HIS CHARACTER. Jxxxv 



Among other tastes or habits which Harvey had, Aubrey 

 informs us that " he was wont to drink coffee, which he and 

 his brother Eliab did before coffee-houses were in fashion in 

 London ." l This was probably a cherished taste with Harvey. 

 In his will he makes a special reservation of his " coffey-pot;" 

 his niece Mary West and her daughter have all his plate ex- 

 cept this precious utensil, which, with the residue, he evidently 

 desired should descend to his brother Eliab as a memorial 

 doubtless of the pleasure they had often enjoyed together 

 over its contents the brewage from the ' sober berry/ 



In visiting his patients, Harvey " rode on horseback with a 

 foot-cloath, his men following on foot, as the fashion then was, 

 which was very decent, now quite discontinued. The judges 

 rode also with their foot-cloathes to Westminster Hall, which 

 ended at the death of Sir Robert Hyde, Lord Chief Justice ; 

 Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury would have revived it, but 

 several of the judges being old and ill horsemen would not 

 agree to it." 2 



Harvey appears to have preserved his faculties unimpaired 

 to the very last. Aubrey, as we have seen, found the anato- 

 mist perusing Oughtred's ' Clavis Mathematica/ and working 

 the problems not long before he died ; and the registers of the 

 College of Physicians further assure us that Harvey, when 

 very far stricken in years, still lost little or nothing of his old 

 activity of mind. He continued to deliver his lectures till 

 within a year or two' of his death, when he was succeeded 

 by his friend Sir Charles Scarborough, and he never failed at 

 the comitia of the college when anything of moment was 

 under consideration. 



Accumulating years, however, and repeated attacks of gout, 



to which Harvey had long been a martyr, at length asserted 



their mastery over the declining body, and William Harvey, 



the great in intellect, the noble in nature, finally ceased to be, 



1 Op. cit. p. 384. 2 Aubrey, ib. p. 386. 



