refused, and of late they have alleged that they cannot keep their engagements with Mr. Kendall if they were to lend me the Watch.[1] What those
- ↑ Had he so chosen, he could have stated more distinctly the ill treatment he had experienced, as well as the magnitude of the injury to the public. The Timekeeper was first locked up six months at the Admiralty, as if by the advice of John Gilpin,[subnote 1] being what might have been expected from his credi-
in his power to reader useless the labours of this indefatigable man. He had secured the whole management of this public concern (so called) although, as we have said, he pretended to have himself discovered one of the principles employed in the construction of the Timekeeper, by virtue of which he claimed some degree of equality with the Inventor; but unluckily John Harrison, who had all the pride of spirit, in a certain sense, which often accompanies genius, could not be brought to compliment this Birmingham philosopher on his merit, in any view.
- ↑ In his pamphlet on Mechanism, some years after, John Harrison has a note on this subject, in a caustic manner, part of which we insert—"they took great care about my Watch, for they locked it up in a closet at the Admiralty,—because it had performed two voyages so well; and so they would keep it as a piece of treasure, for fear any body else should eyer be able to make such another; a fair sign indeed, that they did not understand it"—In other passages he is found complaining into what ignorant hands he had got. The Commissioners certainly did not understand the subject much, and least of all their Manager, whose plebeian cast of mind (notwithstanding his hereditary honours) rendered him incapable of adopting any course advantageous for the public—so it was, they uniformly treated this man of genius as if he had no design but to impose on them; which his spirit could not brook.
laity, reconcile this spitfire impulse, with a leading tenet of the Christian religion, which enjoins to love your enemies, and to bless them that curse you?—A difficulty of the same kind, though not so cogent, applies to the motto of the Garter, in England; for the genuine Christian is forbidden to wish evil to any one. We should like to know how the Chancellor of the Order (the Bishop of Winchester) deals with it.
