ABSTRACT
In The Triumph of Life Shelley wrote of Aristotle’s pupil, Alexander, ‘whom fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion’, of Aristotle himself [the ‘other’ of the line below] and of Bacon: The other long outlived both woes and wars, Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept. Davy had worked at his Elements of Chemical Philosophy with his usual rapid concentration. Once it was completed, he set out with Lady Davy on a bridal tour which was in the nature of a Progress. In Scotland, Davy met with that hospitality, including good sport, in which his heart rejoiced. Whether Lady Davy’s danced to the same tune is not so sure. Her love of angling had been, perhaps, platonic, whereas Davy always fished with the absorption of a madman. Davy had for a long time been experimenting with azote (the name given by Lavoisier to what is now called nitrogen) and chlorine.
