SYLVIUS. 101 



become the topmost thought of his old age, and he 

 could not, of course, dine with a strange doctor without 

 mounting on his hobby. " He was breathing animosity 

 against Vesalius," says Jerome, " arising from I know not 

 what cause. He professed, indeed, that it was for wrongs 

 done to Galen ; and he demanded a most iniquitous thing, 

 that I too should become his enemy." 



Fernel 1 , the other member of the little dinner-party, 

 was a man entirely different in character. He was pro- 

 fessor of medicine in the university, and the first court 

 physician, in spite of his undisguised contempt for court 

 society. His age Jerome considered to be fifty-five, but it 



1 The information about these learned men whose fame has departed, 

 I have generally got from Zedler's Universal Lexicon. I have referred 

 sometimes for it to the excellent Encyclopaedia of Ersch and Griiber, 

 and have had some aid, but not much, from Jocher's Gelehrten 

 Lexicon. I have also, of course, been helped by Tiraboschi when 

 the question has been of an obscure Italian author. The Bio- 

 graphic Universelle I have been unable to trust, and owe to it, 

 I believe, nothing but a part of the sketch of Orontius. English 

 biographical dictionaries, or the biographical part of English encyclo- 

 paedias, I have found much reason to avoid. The Germans are the 

 best encyclopaedists. They study a man before they write even a few 

 paragraphs about him. They are both accurate and full. The French 

 are full, but much too careless about accuracy. The English are both 

 inaccurate and meagre, wherever they have to put down any results of 

 out-of-the-way reading. When, therefore, I have in this work had to 

 rely, not on my own reading but on that of other men, I have pre- 

 ferred looking for information to the Germans. Even them, however, 

 I have not trusted without comparing two or three accounts of the 

 same thing by independent writers, and if I found on any point any 

 discrepancy, have sought to ascertain what was the truth by reference 

 to the original authorities. 



