26o THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



eluded that, despite his great work in another art, he was 

 none the less a good and skilful doctor, who rose to high 

 places because he deserved them. 



So the memorials of him fail. We can only read be- 

 tween the lines of his book and draw inferences, and per- 

 haps measure his thought-power by noting its effect upon 

 the thought inertia of his contemporaries : we can quote 

 what this or that philosopher said about him, which is no 

 safe criterion, for where is there less toleration of truths 

 of to-day than in minds filled to saturation with the truths 

 of yesterday? But no Boswell attended his steps, and no 

 relics have been found of that voluminous correspondence 

 which he is said to have opened with the learned men of 

 Italy. One portrait 1 of him which hung in the house of 

 the Royal College of Physicians was destroyed in the 

 Great Fire of 1666, and another which he bequeathed to 

 the Bodleian Library became decayed, was removed, and 

 disappeared unaccountably during the last century. The 

 sole vestiges of him are a few scraps of doubtful hand- 

 writing, and the old house in Colchester where he once re- 

 sided. His fame rests upon the contents of two ancient and 

 yellow-paged volumes, 2 one of which Peter Short printed 

 for him nearly three hundred years ago; the other 3 his 

 surviving brother lovingly collected from his scattered 

 papers, and it lay in manuscript for half a century after 

 his death. 



In the dark days of Queen Mary, the town of Colches- 

 ter, famous then and since for its oysters and Dutch 

 weavers being a " sweet and comfortable mother of the 

 bodies and a tender nourse of the souls of God's chil- 

 dren" 4 the latter, so styling themselves, much affected 

 the common inns as their meeting places. Consequently 

 Protestantism flourished sturdily, until the Smithfield 



1 Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 3, 1662. 



2 De Magnate. London, 1600. 



3 De Mundo Novo Sublunari, Philosophia Nova. Amsterdam, 1561. 

 *P. Morant: The History and Antiquities of Colchester. London, 1748. 



