I know that I grieve for I had less ability to bear it, and my poor children might have been left suppliants to the mercy of the wide world. grief has its period; but I have much to suffer first. myself, not for my friend; for if probity, charity, and family can entitle her to a better state, she enjoys it. I am left to mourn. * Let me leave this tale of woe." * duty to her "Would that I might here transcribe," said Arago, "in all their simple beauty, some lines of the journal in which he daily recorded his inmost thoughts, his fears, his hopes! Would that you could see him, after this heavy affliction, pausing on the threshold of that home, where 'HIS KIND WELCOMER' awaited him no more; unable to summon courage to enter those rooms, where he was never more to meet 'THE COMFORT OF HIS LIFE!" Of the four children who were the issue of Mr. Watt's marriage with Miss Miller, two died in infancy; one daughter married a Mr. Miller of Glasgow, but died early, leaving issue a son and two daughters, (now all dead, the daughters having left issue); and the only son of that family who attained manhood was the late Mr. James Watt, of Aston Hall, who long survived his father as his respected representative, and died, unmarried, in 1848. CHAPTER XVII. DEPRESSION OF SPIRITS—INSOLVENCY OF DR. ROEBUCK-FORMATION OF PARTNERSHIP WITH MR. BOULTON-TRANSFERENCE OF THE NEW ENGINE TO SOHO-PROLONGATION OF PATENT OF 1769-DEATH OF DR. SMALL-NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, TALENTS, AND VIRTUES-PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OF THE NEW MANUFACTORY— ARTICLES OF PARTNERSHIP. Tins last most grievous calamity put the finishing stroke to the long series of adverse circumstances by which Watt had been oppressed. For years previously he had complained of frequent violent headaches, and almost constant bad health; of what he called laziness, stupefaction, and confusion of ideas, which no doubt meant the mental weariness arising from severe and anxious over-exertion; of the hatefulness of the employment of land surveying, to which he had then become a slave; of his detestation of making bargains, or settling accounts, or forcing workmen to do their duty; so that "I greatly doubt," he says in 1770, "whether the silent mansions of the grave be not the happiest abodes." "I am heart-sick of this country," he writes, after the loss of his wife, to his sympathizing friend Dr. Small, "I am indolent to excess, and, what alarms me most, I grow the longer the stupider. My memory fails me so as often totally to forget occurrences of no very ancient dates. I see myself condemned to a life of business; nothing can be more disagreeable to me; I tremble when I hear the name of a man I have any transactions to settle with. The engineering business is not a vigorous plant here; we are in general very poorly paid. This last year my whole gains do not exceed 2007., though some people have paid me very genteelly. There are also many disagreeable circumstances I cannot write; in short I must, as far as I see, change my abode. There are two things which occur to me, either to try England, or endeavour to get some lucrative place abroad; but I doubt my interest for the latter. What I am fittest for is a surveying engineer. Is there any business in that way? And, about the same time, it appears Dr. Roebuck had mentioned Mr. Watt having had an intention of passing the winter in France; to escape, doubtless, from the sorrowful associations that now pressed upon him in his own country. These circumstances all concurred with the disastrous state of affairs at Borrowstoness and Kinneil, to hasten the final settlement of the agreement with Mr. Boulton and Dr. Small. But it was now evident, since Roebuck had besome insolvent, and therefore unable to be any longer a partner in the proposed manufacture, that instead of one-half of his two-thirds of the patent of the engine, or one-third of the whole patent, as originally intended when that agreement was entered into in 1769, the whole of his interest would have to be purchased from him or his creditors. We have already seen that Boulton and Small were not more desirous of benefitting Watt, than Watt was of benefitting Roebuck; and also, that all four were anxious to see the engine prosecuted to completion, and its merits tested by actual performance on a great scale, none of them, (and, least of all, the inventor,) estimated the invention, as then attempted to be carried. out, as of any very high pecuniary value. In this view, it fortunately happened, that Roebuck's creditors most fully concurred; none of his creditors," writes Watt to Small,* "value the engine at a farthing;" and this uncomplimentary estimate, at which we now so well may marvel, and the creditors might soon afterwards have mourned,-was really of the greatest service in hastening the progress of the transference of the property. * 25 July, 1773. INSOLVENCY OF DR. ROEBUCK. 199 On terms satisfactory at the time to Dr. Roebuck, and which consisted in part at least of Mr. Boulton releasing him from a debt of 6301. due to him by the Doctor, and of the payment by Mr. Boulton of a further sum of 1000l., this transference at last took place, to Mr. Boulton alone; Dr. Small having by that time otherwise engaged all of his available funds. The 10007. paid were to be the first 1000l. of profit, (without repayment of any already sunk,) that might arise after the commencement of the partnership of Boulton and Watt. And in 1773 Mr. Watt and Dr. Roebuck executed a mutual discharge, which, as an interesting document in the history of the modern steam-engine, we shall here give entire:— "In the year 1767, Doctor John Roebuck at Kinneil, entered into partnership with James Watt at Glasgow, to verify and carry into practice an improved fire-engine invented by the said James Watt. Doctor Roebuck was to pay a debt of 1000l. incurred by the said James Watt in making the experiments tending to the invention of the engine, and also to pay the expense of the patent and further experiments. "James Watt was to attend and conduct the experiments, and assigned to the Doctor two-thirds of the property of the said invention, retaining one-third for his own use. "Dr. Roebuck has paid the thousand pounds, but the expense of the other things has been principally paid by James Watt. "In consideration of the mutual friendship subsisting between Dr. Roebuck and myself, and because I think the thousand pounds he has paid more than the value of the property of the two-thirds of the inventions, I hereby take upon myself all other sums I have laid out or paid upon it, also all other debts I have contracted upon that head, relieving the Doctor from the same, and meaning this as an absolute discharge for all sums he may have been owing me before this date. "Kinneil, May 17th, 1773.” "JAMES WATT. 66 Having examined the above narration of facts, I acknowledge the same to be just, and hereby discharge the account. "Kinneil, May 17, 1773." "JOHN ROEBUCK. Thus, in the summer of 1773, Mr. Watt found himself at liberty to remove from Kinneil, where they had long been lying useless, and "perishing" from "long exposure to the injuries of the weather," the iron works, cylinder, and pump, of the condensing engine partly erected there three years before. Those "disjecta membra" were then packed up and sent off to Soho, where a boiler was awaiting them, destined to inspire them with new life and movement; but it was not till after another year that they were followed by Mr. Watt, who had in the interval made his survey for the Caledonian Canal, and had suffered the loss, in which it so dismally terminated, of his much-loved wife. Early in April 1774, he writes to Dr. Small, "I begin now to see daylight through the affairs that have detained me so long, and think of setting out for you in a fortnight at furthest ;' and, early in May, "I have persuaded my friend Dr. Hutton, the famous fossil philosopher, to make the jaunt with me, and there are some hopes of Dr. Black's coming also." The next four or five months were passed in continuous though still partially futile attempts to construct a satisfactory wheel-engine, and in more successful ones to make the condensing engine do some good work. By the end of October, Mr. Watt was able to send his friend Roebuck such a report of the latter, that Dr. R. replied,* "You have now effectually established the justness of the principles on which your machine is constructed, and the generous and spirited gentleman you are connected with will never suffer it to fail for want of exertion to carry it into execution." He was also able to cheer the heart of his aged father, in his lonely home at Greenock, by writing to him, from Birmingham,† "the business * 12 November, 1774. † 11 December, 1774. |