THE GREAT LONDON CHEMISTS 29 



found such difficulty in searching into the cause and 

 manner of things, and I am so sensible of my own disability 

 to surmount these difficulties, that I dare speak posi- 

 tively of very few things except of matters of fact.' This, 

 I think, is in the main still our position. 



Boyle's claim to rank as a 'Great London Chemist' 

 rests upon his having taken up his residence here from 

 the year 1668, until his death, which took place on the 

 last day of the year 1691, in the sixty-fifth year of his 

 age. But he was not a Londoner by birth. He was an 

 Irishman, born at Lismore in County Waterford, and of 

 noble parentage, for he was the seventh son, and the 

 fourteenth child, of the Earl of Cork. He was educated as 

 a child at home ; but at the age of eight he was sent to 

 Eton, where, as he says, ' he lost much of that Latin he 

 had got ; for he was so addicted to the more solid parts of 

 knowledge, that he hated the study of bare words natur- 

 ally.' At the age of eleven (they were precocious in those 

 days) his career at Eton was over ; and he was sent with 

 a French tutor, along with his brother, to Geneva, where 

 he pursued his studies for twenty-one months, and then 

 went to Italy. There he stayed until 1642; when his 

 father's finances having become embarrassed, owing to the 

 breaking out of the great Irish rebellion, Boyle returned 

 home, to find his father dead. Two estates had been left 

 to him ; one at Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire, where he pro- 

 ceeded to reside. In 1654, when twenty-seven years of 

 age, he removed to Oxford, in order to associate himself 

 with a number of men who had united themselves into a 

 society, under the name of the 'Philosophical College/ 

 This society afterwards moved its headquarters to London ; 

 and in 1663 it was incorporated by Charles n., under the 

 name of the ' Royal Society of London/ its object being 

 the ' Promotion of Natural Knowledge.' 



Boyle's name is frequently mentioned in the first few 



