y of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt
was an extraordinary, and in many respects a wonderful man.
Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such
varied and exact information--had read so much, or remembered
what he had read so accurately and well. He had infinite
quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain
rectifying and methodising power of understanding, which
extracted something precious out of all that was presented to
it. His stores of miscellaneous knowledge were immense, and yet
less astonishing than the command he had at all times over them.
It seemed as if every subject that was casually started in
conversation with him, had been that which he had been last
occupied in studying and exhausting; such was the copiousness,
the precision, and the admirable clearness of the information
which he poured out upon it without effort or hesitation. Nor
was this promptitude and compass of knowledge confined in any
degree to the studies connected with his ordinary pursuits. That
he should have been minutely and extensively skilled in
chemistry and the arts, and in most of the branches of physical
science, might perhaps have been conjectured; but it could not
have been inferred from his usual occupations, and probably is
not generally known, that he was curiously learned in many
branches of antiquity, metaphysics, medicine, and etymology, and
perfectly at home in all the details of architecture, music and
law. He was well acquainted, too, with most of the modern
languages, and familiar with their most recent literature. Nor
was it at all extraordinary to hear the great mechanician and
engineer detailing and expounding, for hours together, the
metaphysical theories of the German logicians, or criticising
the measures or the matter of the German poetry.

His astonishing memory was aided, no doubt, in a great measure,
by a still higher and rarer faculty--by his power of digesting
and arranging in its proper place all the information he
received, and of casting aside and rejecting, as it were
instinctively, whatever was worthless or immaterial. Every
conception that was suggested to his mind seemed instantly to
take its place among its other rich furniture, and to be
condensed into the smallest and most convenient form. He never
appeare