Faraday as a Discoverer | Page 5

am I to
do, here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been
attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the
Royal Institution--what can I do?" "Do?" replied Pepys, "put him to
wash bottles; if he is good for anything he will do it directly, if he
refuses he is good for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy; "we must try
him with something better than that." The result was, that Davy
engaged him to assist in the Laboratory at weekly wages.

'Davy held the joint office of Professor of Chemistry and Director of
the Laboratory; he ultimately gave up the former to the late Professor
Brande, but he insisted that Faraday should be appointed Director of
the Laboratory, and, as Faraday told me, this enabled him on
subsequent occasions to hold a definite position in the Institution, in
which he was always supported by Davy. I believe he held that office
to the last.
'Believe me, my dear Tyndall, yours truly,
'J. P. Gassiot.

'Dr. Tyndall.'
From a letter written by Faraday himself soon after his appointment as
Davy's assistant, I extract the following account of his introduction to
the Royal Institution:-- 'London, Sept. 13, 1813.
'As for myself, I am absent (from home) nearly day and night, except
occasional calls, and it is likely shall shortly be absent entirely, but this
(having nothing more to say, and at the request of my mother) I will
explain to you. I was formerly a bookseller and binder, but am now
turned philosopher,[2] which happened thus:-- Whilst an apprentice, I,
for amusement, learnt a little chemistry and other parts of philosophy,
and felt an eager desire to proceed in that way further. After being a
journeyman for six months, under a disagreeable master, I gave up my
business, and through the interest of a Sir H. Davy, filled the situation
of chemical assistant to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in which
office I now remain; and where I am constantly employed in observing
the works of nature, and tracing the manner in which she directs the
order and arrangement of the world. I have lately had proposals made
to me by Sir Humphry Davy to accompany him in his travels through
Europe and Asia, as philosophical assistant. If I go at all I expect it will
be in October next--about the end; and my absence from home will
perhaps be as long as three years. But as yet all is uncertain.'
This account is supplemented by the following letter, written by
Faraday to his friend De la Rive,[3] on the occasion of the death of Mrs.
Marcet. The letter is dated September 2, 1858:--
'My Dear Friend,--Your subject interested me deeply every way; for
Mrs. Marcet was a good friend to me, as she must have been to many of
the human race. I entered the shop of a bookseller and bookbinder at

the age of thirteen, in the year 1804, remained there eight years, and
during the chief part of my time bound books. Now it was in those
books, in the hours after work, that I found the beginning of my
philosophy.
There were two that especially helped me, the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica," from which I gained my first notions of electricity, and
Mrs. Marcet's "Conversation on Chemistry," which gave me my
foundation in that science.
'Do not suppose that I was a very deep thinker, or was marked as a
precocious person. I was a very lively imaginative person, and could
believe in the "Arabian Nights" as easily as in the "Encyclopaedia." But
facts were important to me, and saved me. I could trust a fact, and
always cross-examined an assertion. So when I questioned Mrs.
Marcet's book by such little experiments as I could find means to
perform, and found it true to the facts as I could understand them, I felt
that I had got hold of an anchor in chemical knowledge, and clung fast
to it. Thence my deep veneration for Mrs. Marcet--first as one who had
conferred great personal good and pleasure on me; and then as one able
to convey the truth and principle of those boundless fields of
knowledge which concern natural things to the young, untaught, and
inquiring mind.
'You may imagine my delight when I came to know Mrs. Marcet
personally; how often I cast my thoughts backward, delighting to
connect the past and the present; how often, when sending a paper to
her as a thank-offering, I thought of my first instructress, and such like
thoughts will remain with me.
'I have some such thoughts even as regards your own father; who was, I
may say, the first who personally at Geneva, and afterwards by
correspondence, encouraged, and by that sustained me.'
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