122 ARTHUR E. SHIPLEY 



trafficked in the transmutation of metals, and 

 his name was long associated with a certain 

 "powder of sympathy" which, like the "absent 

 treatment" of the twentieth century practi- 

 tioners of Christian Science, "acted at a dis- 

 tance." Evelyn looked on him as a quack, "a 

 teller of strange things," and Lady Fanshawe 

 refers to his infirmity of lying ; he was certainly 

 a great talker. Still, other men of his epoch 

 spoke well of him and his conversation was 

 doubtless stimulating if profuse. 



In mathematics, John Wallis was, to some 

 extent, a forerunner of Newton. At Felsted 

 School and at Emmanuel College, he received 

 the curiously wide education of his age. He 

 was a skilled linguist; although he had taken 

 holy orders, he was the first of Francis Glis- 

 son's pupils to proclaim in public Harvey's 

 discovery on the circulation of the blood, but 

 his bent was towards mathematics, and he pos- 

 sessed an extraordinary memory for figures. 

 His Arithmetica Infinitorum is described as 

 "the most stimulating mathematical work so 

 far published in England." It contained the 

 germs of the differential calculus, and it sug- 



