7 8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



meager, his carriage stooping. He wore his hair, which was of a dark- 

 brown color, hanging in long, disheveled locks over his face, and it was 

 not until three years before his death that, conforming at last to the 

 fashion of his time, he cut it off, and substituted a periwig. Up to 

 the age of sixteen, he was said to have been straight, and he himself 

 attributed his deformity to his excessive use when young of " incur- 

 vating exercises," such as working with a turning-lathe. Waller, his 

 earliest biographer, tells us : 



His eyes were gray and full, with a sharp ingenious look while younger ; his 

 nose thin, hut of a moderate height and length ; his mouth meanly wide, and 

 upper lip thin ; his chin sharp and forehead large ; his head of a middle size. . . . 

 He went stooping and very fast, having but a light body to carry, and a great 

 deal of spirits and activity, especially in his youth. He was of an active, restless, 

 indefatigable genius even almost to the last, and always slept little to his death, 

 seldom going to sleep till two, three, or four o'clock in the morning, and seldomer 

 to bed, oftener continuing his studies all night, and taking a short nap in the 

 day. His temper was melancholy, mistrustful, and jealous, which more increased 

 upon him with his years. ... He had a piercing judgment into the dispositions 

 of others, and would sometimes give shrewd guesses and smart characters.* 



The extreme parsimony, which the necessities of his early life had 

 rendered a virtue, degenerated, as years went on, into a weakness if 

 not into a vice. After his death, a large iron chest, which it appeared 

 by evident signs had lain undisturbed for above thirty years, was dis- 

 covered in his lodgings, and on being opened was found to contain sev- 

 eral thousand pounds in gold and silver, accumulated by him in the 

 lucrative employment of surveyor for the rebuilding of the city after 

 the fire of September 3, 1666. Thus he condemned himself to a life 

 of sordid privation, while relegating to dust and cobwebs a treasure 

 which he was too penurious to spend, and too busy even to enjoy the 

 miser's pleasure of counting. 



It is difficult to convey an adequate idea of the multifarious and 

 unceasing activity of Hooke's intellectual life during the forty years 

 of his connection with the Royal Society. It reflected the boundless 

 but fortuitous curiosity of an age which had indeed realized the bold 

 vaunt of its herald, by leaving the pillars of Hercules of ancient lore 

 far behind ; but now found itself, like Ulysses of old, embarked on a 

 trackless ocean without any sure pilotage to the happy isles of reno- 

 vated science. Hooke and his contemporaries were inflamed with the 

 unmeasured hopes and vast ambition of the Verulamian prophecies ; 

 but they began to be more and more conscious that the Verulamian 

 method was but as the " golden path of rays " leading to the setting 

 sun. They were haunted by the idea that Nature was to be interro- 

 gated, not progressively or by installments, but once for all, by a su- 

 preme inductive effort,! and they could not wholly relinquish the hope 

 that they were destined to witness its consummation. They had been 

 * " Life," p. xxvii. f Bacon, preface to the " Parasceve," " Works," vol. i., p. 394. 



