r. Johnson. His closest friend for many years was
Theophilus Lindsey. One might also mention the great Lavoisier,
Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and a dozen other scientific,
ecclesiastical, and political celebrities. The Memoir, however, is
almost as remarkable for what it does not tell concerning these people
as for what it does. Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a
little less reticent about himself than he is about others. He does
indeed describe his early struggles as a dissenting minister, but the
reader would like a little more expansiveness in the account of his
friendships and his chemical discoveries. These discoveries were made
during the time that he was minister at the Mill-hill Chapel, Leeds.
Here he began the serious study of chemistry. And that without
training in the science as it was then understood. At Warrington he
had heard a series of chemical lectures by Dr. Turner of Liverpool, a
gentleman whom Americans ought to regard with amused interest, for he
was the man who congratulated his fellows in a Liverpool debating
society that while they had just lost the _terra firma_ of thirteen
colonies in America, they had gained, under the generalship of Dr.
Herschel, a _terra incognita_ of much greater extent _in nubibus_.
Priestley not only began his experiments without any great store of
knowledge, but also without apparatus save what he devised for himself
of the cheapest materials. In 1772 he published his first important
scientific tract, 'a small pamphlet on the method of impregnating
water with fixed air.' For this he received the Copley medal from the
Royal Society. On the first of August, 1774, he discovered oxygen.
Nobody in Leeds troubled particularly to inquire what this dissenting
minister was about with his vials and tubes, his mice and his plants.
Priestley says that the only person who took 'much interest' was Mr.
Hey, a surgeon. Mr. Hey was a 'zealous Methodist' and wrote answers to
Priestley's theological papers. Arminian and Socinian were at peace if
science was the theme. When Priestley departed from Leeds, Hey begged
of him the 'earthen trough' in which all his experiments had been
made. This earthen trough was nothing more nor less than a washtub of
the sort in common local use. So independent is genius of the
elaborate appliances with which talent must produce results.

The discoveries brought fame, especially upon the Continent, and led
Lord Shelburne to invite Priestley to