AN OVERDOSE OF PROSPERITY 3 



edition of his ' Genera Plantarum ' early in 1737, with a 

 dedication to Dillenius, which drew from that Goth a 

 letter, dated May 16, 1737, repudiating the compliment. 

 Dillenius was irate at being left to toil at his laborious 

 ' Pinax ' all alone, and angry at finding his name used 

 in apparent sanction of a system which he considered 

 frivolous, superfluous, and even harmful. ' What is the 

 object of this display ? ' he asks. ' The sexual differences 

 can serve no distinction. It is enough that they have 

 turned the head of one botanist, Vaillant/ &c. His rude 

 reception of Linnaeus at Oxford and his further letters 

 show Dillenius to have been ill-mannered and disagree- 

 able in fact a German bear. Linnaeus, accustomed to 

 Swedish politeness, must have been astonished at this 

 reception of a compliment ; but he had no time to brood 

 over the injury, for he was busily engaged in printing 

 the octavo catalogue of his Dutch friend's greenhouse, 

 the * Viridarium Cliffortianum,' and preparing the mag- 

 nificent 'Hortus Cliffortianus,' and among his many 

 admirers he could afford to despise one uncourteous and 

 selfish acquaintance. 



' In 1737, Linnaeus had completed the arrangement 

 of Clifford's large collection of plants, and had aug- 

 mented and put in order those in the garden. As 

 Clifford had not only given him a considerable sum of 

 money annually, but also maintained, and treated him 

 as if he had been his own son, Linnaeus undertook the 

 extensive work the " Hortus Cliffortianus," which he 

 both arranged and wrote, and he also corrected it for the 



B 2 



