

CONCLUSION. CCCcli 



considered a fair allowance for the varying skill of the 

 artist, or the natural changes- which time wrought upon 

 his person; but none of them contradict the description 

 given by one who knew him well, &quot; that he had a spacious 

 forehead and piercing eye, looking upward as a soul in 

 sublime contemplation, a countenance worthy of one who 

 was to set free captive philosophy.&quot; (a) 



His life of mind was never exceeded, perhaps never 

 equalled. When a child Mind. 



&quot; No childish play to him was pleasing :&quot; 



(a) Evelyn on Medals. The following observations respecting his 

 person are from Rawley s life. It hath been desired that something 

 should be signified touching his diet, and the regimen of his health; of 

 which, in regard of his universal insight into nature, he may perhaps be to 

 some an example. For his diet, it was rather a plentiful and liberal diet, 

 as his stomach would bear it, than a restrained, which he also commended 

 in his book of the History of Life and Death. In his younger years he 

 was much given to the finer and lighter sorts of meat, as of fowls and such 

 like; but afterward, when he grew more judicious, he preferred the stronger 

 meats such as the shambles afforded, as those meats which bred the more 

 firm and substantial juices of the body, and less dissipable : upon which 

 he would often make his meal, though he had other meats upon the table. 

 You may be sure he would not neglect that himself, which he so much 

 extolled in his writings, and that was the use of nitre, whereof he took in 

 the quantity of about three grains in thin warm broth every morning for 

 thirty years together next before his death. And for physic he did indeed 

 live physically but not miserably; for he took only a maceration of rhubarb 

 infused into a draught of white wine and beer mingled together for the 

 space of half an hour in six or seven days, immediately before his meal, 

 whether dinner or supper, that it might dry the body less, which (as he 

 said) did carry away frequently the grosser humours of the body, and not 

 diminish or carry away any of the spirits, as sweating doth; and this was 

 no grievous thing to take: as for other physic in an ordinary way (whatso 

 ever hath been vulgarly spoken) he took not. His receipt for the gout, 

 which did constantly ease him of his pain within two hours, is already set 

 down in the end of the Natural History. It may seem the moon had some 

 principal place in the figure of his nativity, for the moon was never in her 

 passion, or eclipsed, but he was surprised with a sudden fit of fainting, and 

 that, though he observed not, nor took any previous knowledge of the 

 eclipse thereof, and as soon as the eclipse ceased, he was restored to his 

 former strength again.&quot; 



