760 THE HAKVEIAN ORATION. 



Of Harvey's, as of Berkeley's sojourn in Oxford, we know little ; 

 little, indeed, has been recorded, with the exception of the some- 

 what uncertain gossip of the gossiping Aubrey. But what we do 

 know of the place during those years which elapsed between the 

 battle of Edgehill and 1646, makes us certain that scientific, and 

 indeed any other work, must have been carried on in it under 

 great disadvantages. We read of the plague, and of the ' morbus 

 campestris,' described by a former Harveian orator and Linacre 

 lecturer as desolating the town and driving people out of resi- 

 dence. It was, besides, a centre for military operations ; and 

 military life has been shown, by the experience of all ages (though 

 this experience appears to have been lost upon the heedlessness and 

 ignorance of this), to be out of harmony with the habits of men, 

 old as was Harvey then (aet. 64-68), young as our undergraduates 

 are now, who are, or who ought to be devoted to study. What- 

 ever else of Aubrey's tales of Harvey I may disbelieve, I can 

 believe that the words addressed to Charles Scarborough, ' Prithee 

 leave off thy gunning and stay here,' are his. 



If, however, we wish to have a real and truthful picture and 

 image of Harvey before us, we must do by him as we have to do 

 by Shakespeare, by Aristotle, by Butler, and several other great 

 writers : we must lay our minds alongside of his, as it is revealed 

 to us in his works. It is only the writings of great men which 

 will bear or repay such treatment : no commentary nor any bio- 

 graphy can give us the real and vivid sensation of having the men 

 before us which we get from a perusal and reperusal of their books. 

 Having used for this purpose what Mr. Tom Taylor has recently 

 spoken of^ as 'the invaluable three hours before breakfast,' I have 

 come to persuade myself that I have obtained something like a 

 trustworthy idea of what Harvey really was. Previously, how- 

 ever, to doing this, I gave Christian burial to much of what 



163 and p. 502, ed. 1766; p. 148 and pp. 481, 482, ed. Willis) had recorded the loss 

 of his • adversaria multorum annorum laboribus parta,' and especially of his work 

 *De Generatione Insectorum/ when his house was plundered in the Civil War. Later 

 again I came upon the following passage in Lower's work, ' Tractatus de Corde,' ed. 

 1669: 'Quid quod et Harveius si per aetatem et otium licuisset plura poUiceri vide- 



tur ipse, Lib. de Circulat. Sanguinis, cap. 9 Bed qiiod maxime dolendum est et 



ille voto suo et nos spe nostra excidirmis.' Hence I fear there is now little hope either 

 of recovering or of discovering the lost MS. 



^ See speech at Eighty-fourth Anniversary Dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, 

 •Times,' Thursday, May 29, p. 12. 



