ROBERT BOYLE. f) 



way, he would read all the way ; and when they came at night 

 to their inn he would still be studying till supper, and frequently 

 propose such difficulties as he met with in his reading to his 

 governor." The following naive statement, too, which we find 

 in an unfinished essay on a theological subject, which he left 

 behind him in manuscript, and of which Dr. Birch, the editor 

 of his collected works, has printed a part, may serve to show 

 the dihgence with which he prosecuted his severer studies, even 

 amidst all sorts of interruptions. " It is true," he writes, " that 

 a solid knowledge of that mysterious language" (it is his ac- 

 quisition of the Hebrew tongue to which he refers) "is some- 

 what difficult, but not so difficult but that so slow a proficient 

 as I could, in less than a year, of which not the least part was 

 usurped by frequent sicknesses and journeys, by furnaces, and 

 by (which is none of the modestest thieves of time) the con- 

 versation of young ladies, make a not inconsiderable progress 

 towards the understanding of both Testaments in both their 

 originals." But the life of active and incesssant occupation 

 which he led, even in his declining years, is best depicted in 

 another curious document which Dr. Birch has preserved. A 

 few years before his death he was urged to accept the office of 

 President of the Royal Society, of which he had so long been 

 one of the most active and valuable members, and the Trans- 

 actions of which he had enriched by many papers of great 

 interest ; but he declined the honour on the score of his grow- 

 ing infirmities. About this time he also published an advertise- 

 ment, addressed to his friends and acquaintances, in which he 

 begins by remarking " that he has, by some unlucky accidents, 

 had many of his writings corroded here and there, or otherwise 

 so maimed" (this is a specimen of the pedantic mode of 

 expression of which Boyle was too fond), "that without he 



