758 THE HARVEIAN ORATION. 



interval between himself and his companions, and reaching the 

 opposite bank long before them, may have leisure to look down 

 upon them, may be looked up to by them and by the rest of the 

 world, whilst for some time in solitary occupation of that vantage- 

 ground. Such I conceive to be a fair representation^ in the way of 

 metaphor, the best and shortest way, perhaps, of representing such 

 complex relations, of the relations held by Harvey, and indeed by 

 most or all discoverers, to their contemporaries, to their compeers, 

 and to the conditions whereby they are surrounded. 



It may be expected, perhaps, that, coming from Oxford, and 

 having been recently elected a Fellow of the College the Warden- 

 ship of which Harvey held for something more than a year (April 

 1645 to Midsummer 1646), I should have made search for what- 

 ever records there may be left of him unpublished in Oxford, 

 and especially in Merton College. After diligent search, I have 

 to report that there is but little to be learned of Harvey's history 

 from any unpublished document which I have been able to find in 

 Oxford. The Merton College Uegister gives the following account 

 of his election to the Wardenship. In 1645 King Charles I, 

 after the execution of Archbishop Laud, took upon himself the 

 functions of Visitor, and, having removed Sir Nathaniel Brent 

 from the office of Warden, for having joined 'the Rebells now in 

 armes against ' him, he directed the Fellows to take the customary 

 steps for the election of a successor. This course consisted in 

 giving in, after due inquiry, three names to the Visitor, in order 

 that one of the three, the one we may suppose it would be under- 

 stood who was named first, should be appointed by the Visitor. 

 Harvey was so named by five out of the seven Fellows voting; 

 and, after a dispute of which it is unnecessary to give an account, 

 he was duly elected on receipt of a second letter from the King. 

 A couple of days after his admission to the office, on April 11, 

 1645, Harvey summoned the Fellows into the hall and made a 

 speech to them, to the effect that it was likely enough that some 

 of his predecessors had sought the office of Warden to enrich 

 themselves therefrom, but that his intentions were quite of another 

 kind, wishing as he did to increase the wealth and prosperity of 

 the College^. He finished his address to the assembled Fellows 



■^ I would here remark that it was well perhaps for the College of Physicians that 

 Harvey was, by the success of the Parliament, forced to vacate the office of Warden, 



