| Description | [Dated from docket]. [Letter begins with wishes for a happy year. Greetings. The role of the inventor in society. An account of the steam engine should be written up to render it practicable. He has been working on varnishes; copal varnish, amber varnish, items to be manufactured.
'I wanted to make an amber varnish and have executed it, but as it has the virtues so it also inherits the vices of its parent therefore as a varnish not to be considered in the same day with the other; but if a manufacturer of beads jinckumbobs and little Jesuses required this stuff I think blocks might be made of which a faber of this kind might be incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum.'
'Your friends are trying to do something for you what success will attend their endeavours time only will show — every application for publick employment is considered as a job and to be carried into execution requires nothing but a passage through the proper channels; it is then a well digested plan; the honestest endeavour must to succeed put on the face of rogher [sic] but what signifies the dress of a rogue unless you have the address of a wise man; come and lick somne great man's arse and be damn'd to you; what signifies blowing wind in the arse of a hot barrell, or making soap bubbles in another way than that you did at school.'
He has had no success in Mr Boulton's commission [to find a clerk]. Dr Black asks James Watt to perform an experiment with some soft iron. Compliments to the Boultons; Mrs Boulton's venison was the best he has eaten. 'Set all the Bells and hammers of Birmingham a ringing for my treaures are arrived in the firth tho as yet not come to hand'.] |