LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 11 



those subjects. The larger book of botany, 

 chemistry, and physics, was begun in the year 

 1665 ; — the lesser book was wrote before. And 

 after both these (but at what time is uncertain) 

 he wrote out a fair copy in round hand, of cer- 

 tain chemical experiments and conclusions. 



Soon after he came to Cambridge, his studies 

 were very much interrupted by a quartan ague, 

 which stuck by him a considerable time, occa- 

 sioned, as he supposed, by his rising too early 

 in the morning, and bathing too frequently in 

 the evening. He returned into Yorkshire for 

 the recovery of his health, where he was se- 

 verely exercised with hypocondriac melan- 

 choly; the effect, as he believed, of his dis- 

 temper. But it was an effect happy enough 

 in the main, both for himself and others ; for it 

 gave him a most perfect insight into the nature 

 of that kind of melancholy, which, in innocent 

 people, arises from an indisposition or ill habit 

 of body ; and enabled him afterwards, as a 

 casuist, to treat admirably well upon that sub- 

 ject, and to be exceeding useful to as many as 

 applied to him for his advice in the like cases. 

 And, perhaps, few men had more applications 

 of this kind than himself, which occasioned his 

 writing a great deal upon the subject, as well 

 in letters for private use as in set discourses, 

 which were first delivered in the pulpit, and 



