GILBERT AND THE QUEEN. 265 



drew no distinction between GifFarde, Caius and Caldwell, 

 and the barber surgeons or the leeches turned loose upon 

 her people, through the Heaven-sent discernment and 

 selection of his Grace of Canterbury. At all events, as is 

 well known, she refused to take physic to the last, and 

 grimly flouted her doctors from her pile of cushions as 

 long as fierce will and frail body remained together ; and 

 then, with characteristic inconsistency, left to one of 

 them and that one, it is said, Gilbert the only substan- 

 tial bequest whereby she remembered any of her personal 

 attendants. The chorus of execration which arose from 

 the ignored royal household is historical ; but the great 

 work of Gilbert had then been written and laid at her 

 feet. The book itself was not without a spice of ingenious 

 flattery for herself, and so it is not difficult to imagine that 

 the Queen was willing to give to him, in order to carry on 

 labors whereof she saw the value, the pension which she 

 was equally ready to deny even to the most sycophantic of 

 her court satellites. 



The laudatory address of Edward Wright, the mathe- 

 matician, which is prefixed to Gilbert's first and chief 

 volume, 1 wherein all his magnetic and electrical experi- 

 ments and discoveries are recorded, says that it was held 

 back from the press for nearly twice the Horatian period. 

 This places the time of its inception shortly after Gilbert 

 became Censor of the Royal College of Physicians the 

 acquirement of which dignity, and the fact that he was 

 enabled to undertake a task requiring so great an expend- 

 iture of time and labor in addition to the duties imposed 

 on him by his profession, fairly indicate that in the decade 

 which had elapsed since his settlement in England, he had 

 achieved no small measure of success. The statement has 



1 The title in full is as follows : 



Guilielmi Gil / berti Colcestren- / sis, medici londi- / nensis, / De Mag- 

 nete, Magneti- / cisque Corporibus, et de Mag- / no magnete tellure ; 

 Physiologia Nova, / Plurimis et argumentis, et expe / rimentis demon- 

 strata. / Londini / Excudebat Petrus Short Anno / MDC. / 



