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From: James
Patrick Muirhead, The Life of James
Watt (London:
John Muray, 1858)
In the preface to The
Monastery, Scott saluted
the engineer and inventor James Watt as 'the man whose genius
discovered the means of multiplying our national resources to
a degree perhaps even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation
and combination; bringing the treasures of the abyss to the summit
of the earth -- giving the feeble arm of man the momentum of
an Afrite -- commanding manufactures to arise, as the rod
of the prophet
produced water in the desert -- affording the means of dispensing
with that time and tide which wait for no man, and of sailing
without that wind which defied the commands and threats of Xerxes
himself'. He was, moreover, 'one of the best and kindest of
human beings'.
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