HENRY THE SEVENTH. 



CCCXCV 



uninformed. Upon his desiring Sir John Danvers to give 

 his opinion of the work, Sir John said, &quot; Your lordship 

 knows that I am no scholar. Tis no matter, said my 

 lord, I know what a scholar can say ; I would know what 

 you can say. Sir John read it, and gave his opinion what 

 he misliked, which my lord acknowledged to be true, and 

 mended it. Why, said he, a scholar would never have told 

 me this ;&quot;(#) but, notwithstanding this labour and anxiety, 

 the public expectation was not realized. 



If, however, in the history of Henry the Seventh, it is 

 vain to look for the vigour or beauty with which the 

 Advancement of Learning abounds : if the intricacies of a 

 court are neither discovered nor illustrated with the same 

 happiness as the intricacies of philosophy : if in a work 

 written when the author was more than sixty years of age, 

 and if, after the vexations and labours of a professional 

 and political life, the varieties and sprightliness of youthful 

 imagination are not to be found, yet the peculiar properties 

 of his mind may easily be traced, and the stateliness of the 

 edifice be seen in the magnificence of the ruins. 



His vigilance in recording every fact tending to alleviate Facts. 

 misery, or to promote happiness, is noticed by Bishop 

 Sprat, in his history of the Royal Society, where he says, 

 &quot; I shall instance in the sweating sickness. The medicine 

 for it was almost infallible : but, before that could be 

 generally published, it had almost dispeopled whole towns. 

 If the same disease should have returned, it might have 

 been again as destructive, had not the Lord Bacon taken 

 care to set down the particular course of physic for it in 

 his history of Henry the Seventh, and so put it beyond 

 the possibility of any private man s invading it.&quot; (b} 



(fi) Aubrey. 



(6) Whether it is not the same, or of the same nature, as the cholera 

 which has lately appeared and now exists in England. See vol.iii. p. 113. 



