750 THE HAEVEIAN ORATION. 



of those explanations, which he himself so forcibly denounces in the 

 words ('Epistola Secunda ad Riolanum/ p. 1 1 6), 'Vulgo scioli cum 

 Causas assignare haud norunt dicunt statim a spiritibus hoc fieri et 

 omnium opifices spiritus introducunt, et ut mali poetae ad fabulae 

 explicationem et catastrophen Oebv airo fMrjxavrjs advocant in scenam.' 

 It is a hard thing for any man to abstain from speculating as to 

 the cause of any well-established phenomenon, especially if it be of 

 striking interest and importance ; it is a hard thing for any man 

 to do more than keep pace with his own generation; and those 

 who have spent any time in reading the works of Harvey's con- 

 temporaries, will best appreciate the difficulty he must have had in 

 setting himself free from the influence of the idola theatri referred to. 

 I pass from this reflection to an exposition of the claims which 

 have been put forward on behalf of Walter Warner, the editor in 

 1 63 1 of * Harriott's Algebra,' to the discovery of the circulation of 

 the blood ; and I do this by a natural transition, Walter Warner 

 having been a man in whose mind, all his mathematics notwith- 

 standing, the idola in question greatly abounded. Warner^s claims 

 are alluded to by Dr. Willis in a note to his excellent ' Life of 

 Harvey ' (see p. Ixiv). They are put forward by Anthony Wood, 

 upon the authority of Dr. Pell, a man distinguished as one of 

 Oliver Cromwell's diplomatists, and afterwards as an assiduous 

 supporter of the then young Royal Society; and upon that of Dr. 

 Morley, some time Dean of Christ Church, and afterwards Bishop 

 of Winchester (see Wood, 'Athenae Oxonienses/ vol. i. p. 461, 3nd 

 ed. 1 721 ; vol. ii. p. 302, ed. Bliss). Aubrey, a contemporary of 

 Wood's, appears, from a note at p. 417 of the second volume of his 

 ' Lives of Eminent Persons/ to have had the same story from Izaak 

 Walton, who gave Dr. Morley again as his authority ; and Aubrey 

 repeats the tale with certain additions, and notably with that of 

 Dr. PelFs authority, at p. 577 of the same volume. The same story 

 was pointed out to me by one of the officials in the Bodleian 

 Library as being given in an anonymous biographical Miscellany 

 to be found in the ' Bawlinsonian Collection,^ ^ 158, pp. 152-153. 

 This MS. appears to be of the latter half of the seventeenth century, 

 and its legend runs to the following effect. A certain Henry, Earl 

 of Northumberland, being imprisoned in the Tower, did, for the 

 better passing of his time, get several learned persons to live and 

 converse with him ; one of these men (whom, Aubrey tells uSj 



