine, which had been purchased for the use of 
 the natural philosophy class. One wonders how many of the 
 universities in Britain had been so progressive. That of 
 Glasgow seems to have recognised at an early day the 
 importance of science, in which department she continues 
 famous. The coveted and now historical model had been 
 sent to London for repairs. Watt urged its prompt return, 
 and a sum of money was voted for this purpose. Watt 
 was at last completely absorbed in the subject of steam. 
 He read all that had been written on the subject. Most 
 of the valuable matter in those days was in French 
 and Italian, of which there were no translations. Watt 
 promptly began to acquire these languages, that he might 
 know all that was to be known. He could not await the
 
 JAMES WATT 35 
 
 coming of the model, which did not arrive until 1763, and 
 began his own experiments in 1761. How did he obtain 
 the necessary appliances and apparatus? one asks. The 
 answer is easy. He made them. Apothecaries' vials were 
 his steam-boilers, and hollowed-out canes his steam-pipes. 
 Numerous experiments followed, and much was learned. 
 Watt's account of these is appended to the article on 
 ' Steam and the Steam Engine ' in the Encyclopedia 
 Britannica^ ninth edition. 
 
 Detailed accounts of Watt's numerous experiments, 
 failures, difficulties, disappointments, and successes, as one 
 after the other obstacles were surmounted, are not within 
 the scope of this volume, these being all easily accessible 
 to the student ; but the general reader may be interested in 
 the most important of all the triumphs of the indefatigable 
 worker the keystone of the arch. The Newcomen model 
 arrived at last and was promptly repaired, but was not 
 successful when put in operation. Steam enough could 
 not be obtained, although the boiler seemed of ample 
 capacity. The fire was urged by blowing and more steam 
 generated, and still it would not work; a few strokes of 
 the piston and the engine stopped. Smiles says that 
 exactly at the point when ordinary experimentalists would 
 have abandoned the task, Watt became thoroughly aroused. 
 1 Every obstacle/ says Professor Robison, 'was to him the 
 beginning of a new and serious study, and I knew he 
 would not quit it until he had either discovered its worth- 
 lessness or had made something of it.' The difficulty here 
 was serious. Books were searched in vain. No one had 
 touched it. A course of independent experiments was 
 essential, and upon this he entered as usual, determined to 
 find truth at the bottom of the well and to get there in his 
 own way. Here he came upon the fact which led him to 
 the stupendous result. That fact was the existence of 
 latent heat, the original discoverer of which was Watt's 
 intimate friend, Professor Black. Watt found that water 
 converted into steam heated five times its own weight of 
 water to steam heat. He says : 
 
 4 Being struck with this remarkable fact [effect of latent heat],
 
 36 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 and not understanding the reason of it, I mentioned it to my 
 friend Dr. Black, who then explained to me his doctrine of 
 latent heat, which he had taught some time before this period 
 (1764) ; but having myself been occupied with the pursuits of 
 business, if I had heard of it I had not attended to it, when I 
 thus stumbled upon one of the material facts by which that 
 beautiful theory is supported.' 
 
 Here we have an instance of two men in the same uni- 
 versity discovering latent heat, one wholly ignorant of the 
 other's doings; fortunately, the later discoverer only too 
 glad to acknowledge and applaud the original, and, strange 
 to say, going to him to announce the discovery he had 
 made. Watt of course had no access to the Professor's 
 classes, and some years before the former stumbled upon 
 the fact, the theory had been announced by Black, but 
 had apparently attracted little attention. This episode 
 reminds us of the advantages Watt had in his surroundings. 
 He breathed the very ' atmosphere ' of scientific and 
 mechanical investigation and invention, and had at hand 
 not only the standard books, but the living men who 
 could best assist him. 
 
 What does latent heat mean ? we hear the reader 
 inquire. Let us try to explain it in simple language. 
 Arago pronounced Black's experiment revealing it as one 
 of the most remarkable in modern physics. Water passed 
 as an element until Watt found it was a compound. 
 Change its temperature and it exists in three different 
 states, liquid, solid, and gaseous water, ice, and steam. 
 Convert water into steam, and pass, say, two pounds of 
 steam into ten pounds of water at freezing-point, and the 
 steam would be wholly liquefied, i.e. become water again, 
 at 212, but the whole ten pounds of freezing water would 
 also be raised to 212 in the process. That is to say, two 
 pounds of steam will convert ten pounds of freezing water 
 into boiling water, so great is the latent heat set free in 
 the passage of steam to lower temperatures at the moment 
 when the contact of cold surfaces converts the vapour 
 from the gaseous into the liquid state. This heat is so 
 thoroughly merged in the compound that the most delicate 
 thermometer cannot detect a variation. It is undiscover-
 
 JAMES WATT 37 
 
 able by our senses, and yet it proves its existence beyond 
 question by its work. Heat which is obtained by the 
 combustion of coal or wood lies also in water, to be drawn 
 forth and utilised in steam. It is apparently a mere 
 question of temperature. The heat lies latent and dead 
 until we raise the temperature of the water to 212, and it 
 is turned to vapour. Then the powerful force is instantly 
 imbued with life, and we harness it for our purposes. 
 
 The description of latent heat which gave the writer the 
 clearest idea of it, and at the same time a much-needed 
 reminder of the fact that Watt was the discoverer of the 
 practically constant and unvarying amount of heat in 
 steam, whatever the pressure, is the following by Mr. 
 Lauder, a graduate of Glasgow University and pupil of 
 Lord Kelvin, taken from Watf s Discoveries of the Properties 
 of Steam. 
 
 'It is well to distinguish between the two things, Discovery 
 and Invention. The title of Watt the Inventor is world-wide, 
 and is so just and striking that there is none to gainsay. But 
 it is only to the few that dive deeper that Watt the Discoverer 
 is known. When his mind became directed to the possibilities 
 of the power of steam, he, following his natural bent, began 
 to investigate its properties. The mere inventor would have 
 been content with what was already known, and utilised such 
 knowledge, as Newcomen had done in his engine. Watt 
 might have invented the separate condenser and ranked as a 
 great inventor, but the spirit of inquiry was in possession of 
 him, and he had to find out all he could about the nature of 
 steam. 
 
 'His first discovery was that of latent heat. When com- 
 municating this to Professor Black he found that his friend 
 had anticipated him, and had been teaching it in lectures to 
 his students for some years past. His next step was the dis- 
 covery of the total heat of steam, and that this remains prac- 
 tically constant at all pressures. Black's fame rests upon his 
 theory of latent heat ; Watt's fame as the discoverer of the 
 total heat of steam should be equally great, and would be, no 
 doubt, had his role of inventor not overshadowed all his work. 
 
 'This part of Watt's work has been so little known that it is 
 almost imperative to-day to give some idea of it to the general 
 reader. Suppose you take a flask, such as olive oil is often 
 sold in, and fill it with cold water. Set it over a lighted lamp,
 
 38 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 put a thermometer in the water, and the temperature will be 
 observed to rise steadily till it reaches 212, where it remains, 
 the water boils, and steam is produced freely. Now draw the 
 thermometer out of the water, but leaving it still in the steam. 
 It remains steady at the same point 212. Now it requires 
 quite a long time and a large amount of heat to convert all the 
 water into steam. As the steam goes off at the same tempera- 
 ture as the water, it is evident a quantity of heat has escaped 
 in the steam, of which the thermometer gives us no account. 
 This is latent heat. 
 
 ' Now, if you blow the steam into cold water instead of allow- 
 ing it to pass into the air, you will find that it heats the water 
 six times more than what is due to its indicated temperature. 
 To fix your ideas : suppose you take 100 Ibs. of water at 60, 
 and blow one pound of steam into it, making 101 Ibs., its 
 temperature will now be about 72, a rise of 12. Return to 
 your ico Ibs. of water at 60 and add one pound of water at 
 212, the same temperature as the steam you added, and the 
 temperature will only be raised about 2. The one pound of 
 steam heats six times more than the one pound of water, both 
 being at the same temperature. This is the quantity of latent 
 heat, which means simply hidden heat, in steam. 
 
 ' Proceeding further with the experiment, if, instead of allow- 
 ing the steam to blow into the water, you confine it until it 
 gets to some pressure, then blow it into the water, it takes the 
 same weight to raise the temperature to the same degree. 
 This means that the total heat remains practically the same, 
 no matter at what pressure. 
 
 'This is James Watt's discovery, and it led him to the use 
 of high-pressure steam, used expansively.' 
 
 Even coal may yet be superseded before it is exhausted, 
 for as eminent an authority as Professor Pritchett of the 
 Massachusetts Institute of Technology has said in a recent 
 address : 
 
 'Watt's invention and all it has led to is only a step on the 
 way to harnessing the forces of nature to the service of man. 
 Do you doubt that other inventions will work changes even 
 more sweeping than those which the steam-engine has 
 brought ? 
 
 ' Consider a moment. The problem of which Watt solved a 
 part is not the problem of inventing a machine, but the problem 
 of using and storing the forces of nature which now go to 
 waste. Now to us who live on the earth there is only one
 
 JAMES WATT 39 
 
 source of power the sun. Darken the sun and every engine 
 on the earth's surface would soon stop, every wheel cease to 
 turn, and all movement cease. How prodigal this supply of 
 power is we seldom stop to consider. Deducting the atmo- 
 spheric absorption, it is still true that the sun delivers on each 
 square yard of the earth's surface, when he is shining, the 
 equivalent of one horse-power working continuously. Enough 
 mechanical power goes to waste on the college campus to warm 
 and light and supply all the manufactories, street railroads, and 
 other consumers of mechanical power in the city. How to 
 harness this power and to store it that is the problem of the 
 inventor and the engineer of the twentieth century, a problem 
 which in good time is sure to be solved.' 
 
 Who shall doubt, after finding this secret source of force 
 in water, that some future Watt is to discover other sources 
 of power, or perchance succeed in utilising the super- 
 abundant power known to exist in the heat of the sun, or 
 discover the secret of the latent force employed by nature 
 in animals, which converts chemical energy directly into 
 the dynamic form, giving much higher efficiencies than 
 any thermo-dynamic machine has to-day or probably ever 
 can have? Little knew Shakespeare of man's perfect 
 power of motion which utilises all energy ! How came he 
 then to exclaim, ' What a piece of work is a man ; how 
 infinite in faculty ; in form and moving how express and 
 admirable ' ? This query, and a thousand others, have 
 arisen ; for we forget Arnold's lines to the Master: 
 
 ' Others abide our question. Thou art free. 
 We ask and ask Thou smilest and art still.' 
 
 Man's 'moving' is found more ' express and admirable ' than 
 that of the most perfect machine or adaptation of natural 
 forces yet devised. Lord Kelvin says the animal motor 
 more closely resembles an electro-magnetic engine than a 
 heat engine, but very probably the chemical forces in 
 animals produce the external mechanical effects through 
 electricity, and do not act as a thermo-dynamic engine. 
 
 The wastage of heat energy under present methods is 
 appalling. About 65 per cent, of the heat energy of coal 
 can be put into the steam-boiler, and from this only 15
 
 40 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 per cent, of mechanical power is obtained. Thus about 
 nine-tenths of the original heat in coal is wasted. Pro- 
 ceeding further and putting mechanical power into elec- 
 tricity, only from 2 to 5 per cent, is turned into light ; or, 
 in other words, from coal to light we get on an average 
 only about one-half of i per cent, of the original energy 
 a wastage of ninety-nine and one-half of every hundred 
 pounds of coal used. The very best possible with largest 
 and best machinery is a little more than one pound from 
 every hundred consumed. 
 
 When Watt gave to the steam-engine five times its 
 efficiency by utilising the latent heat, he only touched the 
 fringe of the mysterious realm which envelops man. 
 
 Burbank, producer of the spineless cactus and new fruits, 
 who has been delving deep into the mysteries, tells us : 
 
 ' The facts of plant life demand a kinetic theory of evolution, 
 a slight change from Huxley's statement that " Matter is a 
 magazine of force," to that of matter being force alone. The 
 time will come when the theory of " ions" will be thrown aside, 
 and no line left between force and matter.' 
 
 Professor Matthews, he who, with Professor Loeb at 
 Wood's Hole, is imparting life to sea-urchins through 
 electrical reactions, declares 'that certain chemical sub- 
 stances coming together under certain conditions are 
 bound to produce life. All life comes through the 
 operation of universal laws.' We are but young in all this 
 mysterious business. What lies behind and probably near 
 at hand may not merely revolutionise material agencies, 
 but human preconceptions as well. ' There are more 
 things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your 
 Philosophy.' 
 
 Latent heat was a find indeed, but there remained 
 another discovery yet to make. Watt found that no less 
 than four-fifths of all the steam used was lost in heating 
 the cold cylinder, and only one-fifth performed service by 
 acting on the piston. Prevent this, and the power of the 
 giant is increased fourfold. Here was the prize to contend 
 for. Win this, and the campaign is won. First then, what 
 caused the loss ? This was soon determined. The cylin-
 
 JAMES WATT 41 
 
 der was necessarily cooled at the top because it was open 
 to the air, and also cooled below in condensing the charge 
 of steam that had driven the piston up in order to create a 
 vacuum, without which the piston would not descend from 
 top to bottom, to begin another upward stroke. A jet of 
 cold water was introduced to effect this. How to sur- 
 mount this seemingly insuperable obstacle was the problem 
 that kept Watt long in profound study. 
 
 Many plans were entertained, only to be finally rejected. 
 At last the flash came into that teeming brain like a stroke 
 of lightning. Eureka ! he had found it. Not one scintilla 
 of doubt ever intruded thereafter. The solution lay right 
 there, and he would invent the needed appliances. His 
 mode of procedure, when on the trail of big game, is 
 beautifully illustrated here. When he found the root of 
 the defect which rendered the Newccmen engine im- 
 practicable for general purposes, he promptly foimulated 
 the one indispensable condition which alone met the 
 problem, and which the successful steam-engine must 
 possess. He abandoned all else for the time as super- 
 fluous, since this was the key of the position. This is the 
 law he then laid down as an axiom which is repeated in 
 his specification for his first patent in 1769: 'To make a 
 perfect steam-engine it was necessary that the cylinder 
 should be always as hot as the steam which entered it, 
 and that the steam should be .cooled below 100 to exert 
 its full powers.' 
 
 Watt describes how at last the idea of the ' separate 
 condenser,' the complete cure, flashed suddenly upon his 
 mind : 
 
 ' I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon, 
 early in 1765. I had entered the green by the gate at the foot 
 of Charlotte Street, and had passed the old washing-house. I 
 was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far 
 as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as 
 steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and 
 if a communication were made between the cylinder and an 
 exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there 
 condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I 
 must get rid of the condensed steam and injection-water if I
 
 42 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 used a jet as in Newcomen's engine. Two ways of doing this 
 occurred to me. First, the water might be run off by a de- 
 scending pipe, if an off-let could be got at the depth of thirty- 
 five or thirty-six feet, and any air might be extracted by a 
 small pump. The second was to make the pump large enough 
 to extract both water and air. ... I had not walked farther 
 than the golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my 
 mind.' 
 
 Professor Black says : ' This capital improvement flashed 
 upon his mind at once, and filled him with rapture.' We 
 may imagine 
 
 ' Then felt he like some watcher of the skies 
 When a new planet swims into his ken.' 
 
 A new world had sprung forth in Watt's brain, for 
 nothing less has the steam-engine given to man. One 
 reads with a smile the dear modest man's deprecatory 
 remarks about the condenser in after years, when he was 
 overcome by the glowing tributes paid him upon one 
 occasion and hailed as having conquered hitherto uncon- 
 trollable steam. He stammered out words to the effect 
 that it came in his way, and he happened to find it; others 
 had missed it; that was all; somebody had to stumble 
 upon it. That is all very well, and we love thee, Jamie 
 Watt (he was always Jamie to his friends), for such self- 
 abnegation, but the truth of history must be vindicated 
 for all that. It proclaims, Thou art the man ; go up 
 higher and take your seat there among the immortals, the 
 inventor of the greatest of all inventions, a great discoverer, 
 and one of the noblest of men ! 
 
 In this one change lay all the difference between the 
 Newcomen engine, limited to atmospheric pressure, and 
 the steam-engine, capable of development into the modern 
 engine through the increasing use of the tremendous force 
 of steam under higher pressures, and improved conditions 
 from time to time. 
 
 Watt leads the steam out of the cylinder and condenses 
 it in a separate vessel, leaving the cylinder hot. He closes 
 the cylinder top, and sends a circular piston (hitherto all
 
 JAMES WATT 43 
 
 had been square) through it, and closely stuffs it around 
 to prevent escape of steam. The rapidity of the ' strokes ' 
 gained keeps the temperature of the cylinder high ; besides, 
 he encases it and leaves a space between cylinder and 
 covering filled with steam. Thus he fulfils his law : ' The 
 cylinder is kept as hot as the steam that enters.' 'How 
 simple !' you exclaim. 'Is that all? How obviously this 
 is the way to do it ! ' Very true, surprised reader, but true 
 also, that no condenser and closed cylinder, no modern 
 steam-engine. 
 
 On Monday morning following the Sabbath flash, we 
 find Watt was up betimes at work upon the new idea. 
 How many hours' sleep he had enjoyed is not recorded, 
 but it may be imagined that he had several visions of the 
 condenser during the night. One was to be made at once j 
 he borrowed from a college friend a brass syringe, the 
 body of which served as a cylinder. The first condenser 
 vessel was an improvised syringe and a tin can. From 
 such an acorn the mighty oak was to grow. The experi- 
 ment was successful, and the invention complete, but Watt 
 saw clearly that years of unceasing labour might yet pass 
 before the details could all be worked out and the steam- 
 engine appear, ready to revolutionise the labour of the 
 world. During these years, Professor Black was his chief 
 adviser, and encouraged him in hours of disappointment. 
 The true and able friend not only did this, but furnished 
 him with money needed to enable him to concentrate all 
 his time and strength upon the task. 
 
 Most opportunely, at this juncture, came Watt's marriage 
 to his cousin Miss Miller, a lady to whom he had long 
 been deeply attached. Watt's friends are agreed in stating 
 that the marriage was of vast importance, for he had not 
 passed untouched through the days of toil and trial. 
 Always of a meditative turn, somewhat prone to melan- 
 choly when without companionship, and withal a sufferer 
 from nervous headaches, there was probably no gift of the 
 gods equal to that of such a wife as he had been so 
 fortunate as to secure. Gentle yet strong in her gentle- 
 ness, it was her courage, her faith, and her smile that kept 
 Watt steadfast. No doubt he, like many other men blessed
 
 44 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 with an angel in the household, could truly aver that his 
 worrying cares vanished at the doorstep. 
 
 Watt had at last, what he never had before, a home. 
 More than one intimate friend has given expression to the 
 doubt whether he could have triumphed without his 
 wife's bright and cheerful temperament to keep him from 
 despondency during the trying years which he had now to 
 encounter. Says Miss Campbell : 
 
 ' I have not entered into any of the interesting details my 
 mother gave me of Mr. Watt's early and constant attachment 
 to his cousin Miss Miller ; but she ever considered it as having 
 added to his enjoyment of life, and as having had the most 
 beneficial influence on his character. Even his powerful mind 
 sank occasionally into misanthropic gloom, from the pressure 
 of long-continued nervous headaches, and repeated disappoint- 
 ments in his hopes of success in life. Mrs. Watt, from her 
 sweetness of temper and lively, cheerful disposition, had 
 power to win him from every wayward fancy ; to rouse and 
 animate him to active exertion. She drew out all his gentle 
 virtues, his native benevolence and warm affections.' 
 
 From all that has been recorded of her, we are justified 
 in classing Watt with Bassanio. 
 
 ' It is very meet 
 He live an upright life ; 
 For, having such a blessing in his lady, 
 He finds the joys of heaven here on earth ; 
 And, if on earth he do not mean it, then 
 In reason he should never come to heaven.' 
 
 Watt knew and felt this, and let us hope that, as was his 
 duty, he let his wife know it, not only by act, but by 
 frequent acknowledgment. 
 
 Watt did not marry imprudently, for his instrument- 
 making business had increased, as was to have been 
 expected, and his work soon made a reputation as being 
 most perfectly executed. At first he was able to carry out 
 all his orders himself; now he had as many as sixteen 
 workmen. He took a Mr. Craig as a partner, to obtain 
 needed capital. His profits one year were ^600. The busi- 
 ness had been removed in 1760 to new quarters in the city, 
 and Watt himself had rented a house outside the university
 
 JAMES WATT 45 
 
 grounds. Having furnished it, Watt brought his young 
 wife and installed her there, July 1764. We leave him 
 there, happy in the knowledge that he is to be carefully 
 looked after, and, last but not least, steadily encouraged 
 and counselled not to give up the engine. As we shall 
 presently see, such encouragement was much needed at 
 intervals. 
 
 The first step was to construct a model embodying all 
 the inventions in a working form. An old cellar was 
 rented, and there the work began. To prepare the plan 
 was easy, but its execution was quite another story. Watt's 
 sad experience with indifferent work had not been lost 
 upon him, and he was determined that, come what may, 
 this working model should not fail from imperfect con- 
 struction. His own handiwork had been of the finest and 
 most delicate kind, but, as he said, he had ' very little 
 experience of mechanics in great.' 1 This model was a 
 monster in those days, and great was the difficulty of find- 
 ing mechanics capable of carrying out his designs. The 
 only available men were blacksmiths and tinsmiths, and 
 these were most clumsy workmen, even in their own crafts. 
 Were Watt to revisit the earth to-day, he would not easily 
 find a more decided change or advance over 1764, in all 
 that has been changed or improved since then, than in this 
 very department of applied mechanics. To-day such a 
 model as Watt constructed in the cellar would be simple 
 work indeed. Even the gasoline or the electric motor of 
 to-day, though complicated far beyond the steam model, is 
 now produced by automatic machinery. Skilled workmen 
 do not have to fashion the parts. They only stand looking 
 on at machinery itself made by automatic tools per- 
 forming work of unerring accuracy. Had Watt had at his 
 call only a small part of the inventor's resources of our 
 day, his model steam-engine might have been named the 
 Minerva; for, Minerva-like, it would have sprung forth 
 complete, the creature of automatic machinery, the work- 
 men meanwhile smilingly looking on at these slaves of the 
 mechanic which had been brought forth and harnessed to 
 do his bidding by the exercise of godlike reason. 
 
 The model was ready after six months of unceasing
 
 46 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 labour, but notwithstanding the scrupulous fastidiousness 
 displayed by Watt in the workmanship of all the parts, the 
 machine, alas, ' snifted at many openings.' Little can our 
 mechanics of to-day estimate what ' perfect joints ' meant 
 in those days. The entire correctness of the great idea 
 was, however, demonstrated by the trials made. The right 
 principle had been discovered ; no doubt of that. Watt's 
 decision was that ' it must be followed to an issue.' There 
 was no peace for him otherwise. He wrote (April 1765) to 
 a friend, ' My whole thoughts are bent on this machine. I 
 can think of nothing else.' Of course not ; he was hot in 
 the chase of the biggest game hunter ever had laid eyes on. 
 He had seen it, and he knew he had the weapons to bring 
 it down. A larger model, free as possible from defects 
 which he felt he could avoid in the next, was promptly 
 determined upon. A larger and better shop was obtained, 
 and here Watt shut himself up with an assistant and 
 erected the second model. Two months sufficed, instead 
 of six required for the first. This one also at first trial 
 leaked in many directions, and the condenser needed 
 alterations. Nevertheless, the engine accomplished much, 
 for it worked readily with ten and one-half pounds pressure 
 per square inch, a decided increase over previous results. 
 It was still the cylinder and its piston that gave Watt the 
 chief trouble. No wonder the cylinder leaked. It had to 
 be hammered into something like true lines, for at that day 
 so backward was the art that not even the whole collective 
 mechanical skill of cylinder-making could furnish a bored 
 cylinder of the simplest kind. This is not to be construed 
 as unduly hard upon Glasgow, for it is said that all the 
 skill of the world could not do so in 1765, only one 
 hundred and forty years ago. We travel so fast that it is 
 not surprising that there are wiseacres among us quite con- 
 vinced that we are standing still. 
 
 We may be pardoned for again emphasising the fact 
 that it is not only for his discoveries and inventions that 
 Watt is to be credited, but also for the manual ability dis- 
 played in giving to these ' airy nothings ' of the brain ' a 
 local habitation and a name,' for his greatest idea might 
 have remained an ' airy nothing,' had he not been also the
 
 JAMES WATT 47 
 
 mechanician able to produce it in the concrete. It is not, 
 therefore, only Watt the inventor, Watt the discoverer, 
 but also Watt the manual worker, that stands forth. As 
 we shall see later on, he created a new type of workmen 
 capable of executing his plans, working with, and educat- 
 ing them 'often with his own hands. Only thus did he 
 triumph, labouring mentally and physically. Watt there- 
 fore must always stand among the benefactors of men, in 
 the triple capacity of discoverer, inventor, and constructor. 
 The defects of the cylinder, though serious, were clearly 
 mechanical. Their certain cure lay in devising mechanical 
 tools and appliances and educating workmen to meet the 
 new demands. An exact cylinder would leave no room 
 for leakage between its smooth and true surface and the 
 piston ; but the solution of another difficulty was not so 
 easily indicated. Watt having closed the top of the 
 cylinder to save steam, was debarred from using water on 
 the upper surface of the piston as Newcomen did, to fill 
 the interstices between piston and cylinder and prevent 
 leakage of steam, as his piston was round and passed 
 through the top of the cylinder. The model leaked badly 
 from this cause, and while engaged in trying numerous ex- 
 pedients to meet this, and many different things for stuffing, 
 he wrote to a friend, ' My old White Iron man is dead.' 
 This being the one he had trained to be his best mechanic, 
 was a grievous loss in those days. Misfortunes never come 
 singly ; he had just started the engine after overhauling it, 
 when the beam broke. Discouraged, but not defeated, he 
 battled on, steadily gaining ground, meeting and solving 
 one difficulty after another, certain that he had discovered 
 how to utilise steam.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PARTNERSHIP WITH ROEBUCK 
 
 CAPITAL was essential to perfect and place the engine 
 upon the market; it would require several thousand 
 pounds. Had Watt been a rich man, the path would 
 have been clear and easy ; but he was poor, having no 
 means but those derived from his instrument-making 
 business, which for some time had necessarily been neg- 
 lected. Where was the daring optimist who could be 
 induced to risk so much in an enterprise of this character, 
 where result was problematical? Here Watt's best friend, 
 Professor Black, who had himself from his own resources 
 from time to time relieved Watt's pressing necessities, 
 proved once more the friend in time of need. Black 
 thought of Dr. Roebuck, founder of the celebrated Carron 
 Ironworks near by, which Burns apostrophised in these 
 lines, when denied admittance : 
 
 ' We cam na here to view your warks 
 
 In hopes to be mair wise, 
 
 But only, lest we gang to hell, 
 
 It may be nae surprise." 
 
 He was approached upon the subject by Dr. Black, and 
 finally, in September 1765, he invited Watt to visit him 
 with the Professor at his country home, and urged him to 
 press forward his invention ' whether he pursued it as a 
 philosopher or as a man of business.' In the month of 
 November Watt sent Roebuck drawings of a covered 
 cylinder and piston to be cast at his works, but it was so 
 poorly done as to be useless. ' My principal difficulty in
 
 JAMES WATT 49 
 
 making engines,' he wrote to Roebuck, 'is always the 
 smith-work.' 
 
 By this time, Watt was seriously embarrassed for money. 
 Experiments cost much and brought in nothing. His duty 
 to his family required that he should abandon these for a 
 time and labour for means to support it. He determined 
 to begin as a surveyor, as he had mastered the art when 
 making surveying instruments, as was his custom to study 
 and master wherever he touched. He could never rest 
 until he knew all there was to know about anything. Of 
 course he succeeded. Everybody knew he would, and 
 therefore business came to him. Even a public 
 body, the magistrates of Glasgow, had not the slightest 
 hesitation in obtaining his services to survey a canal 
 which was to open a new coalfield. He was also com- 
 missioned to survey the proposed Forth and Clyde Canal. 
 Had he been content to earn money and become leading 
 surveyor or engineer of Britain, the world might have 
 waited long for the forthcoming giant destined to do the 
 world's work ; but there was little danger of this. The 
 world had not a temptation that could draw Watt from his 
 appointed work. His thoughts were ever with his engine, 
 every spare moment being devoted to it. Roebuck's 
 speculative and enterprising nature led him also into the 
 entrancing field of steam. It haunted him until finally, 
 in 1767, he decided to pay off Watt's debts to the amount 
 of a thousand pounds, provide means for further experi- 
 ments, and secure a patent for the engine. In return, he 
 became owner of two-thirds of the invention. 
 
 Next year Watt made trial of a new and larger model, 
 with unsatisfactory results upon the first trial. He wrote 
 Roebuck that ' by an unforeseen misfortune, the mercury 
 found its way into the cylinder and played the devil with 
 the solder.' Only after a month's hard labour was the 
 second trial made, with very different and indeed aston- 
 ishing results 'success to my heart's content,' exclaimed 
 Watt. Now he would pay his long-promised debt to his 
 partner Roebuck, to whom he wrote, ' I sincerely wish 
 you joy of this successful result, and hope it will make 
 some return for the obligations I owe you.' The visit of 
 
 D
 
 5 o FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 congratulation paid to his partner Roebuck was delight- 
 ful. Now were all their griefs ' in the deep bosom of the 
 ocean buried ' by this recent success. Already they saw 
 fortunes in their hands, so brightly shone the sun these 
 few but happy days. But the old song has its lesson : 
 
 ' I 've seen the morning with gold the hills adorning, 
 I 've seen it storming before parting day. ' 
 
 Instead of instant success, trying days and years were still 
 before them. A patent was decided upon, a matter of 
 course and almost of formality in our day, but far from 
 this at that time, when it was considered monopolistic and 
 was highly unpopular on that account. Watt went to 
 Berwick-on-Tweed to make the required declaration before 
 a Master in Chancery. In August 1768 we find him in 
 London about the patent, where he became so utterly 
 wearied with the delays, and so provoked with the enormous 
 fees required to protect the invention, that he wrote his 
 wife in a most despairing mood. She administered the 
 right medicine in reply, ' I beg you will not make yourself 
 uneasy though things do not succeed as you wish. If the 
 engine will not do, something else will; never despair.' 
 Happy man whose wife is his best doctor. From the very 
 summit of elation, to which he had been raised by the 
 success of the model, Watt was suddenly cast down into 
 the valley of despair to find that only half of his heavy 
 task was done, and the hill of difficulty still loomed before. 
 Reaction took place, and the fine brain, so long strained to 
 utmost tension, refused at intervals to work at high pressure. 
 He became subject to recurring fits of despondency, aggra- 
 vated, if not primarily caused, by anxiety for his family, 
 who could not be maintained unless he engaged in work 
 yielding prompt returns. 
 
 We may here mention one of his lifelong traits, which 
 revealed itself at times. Watt was no man of affairs. 
 Business was distasteful to him. As he once wrote to his 
 partner, Boulton, he ' would rather face a loaded cannon 
 than settle a disputed account or make a bargain.' 
 Monetary matters were his special aversion. For any 
 other form of annoyance, danger or responsibility, he had
 
 JAMES WATT 51 
 
 the lion heart. Pecuniary responsibility was his bogey of 
 the dark closet. He writes that ' Solomon said that in the 
 increase of knowledge there is increase of sorrow ; if he 
 had substituted business for knowledge it would have been 
 perfectly true.' 
 
 Roebuck shines out brilliantly in this emergency. He 
 was always sanguine, and encouraged Watt to go forward. 
 October, 1768, he writes: 
 
 ' You are now letting the most active part of your life in- 
 sensibly glide away. A day, a moment, ought not to be lost. 
 And you should not suffer your thoughts to be diverted by any 
 other object, or even improvement of this [model], but only the 
 speediest and most effectual manner of executing an engine of 
 a proper size, according to your present ideas.' 
 
 Watt wrote Dr. Small in January 1769, 'I have much 
 contrived and little executed. How much would good 
 health and spirits be worth to me ! ' And a month later, 
 ' I am still plagued with headaches and sometimes heart- 
 aches.' Sleepless nights now came upon him. All this 
 time, however, he was absorbed in his one engrossing task. 
 Leupold's Theatrum Machinarum, which fell into his hands, 
 gave an account of the machinery, furnaces, and methods 
 of mine-working in the Upper Harz. Alas ! the book 
 was in German, and he could not understand it. He 
 promptly resolved to master the language, sought out a 
 Swiss German dyer then settled in Glasgow, whom he 
 engaged to give him lessons. So German and the German 
 book were both mastered. Not bad work this from one in 
 the depths of despair. It has been before noted that for 
 the same end he had successfully mastered French and 
 Italian. So in sickness as in health his demon steam 
 pursued him, giving him no rest. 
 
 Watt had a hard piece of work in preparing his first 
 patent-specification, which was all-important in those early 
 days of patent ' monopolies,' as these were considered. 
 Their validity often turned upon a word or two too much 
 or too little. It was as dangerous to omit as to admit. 
 Professionals agree in opinion that Watt here displayed 
 extraordinary ability.
 
 52 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 In nothing has public opinion more completely changed 
 than in its attitude towards patents. In Watt's day the 
 inventor who applied for a patent was a would-be mono- 
 polist. The courts shared the popular belief. Lord 
 Brougham vehemently remonstrated against this, declaring 
 that the inventor was entitled to remuneration. Every 
 point was construed against the unfortunate benefactor, as 
 if he were a public enemy attempting to rob his fellows. 
 To-day the inventor is hailed as the foremost of benefactors. 
 
 Notable indeed is it that on the very day Watt obtained 
 his first patent, January 5, 1769, Arkwright got his spin- 
 ning-frame patent. Only the year before Hargreaves 
 obtained his patent for the spinning-jenny. These are the 
 two inventors, with Whitney, the American inventor of the 
 cotton-gin, from whose brains came the development of the 
 textile industry, in which Britain still stands foremost. 
 Fifty-six millions of spindles turn to-day in the little island 
 more than all the rest of the civilised world can boast. 
 Much later came Stephenson with his locomotive. Here 
 is a record for a quartette of manual labourers in the truest 
 sense, actual wage-earners as mechanics Watt, Stephenson, 
 Arkwright, and Hargreaves ! Where is that quartette to be 
 equalled ? 
 
 Working-men of our day should ponder over this, and 
 take to heart the truth that manual mechanical labour is 
 the likeliest career to develop mechanical inventors and 
 lead them to such distinction as these benefactors of man 
 achieved. If disposed to mourn the lack of opportunity, 
 they should think of these working-men, whose advantages 
 were small compared to those of our day. 
 
 The greatest invention of all, the condenser, is fully 
 covered by the first patent of 1769. The best engine up 
 to this time was the Newcomen, exclusively used for 
 pumping water. As we have seen, it was an atmospheric 
 engine, in no sense a steam engine. Steam was only used 
 to force the heavy piston upward, no other work being done 
 by it. All the pumping was done on the downward stroke. 
 The condensation of the spent steam below the piston 
 created a vacuum, which only facilitated the fall of the 
 piston. This caused the cylinder to be cooled between
 
 JAMES WATT 53 
 
 each stroke and led to the wastage of about four-fifths of 
 all the steam used. It was to save this that the condenser 
 was invented, in obedience to Watt's law, as stated in his 
 patent, that ' the cylinder should be kept always as hot as 
 the steam that entered it ' ; but it must be kept clearly in 
 mind that Watt's 'modified machines,' under his first 
 patent, only used steam to do work upon the upward stroke, 
 where Newcomen used it only to force up the piston. The 
 double-acting engine doing work up and down came 
 later, and was protected in the second patent of 1780. 
 
 Watt knew better than any that although his model had 
 been successful and was far beyond the Newcomen engine, 
 it was obvious that it could be improved in many respects 
 not the least of his reasons for confidence in its final and 
 more complete triumph. 
 
 To these possible improvements he devoted himself for 
 years. The records once again remind us that it was not 
 one invention but many, that his task involved. Smiles 
 gives the following epitome of some of those pressing at 
 this stage : 
 
 ' Various trials of pipe-condensers, plate-condensers, and 
 drum-condensers, steam-jackets to prevent waste of heat, many 
 trials of new methods to tighten the piston band, condenser 
 pumps, oil pumps, gauge pumps, exhausting cylinders, loading- 
 valves, double cylinders, beams and cranks all these con- 
 trivances and others had to be thought out and tested elabor- 
 ately amidst many failures and disappointments.' 
 
 There were many others. 
 
 All unaided, this supreme toiler thus slowly and painfully 
 evolved the steam-engine after long years of constant labour 
 and anxiety, bringing to the task a union of qualities and of 
 powers of head and hand which no other man of his time 
 may we not venture to say of all time was ever known 
 to possess or ever exhibited. 
 
 When a noble lord confessed to him admiration for his 
 noble achievements, Watt replied, 'The public only look 
 at my success and not at the intermediate failures and 
 uncouth constructions which have served me as so many 
 steps to climb to the top of the ladder.'
 
 54 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Quite true, but also quite right. The public have no 
 time to linger over a man's mistakes. What concerns is 
 his triumphs. We rise upon our ' dead selves (failures) to 
 higher things,' and mistakes, recognised as such in after 
 days, make for victory. The man who never makes mis- 
 takes never makes anything. The only point the wise man 
 guards is not to make the same mistake twice ; the first 
 time never counts with the successful man. He both for- 
 gives and forgets that. One difference between the wise 
 man and the foolish one ! 
 
 It has been truly said that Watt seemed to have divined 
 all the possibilities of steam. We have a notable instance 
 of this in a letter of this period (March 1769) to his friend, 
 Professor Small, in which he anticipated Trevithick's use 
 of high-pressure steam in the locomotive. Watt said : 
 
 ' I intend in many cases to employ the expansive force of 
 steam to press on the piston, or whatever is used instead of 
 one, in the same manner as the weight of the atmosphere is 
 now employed in common fire-engines. In some cases I intend 
 to use both the condenser and this force of steam, so that the 
 powers of these engines will as much exceed those pressed 
 only by the air, as the expansive power of the steam is greater 
 than the weight of the atmosphere. In other cases, when 
 plenty of cold water cannot be had, I intend to work the engines 
 by the force of steam only, and to discharge it into the air by 
 proper outlets after it has done its office.' 
 
 In these days patents could be very easily blocked, as 
 Watt experienced with his improved crank motion. He 
 proceeded therefore in great secrecy to erect the first large 
 engine under his patent, after he had successfully made 
 a very small one for trial. An outhouse near one of Dr. 
 Roebuck's pits was selected, as away from prying eyes. 
 The parts for the new engine were partly supplied from 
 Watt's own works at Glasgow and partly from the Carron 
 works. Here the old trouble, lack of competent mechanics, 
 was again met with. On his return from necessary absences, 
 the men were usually found in face of the unexpected and 
 wondering what to do next. As the engine neared com- 
 pletion, Watt's anxiety 'for his approaching doom,' he
 
 JAMES WATT 55 
 
 writes, kept him from sleep, his fears being equal to his 
 hopes. He was specially sensitive and discouraged by un- 
 foreseen expenditure, while his sanguine partner, Roebuck, 
 on the contrary, continued hopeful and energetic, and 
 often rallied his pessimistic partner on his propensity to 
 look upon the dark side. He was one of those who 
 adhered to the axiom, ' Never bid the devil good-morning 
 till you meet him.' Smiles believes that it is probable 
 that without Roebuck's support Watt could never have 
 gone on, but that may well be doubted. His anxieties 
 probably found a needed vent in their expression, and left 
 the indomitable do-or-die spirit in all its power. Watt's 
 brain, working at high pressure, needed a safety valve. 
 Mrs. Roebuck, wife-like, very properly entertained the 
 usual opinion of devoted wives, that her husband was really 
 the essential man upon whom the work devolved, and 
 that without him nothing could have been accomplished. 
 Smiles probably founded his remark upon her words 
 to Robison : ' Jamie (Watt) is a queer lad, and without 
 the Doctor (her husband) his invention would have been 
 lost. He won't let it perish.' The writer knows of a 
 business organisation in which fond wives of the partners 
 were all full of dear Mrs. Roebuck's opinion. At one 
 time, according to them, the sole responsibility rested upon 
 three of four of these marvellous husbands, and never did 
 any of the confiding consorts ever have reason to feel that 
 their friend did not share to the fullest extent the praise- 
 worthy opinion formed of his partners by their loving wives. 
 The rising smile was charitably suppressed. In extreme 
 cases a suggested excursion to Europe at the company's 
 expense, to relieve Chester from the cruel strain, and 
 enable him to receive the benefit of a wife's care and ever 
 needful advice, was remarkably effective, the wife's fears 
 that Chester's absence would prove ruinous to the business 
 being overcome at last, though with difficulty. 
 
 Due allowance must be made for Mrs. Roebuck's view 
 of the situation. There can be no doubt whatever, that 
 Dr. Roebuck's influence, hopefulness, and courage were of 
 inestimable value at this period to the over-wrought and 
 anxious inventor. Watt was not made of malleable stuff,
 
 56 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 and, besides, he was tied to his mission. He was bound 
 to obey his genius. 
 
 The monster new engine, upon which so much depended, 
 was ready for trial at last in September 1769. About six 
 months had been spent in its construction. Its success 
 was indifferent. Watt had declared it to be a 'clumsy 
 job.' The new pipe-condenser did not work well, the 
 cylinder was almost useless, having been badly cast, and 
 the old difficulty in keeping the piston-packing tight re- 
 mained. Many things were tried for packing cork, oiled 
 rags, old hats (felt probably), paper, horse dung, etc., etc. 
 Still the steam escaped, even after a thorough overhauling. 
 The second experiment also failed. So great is the gap 
 between the small toy model and the practical work-per- 
 forming giant, a rock upon which many sanguine theoretical 
 inventors have been wrecked ! Had Watt been one of 
 that class, he could never have succeeded. Here we have 
 another proof of the soundness of the contention that 
 Watt, the mechanic, was almost as important as Watt the 
 inventor. 
 
 Watt remained as certain as ever of the soundness of 
 his inventions. Nothing could shake his belief that he 
 had discovered the true scientific mode of utilising steam. 
 His failures lay in the impossibility of finding mechanics 
 capable of accurate workmanship. There were none such 
 at Carron, nor did he then know of any elsewhere. 
 
 Watt's letter to his friend, Dr. Small, at this juncture, is 
 interesting. He writes : 
 
 ' You cannot conceive how mortified I am with this disappoint- 
 ment. It is a damned thing for a man to have his all hanging 
 by a single string. If I had wherewithal to pay the loss, I don't 
 think I should so much fear a failure ; but I cannot bear the 
 thought of other people becoming losers by my schemes ; and 
 I have the happy disposition of always painting the worst.' 
 
 Watt's timidity and fear of money matters generally have 
 been already noted. He had the Scotch peasant's horror 
 of debt anything but that. This probably arises from the 
 fact that the trifling sums owing by the poor to their poor 
 neighbours who have kindly helped them in distress are
 
 JAMES WATT 57 
 
 actually needed by these generous friends for comfortable 
 existence. The loss is serious, and this cuts deeply into 
 grateful hearts. The millionaire's downfall, with large 
 sums owing to banks, rich money-lenders, and wealthy 
 manufacturers, really amounts to little. No one actually 
 suffers, since imprisonment for debt no longer exists ; hence 
 'debt' means little to the great operator, who neither 
 suffers want himself by failure nor entails it upon others. 
 
 To Watt, pressing pecuniary cares were never absent, 
 and debt added to these made him the most afflicted of 
 men. Besides this, he says, he had been cheated and was 
 ' unlucky enough to know.' Wise man ! ignorance in such 
 cases is indeed bliss. We should almost be content to be 
 cheated as long as we do not find it out. 
 
 It was at such a crisis as this that another cloud, and a 
 dark one, came. The sanguine, enterprising, kindly 
 Roebuck was in financial straits. His pits had been much 
 troubled by water, which no existing machinery could 
 pump out. He had hoped that the new engine would 
 prove successful and sufficiently powerful in time to avert 
 the drowning of the pits, but this hope had failed. His 
 embarrassments were so pressing that he was unable to 
 pay the cost of the engine patent, according to agreement, 
 and Watt had to borrow the money for this from that 
 never-failing friend, Professor Black. Long may his 
 memory be gratefully honoured. Watt had the delightful 
 qualities which attracted friends, and those of the highest 
 and best character, but among them all, though more than 
 one might have been willing, none were both able and 
 willing to sustain him in days of trouble except the famous 
 discoverer of latent heat. When we think of Watt, we 
 picture him holding Black by the one hand and Small by 
 the other, repeating to them 
 
 ' I think myself in nothing else so happy 
 As in a soul remembering my dear friends.' 
 
 The patent was secured so much to the good but 
 Watt had already spent too much time upon profitless 
 work, at least more time than he could afford. His duty 
 to provide for the frugal wants of his family became im-
 
 58 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 perative. 'I had,' he said, 'a wife and children, and I 
 saw myself growing grey without having any settled way of 
 providing for them.' He turned again to surveying, and 
 prospered ; for few such men as Watt were to be found in 
 those days, or in any day. With a record of Watt's work 
 as surveyor, engineer, councillor, etc., our readers need 
 not be troubled in detail. It should, however, be recorded 
 that the chief canal schemes in Scotland in this, the day of 
 canals for internal commerce, preceding the day of rail- 
 roads that was to come, were entrusted to Watt, who 
 continued to act as engineer for the Monkland Canal. 
 While Watt was acting as engineer for this (1770-72), Dr. 
 Small wrote him that he and Boulton had been talking of 
 moving canal boats by the steam-engine on the high- 
 pressure principle. In his reply, September 30, 1770, 
 Watt asks, ' Have you ever considered a spiral oar for that 
 purpose, or are you for two wheels?' To make his 
 meaning quite plain, he gives a rough sketch of the screw- 
 propeller, with four turns as used to-day. 
 
 Thus the idea of the screw-propeller to be worked by 
 his own improved engine was propounded by Watt one 
 hundred and thirty-five years ago. 
 
 This is a remarkable letter, and a still more remarkable 
 sketch, and adds another to the many true forecasts of 
 future development made by this teeming brain. 
 
 Watt also made a survey of the Clyde, and reported 
 upon its proposed deepening. His suggestions remained 
 unacted upon for several years, when the work was begun, 
 and is not ended even in our day, of making a trout and 
 salmon stream into one of the busiest, navigable highways 
 of the world. This year further improvements have been 
 decided upon, so that the monsters of our day, with 
 i6,ooo-horse-power turbine engines, may be built near 
 Glasgow. Watt also made surveys for a canal between 
 Perth and Coupar Angus, for the well-known Crinan 
 Canal and other projects in the Western Highlands, as 
 also for the great Caledonian and the Forth and Clyde 
 Canals. 
 
 The Perth Canal was forty miles long through a rough 
 country, and took forty-three days, for which Watt's fee,
 
 JAMES WATT 59 
 
 including expenses, was ^80. Labour, even of the 
 highest kind, was cheap in those times. We note his 
 getting ^7, 75. for plans of a bridge over the Clyde. 
 Watt prepared plans for docks and piers at Port Glasgow 
 and for a new harbour at Ayr. His last and most im- 
 portant engineering work in Scotland was the survey of 
 the Caledonian Canal, made in the autumn of 1773, 
 through a district then without roads. ' An incessant rain 
 kept me,' he writes, ' for three days as wet as water could 
 make me. I could scarcely preserve my journal book.' 
 
 Suffice it to note that he saved enough money to be 
 able to write : ' Supposing the engine to stand good for 
 itself, I am able to pay all my debts and some little thing 
 more, so that I hope in time to be on a par with 
 the world.' 
 
 We are now to make one of the saddest announcements 
 saving dishonour that it falls to man to make. Watt's 
 wife died in childbed in his absence. He was called home 
 from surveying the Caledonian Canal. Upon arrival, he 
 stands paralysed for a time at the door, unable to summon 
 strength to enter the ruined home. At last the door opens 
 and closes, and we close our eyes upon the scene no 
 words here that would not be an offence. The rest is 
 silence. 
 
 Watt tried to play the man, but he would have been 
 less than man if the ruin of his home had not made him 
 a changed man. The recovery of mental equipoise proved 
 for a time quite beyond his power. He could do all that 
 man could do, ' who could do more is none.' The light 
 of his life had gone out.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 BOULTON PARTNERSHIP 
 
 AFTER Watt was restored to himself, the first subject which 
 we find attracting him was the misfortunes of Roebuck, 
 whose affairs were now in the hands of his creditors. ' My 
 heart bleeds for him,' says Watt, ' but I can do nothing 
 to help him. I have stuck by him, indeed, until I have 
 hurt myself.' Roebuck's affairs were far too vast to be 
 affected by all that Watt had or could have borrowed. 
 For the thousand pounds Watt had paid on Roebuck's 
 account to secure the patent, he was still in debt to Black. 
 This was subsequently paid, however, with interest, when 
 Watt became prosperous. 
 
 We now bid farewell to Roebuck with genuine regret. 
 He had proved himself a fine character throughout, just 
 the kind of partner Watt needed. It was a great pity that 
 he had to relinquish his interest in the patent, when, as 
 we shall see, it would soon have saved him from bankruptcy 
 and secured him a handsome competence. He must ever 
 rank as one of the men almost indispensable to Watt in 
 the development of his engine, and a dear, true friend. 
 
 The darkest hour comes before the dawn, and so it 
 proved here. As Roebuck retired, there appeared a star 
 of hope of the first magnitude, in no less a person than 
 the celebrated Matthew Boulton of Birmingham, of whom 
 we must say a few words by way of introduction to our 
 readers, for in all the world there was not his equal as a 
 partner for Watt, who was ever fortunate in his friends. 
 Of course Watt was sure to have friends, for he was through 
 and through the devoted friend himself, and won the hearts
 
 JAMES WATT 61 
 
 of those worth winning. 'If you wish to make a friend, 
 be one,' is the sure recipe. 
 
 Boulton was not only obviously the right man, but he 
 came from the right place, for Birmingham was the head- 
 quarters of mechanical industry. At this time, 1776, 
 there was at last a good road to London. As late as 1747 
 the coach was advertised to run there in two days only 
 ' if the roads permit.' 
 
 If skilled mechanics, Watt's greatest need, were to be 
 found anywhere, it was here in the centre of mechanical 
 skill, and especially was it in the celebrated works of 
 Boulton, which had been bequeathed from worthy sire to 
 worthy son, to be largely extended and more than ever 
 pre-eminent. 
 
 Boulton left school early to engage in his father's busi- 
 ness. When only seventeen years old, he had made several 
 improvements in the manufacture of buttons, watch chains, 
 and various trinkets, and had invented the inlaid steel 
 buckles, which became so fashionable. It is stated that 
 in that early day it was found necessary to export them 
 in large quantities to France, to be returned and sold in 
 Britain as the latest productions of French skill and taste. 
 It is well to get a glimpse of human nature as seen here. 
 Fashion decides for a time with supreme indifference 
 to quality. It is a question of the name. 
 
 At his father's death, the son inherited the business. 
 Great credit belongs to him for unceasingly labouring to 
 improve the quality of his products and especially to raise 
 the artistic standard, then so low as to have already caused 
 'Brummagem' to become a term of reproach. He not 
 only selected the cleverest artisans, but he employed the 
 best artists, Flaxman being one, to design the artistic 
 articles produced. The natural result followed. Boulton's 
 work soon gained high reputation. New and larger 
 factories became necessary, and the celebrated Soho works 
 arose in 1762. The spirit in which Boulton pursued 
 business is revealed in a letter to his partner at Soho from 
 London. ' The prejudice that Birmingham hath so justly 
 established against itself makes every fault conspicuous in 
 all articles that have the least pretensions to taste.' It may
 
 62 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 interest American readers familiar with One Dollar watches, 
 rendered possible by production upon a large scale, that it 
 was one of Boulton's leading ideas in that early day that 
 articles in common use could be produced much better and 
 cheaper ' if manufactured by the help of the best machinery 
 upon a large scale, and this could be successfully done in 
 the making of clocks and timepieces.' He promptly 
 erected the machinery and started this new branch of 
 business. Both King and Queen received him cordially, 
 and became his patrons. Soho works soon became famous 
 and one of the show-places of the country ; princes, philo- 
 sophers, poets, authors, and merchants from foreign lands 
 visited them and were hospitably received by Boulton. 
 
 He was besieged with requests to take gentlemen appren- 
 tices into the works, hundreds of pounds sometimes being 
 offered as premium, but he resolutely declined, preferring 
 to employ boys whom he could train up as workmen. He 
 replies to a gentleman applicant : ' I have built and 
 furnished a house for the reception of one class of appren- 
 tices fatherless children, parish apprentices, and hospital 
 boys ; and gentlemen's sons would probably find themselves 
 out of place in such companionship.' 
 
 It is not to be inferred that Boulton grew up an un- 
 cultured man because, he left school very early. On the 
 contrary, he steadily educated himself, devoting much time 
 to study, so that with his good looks, handsome presence, 
 the manners of the gentleman born, and knowledge much 
 beyond the average of that class, he had little difficulty in 
 winning for his wife a lady of such position in the county 
 as led to some opposition on the part of members of her 
 family to the suitor, but only ' on account of his being in 
 trade.' There exists no survival of this objection in these 
 days of American alliances with heirs of the highest 
 British titles. We seem now to have as its substitute the 
 condition that the father of the bride must be in trade, and 
 that heavily and to some purpose. 
 
 Boulton, like most busy men, had time, and an open mind, 
 for new ideas. None at this time interested him so deeply 
 as that of the steam-engine. Want of water-power proved 
 a serious difficulty at Soho. He wrote to a friend: 'The
 
 JAMES WATT 63 
 
 enormous expense of the horse-power ' (it was also irregular 
 and sometimes failed) 'put me upon thinking of turning 
 the mill by fire. I made many fruitless experiments on 
 the subject.' 
 
 Boulton wrote Franklin, February 22, 1766, in London, 
 about this, and sent a model he had made. Franklin 
 replies a month later, apologising for the delay on account 
 of 'the hurry and anxiety I have been engaged in with 
 our American affairs.' l 
 
 Tamer of lightning and tamer of steam, Franklin and 
 Watt one of the new, the other of the old branch of our 
 English-speaking race co-operating in enlarging the 
 powers of man and pushing forward the chariot of pro- 
 gress fit subject, this, for the sculptor and painter ! 
 
 How much further the steam-engine is to be the hand- 
 maid of electricity cannot be told, for it seems impossible 
 to set limits to the future conquests of the latter, which is 
 probably destined to perform miracles undreamt of to-day, 
 perhaps coupled in some unthought-of way, with radium, 
 the youngest sprite of the weird, uncanny tribe of mys- 
 terious agents. Uranium, the supposed basis of the latest 
 discovery, Radium, has only one-millionth part of the heat 
 of the latter. The slow-moving earth takes twenty-four 
 hours to turn upon its axis. Radium covers an equal 
 distance while we pronounce its name. One and one- 
 quarter seconds and twenty-five thousand miles are tra- 
 versed. Puck promises to put his 'girdle round about the 
 earth in forty minutes.' Radium would pass the fairy 
 girdlist in the spin round sixteen hundred times. Thus 
 truth, as it is being evolved in our day, becomes stranger 
 than the wildest imaginings of fiction. Our century seems 
 
 1 If those in London had only listened to Franklin and taken his advice 
 when he pleaded for British liberties for British subjects in America ! It is 
 refreshing to read in our day how completely the view regarding colonies 
 has changed in Britain. These are now pronounced ' Independent nations, 
 free to go or stay in the empire, as they choose,' the very surest way to 
 prolong the connection. '1 his is true statesmanship. Being free, the 
 chains become decorations and cease to chafe the wearer, unless great 
 growth conies, when the colony must at its maturity perforce either 
 merge with the motherland under one joint government, or become a 
 free and independent nation, giving her sons a country of their own for 
 which to live, and, if necessary, to die.
 
 64 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 on the threshold of discoveries and advances, not less 
 revolutionary, perhaps more so, than those that have sprung 
 from steam and electricity. ' Canst thou send lightnings 
 to say unto thee, " Here we are " ? ' silenced man. It 
 was so obviously beyond his power until last century. Now 
 he smiles as he reads the question. Is Tyndall's prophecy 
 to be verified, that ' the potency of all things is yet to 
 be found in matter ' ? 
 
 We may be sure the searching, restless brains of Franklin 
 and Watt would have been meditating upon strange things 
 in these days if they were now alive. 
 
 Boulton is entitled to rank, so far as the writer knows, 
 as the first man in the world worthy to wear Carlyle's now 
 somewhat familiar title, ' Captain of Industry ' ; for he was 
 in his day foremost in the industrial field, and before that 
 industrial organisations had not developed far enough to 
 create or require captains in Carlyle's sense. 
 
 Roebuck, while Watt's partner, was one of Boulton's 
 correspondents, and told him of Watt's progress with the 
 model engine which proved so successful. Boulton was 
 deeply interested, and expressed a desire that Watt should 
 visit him at Soho. This he did, on his return from a visit 
 to London concerning the patent. Boulton was not at 
 home, but his intimate friend, Dr. Small, then residing at 
 Birmingham, a scientist and philosopher, whom Franklin 
 had recommended to Boulton, took Watt in charge. Watt 
 was amazed at what he saw, for this was his first meeting 
 with trained and skilled mechanics, the lack of whom had 
 made his life miserable. The precision of both tools and 
 workmen sank deep. Upon a subsequent visit he met the 
 captain himself, his future partner ; and of course, as like 
 draws to like, they drew to each other, a case of mutual 
 liking at first sight. We meet one stranger, and stranger 
 he remains to the end of the chapter. We meet another, 
 and ere we part he is a kindred soul. Magnetic attraction 
 is sudden. So with these two, who, by a kind of free- 
 masonry, knew that each had met his affinity. The Walt 
 engine was exhaustively canvassed, and its inventor was 
 delighted that the great, sagacious, prudent and practical 
 manufacturer should predict its success as he did. Shortly
 
 JAMES WATT 65 
 
 after this Professor Robison visited Soho, which was a 
 magnet that attracted the scientists in those days. Boulton 
 told him that he had stopped work upon his proposed 
 pumping engine. ' I would necessarily avail myself of 
 what I learned from Mr. Watt's conversation, and this 
 would not be right without his consent.' 
 
 It is such a delicate sense of honour as is here displayed 
 that marks the man, and finally makes his influence over 
 others commanding in business. It is not sharp practice 
 and smart bargaining that tell. On the contrary, there is 
 no occupation in which not only fair but liberal dealing 
 brings greater reward. The best bargain is that good for 
 both parties. Boulton and Watt were friends. That much 
 was settled. They had business transactions later, for we 
 find Watt sending a package containing ' one dozen Ger- 
 man flutes ' (made, of course, by him in Glasgow), ' at 53. 
 each, and a copper digester, ^i, ios.' Boulton's people 
 probably wished samples. 
 
 Much correspondence followed between Dr. Small and 
 Watt, the latter constantly expressing the wish that Mr. 
 Boulton could be induced to become partner with him- 
 self and Roebuck in his patents. Naturally the sagacious 
 manufacturer was disinclined to associate himself with Mr. 
 Roebuck, then in financial straits, but the position changed 
 when he had become bankrupt, and affairs were in the 
 hands of creditors. Watt therefore renewed the subject, 
 and agreed to go and settle in Birmingham, as he had 
 been urged to do. Roebuck's pitiable condition he keenly 
 felt, and had done everything possible to ameliorate : 
 
 'What little I can do for him is purchased by denying my- 
 self the conveniences of life my station requires, or by remain- 
 ing in debt, which it galls me to the bone to owe. I shall be 
 content to hold a very small share in the partnership, or rone 
 at all, provided I am to be freed from my pecuniary obligations 
 to Roebuck, and have any kind of recompense for even a part 
 of the anxiety and ruin it has involved me in.' 
 
 Thus wrote Watt to his friend Small, August 30, 1772. 
 Small's reply pointed out one difficulty which deserves 
 notice and commendation. ' It is impossible for Mr.
 
 66 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Boulton and me, or any other honest man, to purchase, 
 especially from two particular friends, what has no market 
 price, and at a time when they might be inclined to part 
 with the commodity at an under value.' This is an objec- 
 tion which to stock-exchange standards may seem 'not 
 well taken,' and far too fantastical for the speculative 
 domain, and yet it is neither surprising nor unusual in the 
 realms of genuine business, in which men are concerned 
 with creating only intrinsic values. 
 
 The result so ardently desired by Watt was reached in 
 this unexpected fashion. It was found that in the 
 ordinary course of business Roebuck owed Boulton a 
 balance of ^1200. Boulton agreed to take the Roebuck 
 interest in the Watt patent for the debt. As the creditors 
 considered the patent interest worthless, they gladly ac- 
 cepted. As Watt said, ' It was only paying one bad debt 
 with another.' 
 
 Boulton asked Watt to act as his attorney in the matter, 
 which he did, writing Boulton that ' the thing is now a 
 shadow ; 'tis merely ideal, and will cost time and money 
 to realise it.' This as late as March 29, 1773, after eight 
 years of constant experimentation, with many failures and 
 disappointments, since the discovery of the separate con- 
 denser in 1 765, which was then hailed, and rightly so, as 
 the one thing needed. It remained the right and only 
 foundation upon which to develop the steam-engine, but 
 many minor obstacles intervened, requiring Watt's inven- 
 tive and mechanical genius to overcome. 
 
 The transfer of Roebuck's two-third interest to Boulton 
 afterwards carried with it the formation of the celebrated 
 firm of Boulton and Watt. The latter arranged his affairs 
 as quickly as possible. He had only made ^200 for a 
 whole year spent in surveying, and part of that he gave to 
 Roebuck in his necessity, ' so that I can barely support 
 myself and keep untouched the small sum I have allotted 
 for my visit to you ' (Watt to Small, July 25, 1773). This 
 is pitiable indeed Watt pressed for money to pay his way 
 to Birmingham upon important business. 
 
 The trial engine was shipped from Kinneil to Soho, and 
 Watt arrived in May 1774 in Birmingham. Here a new
 
 JAMES WATT 67 
 
 life opened before him, still enveloped in clouds, but we 
 may please ourselves by believing that through these the 
 wearied and harassed inventor did not fail to catch alluring 
 visions of the sun. Let us hope he thought, as Cowper 
 had shortly before this written : 
 
 1 Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, 
 
 The clouds ye so much dread 
 
 Are big with mercy, and shall break 
 
 With blessings on your head.' 
 
 Partnership requires not duplicates, but opposites a 
 union of different qualities. He who proves indispensable 
 as a partner to one man might be wholly useless, or 
 even injurious, to another. Generals Grant and Sherman 
 needed very different chiefs of staff. One secret of 
 Napoleon's success arose from his being free to make his 
 own appointments, choosing the men who had the qualities 
 which supplemented his, and cured his own shortcomings ; 
 for every man has shortcomings. The universal genius 
 who can manage all himself has yet to appear. Only one 
 with the genius to recognise others of different genius and 
 harness them to his own car can approach the ' universal.' 
 It is a case of different but co-operating abilities, each part 
 of the complicated machine fitting into its right place, and 
 there performing its duty without jarring. 
 
 Never were two men more ' supplementary ' to each 
 other than Boulton and Watt, and hence their success. 
 One possessed in perfection the qualities the other lacked. 
 Smiles sums this up so finely that we must quote him : 
 
 ' Different though their characters were in most respects, 
 Boulton at once conceived a hearty liking for him. The one 
 displayed in perfection precisely those qualities which the 
 other wanted. Boulton was a man of ardent and generous 
 temperament, bold and enterprising, undaunted by difficulty, 
 and possessing an almost boundless capacity for work. He 
 was a man of great tact, clear perception, and sound judgment. 
 Moreover, he possessed that indispensable quality of persever- 
 ance, without which the best talents are of comparatively little 
 avail in the conduct of important affairs. While Watt hated 
 business, Boulton loved it. He had, indeed, a genius for 
 business a gift almost as rare as that for poetry, for art, or
 
 68 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 for war. He possessed a marvellous power of organisation. 
 With a keen eye for details, he combined a comprehensive 
 grasp of intellect. While his senses were so acute, that when 
 sitting in his office at Soho he could detect the slightest stop- 
 page or derangement in the machinery of that vast establish- 
 ment, and send his message direct to the spot where it had 
 occurred, his power of imagination was such as enabled him 
 to look clearly along extensive lines of possible action in 
 Europe, America, and the East. For there is a poetic as well 
 as a commonplace side to business; and the man of business 
 genius lights up the humdrum routine of daily life by exploi ing 
 the boundless region of possibility wherever it may lie open 
 before him? 
 
 This tells the whole story, and once again reminds us 
 that without imagination and something of the romantic 
 element, little great or valuable is to be done in any field. 
 He 'runs his business as if it were a romance,' was said 
 upon one occasion. The man who finds no element of 
 romance in his occupation is to be pitied. We know how 
 radically different Watt was in his nature to Boulton, 
 whose judgment of men was said to be almost unerring. 
 He recognised in Watt at their first interview, not only the 
 original inventive genius, but the indefatigable, earnest, 
 plodding, and thorough mechanic of tenacious grip, and 
 withal a fine, modest, true man, who hated bargaining and 
 all business affairs, who cared nothing for wealth beyond 
 a very modest provision for old age, and who was only 
 happy if so situated that without anxiety for money to 
 supply frugal wants, he could devote his life to the de- 
 velopment of the steam-engine. Thus auspiciously started 
 the new firm. 
 
 ' But Boulton was more than a man of business,' con- 
 tinues Smiles ; ' he was a man of culture, and the friend of 
 educated men. His hospitable mansion at Soho was the 
 resort of persons eminent in art, in literature, and in science ; 
 and the love and admiration with which he inspired such men 
 affords one of the best proofs of his own elevation of character. 
 Among the most intimate of his friends and associates were 
 Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a gentleman of fortune, enthusias- 
 tically devoted to his long-conceived design of moving land- 
 carriages by steam ; Captain Keir, an excellent practical
 
 JAMES WATT 69 
 
 chemist, a wit and a man of learning ; Dr. Small, the accom- 
 plished physician, chemist and mechanist ; Josiah Wedgwood, 
 the practical philosopher and manufacturer, founder of a 
 new and important branch of skilled industry ; Thomas Day, 
 the ingenious author of Sandford and Merton ; Dr. Darwin, 
 the poet physician ; Dr. Withering, the botanist ; besides 
 others who afterwards joined the Soho circle, not the least dis- 
 tinguished of whom were Joseph Priestley and James Watt.' 
 
 The first business in hand was the reconstruction of the 
 engine brought from Kinneil, which upon trial performed 
 much better than before, wholly on account of the better 
 workmanship attainable at Soho; but there still recurs 
 the unceasing complaint that runs throughout the long 
 eight years of trial lack of accurate tools and skilled 
 workmen, the difference in accuracy between the black- 
 smith standard and that of the mathematical instrument 
 maker. Watt and Boulton alike agreed that the inventions 
 were scientifically correct and needed only proper con- 
 struction. In our day it is not easy to see the apparently 
 insuperable difficulty of making anything to scale and 
 perfectly accurate, but we forget what the world of Watt 
 was and how far we have advanced since. 
 
 Watt wrote to his father at Greenock, November 1774 : 
 1 The business I am here about has turned out rather 
 successful; that is to say, the fire-engine I have invented 
 is now going, and answers much better than any other 
 that has yet been made.' This is, as is usual with the 
 Scots in speech, in a low key and extremely modest, on 
 a par with the verdict rendered by the Dunfermline critic 
 who had ventured to attend ' the playhouse ' and to see and 
 hear the great Garrick in Hamlet 'no' bad.' The truth 
 was so pronounced were the results of proper workman- 
 ship, coupled with some of those improvements which Watt 
 was constantly devising that the engine was so satisfactory 
 as to set both Boulton and Watt to thinking about the patent 
 which protected the invention. Six of the fourteen years 
 for which it was granted had already passed. Some years 
 would still be needed to ensure its general use, and it was 
 feared that before the patent expired little return might be 
 received. Much interest was aroused by the successful
 
 70 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 trial. Inquiries began to pour in for pumping-engines for 
 mines. The Newcomen had proved inadequate to work 
 the mines as they became deeper, and many were being 
 abandoned in consequence. The necessity for a new 
 power had set many ingenious men to work besides Watt, 
 and some of these were trying to adopt Watt's principles 
 while avoiding his patent. Hatley, one of Watt's work- 
 men upon the trial engine at the Carron works, had stolen 
 and sold the drawings. 
 
 All this put Boulton and Watt on their guard, and the 
 former hesitated to build the new works intended for the 
 manufacture of steam-engines upon a large scale with 
 improved machinery. An extension of the patent seemed 
 essential, and to secure this Watt proceeded to London 
 and spent some time there, busy in his spare moments 
 visiting the mathematical instrument shops of his youth, 
 and attending to numerous commissions from Boulton. 
 A second visit was paid to London, during which the sad 
 intelligence of the death of his dear friend, Dr. Small, 
 reached him. In the bitterness of his grief Boulton writes 
 him : ' If there were not a few other objects yet remaining 
 for me to settle my affections upon, I should wish also to 
 take up my abode in the mansions of the dead.' Watt's 
 sympathetic reply reminds Boulton of the sentiments held 
 by their departed friend that, instead of indulging in 
 unavailing sorrow, the best refuge is the more sedulous 
 performance of duties. 'Come, my dear sir,' he writes, 
 ' and immerse yourself in this sea of business as soon as 
 possible. Pay a proper respect to your friend by obeying 
 his precepts. No endeavour of mine shall be wanting to 
 make life agreeable to you.' 
 
 Beautiful partnership this, not only of business, but also 
 entering into the soul close and deep, comprehending all 
 of life and all we know of death. 
 
 Professor Small, born 1734, was a Scot, who went to 
 Williamsburg University, Virginia, as Professor of Mathe- 
 matics and Natural Philosophy. Thomas Jefferson was 
 among his pupils. His health suffered, and he returned 
 to the old home. Franklin introduced him to Boulton, 
 writing (May 22, 1765):
 
 JAMES WATT 71 
 
 ' I Tbeg leave to introduce my friend Dr. Small to your 
 acquaintance, and to recommend him to your civilities. I 
 would not take this freedom if I were not sure it would be 
 agreeable to you ; and that you will thank me for adding to 
 the number of those who, from their knowledge of you, must 
 respect you, one who is both an ingenious philosopher and a 
 most worthy, honest man. If anything new in magnetism or 
 electricity, or any other branch of natural knowledge, has 
 occurred to your fruitful genius since I last had the pleasure of 
 seeing you, you will by communicating it greatly oblige me.' 
 
 This man must have been one of the finest characters 
 revealed in Watt's life. Although he left little behind 
 him to ensure permanent remembrance, the extraordinary 
 tributes paid his memory by friends establish his right to 
 high rank among the coterie of eminent men who sur- 
 rounded Watt and Boulton. Boulton records that ' there 
 being nothing which I wish to fix in my mind so per- 
 manently as the remembrance of my dear departed friend, 
 I did not delay to erect a memorial in the prettiest but 
 most obscure part of my garden, from which you see the 
 church in which he was interred.' Dr. Darwin contributed 
 the verses inscribed. Upon hearing of Small's illness Day 
 hastened from Brussels to be present at the last hour. 
 
 Keir writes, announcing Small's death to his brother, 
 the Rev. Robert Small, in Dundee : ' It is needless to say 
 how universally he is lamented, for no man ever enjoyed 
 or deserved more the esteem of mankind. We loved him 
 with the tenderest affection, and shall ever revere his 
 memory.' 
 
 Watt's voluminous correspondence with Professor Small, 
 previous to his partnership with Boulton, proves Small at 
 that time to have been his intimate friend and counsellor. 
 We scarcely know in all literature of a closer union between 
 two men. Many verses of Tennyson's memorial to Hallam 
 could be appropriately applied to their friendship. Watt 
 did not apparently give way to lamentations as Boulton 
 and others did who were present at Small's death, probably 
 because the receipt of Boulton's heart-breaking letter 
 impressed Watt with the need of assuming the part of 
 comforter to his partner, who was face to face with death,
 
 72 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 and had to bear the direct blow. Watt's tribute to his dear 
 friend came later. 
 
 Future operations necessarily depended upon the ex- 
 tension of the patent. Boulton, of course, could not pro- 
 ceed with the works. There was, as yet, no agreement 
 between Watt and Boulton beyond joint ownership in the 
 patent. At this time Watt's most intimate friend of youth- 
 ful years in Glasgow University, Professor Robison, was 
 Professor of Mathematics in the Government Naval 
 School, Kronstadt. He secured for Watt an appointment 
 at ^1000 per annum a fortune to the poor inventor; but 
 although this would have relieved him from dependence 
 upon Boulton, and meant future affluence, he declined, 
 alleging that ' Boulton's favours were so gracefully conferred 
 that dependence on him was not felt.' He made Watt feel 
 ' that the obligation was entirely upon the side of the giver.' 
 Truly we must canonise Boulton. He was not only the 
 first ' Captain of Industry,' but also a model for all others 
 to follow. 
 
 The bill extending the patent was introduced in Parlia- 
 ment, February 1775. Opposition soon developed. The 
 mining interest was in serious trouble owing to the deep- 
 ening of the mines and the unbearable expense of pumping 
 the water. They had looked forward to the Watt engine 
 soon to be free of patent rights to relieve them. 'No 
 monopoly ' was their cry, nor were they without strong 
 support, for Edmund Burke pleaded the cause of his 
 mining constituents near Bristol. 1 
 
 We need not follow the discussion that ensued upon the 
 propriety of granting the patent extension. Suffice to say 
 it was finally granted for a term of twenty-four years, and 
 the path was clear at last. Britain was to have probably 
 for the first time great works and new tools purposely 
 designed for a specialty to be produced upon a large scale. 
 Boulton had arranged to pay Roebuck jiooo out of the 
 
 i The mention of Burke and Bristol so soon after the note of Boulton 
 upon Dr. Small's passing, recalls one of Burke's many famous sentences, 
 one perhaps unequalled under the circumstances. The candidate opposing 
 him for Parliament died during the canvass. When Burke next addressed 
 the people after the sad event he said : 
 
 ' What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue. '
 
 JAMES WATT 73 
 
 first profits from the patent in addition to the 1,200 of 
 debt cancelled. He now anticipated payment of the 
 ;iooo, at the urgent request of Roebuck's assignees, 
 giving in so doing pretty good evidence of his faith in 
 prompt returns from the engines, for which orders came 
 pouring in. New mechanical facilities followed, as well 
 as a supply of skilled mechanics. 
 
 The celebrated Wilkinson now appears upon the scene, 
 first builder of iron boats, and a leading iron-founder of his 
 day, an original Captain of Industry of the embryonic type, 
 who began working in a forge for twelve shillings a week. 
 He cast a cylinder eighteen inches in diameter, and 
 invented a boring machine which bored it accurately, thus 
 remedying one of Watt's principal difficulties. This 
 cylinder was substituted for the tin-lined cylinder of the 
 triumphant Kinneil engine. Satisfactory as were the 
 results of the engine before, the new cylinder improved 
 upon these greatly. Thus Wilkinson was pioneer in iron 
 ships, and also in ordering the first engine built at Soho 
 truly an enterprising man. Great pains were taken by 
 Watt that this should be perfect, as so much depended 
 upon a successful start. Many concerns suspended work 
 upon Newcomen engines, countermanded orders, or re- 
 frained from placing them, awaiting anxiously the perform- 
 ance of this heralded wonder, the Watt engine. As it 
 approached completion, Watt became impatient to test its 
 powers, but the prudent, calm Boulton insisted that not 
 one stroke be made until every possible hindrance to 
 successful working had been removed. He adds, 'Then, 
 in the name of God, fall to and do your best.' Admirable 
 order of battle ! It was, ' Be sure you 're right, then go 
 ahead,' in the vernacular. Watt acted upon this, and 
 when the trial came the engines worked ' to the admiration 
 of all.' The news of this spread rapidly. Inquiries and 
 orders for engines began to flow in. No wonder when we 
 read that of thirty engines of former makers in one coal- 
 mining district only eighteen were at work. The others 
 had failed. Boulton wrote Watt to 
 
 'tell Wilkinson to get a dozen cylinders cast and bored. ... I
 
 74 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 have fixed my mind upon making from twelve to fifteen re- 
 ciprocating engines and fifty rotative engines per annum. Of 
 all the toys and trinkets we manufacture at Soho, none shall 
 take the place of fire-engines in respect of my attention.' 
 
 The captain was on deck, evidently. Sixty-five engines 
 per year prodigious for these days nothing like this was 
 ever heard of before. Two thousand per year is the record 
 of one firm in Philadelphia to-day ; but let us boast not. 
 Perhaps one hundred and twenty-nine years hence will 
 have as great a contrast to show. The day of small 
 factories, as of small nations, is past. Increasing magni- 
 tude, to which it is hard to set a limit, is the order of the 
 day. 
 
 So far all was well ; the heavy clouds that had so long 
 hovered menacingly over Boulton and Watt had been dis- 
 placed once more by clear skies. But no new machinery 
 or new manufacturing business starts without accidents, 
 delays, and unexpected difficulties. There was necessarily 
 a long period of trial and disappointment for which the 
 sanguine partners were not prepared. As before, the 
 chief trouble lay in the lack of skilled workmen, for 
 although the few original men in Soho were remarkably 
 efficient, the increased demand for engines had compelled 
 the employment of many new hands, and the work they 
 could perform was sadly defective. Till this time, it is to 
 be remembered, there had been neither slide-lathes, planing- 
 machines, boring tools, nor any of the many other devices 
 which now ensure accuracy. All depended upon the 
 mechanics' eye and hand, if mechanics they could be 
 called. Most of the new hands were inexpert and much 
 given to drink. Specialisation had to be resorted to one 
 thing for each workman, in the fashioning of which practice 
 made perfect. This system was introduced with success, 
 but the training of the men took time. Meanwhile work 
 already turned out and that in progress was rot up to 
 standard, and this caused infinite trouble. One very 
 important engine was 'The Bow' for London, which was 
 shipped in September. The best of the experts, Joseph 
 Harrison, was sent to superintend its erection. Verbal
 
 JAMES WATT 75 
 
 instructions Watt would not depend upon ; Harrison was 
 supplied in writing with detailed particulars covering 
 every possible contingency. Constant communication 
 between them was kept up by letter, for the engine did 
 not work satisfactorily, and finally Watt himself proceeded 
 to London in November and succeeded in overcoming 
 the defects. Harrison's anxieties disabled him, and 
 Boulton wrote to Dr. Fordyce, a celebrated doctor of that 
 day, telling him to take good care of Harrison, ' let the 
 expense be what it will.' Watt writes Boulton that Har- 
 rison must not leave London, as ' a relapse of the engine 
 would ruin our reputation here and elsewhere.' The 
 Bow engine had a relapse, however, which happened in 
 this way. Smeaton, then the greatest of the engineers, 
 requested Boulton's London agent to take him to see the 
 new engine. He carefully examined it, called it a ' very 
 pretty engine,' but thought it too complicated a piece of 
 machinery for practical use. There was apparently much 
 to be said for this opinion, for we clearly see that Watt 
 was far in advance of his day in mechanical require- 
 ments. Hence his serious difficulties in the construction 
 of the complex engine, and in finding men capable of 
 doing the delicately accurate work which was absolutely 
 indispensable for successful working. 
 
 Before leaving, Smeaton made the engineer a gift of 
 money, which he spent in drink. The drunken engine-man 
 let the engine run wild, and it was thrown completely out of 
 order. The valves the part of the complicated machine 
 that required the most careful treatment were broken. 
 He was dismissed, and, repairs being made, the engine 
 worked satisfactorily at last. In Watt's life we meet 
 drunkenness often as a curse of the time. We have the 
 satisfaction of knowing that our day is much freer from it. 
 We have certainly advanced in the cure of this evil, for our 
 working men may now be regarded as on the whole a 
 steady, sober class, especially in America, where intemper- 
 ance has not to be reckoned with. 
 
 We see the difference between the reconstructed Kinneil 
 engine where Boulton's ' mathematical instrvment-maker's' 
 standard of workmanship was possible because his few
 
 76 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 trained men capable of such work were employed. The 
 Kinneil engine, complicated as it was in its parts, being 
 thus accurately reconstructed, did the work expected and 
 more. The Bow engine and some others of the later 
 period, constructed by ordinary workmen capable only of 
 the 'blacksmith's' standard of finish, proved sources of 
 infinite trouble. 
 
 Watt had several cases of this kind to engross his at- 
 tention, all traceable to the one root, lack of the skilled, 
 sober workmen and the tools of precision which his com- 
 plex (for his day, very complex) steam-engine required. 
 The truth is that Watt's engine in one sense was born 
 before its time. Our class of instrument-making mechanics 
 and several new tools should have preceded it ; then, the 
 science of the invention being sound, its construction 
 would have been easy. The partners continued working 
 in the right direction and in the right way to create these 
 needful additions, and were finally successful, but they 
 found that success brought another source of annoyance. 
 Escaping Scylla, they struck Charybdis. So high did the 
 reputation of their chief workmen rise, that they were early 
 sought after and tempted to leave their positions. Even 
 the two trained fitters sent to London to cure the Bow 
 engine we have just spoken of were offered strong induce- 
 ments to take positions in Russia. Watt writes Boulton, 
 May 3, 1777, that he had just heard a great secret to the 
 effect that Carless and Webb were probably going beyond 
 sea, ;iooo per year having been offered for six years. 
 They were promptly ordered home to Soho, and warrants 
 obtained for those who had attempted to induce them to 
 abscond (strange laws those days !), ' even though Carless 
 be a drunken and comparatively useless fellow.' Consider 
 Watt's task, compelled to attempt the production of his 
 new engines, complicated beyond the highest existing 
 standard, without proper tools, and with such workmen as 
 Carless, whom he was glad to get and determined to keep, 
 drunken and useless as he was. 
 
 French agents appeared and tried to bribe some of the 
 men to go to Paris and communicate Watt's plans to the 
 contractor who had undertaken to pump water from the
 
 JAMES WATT 77 
 
 Seine for the supply of Paris. The German States sent 
 emissaries for a similar purpose, and Baron Stein was 
 specially ordered by his Government to master the secret 
 of the Watt engine, to obtain working plans, and bring 
 away workmen capable of constructing it, the first step 
 taken being to obtain access to the engine-rooms by brib- 
 ing the workmen. All this is so positively stated by 
 Smiles that we must assume that he quotes from authentic 
 records. It is clear, at all events, that the attention of 
 other nations was keenly drawn to the advent of an agency 
 that promised to revolutionise existing conditions. Watt 
 himself, at a critical part of his career (1773), as we have 
 seen, had been tempted to accept an offer to enter the 
 imperial service of Russia, carrying the then munificent 
 salary of 1000 per annum. Boulton wrote him : ' Your 
 going to Russia staggers me. ... I wish to advise you 
 for the best without regard to self, but I find I love my- 
 self so well that I should be very sorry to have you go, 
 and I begin to repent sounding your trumpet at the 
 Ambassador's.' 
 
 The imperial family of Russia were then much interested 
 in the Soho works. The empress stayed for some time at 
 Boulton's house, 'and a charming woman she is,' writes 
 her host. Here is a glimpse of imperial activity and wise 
 attention to what was going on in other lands which it was 
 most desirous to transplant to their own. The emperor, 
 and no less his wife, evidently kept their eyes open during 
 their travels abroad. Imperial progresses, we fear, are 
 seldom devoted to such practical ends, although the 
 present King of Great Britain and Ireland and his nephew 
 the German Emperor would not be blind to such things. It 
 is a strange coincidence that the successor of this emperor, 
 Tsar Nicholas, when Grand Duke, should have been denied 
 admission to Soho works. Not that he was personally 
 objected to, but that certain people of his suite might not 
 be disinclined to take advantage of any new processes 
 discovered. So jealously were improvements guarded in 
 those days. 
 
 Another source of care to the troubled Watt lay here. 
 Naturally, only a few such men had been developed as
 
 78 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 could be entrusted to go to distant parts in charge of 
 fellow-workmen and erect the finished engines. A union 
 of many qualities was necessary here. Managers of 
 erection had to be managers of men, by far the most com- 
 plicated and delicate of all machinery, exceeding even the 
 Watt engine in complexity. When the rare man was 
 revealed, and the engine under his direction had proved 
 itself the giant it was reputed, ensuring profitable return 
 upon capital invested in works hitherto unproductive, as 
 it often did, the sagacious owner would not readily consent 
 to let the engineer leave. He could well afford to offer 
 salary beyond the dreams of the worker, to a rider who 
 knew his horse and to whom the horse took so kindly. 
 The engineer loved his engine, the engine which he had 
 seen grow in the shop under his direction and which he 
 had wholly erected. 
 
 1 M'Andrew's Song of Steam ' tells the story of the 
 engineer's devotion to his engine, a song which only 
 Kipling in our day could sing. The Scottish blood of the 
 M 'Donalds was needed for that gem ; Kipling fortunately 
 has it pure from his mother. M'Andrew is homeward 
 bound, patting his mighty engine as she whirls, and crooning 
 over his tale : 
 
 ' That minds me of our Viscount loon Sir Kenneth's kin the chap 
 Wi' Russia leather tennis-shoon an' spar-decked yachtin'-cap. 
 I showed him round last week, o'er all an' at the last says he : 
 " Mister M 'Andrew, don't you think steam spoils romance at sea?" 
 Damned ijjit ! I 'd been doon that morn to see what ailed the throws, 
 Manholin', on my back the cranks three inches off my nose. 
 Romance ! Those first-class passengers they like it very well, 
 Printed an' bound in little books ; but why don't poets tell ? 
 I 'm sick of all their quirks an' turns the loves an' doves they 
 
 dream 
 
 Lord, send a man like Robbie Burns to sing the Song o' Steam ! 
 To match wi' Scotia's noblest speech yon orchestra sublime, 
 Whaurto uplifted like the Just the tail-rods mark the time. 
 The crank-throws give the double-bass, the feed-pump sobs an' 
 
 heaves, 
 
 An' now the main eccentrics start their quarrel on the sheaves : 
 Her time, her own appointed time, the rocking link-head bides, 
 Till hear that note? the rod's return whings glimmerin' through the 
 
 guides.
 
 JAMES WATT 79 
 
 They 're all awa ! True beat, full power, the clangin' chorus goes 
 
 Clear to the tunnel where they sit, my purrin' dynamoes. 
 
 Interdependence absolute, foreseen, ordained, decreed, 
 
 To work, Ye '11 note, at any tilt an' every rate o' speed. 
 
 Fra skylight-lift to furnace-bars, backed, bolted, braced an' stayed, 
 
 An' singin' like the Mornin' Stars for joy that they are made ; 
 
 While, out o' touch o' vanity, the sweatin' thrust-block says : 
 
 " Not unto us the praise, or man not unto us the praise ! " 
 
 Now, a' together, hear them lift their lesson theirs an' mine : 
 
 " Law, Orrder, Duty an' Restraint, Obedience, Discipline ! " 
 
 Mill, forge an' try-pit taught them that when roarin' they arose, 
 
 An' whiles I wonder if a soul was gien them wi' the blows. 
 
 Oh for a man to weld it then, in one trip-hammer strain, 
 
 Till even first-class passengers could tell the meanin' plain ! 
 
 But no one cares except mysel' that serve an' understand 
 
 My seven thousand horse-power here. Eh, Lord ! They're grand 
 
 they're grand ! 
 
 Uplift am I ? When first in store the new-made beasties stood, 
 Were Ye cast down that breathed the Word declarin' all things 
 
 good? 
 
 Not so ! O' that warld-liftin' joy no after-fall could vex, 
 Ye 've left a glimmer still to cheer the Man the Arrtifex ! 
 That holds, in spite o' knock and scale, o' friction, waste an' slip, 
 An' by that light now, mark my word we '11 build the Perfect 
 
 Ship. 
 
 I '11 never last to judge her lines or take her curve not I. 
 But I ha' lived and I ha' worked. 'Be thanks to thee, Most High ! ' 
 
 So the M' Andrews of Watt's day were loth to part from 
 their engines, this feeling being in the blood of true 
 engineers. On the other hand, just such men, in numbers 
 far beyond the supply, were needed by the builders, who 
 in one sense were almost, if not quite, as deeply concerned 
 as the owners, in having proved, capable engine managers 
 remain in charge of their engines, thus enhancing their 
 reputation. Endless trouble ensued from the lack of 
 managing enginemen, a class which had yet to be developed, 
 but which was sure to arise in time through the educative 
 policy adopted, which was already indeed slowly producing 
 fruit. 
 
 Meanwhile, to meet the present situation, Watt resolved 
 to simplify the engine, taking a step backward, which gives 
 foundation for Smeaton's acute criticism upon its com- 
 plexity. We have seen that the working of steam ex- 
 pansively was one of Watt's early inventions. Some of
 
 8o FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 the new engines were made upon this plan, which involved 
 the adoption of some of the most troublesome of the 
 machinery. It was ultimately decided that to operate this 
 was beyond the ability of the obtainable enginemen of 
 the day. 
 
 It must not be understood that expansion was abandoned. 
 On the contrary, it was again introduced by Watt at a 
 later stage and in better form. Since his time it has ex- 
 tended far beyond what he could have ventured upon 
 under the conditions of that day. 'Yet,' as Lord Kelvin 
 says, 'the triple and quadruple expansion engine of our 
 day all lies in the principle Watt had so fully developed 
 in his day.'
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 REMOVAL TO BIRMINGHAM 
 
 WATT'S permanent settlement in Birmingham had for 
 some time been seen to be inevitable, all his time being 
 needed there. Domestic matters, including the care of 
 his two children, with which he had hitherto been burdened, 
 pressed hard upon him, and he had been greatly depressed 
 by finding his old father quite in his dotage, although he 
 was not more than seventy-five. Watt was alone and very 
 unhappy during a visit he made to Greenock. 
 
 Before returning to Birmingham, he married Miss 
 MacGregor, daughter of a Glasgow man of affairs, who 
 was the first in Britain to use chlorine for bleaching, the 
 secret of which Berthollet, its inventor, had communicated 
 to Watt. 
 
 Pending the marriage, it was advisable that the partner- 
 ship with Boulton as hitherto agreed upon should be 
 executed. Watt writes so to Boulton, and the arrange- 
 ment between the partners is indicated by the following 
 passage of Watt's letter to him : 
 
 ' As you may have possfbly mislaid my missive to you con- 
 cerning the contract, I beg just to mention what I remember of 
 the terms. 
 
 1. I to assign to you two-thirds of the property of the 
 invention. 
 
 2. You to pay all expenses of the Act or others incurred 
 before June 1775 (the date of the Act), and also the expense 
 of future experiments, which money is to be sunk without 
 interest by you, being the consideration you pay for your 
 share. 
 
 3. You to advance stock-in-trade bearing interest, but having 
 
 F
 
 82 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 no claim on me for any part of that, further than my intro- 
 missions ; the stock itself to be your security and property. 
 
 4. I to draw one-third of the profits so soon as any arise 
 from the business, after paying the workmen's wages and 
 goods furnished, but abstract from the stock-in-trade, excepting 
 the interest thereof, which is to be deducted before a balance 
 is struck. 
 
 5. I to make drawings, give directions, and make surveys, 
 the company paying for the travelling expenses to either of us 
 when upon engine business. 
 
 6. You to keep the books and balance them once a year. 
 
 7. A book to be kept wherein to be marked such transactions 
 as are worthy of record, which, when signed by both, to have 
 the force of the contract. 
 
 8. Neither of us to alienate our share of the other, and if 
 either of us by death or otherwise shall be incapacitated from 
 acting for ourselves, the other of us to be the sole manager 
 without contradiction or interference of heirs, executors, 
 assignees or others ; but the books to be subject to their 
 inspection, and the acting partner of us to be allowed a 
 reasonable commission for extra trouble. 
 
 9. The contract to continue in force for twenty-five years, 
 from the 1st of June 1775, when the partnership commenced, 
 notwithstanding the contract being of later date. 
 
 10. Our heirs, executors and assignees bound to observance. 
 
 11. In case of demise of both parties, our heirs, etc., to 
 succeed in same manner, and if they all please, they may burn 
 the contract. 
 
 If anything be very disagreeable in these terms, you will 
 find me disposed to do everything reasonable for your 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Boulton's reply was entirely satisfactory, and upon this 
 basis the arrangement was closed. 
 
 Watt, with his usual want of confidence in himself in 
 business affairs, was anxious that Boulton should come to 
 him at Glasgow and arrange all pecuniary matters con- 
 nected with the marriage. Watt had faced the daughter 
 and conquered, but trembled at the thought of facing the 
 father-in-law. He appeals to his partner as follows : 
 
 ' I am afraid that I shall otherwise make a very bad bargain 
 in money matters, which wise men like you esteem the most 
 essential part, and I myself, although I be an enamoured swain, 
 do not altogether despise. You may perhaps think it odd that
 
 JAMES WATT 83 
 
 in the midst of my friends here I should call for your help; but 
 the fact is that from several reasons I do not choose to place 
 that confidence in any of my friends here that would be neces- 
 sary in such a case, and I do not know any of them that have 
 more to say with the gentleman in question than I have myself. 
 Besides, you are the only person who can give him satisfactory 
 information concerning my situation.' 
 
 This being impracticable, as explained by Boulton, who 
 thoroughly approved of the union, the partnership and 
 Boulton's letter were accepted by the judicious father-in- 
 law as satisfactory evidence that his daughter's future was 
 secure. Boulton states in his letter, July 1776 : 
 
 ' It may be difficult to say what is the value of your property 
 in partnership with me. However, I will give it a name, and 
 I do say that I would willingly give you two, or perhaps three 
 thousand pounds for your assignment of your third part of the 
 Act of Parliament. But I should be sorry to make you so bad 
 a bargain, or to make any bargain at all that tended to deprive 
 me of your friendship, acquaintance, and assistance, hoping 
 that we shall harmoniously live to wear out the twenty-five 
 years, which I had rather do than gain a Nabob's fortune by 
 being the sole proprietor.' 
 
 This is the kind of expression from the heart to make a 
 partner happy and resolve to do his utmost for one who 
 in the recipient's heart had transposed positions, and 
 is now friend first, and partner afterwards. 
 
 The marriage took place in July 1776. Two children 
 were born, both of whom died in youth. Mrs. Watt lived 
 until a ripe old age and enjoyed the fruits of her husband's 
 success and fame. She died in 1832. Arago praises her, 
 and says, ' Various talents, sound judgment, and strength 
 of mind rendered her a worthy companion.' 
 
 It is difficult to realise that many yet with us were con- 
 temporaries of Mrs. Watt, and not a few yet living were 
 contemporaries of Watt himself, for he did not pass away 
 until 1819, eighty-six years ago, so much a thing of yester- 
 day is the material development and progress of the world, 
 which had its basis, start, and accomplishment in the steam- 
 engine.
 
 84 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 The reasons given by Boulton for being unable to pro- 
 ceed to the side of his friend and partner in Glasgow, shed 
 clear light upon the condition of affairs at Soho. Their 
 London agent, like Watt, was also to be married and 
 would be absent. Fothergill had to proceed to London. 
 Scale, one of the managers, was absent. Important 
 visitors were constantly arriving. Said Boulton : 
 
 ' Our copper bottom hath plagued us very much by steam 
 leaks, and therefore I have had one cast (with its conducting 
 pipe) all in one piece ; since which the engine doth not take 
 more than ten feet of steam, and I hope to reduce that quantity, 
 as we have just received the new piston, which shall be put in 
 and at work to-morrow. Our Soho engine never was in such 
 good order as at present. Bloomfield and Willey (engines) are 
 both well, and I doubt not but Bow engine will be better than 
 any of 'em.' 
 
 He concludes, ' I did not sleep last night, my mind 
 being absorbed by steam.' Means for increasing the heat- 
 ing surface swept through his mind, by applying, ' in copper 
 spheres within the water,' the present flue system, also for 
 working steam expansively, ' being clear the principle is 
 sound.' 
 
 To add to Boulton's anxieties, he had received a 
 summons to attend the Solicitor-General next week in 
 opposition to Gainsborough, a clergyman who claimed to 
 be the original inventor. ' This is a disagreeable circum- 
 stance, particularly at this season, when you are absent. 
 Harrison is in London and idleness is in our engine 
 shop.' 
 
 Watt wrote Boulton on July 28, 1776, apologising for 
 his long absence and stating he was now ready to 
 return, and would start 'Tuesday first' for Liverpool, 
 where he expected to meet Boulton. Meanwhile, the 
 latter had been called to London by the Gainsborough 
 business. A note from him, however, reached Watt at 
 Liverpool, in which he says, 'As to your absence, say 
 nothing about it. I will forgive it this time, provided you 
 promise me never to marry again. 1 
 
 In due time, Mr. and Mrs. Watt arrived and settled early
 
 JAMES WATT 85 
 
 in August 1776, in Birmingham, which was hereafter to be 
 their permanent home, although, as we shall see, Watt 
 never ceased to keep in close touch with his native town of 
 Greenock and his Glasgow friends. His heart still warmed 
 to the tartan, the soft, broad Scotch accent never forsook 
 him ; nor, we may be sure, did the refrain ever leave his 
 heart : 
 
 ' But may dishonour blight our fame 
 And quench our household fires, 
 If I or mine forget thy name, 
 Green island of our Sires.' 
 
 Many a famous Scot has the fair South in recent times 
 called forth Stephenson, Ruskin, Carlyle, Mill, Gladstone, 
 and others but never before or since, one whose work 
 was the transformation of the world. 
 
 At last we have Watt permanently settled alongside the 
 great works to which he was hereafter to devote his rare 
 abilities until his retirement at the expiration of the partner- 
 ship in 1800. His labours at Soho soon began to tell. 
 The works acquired a celebrity beyond all others then 
 known for materials, workmanship, and invention. 
 
 The mines of Cornwall promised to become unworkable; 
 indeed, many already had become so. The Newcomen 
 engines could no longer drain the deepened mines. 
 Several orders for Watt engines had been received, and as 
 much depended upon the success of the first, Watt 
 resolved to superintend its erection himself. Mrs. Watt 
 and he started over the terrible road into Cornwall, and 
 had to take up their abode with the superintendent of the 
 mine, there being no other house for miles around. 
 Naturally the builders and attendants of the Newcomen 
 engine viewed Watt's invasion of their district with no 
 kindly feelings. Great jealousy arose, and Watt's sensitive 
 nature was sorely tried. Many attempts to thwart him 
 were met with, and, taken altogether, his life in Cornwall 
 was far from agreeable. 
 
 The engine was erected, the day of trial came, mining 
 men, engineers, mining proprietors and others assembled 
 from all quarters to see the start. Many of the spectators
 
 86 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 interested in other engines would not have shed tears had 
 it failed, but it started splendidly, making eleven eight-foot 
 strokes per minute, which broke the record. Three cheers 
 for the Scotch engineer ! It soon worked with greater 
 power and more steadily, and ' forked ' more water than 
 the ordinary engines with only about one-third the con- 
 sumption of coal. Watt wrote : 
 
 'I understand all the west country captains are to be here to- 
 morrow to see the prodigy. The velocity, violence, magnitude, 
 and horrible noise of the engine give universal satisfaction to 
 all beholders, believers or not. I have once or twice trimmed 
 the engine to end the stroke gracefully and to make less noise, 
 but Mr. Wilson cannot sleep without it seems quite furious, so 
 I have left it to the engine-men ; and, by the bye, the noise 
 seems to convey great ideas of its power to the ignorant, who 
 seem to be no more taken with modest merit in an engine than 
 in a man.' 
 
 Well said, modest, reserved philosopher, with vast horse- 
 power in that big head of yours, working in the closet 
 noiselessly, driving deep but silently into the bosom of 
 Nature's secrets, pumping her deepest mines, discovering 
 and bringing to the surface the genius which lay in steam 
 to do your bidding and revolutionise life on earth ! In 
 this, the first triumph, there was recompense for all the 
 trials Watt and his wife had endured in Cornwall. 
 
 Readers will note that no workman had yet been 
 developed who could be trusted to erect the engine. The 
 master inventor had to go himself as the mechanical genius 
 certain to cure all defects and ensure success. This shows 
 how indispensable Watt was. 
 
 Orders now flowed in, and Watt was needed to prepare 
 the plans and drawings, no one being capable of relieving 
 him of this. To-day we have draftsmen by the thousand 
 to whom it would be easy routine work, as we have thousands 
 to whom the erection of the Watt engine would be play. 
 Watt was everywhere. At length he had to confess that 
 'a very little more of this hurrying and vexation would 
 knock me up altogether.' At this moment he had just 
 been called to return to Cornwall to erect the second 
 engine. He says, ' I fancy I must be cut in pieces and a
 
 JAMES WATT 87 
 
 portion sent to every tribe in Israel.' We may picture him 
 reciting in Falstaffian mood, ' Would my name were not 
 so terrible to the enemy (deep-mine water) as it is. There 
 can't a drowned-out mine peep its head out but I 'm thrust 
 upon it. Well, well, it always was the trick of my country- 
 men to make a good thing too common. Better rust to 
 death than be scoured to nothing by this perpetual motion.' 
 Watt had a hard time of it in Cornwall during his next 
 stay there, for he had to go again. He arrives at Redruth 
 to find many troubles. 
 
 ' Forbes' eduction-pipe is a vile job,' he writes, ' and full of 
 holes. The cylinder they have cast for Chacewater is still 
 worse, for it will hardly do at all. The Soho people have sent 
 here Chacewater pipe instead of Wheal Union, and the gud- 
 geon pipe has not arrived with the nozzles. These repeated 
 disappointments will ruin our credit in the country, and I 
 cannot stay here to bear the shame of such failures of promise.' 
 
 It is easy for present-day captains of industry to plume 
 themselves upon their ability to select men sure to succeed 
 well with any undertaking, and assume that Watt lacked 
 the indispensable talent for selection ; but he had been 
 driven by sad experience to trust none but himself, the 
 skilled workmen needed to co-operate with him not yet 
 having been developed. 
 
 We have not touched upon another source of great 
 anxiety to him at this time. The enterprising Boulton 
 would not have been the organiser he was unless blessed 
 with a sanguine disposition and the capacity for shedding 
 troubles. The business was rapidly extending in many 
 branches, all needing capital ; the engine business, promis- 
 ing though it was, was no exception. Little money was 
 yet due from sales, and much had been spent developing 
 the invention. Boulton's letters to Watt constantly urged 
 cash collections, while mine-owners were not disposed to 
 pay until further tests were made. Boulton suggested 
 loans from Truro bankers on security of the engines, but 
 Watt found this impracticable. The engines were doing 
 astonishingly well to-day, but who could ensure their lasting 
 qualities ? Watt shows good judgment in suggesting that
 
 88 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Wilkinson, the famous foundryman, should be taken into 
 partnership. He urges his enterprising partner to apply 
 the pruning-knife and cut down expenses, naively assuring 
 him that 'he was practising all the frugality in his power.' 
 As Watt's personal expenses were then only 2 per week, 
 a smile rises at the prudent Scot's possible contribution to 
 reduction in expenditure. But he was on the right lines, 
 and at least gave Boulton the benefit of example. Watt 
 was never disposed to look on the bright side of things ; 
 and, to add to Boulton's load, the third partner, Fothergill, 
 was even more desponding than Watt. When Boulton 
 went away to raise means, he was pursued by letters from 
 Fothergill telling him day by day of imperative needs. In 
 one he was of opinion that ' the creditors must be called 
 together ; better to face the worst than go on in the neck- 
 and-neck race with ruin.' Boulton would hurry back to 
 quiet Fothergill and keep the ship afloat. Here he shines 
 out resplendently. He proved equal to the emergency. 
 His courage and determination rose in proportion to the 
 difficulties to be overcome, borne up by his invariable hope 
 and unshakable belief in the value of Watt's condensing 
 engine; he triumphed at last, pledging, as security for a 
 loan of ^14,000, the royalties derivable from the engine 
 patents, and an annuity for a loan of ^7000 more. So 
 small a sum as ,21,000 sufficed to keep afloat the big 
 ship laden with all their treasures. 
 
 There was a period of great depression in Britain when 
 Boulton and Watt were thus in deep water, and at such 
 times credit is sensitive in the extreme. A small balance 
 on the right side performs wonders. This recalls to the 
 writer how once, in the history of his own firm, credit was 
 kept high during a panic by using the identical sum 
 Boulton raised, ,14,000, from a reserve fund that had 
 been laid away and came in very opportunely at the critical 
 time. Every single dollar weighs a hundredfold when 
 credit trembles in the balance. A leading nerve specialist 
 in New York once said that the worst malady he had to 
 treat was the man of affairs whose credit was suspected. 
 His unfailing remedy was : ' Call your creditors together, 
 explain all and ask their support. I can then do you
 
 JAMES WATT 89 
 
 some good, but not till then. 1 His patients who did this 
 found themselves restored to vigour. They were supported 
 by creditors, and all was bright once more. The wise 
 doctor was sound in his advice. If the firm has neither 
 speculated nor gambled (synonymous terms), nor lived 
 extravagantly, nor endorsed for others, and the business is 
 on a solid foundation, no people have so much at stake in 
 sustaining it as the creditors ; they will rally round it and 
 think more of the firm than ever, because they will see 
 behind their money the best of all securities men at the 
 helm who are not afraid and know how to meet a storm. 
 
 Boulton's timid partners no doubt were amazed that he 
 was so blind to the dangers which they with clearer vision 
 saw so clearly. How deluded they were ! We may be sure 
 neither of them saw the danger half as vividly as he, but it 
 is not the part of a leader to reveal to his followers all that 
 he sees or fears. His part is to look dangers steadily in 
 the face and challenge them. It is the great leader who 
 inspires in his followers contempt for the danger which he 
 sees in much truer proportion than they. This Boulton 
 did, for behind all else in his character there lay the in- 
 domitable will, the do or die resolve. He had staked his 
 life upon the hazard of a die and he would stand the cost. 
 ' But if we fail,' often said the timid pair to him, as Macbeth 
 did to his resolute partner, and the same answer came, 
 ' We fail.' That 's all. ' One knockdown will not finish 
 this fight. We '11 get up again, never fear. We know no 
 such word as fail.' l 
 
 1 Perhaps there is no instance so striking as this of the immense 
 difference that sometimes lies in the mere accent given one monosyllable. 
 Until Mrs. Siddons revealed the real Lady Macbeth, every actress had 
 replied, 'We fail?' interrogatively, and then encouragingly, 'Screw your 
 courage to the sticking-place and we "11 not fail." Such the commonplace 
 reciters. When genius touched the word, it flashed and sparkled. Then 
 come the prompt response, ' We fail. 1 She was of such stuff as meets 
 failure without fear. For this revelation the actress becomes immortal, 
 since her name is linked with the greatest son of time. One word did it, 
 nay, a new accent upon a monosyllable a trifling change say you? ' I 
 make it a rule never to mind trifles,' said a great man. ' So should I if I 
 could only tell what were trifles,' said a greater. One is far on if he can 
 predict consequences that may flow from one kind word or the intonation 
 of a word. Fortune sometimes hangs upon a glance or a nod of kindly 
 recognition as we pass.
 
 90 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 One source of serious trouble arose from Watt and 
 Boulton having been so anxious at first to introduce their 
 engines that they paid small regard to terms. When their 
 success was proved, they offered to settle, taking one-third 
 the value of the fuel saved. This was a liberal offer, for, 
 in addition to the mine-owners saving two-thirds of the 
 former cost of fuel consumed by the previous engines, 
 mines became workable, which without the Watt engine 
 must have been abandoned. These terms, however, were 
 not accepted, and a long series of disputes arose, ending in 
 some cases only with the patent-right itself. It was resolved 
 that all future engines should be furnished only upon the 
 terms before stated, Watt declaring that otherwise he would 
 not put pen to paper to make new drawings. ' Let our 
 terms be moderate,' he writes, ' and, if possible, consoli- 
 dated into money a priori, and it is certain we shall get 
 some money, enough to keep us out of jail, in continual 
 apprehension of which I live at present.' Imprisonment 
 for debt, let it be remembered, had not been abolished. 
 One of the most beneficent forward steps that our time 
 can boast of is the Bankruptcy Court. However hard we 
 may yet be upon offenders against us, society, through 
 humane laws, forgives our debtors in money matters, and 
 gives a clear bill of health after honourable acquittal in 
 bankruptcy, and a fresh start. 
 
 The result proved Watt's wisdom. His engines were 
 needed to save the mines. None other could. Applications 
 came in freely upon his terms, and as Watt was a poor 
 hand at bargaining, he insisted that Boulton should come 
 to Cornwall and attend to that part. 
 
 Meanwhile great attention was being paid to the works 
 and all pertaining to the men and methods. The firm 
 established perhaps the first benefit society of workmen. 
 Every one was a member and contributed according to 
 his earnings. Out of this fund payments were made to the 
 sick or disabled in varying amounts. No member of the 
 Soho Friendly Society, except a few irreclaimable drunkards, 
 ever came upon the parish. 
 
 When Boulton's son came of age, seven hundred were 
 dined. No well-behaved workman was ever turned adrift.
 
 JAMES WATT 91 
 
 Fathers employed introduced their sons into the works and 
 brought them up under their own eye, watching over their 
 conduct and mechanical training. Thus generation after 
 generation followed each other at Soho works. 
 
 On another occasion Boulton writes Watt in Cornwall : 
 ' I have thought it but respectful to give our folks a dinner 
 to-day. There were present Murdock, Lawson, Pearson, 
 Perkins, Malcolm, Robert, Muir, all Scotsmen, John 
 Bull and Wilson and self, for the engines are now all 
 finished, and the men have behaved well and are attached 
 to us.' 
 
 Five Scots and three Englishmen in the English works of 
 Soho thought worthy of dining with their employer ! It 
 was, we may be sure, a very rare occurrence in that day, 
 but worthy of the true captain of industry. Here is an 
 early ' invasion ' from the North. We are reminded of Sir 
 Charles Dilke's statement in his Greater Britain, that, in 
 his tour round the world, he found ten Scotsmen for every 
 Englishman in high position. Owing, of course, to the 
 absence of scope at home the Scot has had to seek his 
 career abroad. 
 
 A master-stroke this, probably the first' dinner of its 
 kind in Britain, and no doubt more highly appreciated by 
 the honoured guests than an advance in wages. Splendid 
 workmen do not live upon wages alone. Appreciation felt 
 and shown by their employer, as in this case, is the coveted 
 reward. 
 
 We have read how Watt was much troubled in Scotland 
 with poor mechanics. Not one good craftsman could he 
 then find. After seeing Soho, where the standard was 
 much higher, he declared that the Scotch mechanic was very 
 much inferior ; he was prejudiced against them. Murdock, 
 however, the first Scot at Soho, soon eclipsed all, and no 
 doubt under his wing other Scots gained a trial, with the 
 result indicated. It is very significant that even in the 
 earliest days of the steam-engine, Scotsmen should exhibit 
 such talent for its construction, forecasting their present 
 pre-eminence in marine engineering. 
 
 Small wonder that the Soho works became the model for 
 all others. The last words in Boulton's letter, 'and are
 
 92 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 attached to us,' tell the story. No danger of strikes, of 
 lockouts, or quarrels of any kind in such establishments 
 as that of Boulton and Watt, who proved that they in 
 turn were attached to their men. Mutual attachment 
 between employers and employed is the panacea for all 
 troubles yes, better than a panacea, the preventer of 
 troubles. 
 
 After repeated calls from Watt, Boulton took the journey 
 to Cornwall in October 1778, although Fothergill was 
 again uttering lamentable prophecies of impending ruin, 
 and the London agent was imploring his presence there 
 upon financial matters pressing in the extreme. Boulton 
 succeeded in borrowing ^2000 from Truro bankers on 
 the security of engines erected, and settled several dis- 
 putes, getting ^700 per year royalty for one engine and 
 ^400 per year for another. At last, after nine years of 
 arduous labour since the invention was hailed as successful, 
 the golden harvest so long expected began to replenish the 
 empty treasury. The heavy liabilities, however, remained 
 a source of constant anxiety. No remedy could be found 
 against 'this consumption of the purse.' 
 
 Watt had again to encounter the lack of competent, sober 
 workmen to run engines. The Highland blood led him at 
 last into severe measures, and he insisted upon discharging 
 two or three of the most drunken. Here Boulton had 
 great difficulty in restraining him. Much had to be en- 
 dured, and occasional bouts of drunkenness overlooked, 
 although serious accidents resulted. At last two men 
 appeared whose services proved invaluable Murdock, 
 already mentioned, and Law one of whom became 
 famous. Watt was absent when the former called and 
 asked Boulton for employment. The young Scot was the 
 son of a well-known millwright near Ayr, who had made 
 several improvements. His famous son worked with him, 
 but being ambitious, and hearing of the fame of Boulton 
 and Watt, he determined to seek entrance to Soho works 
 and learn the highest order of handicraft. Boulton had 
 told him that there was at present no place open, but 
 noticing the strange cap the awkward young man had been 
 dangling in his hands, he asked what it was made of.
 
 JAMES WATT 93 
 
 'Timmer,' said the lad. 'What, out of wood?' 'Yes.' 
 ' How was it made ? ' 'I turned it mysel' in a bit lathey o' 
 my own making.' This was enough for that rare judge of 
 men. Here was a natural-born mechanic, certain. The 
 young man was promptly engaged for two years at fifteen 
 shillings per week when in shop, seventeen shillings when 
 abroad, and eighteen shillings when in London. His 
 history is the usual march upward until he became his 
 employers' most trusted manager in all their mechanical 
 operations. When engaged upon one critical job, where 
 the engine had defied previous attempts to put it to rights, 
 the people in the house where Murdock lodged were 
 awakened one night by heavy tramping in his room over- 
 head. Upon entering, Murdock was seen in his bed- 
 clothes heaving away at the bedpost in his sleep, calling 
 out ' Now she goes, lads, now she goes.' His heart was 
 in his work. He had a mission, and only one to make 
 that engine go. 
 
 Of course he rose. There 's no holding down such a 
 ' dreamer ' anywhere in this world. It was not only that 
 he had zeal, for he had sense with it, and was not less 
 successful in conquering the rude Cornishmen who had 
 baffled, annoyed, and intimidated Watt. He won their 
 hearts. His ability did not end with curing the defects of 
 machinery ; he knew how to manage men. At first he 
 had to depend upon his physical powers. He was an 
 athlete, not indisposed to lead the strenuous life. He had 
 not been very long in Cornwall before half a dozen of the 
 mining captains, a class that had tormented poor, retiring 
 and modest Watt, entered the engine-room and began their 
 bullying tricks on him. The Scotch blood was up ; Mur- 
 dock quietly locked the door and said to the captains, 
 ' Now then, gentlemen, you shall not leave until we have 
 settled matters once for all.' He selected the biggest 
 Cornishman and squared off. The contest was soon 
 over. Murdock vanquished the bully, and was ready for 
 the next. The captains, seeing the kind of man he was, 
 offered terms of peace, hands were shaken all round, and 
 they parted good friends, and remained so. We are past 
 that rude age. The skilled, educated manager of to-day
 
 94 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 can use no weapon so effectively with skilled men as the 
 supreme force of gentleness, the manner, language, and 
 action of the educated man, even to the calm, low voice 
 never raised to passion pitch. He conquers and com- 
 mands others, because he has command of himself. 
 
 We must not lose sight of Murdock. In addition to his 
 rare qualities, he possessed mechanical genius. He was 
 the inventor of lighting by gas, and it was he who made 
 the first model of a locomotive. There was no emergency 
 with engines, no accident, no blunder, but Murdock was 
 called in. We read with surprise that his wages even in 
 1780 were only one pound per week. He then modestly 
 asked for an advance, but this was not given. A present 
 of twenty pounds, however, was made to him in recogni- 
 tion of his unusual services. Probably the explanation of 
 the failure to increase his wages at the time was that, 
 owing to the condition of the business, no rise in wages 
 could be made to one which would involve an advance 
 to others. Murdock remained loyal to the firm, however, 
 although invited into partnership by another. Afterwards 
 he received due reward. He had always a strong aversion 
 to partnership, no doubt well founded in this case, for 
 during many years failure seemed almost as likely as 
 success. Watt has much to say in his letters about 
 ' William ' (Murdock), who, more than any one, relieved 
 him from trouble. 1 
 
 The bargainings with mine-owners brought on intense 
 heartaches, and broke Watt down completely. Boulton 
 had to go to him again in Cornwall in the autumn of 1779, 
 and as usual succeeded in adjusting many disputes by 
 
 i An American Murdock was found in Captain Jones, the best manager 
 of works of his day. He entered the service of the Carnegie Steel Company 
 as a young mechanic at two dollars (eight shillings) per day, a perfect copy 
 of Murdock in many important respects. Reading Murdock' s history, we 
 have found ourselves substituting the 'captain/ a title well earned on the 
 field in the war for the Union, which he entered as a private. Once be was 
 offered an interest in the firm, which would have made him one of the band 
 of young millionaires. His reply was, 'Thank you, don't want to have 
 anything to do with business. These works (Steel Rail Mills, Pittsburgh) 
 give me enough to think of. You just give me a "thundering salary." ' 
 ' All right, Captain, the salary of the President of the United States is 
 yours.' Also like Murdock, he was an inventor. His principal invention, 
 recently sustained by the Supreme Court, would easily yield from those
 
 JAMES WATT 95 
 
 wise compromises with the grasping owners which Watt's 
 strict sense of justice had denied. Many of these had paid 
 no royalties for years, others disputed Watt's unerring 
 register of fuel consumption (another of his most in- 
 genious inventions now in general use for many purposes), 
 a more heinous offence in his eyes than that of non-pay- 
 ment. ' The rascality of man,' he writes, ' is almost beyond 
 belief.' He never was more despondent or more irritable 
 than now. No one was better aware of his weakness than 
 himself. In short, his heartaches and nervousness un- 
 fitted him for business. As usual, he attributed his dis- 
 couragement chiefly to his financial obligations. The firm 
 was as hard pressed as ever. Indeed, a new source of 
 danger had developed. Fothergill's affairs became in- 
 volved, and had it not been for Boulton's capital and 
 credit the firm of Boulton and Fothergill could not have 
 maintained payment. This had caused a drain upon their 
 resources. Boulton sold the estate which had come to 
 him by his wife, and the greater part of his father's property, 
 and mortgaged the remainder. It is evident that the great 
 captain had taken in hand far too many enterprises. 
 Probably he had not heard the new doctrine : ' Put all 
 your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.' He 
 had even ventured considerable sums in blockade-running 
 during the American Revolutionary War. It was not 
 without good reason, therefore, that the more cautious 
 Scot addressed to him so many pathetic letters. ' I beg 
 of you to attend to these money matters. I cannot rest in 
 my bed until they have some determinate form.' Watt's 
 inexperience in money matters caused apprehensions of 
 ruin to arise whenever financial measures were discussed. 
 
 who appropriated it and refused payment, at least five millions of dollars 
 (ji, 000,000) in royalties. Captain Jones was born in Pennsylvania of 
 Welsh parents. Murdock won promotion at last, and was first superin- 
 tendent of one of the special departments, and later had general supervision 
 of the mechanical department, becoming ' the right-hand man ' of the 
 firm. The young partners dealt generously with him, and treated him 
 with reverence and affection to the end. He died in his eighty-fifth year. 
 Captain Jones was injured at the works, and passed away just as a touch of 
 age came upon him, as many war veterans did. Fortunate is the firm 
 that discovers a William Murdock or William Jones, and gives him swing 
 to do the work of an original in his own way.
 
 96 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 He was at this time utterly wretched, and Mrs. Watt at 
 last became anxious, long and bravely as she had hitherto 
 borne up and striven to dispel her husband's fears. Never 
 before had she ventured to speak to Boulton upon the 
 subject. She now broke the silence, and wrote him in 
 Corn wall a touching letter, stating that her husband's health 
 and spirits had become much worse since Boulton had left 
 Soho. ' I know there are several things that so prey upon 
 his mind as to render him perfectly miserable. They 
 never cross his mind but he is rendered unfit to do any- 
 thing for a long time.' She describes these financial 
 demons that torment him, and begs that her writing should 
 not be told to Watt, as it might only add to his troubles. 
 The appeal brings Mrs. Watt before us in a most engaging 
 light. 
 
 A study of the problem was made upon Boulton's return, 
 and he agreed to close two departments of the business, 
 which were so far unprofitable, thus entering upon the 
 right path. The engine having proved itself indispensable, 
 the demand for it was becoming great and pressing from 
 various countries. To concentrate upon its manufacture 
 was obviously the true policy. The great captain's enter- 
 prise was not often expended upon failures, and it is with 
 pleasure we find that among the profitable branches which 
 Boulton had encouraged Watt in introducing at Soho, was 
 the copying-press, which Watt invented in 1778, and which 
 we use to this day. In July of that year he writes Dr. 
 Black that he has ' lately discovered a method of copying 
 writing instantaneously, provided it has been written within 
 twenty-four hours. I send you a specimen, and will im- 
 part the secret if it will be of any use to you. It enables 
 me to copy all my business letters.' He kept this secret 
 for two years, and in May 1780 secured a patent, after he 
 had completed details of the press, and experimented with 
 the ink. One hundred and fifty were made and sold. 
 Thirty of these went abroad. It steadily made its way. 
 Watt, writing some thirty years later, said it had proved so 
 useful to him that it was well worth all the trouble of per- 
 fecting it, even if it brought no profit. 
 
 We think of Watt and the steam-engine appears. Let
 
 JAMES WATT 97 
 
 us, however, note the unobtrusive little copying-press on the 
 table at his side. Extremes meet here. It would be 
 difficult to name an invention more universally used, in 
 all offices where man labours in any field of activity. In 
 the list of modest inventions of greatest usefulness, the 
 modern copying-press must take high rank, and this we 
 owe entirely to Watt. 
 
 Of the same period as the copying-machine is his in- 
 vention of a drying-machine for cloth, consisting of three 
 cylinders of copper over which the cloth must turn over 
 and under while cylinders are filled with steam, the cloth 
 to be alternately wound off and on the two wooden rollers, 
 by which means it will pass over three cylinders in suc- 
 cession. This machine was erected for Watt's father-in- 
 law, Mr. MacGregor, in Glasgow, by an ingenious mechanic, 
 John Gardiner, often employed by \Vatt in earlier years. 
 'This I apprehend,' he writes to David Brewster in 1814, 
 1 to be the original from which such machines were made.' 
 When we consider the extent to which such steam drying- 
 machines are used in our day, our estimate of the credit due 
 to Watt cannot be small. The drying-machine is no unfit 
 companion to the copying-machine. 
 
 Watt revisited Cornwall in 1781 to make an inspection 
 of all the engines. Much he found needing attention and 
 improvement. His evenings were spent designing ' road 
 steam carriages.' This was before the day of railroads, 
 and the carriages were to be driven by steam over the 
 ordinary coach roads. He filled a quarto drawing-book 
 with different plans for these, and covered the idea in 
 one of his patent specifications. Boulton suggested in 
 1781 that the idea of rotary motion should be developed, 
 which Watt had from the first regarded as of prime im- 
 portance. It was for this he had invented his original 
 wheel engine, and in his first patent of 1769 he describes 
 one method of securing it. It occurred to him that the 
 ordinary engine might be adapted to give the rotary motion. 
 He wrote from Cornwall to Boulton : ' As to the circular 
 motion, I will apply it as soon as I can.' He prepared 
 a model upon his return to Soho, using a crank connected 
 with the working-beam of the engine for that purpose, 
 
 G
 
 98 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 which worked satisfactorily. There was nothing new in 
 the crank motion ; it was used on every spinning-wheel, 
 grindstone and foot-lathe turned by hand, but its applica- 
 tion to the steam-engine was new. As early as 1771 he 
 writes : 
 
 ' I have at times had my thoughts a good deal upon the 
 subject. In general, it appears to me that a crank of a suffi- 
 cient sweep will be by much the sweetest motion, and perhaps 
 not the dearest, if its durability be considered. ... I then 
 resolved to adopt the crank. ... Of this I caused a model to 
 be made, which performed to satisfaction. But being then 
 very much engaged with other business, I neglected to take a 
 patent immediately, and having employed a blackguard of the 
 name of Cartwright (who was afterward hanged) about this 
 model, he, when in company with some of the same sort who 
 worked at Wasborough's mill, and were complaining of its irre- 
 gularities and frequent disasters, told them he could put them in 
 a way to make a rotative motion which would not go out of 
 order nor stun them with its noise, and accordingly explained 
 to them what he had seen me do. Soon after which, John 
 Steed, who was engineer at Wasborough's mill, took a patent 
 for a rotative motion with a crank, and applied it to their 
 engine. Suspicions arising of Cartwright's treachery, he was 
 strictly questioned, and confessed his part in the transaction 
 when too late to be of service to us.' 
 
 Overtures were made by Wasborough to exchange 
 patents and work together, which Watt scornfully rejected. 
 He writes : 
 
 ' Though I am not so saucy as many of my countrymen, I 
 have enough innate pride to prevent me from doing a mean 
 action because a servile prudence may dictate it. ... I will 
 never meanly sue a thief to give me my own again unless I 
 have nothing left behind.' 
 
 His blood was up. No dealings with rascals ! 
 
 July 1781, Watt had finished his studies, went to Pen- 
 ryn, and swore he had ' invented certain new methods of 
 applying the vibrating or reciprocating motion of steam 
 or fire engines to produce a continued rotation or circular 
 motion round an axis or centre, and thereby to give 
 motion to the wheels of mills or other machines.'
 
 JAMES WATT 99 
 
 Watt proceeded to work out the plan of the rotary 
 engine, stimulated by numerous inquiries for steam-engines 
 for driving all kinds of mills. He found that ' the people 
 in London, Manchester, and Birmingham are steam-mill 
 mad.' 
 
 During many long years of trial with their financial 
 troubles, inferior and drunken workmen, disappointing 
 engines, Cornish mine-owners to annoy him, it is highly 
 probable that Watt only found relief in retiring to his 
 garret to gratify his passion for solving difficult mechanical 
 problems. We may even imagine that from his serious 
 mission the development of the engine which was ever 
 present, he sometimes flew to the numerous less exhausting 
 inventions for recreation, as the weary student flies to 
 fiction. His mind at this period seems never to have been at 
 rest. His voluminous correspondence constantly reveals 
 one invention after another upon which he was engaged. 
 Anew micrometer, a dividing screw, a new surveying quad- 
 rant, problems for clearing the observed distance of the 
 moon from a star of the effects of refraction and parallax, 
 a drawing-machine, a copying-machine for sculpture any- 
 thing and everything he used or saw seems immediately 
 to have been subjected to the question: 'Cannot this be 
 improved ? ' usually with a response in the affirmative. 
 
 As we have seen, he had long studied the question of 
 a locomotive steam carriage. In Muirhead's biography 
 several pages are devoted to this. In his seventh c new 
 improvement,' in his patent of 1784, he describes 'the 
 principle and construction of steam-engines which are 
 applied to give motion to wheel carriages for removing 
 persons, goods, or other matter from place to place, in 
 which case the engines themselves must be portable.' Mr. 
 Murdock made a model of the engine here specified which 
 performed well, but nothing important came of all this 
 until 1802, when the problem was instantly changed by 
 Watt's friend, Mr. Edgeworth, writing him : ' I have always 
 thought that steam would become the universal lord, and 
 that we should in time scorn post-horses. An iron rail- 
 road would be a cheaper thing than a road of the common 
 construction? Here lay in a few words the idea from which
 
 ioo FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 our railway system has sprung. Surely Edgeworth deserves 
 to be placed among the immortals. 1 As in the case of the 
 steamship, however, the indispensable steam-engine of 
 Watt had to furnish the motive power. The railroad is 
 only the necessary smooth track upon which the steam- 
 engine could perform its miracle. It is significant that 
 steam power upon roads required the abandonment of the 
 usual highway. So we may believe is the automobile to 
 force new roads of its own, or to widen existing highways, 
 rendering those safe under certain rules for speed of twenty 
 miles per hour, or even more, when they were intended 
 only for eight or ten. 
 
 The reading-lamp of Watt's day was a poor affair, and 
 as he never saw an inefficient instrument without studying 
 its improvement, he produced a new lamp. He wrote 
 Argand of the Argand burner upon the subject, and for a 
 long time Watt lamps were made at the Soho works, which 
 gave a light surpassing in steadiness and brilliance any- 
 thing of the kind that had yet appeared. He gives four 
 plans for lamps, ' with the reservoir below and the stem as 
 tall as you please.' He also made an instrument for 
 determining the specific gravity of liquids, and a year after 
 this he ' found out a method of working tubes of the elastic 
 resin without dissolving it.' The importance of such tubes 
 for a thousand purposes in the arts and sciences is now 
 appreciated. 
 
 Watt gave much time to an arithmetical machine which 
 he found exceedingly simple to plan, but he adds, ' I have 
 learnt by experience that in mechanics many things fall out 
 between the cup and the mouth.' He describes what it is 
 
 i Since the above was put in type I learn that in his forthcoming book 
 upon The Development of the Locomotive, which promises to become the 
 standard, Mr. Angus Sinclair says: 'The first suggestion of a railroad 
 for goods transportation appears to have been made before the Literary 
 and Philosophical Society of Newcastle by a Mr. Thomas of Denton, in 
 February 1800. Two years later Richard Edgeworth, father of the famous 
 novelist, suggested that it should be extended for the carrying of pas- 
 sengers.' There is no record of Thomas's suggestion, as far as we know, 
 but only tradition. Even if made, however, it seems to have lain dead. 
 Edgeworth evidently knew nothing of it, and as it was his letter to Watt 
 which seems first to have attracted public attention, the passage is allowed 
 to stand as written.
 
 JAMES WATT 101 
 
 to accomplish, but it remained for Babbage at a much later 
 date to perfect the machine. A machine for copying 
 sculpture amused him for a time, but it was never 
 finished. 
 
 If any difficulty of a mechanical nature arose, people 
 naturally turned to Watt for a solution. Thus the Glasgow 
 Water Works Company failed to get pipes for conveying water 
 across the Clyde to stand, the channel of the river being 
 covered with mud and shifty sand, full of inequalities, and 
 subject to the pressure of a considerable body of water. 
 Application was at last made to the recognised genius. If 
 he could not solve it, who could ? This was just one of the 
 things that Watt liked to do. He promptly devised an arti- 
 culated suction-pipe with parts formed on the principle of 
 a lobster's tail. This crustacean tube a thousand feet long 
 solved the matter. Watt stated that his services were 
 induced solely by a desire to be of use in procuring good 
 water for the city of Glasgow, and thus promote the pro- 
 sperity of a company which had risked so much for the 
 public good. These were handsomely acknowledged by 
 the presentation to him of a valuable piece of plate. 
 
 As another proof of Watt's habit of thinking of every- 
 thing that could possibly be improved, it may be news to 
 many readers that the consumption of the smoke from 
 steam-engines early attracted his attention, and that he 
 patented devices for this. These have been substantially 
 followed in the numerous attempts which have been made 
 from time to time to reduce the huge volumes of smoke 
 that keep so many cities under a cloud. He was suc- 
 cessful, and his son James writes to him in 1790 from 
 Manchester : 
 
 ' It is astonishing what an impression the smoke-consuming 
 power of the engine has made upon everybody hereabouts. 
 They scarcely trusted to the evidence of their senses. You 
 would be diverted to hear the strange hypotheses which have 
 been stated to account for it.' 
 
 This is all very well. It is certain that most of the 
 smoke made in manufacturing concerns can be consumed, 
 if manufacturers are compelled by law to erect sufficient
 
 102 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 heating surface and to provide the well-known appliances, 
 including those for careful firing ; but no city, so far as the 
 writer knows, has ever been able to enforce effective laws. 
 There remain the dwellings of the people to deal with, 
 which give forth smoke in large cities in the aggregate far 
 exceeding that made by the manufacturing plants. New 
 York pursues the only plan for ensuring the clearest skies 
 of any large city in the world where coal is generally used, 
 by making the use of bituminous coal unlawful. The 
 enormous growth of present New York (forty-five per cent, 
 in last decade) is not a little dependent upon the attraction 
 of clear blue skies and the resulting cleanliness of all things 
 in and about the city compared with others. When, by the 
 progress of invention or new methods of distributing heat, 
 smoke is banished, as it probably will be some day, many 
 rich citizens will remain in their respective western cities 
 instead of flocking to the clear blue-skied metropolis, as 
 they are now so generally doing. 
 
 Such were some of Watt's by-products. His recreation, 
 if found at all, was found in change of occupation. We 
 read of no idle days, no pleasure trips, no vacations, only 
 change of work. 
 
 Rumours of new inventions of engines far excelling his 
 own continued to disturb Watt, and much of his time was 
 given to investigation. He thought of a caloric air engine 
 as possibly one of the new ideas ; then of the practicability 
 of producing mechanical power by the absorption and 
 condensation of gas on the one hand, and by its dis- 
 engagement and expansion on the other. His mind 
 seemed to range over the entire field of possibilities. 
 
 The Hornblower engine had been heralded as sure 
 to displace the Watt. When it was described, it proved to 
 be, as Watt said, ' no less than our double-cylinder engine, 
 worked upon our principle of expansion. It is fourteen 
 years since I mentioned it to Mr. Smeaton.' Watt had 
 explained to Dr. Small his method of working steam 
 expansively as early as May 1769, and had adopted it in 
 the Soho engine and also in the Shadwell engine erected 
 in that year. 
 
 We have seen before that Watt had to retrace his steps
 
 JAMES WATT 103 
 
 and abandon for a time in later engines what he had before 
 ventured upon. 
 
 The application of steam for propelling boats upon the 
 water was at this time (1788) attracting much attention. 
 Boulton and Watt were urged to undertake experiments. 
 This they declined to entertain, having their facilities fully 
 employed in their own field ; but finally Fulton, on August 
 6, 1803, ordered an engine from them from his own draw- 
 ings, intended for this purpose, repeating the order in 
 person in 1804. It was shipped to America early in 1805, 
 and in 1807 placed upon the Clermont, which ran upon 
 the Hudson River as a passenger boat, attaining a speed 
 of about five miles an hour. This was the first steamboat 
 that was ever used for passengers, and although Fulton 
 neither invented the boat nor the engine, nor the combina- 
 tion of the two, still he is entitled to great credit for over- 
 coming innumerable difficulties sufficient to discourage 
 most men. Fulton, who was the son of a Scotsman from 
 Dumfriesshire, visited Symington's steamboat, the Charlotte 
 Dundas, in Scotland in 1801, and had seen it successfully 
 towing canal boats upon the Forth and Clyde Canal. 
 This was the first boat ever propelled by steam successfully 
 for commercial purposes. It was subsequently discarded, 
 not because it did not tow the canal boats, but because the 
 revolving paddle-wheels caused waves that threatened to 
 wash away the canal banks. 
 
 Several engines were sent to New York. The men in 
 charge of one found on shipboard a pattern-maker going 
 to America named John Hewitt. He settled in America, 
 January 12, 1796, and became the father of the late 
 famous and deeply lamented Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, long 
 a member of Congress and afterwards mayor of New York, 
 foremost in many improvements in the city, the last being 
 the Subway, just opened, which owes its inception to him. 
 For this service the Chamber of Commerce presented him 
 with a memorial medal. Mr. Hewitt married a daughter 
 of Peter Cooper, founder of the Cooper Institute, which 
 owes its wonderful development chiefly to him. His 
 children devote themselves and their fortunes to its manage- 
 ment. At the time of his death, in 1902, he was pro-
 
 io 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 nounced 'the first private citizen of the Republic.' Small 
 engine-shops (of which the ruins still remain), called 
 'Soho,' after their prototype, were erected by his father 
 near New York city, on the Greenwood division of the 
 Erie Railroad. The railroad station was called ' Soho ' by 
 Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, who was then president of the rail- 
 road company. Upon Mr. Hewitt's recent eightieth birth- 
 day, congratulations poured in from all quarters. One 
 cable from abroad attracted attention as appropriate and 
 deserved : ' Ten octaves every note truly struck and grandly 
 sung.' No man in private life passed away in our day with 
 such general lamentation. The Republic got even more 
 valuable material than engines from the old home in the 
 ship that arrived on January 12, 1796. 
 
 We must not permit ourselves to forget that it was not 
 until the Watt engine was applied to steam navigation that 
 the success of the latter became possible. It was only by 
 this that it could be made practicable, so that the steam- 
 ship is the product of the steam-engine, and it is to Watt 
 we owe the modern twenty-three thousand ton monster 
 (and larger monsters soon to come) which keeps its course 
 against wind and tide, almost 'unshaked of motion,' for 
 this can now properly be said. Passengers crossing the 
 Atlantic from port to port now scarcely know anything of 
 irregular motion, and never more than the gentlest of 
 slight heaves, even during the gale that 
 
 ' Catches the ruffian billows by their tops, 
 Curling their monstrous heads. ' 
 
 The ocean, traversed in these ships, is a smooth high- 
 way nothing but a ferry and a week spent upon it has 
 become perhaps the most enjoyable and the most healthful 
 of holiday excursions, provided the prudent excursionist 
 has left behind positive instructions that wireless telegrams 
 shall not follow.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SECOND PATENT 
 
 THE number and activity of rivals attracted to the steam- 
 engine and its possible improvement, some of whom 
 had begun infringements upon the Watt patents, alarmed 
 Messrs. Watt and 1'oulton so much that they decided Watt 
 should apply for another patent, covering his important 
 improvements since the first. Accordingly, October 25, 
 1781, the patent (already referred to on p. 97) was secured 
 ' for certain new methods of producing a continued rotative 
 motion around an axis or centre, and thereby to give 
 motion to the wheels of mills or other machines.' 
 
 This patent was necessary in consequence of the diffi- 
 culties experienced in working the steam wheels or rotatory 
 engines described in the first patent of 1769, and by Watt's 
 having been so unfairly anticipated by Wasborough in the 
 crank motion. 
 
 No less than five different methods for rotatory motion 
 are described in the patent, the fifth commonly known 
 as the 'sun and planet wheels,' of which Watt writes to 
 Boulton, January 3, 1782 : 
 
 ' I have tried a model of one of my old plans of rotative 
 engines, revived and executed by Mr. Murdock, which merits 
 being included in the specification as a fifth method ; for which 
 purpose I shall send a drawing and description next post. It 
 has the singular property of going twice round for each stroke 
 of the engine, and may be made to go oftener round, if 
 required, without additional machinery.' 
 
 Then followed an explanation of the sketch which he 
 sent, and two days later he wrote : ' I send you the drawings
 
 106 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 of the fifth method, and thought to have sent you the 
 description complete, but was late last night before I 
 finished so far, and to-day have a headache, therefore only 
 send you a rough draft of part.' 
 
 In all of these Watt recommended that a fly-wheel be 
 used to regulate the motion, but in the specification for 
 the patent of the following year, 1782, his double-acting 
 engine produced a more regular motion and rendered a 
 fly-wheel unnecessary, 'so that,' he says, 'in most of our 
 great manufactories these engines now supply the place of 
 water, wind and horse mills, and instead of carrying the 
 work to the power, the prime agent is placed wherever it 
 is most convenient to the manufacturer.' 
 
 This marks one of the most important stages in the 
 development of the steam-engine. It was at last the port- 
 able machine it remains to-day, and was placed wherever 
 convenient, complete in itself and with the rotative motion 
 adaptable for all manner of work. The ingenious sub- 
 stitutes Watt had to invent to avoid the obviously perfect 
 crank motion have of course all been discarded, and 
 nothing of these remains except as proofs, where none are 
 needed, that genius has powers in reserve for emergencies ; 
 balked in one direction, it hews out another path for 
 itself. 
 
 While preparing the specification for this patent of 1781, 
 Watt was busy upon another specification quite as im- 
 portant, which appeared in the following year, 1782. It 
 embraced the following new improvements, the winnowing 
 of numberless ideas and experiments that he had con- 
 ceived and tested for some years previously : 
 
 'i. The use of steam on the expansive principle; together 
 with various methods or contrivances (six in number, some of 
 them comprising various modifications) for equalising the 
 expansive power. 
 
 '2. The double-acting engine; in which steam is admitted 
 to press the piston upward as well as downward ; the piston 
 being also aided in its ascent as well as in its descent by a 
 vacuum produced by condensation on the other side. 
 
 '3. The double-engine ; consisting of two engines, primary 
 and secondary, of which the steam-vessels and condensers
 
 JAMES WATT 107 
 
 communicate by pipes and valves, so that they can be worked 
 either independently or in concert; and make their strokes 
 either alternately or both together, as may be required. 
 
 ' 4. The employment of a toothed rack and sector, instead 
 of chains, for guiding the piston-rod. 
 
 ' 5. A rotative engine, or steam- wheel.' 
 
 Here we have three of the vital elements required 
 toward the completion of the work : first, steam used 
 expansively ; second, the double-acting engine. It will be 
 remembered that Watt's first engines only took in steam 
 at the bottom of the cylinder, as Newcomen's did, but with 
 this difference : Watt used the steam to perform work 
 which Newcomen could not do, the latter only using steam 
 to force the piston itself upward. Now came Watt's great 
 step forward. Having a cylinder closed at the top, while 
 the Newcomen cylinder remained open, it was as easy to 
 admit steam at the top to press the piston down as to 
 admit it at the bottom to press the piston up ; also as easy 
 to apply his condenser to the steam above as below, at the 
 moment a vacuum was needed. All this was ingeniously 
 provided for by numerous devices and covered by the 
 patent. Third, he went one step farther to the compound 
 engine, consisting of two engines, primary and secondary, 
 working steam expansively, independently, or in concert, 
 with strokes alternate or simultaneous. The compound 
 engine was first thought of by Watt about 1767. He laid 
 a large drawing of it on parchment before Parliament when 
 soliciting an extension of his first patent. The reason he 
 did not proceed to construct it was ' the difficulty he had 
 encountered in teaching others the construction and use 
 of the single engine, and in overcoming prejudices '; the 
 patent of 1782 was only taken out because he found him- 
 self ' beset with a host of plagiaries and pirates.' 
 
 One of the earliest of these double-acting engines was 
 erected at the Albion Mills, London, in 1786. Watt 
 writes : 
 
 'The mention of Albion Mills induces me to say a few words 
 respecting an establishment so unjustly calumniated in its day, 
 and the premature destruction of which by fire, in 1791, was, 
 not improbably, imputed to design. So far from being, as
 
 io8 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 misrepresented, a monopoly injurious to the public, it was the 
 means of considerably reducing the price of flour while it con- 
 tinued at work.' 
 
 The ' double-acting ' engine was followed by the ' com- 
 pound ' engine, of which Watt says : 
 
 'A new compound engine, or method of connecting together 
 the cylinders and condensers of two or more distinct engines, 
 so as to make the steam which has been employed to press on 
 the piston of the first, act expansively upon the piston of the 
 second, etc., and thus derive an additional power to act either 
 alternately or co-jointly with that of the first cylinder.' 
 
 We have here, in all substantial respects, the modern 
 engine of to-day; yet since the time of which we are 
 now speaking, two fine improvements have been made : 
 first, the piston-rings of Cartwright, 1 which effectively 
 removed one of Watt's most serious difficulties, the escape 
 of steam, even though the best packing he could devise 
 were used the chief reason he could not use high-pressure 
 steam. In our day, the use of this is rapidly extending, 
 as is that of superheated steam. Packing the piston was 
 an elaborate operation even after Watt's day. 
 
 It was not because Watt did not know as well as any of 
 our present experts the advantages of high pressures, that 
 he did not use them, but simply because of the mechanical 
 difficulties then attending their adoption. He was always 
 in advance of mechanical practicalities rather than behind, 
 and, as we have seen, had to retrace his steps, in the case 
 of expansion. 
 
 The other improvement is the cross-head of Haswell, an 
 American, a decided advance, giving the piston-rod a 
 smooth and straight bed to rest upon and freeing it from 
 all disturbance. The drop-valve is now displacing the 
 slide-valve as a better form of excluding or admitting 
 steam. 
 
 Watt of course knew nothing of the thermodynamic value 
 
 of high temperature without high pressure, although fully 
 
 conversant with the value of pressures. This had not been 
 
 even imagined by either philosopher or engineer until dis- 
 
 1 Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823).
 
 JAMES WATT 109 
 
 covered by Carnot as late as 1824. Even if he had known 
 about it the mechanical arts in his day were in no condition 
 to permit its use. Even high pressures were impracticable 
 to any great extent. It is only during the past few years 
 that turbines and superheating, having long been practically 
 discarded, show encouraging signs of revival. They give 
 great promise of advancement, the hitherto insuperable 
 difficulties of lubrication and packing having been over- 
 come within the last five years. Superheating especially 
 promises to yield substantial results as compared with the 
 practice with ordinary engines, but the margin of saving 
 in steam over the best quadruple expansion engine cannot 
 be great. Lord Kelvin, however, expects it to be the final 
 contribution of science to the highest possible economy in 
 the steam-engine. 
 
 In the January (1905) number of Steven? Institute Indi- 
 cator^ Professor Denton has an instructive resume of recent 
 steam-engine economics. He tells us that steam turbines 
 are now being applied to piston engines to operate with 
 the latter's exhaust, to effect the same saving as the sulphur 
 dioxide cylinder ; and adds : 
 
 ' That the turbine is a formidable competitor to the piston 
 engine is mainly due to the fact that it more completely realises 
 the expansive principle enunciated in the infancy of steam his- 
 tory as the fundamental factor of economy by its sagacious 
 founder, the immortal Watt.' 
 
 Watt's favourite employment in Soho works late in 1783 
 and early in 1784 was to teach his engine, now become as 
 docile as it was powerful, to work a tilt hammer. In 1777 
 he had written Boulton that ' Wilkinson wants an engine 
 to raise a stamp of 15 cwt. thirty or forty times in a 
 minute. I have set Webb to work to try it with the little 
 engine and a stamp hammer of 60 Ibs. weight. Many of 
 these battering-rams will be wanted if they answer.' The 
 trial was successful. A new machine to work a 700 Ibs. 
 hammer for Wilkinson was made, and April 27, 1783, Watt 
 writes that 'it makes from 15 to 50, and even 60, strokes 
 per minute, and works a hammer, raised two feet high, 
 which has struck 300 blows per minute.' The engine was
 
 no FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 to work two hammers, but was capable of working four of 
 7 cwt. each. He says, with excusable pride : 
 
 ' I believe it is a thing never done before, to make a hammer 
 of that weight make 300 blows per minute ; and, in fact, it is 
 more a matter to brag of than for any other use, as the rate 
 wanted is from 90 to 100 blows, being as quick as the workmen 
 can manage the iron under it.' 
 
 This most ingenious application of steam power was 
 included in Watt's next patent of April 28, 1784. It 
 embraced many improvements, mostly, however, now of 
 little consequence, the most celebrated being 'parallel 
 motion,' of which Watt was prouder than of any other of his 
 triumphs. He writes to his son, November 1808, twenty- 
 four years after it was invented (1784) : 'Though I am not 
 over anxious after fame, yet I am more proud of the parallel 
 motion than of any other mechanical invention I have ever 
 made.' He wrote Boulton, in June 1784 : 'I have started 
 a new hare. I have got a glimpse of a method of causing 
 a piston-rod to move up and down perpendicularly, by only 
 fixing it to a piece of iron upon the beam. ... I think it 
 one of the most ingenious simple pieces of mechanism I 
 have contrived.' October 1784 he writes: 'The new 
 central perpendicular motion answers beyond expectation, 
 and does not make the shadow of a noise.' He says, 
 ' When I saw it in movement it afforded me all the pleasure 
 of a novelty, as if I had been examining the invention of 
 another.' 
 
 When beam-engines were universally used for pumping, 
 this parallel motion was of great advantage. It has been 
 superseded in our day by improved piston guides and 
 cross-heads, the construction of which in Watt's day was 
 impossible, but no invention has commanded in greater 
 degree the admiration of all who comprehend the principles 
 upon which it acts, or who have witnessed the smoothness, 
 orderly power, and 'sweet simplicity' of its movements. 
 Watt's pride in it as his favourite invention in these respects 
 is fully justified. 
 
 A detailed specification for a road steam-carriage con- 
 cludes the claims of this patent, but the idea of railroads,
 
 JAMES WATT in 
 
 instead of common roads, coming later left the construction 
 of the locomotive to Stephenson. 1 
 
 Watt's last patent bears date June 14, 1785, and was 
 
 ' for certain newly improved methods of constructing furnaces 
 or fireplaces for heating, boiling, or evaporating of water and 
 other liquids which are applicable to steam engines and other 
 purposes; and also for heating, melting, and smelting of metals 
 and their ores, whereby greater effects are produced from the 
 fuel, and the smoke is in a great measure prevented or con- 
 sumed.' 
 
 The principle, 'an old one of my own/ Watt says, is in 
 great part acted upon to-day. 
 
 So numerous were the improvements made by Watt at 
 various periods, which greatly increased the utility of his 
 engine, that it would be in vain to attempt a detailed recital 
 of his endless contrivances ; but we may mention as highly 
 important the throttle-valve, the governor, the steam-gauge, 
 and the indicator. 
 
 Muirhead says : 
 
 ' The throttle-valve is worked directly by the engineer to start 
 or stop the engine, and also to regulate the supply of steam. 
 Watt describes it as " a circular plate of metal, having a spindle 
 fixed across its diameter, the plate being accurately fitted to an 
 aperture in a metal ring of some thickness, through the edge- 
 way of which the spindle is fitted steam-tight, and the ring fixed 
 between the two flanches of the joint of the steam-pipe which 
 is next to the cylinder." One end of the spindle, which has a 
 square upon it, comes through the ring, and has a spanner 
 fixed upon it, by which it can be turned in either direction. 
 When the valve is parallel to the outsides of the ring, it shuts 
 the opening nearly perfectly ; but when its plane lies at an 
 angle to the ring it admits more or less steam according to the 
 degree it has opened ; consequently the piston is acted upon 
 with more or less force.' 
 
 1 Sinclair's Development oj the Locomotive tends to deprive Stephen- 
 son of some part of his fame as inventor. Much importance is attached 
 to Hedley's* 'Puffing Billy,' 1813, which is pronounced to have been a 
 commercial success. Sinclair, however, credits Stephenson with doing 
 most of all men to introduce the locomotive. As the final verdict may 
 admit Hedley and cannot expel Stephenson from the temple of fame, we 
 pass the sentence as written, leaving to future disputants to adjust rival 
 claims. 
 
 * William Hedley (1779-1843).
 
 ii2 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Papin l preferred gunpowder as a safer source of power 
 than steam, but that was before it had been automatically 
 regulated by the 'governor.' The 'governor' has always 
 been the writer's favourite invention, probably because it 
 was the first he fully understood. It is an application of 
 the centrifugal principle adapted and mechanically im- 
 proved. Two heavy revolving balls swing round an upright 
 rod. The faster the rod revolves, the farther from it the 
 balls swing out. The slower it turns, the closer the balls 
 fall toward it. By proper attachments the valve openings 
 admitting steam are widened or narrowed accordingly. 
 Thus the higher speed of the engine, the less steam ad- 
 mitted ; the slower the speed, the more steam admitted. 
 Hence any uniform speed desired can be maintained : 
 should the engine be called upon to perform greater 
 service at one moment than another, as in the case of steel- 
 rolling mills, speed being checked when the piece of steel 
 enters the rolls, immediately the valves widen, more steam 
 rushes into the engine, and vice versa. Until the governor 
 came, regular motion was impossible steam was an unruly 
 steed. 
 
 Arago describes the steam-gauge thus : 
 
 4 It is a short glass tube with its lower end immersed in a 
 cistern of mercury, which is placed within an iron box screwed 
 to the boiler steam-pipe, or to some other part communicating 
 freely with the steam, which, pressing on the surface of the 
 mercury in the cistern, raises the mercury in the tube (which 
 is open to the air at the upper end), and its altitude serves 
 to show the elastic power of the steam over that of the 
 atmosphere.' 
 
 The indicator he thus describes : 
 
 'The barometer being adapted only to ascertain the 
 degree of exhaustion in the condenser where its variations 
 were small, the vibrations of the mercury rendered it very 
 difficult, if not impracticable, to ascertain the state of the ex- 
 haustion of the cylinder at the different periods of the stroke 
 of the engine ; it became therefore necessary to contrive 
 an instrument for that purpose that should be less subject 
 to vibration, and should show nearly the degree of exhaustion 
 
 1 Denis Papin (1647-1714).
 
 JAMES WATT 113 
 
 in the cylinder at all periods. The following instrument, 
 called the Indicator, is found to answer the end sufficiently. 
 A cylinder about an inch diameter, and six inches long, 
 exceedingly truly bored, has a solid piston accurately fitted to 
 it, so as to slide easy by the help of some oil ; the stem of the 
 piston is guided in the direction of the axis of the cylinder, so 
 that it may not be subject to jam, or cause friction in any part 
 of its motion. The bottom of this cylinder has a cock and 
 small pipe joined to it which, having a conical end, may be 
 inserted in a hole drilled in the cylinder of the engine near 
 one of the ends, so that, by opening the small cock, a com- 
 munication may be effected between the inside of the cylinder 
 and the indicator. 
 
 ' The cylinder of the indicator is fastened upon a wooden or 
 metal frame, more than twice its own length ; one end of a spiral 
 steel spring, like that of a spring steel-yard, is attached to the 
 upper part of the frame, and the other end of the spring is 
 attached to the upper end of the piston-rod of the indicator. 
 The spring is made of such a strength, that when the cylinder 
 of the indicator is perfectly exhausted, the pressure of the 
 atmosphere may force its piston down within an inch of its 
 bottom. An index being fixed to the top of its piston-rod, the 
 point where it stands, when quite exhausted, is marked from 
 an observation of a barometer communicating with the same 
 exhausted vessel, and the scale divided accordingly.' 
 
 Improvements come in many ways, sometimes after 
 much thought and after many experimental failures. 
 Sometimes they flash upon clever inventors, but let us 
 remember that this is only after long years have been spent 
 in studying the problem. In the case of the steam-engine, 
 however, a quite important improvement came very 
 curiously. Humphrey Potter was a lad employed to turn 
 off and on the stop-cocks of a Newcomen engine, a 
 monotonous task, for, at every stroke one had to be turned 
 to let steam into the boiler and another for injecting the 
 cold water to condense it, and this had to be done at the 
 right instant or the engine could not move. How to 
 relieve himself from the drudgery became the question. 
 He wished time to play with the other boys whose merri- 
 ment was often heard at no great distance, and this set 
 him thinking. Humphrey saw that the beam in its move- 
 ments might serve to open and shut these stop-cocks, and
 
 ii 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 he promptly began to attach cords to the cocks and then 
 tied them at the proper points to the beam, so that 
 ascending it pulled one cord and descending the other. 
 Thus came to us perhaps not the first automatic device, 
 but no doubt the first of its kind that was ever seen there. 
 The steam-engine henceforth was self-attending, providing 
 itself for its own supply of steam and for its condensation 
 with perfect regularity. It had become in this feature 
 automatic. 
 
 The cords of Potter gave place to vertical rods with 
 small pegs which pressed upward or downward as desired. 
 These have long since been replaced by other devices, 
 but all are only simple modifications of a contrivance de- 
 vised by the mere lad whose duty it was to turn the stop- 
 cocks. 
 
 It would be interesting to know the kind of man this 
 precocious boy inventor became, or whether he received 
 suitable reward for his important improvement. We 
 search in vain ; no mention of him is to be found. Let 
 us, however, do our best to repair the neglect and record 
 that, in the history of the steam-engine, Humphrey Potter 
 must ever be honourably associated with famous men as 
 the only famous boy inventor. 
 
 In the development of the steam-engine, we have one 
 purely accidental discovery. In the early Newcomen 
 engines, the head of the piston was covered by a sheet of 
 water to fill the spaces between the circular contour of the 
 movable piston and the internal surface of the cylinder, 
 for there were no cylinder-boring tools in those days, and 
 surfaces of cylinders were most irregular. To the surprise 
 of the engineer, the engine began one day working at 
 greatly increased speed, when it was found that the piston- 
 head had been pierced by accident and that the cold 
 water had passed in small drops into the cylinder and had 
 condensed the steam, thus rapidly making a more perfect 
 vacuum. From this accidental discovery came the im- 
 proved plan of injecting a shower of cold water through 
 the cylinder, the strokes of the engine being thus greatly 
 increased. 
 
 The year 1783 was one of Watt's most fruitful years of
 
 JAMES WATT 115 
 
 the dozen which may be said to have teemed with his 
 inventions. His celebrated discovery of the composition 
 of water was published in this year. The attempts made 
 to deprive him of the honour of making this discovery 
 ended in complete failure. Sir Humphry Davy, Henry, 1 
 Arago, Liebig, and many others of the highest authority 
 acknowledged and established Watt's claims. 
 
 The true greatness of the modest Watt was never more 
 finely revealed than in his correspondence and papers 
 published during the controversy. Watt wrote Dr. Black, 
 April 2ist, that he had handed his paper to Dr. Priestley 
 to be read at the Royal Society. It contained the new 
 idea of water, hitherto considered an element and now 
 discovered to be a compound. Thus was announced one 
 of the most wonderful discoveries found in the history of 
 science. It was justly termed the beginning of a new era, 
 the dawn of a new day in physical chemistry, and, accord- 
 ing to Dr. Young, ' a discovery perhaps of greater import- 
 ance than any single fact which human ingenuity has 
 ascertained before or since.' What Newton had done for 
 light Watt was held to have done for water. Muirhead 
 well says : 
 
 ' It is interesting in a high degree to remark that for him 
 who had so fully subdued to the use of man the gigantic power 
 of steam it was also reserved to unfold its compound natural 
 and elemental principles, as if on this subject there were to be 
 nothing which his researches did not touch, nothing which 
 they touched that they did not adorn.' 
 
 Arago says : 
 
 ' In his memoir of the month of April, Priestley added an 
 important circumstance to those resulting from the experi- 
 ments of his predecessors ; he proved that the weight of the 
 water which is deposited upon the sides of the vessel, at the 
 instant of the detonation of the oxygen and hydrogen, is pre- 
 cisely the same as the weights of the two gases.' 
 
 Watt, to whom Priestley communicated this important 
 result, immediately perceived that proof was here afforded 
 1 Thomas Henry (1734-1816).
 
 n6 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 that water was not a simple body. Writing to his illustrious 
 friend, he asks : 
 
 ' What are the products of your experiment ? They are 
 wafer, light, and heat. Are we not, thence, authorised to con- 
 clude that water is a compound of the two gases, oxygen and 
 hydrogen, deprived of a portion of their latent or elementary 
 heat ; that oxygen is water deprived of its hydrogen, but still 
 united to its latent heat and light ? If light be only a modifi- 
 cation of heat, or a simple circumstance of its manifestation, 
 or a component part of hydrogen, oxygen gas will be water 
 deprived of its hydrogen, but combined with latent heat.' 
 
 This passage, so clear, so precise, and logical, is taken 
 from a letter of Watt's, dated April 26, 1783. The letter 
 was communicated by Priestley to several of the scientific 
 men in London, and was transmitted immediately afterwards 
 to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, 
 to be read at one of the meetings of that learned body. 
 
 Watt had for many years entertained the opinion that 
 air was a modification of water. He writes Boulton, 
 December 10, 1782 : 
 
 ' You may remember that I have often said, that if water 
 could be heated red-hot or something more, it would probably 
 be converted into some kind of air, because steam would in 
 that case have lost all its latent heat, and that it would have 
 been turned solely into sensible heat, and probably a total 
 change of the nature of the fluid would ensue.' 
 
 A month after he hears of Priestley's experiments, he 
 writes Dr. Black (April 21, 1783) that he 'believes he has 
 found out the cause of the conversion of water into air.' 
 A few days later he writes to Dr. Priestley : 
 
 ' In the deflagration of the inflammable and dephlogisticated 
 airs, the airs unite with violence become red-hot, and, on 
 cooling, totally disappear. The only fixed matter which re- 
 mains is water ; and water, light, and heat, are all the pro- 
 ducts. Are we not then authorised to conclude that water 
 is composed of dephlogisticated and inflammable air, or 
 phlogiston, deprived of part of their latent heat ; and that 
 dephlogisticated, or pure air, is composed of water deprived 
 of its phlogiston, and united to heat and light ; and if light be 
 only a modification of heat, or a component part of phlogiston,
 
 JAMES WATT 117 
 
 then pure air consists of water deprived of its phlogiston and 
 of latent heat ? ' 
 
 It appears from the letter to Dr. Black of April 2ist, that 
 Mr. Watt had, on that day, written his letter to Dr. Priestley, 
 to be read by him to the Royal Society; but on the 26th 
 he informs Mr. de Luc, 1 that having observed some in- 
 accuracies of style in that letter, he had removed them, 
 and would send the Doctor a corrected copy in a day or 
 two, which he accordingly did on the 28th ; the corrected 
 letter (the same that was afterwards embodied verbatim in 
 the letter to Mr. de Luc, printed in the Philosophical 
 Transactions) being dated April 26th. 
 
 In enclosing it, Mr. Watt adds, 'As to myself, the more 
 I consider what I have said, I am the more satisfied with 
 it, as I find none of the facts repugnant.' 
 
 Thus was announced for the first time one of the most 
 wonderful discoveries recorded in the history of science, 
 startling in its novelty, and yet so simple. 
 
 Watt had divined the import of Priestley's experiment, for 
 he had mastered all knowledge bearing upon the question, 
 but even when this was communicated to Priestley, the latter 
 could not accept it, and, after making new experiments, he 
 writes Watt, April 29, 1783, 'Behold with surprise and in- 
 dignation the figure of an apparatus that has utterly ruined 
 your beautiful hypothesis,' giving a rough sketch with his 
 pen of the apparatus employed. Mark the promptitude 
 of the master who had deciphered the message which the 
 experimenter himself could not translate. He immediately 
 writes in reply, May 2, 1783 : 
 
 ' I deny that your experiment ruins my hypothesis. It is 
 not founded on so brittle a basis as an earthen retort, nor on 
 its converting water into air. I founded it on the other facts, 
 and was obliged to stretch it a good deal before it would fit 
 this experiment. ... 1 maintain my hypothesis until it shall 
 be shown that the water formed after the explosion of the pure 
 and inflammable airs, has some other origin.' 
 
 He also writes to Mr. de Luc on May i8th : 
 
 ' I do not see Dr. Priestley's experiment in the same light that 
 he does. It does not disprove my theory. . . . My assertion 
 
 1 Jean Andre" de Luc (1727-1817).
 
 n8 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 was simply that air (i.e. dephlogisticated air, or oxygen, which 
 was also commonly called vital air, pure air, or simple air] was 
 water deprived of its phlogiston, and united to heat, which I 
 grounded on the decomposition of air by inflammation with 
 inflammable air, the residuum or product of which is only 
 water and heat.' 
 
 Having, by experiments of his own, fully satisfied him- 
 self of the correctness of his theory, in November he pre- 
 pared a full statement for the Royal Society, having asked 
 the society to withhold his first paper until he could prove 
 it for himself by experiment. He never doubted its 
 correctness, but some members of the society advised that 
 it had better be supported by facts. 
 
 When the discovery was so daring that Priestley, who 
 made the experiments, could not believe it and had to be 
 convinced by Watt of its correctness, there seems little 
 room left for other claimants, nor for doubt to whom is due 
 the credit of the revelation. 
 
 Watt encountered the difficulties of different weights 
 and measures in his studies of foreign writers upon chem- 
 istry, a serious inconvenience which still remains with us. 
 
 He wrote Mr. Kirwan, 1 November 1783 : 
 
 ' I had a great deal of trouble in reducing the weights and 
 measures to speak the same language ; and many of the 
 German experiments become still more difficult from their 
 using different weights and different divisions of them in 
 different parts of that empire. It is therefore a very desirable 
 thing to have these difficulties removed, and to get all philo- 
 sophers to use pounds divided in the same manner, and I 
 flatter myself that may be accomplished if you, Dr. Priestley, 
 and a few of the French experimenters will agree to it ; for 
 the utility is so evident, that every thinking person must 
 immediately be convinced of it.' 
 
 Here follows his plan : 'Let the 
 
 Philosophical pound consist of 10 ounces, or 10,000 grains, 
 the ounce ,, ,, 10 drachms or 1000 ,, 
 the drachm ,, ,,ioo grains. 
 
 ' Let all elastic fluids be measured by the ounce measure 
 of water, by which the valuation of different cubic inches will 
 
 1 Richard Kirwan (1733-1812). Entered Jesuit novitiate, 1754; Irish 
 barrister, 1766 ; chemist and natural philosopher.
 
 JAMES WATT 119 
 
 be avoided, and the common decimal tables of specific 
 gravities will immediately give the weights of those elastic 
 fluids. 
 
 ' If all philosophers cannot agree on one pound or one grain, 
 let every one take his own pound or his own grain ; it will 
 affect nothing but doses of medicines, which must be corrected 
 as is now done ; but as it would be much better that the 
 identical pound was used by all, I would propose that the 
 Amsterdam or Paris pound be assumed as the standard, being 
 now the most universal in Europe : it is to our avoirdupois 
 pound as 109 is to 100. Our avoirdupois pound contains 7000 
 of our grains, and the Paris pound 7630 of our grains, but it 
 contains 9376 Paris grains, so that the division into 10,000 
 would very little affect the Paris grain. I prefer dividing the 
 pound afresh to beginning with the Paris grain, because I 
 believe the pound is very general, but the grain local. 
 
 ' Dr. Priestley has agreed to this proposal, and has referred 
 it to you to fix upon the pound if you otherwise approve of it. 
 I shall be happy to have your opinion of it as soon as con- 
 venient, and to concert with you the means of making it 
 universal. ... I have some hopes that the foot may be fixed 
 by the pendulum and a measure of water, and a pound derived 
 from that ; but in the interim let us at least assume a proper 
 division, which from the nature of it must be intelligible as long 
 as decimal arithmetic is used.' 
 
 He afterward wrote, in a letter to Magellan : l 
 
 'As to the precise foot or pound, I do not look upon it to be 
 very material, in chemistry at least. Either the common 
 English foot may be adopted according to your proposal, 
 which has the advantage that the cubic foot is exactly 1000 
 ounces, consequently the present foot and ounce would be 
 retained ; or a pendulum which vibrates 100 times a minute 
 may be adopted for the standard, which would make the foot 
 14.2 of our present inches, and the cubic foot would be very 
 exactly a bushel, and would weigh 101 of the present pounds, 
 so that the present pound would not be much altered. But I 
 think that by this scheme the foot would be too large, and that 
 the inconvenience of changing all the foot measures and things 
 depending on them would be much greater than changing all 
 the pounds, bushels, gallons, etc. I therefore give the prefer- 
 ence to those plans which retain the foot and ounce.' 
 
 1 Jean Hyacinthe de Magellan (or, Magalhaens), originally an Augus- 
 tinian monk ; came to England in 1764 ; engaged in perfecting scientific 
 instruments (1723-1790).
 
 120 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 The war of the standards still rages metric, or decimal, 
 or no change. What each nation has is good enough for 
 it in the opinion of many of its people. Some day an 
 international commission will doubtless assemble to bring 
 order out of chaos. As far as the English-speaking race is 
 concerned, it seems that a decided improvement could 
 readily be affected with very trifling, indeed scarcely percep- 
 tible, changes. Especially is this so with money values. 
 Britain could merge her system with those of Canada and 
 America, by simply making her ' pound ' the exact value 
 of the American five dollars, it being now only ten pence 
 less ; her silver coinage one and two shillings equal to 
 quarter- and half-dollars, the present coin to be recoined 
 upon presentation, but meanwhile to pass current. Weights 
 and measures are more difficult to assimilate. Science 
 being world-wide, and knowing no divisions, should use 
 uniform terms. Alas ! at the distance of nearly a century 
 and a half we seem no nearer the prospect of a system of 
 universal weights and measures than in Watt's day, but 
 Watt's idea is not to be lost sight of for all that. He was 
 a seer who often saw what was to come. 
 
 We have referred to the absence of holidays in Watt's 
 strenuous life, but Birmingham was remarkable for a 
 number of choice spirits who formed the celebrated Lunar 
 Society, whose members were all devoted to the pursuit of 
 knowledge and mutually agreeable to one another. Besides 
 Watt and Boulton, there were Dr. Piiestley, discoverer of 
 oxygen gas, Dr. Darwin, Dr. Withering, Mr. Keir, Mr. 
 Galton, Mr. Wedgwood of Wedgwood ware fame, who had 
 monthly dinners at their respective houses hence the 
 ' Lunar ' Society. Dr. Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, who 
 arrived in Birmingham in 1780. has repeatedly mentioned 
 the great pleasure he had in having Watt for a neighbour. 
 He says : 
 
 ' I consider my settlement at Birmingham as the happiest 
 event in my life ; being highly favourable to every object 
 I had in view, philosophical or theological. In the former 
 respect I had the convenience of good workmen of every kind, 
 and the society of persons eminent for their knowledge of 
 chemistry, particularly Mr. Watt, Mr. Keir, and Dr. Withering.
 
 JAMES WATT 121 
 
 These, with Mr. Boulton and Dr. Darwin, who soon left us by 
 removing from Lichfield to Derby, Mr. Gallon, and afterwards 
 Mr. Johnson of Kenilworth, and myself, dined together every 
 month, calling ourselves The Lunar Society^ because the time 
 of our meeting was near the full-moon in order,' as he else- 
 where says, 'to have the benefit of its light in returning 
 home.' 
 
 Richard Lovell Edgeworth says of this distinguished 
 coterie : 
 
 1 By means of Mr. Keir 1 became acquainted with Dr. Small 
 of Birmingham, a man esteemed by all who knew him, and 
 by all who were admitted to his friendship beloved with no 
 common enthusiasm. Dr. Small formed a link which com- 
 bined Mr. Boulton, Mr. Watt, Dr. Darwin, Mr. Wedgwood, 
 Mr. Day, and myself together men of very different characters, 
 but all devoted to literature and science. This mutual intimacy 
 has never been broken but by death, nor have any of the 
 number failed to distinguish themselves in science or literature. 
 Some may think that I ought with due modesty to except 
 myself. Mr. Keir, with his knowledge of the world and good 
 sense ; Dr. Small, with his benevolence and profound sagacity ; 
 Wedgwood, with his increasing industry, experimental variety, 
 and calm investigation : Boulton, with his mobility, quick 
 perception, and bold adventure ; Watt, with his strong inven- 
 tive faculty, undeviating steadiness, and bold resources ; 
 Darwin, with his imagination, science, and poetical excellence; 
 and Day, with his unwearied research after truth, his integrity 
 and eloquence, proved altogether such a society as few men 
 have had the good fortune to live with ; such an assemblage 
 of friends, as fewer still have had the happiness to possess, 
 and keep through life.' 
 
 The society continued to exist until the beginning of 
 the century, 1800. Watt was the last surviving member. 
 The last reference is Dr. Priestley's dedication to it, in 
 1793, of one of his works, Experiments on the Generation 
 of Air from Water ; in which he says : 
 
 'There are few things that I more regret, in consequence of 
 my removal from Birmingham, than the loss of your society. 
 It both encouraged and enlightened me ; so that what I did 
 there of a philosophical kind ought in justice to be attributed 
 almost as much to you as to myself. From our cheerful 
 meetings I never absented myself voluntarily, and from my
 
 122 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 pleasing recollection they will never be absent. Should the 
 cause of our separation make it necessary for me to remove to 
 a still greater distance from you, I shall only think the more, 
 and with the more regret, of our past interviews. . . . Philo- 
 sophy engrossed us wholly. Politicians may think there are 
 no objects of any consequence besides those which immediately 
 interest them. But objects far superior to any of which they 
 have an idea engaged our attention, and the discussion of them 
 was accompanied with a satisfaction to which they are 
 strangers. Happy would it be for the world if their pursuits 
 were as tranquil, and their projects as innocent, and as friendly 
 to the best interests of mankind, as ours.' 
 
 That the partners, Boulton and Watt, had such pleasure 
 amid their lives of daily cares, all will be glad to know. 
 It was not all humdrum money-making, nor intense in- 
 venting. There was the Society of Gifted Minds, the 
 serene atmosphere of friendship in the high realms of 
 mutual regard, best recreation of all. 
 
 In 1786 quite a break in their daily routine took place. 
 In that year Messrs. Boulton and Watt visited Paris to meet 
 proposals for their erecting steam-engines in France under 
 an exclusive privilege. They were also to suggest im- 
 provements on the great hydraulic machine of Marly. 
 Before starting, the sagacious and patriotic Watt wrote to 
 Boulton : 
 
 'I think if either of us go to France, we should first wait 
 upon Mr. Pitt [Prime Minister], and let him know our errand 
 thither, that the tongue of slander may be silenced, all undue 
 suspicion removed, and ourselves rendered more valuable in 
 his eyes, because others desire to have us ! ' 
 
 They had a flattering reception in Paris from the 
 ministry, who seemed desirous that they should establish 
 engine-works in France. This they absolutely refused to 
 do, as being contrary to the interests of their country. It 
 may be feared we are not quite so scrupulous in our 
 day. On the other hand, refusal now would be fruitless, 
 it has become so easy to obtain plans, and even experts, to 
 build machines for any kind of product in any country. 
 Automatic machinery has almost dispelled the need for 
 so-called skilled labour. East Indians, Mexicans, Japanese,
 
 JAMES WATT 123 
 
 Chinese, all become more or less efficient workers with a 
 few months' experience. Manufacturing is therefore to 
 spread rapidly throughout the world. All nations may be 
 trusted to develop, and, if necessary, for a time protect, 
 their natural resources as a patriotic duty. Only when 
 prolonged trials have been made can it be determined 
 which nation can best and most cheaply provide the 
 articles for which raw material abounds. 
 
 The visit to Paris enabled Watt and Boulton to make 
 the acquaintance of the most eminent men of science, with 
 whom they exchanged ideas afterwards in frequent and 
 friendly correspondence. Watt described himself as being, 
 upon one occasion, ' drunk from morning to night with 
 Burgundy and undeserved praise.' The latter was always 
 a disconcerting draught for our subject; anything but 
 reference to his achievements for the modest, self-effacing 
 genius. 
 
 While in Paris Berthollet told Watt of his new method 
 of bleaching by chlorine, and gave him permission to 
 communicate it to his father-in-law, who adopted it in his 
 business, together with several improvements of Watt's 
 invention, the results of a long series of experiments. 
 Watt, writing to Mr. MacGregor, April 27, 1787, says: 
 
 ' In relation to the inventor, he is a man of science, a member 
 of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and a physician, not very 
 rich, a very modest and worthy man, and an excellent chemist. 
 My sole motives in meddling with it were to procure such 
 reward as I could to a man of merit who had made an exten- 
 sively useful discovery in the arts, and secondly, I had an 
 immediate view to your interest; as to myself, I had no 
 lucrative views whatsoever, it being a thing out of my way, 
 which both my business and my health prevented me from 
 pursuing further than it might serve for amusement when 
 unfit for more serious business. Lately, by a letter from the 
 inventor, he informs me that he gives up all intentions of 
 pursuing it with lucrative views, as he says he will not com- 
 promise his quiet and happiness by engaging in business, in 
 which, perhaps, he is right ; but if the discovery has real 
 merit, as I apprehend, he is certainly entitled to a generous 
 reward, which I would wish, for the honour of Britain, to 
 procure for him ; but I much fear, in the way you state it, that 
 nothing could be got worth his acceptance.'
 
 i2 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 France has been distinguished for men of science who 
 have thus refrained from profiting by their inventions. 
 Pasteur, in our day, perhaps the most famous of all, the 
 liver, not only of the simple, but of the ideal life, labouring 
 for the good of humanity service to man and taking for 
 himself the simple life, free from luxury, palace, estate, 
 and all the inevitable cares accompanying ostentatious 
 living. Berthollet preceded him. Like Agassiz, these gifted 
 souls were ' too busy to make money.' 
 
 In 1792, when Boulton had passed the allotted three- 
 score years and ten, and Watt was over threescore, they 
 made a momentous decision which brought upon them 
 several years of deep anxiety. Fortunately the sons of the 
 veterans who had recently been admitted to the business 
 proved of great service in managing the affair, and relieved 
 their parents of much labour and many journeys. Fortu- 
 nate indeed were Watt and Boulton in their partnership, 
 for they became friends first and partners afterward. 
 They were not less fortunate in each having a talented 
 son, who also became friends and partners like their fathers 
 before them. This decision was, that the infringers of their 
 patents were to be proceeded against. They had to appeal 
 to the law to protect their rights. 
 
 Watt met the apparently inevitable fate of inventors. 
 Rivals arose in various quarters to dispute his right to 
 rank as the originator of many improvements. No reflec- 
 tion need be made upon most rival claimants to inventions. 
 Some wonderful result is conceived to be within the range 
 of possibility, which, being obtained, will revolutionise 
 existing modes. A score of inventive minds are studying 
 the problem throughout the civilised world. Every day 
 or two some new idea flashes upon one of them and 
 vanishes, or is discarded after trial. One day the announce- 
 ment comes of triumphant success with the very same idea 
 slightly modified, the modification or addition, slight 
 though this may be, making all the difference between 
 failure and success. The man has arrived with the key 
 that opens the door of the treasure-house. He sets the 
 egg on end, perhaps by as obvious a plan as chipping the 
 end. There arises a chorus of strenuous claimants, each
 
 JAMES WATT 125 
 
 of whom had thought of that very device long ago. No 
 doubt they did. They are honest in their protests and 
 quite persuaded in their own minds that they, and not the 
 Watt of the occasion, are entitled to the honour of original 
 discovery. This very morning we read in the press a 
 letter from the son of Morse, vindicating his father's right 
 to rank as the father of the telegraph, a son of Vail, one 
 of his collaborators, having claimed that his father, and 
 not Morse, was the real inventor. The most august of all 
 bodies of men, since its decisions overrule both Con- 
 gress and President, the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, has shown rare wisdom from its inception, and 
 in no department more clearly than in that regarding 
 the rights of inventors. No court has had such expe- 
 rience with patent claims, for no nation has a tithe of the 
 number to deal with. Throughout its history, the court 
 has attached more and more importance to two points : 
 First, is the invention valuable ? Second, who proved 
 this in actual practice? These points largely govern its 
 decisions. 
 
 The law expenses of their suits seemed to Boulton and 
 Watt exorbitant, even in that age of low prices compared 
 to our own. One solicitor's bill was for no less than 
 ,6000, which caused Watt years afterwards, when speaking 
 of an enormous charge, to say that ' it would not have dis- 
 graced a London solicitor.' When we find, however, that 
 this was for four years' services, the London solicitor 
 appears in a different light. ' In the whole affair,' writes 
 Watt to his friend Dr. Black, January 15, 1797, 'nothing 
 was so grateful to me as the zeal of our friends and the 
 activity of our young men, which were unremitting.' 
 
 The first trial ended June 22, 1793, with a verdict for 
 Watt and Boulton by the jury, subject to the opinion of 
 the court as to the validity of the patent. On May 16, 
 1795, tne case came on for judgment, when unfortunately 
 the court was found divided, two for the patent and two 
 against. Another case was tried December 16, 1796, with 
 a special jury, before Lord Chief Justice Eyre ; the verdict 
 was again for the plaintiffs. Proceedings on a writ of 
 error had the effect of affirming the result by the unanimous
 
 ia6 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 opinion of the four judges, before whom it was ably and 
 fully argued on two occasions. 
 
 The testimony of Professor Robison, Watt's intimate 
 friend of youth in Glasgow, was understood to have been 
 deeply impressive, and to have had a decisive effect upon 
 judges and jury. 
 
 All the claims of \Vatt were thus triumphantly sustained. 
 The decision has always been considered of commanding 
 importance to the law of patents in Britain, and was of 
 vast consequence to the firm of Watt and Boulton 
 pecuniarily. Heavy damages and costs were due from the 
 actual defendants, and the large number of other infringers 
 were also liable for damages. As was to have been ex- 
 pected, however, the firm remembered that to be merciful 
 in the hour of victory and not to punish too hard a fallen 
 foe, was a cardinal virtue. The settlements they made 
 were considered most liberal and satisfactory to all. Watt 
 used frequently long afterwards to refer to his specifications 
 as his old and well-tried friends. So indeed they proved, 
 and many references to their wonderful efficiency were 
 made. 
 
 With the beginning of the new century, 1800, the original 
 partnership of the famous firm of Boulton and Watt ex- 
 pired, after a term of twenty-five years, as did the patents 
 of 1769 and 1775. The term of partnership had been 
 fixed with reference to the duration of the patents. Young 
 men in their prime, Watt at forty and Boulton about fifty 
 when they joined hands, after a quarter-century of unceas- 
 ing and anxious labour, were disposed to resign the cares 
 and troubles of business to their sons. The partnership 
 therefore was not renewed by them, but their respective 
 shares in the firm were agreed upon as the basis of a new 
 partnership between their sons, James Watt, Jr., Matthew 
 Robinson Boulton and Gregory Watt, all distinguished for 
 abilities of no mean order, and in a great degree already 
 conversant with the business, which their wise fathers 
 had seen fit for some years to entrust more and more to 
 them. 
 
 In nothing done by either of these two wise fathers is 
 more wisdom shown than in their sagacious, far-seeing
 
 JAMES WATT 127 
 
 policy in regard to their sons. As they themselves had 
 been taught to concentrate their energies upon useful 
 occupation, for which society would pay as for value 
 received, they had doubtless often conferred, and con- 
 cluded that was the happiest and best life for their sons, 
 instead of allowing them to fritter away the precious years 
 of youth in aimless frivolity, to be followed in later years 
 by a disappointing and humiliating old age. 
 
 So the partnership of Boulton and Watt was renewed in 
 the union of the sons. Gregory Watt's premature death 
 four years later was such a blow to his father that some 
 think he never was quite himself again. Gregory had 
 displayed brilliant talents in the higher pursuits of science 
 and literature, in which he took delight, and great things 
 had been predicted from him. With the other two sons 
 the business connection continued without change for 
 forty years, until, when old men, they also retired like 
 their fathers. They proved to be great managers, for not- 
 withstanding the cessation of the patents which opened 
 engine-building free to all, the business of the firm increased 
 and became much more profitable than it had ever been 
 before, although toward the close of the original partner- 
 ship, and upon the triumph gained in the patent suits, the 
 business became so profitable as fully to satisfy the 
 moderate desire of Watt, and to provide a sure source of 
 income for his sons. This met all his wishes and removed 
 the fears of becoming dependent that had so long haunted 
 him. 
 
 The continued and increasing success of the Soho works 
 was obviously owing to the new partners. They had some 
 excellent assistants, but in the foremost place among all of 
 them stands Murdock, Watt's able, faithful, and esteemed 
 assistant for many years, who, both intellectually and in 
 manly independence, was considered to exhibit no small 
 resemblance to his revered master and friend. Never 
 formally a partner in Soho (for he declined partnership, as 
 we have seen), he was placed on the footing of a partner 
 by the sons in 1810, without risk, and received ^1000 per 
 annum. From 1830 he lived in peaceful retirement, and 
 passed away in 1839. His remains were deposited in
 
 128 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Handsworth Church, near those of his friends and em- 
 ployers, Watt and Boulton (the one spot on earth he could 
 have most desired). ' A bust by Chantrey serves to per- 
 petuate the remembrance of his manly and intelligent 
 features, and of the mind of which these were a pleasing 
 index.' We may imagine the shades of Watt and Boulton, 
 those friends so appropriately laid together, greeting their 
 friend and employee : ' Well done, thou good and faithful 
 servant ! ' If ever there was one, Murdock was the man, 
 and Captain Jones his fellow. 
 
 We have referred to Watt's suggestion of the screw- 
 propeller, and of the sketch of it sent to Dr. Small, Sep- 
 tember 30, 1 770. The only record of any earlier suggestion 
 of steam is that of Jonathan Hulls, in 1736, which he 
 set forth in a pamphlet entitled 'A Description and 
 Draught of a Newly Invented Machine for carrying vessels 
 or ships out of or into any Harbour, Port or River, against 
 Wind or Tide in a Calm' : London, 1737. He described 
 a large barge, fitted with a Newcomen engine, to be em- 
 ployed as a tug, fitted with fan (or paddle) wheels, towing 
 a ship of war, but nothing further appears to have been 
 done. Writing on this subject, Mr. Williamson says : 
 
 ' During his last visit to Greenock in 1816, Mr. Watt, in com- 
 pany with his friend, Mr. Walkinshaw whom the author some 
 years afterwards heard relate the circumstance made a voyage 
 in a steamboat as far as Rothesay and back to Greenock an 
 excursion which, in those days, occupied the greater portion of 
 a whole day. Mr. Watt entered into conversation with the 
 engineer of the boat, pointing out to him the method of " back- 
 ing" the engine. With a footrule he demonstrated to him 
 what was meant. Not succeeding, however, he at last, under 
 the impulse of the ruling passion, threw off his overcoat, and, 
 putting his hand to the engine himself, showed the practical 
 application of his lecture. Previously to this, the " back-stroke " 
 of the steamboat engme was either unknown or not generally 
 known. The practice was to stop the engine entirely a con- 
 siderable time before the vessel reached the point of mooring, 
 in order to allow for the gradual and natural diminution of her 
 speed.' 
 
 The naval review at Spithead, upon the close of the 
 Crimean war in 1856, was the greatest up to that time.
 
 JAMES WATT 129 
 
 Ten vessels out of two hundred and fifty still had not steam 
 power, but almost all the others were propelled by the 
 screw the spiral oar car of Watt's letter of 1770 a red- 
 letter day for the inventor. 
 
 Watt's early interest in locomotive steam-carriages, dating 
 from Robison's having thrown out the idea to him, was 
 never lost. On August 12, 1768, Dr. Small writes to Watt, 
 referring to the ' peculiar improvements in them ' that the 
 latter had made previous to that date. Seven months later 
 he apprises Watt that ' a patent for moving wheel-carriages 
 by steam has been taken out by one Moore,' adding, ' this 
 comes of thy delays ; do come to England with all possible 
 speed.' Watt replied, ' If linen-draper Moore does not use 
 my engine to drive his chaises, he can't drive them by 
 steam.' Here Watt hit the nail on the head ; as with the 
 steamship, so with the locomotive, his steam-engine was 
 the indispensable power. In 1786 he states that he has a 
 carriage model of some size in hand, ' and am resolved to 
 try if God will work a miracle in favour of these carriages.' 
 Watt's doubt was based on the fact that they would take 
 twenty pounds of coal and two cubic feet of water per 
 horse-power on the common roads. 
 
 Another of Watt's recreations in his days of semi-retire- 
 ment was the improvement of lamps. He wrote to the 
 famous inventor of the Argand burner fully upon the sub- 
 ject in August 1787, and constructed some lamps which 
 proved great successes. 
 
 The following year he invented an instrument for deter- 
 mining the specific gravities of liquids, which was generally 
 adopted. 
 
 One of Watt's inventions was a new method of readily 
 measuring distances by telescope, which he used in making 
 his various surveys for canals. Such instruments are in 
 general use to-day. Brough's treatise on Mining (loth ed., 
 p. 228) gives a very complete account of them, and states 
 that ' the original instrument of this class is that invented 
 by James Watt in 1771.' 
 
 In his leisure hours Watt invented an ingenious machine 
 for drawing in perspective, using the double parallel ruler, 
 then very little known and not at all used as far as Watt
 
 1 3 o FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 knew. Watt reports having made from fifty to eighty of 
 these machines, which went to various parts of the world. 
 
 In 1810 Watt informs Berthollet that for several years he 
 had felt unable, owing to the state of his health, to make 
 chemical experiments. But idle he could not be ; he must 
 be at work upon something. As he often said, ' without a 
 hobby-horse, what is life?' So the saying is reported, but 
 we may conclude that the ' horse ' is here an interpolation, 
 for the difference between ' a horse ' and ' a hobby ' is 
 radical a man can get off a horse. 
 
 Watt's next ' hobby ' fortunately became an engrossing 
 occupation and kept him alert. This was a machine for 
 copying sculpture. A machine he had seen in Paris for 
 tracing and multiplying the dies of medals suggested the 
 other. After much labour and many experiments he did 
 get some measure of success, and made a large head of 
 Locke in yellow wood, and a small head of his friend Adam 
 Smith. 
 
 Long did Watt toil at the new hobby in the garret where 
 it had been created, but the garret proved too hot in 
 summer and too cold in winter. March 14, 1810, he writes 
 to Berthollet and Leveque : 
 
 ' I still do a little in mechanics : a part of which, if I live to 
 complete it, I shall have the honour of communicating to my 
 friends in France.' 
 
 He went steadily forward and succeeded in making 
 some fine copies in 1814. For one of Sappho he gives 
 dates and the hours required for various parts, making a 
 total of thirty-nine. Some censorious Sabbatarians dis- 
 covered that the day he was employed one hour ' doing 
 her breast with th drill ' was Sabbath, which, in one who 
 belonged to a strict Scottish Covenanter family, betokened 
 a sad fall from grace. When we consider that his health 
 was then precarious, that he was debarred from chemical 
 experiments, and depended solely upon mechanical sub- 
 jects ; that in all probability it was a stormy day (Sunday, 
 February 3, 1811), knowing also that 'Satan finds some 
 mischief still for idle hands to do,' we hope our readers 
 will pardon him for yielding to the irresistible temptation,
 
 JAMES WATT 131 
 
 even if on the holy Sabbath day for once he could not 
 'get off' his captivating hobby. 
 
 The historical last workshop of the great worker, with 
 all its contents, remains open to the public to-day just as 
 it was when he passed away. Pilgrims from many lands 
 visit it, as Shakespeare's birthplace, Burns's cottage, and 
 Scott's Abbotsford attract their many thousands yearly. 
 We recommend our readers to add to these the garret of 
 Watt in their pilgrimages.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE RECORD OF THE STEAM-ENGINE 
 
 THE Soho works, up to January 1824, had completed 1164 
 steam-engines, of a nominal horse-power of 25,945 ; from 
 January 1824 to 1854, 441 engines, nominal horse-power 
 25,278, making the total number 1605, of nominal horse- 
 power 51,223, and real horse-power 167,319. Mulhall 
 gives the total steam-power of the world as 50,150,000 
 horse-power in 1888. In 1880 it was only 34,150,000. 
 Thus in eight years it increased, say, fifty per cent. As- 
 suming the same rate of increase from 1888 to 1905, a 
 similar period, it is to-day 75,000,000 nominal, which 
 Engel says may be taken as one-half the effective power 
 (vide Mulhall, Steam, p. 546), the real horse-power in 1905 
 being 150,000,000. One horse-power raises ten tons a 
 height of twelve inches per minute. Working eight hours, 
 this is about 5000 tons daily, or twelve times a man's work, 
 and as the engine never tires, and can be run constantly, 
 it follows that each horse-power it can exert equals thirty- 
 six men's work ; but, allowing for stoppages, let us say 
 thirty men. The engines of a large ocean greyhound of 
 35,000 horse-power, running constantly from port to port, 
 equal to three relays of twelve men per horse-power, are 
 daily exerting the power of 1,260,000 men, or 105,000 
 horses. Assuming that all the steam-engines in the world 
 upon the average work double the hours of men, then 
 the 150,000,000 horse-power in the world, each equal to 
 two relays of twelve men per horse-power, exerts the power 
 of 3,600,000,000 of men. There are only one-tenth as 
 many male adults in the world, estimating one in five of 
 the population. 
 
 If we assume that all steam-engines work an average of
 
 JAMES WATT 133 
 
 only eight hours in the twenty-four, as men and horses do 
 (those on duty longer hours are not under continuous 
 exertion), it still follows that the 150,000,000 of effective 
 steam-power, each doing the work of twelve men, equals 
 the work of 1,800,000,000 of men, or of 150,000,000 of 
 horses. 
 
 Engel estimated that in 1880 the value of world industries 
 dependent upon steam was ^"6,257,000,000, and that in 
 1888 it had reached ^8,710,000,000. It is to-day doubt- 
 less more than ^i 2,000,000,000 a great increase,no doubt, 
 over 1880 but the one figure is as astounding as the other, 
 for both mean nothing that can be grasped. 
 
 The chief steam-using countries are America, 14,400,000 
 horse-power in 1888; Britain, 9,200,000 horse-power 
 nominal. If we add the British colonies and dependencies, 
 7,120,000 horse-power, the English-speaking race had 
 three-fifths of all the steam-power of the world. 
 
 In 1840 Britain had only 620,000 horse-power nominal ; 
 the United States 760,000 ; the whole world had only 
 1,650,000 horse-power. To-day it has 75,000,000 nominal. 
 So rapidly has steam extended its sway over most of the 
 earth in less than the span of a man's life. There has 
 never been any development in the world's history compar- 
 able to this, nor can we imagine that such a rapid transfor- 
 mation can ever come in the future. What the future is 
 finally to bring forth even imagination is unable to con- 
 ceive. No bounds can be set to its forthcoming possible, 
 even probable, wonders, but as such a revolution as steam 
 has brought must come from a superior force capable of 
 displacing steam, this would necessarily be a much longer 
 task than steam had in occupying an entirely new field 
 without a rival. 
 
 The contrast between Newcomen and Watt is interest- 
 ing. The Newcomen engine consumed twenty-eight pounds 
 of coal per horse-power, and made not exceeding three 
 to four strokes per minute, the piston moving about 
 fifty feet per minute. To-day, steam marine engines on 
 one and one-third pounds of coal per horse-power the 
 monster ships using less make from seventy to ninety 
 revolutions per minute. ' Destroyers ' reach 400 per
 
 i 3 4 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 minute. Small steam-engines, it is stated, have attained 
 600 revolutions per minute. The piston to-day is supposed 
 to travel moderately when at 1000 feet per minute, in a 
 cylinder three feet long. This gives 166 revolutions per 
 minute. With coal (in America) under the boilers costing 
 four shillings per net ton, from say five pounds of coal for 
 one half-penny, there is one horse-power for three hours, 
 or a day and a night of continuous running for fourpence. 
 
 Countless millions of men and of horses would be useless 
 for the work of the steam-engine, for the seemingly 
 miraculous quality steam possesses, that permits concen- 
 tration, is as requisite as its expansive powers. One 
 hundred thousand horse -power, or several hundred 
 thousand horse-power, is placed under one roof and 
 directed to the task required. Sixty-four thousand horse- 
 power is concentrated in the hold of the great steam- 
 ships now building. All this stupendous force is evolved, 
 concentrated, and regulated by science from the most un- 
 promising of substances, cold water. Nothing man has 
 discovered or imagined is to be named with the steam- 
 engine. It has no fellow. Franklin capturing the lightning, 
 Morse annihilating space with the telegraph, Bell trans- 
 mitting speech through the air by the telephone, are not 
 less mysterious being more ethereal, perhaps in one sense 
 they are even more so ; still, the labour of the world per- 
 formed by heating cold water places Watt and his steam- 
 engine in a class apart by itself. Many are the inventions 
 for applying power, his creates the power it applies. 
 
 Whether the steam-engine has reached its climax, and 
 gas, oil, or other agents are to be used extensively for 
 power in the near future, is a question now debated in 
 scientific circles. Much progress has been made in using 
 these substitutes, and more is probable as one obstacle 
 after another is overcome. Gas especially is coming for- 
 ward, and oil is freely used. For reasons before stated, 
 it seems to the writer that, where coal is plentiful, the day- 
 is distant when steam will not continue to be the principal 
 source of power. It will be a world-surpriser that beats 
 one horse-power developed by one pound of coal. The 
 power to do much more than this, however, lies theoreti- 
 cally in gas, but there come these wise words of Arago to
 
 JAMES WATT 135 
 
 mind : ' Persons whose whole lives have been devoted to 
 speculative labours are not aware how great the distance 
 is between a scheme, apparently the best concerted, and its 
 realisation.' So true ! Watt's ideas in the brain, and the 
 steam-engine that he had to evolve during nine long years, 
 are somewhat akin to the great gulf between resolve and 
 performance, the 'good resolution' that soothes and the 
 ' act ' that exalts. 
 
 The steam-engine is Scotland's chief, though not her 
 only, contribution to the material progress of the world. 
 Watt was its inventor, we might almost write creator, so 
 multiform were the successive steps. Symington by the 
 steamship stretched one arm of it over the water ; Stephen- 
 son by the locomotive stretched the other over the land. 
 Thus was the world brought under its sway, and conditions 
 of human life transformed. Watt and Symington were 
 born in Scotland within a few miles of each other. 
 Stephenson's forebears moved from Scotland south of the 
 line previous to his birth, as Fulton's parents removed 
 from Scotland to America, so that both Stephenson and 
 Fulton could boast with Gladstone that the blood in their 
 veins was Scottish. 
 
 The history of the world has no parallel to the change 
 effected by the inventions of these three men. Strange 
 that little Scotland, with only 1,500,000 people in 1791, 
 about one-half the population of New York city, should 
 have been the mother of such a triad, and that her second 
 'mighty three' (Wallace, Bruce, and Burns always first) 
 should have been of the same generation, working upon 
 the earth near each other at the same time. The Watt 
 engine appeared in 1782; the steamship in 1801; the 
 locomotive thirteen years later, in 1814. Thus thirty-two 
 years after its appearance, Watt's steam-engine had con- 
 quered both sea and land. 
 
 The sociologist may theorise, but plain people will 
 remember that men do not gather grapes from thorns, 
 nor figs from thistles. There must be something in the 
 soil which produces such men ; something in the poverty 
 that compels exertion ; something in the ' land of the 
 mountain and the flood ' that stirs the imagination ; some-
 
 136 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 thing in the history of centuries of struggle for national 
 and spiritual independence ; much in the system of com- 
 pulsory and universal free education ; something of all 
 these elements mingling in the blood that tells, and enables 
 Scotland to contribute so largely to the progress of the 
 world. 
 
 Strange reticence is shown by all Watt's historians re- 
 garding his religious and political views. Williamson, the 
 earliest author of his memoirs, is full of interesting facts 
 obtained from people in Greenock who had known Watt 
 well. The hesitation shown by him as to Watt's orthodoxy 
 in his otherwise highly eulogistic tribute, attracts attention. 
 He says : 
 
 'We could desire to know more of the state of those affec- 
 tions which are more purely spiritual by their nature and 
 origin his disposition to those supreme truths of Revelation, 
 which alone really elevate and purify the soul. In the absence 
 of much information of a very positive kind in regard to such 
 points of character and life, we instinctively revert in a case 
 like this to the principles and maxims of an infantile and early 
 training. Remembering the piety portrayed in the ancestors 
 of this great man, one cannot but cling to the hope that his 
 many virtues reposed on a substratum of more than merely 
 moral excellence. Let us cherish the hope that the calm 
 which rested on the spirit of the pilgrim . . . was one that 
 caught its radiance from a far higher sphere than that of the 
 purest human philosophy.' 
 
 Watt's breaking of the Sabbath before recorded must 
 have seemed to that stern Calvinist a heinous sin, justify- 
 ing grave doubts of Watt's spiritual condition, his ' moral 
 excellence' to the contrary notwithstanding. Williamson's 
 estimate of moral excellence had recently been described 
 by Burns : 
 
 ' But then, nae thanks to him for a' that ; 
 
 Nae godly symptom ye can ca' that ; 
 
 It 's naething but a milder feature 
 
 Of our poor, sinfu', corrupt nature : 
 
 Ye '11 get the best o' moral works, 
 
 "Mang black Gentoos and pagan Turks, 
 
 Or hunters wild on Ponotaxi, 
 
 Wha never heard of orthodoxy. ' 
 
 Williamson's doubts had much stronger foundation in 
 Watt's non-attendance at church, for, as we shall see from
 
 JAMES WATT 137 
 
 his letter to de Luc, July 1788, he had never attended 
 the 'meeting-house' (dissenting church) in Birmingham, 
 although he claimed to be still a member of the Presby- 
 terian body in declining the shrievalty. 
 
 It seems probable that Watt, in his theological views, 
 like Priestley and others of the Lunar Society, was in 
 advance of his age, and more or less in accord with Burns, 
 who was then astonishing his countrymen. Perhaps he 
 had forestalled Dean Stanley's advice in his rectorial address 
 to the students of St. Andrews University, ' Go to Burns 
 for your theology,' yet he remained a deeply religious 
 man to the end, as we see from his letter (page 144), at the 
 age of seventy-six. 
 
 We know that politically Watt was in advance of his 
 times, for the Prime Minister pronounced him a 'sad 
 radical.' He was with Burns politically at all events. 
 Watt's eldest son, then in Paris, was carried away by the 
 French Revolution, and Muirhead suggests that the Prime 
 Minister must have confounded father and son, but it 
 seems unreasonable to suppose that he could have been 
 so misled as to mistake the doings of the famous Watt in 
 Birmingham for those of his impulsive son in France. 
 
 The French Revolution exerted a powerful influence in 
 Britain, especially in the north of England and south of 
 Scotland, which have much in common. The Lunar 
 Society of Birmingham was intensely interested. At one 
 of the meetings in the summer of 1788, held at her father's 
 house, Mrs. Schimmelpenninck records that Mr. Boulton 
 presented to the company his son, just returned from a 
 long sojourn in Paris, who gave a vivid account of pro- 
 ceedings there, Watt and Dr. Priestley being present. A 
 few months later the Revolution broke out. Young Harry 
 Priestley, a son of the doctor's, one evening burst into 
 the drawing-room, waving his hat and crying : ' Hurrah ! 
 Liberty, Reason, Brotherly Love for ever! Down with 
 kingcraft and priestcraft ! The majesty of the people for 
 ever ! France is free ! ' Dr. Priestley was deeply stirred 
 and became the most prominent of all in the cause of 
 the rights of man. He hailed the acts of the National 
 Assembly abolishing monarchy, nobility, and church. He 
 was often engaged in discussions with the local clergy on
 
 138 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 theological dogmas. He wrote a pamphlet upon the French 
 Revolution, and Burke attacked him in the House of 
 Commons. All this naturally concentrated local opposi- 
 tion upon him as leader. The enthusiasts mistakenly deter- 
 mined to have a public dinner to celebrate the anniversary 
 of the Revolution, and no less than eighty gentlemen 
 attended, although many advised against it. Priestley 
 himself was not present. A mob collected outside and 
 demolished the windows. The cry was raised, 'To the 
 new meeting-house ! ' the chapel in which Priestley minis- 
 tered. The chapel was set on fire. Thence the riot 
 proceeded to Priestley's house. The doctor and his 
 family, being warned, had left shortly before. The house 
 was at the mercy of the mob, which broke in, destroyed 
 furniture, chemical laboratory and library, and finally set 
 fire to the house. Some of the very best citizens suffered 
 in like manner. Mr. Ryland, one of the most munificent 
 benefactors of the town, Mr. Taylor, the banker, and 
 Hutton, the estimable bookseller, were among the number. 
 The house of Dr. Withering, member of the Lunar Society, 
 was entered, but the timely arrival of troops saved it from 
 destruction. The members of the Lunar Society, or the 
 'lunatics,' as they were popularly called, were especially 
 marked for attack. The mob cried, ' No philosophers ! ' 
 1 Church and King for ever ! ' All this put Boulton and 
 AVatt upon their guard, for they were prominent members 
 of the Society. They called their workmen together, 
 explained the criminality of the rioters, and placed arms in 
 their hands on their promise to defend them if attacked. 
 Meanwhile everything portable was packed up ready to be 
 removed. 
 
 Watt wrote to Mr. de Luc, July 19, 1791 : 
 
 ' Though our principles, which are well known, as friends to 
 the established government and enemies of republican prin- 
 ciples, should have been our protection from a mob whose 
 watchword was Church and King, yet our safety was prin- 
 cipally owing to most of the dissenters living south of the 
 town ; for after the first moment they did not seem over-nice 
 in their discrimination of religion and principles. I, among 
 others, was pointed out as a Presbyterian, though I never was 
 in a meeting-house [Dissenting Church] in Birmingham, and
 
 JAMES WATT 139 
 
 Mr. Boulton is well known as a Churchman. We had every- 
 thing most portable packed up, fearing the worst. However, 
 all is well with us.' 
 
 From all this we gather the impression that radical 
 principles had permeated the leading minds of Birmingham 
 to a considerable extent, probably around the Lunar Society 
 district in greater measure than in other quarters, although 
 clubs of ardent supporters were formed in London and the 
 principal provincial cities. 
 
 In the political field, we have only one appearance of 
 Watt reported. Early in 1784 we find him taking the 
 lead in getting up a loyal address to the king on the 
 appointment as Prime Minister of Pitt, who proposed to 
 tax coal, iron, copper, and other raw materials of manu- 
 facture to the amount of ; 1,000,000 per year a consider- 
 able sum in those days when manufacturing was in its 
 infancy. Boulton also joined in opposition. They wisely 
 held that for a manufacturing nation ' to tax raw materials 
 was suicidal : let taxes be laid upon luxuries, upon vices, 
 and, if you like, upon property ; tax riches when got, but 
 not the means of getting them. Of all things don't cut 
 open the hen that lays the golden eggs.' 
 
 Watt's services were enlisted, and he drew up a paper for 
 circulation upon the subject. The policy failed, and soon 
 after Pitt was converted to sounder doctrines by Adam 
 Smith's Wealth of Nations. Free trade has ruled Britain 
 ever since, and, being the country that could manufacture 
 cheapest, and, indeed, the only manufacturing country for 
 many years, this policy has made her the richest, per 
 capita, of all nations. The day may be not far distant 
 when America, soon to be the cheapest manufacturing 
 country for many, as it already is for a few, staple articles, 
 will be crying for free trade, and urging free entrance to 
 the markets of the world. To tax the luxuries and vices, 
 to tax wealth got and not in the making, as proposed by 
 Watt and Boulton, is the policy to follow. Watt shows 
 himself to have been a profound economist. 
 
 Watt had cause for deep anxiety for his eldest son, 
 James, who had taken an active part in the agitation. He 
 and his friend, Mr. Cooper of Manchester, 1 were appointed 
 1 Thomas Cooper, M.D. (1759-1840).
 
 1 40 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 deputies by the ' Constitutional Society ' to proceed to 
 Paris and present an address of congratulation to the 
 Jacobin Club. Young Watt was carried away, and became 
 intimate with the leaders. Southey says he actually pre- 
 vented a duel between Danton and Robespierre by appear- 
 ing on the ground and remonstrating with them, pointing 
 out that if either fell the cause must suffer. 
 
 Upon young Watt's return, king's messengers arrived in 
 Birmingham and seized persons concerned in seditious 
 correspondence. Watt suggests that Boulton should see 
 his son and arrange for his leaving for America, or some 
 foreign land, for a time. This proved to be unnecessary ; 
 his son was not arrested, and in a short time all was for- 
 gotten. He entered the works with Boulton's son as 
 partner, and became an admirable manager. To-day we 
 regard his mild republicanism, his alliance with Jacobin 
 leaders, and especially his bold intervention in the quarrel 
 between two of the principal actors in the tragedy of the 
 French Revolution, as 'a ribbon in the cap of youth.' 
 That his douce father did the same and was proud of his 
 eldest born seems probable. Our readers will also judge 
 for themselves whether the proud father had not himself a 
 strong liking for democratic principles, ' the rights of the 
 people,' ' the royalty of man,' which Burns was then 
 blazing forth, and held such sentiments as quite justified 
 the Prime Minister's accusation that he was ' a sad radical. ' 
 
 In Britain, since Watt's day, all traces of opposition to 
 monarchy aroused by the French Revolution have dis- 
 appeared as completely as the monarchy of King George. 
 The 'limited monarchy' of to-day, developed during the 
 admirable reign of Queen Victoria, has taken its place. 
 The French abolished monarchy by a frontal attack upon 
 the citadel, involving serious loss. Not such the policy 
 of the colder Briton. He won his great victory, losing 
 nothing, by flanking the position. That the king ' could 
 do no wrong,' is a doctrine almost coeval with modern 
 history, flowing from the ' divine right ' of kings, and, as 
 such, was quietly accepted. It needed only to be properly 
 harnessed to become a very serviceable agent for registering 
 the people's will. 
 
 It was obvious that the acceptance of the doctrine that
 
 JAMES WATT 141 
 
 the king could do no wrong involved the duty of proving 
 the truth of the axiom, and it was equally obvious that the 
 only possible way of doing this was that the king should 
 not be allowed to do anything. Hence he was made the 
 mouthpiece of his ministers, and it is not the king, but 
 they, who, being fallible men, may occasionally err. The 
 monarch, in losing power to do anything, has gained power 
 to influence everything. The ministers hold office through 
 the approval of the House of Commons. Members of 
 that House are elected by the people. Thus stands govern- 
 ment in Britain ' broad-based upon the people's will.' 
 
 All that the revolutionists of Watt's day desired has, in 
 substance, been obtained, and Britain has become in truth 
 a 'crowned republic,' with 'government of the people, for 
 the people, and by the people.' This steady and beneficent 
 development was peaceably attained. The difference be- 
 tween the French and British methods is that between 
 revolution and evolution. 
 
 In America's political domain a similar evolution has 
 been even more silently at work than in Britain during the 
 past century, and is not yet exhausted the transformation 
 of a loose confederacy of sovereign states, with different 
 laws, into one solid government, which assumes control 
 and ensures uniformity over one department after another. 
 The centripetal forces grow stronger with the years ; power 
 leaves the individual states and drifts to Washington, as 
 the necessity for each successive change becomes apparent. 
 In the regulation of interstate commerce, of trusts, and in 
 other fields, final authority over the whole land gravitates 
 more and more to Washington. It is a beneficent move- 
 ment, likely to result in uniform national laws upon many 
 subjects in which present diversity creates confusion. 
 Marriage and divorce laws, bankruptcy laws, corporation 
 charter privileges, and many other important questions 
 may be expected to become uniform under this evolu- 
 tionary process. The supreme court decision that the 
 union was an indissoluble union of indissoluble states, 
 carries with it finally uniform regulation of many interstate 
 problems, in every respect salutary, and indispensable for 
 the perfect union of the American people.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 WATT IN OLD AGE 
 
 WATT gracefully glided into old age. This is the great 
 test of success in life. To every stage a laurel, but to 
 happy old age the crown. It was different with his friend 
 Boulton, who continued to frequent the works and busy 
 himself in affairs much as before, although approaching 
 his eightieth year. Watt could still occupy himself in his 
 garret, where his ' mind to him a kingdom was,' upon the 
 scientific pursuits which charmed him. He revisited Paris 
 in 1802 and renewed acquaintance with his old friends, 
 with whom he spent five weeks. He frequently treated 
 himself to tours throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. 
 In the latter country he purchased a property which 
 attracted him by its beauties, and which he greatly im- 
 proved. It became at a later date, under his son, quite 
 an extensive estate, much diversified, and not lacking 
 altogether the stern grandeur of his native Scotland. He 
 planted trees and took intense delight in his garden, being 
 very fond of flowers. The farmhouse gave him a comfort- 
 able home upon his visits. The fine woods which now 
 richly clothe the valley and agreeably diversify the river 
 and mountain scenery were chiefly planted under his 
 superintendence, many by his own hand. In short, the 
 blood in his veins, the lessons of his childhood that made 
 him a 'child of the mist,' happy in roaming among the 
 hills, reasserted their power in old age as the Celtic 
 element powerfully does. He turned more and more to 
 Nature, 
 
 ' That never did betray the heart that loved her.' 
 
 We see him strolling through his woods, and imagine 
 
 142
 
 JAMES WATT 143 
 
 him crooning to himself from that marvellous memory that 
 forgot no gem : 
 
 ' For I have learned 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 A lover of the meadows and the woods 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth.' 
 
 Twice Watt was requested to undertake the honour of 
 the shrievalty: in 1803 that of Staffordshire, and in 1816 
 that of Radnorshire, both of which were positively 
 declined. 
 
 He finally found it necessary to declare that he was not 
 a member of the Church of England, but of the Presby- 
 terian Church of Scotland, a reason which in that day was 
 conclusive. 
 
 In 1816 he was in his eighty-first year, and no difficulty 
 seems then to have been found for excusing him, for 
 it seems the assumption of the duties was compulsory. It 
 was ' the voice of age resistless in its feebleness.' 
 
 The day had come when Watt awakened to one of the 
 saddest of all truths, that his friends were one by one 
 rapidly passing away, the circle ever narrowing, the few 
 whose places never could be filled becoming fewer, he in 
 the centre left more and more alone. Nothing grieved 
 Watt so much as this. In 1794 his partner, Roebuck, 
 fell; in 1799 his inseparable friend and supporter in his 
 hour of need, Dr. Black, and also Withering of the Lunar 
 Society; and in 1802 Darwin 'of the silver song,' one of 
 his earliest English friends. In 1804 his brilliant son 
 Gregory died a terrible shock. In 1805 his first Glasgow
 
 144 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 College intimate, Robison ; Dr. Thomas Beddoes in 1808 ; 
 Boulton, his partner, in 1809; Dr. Wilson in 1811; de 
 Luc in 1817. Many other friends of less distinction fell 
 in these years who were not less dear to him. He says, 
 ' by one friend's withdrawing after another,' he felt himself 
 ' in danger of standing alone among strangers, the son of 
 later times.' 
 
 He writes to Boulton on November 23, 1802 : 
 
 ' We cannot help feeling, with deep regret, the circle of our 
 old friends gradually diminishing, while our ability to increase 
 it by new ones is equally diminished ; but perhaps it is a wise 
 dispensation of Providence so to diminish our enjoyments in 
 this world, that when our turn comes we may leave it without 
 regret.' 
 
 He writes to another correspondent, July 12, 1810 : 
 
 ' I, in particular, have reason to thank God that He has pre- 
 served me so well as I am, to so late a period, while the greater 
 part of my contemporaries, healthier and younger men, have 
 passed " the bourne from which no traveller returns." It is, 
 however, a painful contemplation to see so many who were 
 dear to us pass away before us ; and our consolation should be, 
 that as Providence has been pleased to prolong our life, we 
 should render ourselves as useful to society as we can while we 
 live.' 
 
 And again, when seventy-six years of age, January 1812, 
 he writes : 
 
 ' On these subjects I can offer no other consolations than 
 what are derived from religion : they have only gone before us 
 a little while, in that path we all must tread, and we should be 
 thankful they were spared so long to their friends and the 
 world.' 
 
 Sir Walter Scott declares : 
 
 'That is the worst part of life when its earlier path is trod. 
 If my limbs get stiff, my walks are made shorter, and my 
 rides slower ; if my eyes fail me, I can use glasses and a large 
 print ; if I get a little deaf, I comfort myself that except in 
 a few instances I shall be no great loser by missing one full 
 half of what is spoken ; but I feel the loneliness of age "when 
 my companions and friends are taken from me}
 
 JAMES WATT 145 
 
 All his life, until retiring from business, Watt's care was 
 to obtain sufficient for the support of himself and family 
 upon the most modest scale. He had no surplus to devote 
 to ends beyond self, but as soon as he retired with a small 
 competence it was different, and we accordingly find him 
 promptly beginning to apply some portion of his still small 
 revenue to philanthropical ends. Naturally, his thoughts 
 reverted first to his native town and the university to which 
 he owed so much. 
 
 In 1808 he founded the Watt Prize in Glasgow 
 University, saying : 
 
 ' Entertaining a due sense of the many favours conferred upon 
 me by the University of Glasgow, I wish to leave them some 
 memorial of my gratitude, and, at the same time, to excite a 
 spirit of inquiry and exertion among the students of Natural 
 Philosophy and Chemistry attending the College ; which 
 appears to me the more useful, as the very existence of Britain, 
 as a nation, seems to me, in great measure, to depend upon 
 her exertions in science and in the arts.' 
 
 The University conferred the degree of LL. D. upon him 
 in 1 7 74, and its great engineering laboratory bears his name. 
 
 In 1816 he made a donation to the town of Greenock 
 for scientific books, stating it to be his intention ' to form 
 the beginning of a scientific library for the instruction of 
 the youth of Greenock, in the hope of prompting others to 
 add to it, and of rendering his townsmen as eminent for 
 their knowledge as they are for their spirit of enterprise.' 
 This has grown to be a library containing 15,000 volumes, 
 and is a valuable adjunct of the Watt Institution, founded 
 by his son in memory of his father, which is to-day the 
 educational centre of Greenock. Its entrance is adorned 
 by a remarkably fine statue of Watt, funds for which were 
 raised by public subscription. 
 
 Many societies honoured the great inventor. He was a 
 fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal 
 Society of London, Member of the Batavian Society, 
 correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences, and 
 was one of the eight Foreign Associates of the French 
 Academy of Sciences. 
 
 Watt's almost morbid dislike of publicity leaves many
 
 i 4 6 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 acts of kindness and charity hidden from all save the 
 recipients. Muirhead assures us that such gifts as we 
 can well believe were not wanting. Watt's character 
 as a kindly neighbour always stood high. He was one of 
 those 'who will not receive a reward for that for which 
 God accounts Himself a debtor persons that dare trust 
 God with their charity, and without a witness.' 
 
 In the autumn of 1819 an illness of no great apparent 
 severity caused some little anxiety to Watt's family, and 
 was soon recognised by himself as the messenger sent 
 to apprise him of his end. This summons he met with 
 the calm and tranquil mind, that, looking backward, could 
 have found little of serious nature to repent, and looking 
 forward, found nothing to fear. ' He often expressed his 
 gratitude to the Giver of All Good who had so signally 
 prospered the work of his hands and blessed him with 
 length of days and riches and honour.' On August 19, 
 1819, aged eighty-three, in his own home at Heathfield, he 
 tranquilly breathed his last, deeply mourned by all who 
 were privileged to know him. In the parish churchyard, 
 alongside of Boulton, he was most appropriately laid to rest. 
 Thus the two strong men, life-long friends and partners, 
 who had never had a serious difference, ' lovely and pleasant 
 in their lives, in their death were not divided.' 
 
 It may be doubted whether there be on record so 
 charming a business connection as that of Boulton and 
 Watt; in their own increasingly close union for twenty- 
 five years, and, at its expiration, in the renewal of that 
 union in their sons under the same title; in their sons' 
 close union as friends without friction as in the first 
 generation ; in the wonderful progress of the world result- 
 ing from their works; in their lying down side by side in 
 death upon the bosom of mother earth in the quiet 
 churchyard, as they had stood side by side in the battle of 
 life; and in the faithful servant Murdock joining them at 
 the last, as he had joined them in his prime. In the sweet 
 and precious influences which emanate from all this, may 
 we not gratefully make acknowledgment that in contem- 
 plation thereof we are lifted into a higher atmosphere, 
 refreshed, encouraged, and bettered by the true story of
 
 JAMES WATT 147 
 
 men like ourselves, whom, if we can never hope to equal, 
 we may at least try in part to imitate. 
 
 A meeting was called in London to take steps for a 
 monument to Watt to be placed in Westminster Abbey. 
 The Prime Minister presided and announced a subscription 
 of ^500 sterling from His Majesty. It may truly be said 
 that 
 
 ' A meeting more distinguished by rank, station, and talent, 
 was never before assembled to do honour to genius, and to 
 modest and retiring worth ; and a more spontaneous, noble, 
 and discriminating testimony was never borne to the virtues, 
 talents, and public services of any individual, in any age or 
 country.' 
 
 The result was the colossal statue by Chantrey, which 
 bears the following inscription, pronounced to be beyond 
 comparison ' the finest lapidary inscription in the English 
 language.' It is from the pen of Lord Brougham : 
 
 NOT TO PERPETUATE A NAME 
 WHICH MUST ENDURE WHILE THE PEACEFUL ARTS FLOURISH 
 
 BUT TO SHEW 
 
 THAT MANKIND HAVE LEARNT TO HONOUR THOSE 
 WHO BEST DESERVE THEIR GRATITUDE 
 
 THE KING 
 
 HIS MINISTERS, AND MANY OF THE NOBLES 
 
 AND COMMONERS OF THE REALM 
 
 RAISED THIS MONUMENT TO 
 
 JAMES WATT 
 
 WHO DIRECTING THE FORCE OF AN ORIGINAL GENIUS 
 
 EARLY EXERCISED IN PHILOSOPHIC RESEARCH 
 
 TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF 
 
 THE STEAM ENGINE 
 ENLARGED THE RESOURCES OF HIS COUNTRY 
 
 INCREASED THE POWER OF MAN 
 AND ROSE TO AN EMINENT PLACE 
 
 AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS FOLLOWERS OF SCIENCE 
 AND THE REAL BENEFACTORS OF THE WORLD 
 
 BORN AT GREENOCK MDCCXXXVI 
 DIED AT HEATHFIELD IN STAFFORDSHIRE MDCCCXIX
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 WATT, THE INVENTOR AND DISCOVERER 
 
 IN the foregoing pages an effort has been made to follow 
 and describe Watt's work in detail as it was performed, 
 but we believe our readers will thank us for presenting the 
 opinions of a few of the highest scientific and legal 
 authorities upon what Watt really did. Lord Brougham 
 has this to say of Watt : 
 
 ' One of the most astonishing circumstances in this truly great 
 man was the versatility of his talents. His accomplishments 
 were so various, the powers of his mind were so vast, and yet 
 of such universal application, that it was hard to say whether 
 we should most admire the extraordinary grasp of his under- 
 standing or the accuracy of nice research with which he could 
 bring it to bear upon the most minute objects of investigation. 
 I forget of whom it was said that his mind resembled the trunk 
 of an elephant, which can pick up straws and tear up trees by 
 the roots. Mr. Watt in some sort resembled the greatest and 
 most celebrated of his own inventions; of which we are at a 
 loss whether most to wonder at the power of grappling with 
 the mightiest objects, or of handling the most minute ; so that 
 while nothing seems too large for its grasp, nothing seems too 
 small for the delicacy of its touch ; which can cleave rocks and 
 pour forth rivers from the bowels of the earth, and with perfect 
 exactness, though not with greater ease, fashion the head of a 
 pin, or strike the impress of some curious die. Now those who 
 knew Mr. Watt, had to contemplate a man whose genius could 
 create such an engine, and indulge in the most abstruse specu- 
 lations of philosophy, and could at once pass from the most 
 sublime researches of geology and physical astronomy, the for- 
 mation of our globe, and the structure of the universe, to the 
 manufacture of a needle or a nail ; who could discuss in the 
 same conversation, and with equal accuracy, if not with the 
 
 148
 
 JAMES WATT 149 
 
 same consummate skill, the most forbidding details of art, and 
 the elegances of classical literature; the most abstruse branches 
 of science, and the niceties of verbal criticism. 
 
 '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 in part to others. I 
 have heard him refuse the honour universally ascribed to 
 him, of being 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 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.' 
 
 Sir Humphry Davy says : 
 
 ' I consider it as a duty incumbent on me to endeavour to 
 set forth his peculiar and exalted merits, which live in the 
 recollection of his contemporaries and will transmit his name 
 with immortal glory to posterity. Those who consider James 
 Watt only as a great practical mechanic form a very erroneous 
 idea of his character ; he was equally distinguished as a 
 natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demon- 
 strate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that 
 peculiar characteristic of genius, the union of them for practical 
 application. The steam-engine before his time was a rude 
 machine, the result of simple experiments on the compression 
 of the atmosphere, and the condensation of steam. Mr. Watt's 
 improvements were not produced by accidental circumstances 
 or by a single ingenious thought ; they were founded on 
 delicate and refined experiments, connected with the dis-
 
 iSo FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 coveries of Dr. Black. He had to investigate the cause of the 
 cold produced by evaporation, of the heat occasioned by the 
 condensation of steam to determine the source of the air 
 appearing when water was acted upon by an exhausting power ; 
 the ratio of the volume of steam to its generating water, and 
 the law by which the elasticity of steam increased with the 
 temperature ; labour, time, numerous and difficult experiments, 
 were required for the ultimate result ; and when his principle 
 was obtained, the application of it to produce the movement of 
 machinery demanded a new species of intellectual and experi- 
 mental labour. 
 
 The Archimedes of the ancient world by his mechanical in- 
 ventions arrested the course of the Romans, and stayed for a 
 time the downfall of his country. How much more has our 
 modern Archimedes done? He has permanently elevated the 
 strength and wealth of this great empire ; and, during the last 
 long war, his inventions and their application were amongst 
 the great means which enabled Britain to display power and 
 resources so infinitely above what might have been expected 
 from the numerical strength of her population. Archimedes 
 valued principally abstract science ; James Watt, on the 
 contrary, brought every principle to some practical use ; and, 
 as it were, made science descend from heaven to earth. The 
 great inventions of the Syracusan died with him those of our 
 philosopher live, and their utility and importance are daily 
 more felt ; they are among the grand results which place civilised 
 above savage man which secure the triumph of intellect, and 
 exalt genius and moral force over mere brutal strength, courage, 
 and numbers. 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh says : 
 
 ' It may be presumptuous in me to add anything in my own 
 words to such just and exalted praise. Let me rather borrow 
 the language in which the great father of modern philosophy, 
 Lord Bacon himself, has spoken of inventors in the arts of 
 life. In a beautiful, though not very generally read fragment 
 of his, called the New Atlantis, a voyage to an imaginary 
 island, he has imagined a university, or rather royal society, 
 under the name of Solomon's House, or the College of the Six 
 Days' Works ; and among the various buildings appropriated 
 to this institution, he describes a gallery destined to contain 
 the statues of inventors. He does not disdain to place in it 
 not only the inventor of one of the greatest instruments of 
 science, but the discoverer of the use of the silkworm, and of 
 other still more humble contrivances for the comfort of man.
 
 JAMES WATT 151 
 
 What place would Lord Bacon have assigned in such a gallery 
 to the statue of Mr. Watt? Is it too much to say, that, con- 
 sidering the magnitude of the discoveries, the genius and 
 science necessary to make them, and the benefits arising from 
 them to the world, that statue must have been placed at the 
 head of those of all inventors in all ages and nations ? In 
 another part of his writings the same great man illustrates the 
 dignity of useful inventions by one of those happy allusions to 
 the beautiful mythology of the ancients, which he often employs 
 to illuminate as well as to decorate reason. "The dignity," 
 says he, " of this end of endowment of man's life with new 
 commodity appeareth, by the estimation that antiquity made 
 of such as guided thereunto ; for whereas founders of states, 
 lawgivers, extirpators of tyrants, fathers of the people, were 
 honoured but with the titles of demigods, inventors were ever 
 consecrated amongst the gods themselves.'" 
 
 The Earl of Aberdeen l says : 
 
 ' It would ill become me to attempt to add to the eulogy 
 which you have already heard on the distinguished individual 
 whose genius and talents we have met this day to acknowledge. 
 That eulogy has been pronounced by those whose praises are 
 well calculated to confer honour, even upon him whose name 
 does honour to his country. I feel in common with them, 
 although I can but ill express, that intense admiration which 
 the bare recollection of those discoveries must excite, which 
 have rendered us familiar with a power before nearly unknown, 
 and which have taught us to wield, almost at will, perhaps the 
 mightiest instrument ever entrusted to the hands of man. I 
 feel, too, that in erecting a monument to his memory, placed, 
 as it may be, among the memorials of kings, and heroes, and 
 statesmen, and philosophers, it will be then in its proper 
 place ; and most in its proper place, and in the midst of those 
 who have been most distinguished by their usefulness to man- 
 kind, and by the spotless integrity of their lives.' 
 
 Lord Jeffrey says : 
 
 'This name fortunately needs no commemoration of ours ; 
 for he that bore it survived to see it crowned with undisputed 
 and unenvied honours ; and many generations will probably 
 pass away, before it shall have gathered "all its fame." We 
 have said that Mr. Watt was the great imprcmer of the steam- 
 engine ; but, in truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, 
 or vast in its utility, he should rather be described as its 
 
 1 George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl (1784-1860).
 
 1 5 2 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 inventor. It was by his inventions that its action was so 
 regulated, as to make it capable of being applied to the finest 
 and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased, 
 as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable 
 contrivance, it has become a thing stupendous alike for its 
 force and its flexibility, for the prodigious power which it can 
 exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility, with which it 
 can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an 
 elephant, that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing 
 to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate 
 metal before it ; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine 
 as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It 
 can embroider muslin and forge anchors, cut steel into 
 ribbons, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds 
 and waves. 
 
 'It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits 
 which these inventions have conferred upon this country. 
 There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to 
 them ; and, in all the most material, they have not only 
 widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but 
 multiplied a thousandfold the amount of its productions. It is 
 our improved steam-engine that has fought the battle of Europe, 
 and exalted and sustained, through the late tremendous contest, 
 the political greatness of our land. It is the same great power 
 which now enables us to pay the interest of our debt, and to 
 maintain the arduous struggle in which we are still engaged 
 [1819], with the skill and capital of countries less oppressed 
 with taxation. But these are poor and narrow views of its 
 importance. It has increased indefinitely the mass of human 
 comforts and enjoyments, and rendered cheap and accessible, 
 all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It 
 has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to 
 which no limits can be assigned ; completed the dominion of 
 mind over the most refractory qualities of matter, and laid a 
 sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanical 
 power which are to aid and reward the labours of after genera- 
 tions. It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is 
 mainly owing ; and certainly no man ever bestowed such a 
 gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but un- 
 bounded ; and the fabled inventors of the plough and the 
 loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rude 
 contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind 
 than the inventor of our present steam-engine. 
 
 This will be the fame of Watt with future generations ; and 
 it is sufficient for his race and his country. But to those to 
 whom he more immediately belonged, who lived in his society
 
 JAMES WATT 153 
 
 and enjoyed his conversation, it is not, perhaps, the character 
 in which he will be most frequently recalled most deeply 
 lamented or even most highly admired.' 
 
 We shall end by quoting the greatest living authority, 
 Lord Kelvin, now Chancellor of the University of Glasgow, 
 which Watt and he have done so much to render 
 famous : 
 
 ' Precisely that single-acting, high-pressure syringe-engine, 
 made and experimented on by James Watt one hundred and 
 forty years ago in his Glasgow College workshop, now in 1901, 
 with the addition of a surface-condenser cooled by air to 
 receive the waste steam, and a pump to return the water 
 thence to the boiler, constitutes the common road-motor which, 
 in the opinion of many good judges, is the most successful of 
 all the different motors which have been made and tried within 
 the last few years. Without a condenser, Watt's high-pressure, 
 single-acting engine of 1761, only needs the cylinder-cover 
 with piston-rod passing steam-tight through it (as introduced 
 by Watt himself in subsequent developments), and the valves 
 proper for admitting steam on both sides of the piston, and for 
 working expansively, to make it the very engine which, during 
 the whole of the past century, has done practically all the 
 steam work of the world, and is doing it still, except on the sea 
 or lakes or rivers, where there is plenty of condensing water. 
 Even the double and triple and quadruple expansion engines, 
 by which the highest modern economy for power and steam 
 engines has been obtained, are splendid mechanical develop- 
 ments of the principle of expansion, discovered and published 
 by Watt, and used, though to a comparatively limited extent, 
 in his own engines. 
 
 4 Thus during the five years from 1761-66 Watt had worked 
 out all the principles and invented all that was essential in 
 the details for realising them in the most perfect steam-engines 
 of the present day.' 
 
 So passes Watt from view as the discoverer and inventor 
 of the 'most powerful instrument in the hands of man to 
 alter the face of the physical world.' He takes his place 
 1 at the head of all inventors of all ages and all nations.'
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 WATT, THE MAN 
 
 OF Watt, the genius, possessed of abilities far beyond 
 those of other men, a scientist and philosopher, a mechani- 
 cian and a craftsman, one who gravitated without effort to 
 the top of every society, and who, even when a young 
 workman, made his workshop the meeting-place of the 
 leaders of Glasgow University for the interchange of views 
 upon the highest and most abstruse subjects with all this 
 we have already dealt, but it is only part, and not the 
 nobler part. He excelled all his fellows in knowledge, 
 but there is much beyond mere knowledge in man. Strip 
 Watt of all those commanding talents that brought him 
 primacy without effort, for no man ever avoided precedence 
 more persistently than he, and the question still remains : 
 What manner of man was he, as man ? Surely our readers 
 would esteem the task but half done that revealed only 
 what was unusual in Watt's head. What of his heart ? is 
 naturally asked. We hasten to record that in the domain 
 of the personal graces and virtues, we have evidence of 
 his excellence as copious and assured as for his pre- 
 eminence in invention and discovery. 
 
 We cite the testimony of those who knew him best. 
 It is seldom that a great man is so fortunate in his 
 eulogists. The picture drawn of him by his friend, 
 Lord Jeffrey, must rank as one of the finest ever pro- 
 duced, as portrait and tribute combined. That it is a 
 discriminating statement, although - so eulogistic, may 
 well be accepted, since numerous contributory proofs are 
 given by others of Watt's personal characteristics. Says 
 Lord Jeffrey : 
 
 ' Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr.
 
 JAMES WATT 155 
 
 Watt was an extraordinary, and in many respects a wonderful 
 man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and 
 such varied and exact information had read so much or 
 remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He 
 had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, 
 and a certain rectifying and methodising power of understand- 
 ing, which extracted something precious out of all that was 
 presented to it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were 
 immense, and yet less astonishing than the command he had 
 at all times over them. It seemed as if every subject that was 
 casually started in conversation with him had been that which 
 he had been last occupied in studying and exhausting ; such 
 was the copiousness, the precision, and the admirable clearness 
 of the information which he poured out upon it without effort 
 or hesitation. Nor was this promptitude and compass of 
 knowledge confined in any degree to the studies connected 
 with his ordinary pursuits. That he should have been minutely 
 and extensively skilled in chemistry and the arts, and in most 
 of the branches of physical science, might perhaps have been 
 conjectured ; but it could not have been inferred from his usual 
 occupations, and probably is not generally known, that he was 
 curiously learned in many branches of antiquity, metaphysics, 
 medicine, and etymology, and perfectly at home in all the 
 details of architecture, music, and law. He was well acquainted, 
 too, with most of the modern languages, and familiar with their 
 most recent literature. Nor was it at all extraordinary to hear 
 the great mechanician and engineer detailing and expounding, 
 for hours together, the metaphysical theories of the German 
 logicians, or criticising the measures or the matter of the 
 German poetry. 
 
 'His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt, in a great 
 measure, by a still higher and rarer faculty by his power of 
 digesting and arranging in its proper place all the information 
 he received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were in- 
 stinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every con- 
 ception that was suggested to his mind seemed instantly to take 
 its place among its other rich furniture, and to be condensed into 
 the smallest and most convenient form. He never appeared, 
 therefore, to be at all encumbered or perplexed with the verbiage 
 of the dull books he perused, or the idle talk to which he 
 listened ; but to have at once extracted, by a kind of intellectual 
 alchemy, all that was worthy of attention, and to have reduced 
 it, for his own use, to its true value and to its simplest form. 
 And thus it often happened that a great deal more was learned 
 from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and argu- 
 ments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could ever
 
 i 5 6 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 have derived from the most painful study of the originals, and 
 that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere 
 clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might 
 have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that 
 invaluable assistance. 
 
 It is needless to say, that, with those vast resources, his con- 
 versation was at all times rich and instructive in no ordinary 
 degree ; but it was, if possible, still more pleasing than wise, 
 and had all the charms of familiarity, with all the substantial 
 treasures of knowledge. No man could be more social in his 
 spirit, less assuming or fastidious in his manners, or more kind 
 and indulgent toward all who approached him. He rather 
 liked to talk, at least in his latter years ; but though he took a 
 considerable share of the conversation, he rarely suggested the 
 topics on which it was to turn, but readily and quietly took up 
 whatever was presented by those around him, and astonished 
 the idle and barren propounders of an ordinary theme by the 
 treasures which he drew from the mine they had unconsciously 
 opened. He generally seemed, indeed, to have no choice or 
 predilection for one subject of discourse rather than another, 
 but allowed his mind, like a great cyclopaedia, to be opened at 
 any letter his associates might choose to turn up, and only 
 endeavour to select, from his inexhaustible stores, what might 
 be best adapted to the taste of his present hearers. As to 
 their capacity he gave himself no trouble ; and, indeed, such 
 was his singular talent for making all things plain, clear, and 
 intelligible, that scarcely any one could be aware of such a 
 deficiency in his presence. His talk, too, though overflowing 
 with information, had no resemblance to lecturing or solemn 
 discoursing, but, on the contrary, was full of colloquial spirit 
 and pleasantry. He had a certain quiet and grave humour, 
 which ran through most of his conversation, and a vein of 
 temperate jocularity, which gave infinite zest and effect to the 
 condensed and inexhaustible information which formed its 
 main staple and characteristic. There was a little air of 
 affected testiness, and a tone of pretended rebuke and contra- 
 diction, with which he used to address his younger friends, 
 that was always felt by them as an endearing mark of his kind- 
 ness and familiarity, and prized accordingly, far beyond all the 
 solemn compliments that ever proceeded from the lips of 
 authority. His voice was deep and powerful, although he 
 commonly spoke in a low and somewhat monotonous tone, 
 which harmonised admirably with the weight and brevity of 
 his observations, and set off to the greatest advantage the 
 pleasant anecdotes, which he delivered with the same grave 
 brow, and the same calm smile playing soberly on his lips.
 
 JAMES WATT 157 
 
 There was nothing of effort indeed, or impatience, any more 
 than pride or levity, in his demeanour ; and there was a finer 
 expression of reposing strength, and mild self-possession in his 
 manner, than we ever recollect to have met with in any other 
 person. He had in his character the utmost abhorrence for all 
 sorts of forwardness, parade, and pretensions ; and, indeed, 
 never failed to put all such impostures out of countenance, by 
 the manly plainness and honest intrepidity of his language and 
 deportment. 
 
 ' In his temper and dispositions he was not only kind and 
 affectionate, but generous, and considerate of the feelings of 
 all around him ; and gave the most liberal assistance and en- 
 couragement to all young persons who showed any indications 
 of talent, or applied to him for patronage or advice. His 
 health, which was delicate from his youth upwards, seemed to 
 become firmer as he advanced in years ; and he preserved, up 
 almost to the last moment of his existence, not only the full 
 command of his extraordinary intellect, but all the alacrity of 
 spirit, and the social gaiety, which had illumined his happiest 
 days. His friends in this part of the country never saw him 
 more full of intellectual vigour and colloquial animation, never 
 more delightful or more instructive, than in his last visit to 
 Scotland in the autumn of 1817. Indeed, it was after that time 
 that he applied himself, with all the ardour of early life, to the 
 invention of a machine for mechanically copying all sorts of 
 sculpture and statuary ; and distributed among his friends 
 some of its earliest performances, as the productions of a 
 young artist just entering on his eighty-third year. 
 
 ' All men of learning and science were his cordial friends ; 
 and such was the influence of his mild character and perfect 
 fairness and liberality, even upon the pretenders to these 
 accomplishments, that he lived to disarm even envy itself, and 
 died, we verily believe, without a single enemy. 
 
 Professor Robison, the most intimate friend of his youth, 
 records that : 
 
 ' When to the superiority of knowledge in his own line, which 
 every man confessed, there was joined the naive simplicity and 
 candour of his character, it is no wonder that the attach- 
 ment of his acquaintances was so strong. I have seen some- 
 ing of the world, and I am obliged to say that I never saw 
 such another instance of general and cordial attachment to 
 a person whom all acknowledged to be their superior. But 
 this superiority was concealed under the most amiable can- 
 dour, and liberal allowance of merit to every man. Mr. Watt
 
 158 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 was the first to ascribe to the ingenuity of a friend things 
 which were very often nothing but his own surmises followed 
 out and embodied by another. I am well entitled to say this, 
 and have often experienced it in my own case.' 
 
 Sir Walter Scott says : 
 
 ' This potent commander of the elements, this abridger of 
 time and space, this magician, whose cloudy machinery has 
 produced a change in the world, the effects of which, extra- 
 ordinary 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 combiner 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. There he stood, surrounded by the little 
 band of northern literati, men not less tenacious, generally 
 speaking, of their own opinions, than the national regiments 
 are supposed to be jealous of the high character they have 
 won upon service. 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 informa- 
 tion at every one's command. His talents and fancy over- 
 flowed on every subject. One gentleman was a deep philolo- 
 gist, he talked 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 belles lettres all his life ; of science it is unneces- 
 sary to speak, it was his own distinguished walk.' 
 
 Lord Brougham says : 
 
 ' We have been considering this eminent person as yet only 
 in his public capacity, as a benefactor of mankind by his 
 fertile genius and indomitable perseverance ; and the best 
 portraiture of his intellectual character was to be found in 
 the description of his attainments. It is, however, proper to 
 survey him also in private life. He was unexceptionable in all 
 its relations ; and as his activity was unmeasured, and his 
 taste anything rather than fastidious, he both was master of 
 every variety of knowledge, and was tolerant of discussions on 
 subjects of very subordinate importance compared with those 
 in which he most excelled. Not only all the sciences from the 
 mathematics and astronomy, down to botany, received his 
 diligent attention, but he was tolerably read in the lighter 
 kinds of literature, delighting in poetry and other works of 
 fiction, full of the stores of ancient literature, and readily 
 giving himself up to the critical disquisitions of commentators,
 
 JAMES WATT 159 
 
 and to discussion on the fancies of etymology. His manners 
 were most attractive from their perfect nature and simplicity. 
 His conversation was rich in the measure which such stores 
 and such easy taste might lead us to expect, and it astonished 
 all listeners with its admirable precision, with the extraordin- 
 ary memory it displayed, with the distinctness it seemed to 
 have, as if his mind had separate niches for keeping each 
 particular, and with its complete rejection of all worthless and 
 superfluous matter, as if the same mind had some fine machine 
 for acting like a fan, casting off the chaff and the husk. But 
 it had besides a peculiar charm from the pleasure he took in 
 conveying information where he was peculiarly able to give it, 
 and in joining with entire candour whatever discussion 
 happened to arise. Even upon matters on which he was 
 entitled to pronounce with absolute authority, he never laid 
 down the law, but spoke like any other partaker of the conver- 
 sation. I had the happiness of knowing Mr. Watt for many 
 years, in the intercourse of private life ; and I will take upon 
 me to bear a testimony, in which all who had that gratifica- 
 tion I am sure will join, that they who only knew his public 
 merit, prodigious as that was, knew but half his worth. Those 
 who were admitted to his society will readily allow that any- 
 thing more pure, more candid, more simple, more scrupulously 
 loving of justice, than the whole habits of his life and conversa- 
 tion proved him to be, was never known in society. 
 
 The descriptions given by Lords Brougham, Jeffrey, the 
 genial Sir Walter, and others, of Watt's universality of 
 knowledge and his charm in discourse recall Canterbury's 
 eulogium : 
 
 ' Hear him but reason in divinity, 
 And, all-admiring, with an inward wish 
 You would desire the king were made a prelate ; 
 Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, 
 You would say, it hath been all-in-all his study : 
 List his discourse of war, and you shall hear 
 A fearful battle rendered you in music : 
 Turn him to any cause of policy, 
 The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, 
 Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks, 
 The air, a chartered libertine, is still, 
 And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, 
 To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences. ' 
 
 If Watt fell somewhat short of this, so no doubt did the 
 king so greatly extolled, and much more so, probably, than 
 the versatile Watt.
 
 160 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Dr. Black, the discoverer of latent heat, upon his death- 
 bed, hears that the Watt patent has been sustained, and 
 is for the time restored again to interest in life. He 
 whispers that he ' could not help rejoicing at anything 
 that benefited Jamie Watt.' 
 
 The Earl of Liverpool, Prime Minister, stated that Watt 
 was remarkable for 
 
 'the simplicity of his character, the modesty of his nature, the 
 absence of anything like presumption and ostentation, the 
 unwillingness to obtrude himself, not only upon the great and 
 powerful, but even on those of the scientific world to which he 
 belonged. A more excellent and amiable man in all the 
 relations of life I believe never existed.' 
 
 There can be no question that we have for our example, 
 in the man Watt, a nature cast in the finest mould, seem- 
 ingly composed of every creature's best. Transcendent as 
 were his abilities as inventor and discoverer, we are per- 
 suaded that our readers will feel that his qualities as a man 
 in all the relations of life were not less so, nor less worthy 
 of record. His supreme abilities we can neither acquire 
 nor emulate. These are individual and ended with him. 
 But his virtues and charms as our fellow-man still shine 
 steadily upon our paths, and will shine upon those of our 
 successors for ages to come, we trust not without leading 
 us and them to tread some part of the way toward the 
 acquisition of such qualities as enabled the friend of James 
 Watt to declare his belief that 'a more excellent and 
 amiable man in all the relations of life never existed.' A 
 nobler tribute never was paid by man to man, yet was it 
 not undeserved. 
 
 So passes Jamie Watt, the man, from view a man who 
 attracted, delighted, impressed, instructed, and made life- 
 long friends of his fellows, to a degree unsurpassed, 
 perhaps unequalled. 
 
 ' His life was gentle, and the elements 
 So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up 
 And say to all the world, " This was a man." '
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABERDEEN. Earl of, eulogy on Watt, 
 151. 
 
 Air, a modification of water, 116. 
 
 Albion Mills, London, 107. 
 
 Anderson, John, Professor of Natu- 
 ral Philosophy, 18, 29. 
 
 Arkwright's patent for a spinning 
 frame, 52. 
 
 BALFOUR, ARTHUR JAMES, Prime 
 Minister, 26. 
 
 Beddoes, Dr., 144. 
 
 Bion's Construction and Use of 
 Mathematical Instruments^ 27. 
 
 Black, Professor, discoverer of latent 
 heat, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 42, 43, 48, 
 57, 60, 115, 116, 125, 143; death 
 of, 159. 
 
 Boulton, Matthew, of Birmingham, 
 Watt's partner, 60 ; acquires Roe- 
 buck's interest in Watt's patent, 
 66 ; thepartnership, 66-67; Smiles's 
 estimate of his character, 67-68 ; 
 terms of the partnership, 81 ; his 
 courage and perseverance under 
 difficulties, 87-90; a member of 
 the Lunar Society, 120-122 ; visits 
 Paris, 122 ; takes legal proceed- 
 ings for protection of patents, 124- 
 126 ; dissolution of the partner- 
 ship, 126; his death, 144. 
 
 Matthew Robinson, son of the 
 
 preceding, 126. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, defends inventors, 
 52 ; on James Watt, 147-148, 158- 
 
 Burbank on force and matter, 40. 
 
 CALEDONIAN CANAL, 58, 59. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 85. 
 Cariwright piston-rings, 108. 
 Cloth drying-machine invented by 
 
 Watt, 97. 
 Clyde, the, surveyed by Watt, 58. 
 
 Coal, heat energy of, 39. 
 Condenser, discovery of, 41-43, 52. 
 Cooper, Peter, founder of the Cooper 
 
 Institute, 103. 
 
 Copying-press, invention of, 96-97. 
 Craig, Mr., partner of Watt, 44. 
 Crawford's Dyke, Greenock, 7. 
 Crinan Canal, 58. 
 
 DARWIN, Dr., 120, 143. 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, on James 
 
 Watt, 149. 
 Day, Mr., 121. 
 Dick, Dr., Professor of Natural 
 
 Philosophy, 20, 28, 29, 31. 
 
 EDGEWORTH, RICHARD, suggests 
 an iron railroad, 99, 100 and ., 
 
 121. 
 
 Engineers' devotion to their en- 
 gines, 78. 
 
 FORDYCE, Dr., 75. 
 
 Forth and Clyde Canal, 49, 58. 
 
 Fothergill, a partner of Boulton and 
 
 Watt, 88, 92, 95. 
 Franklin, Dr. , 63. 64. 
 French Revolution, influence of the, 
 
 in Britain, 137. 
 Fulton's steamboat, 103, 135. 
 
 GALTON, Mr., 120. 
 
 Gladstone. W. ..,85. 
 
 Glasgow University, its devotion to 
 science, 29, 34 ; takes Watt under 
 its protection, 29; confers upon 
 him the degree of LL.D., 145. 
 
 ' Governor,' the, 112. 
 
 HARGREAVES' patent for a spinning- 
 jenny, 52. 
 
 Harrison, Joseph, engine-builder, 
 74. 75-
 
 162 
 
 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Harwell's invention of the cross- 
 head, 108. 
 
 Heat energy, waste of, 38-40. See 
 also Latent heat. 
 
 Hedley's ' Puffing Billy,' in . 
 
 Hewitt, Hon. Abram S., 103. 
 
 John, pattern-maker, 103. 
 
 Hulls, Jonathan, 128. 
 
 INDICATOR, 112. 
 
 Inventors regarded as monopolists, 
 5. 52. 
 
 JEFFREY, Lord, tribute to the 
 memory of Watt, 151, 154-157. 
 
 Jones, Captain, of the Carnegie 
 Steel Company, 94 ., 128. 
 
 KEIR, Mr., 120. 
 
 Kelvin, Lord, 29, 30, 39, 109 ; on 
 Watt's steam-engine, 153. 
 
 Knox, John, on compulsory educa- 
 tion, 8. 
 
 LATENT HEAT, discovery of, 29-32, 
 
 35 ; description of, 36-38. 
 Lauder's description of latent heat, 
 
 Leupold's Theatrum Machinarum, 
 
 S 1 - 
 
 Liverpool, Earl of, on Watt, 160. 
 Loeb, Professor ,40. 
 Lunar Society of Birmingham, 120, 
 
 121, 137, 138. 
 
 MAcGREGOR, Miss, second wife of 
 James Watt, 81. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, on the 
 genius of Watt, 150. 
 
 Matthews, Professor, 40. 
 
 Mechanical labour produces me- 
 chanical inventors, 52. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 85. 
 
 Miller, Miss, James Watt's first 
 wife, 43. 
 
 Monkland Canal, 58. 
 
 Morgan, John, mathematical in- 
 strument-maker, London, 24. 
 
 Muirhead, Agnes, mother of James 
 Watt, 10 ; her death, 17. 
 
 Murdock, William, Boulton and 
 Watt's manager, 91-94 and . , 99, 
 105, 127. 
 
 NEWCOMEN'S steam-engine, 34, 35, 
 37, 41, 42, 47, 52, 70, 73, 85, 107, 
 113, 114, 133. 
 
 PARALLEL motion, no. 
 
 Pasteur, M., 124. 
 
 Patents of inventions, unpopularity 
 of, 50, 52. 
 
 Perth Canal, 58. 
 
 Potter, Humphrey, a youthful in- 
 ventor, 113. 
 
 Poverty, man's best heritage, 9. 
 
 Priestley, Dr., 115-121 ; in sym- 
 pathy with the French Revolution, 
 137; on the Birmingham Lunar 
 Society, 121. 
 
 Pritchett, Prof., on utilising the 
 forces of nature, 38. 
 
 Professional pride, 25-27. 
 
 RADIUM, 63. 
 
 Railway system, origin of the, 99, 
 loo and n. 
 
 Robison, Professor of Natural Philo- 
 sophy, 29, 32, 34, 35, 65, 72, 126 ; 
 his death, 144 ; his tribute to the 
 memory of Watt, 157. 
 
 Roebuck, Dr., founder of the Carron 
 Ironworks, 48; partner with Watt, 
 49. 5L 55. 57; his bankruptcy, 
 60, 65; his interest in Watt's 
 patent transferred to Boulton, 66 ; 
 his death, 143. 
 
 Ruskin, John, 85. 
 
 Russia interested in Watt's engine, 
 72, 77- 
 
 SCIENTIFIC teaching in Glasgow 
 
 University, 29, 34. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, on old age, 144 ; 
 
 an appreciation of James Watt, 
 
 158. 
 
 Screw-propeller, 128, 129. 
 Sculpture - copying machine, 130, 
 
 I S7- 
 Sinclair, Angus, his Development of 
 
 the Locomotive, 100 ., in n. 
 Small, Professor, 51, 54, 56-58, 64, 
 
 65, 69, 121, 129; his death, 70- 
 
 7i- 
 
 Smeaton's criticism on Watt's en- 
 gine, 75, 79. 
 Smiles, Dr., 30, 53, 55 ; his estimate 
 
 of Boulton and Watt, 67.
 
 INDEX 
 
 163 
 
 Smith, Adam, author of The. Wealth 
 
 of Nations, 29, 32. 
 Smoke consumption, 101. 
 Soho Friendly Society, 90. 
 manufacturing works. See 
 
 Boulton, Matthew. 
 Spinning frame, patent for, 52. 
 Steamboat built at Soho, 103. 
 Steam-engine improvements, 108- 
 
 109. 
 
 Steam-gauge, 112. 
 Steam statistics, 132. 
 Stephenson, George, inventor of the 
 
 locomotive, 52, 85, in and ., 
 
 135- 
 Symington, William, inventor of the 
 
 steamship, 135. 
 
 THROTTLE-VALVES, in. 
 Turbine engines, 109. 
 
 URANIUM, 63. 
 
 WATER, conversion of, into air, 116- 
 118. 
 
 discovered by Watt to be a 
 
 compound, 36, 115. 
 
 Watt, Gregory, son of the inventor, 
 126, 127, 143. 
 
 James, parentage, 7 ; his early 
 
 years, 12; his mechanical dex- 
 terity, 14; death of his mother, 
 17; leaves Glasgow for London, 
 20 ; in the employment of John 
 Morgan, mathematical instru- 
 ment-maker, 24 ; the Guild of 
 Hammermen in Glasgow refuse 
 to allow him to start business, 28 ; 
 befriended by the Glasgow -Uni- 
 versity, 29, 30 ; studies the-french 
 and Italian languages, 34 ; re- 
 duced to the manufacture of ' pot- 
 boilers,' 29-30, 32 ; an organ- 
 builder, 31 ; in close contact with 
 the leading scientists of the time, 
 32, 36 ; his initial experiments 
 with steam, 34-35, 40 ; discovers 
 the theory of latent heat, 35-37 ; 
 the discovery of the steam-engine, 
 41-43 ; his marriage, 43 ; at work 
 on his model of the steam-engine, 
 45-47 ; surveyor, 49 ; his partner- 
 ship with Roebuck, 49 ; success 
 of the model, 49 ; his incapacity 
 
 for business, 50 ; studies the Ger- 
 man language, 51 ; his first patent 
 specification, 51 ; works at the 
 improving of the engine, 53 ; 
 the first large engine built, 54; 
 a 'clumsy job, 1 56; pecuniary 
 troubles, 49, 56, 57, 66 ; the con- 
 denser, 52 ; suggests the screw- 
 propeller, 58 ; his work as a sur- 
 veyor, 58-59 ; death of his wife, 
 59 ; visits Boulton 's works at 
 Soho, 64 ; the partnership with 
 Boulton, 65-66; death of his 
 friend Dr. Small, 70-71 ; refuses 
 offer of Russian appointment, 72 ; 
 obtains an extension of patent, 
 
 72 ; success of the new engine, 
 
 73 ; troubles connected with the 
 Bow engine, 73-76 ; attempts by 
 foreign nations to bribe his work- 
 men, 76 ; his second marriage, 
 81-83 I terms of his partnership 
 with Boulton, 81 ; permanent 
 settlement in Birmingham, 84 ; 
 builds engines in Cornwall, 85-94 ; 
 increased anxieties, 89-90, 94-96 ; 
 invents the copying-press and the 
 cloth drying-machine, 96-97 ; 
 works at his rotary motion theory, 
 97-98 ; his improved reading- 
 lamp, 100 ; attempts to remedy 
 the smoke nuisance, 101 ; his 
 second steam-engine patent, 103 ; 
 the 'parallel motion' improve- 
 ment, no ; his discovery of the 
 compound nature of water, 36, 
 115-118; suggests a uniformity of 
 weights and measures, 118-120 ; 
 a member of the Lunar Society, 
 120-122 ; in Paris, 122-123 : takes 
 legal proceedings for protection 
 of patents, 124-126 ; the screw- 
 propeller, 128-129; the partner- 
 ship dissolved, 126 ; his sculpture- 
 copying machine, 130, 157 ; his 
 theological views, 136-139, 143 ; 
 opposes the proposed tax on coal, 
 iron, etc., 139; in old age, 142; 
 receives LL.D. from Glasgow 
 University, 145 ; his death, 146 ; 
 his monument in Westminster 
 Abbey, 147 ; appreciations of, by 
 Lord Brougham, Sir Humphry 
 Davy, etc. , 148-160.
 
 164 FAMOUS SCOTS 
 
 Watt, Jamei, son of the inventor, I Watt Institution, Greenock, 145. 
 
 126, 137, 139, 140. | Wedgwood, Mr., 120. 
 John, brother of the inventor, t Weights and measures, uniformity 
 
 17. of, 118-120. 
 Thomas, founder of a school Whitney, inventor of the cotton- 
 
 of mathematics at Crawford's j gin, 52. 
 
 Dyke, Greenock, 7. ! Wilkinson, John, builder of iron 
 shipwright and contractor, boats, 73, 88, 109. 
 
 8 ; marriage, 10. | Withering, Dr., 120, 138, 143.
 
 FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES 
 
 Aytoun (William Edmonstoune). See "Pollok and 
 
 Aytoun." 
 
 Balladists (The). By JOHN GEDDIE. 
 
 " One of the most delightful and eloquent appreciations of the ballad 
 literature of Scotland that has ever seen the light." New Age. 
 
 "Blackwood" Group (The). By Sir GEORGE 
 
 DOUGLAS. 
 
 Susan Edmonstoune Ferrier. John Gait. 
 
 Thomas Hamilton. D. M. Moir. John Wilson. 
 
 "Sir George Douglas, in addition to summarising their biographies, 
 criticises their works with excellent and well-weighed appreciation." 
 Literary World. 
 
 Boswell (James). By \V. KEITH LEASK. 
 
 ' ' One of the finest and most convincing passages that have recently 
 appeared in the field of British Biography. Morning Leader. 
 
 Bruce (King Robert the). By Professor MURISON. 
 
 "A fresh, independent, critical estimate of the man who emancipated 
 Scotland from a thraldom which was almost worse than death." Speaker. 
 
 Buchanan (George). By the late ROBERT WALLACE, 
 
 M.P. 
 
 "This is in many respects the freshest, brightest, and most enjoyable 
 of the volumes in the series." Leeds Mercury. 
 
 Burns (Robert). By GABRIEL SETOUN. 
 
 ' ' A very valuable and opportune addition to a useful series." Bookman. 
 
 Cairns (Principal). By JOHN CAIRNS, M.A. 
 
 "A brief but most loyal and understanding estimate." British Weekly. 
 
 Cameron (Richard). By Professor HERKLESS. 
 
 " Interesting study of Cameron and his times." National Observer. 
 
 Campbell (Thomas). By J. CUTHBERT HADDEN. 
 
 " His monograph is painstaking and accurate." The Athenccum. 
 "A capital little book." Saint Andre*. 
 
 Carlyle (Thomas). By HECTOR C. MACPHERSON. 
 
 '' One of the best books on Carlyle yet written." Literary World. 
 
 Chalmers (Thomas). By Professor W. GARDEN 
 BLAIKIE. 
 
 " The most notable feature of Professor Blaikie's book and none could 
 be more commendable is its perfect balance and proportion. In other 
 words, justice is done equally to the private and to the public life of 
 Chalmers, if possible greater justice than has been done by Mrs Oliphant." 
 Spectator.
 
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