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THE GALLERY OF PORTRAITS: WITH MEMOIRS.

LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE-STREET.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Duke-Street, Lambeth.

PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.

Page.

TAYLOR.

During this period of public confusion and domestic trouble, Taylor composed an 'Apology for authorized and set Forms of Liturgy,' published in 1646, and his great work, a 'Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying,' published in 1647, "the first attempt on record to conciliate the minds of Christians to the reception of a doctrine which, though now the rule of action professed by all Christian sects, was then, by all sects alike, regarded as a perilous and portentous novelty." As such, it was received with distrust, if not disapprobation, by all parties; and if it was intended to inculcate upon the Episcopalians the propriety of conceding something to the prejudices of their opponents, as well as to procure an alleviation of the oppression exercised on the Episcopal church, we may see in the conduct of the government after the Restoration, that Taylor preached a doctrine for which neither the one nor the other were then ripe. It is the more to his honour that in this important point of Christian charity he had advanced beyond his own party, as well as those by whom his party was then persecuted. But though his views were extended enough to meet with disapprobation from his contemporaries, he gives a greater latitude to the civil power in repressing error by penal means, than the general practice, at least in Protestant countries, would now grant. "The forbearance which he claims, he claims for those Christians only who unite in the confession of the Apostles' Creed," and he advocates the drawing together of all who will subscribe to that ancient and comprehensive form of belief into one church, forgetting differences which do not involve the fundamental points of Christianity. And he inculcates the "danger and impropriety of driving men into schism by multiplying symbols and subscriptions, and contracting the bounds of communion, and the still greater wickedness of regarding all discrepant opinions as damnable in the life to come, and in the present capital." For a fuller account of this remarkable work, we refer to the Life by Heber, p. 201-218, or still better, to the original.

Footnote 1:

Heber's Life of Taylor, p. xxvii.

It has been mentioned that near Mandinam stood Golden Grove, the seat of the Earl of Carbery, a nobleman distinguished by his abilities and zeal in the Royal cause. He proved a constant and sincere friend to Taylor; and the grateful scholar has conferred celebrity upon the name and hospitality of Golden Grove by his 'Guide to Infant Devotion,' or manual of daily prayers, which are called by the name of that place, in which they, and many other of the author's works, were meditated; especially his Eniautos, or course of sermons for all the Sundays in the year.

Considerable obscurity hangs over this portion of Taylor's life: but it appears that in the years 1654-5 he was twice imprisoned, in consequence of his advocacy of the fallen causes of Episcopacy and Royalty. At some time in 1654 he formed an acquaintance with Evelyn, which proved profitable and honourable to both parties; for the layman, as is evident from his Memoirs and Diary, highly valued and laid to heart the counsels of the man whom he selected as his "ghostly father," and to whose poverty he liberally ministered in return out of his own abundance.

We learn from Evelyn's Diary that Taylor was in London in the spring of 1637, and his visits, if not annual, were at least frequent. He made many friends, and among them the Earl of Conway, a nobleman possessed of large estates in the north-east of Ireland, who conceived the desire of securing Taylor's eminent abilities for the service of his own neighbourhood, and obtained for him a lectureship in the small town of Lisburne. Taylor removed his family to Ireland in the summer of 1658. He dwelt near Portmore, his patron's splendid seat on the banks of Lough Neagh; and some of the islands in that noble lake, and in a smaller neighbouring piece of water called Lough Beg, are still recorded, by the traditions of the peasantry, to have been his favourite places of study and retirement. To this abode his letters show him to have been much attached.

In the spring of 1660 Taylor visited London, to superintend in its passage through the press the 'Rule of Conscience, or Ductor Dubitantium.' This, it appears from the author's letters, was considerably advanced so early as the year 1655. It was the fruit of much time, much diligence, and much prayer; and that of all his writings concerning the execution of which he seems to have felt most anxiety. In this case, as it often happens, the author seems to have formed an erroneous estimate of the comparative value of his works. Neither on its first appearance, nor in later times, did the 'Ductor Dubitantium' become extensively popular. Its object, which even at the first was accounted obsolete, was to supply what the Romish church obtained by the practice of confession, a set of rules by which a scrupulous conscience may be guided in the variety of doubtful points of duty which may occur. The abuses are well known, to which the casuistic subtlety of the Romish doctors gave birth; and it may be doubted whether it were wise to lay one stone towards rebuilding an edifice, which the general diffusion of the Scriptures, a sufficient rule, if rightly studied, to solve all doubts, had rendered unnecessary. The work, in spite of its passages of eloquence and profusion of learning, is too prolix to be a favourite in these latter days, but it is still, says his biographer, one "which few can read without profit, and none, I think, without entertainment. It resembles in some degree those ancient inlaid cabinets, whose multifarious contents perplex our choice, and offer to the admiration or curiosity of a more accurate age a vast wilderness of trifles and varieties with no arrangement at all, or an arrangement on obsolete principles, but whose ebony drawers and perfumed recesses contain specimens of every thing that is precious or uncommon, and many things for which a modern museum might be searched in vain."

Taylor's accidental presence in London at this period, when the hopes of the Royalists were reviving, was probably serviceable to his future fortunes. He obtained by it the opportunity of joining in the Royalist declaration of April 24; and he was among the first to derive benefit from the restoration of that King and that Church, of whose interests he had ever been a most zealous, able, and consistent supporter. He was nominated Bishop of Down and Connor, August 6, 1660, and consecrated in St. Patrick's Cathedral January 27, 1661. In the interval he was appointed Vice-chancellor of the University of Dublin, which during past troubles had been greatly dilapidated and disordered, in respect both of its revenues and discipline. He was the principal instrument in remodelling and completing the statutes, and settling the University in its present form.

In the spring of 1661 Taylor was made a member of the Irish Privy Council, and the small diocese of Dromore, adjacent to Down, was assigned to his charge, "on account," in the words of the writ under the Privy Seal, "of his virtue, wisdom, and industry." This praise was well deserved by his conduct in that difficult time, when those who had displaced the episcopal clergy were apprehensive of being in their turn obliged to give way, and religious differences were embittered by thoughts of temporal welfare. Taylor had to deal chiefly with the wilder and most enthusiastic party, and his advances towards an intercourse of Christian charity were met with scorn and insult. But his exemplary conduct, and persevering gentleness of demeanour, did much to soften at least the laity of his opponents; for we are told that the nobility and gentry of the three dioceses over which he presided came over, with one exception, to the Bishop's side.

His varied duties can now have left little time for the labour of the pen; still he published sermons from time to time, and in 1664 completed and published his last great work, a 'Dissuasive from Popery,' undertaken by desire of the collective body of Irish bishops. He continued after his elevation to reside principally at Portmore, occasionally at Lisburne. Of his habits, and the incidents of this latter part of his life, we know next to nothing; except that he suffered the severest affliction which could befal a man of his sensibility and piety, in the successive deaths of his three surviving sons, and the misconduct of two of them. One died at Lisburne, in March, 1661; one fell in a duel, his adversary also dying of his wounds; the third became the favourite companion of the profligate Duke of Buckingham, and died of a decline, August 2, 1667. Of the latter event the Bishop can scarcely have heard, for he died on the 13th of the same month, after ten days' sickness. He was buried at Dromore. Two of his daughters married in Ireland, into the families of Marsh and Harrison; and several Irish families of repute claim to be connected with the blood of this exemplary prelate by the female line.

The materials for Bishop Taylor's life are very scanty. The earliest sketch of it is to be found in the funeral sermon preached by his friend and successor in the see of Dromore, Dr. Rust, who sums up the virtues of the deceased in a peroration of highly-wrought panegyric, of which the following just eulogy is a part--"He was a person of great humility; and notwithstanding his stupendous parts, and learning, and eminency of place, he had nothing in him of pride and humour, but was courteous and affable, and of easy access, and would lend a ready ear to the complaints, yea, to the impertinence of the meanest persons. His humility was coupled with an extraordinary piety; and I believe he spent the greatest part of his time in heaven.... To all his other virtues he added a large and diffusive charity; and whoever compares his plentiful income with the inconsiderable estate he left at his death, will be easily convinced that charity was steward for a great proportion of his revenue. But the hungry that he fed, and the naked that he clothed, and the distressed that he supplied, and the fatherless that he provided for, the poor children that he put to apprentice, and brought up at school, and maintained at the university, will now sound a trumpet to that charity which he dispensed with his right hand, but would not suffer his left hand to have any knowledge of it.

"To sum up all in a few words, this great prelate had the good humour of a gentleman, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, the wisdom of a counsellor, the sagacity of a prophet, the reason of an angel, and the piety of a saint; he had devotion enough for a cloister, learning enough for an university, and wit enough for a college of virtuosi; and had his parts and endowments been parcelled out among his poor clergy that he left behind him, it would perhaps have made one of the best dioceses in the world. But, alas! 'Our Father! our Father! the horses of our Israel, and the chariot thereof!' he is gone, and has carried his mantle and his spirit along with him up to heaven; and the sons of the prophets have lost all their beauty and lustre which they enjoyed only from the reflection of his excellencies, which were bright and radiant enough to cast a glory upon a whole order of men."

"It is this distinctive excellence, still more than the other qualifications of learning and logical acuteness, which has placed him, even in that age of gigantic talent, on an eminence superior to any of his immediate contemporaries; and has seated him, by the almost unanimous estimate of posterity, on the same lofty elevation with Hooker and with Barrow.

"Of such a triumvirate, who shall settle the precedence? Yet it may, perhaps, be not far from the truth, to observe that Hooker claims the foremost rank in sustained and classic dignity of style, in political and pragmatical wisdom; that to Barrow the praise must be assigned of the closest and clearest views, and of a taste the most controlled and chastened; but that in imagination, in interest, in that which more properly and exclusively deserves the name of genius, Taylor is to be placed before either. The first awes most, the second convinces most, the third persuades and delights most: and, according to the decision of one whose own rank among the ornaments of English literature yet remains to be determined by posterity , Hooker is the object of our reverence, Barrow of our admiration, and Jeremy Taylor of our love."

LAVOISIER.

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris, August 26, 1743. He was educated under the eye of his father, a man of opulence, with discernment to appreciate his son's abilities, and liberality to cultivate them without regard to cost. Lavoisier early showed a decided inclination for the physical sciences; and before he was twenty years old, had made himself master of the principal branches of natural philosophy.

In 1764 the government proposed an extraordinary premium for the best and cheapest project of lighting the streets of Paris, and other large cities. To this subject, involving a knowledge of several branches of science, Lavoisier immediately devoted his attention. He produced so able a memoir, full of the most masterly, accurate, and practical views, that the gold medal was awarded to him. This production was the means of introducing him into the Academy of Sciences, of which, after a severe contest, he was admitted a member, May 13, 1768; and he proved himself through life one of its most useful and valuable associates.

At this time the whole range of chemical and physico-chemical science was in an extremely imperfect state; and the first steps to a more improved system involved the necessity of clearing away a vast mass of error which encumbered the path to truth. For instance, one of the fanciful ideas, the offspring of the alchemy of the dark ages, which still continued to haunt the regions of science, was the belief of the conversion of water into earth by gradual consolidation. This subject Lavoisier treated in the true spirit of the experimental method, and clearly showed that the pretended conversion was either a deposition of earthy particles, or a sediment arising from the action of the water on the internal surface of the retort. He also laboured on the analysis of the gypsum found in the neighbourhood of Paris, and on the crystallization of salts. He discussed the project of conveying water from L'Yvette to Paris, and the theory of congelation; and to these researches added extensive observations on the phenomena of thunder and the Aurora Borealis.

He next directed his attention more especially to mineralogy; and made excursions, in conjunction with Guettard, into all parts of France, endeavouring to form from different districts a complete collection of their characteristic mineral productions. He made advances towards a systematic classification of facts connected with the localities of fossils, which afterwards served as the basis of his work on the revolutions of the globe and the formation of successive strata, of which two admirable abstracts were inserted in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, for 1772 and 1787.

Thus during the earlier part of his life, Lavoisier does not seem to have devoted himself in particular to any one branch of science. But about the year 1770 the announcement of the existence of more than one species of gaseous matter, arising out of the successive researches of Black, Scheele, Priestley, and Cavendish, had the effect of fixing his attention to the subject of pneumatic chemistry. The invaluable discoveries just alluded to had opened a new world to the inquirer into nature; and the labours of those distinguished experimentalists had conspired to commence a fresh era in science. Lavoisier was one of the first to appreciate at once the importance of the results they had arrived at, and the immense field of further research to which those results had opened the way. He perceived by a sort of instinct the glorious career which lay before him; and the influence which this new science thus, as it were, created, must have over every sort of physical research. Priestley possessed precisely those qualifications which are most available for striking out new and brilliant discoveries of facts; a boundless fertility of invention; a power of rapidly seizing remote analogies; and an equal readiness in framing and in abandoning hypotheses, which have no value, but as guides to experiment. Lavoisier, less eminent in these respects, possessed in a more peculiar degree the mental characteristics which enable their owner to advance to grand generalizations and philosophical theories upon the sure basis of facts. He possessed, in its fullest sense, the true spirit of inductive caution, and even geometrical rigour; and his observations, eminently precise and luminous, always pointed to more general views.

In 1774, he published his 'Opuscules Chimiques,' in which, after a full and truly philosophical examination of the labours of preceding experimenters in the discovery of the gases and their characteristic properties, he proceeds to describe his own beautiful and fundamentally important researches, from which resulted the 'True Theory of Combustion,' which may be termed the very sun and centre of the whole modern system of chemistry.

This near approach to the truth was thrown into discredit by the more brilliant and imposing theory of Stahl, who captivated the imaginations of chemists by his doctrine of phlogiston, the principle or element of fire, a sort of metaphysical something, which conferred the property of being combustible. Stahl taught that the process of combustion deprived bodies of their phlogiston, which, in the act of separation, exhibited its latent energies in the evolution of light and heat.

It was however long before Lavoisier gained a single convert. At length M. Berthollet, at a meeting of the Academy in 1785, publicly renounced the old opinions and declared himself a convert. Fourcroy followed his example. In 1787, Morveau, during a visit to Paris, became convinced, and declared the conclusions of Lavoisier irresistible. The younger chemists speedily embraced the new views; and their establishment was thus complete. There only remained some lurking prejudices in England, where the Essay of Kirwan retained its credit. Lavoisier and his coadjutors translated this essay into French, accompanying each section by a refutation. So completely was this done, that the author himself was convinced; and, with that candour which distinguishes superior minds, gave up his views as untenable, and declared himself a convert.

These discoveries introduced Lavoisier to the notice of the most eminent persons in the State; and in 1776, Turgot engaged him to superintend the manufacture of gunpowder for the Government. He introduced many valuable improvements in the process, and many judicious reforms into the establishment.

Another important research in which Lavoisier engaged, in conjunction with Laplace, was the determination of the specific heats of bodies, by means of an ingenious apparatus, which they denominated the calorimeter: these were by far the most precise experiments on the subject which had as yet been made, though some inaccuracies in the method have since been pointed out.

Lavoisier owed much, it must be owned, to those external advantages of fortune, the absence of which, though it cannot confine the flights of real genius, yet may seriously impair the value and efficiency of its exertions; and the presence of which, though it cannot confer the powers of intellect, may yet afford most invaluable aids to the prosecution of research, and the dissemination of knowledge. In the instance before us, these advantages were enjoyed to the full extent, and turned to the best use. Lavoisier was enabled to command the most unlimited resources of instrumental aid; he pursued his researches in a laboratory furnished with the most costly apparatus, and was able to put every suggestion to the test of experiment, by the assistance of the most skilful artists, and instruments of the most perfect construction.

But as he could thus command these essential advantages for the prosecution of his own investigations, he was equally mindful of the extension of similar advantages to others: he always evinced himself ready to assist the inquiries of those who had not the same means at their disposal; and was no less liberal in aiding them by his stores of information and able advice. Indeed no one could be more sensible how much there is of mutual advantage in such intercourse between those engaged in the same scientific labours; and this conviction, joined with a full perception of the immense benefits accruing from personal acquaintance among men of kindred pursuits, and the interchange of social good offices, led him to the regular practice of opening his house on two evenings in every week, for an assembly of all the scientific men of the French capital; which very soon became a point of general resort and reunion to the philosophers of Europe.

At these meetings general discourse and philosophic discussion were agreeably intermingled; the opinions of the most eminent philosophers were freely canvassed; the most striking and novel passages in the publications of foreign countries were made known, recited, and animadverted upon; and the progress of experiment was assisted by candid comments and comparison with theory. In these assemblies might be found, mingling in instructive and delightful conversation, all those whose names made the last century memorable in the annals of science. Priestley, Fontana, Landriani, Watt, Bolton, and Ingenhouz, were associated with Laplace, Lagrange, Borda, Cousin, Monge, Morveau, and Berthollet. There was also an incalculable advantage in bringing into communication and intimacy men engaged in distinct branches of science: the intercourse of the mathematician with the geologist, of the astronomer with the chemist, of the computer with the experimenter, and of the artist with the theorist, could not fail to be of mutual advantage. In no instance were the beneficial effects of such intercourse more strikingly displayed than in the chemical sciences; which, from this sort of comparison of ideas and methods, began now to assume a character of exactness from an infusion of the spirit of geometry; and a department hitherto abandoned to the wildest speculations, and encumbered with the most vague and undefined phraseology , began to assume something like arrangement and method in its ideas, and precision and order in its nomenclature. This influence was strongly marked in the physical memoirs produced in France from this period downwards. The precision and severity of style, and the philosophical method of the mathematicians, was insensibly transfused into the papers of the physical and chemical philosophers.

Lavoisier individually profited greatly by the sources of improvement and information thus opened. Whenever any new result presented itself to him, which, perhaps, from contradicting all received theories, seemed paradoxical, or at variance with all principles hitherto recognised, it was fully laid before these select assemblies of philosophers; the experiment was exhibited in their presence, and they were invited with the utmost candour to offer their criticisms and objections. In perfect reliance on the mutual spirit of candour, they were not backward in urging whatever difficulties occurred to them, and the truth thus elicited acquired a firmness and stability in its public reception proportioned to the severity of the test it had undergone. Lavoisier seldom announced any discovery until it had passed this ordeal.

At length he combined his philosophical views into a connected system, which he published in 1789, under the title of 'Elements of Chemistry:' a beautiful model of scientific composition, clear and logical in its arrangement, perspicuous and even elegant in its style and manner. These perfections are rarely to be found in elementary works written by original discoverers. The genius which qualifies a man for enlarging the boundaries of science by his own inventions and researches is of a very different class from that which confers the ability to elucidate, in a simple and systematic course, the order and connexion of elementary truths. But in Lavoisier these different species of talent were most happily blended. He not only added profound truths to science, but succeeded in adapting them to the apprehension of students, and was able to render them attractive by his eloquence.

In 1791 he entered upon extensive researches, having for their object the application of pneumatic chemistry to the advancement of medicine, in reference to the process of respiration. With this view he examined in great detail the changes which the air undergoes, and the products generated in that process of the animal economy. He had previously, however, as far back as 1780, detailed a series of experiments to determine the quantity of oxygen consumed and carbonic acid generated by respiration, in a given time, in the Memoirs of the French Academy.

In the twenty volumes of the Academy of Sciences, from 1772 to 1793, are not less than forty memoirs by Lavoisier, replete with all the grand phenomena of the science:--the doctrine of combustion in all its bearings; the nature and analysis of atmospheric air; the generation and combinations of elastic fluids; the properties of heat; the composition of acids; the decomposition and recomposition of water; the solutions of metals; and the phenomena of vegetation, fermentation, and animalization. These are some of the most important subjects of his papers; and during the whole of this period he advanced steadily in the course which was pointed out to him by the unerring rules of inductive inquiry, to which his original genius supplied the commentary. So well did he secure every point of the results to which he ascended, that he never made a false step. It was only in one subject, before alluded to, that he may be said to have gone a few steps too far. Nor did he ever suffer himself to be discouraged, or his ardour to be damped by the difficulties and obstacles which perpetually impeded his progress. He traced new paths for investigation, and founded a new school of science; and his successors had ample employment in following out the inquiries which he had indicated, and exploring those recesses to which he had opened the way.

In the relations of social and civil life Lavoisier was exemplary; and he rendered essential service to the state in several capacities. He was treasurer to the Academy, and introduced economy and order into its finances: he was also a member of the board of consultation, and took an active share in its business. When the new system of measures was in agitation, and it was proposed to determine a degree of the meridian, he made accurate experiments on the dilatation of metals, in conjunction with Laplace , to ascertain the corrections due to changes of temperature in the substances used as measuring rods in those delicate operations.

During the terrors of Robespierre's tyranny, Lavoisier remarked that he foresaw he should be stripped of all his property, and accordingly would prepare to enter the profession of an apothecary, by which he should be able to gain a livelihood. But the ignorant and brutal ruffians who were then in power had already condemned him to the scaffold, on which he was executed, May 8, 1794, for the pretended crime of having adulterated snuff with ingredients destructive to the health of the citizens! On being seized, he entreated at least to be allowed time to finish some experiments in which he was engaged; but the reply of Coffinhall, the president of the gang who condemned him, was characteristic of the savage ignorance of those monsters in human form:--"The Republic does not want savans or chemists, and the course of justice cannot be suspended."

Lavoisier in person was tall and graceful, and of lively manners and appearance. He was mild, sociable, and obliging; and in his habits unaffectedly plain and simple. He was liberal in pecuniary assistance to those in need of it; and his hatred of all ostentation in doing good probably concealed greatly the real amount of his beneficence. He married, in 1771, Marie-Anni-Pierrette Paulze, a lady of great talents and accomplishments, who after his death became the wife of Count Rumford.

SYDENHAM.

The celebrated physician, Thomas Sydenham, in many respects the most eminent that England has produced, was born in the year 1624, at Wynford-Eagle, in Dorsetshire, where his father, William Sydenham, enjoyed a considerable estate. The mansion in which he was born is now converted into a farm-house, and stands on the property of Lord Wynford.

In the year 1642, when eighteen, he was admitted as a commoner at Magdalen-Hall, Oxford; but quitted it in the same year, when that city became the head quarters of the royal army, after the battle of Edge-hill. He was probably induced to take this step by reasons of a political nature; for we find that his family were active adherents of the opposite party. Indeed he is said, though on doubtful authority, to have held a commission himself under the Parliament during his absence from Oxford; and his elder brother, William, is known to have attained considerable rank in the republican army, and held important commands under the Protectorate.

The political bias of his family is not without interest, as affording a probable explanation of some circumstances in his life which would otherwise be rather unaccountable,--such as the fact, that though he reached the first eminence as a practising physician, he was never employed at court, and was slighted by the college, who invested him with none of their honours, nor even advanced him to the fellowship, though a licentiate of their body, and qualified by the requisite University education.

When Oxford was surrendered to the Parliament, Sydenham determined to resume his academical studies; and passing through London

on his way, he met accidentally with Dr. Thomas Coxe, a physician of some repute at that time, who was attending his brother. The choice of a profession became the subject of a conversation between them, which determined him in favour of medicine; for in a letter addressed to Dr. Mapletoft, thirty years after this time, which forms the preface to one of his writings, he refers with much warmth to this conversation as the origin of his professional zeal, and, consequently, of whatever useful advances he had made in medicine. Thus his success, both in the practice and reformation of his art, may show the advantage of waiting till the faculties are fully matured, before they are exercised in a study which requires independence as well as vigour in thinking: for the circumstances of his family being sufficiently affluent to place him above the necessity of choosing a profession early, he had not turned his attention to physic till an age at which the medical education is generally almost completed. We are not, however, to believe in the justice of an accusation brought against him, that he had never studied his profession till he began to practise it; for though we do not know what particular line of study he pursued on his return to Oxford, it is clear from many passages in his works that he had studied the writings of the ancient physicians with no common care; and as his own show no defect of acquaintance with whatever real information had been collected before his time, we may reasonably conclude that this contemporary censure was mistaken or malicious. He certainly held the opinions of his modern predecessors in very little respect, for he does not often mention them, even for the purpose of confutation; and in the letter to Dr. Mapletoft already referred to, he says that he had found the best, and, in fact, the only safe guide, through the various perplexities he had met with in his practice, to be the method of actual observation and experiment recommended by Lord Bacon. This sentiment is often repeated in his works; but it surely does not countenance the idea that he had begun to practise without endeavouring to make what preparation he could, or would have had others follow such an example; for the charge against him goes to this length. The notion might arise from a foolish anecdote related by his admirer, Sir Richard Blackmore, of his having recommended Don Quixote as the best introduction he knew to the practice of medicine, which Sydenham must have intended as a jest, or perhaps as a sarcasm on the narrator himself.

At Oxford he formed a close friendship with John Locke, better known afterwards as a philosopher than as a physician. Their intimacy, which lasted to the end of Sydenham's life, probably contributed not a little to give form to the disgust which he soon displayed at the unsatisfactory and fluctuating state of medical opinion, and to the zeal with which he sought to establish it on surer grounds; for he appeals, as to the highest authority, in confirmation of some of his new views on the treatment of fever, to the approval of his illustrious friend, who even paid him the compliment of prefixing a eulogy in indifferent Latin verse to the treatise in which these views are developed.

On the 14th of April, 1648, he took the degree of bachelor of medicine, being then twenty-four years old; and in the same year obtained a fellowship at All Souls College, by the interest of a relation. The degree of doctor he subsequently took at Cambridge, where, being among those who thought with him in politics, he probably found himself more at his ease. After a visit of some length at Montpellier, then considered the best practical school of medicine on the continent, he settled in Westminster, and soon after married.

His progress to eminence in his profession must have been unusually rapid, which might be owing, in some measure, to the call for men of good capacity to the more stirring scenes of civil strife; for at thirty-six he had succeeded in establishing a first-rate reputation, which he continued to sustain in spite of much hostility and ill-health for upwards of twenty years.

He witnessed the breaking out of the plague in 1665, but when it reached the house adjoining his own, he was induced to remove with his family some miles out of town. Of this desertion of his post, however, he seems to have repented; for he afterwards returned, and occupied himself diligently in visiting the victims of that devastating malady, and has left a short but interesting account of his opinions respecting it, and of the treatment he adopted; for the comparative success of which, he appeals to the physicians who had witnessed or followed his practice.

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