"There did I first rejoice that I was born Amidst the majesty of azure seas."
Davy received what is usually called a liberal education, putting in nine years in the Penzance and one year in the Truro Grammar School. His best exercises were translations from the classics into English verse. He was rather idle, fond of fishing (an enthusiasm he retained throughout life) and shooting, and less appreciated and beloved by his masters than by his school-fellows, who recognized his wonderful abilities, sought his aid in their Latin compositions (as well as in the writing of letters and valentines), and listened eagerly to his imaginative tales of wonder and horror. Years later he wrote to his mother: "After all, the way in which we are taught Latin and Greek does not much influence the important structure of our minds. I consider it fortunate that I was left much to myself when a child, and put upon no particular plan of study, and that I enjoyed much idleness at Mr. Coryton's school. I perhaps owe to these circumstances the little talents that I have and their peculiar application."
When Davy was about sixteen years old, his father died, leaving the widow and her five children, of whom Humphry was the eldest, with very scanty provision. The mind of the youth seemed to undergo an immediate change. He expressed his resolution (which he nobly carried out) to play his part as son and brother. Within a few weeks he became apprenticed to an apothecary and surgeon, and, having thus found his vocation, drew up his own particular plan of self-education, to which he rigidly adhered. His brother, Dr. John Davy, bears witness that the following is transcribed from a notebook of Humphry's, bearing the date of the same year as his apprenticeship (1795):--
1. Theology or Religion } Taught by Nature. Ethics or Moral Virtues } by Revelation.
3. My Profession-- 1. Botany. 2. Pharmacy. 3. Nosology. 4. Anatomy. 5. Surgery. 6. Chemistry.
A series of essays which Davy wrote in pursuing his scheme of self-culture proves how rapidly his mind drew away from the superstitions which characterized the masses of the people among whom he lived. He had as a boy been haunted by the fear of monsters and witches in which the credulous of all classes then believed. His notebook shows that he was now subjecting to examination the religious and political opinions of his time. He composed essays on the immortality and immateriality of the soul, on governments, on the credulity of mortals, on the dependence of the thinking powers on the organization of the body, on the ultimate end of being, on happiness, and on moral obligation. He studied the writings of Locke, Hartley, Berkeley, Hume, Helvetius, Condorcet, and Reid, and knew something of German philosophy. It was not till he was nineteen that Davy entered on the experimental study of chemistry.