Literary Connexions or Acquaintances [March 1837]

This chapter discusses the acquaintance of de Quincey with Humphry Davy. Davy was charged, by many others as well as Coleridge, with too much forgetting the dignity of science in the society, and too openly laying himself out to win favour or applause. Davy was not a favourite with Coleridge; and yet Coleridge, who grasped the whole philosophy of chemistry perhaps better than any man except Schelling, admired him, and praised him much; and often he went so far as to say that he might have been a great poet, which perhaps few people will be disposed to think, from the specimens he has left in the Bristol Anthology. Davy was then supposed to be making a fortune by some manufactory of gunpowder, from which he drew a large share of profit, not for capital contributed, or not for that originally, but for chemical secrets communicated.