An Essay Upon National Character: Being an Inquiry into Some of the Principal Causes Which Contribute to Form and Modify the Characters of Nations in the State of Civilisation
An Essay Upon National Character: Being an Inquiry into Some of the Principal Causes Which Contribute to Form and Modify the Characters of Nations in the State of Civilisation
Richard Chenevix was an Irish chemist, mineralogist and playwright. He was known for his sharp cynicism and for engaging in combative criticism.
Background
Chenevix was born c. 1774, in Ballycommon, Ireland, the son of Elizabeth Arabin and lieutenant-colonel Daniel Chenevix of the Royal Irish Artillery. His great uncle Richard, and namesake, was the Church of Ireland Bishop of Waterford and Lismore.
Education
Chenevix was educated at the University of Glasgow. He entered there in 1785, but did not take a degree; however, he did graduate Bachelor of Arts from the University of Dublin.
Chenevix revealed his abilities as an analytical chemist in his analyses of a new variety of lead ore (1801); of arsenates of copper (1801); and of sapphire, ruby, and corundum (1802). The publication of Remarks Upon Chemical Nomenclature, According to the Principles of the French Neologists in 1802 won for him the reputation of a pioneer in that field.
At the same time, Chenevix was acquiring notoriety for his heated attacks upon his scientific colleagues, especially those in Germany. He was particularly critical of the German school of Naturphilosophie: he took to task Oersted’s Materialien zu einer Chernie des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (1803), in which the dualistic system of the Hungarian chemist Winter was defended, and opposed the dynamical theory of crystallization of the mineralogist Christian Samuel Weiss (1804). His pugnacity was to lead him into the most disastrous enterprise of his career.
In 1803 an anonymous handbill was circulated among British scientists. It announced the isolation of a new chemical element, palladium or “new silver,” and offered the metal for sale. Chenevix, believing the announcement a fraud, purchased the complete stock. He set about analyzing it with the preconceived notion that it was an alloy of platinum and mercury. After a series of laborious experiments, he concluded that palladium was in fact an amalgam of platinum made in some peculiar way. His report to the Royal Society caused a sensation. Not long after, Wollaston read to the society a paper in which he declared himself the author of the handbill and the discoverer of two new elements in crude platinum ore - namely, palladium and rhodium.
About 1804, with his scientific reputation badly damaged, Chenevix left England and went to France, where he lived for the remainder of his life. In these years he published a significant paper, “Sur quelques méthodes minéralogiques” (1808), in which he disputed Abraham Gottlob Werner’s classification of minerals by their chemical composition. He himself adopted R. J. Haiiy’s criterion of classification, the physical characteristics of minerals. In 1809 he turned again to chemistry, developing a method for the preparation of acetone by the distillation of acetates. Increasingly, however, Chenevix turned to literary work and wrote several novels, plays, and poems.
On June 4, 1812 Chenevix married Countess Jeanne Francoise de Rouault, the widow of Comte Charles de Ronault, whom he had met at the home of Sir John Sebright.