User:Harrietnewnes/sandbox

Education, apprenticeship and poetry
Davy was born in Penzance, Cornwall in England on 17 December 1778. Davy's brother, John Davy, writes that the society of their hometown was characterised by "an almost unbounded credulity respecting the supernatural and monstrous [...] Amongst the middle and higher classes, there was little taste for literature, and still less for science [...] Hunting, shooting, wrestling, cockfighting, generally ending in drunkenness, were what they most delighted in". At the age of six, Davy was sent to the grammar school at Penzance. Three years later, his family moved to Varfell, near Ludgvan, and subsequently, in term-time Davy boarded with John Tonkin, his godfather and later his guardian. On leaving Penzance grammar school in 1793, Tonkin paid for Davy to attend Truro Grammar School in 1793 to finish his education under the Rev Dr Cardew, who, in a letter to Davies Gilbert, said dryly: "I could not discern the faculties by which he was afterwards so much distinguished." Yet, Davy entertained his school friends with writing poetry, Valentines, and telling stories from One Thousand and One Nights. Reflecting on his school days, in a letter to his mother, Davy wrote: "Learning naturally is a true pleasure; how unfortunate then it is that in most schools it is made a pain." Davy said: "I consider it fortunate I was left much to myself as a child, and put upon no particular plan of study... What I am I made myself." Davy's brother praises his "native vigour": "there belonged, however, to his mind, it cannot be doubted, the genuine quality of genius, or of that power of intellect which exalts its possessor above the crowd.

After Davy's father died in 1794, Tonkin apprenticed him to John Bingham Borlase, a surgeon with a practice in Penzance. Davy's indenture is dated 10 February 1795. In the apothecary's dispensary, Davy became a chemist, and a garret in Tonkin's house was where he conducted his earliest chemical experiments. Davy's friends said: "This boy Humphry is incorrigible. He will blow us all into the air." His elder sister complained of the ravages made on her dresses by corrosive substances. Davy was taught French by a refugee priest, and in 1797 read Lavoisier's Traité élémentaire de chimie

John Ayrton Paris remarked that poetry written by the young Davy "bear the stamp of lofty genius". Davy's first preserved poem entitled The Sons of Genius is dated 1795 and marked by the usual immaturity of youth. Other poems written in the following years, especially On the Mount's Bay and St Michael's Mount, are descriptive verses, showing sensibility but no true poetic imagination. Three of Davy's paintings from around 1796 have been donated to the Penlee House museum at Penzance. One is of the view from above Gulval showing the church, Mount's Bay and the Mount, while the other two depict Loch Lomond in Scotland.

While writing verses at the age of 17 in honour of his first love, he was eagerly discussing the question of the materiality of heat with his Quaker friend and mentor Robert Dunkin. Dunkin remarked: 'I tell thee what, Humphry, thou art the most quibbling hand at a dispute I ever met with in my life.' One winter day he took Davy to the Larigan River, To show him that rubbing two plates of ice together developed sufficient energy by motion, to melt them, and that after the motion was suspended, the pieces were united by regelation. It was a crude form of analogous experiment exhibited by Davy in the lecture-room of the Royal Institution that elicited considerable attention. As professor at the Royal Institution, Davy repeated many of the ingenious experiments he learned from his friend and mentor, Robert Dunkin.