LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, from the portrait in Dr Williams'

Library by Artaud

(Photogravure) Frontispiece

BIRTHPLACE OF PRIESTLEY, from a drawing by J. A.

Joseph Priestley

CHAPTER I

Birth-Parentage-Home Life—Early Education

IF," says Mr Frederic Harrison, "we choose one man as a type of the intellectual energy of the eighteenth century we could hardly find a better than Joseph Priestley, though his was not the greatest mind of the century. His versatility, eagerness, activity and humanity; the immense range of his curiosity in all things, physical, moral or social; his place in science, in theology, in philosophy and in politics; his peculiar reation to the Revolution, and the pathetic story of his inmerited sufferings, may make him the hero of the eighteenth century."

In these few lines Mr Harrison has indicated, in terms ufficiently precise, the leading features in the character nd life-history of one of the most remarkable men of the ighteenth century. To what extent he may be regarded s a hero and as a type of the intellectual energy of that entury it is the purpose of the following pages to make lear.

Joseph Priestley was born at Fieldhead, in the parish. f Birstall, near Leeds, on March 13 (Old Style), 1733.1 I The Gregorian Calendar was not adopted in Great Britain until 1751. 1752 eleven days were left out of the Calendar, September 3rd being unted the 14th. The change of style probably accounts for the confusion the various dates of Priestley's birth given by different writers. In ialmers's General Biographical Dictionary the date is given as March 18;

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He was named after his paternal grandfather, "an eminent tradesman, as much famed for his heavenly conduct as his grandson (Joseph) has since been for natural abilities."

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"The Priestleys," writes Madame Belloc, the great-granddaughter of the subject of this memoir, in her charming essay, Joseph Priestley in Domestic Life" (Contemporary Review, October 1894), "were of an old Presbyterian stock; one branch of the family acquired wealth and lived at Whiteways, but his (Joseph's) own immediate ancestors were farmers and clothiers, people of substance in the yeoman class. We can trace them accurately as far as the middle of the seventeenth century, when one Phoebe Priestley, after wrestling with fever in her household, was herself stricken, and lay like a lamb before the Lord' on her deathbed. Her husband wrote a long and touching account of all she said and did, that her children might know what manner of mother they had lost. These people were presumably of the same stock as the Priestleys of Soylands, who ran back into the Middle Ages.

"The children of the Priestley families were all named after scriptural characters. They were Josephs, Timothys and Sarah from one generation to another. The Bible was stamped intc them, and from it they drew all the inspiration of their lives."

Joseph Priestley the elder was born in 1660, and died on August 2, 1745. He married Sarah Healey and had by her eight children, five sons and three daughters, of whom Jonas, the father of Joseph Priestley the younger, born about 1700, was the seventh child and fourth son. Jonas Priestley married Mary, a daughter of Joseph Swift, a farmer and maltster of Shafton, near Wakefield, and had by her six children, four sons and two

in Allen's American Biographical and Historical Dictionary and i Thomson's History of the Royal Society as March 24; Corry, in his Life of Priestley, gives March 24; Hoefer, in his Histoire de la Chimie, give March 30, probably following Dumas's Philosophie de Chimie; Cuvier, in his Eloge, says that he was born near Bristol in 1728! In a letter to Wedgwood, dated March 23, 1783, Priestley says in a postscript "This day I complete my half century."

HIS PARENTAGE

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daughters, of whom Joseph was the eldest and Timothy the second; Martha, the elder girl, who died in 1812, married John Crouch, and was left a widow in poor circumstances in 1786. Another member of the Priestley family who requires mention for the purpose of this narrative is Sarah, the sister of Jonas and second daughter of Joseph Priestley the elder. She was born in 1692 and married John Keighley-" a man who had distinguished himself for his zeal for religion and for his public spirit." She was left a widow in 1745. Three years before this she took her nephew Joseph, the subject of this memoir, to live with her, and "was fond of him in the extreme." She died in 1764. Her brother John, Joseph Priestley the younger's uncle, died on February 28, 1786, aged ninety-two. "He was a remarkable man and of a singularly happy constitution, both of body and mind."

This happy constitution of body and mind seems indeed to have been a characteristic of many members of the family, the several branches of which were remarkably healthy and long-lived.

Priestley says of his father Jonas that he had uniformly better spirits than any man he ever knew, and by this means was as happy towards the close of life, when reduced to poverty and dependent upon others, as in his best days. These facts are not without interest as serving to account for much that we shall have occasion to note in the character and temperament of the subject of this biography.

Fieldhead, the house in which he first saw the light, had been occupied by the family for several generations. It was a small two-storey building, built of stone and slated with flag, similar in character to many of the

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