It would be vain to enumerate all the projects in which he was consulted, or the schemes which he executed. The variety and extent of his employments may be best estimated from his Reports, of which a complete collection has been published by the Society of Civil Engineers, in consequence of the liberality of Sir Joseph Banks, who had purchased, and presented them to the Society for this purpose. They fill three quarto volumes, and constitute a most interesting and valuable series of treatises on every branch of engineering; as draining, bridge-building, making and improving canals and navigable rivers, planning docks and harbours, the improvement of mill-work, and the application of mechanical improvements to different manufactures. His papers in the Philosophical Transactions are published separately, and fill another quarto volume. They contain descriptions of those early inventions which we have mentioned, and of an improved air-pump, and a new hygrometer and pyrometer; together with his treatise on Mill-work, and some papers which show that he was fond of the science of astronomy, and practically skilled in it.
His health began to decline about 1785, and he endeavoured to withdraw from business, and to devote his attention to publishing an account of his own inventions and works; for as he often said, “he thought he could not render so much service to his country as by doing that.” He succeeded in bringing out his elaborate account of the Eddystone Light-house, published in 1791. But he found it impossible to withdraw entirely from business: and it appears that over-exertion and anxiety did actually bring on an attack of paralysis, to which his family were constitutionally liable. He was taken ill at his residence at Austhorpe, in September, 1792, and died October 28, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He had long looked to this disease as the probable termination of his life, and felt some anxiety concerning the likelihood of out-living his faculties, and in his own words, of “lingering over the dregs after the spirit had evaporated.” This calamity was spared him: in the interval between his first attack and his death, his mind was unclouded, and he continued to take his usual interest in the occupations of his domestic circle. Sometimes only he would complain, with a smile, of his slowness of apprehension, and say, “It cannot be otherwise: the shadow must lengthen as the sun goes down.”