Robert Boyle 73 



amateurs have occasionally rivalled professional scholars in 

 profundity of knowledge and academic conservatism. 



The essential distinction and it is an important one 

 lies in the wider range of subjects which the professional 

 man of science has to cover. He may have to lecture or 

 advise students on matters which are outside his own 

 researches, or he may have to direct an institution burdened 

 with a quantity of routine work which cannot be neglected. 

 He both gains and loses by the exigencies of his duties ; while 

 his compulsory reading may supply him with analogies which 

 are frequently fertile in valuable suggestions, he is often drawn 

 away to side issues, and is tempted to adopt a dogmatic 

 attitude on those portions of his subject which he teaches 

 or directs, but is not much interested in. 



The non-academic class of workers are free from any 

 routine which they do not impose on themselves and, as 

 might be expected, present less uniformity in their aims and 

 modes of working. What greater contrast could, indeed, 

 be found than that between the three men whose work 

 forms the main subject of this chapter : Robert Boyle, 

 the indefatigable experimenter and voluminous writer, who, 

 though refusing a peerage and the Presidency of the Royal 

 Society, found his chief pleasure in intercourse with other 

 men of science : Henry Cavendish, the taciturn recluse, who 

 disliked contact with the ordinary affairs of life, and was 

 remiss even in publishing his revolutionizing researches; 

 William Herschel, the poor Hanoverian oboist, who had to 

 earn his living as a teacher of music, and fight his way 

 up until, with telescopes constructed by his own hands, he 

 attained unrivalled pre-eminence as an astronomer. 



Robert Boyle (1627-1691) belonged to an old Hereford- 

 shire family, whose name is mentioned in Domesday Book 

 as Biuville. His father, Richard, described by Thomas Birch 

 as one of the greatest men of his age, passed through a 

 course of study at Cambridge, and having spent some time 

 in London as a student of the Middle Temple, went to 

 Ireland to make his fortune, married a rich wife, and ulti- 

 mately became Baron of Youghall, Viscount of Dungarvan 

 and Earl of Cork. He was married twice and had fifteen 

 children. Robert, the last but one of them, received his 



