1 8 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



himself fill up the lacunoe. out of his memory or invention, they 

 will not be intelligible." He then goes on to allege his age 

 and his ill health as reasons for immediately setting about the 

 arrangement of his papers, and to state that his physician and 

 his best friends have " pressingly advised him against speaking 

 daily with so many persons as are wont to visit him ; " represent- 

 ing it as that which must " disable him for holding out long." 

 He therefore intimates that he means in future to reserve two 

 days of the week to himself, during which, " unless upon occa- 

 sions very extraorditiary," he must decline seeing either his 

 friends or strangers, "tliat he may have some time both to 

 recruit his spirits, to range his papers, and fill up the lacuncs of 

 them, and to take some care of his affairs in Ireland, which are 

 very much disordered, and have their face often changed by 

 the public disorders there." He at the same time ordered a 

 board to be placed over his door, giving notice when he did 

 and when he did not receive visits. 



Nothing can set in a stronger light than this the celebrity 

 and public importance to which he had attained. His reputa- 

 tion, indeed, had spread over Europe \ and he was the principal 

 object of attraction to all scientific strangers who visited the 

 English metropolis. Living, as it was his fortune to do, at what 

 may be called only the dawn of modern science, Boyle perhaps 

 made no discovery which the researches of succeeding investi- 

 gators in the same department have not long ere now gone far 

 beyond. But his experiments, and the immense number of 

 facts which he collected and recorded, undoubtedly led the 

 way to many of the most brilliant results by which, since his 

 day, the study of nature has been crowned. Above all, he 

 deserves to be regarded as one of the principal founders of our 

 modem chemistry. That science, before his time, was little 



