68 Outlines of Geology, 



he attracted some notice as a physician, and more as an anti- 

 quary; and in his last will he founded a lecturesliip in tlie 

 University of Cambridge; he died in 172S. 



When we consider the untoward circumstances of Dr. Wood- 

 ward's education, and the obstacles that in early life were opposed 

 to the natural bent of his genius or inclination, we must allow 

 him no small merit in encountering and overcoming them. At 

 the same time, his life and writings are a good deal sullied by a 

 peevish jealousy and visionary enthusiasm. He is ridiculed by 

 Pope, under the name of Vadius, in his Moral Essays ; and again 

 in several parts of the Memoirs of ScribleruSj where an ancient 

 shield, which the Doctor possessed, becomes the chief subject of 

 the poet's merriment. 



Among the correspondents and opponents of Woodward we 

 meet with several authors whose works are never read, and whose 

 names are falling fast into entire oblivion ; there were others of 

 more celebrated memory, and among them Leibnitz, who, towards 

 the end of the 17th century, published his Protogcea, in which 

 there is little more than crude and improbable speculations re- 

 lating to the agency of fire upon a supposed chaotic mass. Nor 

 are the geological opinions of Whiston deserving of more atten- 

 tion, though his work, published in 1696, entitled " A New Theory 

 of the Earth, wherein the Creation of the World in Six Days, 

 the Universal Deluge, and the General Conflagration, as laid 

 down in the Holy Scriptures, are shown to be perfectly agreeable 

 to Reason and to Philosophy ;" gained him great notoriety. 



It would, however, be an injustice to Whiston, were I to pass 

 him by without quoting Locke's eulogium of his Theory of the 

 Earth ; who says, in a letter to Mr. Molyneux, bearing date 

 Feb. 22, 1696: — " I have not heard any one of my acquaintance 

 speak of it but with great commendations, and, as I think, it 

 deserves : and, truly, it is more to be admired that he has laid 

 down an hypothesis whereby he has explained so many wonderful 

 and before inexplicable things, in the great changes of this globe^ 

 than that some of them should not easily go down with some men, 

 when the whole was entirely new to all. He is one of those sort 



