Ixxxiv THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



Lad the confidence of the king, but in very different ways : 

 Cowley lent himself to the privacies and intrigues of the royal 

 family and its adherents, for whom he even consented to play the 

 base part of spy upon their opponents. He was also the cypher- 

 letter writer, and the decypherer of the royal correspondence, 

 and thus mixed up with all the littlenesses of the court party, 

 by whom he must have been, as matter of course, despised, as 

 he was subsequently neglected. Harvey was a man of another 

 stamp, composed of a different clay ; and it gives us a high 

 sense of his independence and true nobility of nature that in 

 the midst of faction and intrigue, he is never found associated 

 with aught that is unworthy of the name of man in his best 

 estate. The war of party and the work of destruction might 

 be going on around; Harvey, under a hedge, and within reach 

 of shot, was cooly engaged with his book, or in the chamber 

 of his friend Dr. Bathurst, wrapt in contemplation of the 

 mysteries of Generation. 



Harvey appears to have possessed, in a remarkable degree, 

 the power of persuading and conciliating those with whom 

 he came in contact. In the whole course of his long life we 

 hear nothing either of personal enemies or personal enmities ; 

 "Man" he says "comes into the world naked and unarmed, as 

 if nature had destined him for a social creature and ordained 

 that he should live under equitable laws and in peace; as if she 

 had desired that he should be guided by reason rather than be 

 driven by force." 1 The whole of the opposition to his new 

 views on the circulation was got up at a distance ; all within 

 his own sphere were of his way of thinking. His brethren 

 of the College of Physicians appear to have revered him. 

 The congregated fellows must have risen to their feet by 

 common consent as he came among them on the memorable 

 occasion after they had elected him their president. 



1 On Generation, p. 425. 



