Faraday to James David Forbes   26 April 1832

31 Kings Road | Brighton | April 26th 1832

My dear Sir

Although I receive your letter¹ here, I answer it immediately for if I waited until I returned to London I could do nothing more than what is in my power here[.]

You are quite right in understanding that (as far as I know) Nobili & Antinori only have obtained the spark from a natural magnet before you. These two wrote the paper in the Antologia in common²[.]

Letters from Baron Jacquin³ at Vienna say that the results which my letter announced & those of MM Nobili & Antinori had been successfully obtained there[.] The letter was to Mr Gray of the British Museum. I do not know its date or whether at Vienna they had obtained the spark[.]

Before I left town I put into my Binders hands to be bound a volume of my papers from the Philosophical Transactions⁴[.] With the papers I have had bound up certain letters of Scientific friends as Young Herschell Barlow Wollaston⁵ &c &c relating to the subjects in the papers and also the numbers of the Lycée⁶ sent to me by Hachette containing the translation of my letter to him & likewise the paper sent me by Nobili. This latter therefore will when I return home form part of a Quarto Volume - or I should have had great pleasure in sending it to you in accordance with your request[.]

But I hope that by this time the No of the Antologia (for November 1831) is in London & Edinburgh & that you can easily gain access to it. I judge from Baron Jacquin's letter that it has been published some little time[.]

I hope that by this time you have received my paper⁷[.] If I thought you had not I would pack one up & send it to the address you gave me in your last[.]

You speak of the transmission of information & the lesson it affords to discoverers - but is it not very annoying that one may not talk of a matter to ones most intimate friend least it should be misinterpreted or perhaps given to another or as has happened to myself (in other cases, not the present) be actually stolen[.] But I must not allow my recollection to dwell on these things although they sometimes almost induce me to give up the pursuit of science for exalted & noble as it is in itself & as it its [sic] outward appearance it frequently presents to the private knowledge of him who pursues it quite as much that is degraded & base[.]

I am My dear Sir Very Truly Yours M. Faraday

Address: James D. Forbes Esq | &c &c &c | Greenhill | Edinburgh