Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/272

Mechanician, has attempted to make the world better acquainted with this practical philanthropist; which knows of him only as an eminent clock and watchmaker.—When our Adventurer went to London, in 1727, with the plans of his first Machine for the Longitude, he called on Graham, by the advice of Dr. Halley, who told him not to mind something repulsive in his first reception. After they got the ice broke (as John Harrison expresses it) this worthy man, than whom there could not be a better judge, allowed that young Harrison's plans were superior to his own; and probably saw that he was destined to supplant the imputation of all who had gone before him (his own inclusiyely) yet he manifested not a particle of that envy and ill-will which few but such rare geniuses can suppress at such a time—which Addison could not, who, it seems agreed,

Bore, like the Turk, no rival near the throne.

Which Pope himself, who wrote that line, was unequal to:^[1] for he envied the success of the Beggars' Opera, the production of his friend Gay.—Graham instead of picking what he could out of the young man who had brought his drawings with him, and then conjuring up bugbears to dissuade him from applying to the Board of Longitude, which is too often the sequel of such an affair, detained him to pot-luck,^[2] treated him like a brother, though an entire stranger, and gave him the most judicious counsel; nor did he stop at this negative kindness (advice being cheap) for he lent him money without security, and without interest. Nay, we have it on the testimony of John Harrison, that when he was pressed by the difficulties his enterprize led him into, and his friends came forward for his relief, "Graham was still among the rest."^[3] In short the

1. With these, Voltaire may form a trio, for "his despotic jealousy could brook no rival in literary fame."
2. These kindred geniuses, it appears, kept up an animated discussion, on scientific chronometry, from ten in the morning till eight in the evening.
3. There was the more merit in this, when it is considered that he was not like the Man of Ross, and other celebrated philanthropists, disengaged from the cares of a family.