WATSON
tion. In 1831 he narrowly escaped prison
for organizing a feast on the day on which
the Government had ordered a fast. In
the same year he began to publish, and in
1833 spent six further months in prison.
He returned to the work at his release,
and with the aid of a subsidy from Julian
Hibbert he (with his own hand) printed
and bound works of Paine, Volney, Mira-
baud, etc., which he sold at one shilling
each. He was again in prison for six
months in 1834. Watson, a very sober
and earnest man, worked also in the
moderate Chartist and the Trade Union
movements, and was one of the most
ardent opponents of " the taxes on know
ledge." D. Nov. 29, 1874.
WATSON, Sir William, LL.D., poet. B. Aug. 2, 1858. Watson is the son of a Yorkshire merchant who had settled in Liverpool which is all that he cares to tell about his early life. He opened his dis tinguished literary career with The Prince s Quest in 1880, followed by Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature in 1884. He, as is the lot of poets, obtained little recognition for his early work, and until he published Words worth s Grave (1892) and Lachrymce Musa- rum (on the death of Tennyson, 1893) he was comparatively unknown. He is now in the front rank, if not in a rank of his own, among living British poets. Gladstone awarded him the Civil List pension vacated by Tennyson. He has an honorary degree from Aberdeen University, and was knighted in 1917. Sir William is not only one of the few poets who take account of science, but he is also rare in the definiteness of his Agnostic creed. The Hope of the World (1897) is a fine Agnostic poem on man s evolution and situation, abjuring the dream of immortality. " The Unknown God " (in The Hope of the World and Other Poems, 1898) is equally drastic and more beautiful. To Watson " God " is merely " the mystery we make darker with a name." He treats severely the God of the Churches
" A God for ever hearkening Unto his self-appointed laud."
873
WATT, James, LL.D., F.E.S., F.E.S.E.,
engineer. B. Jan. 19, 1736. Ed. Greenock
Grammar School. At the age of seventeen
he was sent to London to learn the making
of mathematical instruments. Ho was back
in Glasgow in 1757, and was appointed
mathematical instrument maker to the
University. It was while he was repairing
the model of a Newcomen steam engine
(which he did not invent) for the University
that Watt conceived the germ of his great
improvement of the engine, which he
patented in 1769. He had meantime gone
as engineering adviser to the Carron
Foundry, and in 1774 he joined Boulton
in establishing a firm at Birmingham.
Watt was not only a fertile inventor
" his many and most valuable inventions
must always place him among the leading
benefactors of mankind" (Diet. Nat. Biog.)
but a good chemist and very fair general
scholar. He knew Latin, Greek, French,
German, and Italian. He was admitted
to the Eoyal Society in 1785, and received
his honorary degree from Glasgow Univer
sity in 1806. He was also a corresponding
member of the French Institut (1808) and
a foreign associate of the Academie des
Sciences (1814). He declined the offer of
a baronetcy, and died a plain man. Watt
was an intimate friend of Lavoisier and
Berthollet, and he adopted the advanced
ideas of the French. Mr. Andrew Carnegie
makes it plain in his life of the great
engineer (Life of J. Watt, 1905, p. 202)
that he was a Deist. He did not attend
church or chapel, and one of the earliest
biographers, Williamson, a Christian, darkly
hints that it would be interesting to know
more about his " disposition to the supreme
truths of Revelation." D. Aug. 25, 1819.
WATTS, Charles, lecturer and writer. B. Feb. 27, 1836. The son of a Wesleyan minister, he was at an early age converted to Freethought by Southwell and G. J. Holyoake. Within a year or two of his arrival in London he came under the influ ence of E. Cooper, Bradlaugh, and other prominent men in the Secularist movement. 874
