Thomas Beddoes to Humphry Davy, 22 or 23 December 1808
Fragment 1
Davy wrote in his notebook: ‘Beddoes was reserved in manner, and almost dry; but his countenance was very agreeable. He was cold in conversation, and apparently much occupied with his own peculiar views and theories. Nothing could be a stronger contrast to his apparent coldness in discussion, than his wild and active imagination, which was as poetical as Darwin’s. He was little enlightened by experiment, and, I may say, little attentive to it. He had great talents, and much reading, but had lived too little amongst superior men. On his death-bed he wrote me a most affecting letter, regretting his scientific aberrations. I remember one expression: ‘Like one who has scattered abroad the avena fatua of knowledge, from which neither branch, nor blossom, nor fruit has resulted, I require the consolations of a friend.’ Beddoes had talents which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, if they had been applied with discretion.’
…………….Fragment 2, from The Medical and Physical Journal, 21 (February 1809), 91.
We are favoured by one of the first philosophers of the age with the following extract from a letter, written by Dr. Beddoes’ own hand two days before his death:
Quietly and stilly have I put forth a bit of solid pathological doctrine, drawn from no superficial sources. What I refer to is in the Medical and Physical Journal in the last two months; it is briefly this, that in some circumstances a man shall die apoplectic, or with inflamed head, and shall have an inflammation in his stomach, sometimes of standing, at others arising in a few hours; and whichever the duration, no pain be felt in the stomach, and indeed the head will go on long too.
Published: John Davy (ed.), The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., 9 vols (London, 1839), Vol. I Memoirs of His Life, p. 49
MS: RI MS HD/14/I