WATTHIS GREAT-GRANDFATHER HIS GRANDFATHER THOMAS WATT BURGH OF GREENOCK LIFE AND THE fame of James Watt, great as it unquestionably became in the course of his long and honoured life, has increased since his death in a degree that may, perhaps, be termed unprecedented, being co-ordinate with nothing less than the unlimited development of his own manifold inventions. In the case of illustrious heroes and statesmen, poets, orators, or artists, who have attained the height of their glory in their own time, it often happens that when the excitement of contemporary interest, the influence of power, or the partiality of friendship is removed, the judgment which posterity pronounces on their achievements is a comparatively severe one. Such, however, has not been the case with the inventor of the modern steam-engine; and the renown of so great a promoter of the arts of civilization and the blessings of peace, elastic and expansive as that mighty agent which he first taught men truly to regulate and use, appears, with a steady progression, to have become as universally diffused as the all-pervading power of STEAM. The respect which in all ages and countries has ever been paid to inventors seems, indeed, to rest on something more profound than mere gratitude for the benefits which they have been the means of conferring on mankind; and to imply, if it does not express, a consciousness that by the grand and original conceptions of their minds they approach somewhat B 66 66 more nearly than their fellows to the qualities and preeminence of a higher order of being. "The dignity," says Lord Bacon, "of this end of endowment of man's life with "new commodity appeareth by the estimation that antiquity "made of such as guided thereunto; for whereas founders of states, lawgivers, extirpators of tyrants, fathers of the people, "were honoured but with the titles of demigods, inventors were ever consecrated among the gods themselves." * Of all the inventions which the ingenuity of man has devised, that of the modern steam-engine is, whether we regard its own mechanism and mode of performing its operations, or the operations themselves, perhaps the most wonderful, and certainly the most useful. "We must confess," says Belidor, "that this is the most marvellous of all machines, and that "there are none of which the mechanism has so much analogy "to that of animals. Heat is the principle of its motion; in "its different pipes there takes place a circulation like that of "the blood in the veins, having valves which open and shut "themselves at right times; it feeds itself, performs its " evacuations at regular intervals, and draws from its own "work all that is needful for its subsistence." + So, Wordsworth and Coleridge, when on a tour in Scotland, "passed," says Dr. Wordsworth, "a steam-engine, and Wordsworth made some observation to the effect that it was scarcely possible "to divest oneself of the impression, on seeing it, that it had "life and volition. 'Yes,' replied Coleridge, 'it is a giant "with one idea.'" Thus, the multiplication of diversified forms and effects which the living energies of machinery mysteriously call forth from shapeless, inert, and apparently inadequate materials,-the diminution of labour,the abridgment of time, the annihilation of distance, which the skilful employment of steam enables us to attain, seem little less than emanations from the awful attribute of creative power; and strikingly exemplify that Divine omnipotence and 66 *Fragments of Valerius Terminus, on the Interpretation of Nature;' Works of Bacon, by Basil Montagu, 1825, vol. i. p. 266. Belidor, Archit. Hydraul.,' vol. ii. pp. 324, 325, ed. 1739. Life of Wordsworth,' vol. ii. pp. 447, 448, ed. 1851. wisdom which inspired the genius to conceive and bestowed the ability to produce them. In proportion to the estimate which men have formed of the importance of the inventor's work is generally the desire they feel to learn the history of its origin and progress; and of the development of the mind of its contriver. It will be seen from the following pages, that the life of the creator of the modern steam-engine was one, as has been justly remarked, of patriarchal simplicity, "devoted to labour, to "study, to meditation;" and that in a humble condition, and a career of virtuous industry and patient thought, "projects "were elaborated, which were destined to raise the British "nation to an unheard-of height of power." The first of the paternal ancestors of James Watt, of whom any notices have been preserved, is his great-grandfather; the minute details of whose personal history, however, have shared nearly the same oblivion in which even his Christian name is sunk. It is only known, from the traditions of his family, that he lived in Aberdeenshire in the earlier half of the seventeenth century, and followed the business of a farmer, whether of his own land or not we can only conjecture; that his peaceful pursuits did not exempt him, in "the troubles" of that period, from a rude summons to arms, and an early death in battle; that he perished in one of the wars of Montrose, fighting, in all likelihood, for the cause of the Covenant; that his property was confiscated; and that his orphan son, Thomas, educated by the care of some distant relations, thus received that blessing promised to the fatherless to compensate their loss. Where those relations lived who thus benevolently rescued from destitution the poor orphan does not appear. He was born, according to one account, in 1639, according to another in 1642, and was at all events soon removed from Aberdeenshire;-a county which at that time suffered more than perhaps any other part of Scotland from the scourge of civil war, and which, according to the lamentable account given by Spalding in his 'Memorialls of the Trubles in Scotland and in England, A.D. 1624-A.D. 1645,' was left "almost man "less, moneyless, horseless, and armless, so pitifully was the 66 same borne down and subdued." Thomas Watt settled, early in life, in the little burgh of barony of Crawfordsdyke, or Cartsdyke, situated in the barony of Cartsburn, in the close vicinity of the town of Greenock in Renfrewshire. He was a "teacher of naviga❝tion;" or, as he is styled on his tomb-stone, "Professor of "the Mathematicks;" a vocation for the exercise of which it appears that neither Cartsdyke nor Greenock could, previous to that time, have afforded any very wide scope. Greenock was erected into a burgh of barony by a charter of Charles I., granted 5th June, 1635, and ratified by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland in 1641; and, according to the best information extant on the subject, the erection of Crawfordsdyke into a similar burgh took place in 1669. But neither place became very populous or busy for many years afterwards; and even so late as April, 1700, in an enquiry for settling the amount of taxation to be made in respect of their trade, it was given in evidence that the whole shipping of the two burghs together consisted but of one ship belonging wholly to Greenock; three ships having part-owners in Glasgow; and two barks and a traveller-boat, said to belong to Greenock. In this estimate there can be no doubt that the open or half-decked boats employed in the herring or other fisheries were not included; for even then those resources of the Western Frith were opening up an extensive and valuable business, and might indeed be looked upon as a nursery of excellent seamen soon to be employed in making longer voyages, as well as of that enterprise and capital which the merchants of Glasgow, Port-Glasgow, and Greenock, were to embark in the great system of commerce which they have since created. But still the enumeration above-mentioned presents a marvellous contrast with the present state of the Frith of Clyde, when, after the interval of only a century and a half, we see its waters covered with the sails of thousands of merchant vessels, and its air darkened with the smoke of almost innumerable steam-boats. That learned antiquary, William Hamilton of Wishaw, in his volume of 'Descriptions of the Sheriffdoms of Lanark and Renfrew, compiled about M.DCC.X.,' which was printed at Glasgow in 1831, for the Maitland Club, gives the following description of the two sister burghs as they appeared in his time: 66 66 66 66 : "About two miles down from Newark, upon the river of Clyde, is the house, town, and parish of Greenock. This "parish is of no old erection. But the Lairds of Greenock having given incouragement to build, leave and inhabite there, that the town so increased as the Laird was incouraged to build ane church there; and got severall lands disjoyned from neighbouring parishes, which makes up this parish of Greenock. And the town of Greenock is now “ erected in ane burgh of barronie; hath ane good harbour "for vessels, and is become a place of considerable trade, "and is like more and more to increase, as specially if the "herring fishing continue in the river of Clyde for as that fishing necessarly follows the sweaming of the herring, so "when they sweam in Clyde or in the lochs adjoyning to it, "as frequently they doe towards the end of the year, it occa"sions a confluence of many thousands of people to these pairts, which yearly continowes a considerable space. 66 66 "The last Laird of Greenock, Sir John Schaw, did wonderfuly augment his fortune, so as he left one of the best "gentlemen's estate to his sone in all that country. "There is very expensive works lately built about the house, "gardens and parks of Greenock, which exceadingly beautify "the place; and he hath singularly repaired and beautifyed "the church. 66 "Near to the town of Greenock is the town of Carsedyke, lyand upon the river of Clyde, a litle to the east of "Greenock. It is erected in a burgh of barrony, and hath a very convenient harbour for vessels. It belongs to the "Laird of Carseburn, Crawford, who is brother sone to the "Laird of Jordanhill, who hath a convenient house and dwelling ther, att Carseburn.-The town is mostly subfewed "to merchands, seamen, or loadingmen, who have built very good houses in it; and is a very thriving litle place." 66 66 |