with only the advantages of a remote country town, his talent appeared in the earnestness with which he cultivated at once the most various branches of knowledge and speculation. He was fond of metaphysics; he was fond of experiment; he was an ardent student of Nature; and he possessed at an early age poetic powers which, had they been cultivated, would, in the opinion of competent judges, have made him eminent in literature as he became in science. All these tastes endured throughout life. Business could not stifle them—even the approach of death was unable to extinguish them. The reveries of his boyhood on the sea-worn cliffs of Mount's Bay may yet be traced in many of the pages dictated during the last year of his life amidst the ruins of the Colosseum."
Davy's first paper, published while at Bristol, was on heat, light, and respiration. The memoir laid the foundations of the present dynamical theory of heat. At this period he showed great abilities, was young, enthusiastic, energetic, and ambitious. He was bound to succeed.
While at Dr Beddoes', Davy was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet and philosopher) and Robert Southey (poet, essayist, and historian), and there is no doubt that meeting such men helped to develop his genius and erudition. Davy was one of the most remarkable chemists of his or any age. Chemistry in
