From Thomas Beddoes to Erasmus Darwin   [?late 1789-January 1790]

You may by this time have heard, for, in consequence of my own communications, and those of many persons to whom I had mentioned the circumstance, it has spread pretty wide; that an Author, an Englishman, and a Physician, clearly and distinctly discovered, a little after the middle of the last century, several capital branches of the pneumatic theory of chemistry; and he employs, not vague terms, but clear experiments, and an apparatus such as will astonish every intelligent person who sees it for the first time. I have employed a few intervals of leisure, to brush the dust off the memory of this, perhaps, next to him who awes all men to a respectful distance, the greatest of our natural philosophers.