Ixxvi THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



out upon every occasion." We cannot suppose that this was 

 offensively, but merely in the way of gesticulation, and to lend 

 force to his words ; for in his public and literary life, Harvey 

 showed everything but a choleric nature : he seems, indeed, at 

 all times to have had his temper under entire control. The way 

 in which Harvey himself speaks of the robbery of his apartments 

 and the destruction of his papers, has nothing of bitterness or 

 acrimony in it. With the opportunity presenting itself to him 

 as when he sends Nardi the books on the Troubles in England 

 he is not tempted to utter even a splenetic word against 

 the party which had been all along opposed to his friends, and 

 by which he had suffered so severely. Harvey was, probably, 

 a marked man by Cromwell and his adherents ; but had he 

 been so disposed he could have indulged in a little vitupera- 

 tion without risk of molestation. The government of England 

 in the Protector's time was still no tyranny. 



Harvey appears not to have esteemed the fair sex very highly. 

 He would say, that " we Europeans knew not how to order or 

 govern our women, and that the Turks were the only people 

 who used them wisely." But, indeed, if Aubrey may be 

 trusted, he did not think very much of mankind in general : 

 he was wont to say, that " man was but a great mischievous 

 baboon." Harvey, however, wived young, and in his age he 

 seems still to have thought that the old man was best tended 

 by the gentle hand of a woman not too far striken in years. 1 



Harvey, in his own family circle, must have been affec- 

 tionate and kind, characteristics of all his brothers who 

 appear as we have said to have lived together through their 

 lives in perfect amity and peace. But our Harvey's sympa- 

 thies were not limited to his immediate relatives : attachment, 

 friendship was an essential ingredient in his nature. His will 

 from first to last is a piece of beautiful humanity, and more 

 than one widow and helpless woman is there provided for. 

 1 Vide Aubrey, Op. cit. p. 381. 



