2 
INFANCY OF 
the original and more Southern Empire of the Britons, and the most 
penetrating of their philosophers, Sir Isaac Newton, — had as yet, 
reared his head in the learned world, as a new legislator and universal 
reformer of any one science. The discoveries and merits of a Tycho 
Brahe, whose country borders so nearly on that of Linnaeus, will 
not stand a comparison here. The age we live in, is the first that made 
a new epoch in the course of national learning. Among the great ap- 
paritions, which the literary heavens have exhibited and rendered eter- 
nal, a star from the North has shone forth, the brightest and most illu- 
mining. Without comparing here Leibnitz, who run the best part 
of his immortal career in the last century, Switzerland found in Hal- 
ler, the greatest and most solid universalist; Holland , in Boerhaave, 
the greatest physician; France , in Voltaire, the greatest wit and first 
favourite of the literary graces ; but Sweden, the most systematical genius 
of the age, the most intimate and scrutinizing minion that ever graced 
the bosom of Nature; who rendered her knowledge the most regular and 
the most cultivated, and became her teacher in all parts of the world. 
Never was the name of any Literatus of his nation, or of Northern 
Europe at large spread so far, honoured so devoutly, and rendered so 
immortal as Lis. However distinguifhed and uncommon his merits 
were, as extraordinary and memorable became the vicissitudes of his 
fate, and as rugged and thorny the paths on which he attained the 
climax of his greatness. 
Charles Linn & us was born on the third of May, 1707, at Rashult , 
a village in the province of Smaland. Nils, or Nicholas Linnaeus, 
his father, who took birth in the year 1674, held the sacred funflion of 
pastor of the village, two years previous to that event. He was joined 
in 
1 
