46 NEHEMIAH GREW 



that the Royal Society *' might always wear this Catalogue, as 

 the Miniature of [his] abundant Respects, near their Hearts." 

 As we should expect, this Catalogue is far more discursive than 

 such a work would be if it were drawn up at the present day, 

 though Grew takes credit to himself for not " medling with 

 Mystick, Mythologick, or Hieroglyphick matters." He manages, 

 however, to introduce some general remarks which are of interest. 

 He realises, for instance, that it is possible to group living creatures 

 in a way which has some significance, and that it is the business 

 of the biologist to discover this grouping. He blames Aldro- 

 vandus for beginning his history of quadrupeds with the horse, 

 because it is the most useful animal to man, and points out that 

 Gesner's arrangement, which is purely alphabetical, is even less 

 satisfactory. " The very Scale of the Creatures," he concludes, 

 " is a matter of high speculation." It is tempting to quote 

 largely from the Catalogue, but I will confine myself to one 

 other remark of Grew's which is perhaps particularly applicable 

 to-day, when the quotation of authorities is apt to become 

 almost an obsession : " I have made the Quotations," he says, 

 " not to prove things well known, to be true;. ..as if Aristotle 

 must be brought to prove a Man hath ten Toes." 



Grew's last work was the Cosmologia Sacra 1 , a folio volume 

 occupied with a defence of Christianity, and an explanation of 

 the author's views on the nature of the Universe. There is a 

 copy in the British Museum, the earlier part of which is crowded 

 with marginal and fly-leaf notes, in some cases initialled or even 

 signed in full by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One cannot help 

 recalling Charles Lamb's humorous complaint that books lent 

 to Coleridge were apt to be returned " with usury ; enriched with 

 annotations tripling their value. . .in matter oftentimes, and almost 

 in quantity not unfreqnently, vying with the originals." Coleridge 

 seems to have accepted Grew quite seriously as a thinker. In 

 one of his manuscript notes we read, " It is from admiration of 

 Dr N. Grew, and my high estimate of his Powers, that I am 

 almost tempted to say, that the Reasonings in Chapt. Ill ought 

 to have led him to the perception of the essential pfazno menality 

 of Matter." That these reasonings did not so lead him, must, 



1 1701. 



