1798

Thomas Beddoes to James Watt Jr, 25 February 1798

25 Feb

I am very thankful to your father for Black’s drawings & to you for giving me your ideas – I agree with you that Milner’s is a very good syllabus for its period. I need not trouble you to procure me a copy as I have long had & indeed used it at Oxford – My intention is to give a syllabus by spurts – If they have the heads of each lecture before it is given I do not think that not having the whole at first will be a disadvantage & I shall better mature it – Indeed my time has been exceedingly engaged in the way of my profession & I think I shall not be able to compleat an arrangement of the whole heads before the lectures must begin – Clayfield & I like the Irish operator very well so far

You may rely on the safe return of Widenmann & the brasses. I might perhaps have asked you to lend me his Mineralogy for a few days when I came to that part. But I have succeeded in my endeavours to procure a copy –

1.   Would you dislike to lend me your pechsteins provided they w^d not suffer & I promised not to trust them out of my own hands & I found nothing respecting this interesting class in Broderip’s? I w^d not wish them till a day or two before I shew them & w^d return them directly –

2.   W^d you lend me Crell’s Annalen for 1795, 6, 7 – for 2 months?

3.   Perhaps what I am now going to say is like an attempt to borrow the Ark of the Covenant. But as I think that the person asked has as much right to refuse as the asker to ask, & actually regulate my feelings by this principle, so as not to be chagrined by a frank denial, I the less hesitate to express my wish – you shewed me one of your own or Mr Boulton’s many specimens of Herculaneum glass – 1, 2, or 3 of these w^d enliven my hist^y of Chemistry – I engage both for keeping them in my own hands & for returning them immediately – It is for you to estimate the chance of injury during conveyance. Very probably your repugnance to trust such things out of your own keeping may be insuperable & perhaps my own would – If these curiosities belong to Mr Boulton, I request you – not to ask him to lend them – but to mention to him the substance of this page – If among these specimens ‘antiquae lacidas & artis’ there be any one that can be trusted which shews complication of structure, I sh^d be glad of that –

4.     I sh^d be glad to borrow for exhibition a well defined Saxon topaz – if Broderip (who has with wonderful liberality or easiness committed his cabinet to my disposal & God send me grace & good luck not injure any specimen) sh^d happen not to have one –

Thomas Beddoes

For Mr Watt Sen^r – In the Annals of Med. Vol. 2 there is a pretty case of phthisis cured accidentally by mephitic air – I have had some curious & distinct facts lately sent by new observers – which I think to print in a small pamphlet, partly to let them know we are going on; partly to say the Pneum^c Instⁿ will be begun early in winter; si deus voluerit & B-n-p-rte – If any fine morning within a fortnight, Mr Watt sh^d be inclined to sing a song or whistle a tune, I wish he w^d at the same time cut out an elastic transferring tube; his hands will be at liberty & he w^d lose, therefore, no time –

[in Anna Beddoes’s hand:]

Please to let me know, and do not, because I am a woman treat me with less candour than you would the dr whether I with my little Maryanne could be admitted into y^r delightful Scotch scheme without inconvenience to you; Dr B. is about a p^r of travelling horses, he would take the chaise, and walk or ride where you like to go out of the common road; this is not the whole of the explanation, quite as you will conceive. Now though you may not have the honesty to say no downright yet I shall contrive to find out what you wish by the manner in which you express yourself   AMB.

Address: James Watt Esq Jun^r / Soho / Birmingham
Endorsement: Dr Beddoes / Clifton 25 Feb^y 1798 / Wants the loan of sundry articles for his lectures
MS: LoB MS 3219/6/2/B/65