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THE

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY

BRITISH WORTHIES.

VOLUME IX.

LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

1846.

London: Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.

CONTENTS.

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY
OF
BRITISH WORTHIES.

Algernon Sidney, or Sydney, famed as one of the stanchest of modern republicans, came partly of the same stock as the very loyal and poetical Sir Philip Sidney, that ornament of the Elizabethan age. Algernon was the second surviving son of Robert, second Earl of Leicester of that creation, and of his wife Dorothy, eldest daughter of Henry Earl of Northumberland. Neither the place nor the date of his birth is mentioned; but he is supposed to have been born in the year 1621 or 1622, towards the close of the reign of James I., and [Pg 6] it is most probable that Penshurst, in Kent, was his birth-place.

When his father, the Earl of Leicester, in 1632, went as ambassador from Charles I. to the court of Denmark, he took his young son Algernon with him; and four years after he likewise accompanied his father on his embassy to France. By this early residence in foreign countries he must have acquired that facility of learning languages for which he was somewhat distinguished among his contemporaries. But of his education very little is known. It is probable that, during his residence in Paris, he frequented the French schools and colleges, or was placed by his father under French masters. Although constitutional liberty had almost entirely disappeared in France, and the government of that country had been converted into a most absolute monarchy, there was a latent, abstract love of republican institutions among many of the French professors (albeit ecclesiastics) and men of letters, and the great commonwealths and republican heroes of antiquity were, almost exclusively, proposed as the studies and models of youths. This continued to obtain down to the outbreak of the great French Revolution in 1789; and many of the lamentable errors, blunders, and crimes of that Revolution, are to be clearly and directly traced to a blind and passionate imitation of the sternest Republicans of Greece and Rome, whose deeds were, in part, repugnant to the religious faith and feelings of modern society, and in good part misunderstood by their professed imitators. No doubt, this admiration for the ancient forms of republican government was, among the French—as also in the greater part of Italy,—all the stronger from the despotically monarchic character of their own institutions, and all the blinder, more passionate, and unreasoning from their long and total exclusion from practical self-government, and from their consequent want of acquaintance with the real workings of an actually free or representative government. The languages of Greece and Rome absorbed the attention of the youths of England perhaps even more than that of the young students of France, and [Pg 7] Oxford and Cambridge were constantly re-echoing the fame of the antique republican worthies; but when an Englishman quitted his college and the world that was, for the world that is, he saw the actual operation of a mixed and comparatively free government, he came in contact with practical men familiar with parliaments or municipal councils, and he saw that he himself might one day have a share, more or less prominent, in the government of his country or in some of its municipal administrations. He could then compare the ancient Republics with a modern limited monarchy; the French could only contrast them with their own despotism. What we now call the British Constitution was not really born until five years after Algernon Sidney's death; and, at the time of his birth, the despotic temper of the Tudors, the speculative absolutism of James I. and his scandalous disuse of Parliaments, had certainly made great inroads on the old liberties of the country; but still the municipal freedom—the source of, and the best security for, all constitutional liberty—had scarcely been touched, and Englishmen had the habits of a free people, and much practice in governing themselves.

From whatever cause it may have proceeded, Sidney's republicanism does not appear of English growth; it bears no resemblance to the devout and mystical republicanism of Sir Harry Vane, the vulgar conventicle republicanism of General Harrison, or the camp republicanism of Ludlow—still less does it resemble the adaptive republicanism of Milton—it has an exotic, antique character, hard, unimaginative, and impracticable, having hardly anything in common either with the theory or the practice of any of the remarkable men that made the short-lived English Commonwealth. These men looked at the existing Republics of Holland, Switzerland, Genoa, Venice: Sidney hardly condescended to look lower than Greece and Rome.

His first entrance upon public life was in 1641, when he was about nineteen or twenty years old. The Irish Papists had risen in rebellion and had perpetrated a horrible massacre of the Protestants. The Earl of Leicester, [Pg 8] Algernon's father, was then Lord-Lieutenant, and Algernon commanded a troop of horse in the Earl's own regiment. Both he and his elder brother, Lord Viscount Lisle, distinguished themselves by their gallantry in the campaigns of 1641 and 1642, during which a fearful retaliation was inflicted upon the Irish. It became a fixed unalterable belief with the adversaries of that unhappy prince, that Charles I. had secretly promoted the insurrection as a means of thwarting the designs of that Parliament, with which he was on the very verge of a civil war.

Returning to England in August, 1643, when the civil war was raging, and when English blood had been shed in torrents at Edgehill, at Chalgrove, at Newbury, and in many other sternly-contested fields, Algernon and his elder brother, who professed to be on their way to join the king, then at Oxford, were seized as they landed in Lancashire, by order of the Parliament. By this incident they lost the favour of Charles, who believed that before quitting Ireland they had made up their minds to join his enemies, and that their capture was of their own contrivance. Similar ruses, common in most civil wars, were not unknown in this.

Both Algernon and his elder brother, Lord Lisle, forthwith joined the Parliamentarians. Algernon became captain of a troop of horse in the regiment of the Presbyterian Earl of Manchester, who, in brief space of time, was driven from his high command by Cromwell and Fairfax, and the self-denying ordinances. In April, 1645, Fairfax, as lord-general, or commander-in-chief for Parliament, raised Algernon to the rank of Colonel, and gave him a regiment; and in 1646, his brother, Lord Lisle, having become lieutenant-general of Ireland, he was made lieutenant-general of the horse in that kingdom, and governor of Dublin. His name, at this period, frequently occurs in the pages of Rushworth and Whitelock, the two great annalists or registrars of the Parliamentarians; and he is generally mentioned as a brave and active officer whose faith and steadiness to Parliament were undoubted. In fact, he was now himself [Pg 9] a member of the Long Parliament, having been returned member for Cardiff at the beginning of the year 1646, before he went to Dublin. In May, 1647, having returned to London, Algernon received the thanks of the House of Commons for his services in Ireland, and was appointed governor of Dover Castle. In 1648, though then only twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age, he, as well as his brother, Lord Lisle, acted as one of the judges on the irregular trial of Charles I. It is said that he was not present when the sentence was passed, and he certainly did not sign the warrant for the execution. But he afterwards justified that execution, and thereby, and by other words and acts, he drew down upon himself the implacable resentment of the Royalist party, whose hour of vengeance was coming.

When Cromwell resolved to break up the remnant of the Long Parliament, called the Rump, which was certainly throwing, or threatening to throw, the whole nation into a state of anarchy, he looked upon Algernon Sidney as a very dangerous and obstinate member of it,—as a pragmatical and resolute republican, who would be sure to oppose the trying of his grand political problem or experiment,—"What if a man should take upon him to be king?"

Algernon was in his place when Oliver arrived in the House to "take away that bauble" (the speaker's mace), to turn out the members, lock up the doors, and carry off the keys in his pocket. And Algernon continued firm in his seat, thinking, mayhap, of the Roman senators in their curule chairs and of the impious Gauls who took them by the beard, when the musqueteers had been called in, and had forcibly thrust out Sir Harry Vane, Wentworth, and Harry Marten. In this attitude of contemplative defiance Algernon attracted the eye of Cromwell, who shouted to Harrison (who was as active in ending this parliament as Colonel Pride had been in purging it), "Put him out! Put that man out!" Harrison told Sidney that he must rise and be gone. Sidney replied that he would not go; and he sate until the lord-general shouted again "Put him out!" and until Harrison [Pg 10] and Worsley laid their hands upon his shoulders, as if they would force him. Then the indignant republican rose, and walked towards the door. In a few more seconds the house was entirely cleared—"For," says Whitelock, who was present, "among all the parliament, of whom many wore swords, and would sometimes brag high, not one man offered to draw his sword against Cromwell, or to make the least resistance against him, but all of them tamely departed the house." [A]

Among the one hundred and thirty-nine persons,—"Known persons, fearing God and of approved integrity"—whom Cromwell, after his unceremonious dissolution of the Rump, chose to be a parliament or convention, and summoned to Westminster by his own writ, was Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, and a close political associate of Algernon Sidney.

Upon his expulsion Algernon withdrew into the country. It is said that he would never enter into any compromise with the Cromwellians, or accept of any post, service, or kindness from the Protector; but it does not very clearly appear that the Protector ever tempted him with the offer of such things. In 1658, when Oliver made his new upper house, or House of Lords, or "other house," as it was more commonly called, Algernon's elder brother, Lord Lisle, who appears to have been of an accommodating spirit, was chosen by the Protector to be a member of it. But Algernon remained in retirement during the whole of the protectorate of Cromwell and his son Richard. There is reason to believe that he resided chiefly at the family seat of Penshurst, where, in the midst of quiet, pleasant, pastoral scenery, the gifted Sir Philip Sidney had been born, and where he was thought by some to have written his 'Arcadia.' The mind of Algernon was much less likely to derive inspiration from those Kentish scenes.

In May, 1659, only nine months after the death of the great Oliver, the members of the Rump restored themselves as a legitimate parliament; or, rather, they were [Pg 11] restored by the army and Lambert and Fleetwood, as they had been dismissed by the army and Cromwell and Harrison. About one hundred members took their seats "to improve," as they loudly proclaimed, "the present opportunity, and settle and secure the peace and freedom of the Commonwealth." Their first proceeding was to pass a declaration that there should no longer be any single person, protectorate, kingship, or House of Peers. Algernon Sidney now reappeared in public; and Richard Cromwell, happy to retire into private life, signed his demission, from the protectorate, in form. On the 13th of May, Sidney was nominated, by the Republicans, one of their new Council of State. This council seized all the powers which had been so triumphantly wielded by Oliver Cromwell: it consisted of thirty-one persons, who, though all professing republicanism, differed very widely in their views, aspirations, and interests: Sir Harry Vane, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (Shaftesbury), were members of it, and so also were Fairfax, Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, Bradshaw, Haselrig, Ludlow, St. John, and Whitelock. Two of them—Whitelock and Anthony Ashley Cooper—were almost immediately accused of carrying on a secret correspondence "with Charles Stuart and Sir Edward Hyde, beyond seas;" others were set down as visionaries or madmen who would ruin the good old cause, without meaning it; and, while they disagreed among themselves and disgusted all the Cromwellians, they lost the confidence of the downright republicans, whose energy had been great, but whose number had always been very limited.

At this crisis, when his darling republic was falling to pieces, and when General Monk, with a full assurance of success, was preparing to bring in Charles II. without limitations or conditions, Algernon Sidney accepted a diplomatic mission, and went to Denmark, along with Sir Robert Honeywood and Mr. Borne, to help in negotiating a peace between that country and Sweden. And now the catastrophe was precipitated by a quarrel between the Rump and the army, who had restored them. [Pg 12] Oblivious of their recent obligations, and of their present distractions, dependency, and helplessness, they resolved to wrest the command from the officers who had reseated them, and insisted that new commissions should be taken out from themselves or their Council of State, and that the whole army should be immediately placed in a proper dependency on the civil power—i. e., on the Rump, who had no other right to be a parliament or council than that which the army had given them. As might have been foreseen, the men of the sword and of action, instead of submitting to be turned out themselves, turned out the men of the pen and of speeches and theories. The rough, blunt Desborough explained, in a very few words, the whole logic of the army. "Because," said he, "the parliament intended to dismiss us, we had a right to dismiss the parliament." This was, in effect, the death sentence of the Commonwealth.

Sidney was absent upon his mission when the restoration of Charles II. took place. In a letter written to him by his father shortly after the Restoration, and published in 'Familiar Letters, written by John late Earl of Rochester, and several other Persons of Honour,' 8vo., London, 1697, the Earl mentions a report which he had heard, that when the university of Copenhagen brought Sidney their album, and desired him to write something in it, he wrote,—

and signed the verses with his name. This anecdote is confirmed by Lord Molesworth, who, in the Preface to his 'Account of Denmark' (first published in 1694), tells us, that even while Sidney was still at the Danish court, "M. Terlon, the French ambassador, had the confidence to tear out of the Book of Mottoes in the king's library" the above lines, "which Mr. Sidney, according to the liberty allowed to all noble strangers, had written in it." "Though M. Terlon," adds Lord Molesworth, "understood not a word of Latin, he was told by others the meaning of that sentence, which he considered as a [Pg 13] libel upon the French government, and upon such as was then setting up in Denmark by French assistance or example." [B] His father intimates, that this and some other things he had heard of him made him hesitate about speaking to the king in his behalf, as he had intended to do. "It is also said," continues the Earl, "that a minister who hath married a Lady Laurence here at Chelsea, but now dwelling at Copenhagen, being there in company with you, said, 'I think you were none of the late king's judges, nor guilty of his death,' meaning our king. 'Guilty!' said you. 'Do you call that a fault? Why, it was the justest and bravest action that ever was done in England, or anywhere else;' with other words to the same effect. It is said also that, you having heard of a design to seize upon you, or to cause you to be taken prisoner, you took notice of it to the King of Denmark himself, and said, 'I hear there is a design to seize upon me; but who is it that hath that design? Est ce notre bandit?' by which you are understood to mean the king. Besides this, it is reported that you have been heard to say many scornful and contemptuous things of the king's person and family, which, unless you can justify yourself, will hardly be forgiven or forgotten; for such personal offences make deeper impressions than public actions, either of war or treaty."

It is probable that none of these reports were to be gainsayed. Sidney, in his answer to his father, says, "That which I am reported to have written in the book at Copenhagen is true; and, never having heard that any sort of men were so worthily the objects of enmity as those I mentioned, I did never in the least scruple avowing myself to be an enemy unto them." Accordingly, instead of coming home, he proceeded first to Hamburg, whence he went to Frankfort, and from thence [Pg 14] to Rome, where he proposed to take up his residence. About the middle of the year 1661, however, he was forced to remove to Frascati; and he is afterwards traced to various places in Germany, France, and the Low Countries. At Rome he was remarked as a brave, free-speaking man, an admirable horseman, and an accomplished Italian scholar. In 1665 he was at the Hague, actively employed, along with other English exiles of the same political principles, in urging the States of Holland to invade England. During the disastrous, and, to the English government, disgraceful year 1667, some of the most fanatic of these exiles came over with De Ruyter and his Dutch fleet to the Thames and the Medway, and assisted in burning our men-of-war at Chatham. Algernon was at this time in Paris, urging Louis XIV. to declare war against Charles II., and endeavouring to impress upon that ultra-absolute monarch the inestimable advantage he and France would derive from the establishment of a republic in England. In a memorial to Louis, he engaged to procure a rising in England, if his Most Christian Majesty would only allow him a grant of 100,000 crowns. While the republican Sidney was begging for this money, Charles II., unknown to him, was making himself the pensioner of France, and was obtaining large sums from Louis XIV., for the avowed purpose of doing away with parliaments, and making the power of the crown absolute in England! With such republicans and such a king, the liberties of the English people were well nigh put in jeopardy. After long and fruitless solicitations to Louis, and intrigues with his ministers or their employés, Algernon withdrew, irritated, despondent, and very poor, into Gascony. There he appears to have remained until, in 1677, a pardon for his part in the late king's trial, &c., and permission for him to return home, were obtained from Charles II., on his own plea that he was anxiously desirous to see his aged and infirm father, the Earl of Leicester, once more before he died.

It is commonly stated that Sidney's pardon was obtained through the interest of the Earl of Sunderland, [Pg 15] who was the son of his sister Dorothy (Waller's 'Sacharissa'); but he himself, in a letter to the Hon. Henry Savile, then the English ambassador at the court of France, appears to attribute it to that gentleman's exertions. "My obligation unto you," he says, "I so far acknowledge . . . to be the greatest that I have in a long time received from any man, as not to value the leave you have obtained for me to return into my country, after so long an absence, at a lower rate than the saving of my life."

The Earl died that same year (1677), and, although he had never approved of the course his son Algernon had taken, left him a legacy of 5100l., with which, he says, in his 'Apology,' dated on the day of his death, he would have immediately returned to Gascony, if he had not been detained by a long and tedious suit in Chancery, in which he was involved by his elder brother, now Earl of Leicester, choosing to dispute his father's will. Before this, Sidney appears to have been only assisted by his father with irregular and scanty remittances; and during his wanderings on the Continent he was often in great straits.

It was impossible that Sidney should long remain quiet in England. The misgovernment of the country, the vices of Charles II., the fanatical and tyrannical temper of his brother the Duke of York, the next in succession to the throne, excited the heads and hearts of cool, dispassionate men, and drove those of a less happy temperament into a frenzy. Many even of those who were attached to monarchy and the old institutions of the country foresaw the inevitableness of some great change—a change afterwards realized by the revolution of 1688, which put the crown upon the head of the politic, wise, and truly great William Prince of Orange.

In 1678, the year after his return, and the year which witnessed the most disgraceful, abominable parts of the Parliamentary proceedings against the so-called "Popish Plot," Sidney was a candidate for the representation of Guildford. Being defeated in that election, he stood in 1679 for Bramber. Being again defeated by a court [Pg 16] candidate, he petitioned against the return of his opponent, and was only unseated after a double return. He had thus openly taken his stand as the opponent of the king who had granted him his free pardon; and he was generally looked upon as leagued with the Earl of Shaftesbury (the Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper of former days), William Lord Russell, Lord Essex, Mr. Hampden, Trenchard, and the other popular leaders, who differed widely among themselves in their principles and views, but the designs of the most moderate of whom certainly extended to such a change of government as would have amounted to a revolution. At this moment Algernon Sidney, together with a score more of the patriots, received money from France; for Louis XIV., having little reliance on the steadiness or good faith of his pensioner Charles, was very desirous of strengthening our Parliamentary opposition, in order that they might bring about the reduction of the English army, and so bind their king to a neutrality, which must greatly favour that career of aggression and conquest the French had commenced on the continent of Europe. Though far, indeed, from being so rich as that nobleman, Sidney was no more a mean and mercenary man than William Lord Russell; and if he really took money from the French court, we may conclude that it was only to distribute it among others. As we have already said,—in our memoir of Lord Russell,—the papers discovered by Sir John Dalrymple, in the Archives at Versailles, are still open to doubt and rational controversy. [C] M. Barillon, the French minister at London, whose reputation is none of the best, may have charged his court with sums of money he never disbursed. Sidney was not in parliament, but he was closely united with those who were, and he was considered as the head of a small, disaffected party.

In a despatch dated 5th December, 1680, Barillon [Pg 17] writes, "The Sieur Algernoon Sydney is a man of great views and very high designs, which tend to the establishment of a republic. He is in the party of the Independents and other sectaries; and this party were masters during the last troubles. They are not at present very powerful in parliament, but they are strong in London; and it is through the intrigues of the Sieur Algernoon Sidney that one of the two sheriffs, named Bethal, has been elected. The Duke of Buckingham is of the same party, and believes himself at the head, &c. . . . The service which I may draw from Mr. Sidney does not appear, for his connections are with obscure and concealed persons; but he is intimate with the Sieur Jones [Sir William Jones, lately attorney-general], who is a man of the greatest knowledge in the laws of England, and will be chancellor, if the party opposed to the court shall gain the superiority, and the Earl of Shaftesbury be contented with any other employment." And in the account of his disbursements among the patriots, from the 22nd December, 1678, to the 14th December, 1679, Barillon twice sets down the name of the Sieur Algernon Sidney, and for 500 guineas each time. [D]

In a despatch dated the 30th of September, 1680, Barillon describes the arguments Sidney was accustomed to use with him to show that it was for the interest of France that England should be revolutionized and converted into a republic. [E]

The sheriff, named Bethal by the French minister, was the Whig sheriff Bethell, who, with his Whig colleague Cornish, so long succeeded in returning popular juries, and in thus thwarting the Court and the Tories. [See Memoir of William Lord Russell.] When determined Tories had been despotically thrust by the king into the places of Bethell and Cornish, and when Tory juries had been made sure of, the Rye House Plot was announced. In consequence of revelations made [Pg 18] by the infamous Lord Howard of Escrick, Sidney was thrown into the Tower a few days after Russell. But for the republican enthusiasm and credulity of Sidney this traitor would never have been admitted (as he indisputably was) to the secret conferences of the patriots. Among other matter Howard of Escrick deposed that Sidney had undertaken to manage a treasonable correspondence with the fugitive Earl of Argyle and the disaffected Whigs and Cameronians in Scotland, and had sent one Aaron Smith into Scotland, after having given him 60 guineas. Another traitor to the patriots—a lawyer, named West, who increased the number and swelled the size of his depositions just as the Court party wished—swore that Colonel Algernon Sidney had held a close correspondence with the rebellious Scots, and had been present in secret conclaves in London, wherein it was resolved to shoot the king, &c.

Both in the council-chamber, into which he was brought to be examined, and in his dungeon in the Tower, Sidney displayed a sort of Roman fortitude and taciturnity. He told the king and his ministers that he would not answer their ensnaring questions; that they must seek evidence against him from some other man.

Russell was tried on the 13th and executed on the 21st of July [1683]. Sidney was not put upon his trial until four months later. He was brought up to the bar of the King's Bench to plead, on the 7th of November, and his trial took place on the 21st, before Sir George Jeffreys, lately promoted to the place of Lord Chief Justice. Jeffreys exhibited little of his wonted coarseness and passion on this occasion; but his demeanour was very determined and inflexible, and he bore down every objection of the prisoner with an authority that nothing could shake or impress. The only evidence produced in court in support of the principal facts charged was Lord Howard of Escrick, who had, according to his own account, been a party to the plot, and now came to swear away the lives of his associates in order to save his own; and as the law of high treason required two witnesses to prove the crime, the other was [Pg 19] supplied by bringing forward a manuscript found among Sidney's papers, and asserted, no doubt with truth, to be his hand-writing, which, it was pretended, contained an avowal and defence of principles the same, or of the same nature, with those involved in the alleged plot. There was a fearlessness, a noble pride in the demeanour of the prisoner. When asked whether he would put any questions to the witness, Lord Howard, he replied with withering scorn, "No! I have no questions to ask such as he!" At a subsequent part of the trial, he asked the jury whether any credit was due to such a man as my Lord Howard, who had betrayed and cozened his friends, who deposed differently now from what he had deposed on the trial of Lord Russell; who had denied the plot before his arrest, and who had said since that he could not get his pardon from the king till he had "done some other jobs"—"until the drudgery of swearing was over." "Besides," added Sidney, "this Howard is my debtor for a considerable sum; his mortgage was forfeit to me; and when I should have taken the advantage the law gave me, he found a way to have me laid up in the Tower! His lordship is a very subtile man; for as, at Lord Russell's trial, he said he was to carry his knife between the paring and the apple, so for this he has so managed as to get his pardon and save his estate." Nor was he unprovided with witnesses of name and station to assist him in making good his charges against the miscreant. These witnesses were, two of Howard of Escrick's own relatives, Mr. Philip and Mr. Edward Howard, the Earl of Anglesey, Lord Clare, Lord Paget, Monsieur du Cas, a Frenchman, and Doctor Gilbert Burnet, the historian. Sidney, however, as was to be expected under all the circumstances, was found guilty; and being again brought up on the 26th, was sentenced to be put to death after the revolting manner of execution then enjoined by law in cases of high treason. Upon hearing this sentence, he said with a loud firm voice,—"Then, O God! O God! I beseech thee to sanctify my sufferings, and impute not my blood to the country or the city. Let no inquisition [Pg 20] be made for it; but if at any day the shedding of blood that is innocent must be revenged, let the weight of it fall only on those that maliciously persecute me for righteousness sake." The chief justice thought himself obliged to put up his prayer also, which he did in these words:—"I pray God to work in you a temper fit to go unto the other world, for I see you are not fit for this." "My Lord," replied Sidney, stretching out his arm, "feel my pulse, and see if I am disordered. I bless God I never was in better temper than I am now." He twice petitioned the king for pardon; but all that could be obtained for him was the remission of the degrading and brutal parts of his sentence; and on Friday, the 7th of December, he was beheaded on Tower Hill. No one ever suffered with more firmness or with less parade. He did not even address the people; but when asked to speak, replied that he had made his peace with God, and had nothing to say to man. A paper which he delivered to the sheriff, and which was afterwards printed, concluded as follows:—"The Lord sanctify these my sufferings unto me; and though I fall as a sacrifice unto idols, suffer not idolatry to be established in this land. . . . Grant that I may die glorifying thee for all thy mercies, and that at the last thou hast permitted me to be singled out as a witness of thy truth, and, even by the confession of my very opposers, for that old cause, in which I was from my youth engaged, and for which thou hast often and wonderfully declared thyself." Thus perished one who has generally been considered as the last of the Commonwealth men.

The trial and condemnation of Algernon Sidney seem to have shocked the public feeling of the time in no ordinary degree. Even the cautious Evelyn, after stating that he was executed "on the single witness of that monster of a man, Lord Howard of Escrick, and some sheets of paper taken in Mr. Sidney's study, pretended to be written by him, but not fully proved, nor the time when, but appearing to have been written before his majesty's restoration, and then pardoned by the Act of Oblivion," adds, that "though Mr. Sidney was known [Pg 21] to be a person obstinately averse to government by a monarch (the subject of the paper was in answer to one of Sir E. [R.?] Filmer), yet it was thought he had very hard measure." He describes Sidney as "a man of great courage, great sense, great parts, which he showed both at his trial and death;" and he appears to have been looked upon universally in the same light—by his friends as one of the ablest, by his enemies as one of the most dangerous, of his party. While he was yet in exile, Charles himself, in 1670, described him to Colbert, the French minister, as one who could not be too far from England, where his pernicious sentiments, supported with so great parts and courage, might do much hurt. Indeed, with the exception of Shaftesbury, he was the only person of eminent ability in the particular knot of patriots to which he belonged. Yet he must not be confounded in intellectual, any more than in moral character, with that brilliant and versatile politician. A man of talent and accomplishments he was, but narrow-minded, opinionative, and egotistical, to the point of utter impracticability. Burnet describes him "as a man of most extraordinary courage, a steady man, even to obstinacy, sincere, but of a rough and boisterous temper, that could not bear contradiction, but would give foul language upon it." "He seemed to be a Christian," adds the bishop, "but in a particular form of his own; he thought it was to be like a divine philosophy in the mind; but he was against all public worship and everything that looked like a church. He was stiff to all republican principles, and such an enemy to everything that looked like monarchy, that he set himself in a high opposition against Cromwell when he was made protector. He had studied the history of government in all its branches beyond any man I ever knew."

In an anecdote, which has many times been quoted in his praise, we can see nothing to commend or admire. The story is, that during his residence in France he shot a beautiful horse rather than give or sell it to the king, who greatly admired it; saying that the steed which had been ridden by a free man like himself should never be [Pg 22] mounted by a tyrant like Louis XIV. If this be true, what is there in it but a mad bravado, and an act of cruelty to a noble animal? But we believe it to be a fable. Sidney was too poor at the time to have a costly horse. But if he had had one, and had behaved in the manner described, Louis, assuredly, would have clapped him up in the Bastile, or have turned him out of France.

Sidney's 'Discourses concerning Government' were first published in 1698, with a short preface by John Toland; again in 1704, and a third time in 1751, at the expense of Mr. Thomas Hollis, who prefixed a Life of the Author, and also printed for the first time his 'Apology,' already mentioned. This edition of the works of Algernon Sidney was reproduced in 1772 by Mr. Brand Hollis, to whom Mr. Thomas Hollis left his property, with notes and corrections by Mr. J. Robertson, and the addition of some letters and other short pieces of Sidney's, all previously published, together with a tract entitled 'A General View of Government in Europe,' first printed in James Ralph's anonymous publication entitled 'Of the Use and Abuse of Parliaments,' 2 vols. 8vo., Lond., 1744, and there attributed to Sidney, but which Robertson says he is convinced "is the production of a different hand." In fact, there is no doubt that it is spurious. The two editions of 1751 and 1772 both contain 'Letters of the Honourable Algernon Sidney to the Honourable Henry Savile, ambassador in France in the year 1679,' &c., which originally appeared in an octavo volume in 1742. Particulars relating to Algernon will also be found in Arthur Collins's 'Memoirs of the Lives and Actions of the Sidneys,' prefixed to his 'Letters and Memorials of State,' 2 vols. fol., Lond., 1746; and in Blencowe's 'Sidney Papers,' 8vo., Lond., 1825. Collins states that several treatises by Sidney, in Latin and Italian, and also an 'Essay on Virtuous Love,' in English, remain in his own hand-writing at Penshurst. A Life of Algernon Sidney, by George William Meadley, was published in 1813.

Sidney's Trial was printed in 1684, but it is said to [Pg 23] have passed through the hands of Jeffreys, who struck out whatever he pleased. It is given, along with the other trials connected with the Rye House Plot, in Howell's 'State Trials.' The reader may also be referred to 'True Account and Declaration of the horrid Conspiracy against the late King,' &c., written by the time-serving Bishop Sprat, and published by order of James II. in 1685; and 'The Secret History of the Rye House Plot,' by the infamous Ford, Lord Grey, first printed in 1754.

The attainder of Algernon Sidney was reversed after the revolution of 1688. It is observable that neither in this act of parliament nor in the act passed in the same session reversing the attainder of Lord Russell is there any assertion of the innocence of the convicted party. And Mr. Hallam observes that the common accusation against the court in Sidney's trial, "of having admitted insufficient proof by the mere comparison of hand-writing, though alleged not only in most of our historians, but in the act of parliament reversing Sidney's attainder, does not appear to be well founded: the testimony to that fact, unless the printed trial is extraordinarily falsified, being such as would be received at present."

Footnotes

[A] Memorials.

[B] By a strange and sudden revolution, the burghers of Copenhagen, in 1660, overthrew the old Danish constitution, which had left the powers of the state in the hands of the proud tyrannical nobles. In seeking refuge from an oligarchical tyranny the Danes erected a kingly despotism.

[C] For various remarks on this mysterious subject, we refer the reader to Mr. Hallam's 'Constitutional History,' vol. ii. p. 274, of 4to. edition of 1827; and to the 'Pictorial History of England,' vol. iii. p. 727.

[D] Correspondence and Accounts as published by Sir John Dalrymple in 'Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland,' 4to. Lond. 1773.

[E] Id. Id.

It often happens that extraordinary philosophical talent or inventive ingenuity is accompanied with such simplicity of character, such ignorance of mankind or of the world, such facility or carelessness of disposition and temper, or such general incapacity for playing the game, or, if you will, fighting the battle, of life, that the possessor leaves a name which is rather a memento to point out the perils than a monument to emblazon the triumphs of genius. Absorbed in his higher speculations and pursuits, he is indifferent to the objects and ends which engage the ambition of ordinary men. If he is forced to take part in the universal struggle that is going on around him, his heart and spirit are not there. In all that is strongest, highest, greatest, most real in him, he lives apart, in a world of his own. He has no chance in the common scramble in which his fellows are straining every thew and sinew—he with his whole soul, and mind, and strength elsewhere, and with, as it were, only his left [Pg 25] hand at liberty. He is thrown out, very probably thrown down and trampled into the earth.

Very different was the case of the remarkable individual whose history we have now to relate. Endowed in ample measure with many faculties, that which he possessed in the rarest degree of all was the faculty of rising in the world.

Sir William Petty has himself given us an outline of his life on a singular occasion—in the commencement of his will. He there mentions that he was born at Rumsey, or Romsey, in Hampshire, and he afterwards speaks of his father, mother, and grandfather having been all buried in the church there. From other sources we learn that the day he came into the world was Monday the 26th of May, 1623, and that he was the eldest son of Anthony Petty, who, Aubrey the antiquary tells us, "was by profession a clothier, and also did dye his own clothes." In his will, dated 2nd May, 1685, Petty speaks of the memory of all his brothers and sisters, implying that he had had several and that they were by that time all dead. While still a boy his friend Aubrey, who had much of his information from Petty himself, says that he took great delight in watching the operations of smiths, carpenters, joiners, and other artificers, so that by the time he was twelve years old he had stored up no little mechanical knowledge, and had even acquired considerable practical skill and dexterity in various trades and handicrafts. His education was begun at the free-school of his native place; and he states in his will that at the age of fifteen he "had obtained the Latin, Greek, and French tongues, the whole body of common arithmetic, the practical geometry and astronomy conducing to navigation, dialling, &c., with the knowledge of several mathematical trades." In the common printed copies of his will—for instance in that prefixed to his Tracts, 8vo., Dublin, 1769, and in that given in all the editions of Collins's Peerage, not excepting the latest by Sir Egerton Brydges, he is made to intimate that he then went to the university of Oxon (or Oxford). The true word is not Oxon but Caen. The account given by his friend [Pg 26] Aubrey, in his Lives, is as follows:—"He has told me there happened to him the most remarkable accident of life (which he did not tell me), and which was the foundation of all the rest of his greatness and acquiring riches. He informed me that about fifteen, in March, he went over to Caen, in Normandy, in a vessel that went hence, with a little stock, and began to play the merchant, and had so good success, that he maintained himself, and also educated himself: this I guess was that most remarkable accident that he meant. Here he learned the French tongue, and perfected himself in Latin, and had Greek enough to serve his turn. At Caen he studied the arts. At eighteen he was, I have heard him say, a better mathematician than he is now; but, when occasion is, he knows how to recur to more mathematical knowledge." This was written in 1680. What Anthony Wood tells us, in the Athenæ Oxoniensis, is to the same effect, and is indeed in all probability abridged from the above statement of Aubrey's. Petty himself goes on to say that his knowledge of mathematics and of practical mechanics, and his having been at the University of Caen, prepared him for the king's navy. Aubrey relates that he was first bound apprentice to a sea-captain, by whom he was once drubbed with a cord for failing to discover a landmark—a steeple upon the coast—which he was sent aloft to look for—a circumstance which for the first time showed him that he was purblind, or short-sighted. While he was still in the navy, Petty tells us himself, he had at the age of twenty years gotten up (or saved) about threescore pounds, with as much mathematics as any of his age was known to have had. He speaks of his mathematics, we see, as if it was so much additional money capital. And indeed, although he may have loved, and probably did love, knowledge for its own sake, he never forgot its value as a means or instrument. And both the arithmetical or calculating character and the acquisitive turn of his mind inclined him to the habit of estimating its value in that respect in figures and by the standard of the pocket. Instead of saying with Lord Bacon that knowledge was power, he would have said, [Pg 27] if he had spoken out, that knowledge was pounds, shillings, and pence—which indeed constitute perhaps in this world the most universally felt and the best understood species of power. He was all for the practical in all things, and generally for the pecuniary as the most comprehensive form of the practical.

His merit, however, in his proper line was as great as that of any man who has ever been the architect of his own fortunes. There is no trace of his having ever received any assistance from his father, who was probably in poor circumstances, and who at his death in 1644 left him, Aubrey assures us, little or nothing. Nor does any other relation appear to have helped him after he got through his boyhood. "With this provision," he proceeds in his own narrative, that is to say, with his sixty pounds sterling and his mathematics—"anno 1643, when the civil wars between the king and parliament grew hot, I went into the Netherlands and France for three years, and, having vigorously followed my studies, especially that of medicine, at Utrecht, Leyden, and Amsterdam, and Paris, I returned to Romsey, where I was born, bringing back with me my brother Anthony, whom I had bred, with about ten pounds more than I had carried out of England." At Paris, Aubrey and Wood tell us he made the acquaintance of his distinguished countryman Hobbes, who had also fled from the civil storm at home, having, with his more experienced prescience, and perhaps greater timidity or caution of temper, been a little before Petty in effecting his retreat—for he did not wait till the war grew hot, but made off with himself soon after the Long Parliament commenced its sittings in November, 1642. Petty and Hobbes, whose quick intellectual sympathy immediately discerned the remarkable capacity of his young friend, and who loved his company, read together the Anatomy of Vesalius; and Petty also drew the schemes or diagrams required by Hobbes for a tract he was writing on Optics. How he maintained himself (and, as it would appear, his brother also) at this time is not known. Ward's conjecture, in his Lives of the Professors of [Pg 28] Gresham College, which has been copied in the Biographia Britannica and other later accounts, that he employed himself in some sort of traffic, rests on no sufficient evidence or authority. He told Aubrey that during this residence in Paris he was at one time driven to so great a strait for money, that he lived a week on two pennyworth of walnuts—"or three," says the conscientious antiquary, "I have forgotten which, but I should think the former." "Query," adds Aubrey, "whether he was not some time a prisoner there?"

By his own account, as quoted above, he would appear to have returned to England about the end of the year 1645. The next notice we have of him, and the first fact in what may be called his public history, is, that on the 6th of March, 1647, a patent was granted him by the parliament for seventeen years to teach what is called his art of double writing. The instrument by which this was performed was of the nature of what would now be called a copying machine, and its uses are expounded in the following terms in a tract which Petty published the next year, 1648, entitled 'Advice to Mr. Samuel Hartlib for the Advancement of some particular parts of Learning:'—"There is invented an instrument of small bulk and price, easily made and very durable, whereby any man, even at the first sight and handling, may write two resembling copies of the same thing at once, as serviceably and as fast (allowing two lines upon each page for setting the instrument) as by the ordinary way; of what nature or in what character or what matter soever, as paper, parchment, a book, &c. the said writing, &c. ought to be made upon. The use hereof will be very great to lawyers and scriveners, for making of indentures and all kind of counterparts; to merchants, intelligencers, registers, secretaries, clerks, &c.; for copying of letters, accounts, invoices, entering of warrants, and other records; to scholars, for transcribing of rare manuscripts, and preserving originals from falsification and other injuries of time. It lessens the labour of examination, serveth to discover forgeries and surreptitious copies, and to the transacting of all businesses of writing, [Pg 29] as with ease and speed, so with privacy also." The contrivance appears to have been a mechanical combination by which two connected pens were moved at the same time and by the same action of the hand. But it proved a failure; for in practice the greater weight and cumbersomeness of the double pen were found to be more than a compensation for its multiplying powers.

It probably, however, had the effect of bringing the inventor into notice; and he would be made further known in other quarters, we may suppose, by his tract on the Advancement of Learning, published the following year. This was a quarto pamphlet of about thirty pages; and Hartlib, to whom it was addressed, was the same person to whom Milton had also addressed his letter or tractate entitled "Of Education," published four years before. Petty's discourse, indeed, as well as Milton's, was mainly an exposition of an educational plan or system; Aubrey calls it his 'Advice concerning the Education of Youth.'

We will select some of his proposals from an abstract of the work given in the Biographia Britannica, as at least curiously illustrating the character of his mind, whatever may be thought of their real expediency or practicability. The subjects to which he principally directs his attention are Mathematics, Physics, and the History of Art and Nature. He proposes, in the first place, that there should be appointed able readers of all books on these subjects; that every book should be read by two several persons apart; and that out of all the books one great book should be made, containing everything valuable in them properly arranged and furnished with convenient indexes. The first of his special proposals for the education of youth is, that there be instituted Ergastula Literaria, or literary workhouses, where children may be taught to do something towards their living, as well as to read and write. This is exactly the idea of our modern Schools of Industry. He would have all the children in the kingdom trained according to this kind of education from the age of seven years, no fees being demanded from those whose parents [Pg 30] were too poor to afford them. If the latter cannot gain their whole living by their labour, let them, he says, remain somewhat the longer in the workhouse. The fourth proposal is as follows:—"That, since few children have need of reading before they know or can be acquainted with the things they read of, or of writing before their thoughts are worth the recording or they are able to put them into any form (which we call inditing), much less of learning languages when there are books enough for their present use in their own mother tongue, our opinion is, that these things, being withal somewhat above their capacity, as being to be attained by judgment, which is the weakest in children, be deferred a while, and others more needful for them, such as are in the order of nature before these above mentioned, and are attainable by the help of memory, which is either most strong or unpreoccupied in children, be studied before them. We wish, therefore, that the educands be taught to observe and remember all sensible objects and actions, whether they be natural or artificial, which the educators must upon all occasions expound unto them." In subsequent articles it is proposed that they should be habituated to such exercises as conduce to health, strength, and agility of body; that they should be taught to read by much more compendious methods than those in common use, which, it is observed, is a thing certainly very easy and feasible; that, besides writing in the common way, they should be taught to write swiftly, and in real characters, "as likewise the dexterous use of the instrument for writing many copies of the same thing at once;" that it may be considered whether they should not also be taught the artificial memory; "that in no case the art of drawing and designing be omitted, to what course of life soever these children are to be applied; since the use thereof for expressing the conceptions of the mind seems to be little inferior to that of writing, and in many cases performs what by words is impossible;" that the elements of arithmetic and geometry be studied by all; "that such as shall have need to learn foreign languages [Pg 31] (the use whereof would be much lessened were the real and common characters brought into practice) may be taught them by incomparably more easy ways than are now usual;" that such as have any natural ability for music be instructed in that art. The fifteenth and last proposal is, "that all children, though of the highest rank, be taught some genteel manufacture in their minority, such as these—turning of curious figures, making mathematical instruments, dials, and how to use them in astronomical observations; making watches and other trochilic motions; limning, and painting on glass or in oil-colours; graving, etching, carving, embossing, and moulding in sundry matters; the lapidary's art in knowing, cutting, and setting jewels; grinding of glasses, dioptrical and catoptrical; botanies and gardening; making musical instruments; navarchy, and making models for building and rigging of ships; architecture, and making models for houses; the confectioner's, perfumer's, or dyer's arts; chemistry, refining metals, and counterfeiting jewels; anatomy, making skeletons, and excarnating bowels; making mariner's compasses, globes, and other magnetic devices." Another part of the scheme is, that there should be erected a Gymnasium Mechanicum, or College of Tradesmen, wherein one workman at least of every trade, the most ingenious and most diligent that could be found, should be allowed a handsome dwelling rent-free; and that within the walls of this college, the design of which is the advancement of all mechanical arts and manufactures, there should be a Nosocomium Academicum, or institution for the treatment of diseases, according to the most exact and perfect idea thereof; a complete Theatrum Botanicum, or Botanic Garden, with stalls and cages for all strange beasts and birds, and ponds and conservatories for all exotic fishes—in other words, what we now call a Zoological Garden. And, characteristically enough, the concluding part of the scheme is a proposal for the compilation of a work, to be entitled Vellus Aureum, sive Facultatum Lucriferarum Descriptio Magna (the Golden Fleece, or great Description of the Money-making [Pg 32] Faculties); "wherein all the practised ways of getting a subsistence, and whereby men raise their fortunes, may be at large declared." Thus we have the favourite Luciferous experimenting of Bacon improved by the slightest possible change. In Petty's notion the Lucriferous was the true Luciferous.

The scheme, however, taken altogether, is a very remarkable conception for a young man of four or five and twenty, and evinces a decided capacity and habit both of ingenious and independent thinking. Some of his suggestions have the appearance of shooting far beyond what we should imagine to have been the spirit and ordinary intelligence of that time, of anticipating what we are accustomed to consider the newest of our modern ideas, and sometimes almost of transcending the most extreme point to which discovery or speculation in this field has been carried by any projector of the present day. But perhaps we are somewhat apt to deceive ourselves by over-rating our superiority over our ancestors here. In many respects both the theory and the practice of education seem to have been fully as well understood in this and other countries of Europe two or even three centuries ago as they are now. In the art of teaching languages, at least, the schoolmasters of the seventeenth, and even of the sixteenth century, certainly in general far excelled their successors; and some of the wisest and most effective of the improved plans that are now coming into use are only their methods revived. Such, for instance, are literal interlineary translations—the precedence given to the vocabulary over the grammar—the teaching of the foreign tongue (as nature teaches every tongue, and much more speedily and more perfectly than art ever succeeds in doing) by the ear rather than by the eye, and by means of things rather than of books.

Petty makes no mention in his own narrative either of his multiplying pen or of his pamphlet; indeed, that account is for the most part confined to a detail of the progress of his pecuniary circumstances. He is stated to have entered himself a student at Brazennose College, Oxford, at the time the loyalists were ejected from the [Pg 33] university by the parliamentary visitors, which was in April, 1648. He was created a Doctor of Physic on the 7th of March, 1649. In his own account, after noticing his return to England with ten pounds more than he had carried abroad, he proceeds:—"With this seventy pounds and by endeavours, in less than four years more I obtained my degree of M.D. in Oxford, and forthwith thereupon to be admitted into the College of Physicians, London; and into several clubs of the virtuous; after all which expenses defrayed, I had left twenty-eight pounds; and in the next two years, being made Fellow of Brazennose, and Anatomy Professor in Oxford, and also Reader at Gresham College, I advanced my said stock to about 400l., and, with 100l. more advanced and given me to go for Ireland, unto full 500l." It is said to have been on a parliamentary recommendation that he obtained his Fellowship. The date of his admission to the College of Physicians is given as the 25th of June, 1650. He had before this been made deputy to Doctor Thomas Clayton, the Professor of Anatomy at Oxford, who laboured under a singular disqualification for the office he held, having, it seems, an insurmountable aversion to the sight of a mangled corpse. It was while he occupied this situation that Petty was principally instrumental in bringing about the revival of Anne Green, who was hanged at Oxford on the 14th of December, 1650, perhaps the most extraordinary instance of the restoration of suspended animation on record. She had not only been hanged by the neck for nearly half an hour, but both during that time and after she was taken down she had been subjected to all sorts of rough and violent usage by her friends with the view of putting her out of pain, and extinguishing any possible remains of life. Yet she perfectly recovered. "I myself," says Derham, in his Physico-Theology, "saw her many years after that. She had, I heard, borne divers children." At last Doctor Clayton resigned; and on the 1st of January, 1651, Petty became Anatomical Professor. On the 7th of February in the same year he succeeded Dr. Knight in the Professorship of Music in Gresham [Pg 34] College, an appointment for which he is said to have been mainly indebted to the interest of his friend Captain John Graunt, well known for his attention to political arithmetic, and for his 'Observations upon the Bills of Mortality,' which were published ten years after this time, and in which he was assisted by Petty. [F] By the virtuous, into several of whose clubs he tells us he was admitted, Petty means only what we should now call the Virtuosi. He was one of the members of the Oxford branch of the association, originally formed in London about the year 1645, out of which eventually rose the Royal Society. The Oxford philosophers joined their London friends whenever any of them happened to be in the metropolis; but they had also their own regular meetings, which appear to have commenced about 1649 or 1650, when Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Wallis, and other leading members of the original London body were removed to appointments in the University. At Oxford they were joined by Dr. Seth Ward, Dr. Ralph Bathurst, and Dr. Thomas Willis, as well as by Petty; and it is recorded that they met at first in Dr. Petty's lodgings, which were in the house of an apothecary, for the convenience of obtaining such drugs or chemical substances as they might have occasion to use or inspect. Petty appears to have continued to reside principally at Oxford so long as he remained in England.

In the latter part of the year 1652, however, he was appointed Physician to the army in Ireland; and, taking his departure for that country, he landed at Waterford on the 10th of September. This post he retained till June, 1659, at a salary of twenty shillings a day, while he gained by his practice 400l. a year more. About September, 1654, perceiving, he tells us, that the admeasurement of the lands forfeited by the late rebellion was most [Pg 35] insufficiently and absurdly managed, he obtained a contract, dated 11th December, 1654, for performing the said admeasurement, by which he gained above 9000l.; "which," he adds, "with the 500l. above mentioned, my salary of 20s. per diem, the benefit of my practice, together with 600l. given me for directing an after-survey of the adventurers' land, and 800l. more for two years' salary as Clerk of the Council, raised me an estate of about 13,000l. in ready and real money, at a time when, without art, interest, or authority, men bought as much land for ten shillings in real money as in this year, 1685, yields ten shillings per annum rent above his majesty's quit-rents." With part of this money he bought soldiers' debentures, with the produce of which he afterwards bought lands in Ireland that produced him a rental, Aubrey says, of 18,000l. a year, of the greater part of which however he was deprived after the Restoration by the Court of Nocents, or Innocents, which found that many of the persons to whom the lands had originally belonged had not taken part in the rebellion of 1641, and consequently that the lands were not forfeited. Petty, we suppose, would get back his purchase-money; but that would be a scanty compensation. And possibly even that might be withheld, on the plea that he had no claim except against the defunct illegal government. With another portion of his 13,000l. he bought the Earl of Arundel's house and garden in Lothbury, London, and erected upon their site the buildings forming Tokenhouse-yard, which however were for the most part destroyed some years afterwards by the Great Fire. It was Henry Cromwell who gave him his place of Clerk of the Council in 1657, having already on his first coming over as Lord-Lieutenant, two years before, made him his secretary.

He returned to England early in 1659. It is affirmed to have been again by the interest of his friend the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland that he was returned for the borough of West Looe, in Cornwall, to the parliament called by Richard Cromwell, which met on the 27th of January in that year. He had not yet taken his seat when, on the [Pg 36] 25th of March, six articles of impeachment were exhibited against him by Sir Hierome Sankey, member for Woodstock, for his proceedings in connexion with the distribution and allotment of Irish forfeited lands; upon which he was summoned to attend the House that day month. He made his appearance on the 19th of April, and the charges were discussed on the 21st; but, the parliament being suddenly dissolved on the day following, no decision was come to. In a letter to Thurloe, then principal secretary of state, dated the 11th of April, Henry Cromwell writes in terms which strongly show how high Petty stood in his regard. "I have heretofore," he says, "told you my thoughts of Dr. Petty, and am still of the same opinion; and, if Sir Hierome Sankey do not run him down with numbers and noise of adventurers, and such other like concerned persons, I believe the parliament will find him as I have represented. He has curiously deceived me these four years if he be a knave." Aubrey affirms that Petty and Sankey, whom he calls one of Oliver's knights, and who, he says, was wont to preach at Dublin, "printed one against the other;" and Petty did publish a folio pamphlet in 1659, entitled 'A Brief of Proceedings between Sir Hierome Sankey and the author, with the State of the Controversy between them;' and another in 1660, in octavo, entitled 'Reflections upon some Persons and Things in Ireland, by Letter to and from Dr. Petty; with Sir Hierome Sankey's Speech in Parliament.' Aubrey adds—"The knight had been a soldier, and challenged Sir William to fight with him. Sir William is extremely short-sighted, and, being the challengee, it belonged to him to nominate place and weapon. He nominates, for the place, a dark cellar, and the weapon to be a great carpenter's axe. This turned the knight's challenge into ridicule, and so it came to nought." The breaking up of the parliament, however, did not save Petty. He returned to Ireland immediately; but, notwithstanding the continued friendship and protection of the Lord-Lieutenant, steps were taken to prosecute him by the English government, and he was removed [Pg 37] from all his public employments. The Restoration, however, came before anything could be done; and Petty hastened to make friends with the new government, which he seems to have had no difficulty in doing, although he had figured as one of the members of Harrington's republican Rota Club, which had continued to meet at Miles's Coffee-House, in New Palace Yard, down to so recent a date as the 21st of February in this same year. But Petty, who had come over again to England in the latter part of 1659, had returned to Ireland soon after Christmas, and he was still there when the Restoration took place. Aubrey says, that, when he soon after came back to England, "he was presently received into good grace with his majesty, who was mightily pleased with his discourse." Having resigned his professorship in Gresham College on the 8th of March, 1661, he was on the 19th of the same month made one of the commissioners of the Court of Claims relating to the Irish estates; and on the 11th of April he received the honour of knighthood, together with the grant of a new patent constituting him Surveyor-General for Ireland. Aubrey even affirms that he received a patent creating him an Irish peer by the title of Earl of Kilmore; "which," it is added, "he stifles during his life to avoid envy, but his son will have the benefit of the precedency." This, however, is perhaps only a dream of the gossiping antiquary; who subjoins, in a note written after Petty's death, "I expected that his son would have broken out a lord or earl, but it seems that he had enemies at the court at Dublin, which out of envy obstructed the passing of his patent."

Although he was not made a peer, however, Petty was made a member of parliament, being returned this same year to the Irish House of Commons for the borough of Eniscorthy. All the forfeited lands in Ireland of which he had been possessed on the 7th of May, 1659, were confirmed to him by the Act of Settlement passed in 1662. Upon the foundation of the Royal Society in July, 1662, he was elected one of the first council; and when the College of Physicians obtained its new charter [Pg 38] the following year, his name was published in the list of the Fellows, although he had now left off practice. It was soon after this date that he first produced his famous invention of a double-bottomed ship to sail against wind and tide, which in July, 1664, made a successful passage from Dublin to Holyhead and back again, but was lost in a violent storm on a third attempt to cross the Irish Sea. The idea continued to occupy him for some years; but he was obliged to admit at last that he could make nothing of it. It appears, in fact, that although the new species of ship performed wonders against wind and tide, before the wind it refused to move at all. Such is stated to have been one of its defects—as if more would not have been superfluous.

In 1667, on Trinity Sunday, Sir William Petty married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Hardress Waller, of Castletown, in the county of Limerick, Knight, and widow of Sir Maurice Fenton, Bart., described by Aubrey as "a very beautiful and ingenious lady, brown, with glorious eyes." He afterwards, he tells us, set up iron-works and pilchard-fishing in Kerry, and opened the lead-mines and timber-trade in the same county; by all which operations, together with some advantageous bargains, and by living under his income, he in course of time greatly increased his fortune.

It was during the remaining portion of his life that most of his literary performances were published, and probably for the greater part executed. Though none of them are of great magnitude, their number is considerable. The principal are—'A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions,' 4to., London, 1662, 1667, 1685, 1690 (for the first time with the author's name), and 1769; a Latin Hexameter Poem entitled 'Colloquium Davidis cum anima sua De Magnalibus Dei' (a paraphrase of the 104th Psalm), folio, London, 1679, under the name of Cassid. Aureus Minutius; 'Quantulumcunque, concerning Money,' 4to., 1682; 'An Essay in Political Arithmetic concerning the Growth of the City of London,' 8vo., London, 1682, 1686, and 1769; 'Observations upon the Dublin Bills of Mortality in 1681, and [Pg 39] the State of that City,' 8vo., London, 1683, 1686, and 1769; 'Maps of Ireland,' folio, 1685; 'Two Essays in Political Arithmetic, concerning the People, Housing, Hospitals, &c. of London and Paris,' 8vo., London, 1687; 'Five Essays in Political Arithmetic,' 8vo., London, 1687. He also contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions. And among other works of his writing not published till after his death were, 'Political Arithmetic, or a Discourse concerning the Extent and Value of Lands, People, Buildings, &c., as the same relates to every Country in general, but more particularly to the Territories of his Majesty of Great Britain, and his Neighbours of Holland, Zealand, and France,' 8vo., 1690, 1755, and 1769; 'The Political Anatomy of Ireland,' 8vo., London, 1691, 1719, and 1769 (in which two latter editions it is entitled 'A Political Survey of Ireland'); and 'Verbum Sapienti, or An Account of the Wealth and Expense of England,' drawn up in 1666, and printed along with the last in all the editions.

Petty's Quantulumcunque, where he ventures into the region of what is now called Political Economy, contains some ingenious and sound remarks, but it does not show that he had seen much farther into the true nature of money than his contemporaries. His reputation is not so much that of a political economist as of a political arithmetician. By Political Arithmetic is meant that subdivision of Political Economy which is occupied with the calculation of the mere numerical results of the powers and principles that regulate the progress of society. It comprehends what we now call Statistics, but only as its substratum or basis, or as furnishing the data for its operations and conclusions, which have for the most part a reference rather to the future than to the present. Even in this field Petty must be considered as rather an ingenious than a very wise or profound speculator. But his views are sometimes curious and interesting from their very boldness, not to say extravagance and absurdity. One of his most remarkable tracts is his 'Essay in Political Economy concerning the Growth of the City [Pg 40] of London,' first published, as has been stated above, in 1682. It is the more interesting inasmuch as some of the principal predictions hazarded in it refer to almost the present time.

By the city of London, the author begins by stating, he means the old city with the liberties thereof, Westminster, Southwark, and whatever other houses in Middlesex and Surrey are contiguous to or within call of those in any of these divisions of the metropolis proper. More particularly, he includes the 97 parishes within the walls of London, the 16 next without them, the 6 of Westminster, and the 14 outparishes of Middlesex and Surrey; all which 133 parishes are comprehended within the weekly Bills of Mortality.

The population of London at the date of his writing, 1682, he deduces as being about 670,000; and he calculates that it doubles itself in forty years. That of the rest of England and Wales on the other hand he takes at 7,400,000, and conceives that it only doubles itself in three hundred and sixty years. He then proceeds thus:—"Now, if the City double its people in 40 years, and the present number be 670,000, and if the whole territory be 7,400,000, and double in 360 years as aforesaid; then,...it appears that anno 1842 the people of the City will be 10,718,880, and those of the whole country but 10,917,389, which is but inconsiderably more. Wherefore it is certain and necessary that the growth of the City must stop before the said year 1842, and will be at its utmost height in the next preceding period, anno 1802, when the number of the City will be eight times its present number, namely, 5,359,000; and when, besides the said number, there will be 4,466,000 to perform the tillage, pasturage, and other rural works necessary to be done without the said city."

It does not appear upon what grounds it is so confidently assumed that the growth of the City must necessarily stop so soon as its population becomes equal to that of the country. The remainder of the disquisition is occupied with an examination of the question whether it would be best that the metropolis should be only a [Pg 41] seventh part of its then magnitude or should become seven times greater than it then was.

But first our author indulges in some conjectures as to the causes of the growth of London up to the time of his writing. "The causes," he observes, "of its growth from 1642 to 1682, may be said to have been as followeth; namely, from 1642 to 1650, that men came out of the country to London to shelter themselves from the outrages of the civil wars during that time; from 1650 to 1660, the royal party came to London for their more private and inexpensive living; from 1660 to 1670, the king's friends and party came to receive his favours after his happy restoration; from 1620 to 1680, the frequency of plots and parliaments might bring extraordinary numbers to the City. But what reasons to assign for the like increase from 1604 to 1642 I know not, unless I could pick out some remarkable accident happening in each part of the said period, and make that to be the cause of this increase, as vulgar people make the cause of every man's sickness to be what he did last eat. Wherefore, rather than so to say quidlibet de quolibet, I rather quit even what I have above said to be the cause of London's increase from 1642 to 1682, and put the whole upon some natural and spontaneous benefits and advantage that men find by living in great more than in small societies; and shall therefore seek for the antecedent causes of this growth in the consequences of the like, considered in greater characters and proportions." The facts here mentioned may, as Petty himself is not indisposed to admit, have had little to do with the increase of the population of London between 1642 and 1682, but they are still of some historic curiosity and importance, taken simply by themselves as facts resting on contemporary authority. And they have not been adverted to by the professed historians of the time.

The most curious part of the speculation, however, is the exposition of the advantages that would follow from London being seven times greater than it then was. First: it is calculated that such a city, containing 4,690,000 [Pg 42] inhabitants, might easily stand upon a space of ground of 10,500 acres, which is about equivalent to a circle of four miles and a half in diameter, and less than fifteen miles in circumference. Then, for the necessary supply of provisions, &c., "a circle of ground of thirty-five miles semi-diameter," we are told, "will bear corn, garden-stuff, fruits, hay, and timber for the 4,690,000 inhabitants of the said city and circle, so as nothing of that kind need be brought from above thirty-five miles' distance from the said city." "All live cattle and great animals," it is added, "can bring themselves to the said city, and fish can be brought from the Land's End and Berwick as easily as now. Of coals there is no doubt. And for water twenty shillings per family, or six hundred thousand pounds per annum in the whole, will serve this city, especially with the help of the New River." It is then proposed that the above-mentioned housing, and a border of ground of three-quarters of a mile broad, should be encompassed with a wall and ditch of twenty miles about, as strong as any in Europe, which, it is calculated, would cost only about a million sterling, or about a penny in the shilling of house-rent for one year; and it is asked, "What foreign prince could bring an army from beyond seas able to beat, first, our sea-forces, and next, with horse harassed at sea, to resist all the fresh horse that England could make, and then conquer above a million of men well united, disciplined, and guarded within such a wall, distant everywhere three-quarters of a mile from the housing to elude the grenadoes and great shot of the enemy?"

But foreign powers are not the only enemies to be provided against. The exposition goes on:—"As to intestine parties and factions, I suppose that 4,690,000 people united within this great city, could easily govern half the said number stationed without it; and that a few men in arms within the said city and wall could also easily govern the rest unarmed, or armed in such a manner as the sovereign shall think fit." It appears, then, to be taken for granted that the inhabitants of the metropolis and the inhabitants of the rest of the [Pg 43] kingdom may be considered as natural enemies, or as constituting two factions permanently opposed to one another, but at the same time each perfectly united within itself. But, perhaps, the strangest part of the scheme is the manner in which it is proposed that it might be made to operate in strengthening the town and weakening the country through the medium of religion. "As to uniformity in religion, I conceive," proceeds our author, "that if St. Martin's parish may (as it doth) consist of about 40,000 souls, that this great city also may as well be made but as one parish, with seven times one hundred and thirty chapels; in which might not only be an uniformity of common prayer, but in preaching also: for that a thousand copies of one judiciously and authentically composed sermon might be every week read in each of the said chapels, without any subsequent repetition of the same as in the case of homilies. Whereas, in England (wherein are near ten thousand parishes, in each of which upon Sundays, holidays, and other extraordinary occasions there should be about one hundred sermons per annum, making about a million of sermons per annum in the whole), it were a miracle if a million of sermons, composed by so many men, and of so many minds and methods, should produce uniformity upon the discomposed understandings of above eighty millions of hearers." This last number is apparently a misprint: but the meaning of the passage seems to be that, while the people of the City are to be, as it were, compressed into a uniformity of faith by having one and the same sermon preached every Sunday and holiday in all the churches, the inhabitants of the country are to be purposely kept in a state of division and distraction by being exposed to all the diversities and discordance of doctrine that would naturally proceed from ten thousand preachers all left unchecked to utter whatever their own discretion or indiscretion might prompt. Surely nothing equally comical and absurd was ever so gravely proposed before or since. The entire speculation, indeed, it must be confessed, does not raise a very exalted idea of its author as a thinker on such subjects. It is, throughout, [Pg 44] more like the speculation of a hermit in his cell, or of a girl in a boarding-school, than that of either a philosopher or a man of large practical faculty. And Petty may perhaps have had, after all, more of the mere dexterity and quickness which go to the making of a fortune than of the deeper sagacity, the comprehensive largeness of view, and the far-reaching prescience which are necessary for either a philosopher or a statesman.

He had no doubt, however, plenty of ready talent of various kinds. "He can be an excellent droll," writes his friend Aubrey, "if he has a mind to it, and will preach extempore incomparably, either the Presbyterian way, Independent, Capucin friar, or Jesuit." And again, "He is a person of an admirable inventive head, and practical parts. He hath told me that he hath read but little, that is to say, not since twenty-five ætatis, and is of Mr. Hobbes his mind, that, had he read much, as some men have, he had not known so much as he does, nor should have made such discoveries and improvements." But in truth, Petty is not the author of any thing that can be called a discovery in science or the arts. There was considerable resemblance between him and his friend Hobbes in what we may call complexion of intellectual character, however inferior Petty was in literary and philosophical cultivation as well as in original mental power. Both in particular had abundance of that self-confidence which may have been partly innate, but was also strengthened in both by the accident of their having been to a great extent self-educated; for it is evident that so they must in reality have been, notwithstanding the formal attendance of each for some time at the university.

The impression that Petty made in conversation may be gathered from various passages in the Diary of Pepys, to whom he was also well known. "At the coffee-house," Pepys writes under date of the 27th of January, 1664, "where I sat with Sir G. Askew and Sir William Petty, who in discourse is, methinks, one of the most rational men that ever I heard speak with a tongue, having all his notions the most distinct and clear." [Pg 45] Again, under the 18th of February, 1665, we read:—"At noon, to the Royal Oak tavern in Lombard Street; where Sir William Petty and the owners of the double-bottomed boat (the Experiment) did entertain my Lord Brouncker, Sir R. Murray, myself, and others, with marrow-bones and a chine of beef of the victuals they have made for this ship; and excellent company and good discourse: but above all I do value Sir William Petty." Many details about the double-bottomed boat are given by Pepys. One passage is as follows:—"1st February, 1664. Thence to Whitehall; where, in the duke's chamber, the king came and staid an hour or two laughing at Sir W. Petty, who was there about his boat; and at Gresham College in general: at which poor Petty was, I perceive, at some loss; but did argue discreetly, and bear the unreasonable follies of the king's objections and other bystanders with great discretion; and offered to take odds against the king's best boats; but the king would not lay, but cried him down with words only."

We must add Aubrey's description of Petty's personal appearance. "He is," he writes, "a proper handsome man, measured six foot high, good head of brown hair, moderately turning up; vide his picture as Doctor of Physic. His eyes are a kind of goose-grey, but very short-sighted, and as to aspect beautiful, and promise sweetness of nature, and they do not deceive, for he is a marvellous good-natured person, and ευσπλαγχνος [tender-bowelled]. Eye-brows thick, dark, and straight [horizontal]. His head is very large, μακροκεφαλος. He was in his youth slender, but, since these twenty years and more past, he grew very plump, so that now, 1680, he is abdomine tardus [heavy-paunched]. This last March, 1679–80, I persuaded him to sit for his picture to Mr. Logan, the graver, whom I forthwith went for myself, and he drew it first before his going into Ireland, and 'tis very like him. But about 1659 he had a picture in miniature drawn by his friend and mine, Mr. Samuel Cowper (prince of limners of his age), one of the likest that ever he drew."

[Pg 46] He went over to Ireland to take his seat in the parliament of that kingdom on the 22nd of March, 1680. This is about the last thing that is recorded of Petty. "He died," Aubrey relates, "at his house in Piccadilly Street, almost opposite to St. James's Church, on Friday, 16th day of December, 1687, of a gangrene in his foot, occasioned by the swelling of the gout." His remains were interred in the church of his native town of Romsey, beside those of his father and mother; they are covered by a flat stone, on which an illiterate workman has cut the words "Here layes Sir William Pety."

He left a large fortune, perhaps the largest that up to that time had ever been accumulated by an individual in England. "He hath told me," says Aubrey, "that he never got by legacies in his life but only ten pounds, which was not paid. He hath told me that, whereas some men have accidentally come into the way of preferment by lying at an inn, and there contracting an acquaintance, on the road, or as some others have done,—for example, my cousin Rowland Platts, whom the Lord Cottington never having seen before, liked so well, that he made him his gentleman of the horse when he went his embassy into Spain (this was on ship-board)—he never had any such opportunity, but hewed out his fortune himself." In the pamphlet which he published in 1660 in his own defence against the charges of Sir Hierome Sankey, under the title of 'Reflections upon some Persons and Things in Ireland,' Petty has entered into some details upon the manner in which his property was acquired which add something to the statement already quoted from his will, with which they may be compared. "In the year 1649," he says, "I proceeded M.D.; after the charges whereof, and my admission into the College of London, I had left about 60l. From that time till about August, 1652, by my practice, fellowships at Gresham, and at Brazen-nose, and by my Anatomy Lecture at Oxford, I had made that 60l. to be near 500l. From August 16, 1652, when I went for Ireland, to December, 1654, when I began the survey and other public entanglements, with 100l. advance money, and [Pg 47] 365l. a year well-paid salary, as also with my practice among the chief in the chief city of the nation, I made my said 500l. above 1600l. Now the interest of this 1600l. for a year in Ireland could not be less than 200l., which, with 550l. for another year's salary and practice, namely, until the lands were set out in October, 1655, would have increased my said stock to 2350l.; with 2000l. whereof I would have bought 8000l. in debentures, which would then have purchased me about 15,000 acres of land, namely, as much as I am now accused to have. These 15,000 acres could not yield me less than, at 2s. per acre, 1500l. per annum, especially receiving the rents of May-day preceding. This year's rent, with 550l. for my salary and practice, &c., till December, 1656, would have brought me even then (debentures growing dearer) 6000l. in debentures, whereof the five-sevenths then paid would have been about 4000l. neat, for which I must have had about 8000 acres more, being as much almost as I conceive is due to me. The rent for 15,000 acres and 8000 acres for three years could not have been less than 7000l., which, with the same three years' salary, namely, 1650l., would have been near 9000l. estate in money, above the above-mentioned 1500l. per annum in lands. The which, whether it be more or less than what I now have, I leave to all the world to examine and judge. This estate I might have got without ever meddling with surveys, much less with the more fatal distribution of lands after they were surveyed, and without meddling with the clerkship of the council, or being secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant; all which had I been so happy as to have declined, then had I preserved an universal favour and interest with all men, instead of the odium and persecution I now endure." Petty's actual acquisitions, however, came at length far to exceed the amount insinuated in this hypothetical statement. If we may rely upon the account of his friend Aubrey, the lands in Ireland that remained to him in 1680, after he had been forced by the Court of Innocents to relinquish the greater part of what he had once possessed, produced a rental of 7000l. or 8000l. per [Pg 48] annum, and he could from Mount Mangorto, in the county of Kerry, behold 50,000 acres of his own property.

In his will (made in 1685) Petty states his revenue from property in Ireland without the county of Kerry, in lands, remainders, and reversions, to be then about 3100l. per annum; and he adds, "I have of neat profits out of the lands and woods of Kerry, above 1100l. per annum, besides iron-works, fishing, and lead-mines, and marble-quarries, worth 600l. per annum; in all 4800l." Altogether he makes his real estate to amount to about 6700l. per annum. The total of his personal estate he sets down at 46,412l.; so that, including what he calls demonstrable improvements of his Irish estates, he considers that he may leave behind him about 15,000l. per annum in all. This is after making allowance for a loss of 25,000l. upon twice that amount of debts which he calls doubtful, and of 3200l. upon 4000l. of bad or nearly desperate debts. To his wife he leaves 1587l. per annum, with 9000l. in money; advising her to spend the whole of her income "on her own entertainments, charity, and munificence, without care of increasing her children's fortunes." To his daughter he leaves in all 20,000l.; the rest of his estate he divides for the greater part between his two sons, upon the general principle of making the income of the elder about twice that of the younger. The legacies are few and of inconsiderable amount. "As for legacies for the poor," he says, "I am at a stand; as for beggars by trade and election, I give them nothing; as for impotents by the hand of God, the public ought to maintain them; as for those who have been bred to no calling nor estate, they should be put upon their kindred; as for those who can get no work, the magistrates should cause them to be employed, which may be well done in Ireland, where is fifteen acres of improvable land for every head; prisoners for crimes, by the king; for debts, by their prosecutors; as for those who compassionate the sufferings of any object, let them relieve themselves by relieving such sufferers, that is, give them alms pro re nata, and for God's sake relieve those several species above mentioned where the above-mentioned [Pg 49] obligers fail in their duties: wherefore I am contented that I have assisted all my poor relations, and put many into a way of getting their own bread, and have laboured in public works, and by inventions have sought out real objects of charity; and do hereby conjure all who partake of my estate from time to time to do the same, at their peril. Nevertheless, to answer custom, and to take the surer side, I give 20l. to the most wanting of the parish wherein I die." There are no such bequests as according to Pepys had been in a previous will made by Petty. Under date of the 22nd of March, 1665, Pepys notes:—"Sir William Petty did tell me that in good earnest he hath in his will left some part of his estate to him that could invent such and such things. As, among others, that could discover truly the way of milk coming into the breasts of a woman; and he that could invent proper characters to express to another the mixture of relishes and tastes. And says, that to him that invents gold he gives nothing for the philosopher's stone; for, says he, they that find out that will be able to pay themselves. But, says he, by this means it is better than to go to a lecture; for here my executors, that must part with this, will be sure to be well convinced of the invention before they do part with their money." Most probably Petty in making these communications was only playing off some of his drollery upon his temptingly mystifiable friend.

The remainder of the real will is also very characteristic. "As for the education of my children," it continues, "I would that my daughter might marry in Ireland, desiring that such a sum as I have left her might not be carried out of Ireland. I wish that my eldest son may get a gentleman's estate in England, which, by what I have gotten already, intend to purchase, and by what I presume he may have with a wife, may amount to between 2000l. and 3000l. per annum, and by some office he may get there, together with an ordinary superlucration, may reasonably be expected; so as I may design my youngest son's trade and employment to be the prudent management of our Irish estate for himself and [Pg 50] his elder brother, which I suppose his said brother must consider him for. As for myself, I being now about threescore and two years old, I intend to attend the improvement of my lands in Ireland, and to get in the many debts owing unto me; and to promote the trade of iron, lead, marble, fish, and timber, whereof my estate is capable; and, as for studies and experiments, I think now to confine the same to the anatomy of the people and political arithmetic, as also to the improvement of ships, land-carriages, guns, and pumps, as of most use to mankind, not blaming the studies of other men. As for religion, I die in the profession of that faith and in the practice of such worship as I find established by the law of my country, not being able to believe what I myself please, nor to worship God better than by doing as I would be done unto, and observing the laws of my country, and expressing my love and honour to Almighty God by such signs and tokens as are understood to be such by the people with whom I live, God knowing my heart even without any at all. And thus begging the Divine majesty to make me what he would have me to be both as to faith and good works, I willingly resign my soul into his hands, relying only on his infinite mercy and the merits of my Saviour for my happiness after this life, where I expect to know and see God more clearly than by the study of the Scriptures and his works I have been hitherto able to do. Grant me, O Lord, an easy passage to thyself, that, as I have lived in thy fear, I may be known to die in thy favour. Amen."

By his widow, who survived him about twenty years, dying in February, 1708, Sir William Petty had three sons and a daughter—"very lovely children, but all like the mother," says Aubrey; who moreover adds in a note, "He hath a natural daughter that much resembles him, no legitimate child so much, that acts at the Duke's Playhouse, who hath had a child by . . . about 1679. She is (1680) about twenty-one." Of the three sons, John, the first-born, died in infancy. On the 6th of December, 1688, within a year after the death of her husband, Lady Petty was created Baroness of Shelburne, in the [Pg 51] Irish peerage, for life; and at the same time Petty's eldest son was made Baron of Shelburne, also in the peerage of Ireland, with limitation however to the heirs male of his own body. They were the two last creations made by King James II. before the transference of the crown. Both the new lord and his mother, however, deserted James as soon as he was driven from the throne; their estates were consequently sequestered by the Irish parliament, but they were recovered on the complete establishment of the new government. Lord Shelburne died in 1696 without issue, on which the title became extinct. In 1699 the title was restored by King William to his surviving brother Henry, who in 1719 was further elevated by George I. to the dignities of Viscount Dunkerron and Earl of Shelburne in the peerage of Ireland; but he also died, in April, 1751, without surviving issue—he had lost the last of several sons about six months before—on which the titles again became extinct. Meanwhile his sister Anne had in January, 1692, been married to Thomas Fitzmaurice, twenty-first Baron Kerry, and first Earl of Kerry, by whom, besides William, second Earl of Kerry, she had another son who grew up, John; and to him his uncle the Earl of Shelburne left his estates in the county of Kerry, which are stated to have amounted to above 86,000 acres, or upwards of 135 square miles of English statute measure. This John Fitzmaurice immediately assumed the name of Petty, and was in the same year, 1751, created Baron Dunkerron, Viscount Fitzmaurice, and Earl of Shelburne, in the peerage of Ireland, and in 1760 was made Baron Wycombe, of Chipping Wycombe, in that of England. His eldest son William, Earl of Shelburne, who was one of the most distinguished political figures of the latter part of the last century, was created Viscount Calne, Earl of Wycombe, and Marquess of Lansdowne, in the British peerage, in 1784. The first Marquess of Lansdowne, who died in 1805, was succeeded by his eldest son John, who died without issue in 1809; and he was succeeded by his half-brother [Pg 52] Henry, now Marquess of Lansdowne, who also in 1818 succeeded to the Irish earldom of Kerry, with the ancient Barony of Kerry, dating from the reign of King John, and who is, it appears from this deduction, the great-great-grandson of Sir William Petty.

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 headquarters of the royal army, after the battle of Edgehill. 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 [Pg 54] 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, in 1646, 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 of 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 [Pg 55] 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 within 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 [Pg 56] among those who thought with him in politics, he probably found himself more at his ease. After a visit of some length to 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.

At the age of twenty-five, though a man of remarkably temperate and regular habits, he became afflicted with gout and stone, from which he suffered extreme torment with great resignation and patience for the rest of his life. Of course, he did not neglect the opportunity of studying those diseases in his own person, and recording the result of his observations. His account of gout, especially, is considered to be a most accurate and able history of that disease.

He died, leaving a family, at his house in Pall-Mall, on the 29th of December, 1689, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, and was buried in the parish church of St. James, Westminster, where, in 1810, a tablet was erected to his memory by the College of Physicians, who became, as a body, tardily but fully convinced of his extraordinary merit and eminent claims to the gratitude and respect of his profession.

[Pg 57] He is said to have been a man of the most retiring and unobtrusive disposition, and the utmost placidity of temper. In a biographical sketch by Dr. Samuel Johnson, prefixed to an English edition of his works by Swan, in 1742, it is remarked, that if he could not teach us in his writings how to cure the painful disorders from which he suffered, he has taught us by his example the nobler art to bear them with serenity. Nor was he less patient of mental than of bodily inflictions; for though he was the object of much asperity among the physicians of his time, he made no reprisals upon the reputations of those who slandered him: though he often speaks of their bitterness, he never even mentions their names—a forbearance to which, as his biographer pungently remarks, they are indebted for their escape from a discreditable immortality. His writings breathe throughout a spirit of warm piety, candour, and benevolence: he is said to have been extremely generous in his dealings with his patients; for which, with other reasons, his practice though large was not very gainful, and he did not leave much wealth behind him. He never was sought after by the great, like his successor and disciple Radcliffe; and had none of the talents by which that singular man was able to push his fortune and establish a kind of professional despotism. Yet whatever medical skill the latter evinced seems to have been derived from Sydenham, whose doctrines and treatment he contrived to bring into a much more early and general repute in England than they would probably have otherwise obtained. Each had his reward: the one will be long remembered as the founder of a magnificent library; the other can never be forgotten as the author of modern medicine.

The bent of Sydenham's mind was eminently practical; he thought that the business of a physician is to acquire an accurate knowledge of the causes and symptoms of diseases, and the effects of different remedies upon them; that, if he cannot prevent them, he may at least recognise them with certainty, and apply with promptitude the means most likely to cure them: with Hippocrates and the ancient empirical physicians, whose [Pg 58] tenets he professed to follow, he condemned all curious speculations upon the intimate nature of disease, as incapable of proof, and therefore always useless and often hurtful; and maintained that the only trustworthy source of opinion in medicine is experience resulting from observations frequently repeated, and experiments cautiously varied; and that no theories worth attention can be framed until the recorded experience of many observers, under many different circumstances, and even through successive ages, shall be embodied into one general system; and he boldly declared his belief that every acute disease might then be cured. An instance, which unfortunately as yet stands alone in support of this rather sanguine expectation, may be taken from the history of small-pox. The observation of its contagious nature led to the general practice of inoculation, and this to the immortal discovery of Jenner, by which a disease but yesterday the scourge of the earth has been almost extinguished. It is remarkable that Sydenham, who first pointed out the important difference between its distinctive and confluent forms—who so materially improved the treatment by changing it from stifling to cooling—and who studied and has described it with a laborious accuracy hardly paralleled in the history of medicine—was not aware of this, to us, its most striking characteristic of contagion. A person conversant with such subjects will feel no surprise at this: to the general reader it may be a sufficient explanation, that it lies dormant for ten days; and that as it can only be taken once, and was always prevalent in London, the number of persons susceptible at any given time, and in obvious communication with each other, were comparatively few; so that opportunities were not so likely to arise as might be imagined of tracing its progress in single families or neighbourhoods from one source of contagion.

Sydenham is justly celebrated for the happiness of his descriptions, and his skilful application of simple methods of cure, which are as effectual as they were novel in that age, when a medical prescription sometimes contained a hundred different substances; but he has merit of a [Pg 59] higher kind, as a discoverer of general laws. Among others, he was the first to notice that there is a uniformity in the fevers prevailing at any one time, which is subject to periodical changes; and that other acute diseases often partake largely of the same general character, and sometimes even merge in it altogether, as the plague is said to have swallowed up all other diseases. This, which he ascribed to some peculiar state of the atmosphere, he called its epidemic constitution; and to be aware of its vicissitudes must of course be very important to the physician as a guide to practice. The value of these laws, which Sydenham deduced from a multitude of observations, has been attested by almost every medical writer since his time.

Sydenham's works have been repeatedly printed in the original Latin, as well as in English and the Continental languages. His first work was published after he had been sixteen years in practice; the last, which he edited himself, is dated three years before his death; and an elegant compendium of his experience was published posthumously by his son. They all appear to have been extorted by the importunity of his friends or the misrepresentations of his enemies. It is said that they were composed in English, and translated into Latin by his friends Mapletoft and Havers: there is, however, little reason for attaching credit to this report, as we are assured, on the authority of Sir Hans Sloane, who knew him well, that Sydenham was an excellent classical scholar, and perfectly capable of expressing himself elegantly in Latin. They are most carefully written and clearly expressed, and bear marks of the utmost truth and impartiality in the narration of facts, and judgment in arranging them. They are not voluminous, as he studiously refrained from overloading them with trivial matter, and from entering into the detail of a greater number of cases than might be sufficient to illustrate his method of practice. His object was to confine himself to the results of his own observation: to this he pretty strictly adhered, so that little space is occupied in his writings by quotations or criticism. It must be admitted that he occasionally [Pg 60] lapses into theoretical discussion, in violation of his own principles; but as he seldom or never permitted his fancy to divert him from what was practically useful, he may be pardoned if, in that age of speculation, he could not entirely resist the seduction. A graver charge against him is, that he overlooked or undervalued the immense body of information to be obtained from examining the effects of diseased actions after death, and devoted himself too exclusively to the study of the symptoms during life, and the effect of remedies upon them. It is hardly a sufficient justification of a man of so much independence of spirit to reply, that such examinations were opposed by the prejudices of the age in which he lived. Others have overcome the same obstacles, and with them many of those difficulties which perplexed and misled even the mind of Sydenham. He had equal or greater difficulties to contend against in the deep-rooted absurdities of the chemical and mechanical schools, which in the early part of his life held an almost equally divided sway in medicine: the former originated with Paracelsus and his disciples, and had the advantage of a longer prescription; and the latter had received a fresh accession of strength from the recent discoveries of Harvey: both, however, gave way before his energetic appeal to fact and experience. Scarcely less credit is due to him for his successful opposition to the popular superstition in favour of a host of futile remedies, which are now happily consigned to oblivion with the family receipt-books and herbals in which their virtues were paraded, than for his victory over false principles and dangerous rules of practice.

On the whole, it may be safely advanced that medicine, as a practical science, owes more to the closely-printed octavo, in which the results of his toilsome exertions are comprised, than to any other single source of information.

Robert Boyle was the seventh son of Richard Boyle, earl of Cork, and his wife Catherine, only daughter of Sir Geoffry Fenton, secretary of state for Ireland. There were fifteen children of this marriage, and the subject of this memoir (the fourteenth) was born on the 25th of January, 1626, at Lismore, in the province of Munster. His sister Catherine, by marriage Lady Ranelagh, afterwards mentioned, was considerably older, having been born on the 22nd of March, 1614.

The autobiography and correspondence of Robert Boyle have been almost entirely forgotten in the superior fame which he has attained in chemistry and medicine. If we consider the position in which he stands among our philosophers, it will not appear superfluous, having his own words to quote, if we give the account of his earlier years at some length. The narration in question (in which he calls himself Philaretus, and writes in the third person) is prefixed to Dr. Birch's edition of his [Pg 62] works in 5 vols. fol., which we here cite once for all—'The Works of the Hon. Robert Boyle, in five volumes, to which is prefixed a Life of the Author,' London, printed for A. Millar, 1744. Of his birth and station he says, "that it so suited his inclinations and designs, that, had he been permitted an election, his choice would scarce have altered God's assignment." His father, having "a perfect aversion for their fondness, who use to breed their children so nice and tenderly that a hot sun or a good shower of rain as much endangers them as if they were made of butter or of sugar," committed him to a nurse away from home, under whose care he formed a vigorous constitution. He lost his mother at an early age, this being one "great disaster;" the other was the acquisition of a habit of stuttering, which came upon him from mocking other children. He was taught early to speak both French and Latin, and his studiousness and veracity endeared him to his father, "and indeed lying was a vice both so contrary to his nature, and so inconsistent with his principles, that as there was scarcely anything he more greedily desired than to know the truth, so was there scarcely anything he more perfectly detested than not to speak it; which brings into my mind a foolish story I have heard him jeered with by his sister, my Lady Ranelagh, how she having given strict order to have a fruit-tree preserved for his sister-in-law, the Lady Dungarvan, he accidentally coming into the garden, and ignoring the prohibition, did eat half a score of them, for which being chidden by his sister Ranelagh (for he was yet a child), and being told by way of aggravation that he had eaten half a dozen plums, 'Nay, truly, sister,' answers he simply to her, 'I have eaten half a score.'" At eight years old he was sent to Eton with his elder brother, the provost being Sir Henry Wotton, "a person that was not only a fine gentleman himself, but very well skilled in the art of making others so." Here he was placed under the immediate care of Mr. Harrison, one of the masters, and became immoderately fond of study from "the accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius, which first [Pg 63] made him in love with other than pedantic books." He always declared that he was more indebted to this author than was Alexander, the hero of the work. Two years afterwards, during an attack of the ague, the Romance of Amadis de Gaule was put into his hands "to divert his melancholy," and by this and other such works his habit of persevering study was weakened. He was obliged afterwards systematically to conquer the ill effects of this mental regimen, and "the most effectual way he found to be the extraction of the square and cube roots, and especially those more laborious operations of algebra which so entirely exact the whole man, that the smallest distraction or heedlessness constrains us to renew our trouble, and re-begin the operation." During his abode at Eton several remarkable escapes from imminent peril occurred to him, upon which, in after-life, he looked back with reverential gratitude, and with the full conviction that the direct hand of an overruling Providence was to be traced in them.

His father about the close of the year 1637 came to England, and settled at Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire; and Robert Boyle was soon after removed from Eton to his father's house, and placed under the tuition of the rector of the parish. In the autumn of 1638 he was sent to travel with an elder brother, under the care of M. Marcombes, a Frenchman, of whom he says, with many other encomia, that "if he were given to any vice himself, he was careful by sharply condemning it to render it uninfectious." "The worst quality he had was his choler; and that being the only passion to which Philaretus was much observed to be inclined, his desire to shun clashing with his governor, and his accustomedness to bear the sudden sallies of his impetuous humour, taught our youth so to subdue that passion in himself, that he was soon able to govern it habitually and with ease." It had been intended that he should have served in a troop of horse which his elder brother had raised, but the illness of another brother prevented this. He visited France and Switzerland, and settled with his governor at Geneva, for the prosecution of his studies. The only [Pg 64] incident which we shall mention as occurring during this period, is one which may be thought by many scarcely worthy of notice. Boyle himself used to speak of it as the most considerable accident of his whole life; and for its influence upon his life it ought not to be omitted. While staying at Geneva he was waked in the night by a thunder-storm of remarkable violence. Taken unprepared and startled, it struck him that the day of judgment was at hand; "whereupon," to use his own words, "the consideration of his unpreparedness to welcome it, and the hideousness of being surprised by it in an unfit condition, made him resolve and vow, that if his fears that night were disappointed, all further additions to his life should be more religiously and watchfully employed." He has been spoken of as being a sceptic before this sudden conversion. This does not appear from his own account, further than as any boy of fourteen may be so called, who has never taken the trouble fully to convince himself of those truths which he professes to believe. He carried his theological studies to considerable depth. He cultivated both Hebrew and Greek, though a professed hater of verbal studies, that he might read the originals of the Scriptures. On this subject he remarks in his manuscripts (Works, vol. i. pp. 29, 30)—"When I have come into the Jewish schools, and seen those children that were never bred up for more than tradesmen, bred up to speak (what hath been peculiarly called) God's tongue as soon as their mother's, I have blushed to think how many gown-men, that boast themselves to be the true Israelites, are perfect strangers to the language of Canaan; which I would learn were it but to be able to pay God the respect usual from civil inferiors to princes, with whom they are wont to converse in their own languages. And I confess myself to be none of those lazy persons that seem to expect to obtain from God the knowledge of the wonders of his book upon as easy terms as Adam did a wife, by sleeping profoundly, and having her presented to him at his awaking."

In September, 1641, he left Geneva, and travelled in [Pg 65] Italy, where he employed himself in learning the language, and "in the new paradoxes of the great stargazer Galileo, whose ingenious books, perhaps because they could not be so otherwise, were confuted by a decree from Rome; his highness the pope, it seems, presuming, and that justly, that the infallibility of his chair extended equally to determine points in philosophy as in religion, and loath to have the stability of that earth questioned in which he had established his kingdom." Having seen Florence, Rome, and Genoa, he came to Marseilles, and here his own narrative ends. At Marseilles he was detained for want of money, owing to the troubles in England; having, however, procured funds from his governor, he returned to London, where he found (in 1644) his father dead, and himself in possession of the manor of Stalbridge, with other property. At that place he resided till 1650, not taking any part in politics, and being in communication with men of influence in both parties, whereby his property received protection from both. The epistolary correspondence of Boyle is amusing, and furnishes one of the earliest specimens of the lighter style. Considering the formality of the age, and the then existing peculiarities of the English, the extracts we give from a letter to Lady Ranelagh will appear original; while the letter immediately following, written from Boyle when at Eton to his father (stated in the 'Biog. Brit.' to be taken from the original), will show the manners of the time:—

"My most honoured Lord Father,

"Heartily praying for the continuance of God's favor to your Lordship still in soul and body, I humbly prostrate myself unto your honorable feet, to crave your blessing and pardon for my remissness, in presenting my illiterate lines unto your honorable kind acceptance. Whereas I have been heretofore cloyed with our college exercise, I could not so often visit your Honour in writing; but now being by the ardent desire of our brother, and the licence of Sir Harry Wotton, and our schoolmaster, come to London, where we make four days' [Pg 66] residence, have found opportunity to offer unto your Honour that oblation due unto so good and so noble a father, that is most humble duty: desiring your Honour to pardon him for his brevity, who strives to live after your Lordship's will and commandments.

"London, decimo 4to Martii.

"Truly and obediently,
"Robert Boyle."

The following is a part of his account of his first journey to Stalbridge, written to Lady Ranelagh, March 30, 1646:—

"As we went along, we met divers little parties, with whom we exchanged fears, and found that the malignant humours which were then abroad had frightened the country into a shaking ague, till we got to Farnham, which we found empty and unguarded. With divers contemplations upon this subject, I went to supper, and thence to bed, not without some little fear of having our quarters beaten up by the cavaliers that night; when lo! to second my apprehensions, about the dead of my sleep, and that night, I heard a thundering at the door, as if they meant to fright it out of the hinges and us out of our wits. I presently leaped out of my bed, in my stockings and clothes (my usual night-posture when I travel), and while Roger was lighting a candle, got my Bilboa and other instruments from under my pillow; whereupon Roger opening the door, saw it beset with musketeers, who no sooner saw us, but said aloud that we were not the men they looked for; and being entreated to come into the chamber, refused it, and he that brought them thither excused their troubling us with as transcendent compliments as the brown bill could afford. I wondered at their courtesy till I knew that it was the town constable, that, making a search for some suspicious persons, and coming by my chamber, that wanted a lock, either had a mind to make us take notice of so considerable an officer, or no mind that we should sleep while our betters watched; and for his not coming in, some accents of fear [Pg 67] that fell from him made me suspect I was obliged for that to myself; and I remember that just at the opening of the door, he, peeping in, espied me drawing a pistol out of one of my holsters, which I believe made him so niggardly of his company. The next day we dined at Winchester, and ever and anon, by the trembling passengers we met, were as nicely catechized concerning our ways, as if we were to be elected in the number of the new lay elders. From thence we reached Salisbury that night, though, before we came thither, we were fain to pass in the dark through a wood, where we had warning given us that about an hundred woodmen (we have got wild English too now) lay leiger, where these night-birds used to exercise their charity, in easing weary travellers of such burthensome things as money and portmanteaus. But coming nearer, and knowing the state's messenger, as he called himself, they durst not meddle neither with us nor with my trunks, which they eyed though very lovingly; and had we not been there, would, I believe, have opened to search for malignant letters, such as use to be about the king's picture in a yellow boy. I am loaded with civil language and fair promises; but I have always observed that in the trooper's dictionary the pages are so close and thick written with promises, that there is no room left for such a word as performance."

From this time to the end of his life he appears to have been engaged in study. His chemical experiments date from 1646. He was one of the first members of the invisible college, as he calls it, which has since become the Royal Society. The rest of his public life is little more than the history of his printed works, which are voluminous, and will presently be further specified. He must have written with singular rapidity, for an argumentative and elaborate letter, written, as appears on the face of it, in the morning, previously to making his preparations for a journey in the afternoon, is of a length which would occupy more than a page of this work.

After various journeys to his Irish estates, he settled at Oxford in 1654, where he remained till 1668. That [Pg 68] which especially directed him to this place, besides its being generally suited to the prosecution of all his literary and philosophical pursuits, was the presence of that knot of learned men from whom the Royal Society took its rise. It consisted of a few only, but those eminent: Bishop Wilkins, Wallis, Ward, Wren, and others, who used to meet for the purpose of conferring upon philosophical subjects, and mutually communicating and reasoning on their respective experiments and discoveries. Here his life ('Works,' vol. i.) states him to have invented the air-pump, which is not correct, though he made considerable improvements in it. On the accession of Charles II. in 1660, he was much pressed to enter the church, but refused, both as feeling the want of a sufficient vocation towards that profession, and as desirous to add to his writings in favour of Christianity all the force which could be derived from his fortune not being interested in its defence. From this time forwards, Boyle's life is not much more than the history of his works. It passed in an even current of tranquil happiness, and diligent employment, little broken, except by illness, from which he was a great sufferer. At an early age, he was attacked by the stone, and continued through life subject to paroxysms of that dreadful disease; and in 1670 he was afflicted with a severe paralytic complaint, from which he fortunately recovered without sustaining any mental injury. On the incorporation of the Royal Society in 1663, he was named as one of the council in the charter; and as he had been one of the original members, so through his life he continued to publish his shorter treatises in their Transactions. In 1662 he was appointed by the king Governor of the Corporation for propagating the Gospel in New England. The diffusion of Christianity was a favourite subject of exertion with him through life. For the sole purpose of exerting a more effectual influence in introducing it into India, he became a Director of the East India Company; and, at his own expense, caused the Gospels and Acts to be translated into Malay, and five hundred copies to be printed and sent abroad. He also caused a translation of [Pg 69] the Bible into Irish to be made and published, at an expense of 700l.; and bore great part of the expense of a similar undertaking in the Welsh language. To other works of the same sort he was a liberal contributor; and as in speech and writing he was a zealous yet temperate advocate of religion, so he showed his sincerity by a ready extension of his ample funds to all objects which tended to promote the religious welfare of his fellow-creatures.

In 1666 he left Oxford, and took up his abode with Lady Ranelagh, in London. In this year his name appears as attesting the miraculous cures (as they were called by many) of Valentine Greatraks, an Irishman, who, by a sort of animal magnetism, made his own hands the medium of giving many patients almost instantaneous relief. This gentleman, Mr. Greatraks, a man of respectable family, and an Irish magistrate (whose printed letter to Robert Boyle, besides being accompanied by the testimonials of himself and others to facts, is, as far as such a thing can be, evidence of good faith by its style and documents), one day believed himself enabled by the power of God to cure diseases by his touch, and whatever the cause might be, has left sufficient evidence at least of this fact, that after his touch inveterate diseases did shortly leave those who suffered from them. Mr. Greatraks published his letter to Mr. Boyle in 1666, and some remarks written in the fly-leaf of a copy we have seen will make a good resumé of the state of the evidence. "In looking over the cases stated in this pamphlet, attested as they are by the most learned and philosophical individuals of that period, it is impossible to deny the existence of the facts as attested, without rejecting in toto the evidence of every historical record. Credulity may have distorted and exaggerated the reality, as witnessed by such men even as Boyle, Cudworth, Wilkins, Patrick, &c.; but, doubtless, the facts are essentially true as reported, and as certainly to be accounted for on the principle of mental and physical sympathy, the imagination of the patient being wrought upon by the powerful emotions excited by expectation. Half a hundred works of the [Pg 70] most philosophical and scientific physicians might be cited in confirmation of the astonishing effects of that agitating excitement of the nervous system produced by operating upon the imagination; which perfectly explains all the wonders of animal magnetism." We may add that the phenomena certainly witnessed at the tomb of the Jansenist Abbé Paris were not better attested, and were less extraordinary in degree, than those in question; and that, as we shall see, of all the men of his time, Robert Boyle was peculiarly the one whose opinion it would have been desirable to have. The reputation of Mr. Greatraks extended through the three kingdoms, and Flamsteed, among others (Baily's 'Flamsteed,' p. 12), was among the number of those who went to Ireland to be touched, and calls himself "an eye-witness of several of his cures." He also received benefit himself, but whether from the touch or from subsequent sea-sickness, he is not certain, but judges from both. At the same time, in illustration of what we shall presently have to say on the distinction between Boyle as an eye-witness and Boyle as a judge of evidence, we find him in 1669 not indisposed to receive, and that upon the hypothesis implied in the words, the "true relation of the things which an unclean spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy," &c. That he should have been inclined to prosecute inquiries about the transmutation of metals needs no excuse, considering the state of chemical knowledge in his day; and we find even Newton inclined to fear, from the result of some experiments of Boyle (the results of which only had been stated), and to speak in time, as became one who should afterwards be master of the mint, a word in favour of the currency. In a letter to Oldenburgh, dated 1676, Newton writes thus: "But yet because the way by which mercury may be so impregnated, has been thought fit to be concealed by others that have known it, and may therefore possibly be an inlet to something more noble, not to be communicated without immense damage to the world, if there should be any verity in the Hermetic writers; therefore I question not but that the great wisdom of the noble author will [Pg 71] sway him to high silence, till he shall be resolved of what consequence the thing may be, either by his own experience, or the judgment of some other that thoroughly understands what he speaks about; that is, of a true Hermetic philosopher, whose judgment (if there be any such) would be more to be regarded in this point, than that of all the world besides to the contrary, there being other things beside the transmutation of metals (if these great pretenders brag not) which none but they understand. Sir, because the author seems desirous of the sense of others in this point, I have been so free as to shoot my bolt; but, pray, keep this letter private to yourself. Your servant, Isaac Newton."

It appears that both Boyle and Newton were startled with the result of the experiments of the former; and the treatment which old believers in alchemy have experienced from the present age will render it no less than just to say, that faith in alchemy now, and the same in the middle of the seventeenth century, are two things so different in kind, that to laugh at both in one shows nothing but the ignorance of the laugher.

In the year 1680 he was elected President of the Royal Society, a post which he declined, as appears by a letter to Hooke ('Works,' i. p. 74), from scruples of conscience about the religious tests and oaths required. In 1688 he advertised the public that some of his manuscripts had been lost or stolen, and others mutilated by accident; and in 1689, finding his health declining, he refused most visits, and set himself to repair the loss. In that year, being still in a sort of expectation that the alchemical project might succeed, he procured the repeal of the statute 5 Hen. IV. "against the multiplying of gold or silver," and, what was still more useful, the same statute contains a provision that "no mine of copper, &c. shall be adjudged a royal mine, although gold or silver may be extracted out of the same." In 1691 his complaints began to assume a more serious character. Lady Ranelagh died on the 23rd of December, and he followed her on the 30th of the same month. He was buried at St. Martin's in the Fields, Jan. 7, 1692, and a funeral [Pg 72] sermon was preached on the occasion by Dr. Burnet, who had long been his friend, and to the expenses of whose history of the Reformation he had largely contributed.

Boyle was never married. In a letter to his niece, Lady Barrymore, on a rumour of the kind, he says, "You have certainly reason, madam, to suspend your belief of a marriage celebrated by no priest but Fame, and made unknown to the supposed bridegroom: I shall therefore only tell you that the little gentleman and I are still at the old defiance. You have carried away too many of the perfections of your sex, to leave enough in this country for the reducing so stubborn a heart as mine, whose conquest were a task of so much difficulty, and is so little worth it, that the latter property is always likely to deter any that hath beauty and merit enough to overcome the former." He was tall, slender, and emaciated; excessively abstemious in food, and somewhat oppressed by low spirits: but at the same time of a copiousness of conversation and wit which made Cowley and Davenant rank him in that respect among the first men of his age. His benevolence both in action and sentiment distinguished him from others as much as his acquirements and experiments: and that in an age when toleration was unknown. He constantly refused a peerage, though the personal friend of three successive kings. He was always a moderate adherent of the Church of England; nor is it recorded that he ever attended any other place of worship, except once when he went to hear Sir Henry Vane discourse at his own house, on which occasion he entered into a discussion with the preacher. Finally, he was a man of whom all spoke well. With such a character, it is not to be wondered at if his private virtues were made to reflect a lustre upon his scientific exploits which the latter could not have gained alone; the more especially when it is considered that his contemporaries, who viewed him as he was, and from their own position, had a right to style his genius as one which produced results of the first order, which could be but another way of saying that it was of the first order itself. [Pg 73] So indeed it has been understood: and we are accustomed to talk of Bacon and Newton and Boyle together. The merits of Boyle are indeed singular, and almost unprecedented; his discoveries are in several cases of the highest utility: but we do not think the inference that they were the result of a reasoning power, or a distinctive sagacity, of the highest kind, would be correct. Coming after Bacon, feeling all the beauty of his methods, disgusted with the spirit of system, and strong beyond his contemporaries in common sense, the same view of life which made him indifferent to the political and religious disputes of his time, and content himself with the knowledge and practice of the things which they all agreed in, also regulated his views of philosophy; so that he tossed Laud and Paracelsus on one side, Prynne and Des Cartes on the other, and began to investigate for himself, on the simple principle of examining closely and strictly relating what he saw. In this respect his writings remind us strongly of those of Roger Bacon: they are full of sensible views and experiments of his own, and of absurdities derived from the relation of others. He leans too much, for one of our day, to the attempt to discover the fundamental relations which touch close upon the primary qualities of matter, instead of endeavouring to connect and classify what he had actually observed. And what we maintain is, that his discoveries do not show him to have that talent for suggestion and power of perceiving points of comparison which is the distinguishing attribute of the greatest discoverers. To take an instance: in his experiments "showing how to make flame stable and ponderable," he finds that various substances gain weight by being heated. He states it then as proved that "either flame, or the analogous effluxions of the fire, will be, what chemists would call, corporified with metals or minerals exposed naked to its action." But it never suggests itself to him, that the additional substance added to the metal or mineral may be air, or a part of air.

When a character has been overrated in any respect, the discovery of it is usually attended by what the [Pg 74] present age calls a reaction: the pendulum of opinion swings to the side opposite to that on which it has been unduly brought out of its position of equilibrium. For instance, in a very instructive discourse prefixed to the 'Supp. Encyc. Britann.,' Mr. Brande speaks thus: "Boyle has left voluminous proofs of his attachment to scientific pursuits, but his experiments are too miscellaneous and desultory to have afforded either brilliant or useful results; his reasoning is seldom satisfactory; and a broad vein of prolixity traverses his philosophical works. He was too fond of mechanical philosophy to shine in chemistry, and gave too much time and attention to theological and metaphysical controversy to attain any excellence in either of the former studies. He who would do justice to Boyle's scientific character must found it rather upon the indirect benefits which he conferred, than upon any immediate aid which he lent to science. He exhibited a variety of experiments in public, which kindled the zeal of others more capable than himself. He was always open to conviction, and courted opposition and controversy upon the principle that truth is often elicited by the conflict of opinions." From none of this do we dissent except as to degree. To say that Boyle did not attain any excellence in chemistry, or furnish "any immediate aid" to science, is surely too much. Perhaps it will be a fair method to take a foreign history of physics (where national partiality is out of the question) and try the following point: What are those discoveries of the Briton of the seventeenth century which would be thought worthy of record by a Frenchman of the nineteenth? In the 'Hist. Phil. du Progrès de la Physique,' Paris, 1810, by M. Libes, we find a chapter devoted to the "Progrès de la Physique entre les Mains de Boyle," and we are told that the air-pump in his hands became a new machine—that such means in the hands of a man of genius multiply science, and that it is impossible to follow Boyle through his labours without being astonished at the immensity of his resources for tearing out the secrets of nature. The discovery of the propagation of sound by the air (the [Pg 75] more creditable to Boyle that Otto von Guericke had been led astray as to the cause), of the absorbing power of the atmosphere, of the elastic force and combustive power of steam, the approximation to the weight of the air, the discovery of the reciprocal attraction of the electrified and non-electrified body, are mentioned as additions to the science. Between the character implied in the two preceding quotations, we have no doubt the true one is to be found. But there is a peculiar advantage consequent upon such a labourer as Boyle in the infancy of such a science as chemistry. Here are no observed facts of such common occurrence, and the phenomena of which are so distinctly understood, that any theory receives something like assent or dissent as soon as it is proposed. The science of mechanics must have originally stood to chemistry much in the same relation as the objects of botany to those of mineralogy: the first presenting themselves, the second to be sought for. The mine was to be found as well as worked; and every one who sank a shaft diminished the labour of his successors by showing at least one place where it was not. In this point of view it is impossible to say to what degree of obligation chemistry is to limit its acknowledgments to Boyle. Searching every inlet which phenomena presented, trying the whole material world in detail, and with a disposition to prize an error prevented, as much as a truth discovered, it cannot be told how many were led to that which does exist, by the previous warning of Boyle as to that which does not. Perhaps had his genius been of a higher order he would have made fewer experiments and better deductions; but as it was, he was admirably fitted for the task he undertook, and no one can say that his works, the eldest progeny of the 'Novum Organum,' were anything but a credit to the source from whence they sprang, or that their author is unworthy to occupy a high place in our Pantheon, though not precisely on the grounds taken in many biographies or popular treatises.

The characteristics of Boyle as a theological writer are much the same as those which appertain to him as a philosopher. [Pg 76] He does not enter at all into disputed articles of faith, and preserves a quiet and argumentative tone throughout. In his discourse against customary swearing, written when he was very young, he shows a little of the vein which distinguishes his letters: but the very great prolixity which he falls into renders him almost unreadable. He was, as he informs us in his youth, a writer of verses; and one fancy-piece in prose, 'The Martyrdom of Theodora,' has been preserved, wherein his hero and heroine make set speeches to each other, of a kind somewhat like those in Cicero de Oratore, with a little dash of Amadis de Gaule, until the executioner relieves the reader. The treatises 'on Seraphic Love,' 'Considerations on the Style of the Scriptures,' and 'on the great Veneration that Man's Intellect owes to God,' have a place in the Index librorum prohibitorum of the Roman Church. (Kippis, 'Biog. Brit.') His 'Occasional Reflections' have fallen under the lash of the two greatest satirists in our language, Swift and Butler, in the 'Pious Meditation upon a Broomstick' of the former, and an 'Occasional Reflection on Dr. Charlton's feeling a Dog's Pulse at Gresham College,' published with the posthumous writings of the latter. We are induced to give an extract from his now little known Reflections, as at once a specimen of his style and as affording a standard to judge of the merits of his better known satirists:—

"Reflection VI.—Sitting at ease in a Coach that went very fast.—As fast as this coach goes, I sit in it so much at ease, that whilst its rapid motion makes others suspect that I am running for a wager, this lazy posture, and this soft seat, do almost as much invite me to rest, as if I were a-bed. The hasty wheels strike fire out of the flints they happen to run over, and yet this self-same swiftness of these wheels, which, were I under them, would make them crush my bones themselves into splinters, if not into a jelly, now I am seated over them, and above their reach, serves but to carry me the faster towards my journey's end. Just so it is with outward accidents, and conditions, whose restless vicissitudes but too justly and too [Pg 77] fitly resemble them to wheels: when they meet with a spirit that lies prostrate on the ground, and falls groveling beneath them, they disorder and oppress it; but he, whose high reason and exalted piety, has, by a noble and steady contempt of them, placed him above them, may enjoy a happy and a settled quiet, in spite of all these busy agitations, and be so far from resenting any prejudicial discomposure from their inferior revolutions, that all those changes, that are taken for the giddy turns of fortune's wheel, shall serve to approach him the faster to the blest mansion he would arrive at."

The 'Boylean Lectures' were instituted by him in his last will, and endowed with the proceeds of certain property, as a salary for a "divine or preaching minister," on condition of preaching eight sermons in the year for proving the Christian religion against notorious infidels, viz. atheists, theists, pagans, Jews, and Mahometans, not descending lower to any controversies that are among Christians themselves. The minister is also required to promote the propagation of Christianity, and answer the scruples of all who apply to him. The stipend was made perpetual by Archbishop Tennison. Dr. Bentley was appointed the first Boyle lecturer. We shall not give a detailed list of all the titles of Boyle's works, which would occupy much room to little purpose, as a complete set of the original editions is very rarely met with, and the two collected editions have their own indexes. During his lifetime, in 1677, a very imperfect and incorrect edition was published at Geneva. The first complete edition was published in 1744 by Dr. Birch, as already noticed. It is in five volumes folio, and contains the life which has furnished all succeeding writers with authorities, besides a very copious index. The collection of letters in the fifth volume is highly interesting. The second complete edition was published in 1772. But previously to either of these, in 1780, Dr. Shaw, the editor of Bacon, deserved well of the scientific world by publishing an edition of Boyle in three volumes quarto, "abridged, methodized, and disposed under general heads." The second edition was published in 1738. As [Pg 78] far as may be, the various and scattered experiments are brought together, and a good index added, but we cannot find any references to the originals. There is a list of Boyle's works in Hutton's mathematical dictionary, and another in Moreri. There is a copious life, taken mostly from Dr. Birch, in the 'Biog. Brit.,' and the same with some additions in Dr. Kippis's unfinished reprint.

It will be useful to remember as to contemporary chronology, that Boyle was born in the year in which Bacon died, and Newton in that in which Galileo died; Boyle being fifteen years older than Newton.

This eminent Nonconformist divine was born at Rowdon, a small village in Shropshire, on the 12th of November, 1615; but he resided till 1625 at Eaton Constantine, about five miles from Shrewsbury. The contiguity of his birth-place to the seat of Lord Newport was probably the means of introducing him to the notice of that nobleman. His father's little property was so much encumbered, as to prevent him from giving his son any education beyond what could be obtained from the village schoolmasters, who were neither competent teachers nor moral men. To Mr. John Owen, who kept the free grammar-school at Wroxeter, Baxter acknowledges some obligations. Though he was captain of the school, his acquirements were very inconsiderable when he left it. His ambition was to enter one of the universities to qualify himself for the ministry; but his master, Mr. Owen, probably perceiving that he required more regular instruction than he could expect to receive from [Pg 80] a college tutor, recommended him to Mr. Richard Wickstead, chaplain to the council at Ludlow, who had an allowance from government for a divinity student. Though the defects in his previous education were but ill supplied by this arrangement (Wickstead being a negligent tutor), he had access to a good library, where he acquired a taste for those studies which he pursued with such indefatigable diligence in after-life. Here he continued for eighteen months, when he returned to his father's house, and, at Lord Newport's request, supplied for a few months the place of his old master at Wroxeter grammar-school. Finding all his hopes of going to the university disappointed he resumed his professional studies under the direction of Mr. Francis Garbett, a clergyman of some celebrity, who conducted him through a course of theology, and gave him much valuable assistance in his general reading. While he was thus engaged, he was suddenly diverted from his pursuits by a proposition from his friend, Mr. Wickstead, to try his fortune at court. The project, singular as it was, seems not to have been unpalatable either to the future puritan-divine or to his father: theology was thrown aside, and Baxter went up to Whitehall, specially introduced to Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels, as an aspirant to royal favour. His reception was courteous and even kind. For one month he mingled in the festivities of the palace—a period which was sufficient to convince him of the unsuitableness of such a mode of life to his tastes, his habits, and his conscience;—he then returned home, and resumed his studies with a determination never to be again diverted from them. Before he went to London, his religious impressions were deepened by the perusal of Bunny's 'Resolution,' Sibbs's 'Bruised Reed,' and other works of this kind. Some books which he read after his return increased that habitual seriousness which he derived from his natural disposition, as well as from the example of his father; and a protracted illness completed the preparation of his mind for the reception of those impressions of religious duty under which he acted through the remainder of his life.

[Pg 81] While he was in this declining state of health, his anxiety to commence his ministerial labours overcame every other consideration. He applied for ordination to the bishop of Worcester, and obtained it, together with a schoolmaster's licence, as he had accepted the mastership of the free grammar-school at Dudley, just then founded by his friend Mr. Foley, of Stourbridge. He was then twenty-three years of age, and at this time entertained no scruples on the subject of conformity, having never examined with any nicety the grounds of subscription. His attention, however, was speedily drawn to the debatable points of the controversy; but, at first, the bitter tone of the Nonconformists gave him an unfavourable impression of their character, though he admired their fervent piety, and their energetic efforts to stem the moral corruption of the times. There was much in his own views and temperament which corresponded with theirs; but it required time and circumstances to develop the tendencies of his mind.

At the end of nine months Baxter removed from Dudley to Bridgenorth, where he acted as assistant to the clergyman. A release from his school engagements must, to such a mind as Baxter's, intent upon pastoral duties, have appeared a sufficient inducement for the change, but, in the then state of his feelings, it was of still greater moment for him to be relieved from the prospect of having to renew his subscription. Bridgenorth is the centre of a little district comprising six parishes, exempt from all episcopal jurisdiction, except a triennial visitation from the archbishop. Here he expected to perform the humble duties of a curate without obstruction, happy in the society of a colleague whose views harmonized with his own, and still happier in having a wide field for his exertions. But his hopes were soon frustrated by the "et cetera oath," as it was called, which enjoined all who had taken orders to swear that they would never consent to any alteration in the ceremonial or government of the church by archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, &c. It does not appear that Mr. Baxter, any more than his brother clergyman at Bridgenorth, [Pg 82] thought it necessary to observe the terms of this oath, for a complaint was laid against them for non-compliance with the ritual in various particulars.

Baxter left Bridgenorth after a residence of one year and nine months, on an invitation from a committee of the parishioners (1640) to become the officiating clergyman at the parish church in Kidderminster, the vicar having agreed, in order to settle disputes, to allow 60l. per annum to a curate of their own choosing. The living was afterwards sequestered, the townsmen collected the tithes, paid Baxter and Baxter's curate, and gave the vicar 40l. per annum. The circumstances under which Baxter settled at Kidderminster were favourable to his views; but it was not without considerable opposition from one portion of the community, whose vices he publicly reproved, that he carried some of his reforms into effect. Not satisfied with correcting the more flagrant offences of the inhabitants, he visited them at their houses, became acquainted with their families, gave them religious instruction in private, and became their friend as well as their pastor. By these means he soon wrought a complete change in the habits of the people. Though so strict a disciplinarian, his conciliatory manners won the hearts of all but a few who were irreclaimable. His preaching was acceptable to all ranks. Wherever he went, large audiences attended him; and his energy was so unremitting, notwithstanding his feeble health and constant indisposition, that he preached three or four times a week.

During the civil wars of that period Baxter held a position by which he was connected with both the opposite parties in the state, and yet was the partisan of neither. His attachment to monarchy was well known, though his adherence to the Royalist party was not so certain; while the deep stream of religious feeling which ran through the conversation of the Parliamentarians drew his sympathies to that side. The undisguised respect paid by him to the character of some of the Puritans, made him and many others, who were sincerely attached to the crown, the objects of jealousy and persecution. [Pg 83] A clamour was raised against them, and the rabble, whose excesses had been checked by him, were eager enough to become the trumpeters of the charge. During one of these ebullitions of party excitement, Baxter spent a few days in the Parliamentary army, and was preaching within sound of the cannon when the memorable battle was fought at Edgehill. His friends, not considering it safe for him to return to Kidderminster, he retired to Coventry, where he lived two years, preaching regularly to the Parliamentary garrison and to the inhabitants. After the battle of Naseby, in 1645, he passed a night on a visit to some friends in Cromwell's army, a circumstance which led to the chaplaincy of Colonel Whalley's regiment being offered to him, which, after consulting his friends at Coventry, he accepted. In this capacity he was present at the taking of Bridgewater, the sieges of Exeter, Bristol, and Worcester, by Colonels Whalley and Rainsborough. He lost no opportunity of moderating the temper of the champions of the Commonwealth, and of restraining them within the bounds of reason; but as it was known that the check proceeded from one who was unfriendly to the ulterior objects of the party, his interference was coolly received. Among the soldiery he laboured with unceasing ardour to diffuse a better spirit, and to correct those sectarian errors, as he considered them—anabaptism, antinomianism, and separatism inclusive,—which in his view were so productive of disputes and animosity.

After his recovery from an illness, which compelled him to leave the army, we find him again at Kidderminster, exerting himself with renewed vigour to moderate conflicting opinions. The conduct of Cromwell at this crisis exceedingly perplexed that class of men of whom Baxter might be regarded as the type. For the sake of peace they yielded to an authority which they condemned as a usurpation, but nothing could purchase their approbation of the measures by which it had been attained and was supported. In open conference, Baxter did not scruple to denounce Cromwell and his adherents as guilty of treason and rebellion; though he afterwards [Pg 84] doubted if he was right in opposing him so strongly. (See Baxter's 'Penitent Confessions,' quoted in Orme.) The reputation of Baxter rendered his countenance to the new order of things highly desirable, and accordingly no pains were spared to procure it. At the suggestion of some of his noble friends, he once preached before the Protector, who afterwards invited him to an interview, and endeavoured to reconcile him to the political changes that had taken place; but the preacher was unconvinced by his arguments, and boldly told him that "the honest people of the land took their antient monarchy to be a blessing, and not an evil." The necessity of any alteration in the government did not come within the scope of his comprehension. He looked with a single eye to the diffusion of a deeper spirit of religion by means of a purified establishment, beyond which he was incapable of carrying his views or lending his sanction.

In the disputes which prevailed about this time on the subject of episcopal ordination, Baxter took the side of the Presbyterians in denying its necessity. With them, too, he agreed in matters of discipline and church government. He dissented from them in their condemnation of episcopacy as unlawful. On their great principle, viz. the sufficiency of the Scriptures to determine all points of faith and conduct, he wavered for some time, but ultimately adopted it in its full extent. Occupying, as he did, this middle ground between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, it was not very obvious with which of the two parties he was to be classed. Had all impositions and restraints been removed, there is every reason to suppose that he would have preferred a moderate episcopacy to any other form of church government; but the measures of the prelatical party were so grievous to the conscience, that he had no choice between sacrificing his opinions or quitting their communion.

The views maintained by Baxter, blended as they were with the principles of monarchy, made them extremely popular towards the close of Cromwell's career, when men were beginning to find that they had only exchanged one species of tyranny for another, and, as some thought, [Pg 85] for a worse. In the sermon which Baxter preached before the parliament on the day preceding that on which they voted the return of the king, he spoke his sentiments on this subject with manly resolution, and in allusion to the political state of the country, he maintained that loyalty to their king was a thing essential to all true Protestants of every persuasion.

It was expected that on the restoration of the king moderation would have prevailed in the councils of the nation, and a conciliatory policy have been adopted with regard to religious opinions. Some indication of such a spirit appeared in the appointment of Presbyterian divines among the king's chaplains, and Baxter along with the rest. Many who had access to the king strenuously recommended conciliation, and for a time their advice prevailed against the intrigues of court influence. Among other measures a conference was appointed at the Savoy, consisting of a certain number of Episcopalian and Presbyterian divines, to devise a form of ecclesiastical government which might reconcile the differences and satisfy the scruples of the contending parties. Baxter and the Presbyterians were extremely desirous of bringing this commission to a successful issue; and Baxter himself drew up a reformed liturgy, which, with some alterations he presented at this conference. The Presbyterians would have accepted Bishop Usher's scheme as a model, with any alterations which might be mutually agreed upon; but the bishops were secretly opposed to the arrangement, and finally frustrated it by carrying a declaration to this effect, that although all were agreed upon the ends contemplated in this commission, they disagreed about the means. Having thus defeated the object of the conference, the next step was to sequestrate the livings of those divines who had been inducted during the Protectorate. Oaths and subscriptions, which had been suspended while there was any prospect of a union of parties, were again called for by the bishops and their adherents. In accordance with this demand a law was passed in 1662, called the Act of Uniformity, so strict in its requisitions upon the debatable points of ceremonial [Pg 86] worship, that it had the effect of banishing at once two thousand divines from the pale of the English church. Of this number was Baxter. Previous to the passing of this measure he had refused the bishopric of Hereford and other preferments offered him by Clarendon, the Chancellor, asking one favour only in lieu of them—to be allowed to return to his beloved flock at Kidderminster. The vicar, who was ejected in 1640, had been restored; and was bound by the old agreement to pay Baxter 60l. a year as a lecturer. But Baxter was willing to perform the pastoral duties without remuneration: all he wanted was to watch over those whom he had brought into the fold of Christ; but this request was refused.

On the 25th of May, 1662, three months before the day on which the Bartholomew Act, as the Act of Uniformity was called, from its coming into operation on St. Bartholomew's day, Baxter had preached in London his last sermon, under a regular engagement in the church; and, finding his public duties at an end, he retired in July, 1663, to Acton, in Middlesex, where he employed most of his leisure in writing for the press. Some of his largest works were the fruits of this seclusion. His two most popular treatises, 'The Saints' Everlasting Rest,' and 'A Call to the Unconverted,' were published before he left Kidderminster, and raised his fame as a writer to a higher pitch than what he had enjoyed even as a preacher. Several attempts were made by the ejected ministers and their friends in parliament to get the rigorous restrictions against them removed, but without success. The persecutions continued with unabated violence. Even those who, like Baxter, disliked separation, and attended the worship of the church, suffered penalties for having morning and evening prayers at their own houses. In the midst of those awful calamities, the plague and the fire, which raged with such frightful devastation in two successive years, the services of the Puritan divines to the inhabitants of the metropolis were so conspicuous, that the current of opinion turned in their favour, and led to new efforts in their behalf, [Pg 87] which ended for the time in the Indulgence granted in 1672. This drew Baxter from his retirement at Totteridge, to which place he had removed on the suppression of his ministry at Acton. He settled again in London, and preached as a lecturer in different parts of the City, but more constantly at Pinner's Hall and Fetter Lane. His preaching, though highly acceptable to his more immediate friends, was never so popular as it had been at Kidderminster. While he advocated tolerance from an intolerant communion he shone like a light in a dark place; but now that he was the apologist of conformity, while he was a sufferer for non-conformity, his conduct involved a kind of consistency too refined for public admiration. An ineffectual attempt which he made at this time to combine the Protestant interests against Papal ascendency exposed him to various misrepresentations, to remove which he published a vindication of himself in a tract entitled 'An Appeal to the Light,' but without eradicating the unfavourable impressions.

His time was now divided between writing and preaching. For a while he had a regular audience in a room over St. James's market-house, and at other places in London. But his public duties were frequently suspended by those rigorous enactments to which the Nonconformists were subjected during the last two reigns of the Stuarts.

In 1682 the officers of the law burst into his house, at a time when he laboured under severe indisposition, with a warrant to seize his person for coming within five miles of a corporation, and would have hurried him before a justice of the peace in this condition, had they not been met by his physician, whose interference probably saved his life as well as obtained his pardon. Two years later, while his health was still in a precarious state from a chronic disease, he was again harassed by distraints and penal proceedings. Still later it was his misfortune to be one of the unhappy victims of Jeffreys. He was apprehended on a lord chief justice's warrant, on a charge of sedition and being hostile to episcopacy. The charge was founded on some passages [Pg 88] in his 'Paraphrase of the New Testament.' On the trial, Jeffreys, not content with using language the most opprobrious to the prisoner and his counsel, acted the part of prosecutor as well as judge, and scrupled not to gain his ends by silencing the accused, by insulting his counsel, by refusing to hear his witnesses, and by triumphing over his sentence. He said upon the bench, "he was sorry that the Act of Indemnity disabled him from hanging him." His punishment was a fine of 500 marks, to lie in prison till it was paid, and to be bound to his good behaviour for seven years. For the non-payment of this heavy penalty he was committed to the King's Bench prison, where he lay until the 26th of November in the following year (1686), having been confined for nearly eighteen months. His pardon was obtained by the mediation of Lord Powis, and the fine was remitted. The solitude of his prison was enlivened on this, as on former occasions, by the affectionate attentions of his wife. Baxter himself lived to see that favourable change in reference to religious toleration which commenced at the Revolution of 1688. He died on the 8th of December, 1691, and was buried in Christ Church, Newgate-Street.

The literary career of Baxter is not the least extraordinary part of his history. He published a body of practical and polemical divinity with a rapidity almost unequalled; the excellence of some of his practical writings secured them an unexampled popularity, and thus laid the foundation of a new theological system which still retains his name. The catalogue of his works is not easily described. It contains nearly 168 distinct publications. (See list in Orme's Life, prefixed to the edition of his works, London, 1830.) Many of these are only known to his admirers, but others are more read than any other productions of a religious character. His fame chiefly rests on his two most popular works, and on his 'Methodus Theologiæ' and 'Catholic Theology,' in which his peculiar views are embodied. Several of his learned contemporaries have recorded their testimony to the character of his writings. Sir Matthew Hale was a [Pg 89] constant reader of them, and honoured Baxter with his friendship. Bishop Wilkins praised him in the phrase that Johnson afterwards applied to Goldsmith: "he has cultivated every subject which he has handled;" and Dr. Isaac Barrow said, that "his practical writings were never mended, and his controversial ones seldom confuted." Baxter left behind him a 'Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times,' which was published in a folio volume after his death (1696) by his intimate friend Mr. Matthew Sylvester, under the title 'Reliquiæ Baxterianæ.' It is here that we find that review of his religious opinions written in the latter part of his life, which Coleridge speaks of as one of the most remarkable pieces of writing that have come down to us. (See Coleridge's 'Biographia Literaria.') Calamy's 'Life of Baxter' is a kind of abridgment of this work, which abounds in notices of the men, the transactions, the habits, and the opinions of the stirring period in which he lived.

There are a few poems by Baxter, not long ago published in a small volume. His 'World of Spirits' has been lately reprinted.

The name of Baxterians, adopted by his more immediate adherents, is now almost extinct: but Baxterianism is still the resting place of many who do not approve of the extremes of Calvinism. The Baxterians hardly ever attained the rank of a separate denomination, even when they were most numerous; and they are now completely scattered among different communions. Their writings are most popular among the orthodox dissenters.

Henry Purcell, the pride and boast of the English school of music, was born in the year 1658, in the city of Westminster, it is generally supposed. His father Henry, and also his uncle Thomas Purcell, were appointed gentlemen of the chapel-royal at the Restoration, and are named, in the archives of the herald's college, among the persons who officiated at the coronation of Charles II. The young Henry lost his father when but six years of age, about which time he appears to have entered as one of the children of the chapel under Captain Cook, then master, to whom therefore it is rather more than probable he was indebted not only for his initiation in the principles of music, but for much of his knowledge of its practice, and of its theory as applicable to composition. It is true that on Dr. Blow's monumental tablet in Westminster Abbey it is triumphantly recorded that he was "master to the famous Mr. Henry Purcell;" and no doubt the youthful musician, [Pg 91] when he quitted the chapel on his voice changing, received some instructions from Blow, a master then in high repute, and from whom a few lessons were enough to recommend to public notice a young man on his entrance into the world; but to Cook the credit is due for the right guidance of Purcell's inborn genius, and for its early cultivation. Sir John Hawkins says, "it is certain that he was a scholar of Pelham Humphrey, who was Cook's successor," but gives no authority for this, and assigns no reason for his belief. Humphrey became master of the children in 1672, when Purcell had attained his fourteenth year, who consequently could not have remained long, if at all, under the tuition of the new master: Cook therefore must not on such doubtful evidence be deprived of the praise to which he is entitled for his large share in the education of our great English composer. But, as Dr. Burney has well remarked, "there is nothing more common than this petit larceny among musicians. If the first master has drudged eight or ten years with a pupil of genius, and it is thought necessary, in compliance with fancy or caprice, that he should receive a few lessons from a second, this last instantly arrogates to himself the whole honour both of the talents and cultivation of his new scholar, and the first and chief instructor is left to sing sic vos non vobis."

Purcell was remarkable for precocity of talent, and seconded the liberality of nature by his zeal and diligence. While yet a boy-chorister he composed more than one anthem; and in 1676, though only eighteen years of age, was chosen to succeed Dr. Christopher Gibbons as organist of Westminster Abbey, an appointment of high professional rank. Six years after, in 1682, he became one of the organists of the royal chapel; and there, as well as at the Abbey, produced his numerous anthems, many of which appear in different collections, and nearly all of them have recently been published in one complete work. These were eagerly sought, almost as soon as written, for the use of the various cathedrals, and thus his fame quickly travelled to the remotest parts of England and Ireland. Had Purcell confined himself to [Pg 92] church music only, he would have stood on very lofty ground as compared with either his predecessors or contemporaries, and his works would have been transmitted with honour to after-ages; but the greatness of his genius is most conspicuous in his compositions for the chamber and the stage. In these the vividness of his imagination and the fertility of his invention appear in all their affluence, because unrestrained by the character of the poetry to which he gave musical expression, and unincumbered by what is termed musical erudition, a kind of learning which time (even a century and a half ago) and a laudable feeling of veneration had rendered an almost necessary attribute of cathedral harmony. The versatility of his talent and the division of his labours between the church and the theatre, led his facetious friend, Tom Brown, in his 'Letters from the Dead to the Living,' to say that musical men "hang between the church and the playhouse, as Mahomet's tomb does between the two loadstones, and must equally incline to both, because by both are equally supported."

Purcell's first essay in dramatic music, when only nineteen years of age, was his setting the songs, &c. in Nahum Tate's 'Dido and Æneas,' an operetta written for a boarding-school of celebrity. In this is the simple and beautiful duet, 'Fear no danger,' once sung everywhere and by everybody, but now almost forgotten. The music in Nat. Lee's 'Theodosius, or the Force of Love,' performed at the Duke's theatre, in 1690, was his first work for the public stage. In the same year he set new music to 'The Tempest,' as altered by Dryden, which is still heard with delight, and also the 'Prophetess, or Diocletian,' altered by Dryden and Betterton from Beaumont and Fletcher. In 1691 he composed the songs, &c. in Dryden's 'King Arthur,' among which are the inimitable frost-scene, the very original and lovely air, 'Fairest Isle,' and the charming duet, 'Two daughters of this aged stream are we.' In 1692 appeared Sir R. Howard's and Dryden's 'Indian Queen,' with Purcell's music. The fine incantation scene in this, 'Ye twice ten hundred deities,' is yet often heard in good [Pg 93] concerts, but never in fashionable ones. The duet and chorus, 'To arms,' and the air, 'Britons, strike home!' in Dryden's alteration of 'Bonduca,' are national property—are our war-songs, always received with acclamations when we are engaged in or menaced by hostilities, and frequently performed during peace on account of their beauty, musically considered. These alone will suffice to carry Purcell's name to distant ages. His music in D'Urfey's 'Don Quixote' is remarkably appropriate and clever: the song, 'Genius of England,' has few rivals, and the cantata, 'Let the dreadful engines of eternal will,' sung in the character of the love-distracted Cardenio, is, with the exception of the latter part (now very wisely omitted in the performance), one of the composer's finest creations. He also wrote airs, overtures, and act-tunes for many dramas, among which may be mentioned Dryden and Lee's 'Œdipus,' 'Timon of Athens,' 'The Fairy Queen,' altered from 'A Midsummer-night's Dream,' and Dryden's 'Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr.'

The three detached cantatas by Purcell are undeniable proofs of his fancy, energy, and deep feeling. It is sufficient to name 'Mad Bess,' 'Old Tom of Bedlam,' or 'Mad Tom' (the words by Mr. William Basse, Walton tells us, in his 'Angler'), and 'From rosy bowers,' written by Tom D'Urfey, but not originally sung in 'Don Quixote,' as Percy seems to think. So well known are these, so highly valued by true connoisseurs, and so much admired by all lovers of music, that one more word in their praise would be superfluous. It is not necessary to enter into any account of, or even to name, his many single songs and duets. After the composer's death they were collected by his widow, and published in two folio volumes, under the title of 'Orpheus Britannicus,' the second and best edition of which is now very rare. His odes, glees, catches, and rounds are numerous, and several of them familiar to the admirers of vocal harmony. In 1683 he published twelve sonatas for two violins and a bass. In the preface he says that "he has faithfully endeavoured a just imitation of the most famed Italian masters, principally [Pg 94] to bring the seriousness and gravity of that sort of music into vogue and reputation among our countrymen, whose humour 'tis time now should begin to loathe the levity and balladry of our neighbours." Purcell's esteem for the Italian masters had been before confessed in the dedication of his 'Diocletian' to the Duke of Somerset, wherein he modestly remarks, "Poetry and painting have arrived to their perfection in our country: music is yet but in its nonage, a forward child, which gives hope of what it may be hereafter in England, when the masters of it shall find more encouragement. 'Tis now learning Italian, which is its best master, and studying a little of the French air to give it somewhat more of gayety and fashion. Thus being farther from the sun, we are of later growth than our neighbouring countries, and must be content to shake off our barbarity by degrees." Here he does justice to the French school, by which he had certainly profited, though in a perfectly fair manner.

Two years after his decease his widow printed the overtures, act-tunes, &c. before mentioned, under the title of 'A Collection of Ayres composed for the Theatre, and on other Occasions,' &c. They are in four parts, and continued in use in Dr. Burney's time, till superseded by Handel's concertos and other newer compositions.

We have above alluded to Purcell's compositions for the church, and as regards these must add a few remarks. His published anthems amount in number to upwards of fifty; and to these are to be added a Te Deum and Jubilate with orchestral accompaniments—a complete Service, several hymns, motets, and sacred songs. Some of his anthems, especially those in Dr. Boyce's Collection, are still in use in our cathedral and other choirs, and never can be allowed to fall into neglect while the influential persons in those venerable establishments possess any musical discernment. His Te Deum and Jubilate, to which the epithet "grand" is the usual prefix, is a work that has seldom if ever been spoken of but in terms of unqualified panegyric. That it evinces many [Pg 95] traits of originality—that it displays a vast deal of scientific skill—that an easy, pleasing melody runs through portions of it—and that it has also the merit of being the first of the kind ever produced in this country, cannot be denied: but, on the other hand, there is in its general structure a want of suitable grandeur—mainly arising from the frequent occurrence of mean passages of pointed, jerking notes in the vocal parts, that take from it much of the solemnity which the subject demands; and these, together with certain divisions that disconnect the words and obscure the sense, produce an effect not only undignified, but nearly bordering on the ridiculous. Besides these greater defects, there are in the work some others of less importance, such as a few conceits, some harsh notes, and occasional errors in accentuation and emphasis. The best excuse for the composer is, that most of the errors we have ventured to point out were common at the time they were committed. Still they are errors, and of magnitude, and should have kept within moderate bounds that warmth of feeling which has led to such unreserved encomiums on what, in our opinion, is by no means to be reckoned among the best of the composer's works.

Purcell died in November, 1695, of consumption, Hawkins surmises; and it is to be wished that this always industrious and sometimes over-diligent historian had not snatched from the oblivion to which it ought to have been consigned, a "tradition" that his death was occasioned by a cold caught in an inclement night, waiting for admittance into his house, Mrs. Purcell having "given orders to his servants not to let him in after midnight." We regret to say that this exceedingly improbable story has lately been revived, without the slightest attempt at proof, accompanied by vituperative expressions most injurious to the memory of one who, if we may judge from her language in the dedication to the 'Orpheus Britannicus,' was an attached, faithful wife, and incapable of the cruelty alleged against her. Purcell's habits, Hawkins states, were of the most convivial kind, and led him too frequently into the society of "the [Pg 96] witty Tom Brown," together with other persons of irregular lives; and thus were, most likely, sown the seeds of a disease which at so early a period terminated a life of such inestimable value.

The remains of this great musician lie in the north transept of Westminster Abbey: on a pillar near the spot is a tablet, placed there by the Lady Elizabeth Howard, on which is the subjoined inscription, commonly attributed to Dryden:—

"Here lies
Henry Purcell, Esq.,
who left this life,
and is gone to that blessed place
where only his harmony can be exceeded.
Obiit 21 mo. die Novembris,
Anno ætatis suæ 37 mo.,
Annoq. Domini, 1695."

On the stone over his grave was a Latin epitaph, now entirely effaced. The original and a translation are both given by Hawkins and Burney. Among the works of Dryden is an epitaph on the death of his friend Purcell, but it cannot be viewed as one of the happiest of the great poet's efforts. Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, wrote an ode on the same occasion, in which are some noble thoughts concerning the desire of posthumous fame. It concludes with the following praise of the art in which our British composer signalised himself:—

[The end of The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies Vol 9 of 12 edited by Charles Knight]

	Page
ALGERNON SIDNEY	5
WILLIAM PETTY	24
THOMAS SYDENHAM	53
ROBERT BOYLE	61
RICHARD BAXTER	79
HENRY PURCELL	90

THE

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY

OF

BRITISH WORTHIES.

VOLUME IX.

LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

1846.

London: Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.

CONTENTS.

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY OF BRITISH WORTHIES.

Footnotes

Footnotes

Transcriber's Note

LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY
OF
BRITISH WORTHIES.