lO 



NA TURE 



[November 2, 1S93 



nected biography is that of Dr. Althaus, of University 

 College, London, who, in iSSS, contributed to the 

 Ai/ge»ieine Zcitung, published in .Munich, a series of 

 very interesting articles upon the hfe and correspondence 

 of this remarkable man. These he supplemented at a 

 later date by many new facts as to Oldenburg's birth, 

 parentage, education, and early life, the results of re- 

 searches undertaken at his instance by Dr. von Bippen, 

 y^ichivist of Bremen. Until these facts were published 

 by Dr. Althaus, we knew nothing whatever of Olden- 

 burg's early life. He appears suddenly upon the scene 

 as the agent for Bremen with the English Commonwealth 

 and a correspondent of Milton's, but who this iriend of 

 Milton's was, and from what pit he was digged, no one 

 seems to have taken much trouble to inquire. 



We did not, as it now turns out, know so much as the 

 date of his birth, for it is evident from Dr. von Bippen's 

 researches that the date 1626 usually given in biogra- 

 phical dictionaries as the date of Oldenburg's birth is 

 altogether wrong, and that as a matter of fact he must 

 have been born about 161 5, a date which puts the whole 

 of his life and correspondence in an entirely new per- 

 spective. He was, according to this, only seven years 

 Milton's junior, which accords much better with the tone 

 of their correspondence, and he was seventeen years 

 older than Spinoza, which perhaps partly accounts for the 

 somewhat fatherly manner in which he encouraged that 

 philosopher to publish certain of his works. Etjually at 

 sea are the biographical dictionaries (and other works 

 toojras to his descent. The statement copied from book 

 to book that he was descended from the Counts of 

 Oldenburg appears to have been a pure "shot,"' inferred 

 partly from his name, and partly from the fact that in his 

 matriculation entry at Oxford he is called "nobilis Sa.xo,"' 

 which means nothing at all. What we do now know 

 about him is that he was the son of Heinrich Oldenburg 

 (d. 1634), a tutor in the Gymnasium at Bremen, the 

 grandson of another Heinrich Oldenburg (d. 1603)^ Pro- 

 fessor of Mathematics in the same Gymnasium, and 

 great-grandson of Johann Oldenburg, who came from 

 Miinster in 1528 to be the first rector of the Evangelical 

 school at Bremen ; and that he was one of a large lamily 

 who lived in somewhat narrow circumstances. 



As to Oldenburg's education, we learn that he studied 

 first at the Evangelical school and afterwards at the 

 Gymnasium illustre in Bremen, and that on November 2, 

 1639, he took there the degree of Master in Theolog)-, 

 the subject of his thesis being " De ministeno ecclesias- 

 tico et magistratu politico. ' Whether, like Gotthold 

 Lessing at a later day, he was intended by his parents 

 for a theologian, we do not know. He did not break 

 with theology so completely as Lessing did, for through- 

 out his life there was a certain theological flavour about 

 him, and, in his interesting " commonplace book " pre- 

 served among the archives of the Royal Society, there 

 is an entry of fifteen pages headed " Sensa Animi mei de 

 Deo et ejus cultu naturali " ; but he revolted from the 

 a priori methods of the current teaching, and in the same 

 iMS. we find accordingly many vigorous passages directed 

 against " the vain shadows of scholastic theology and 

 nominalist philosophy." These outbursts, however, be- 

 long to a later date. It was as a theologian that he 

 graduated at Bremen, and then, for some unknown 

 reason, he went to England. 



In England he lived for eight years, probably in the 

 capacity of a tutor, probably, too, in royalist families. 

 Some evidence, at any rate, exists in the Bremen archives 

 that during this first English residence he took the king's 

 side against the Parliament. Then comes a gap of four 

 years, during which there are hints that he was travel- 

 ling upon the continent of Europe and cultivating those 

 numerous acquaintances with learned men, which after- 

 wards stood him in such good stead when his life-work 



NO. 1253, VOL. 49] 



was to gather scientific information from all parts of the 

 world. 



From June, 1653, however, his life becomes clear. In 

 that month he was, as I have said, appointed agent for 

 Bremen, in which capacity he had audiences with Crom- 

 well, and made the acquaintance of Crom.weU's Latin 

 secretary, John Milton. The acquaintanceship ripened 

 into friendship, and an elegant but somewhat ponderous 

 Latin correspondence followed. Oldenburg's political 

 mission came to nothing, and then we find him in a 

 country village in Kent waiting in uncertainty as to 

 public events and as to his own future career. That, 

 career was, however, very soon determined, for in 1656 

 he went to Oxford, and was immediately caught in that 

 current of "experimental learning" which had already 

 begun to flow. Boyle, Wilkins, Wallis, Petty were his 

 constant associates, and his letters at this time show the 

 strong scientific impulse which his mind had received. 



The passage in Anthony a Wood's " Fasti Oxonienses," 

 which records Oldenburg's Oxford residence, is as fol- 

 lows : — " 1656. In the beginning of this year studied in 

 Ox. in the condition of a sojourner Henry Oldenburg, 

 who wrote himself sometimes Grubendole, and in the 

 month of June he was entred a student by the name and 

 title of iHenricus Oldenburg, Bremensis, noblis Saxo; 

 at which time he was tutor to a young Irish nobleman 

 called Henry 6 Bryen, then'a student. also there. ' Besides 

 Henry O'Brien he had another young nobleman as his 

 pupil during his Oxford residence, namely Richard 

 Jones, son of Catherine Lady Ranelagh and nephew to 

 the Hon. Robert Boyle, and after remaining at Oxford 

 for about eighteen months he accompanied young Rane- 

 lagh upon a journey to the Continent. For a year they 

 remained at Saumur, and while there letters continued 

 to pass between him and Milton. It is rather amusing, 

 to read that Milton had entrusted to Oldenburg a packet 

 of his latest politico-theological writings for distribution 

 to foreign savants, a task which the cautious Oldenburg 

 did not half like, and which he executed, as he informed 

 Milton, by giving copies of the writings " to no one who 

 did not ask for them." How many asked for them he 

 does not say. It was not in truth with the fierce political 

 and theological controversies of the time that Olden-, 

 burg's mind was now engaged. He had gained a new 

 interest and was travelling with a new object. His 

 scientific observations were certainly very mixed, many 

 of them trivial, and some of them superstitious, but they 

 serve to show the direction in which his mind was travel- 

 ling. From Saumur he sends to Boyle " noteworthy 

 observations concerning the existence and the working 

 of-animal poison," and a chemical recipe for an invisible 

 ink, and says that if his travels take him to Italy it will 

 be a satisfaction to give Boyle "news of the industrious 

 Kircher's subterraneous world, his strange Grotta de' Serpi, 

 his story of the growth of pulverised and sowne cockles 

 irrigated by sea-water, his thermometre by a wild-oats- 

 beard, his vegetable phoenix's resurrection out of its owne 

 dust by ye warmth of y« sun, his pretended ocular confu- 

 tation of Kepler's magnetical motions of ye Planets 

 about the Sun, and of Gilbert's magneticall motion of 

 ye Earth and of twenty other remarquable things." 



At a later date he sends Boyle from Paris the recipe of 

 a wonderful oil which he had picked up in the course of 

 his travels, which was supposed to heal " migraines, 

 palsies, lamenesses, crookednesses, and all ricketing 

 diseases." More wonderful even than this wonderful 

 oil is another of his discoveries, for Samuel Hartlib, in a 

 letter dated April, 1659, informs Boyle that Oldenburg 

 has written to him from Paris that he has in that city 

 discovered a" clever, but very secretly acting" physician, 

 who had spoken to him of a method by means of which 

 one can prepare a drink from sunbeams ! 



Meanwhile Bovle and the other Oxford worthies con- 



