Note 112 — DAVY,
Reading edition
Byron's lines in the first canto of 'Don Juan' will doubtless recur to many of my readers:
'This is the patent age of new inventions For killing bodies and for saving souls, All propagated with the best intentions; Sir Humphry Davy's lantern by which coals Are safely mined for in the mode he mentions.'
Jackson's account of Timbuctoo; the narrative of Robert Adams, a sailor; Dr. Leyden's 'Discoveries in Africa,' and other works, are then hinted at; and the poet goes on, sardonically, to say that all these
'Are ways to benefit mankind, as true Perhaps, as shooting them at Waterloo.'