Edward Jenncr as Naturalist. 
69 
He was straightforward and upright from the sense of 
duty. “In every private affair/’ says one who knew him 
intimately, “and in every public transaction, but one prin¬ 
ciple guided him. The purity of his motives and the dis¬ 
interestedness of his actions have by no means been yet 
duly acknowledged. Had those who opposed him known 
how little of selfishness, of vanity or of pride entered into 
his character they would have deeply lamented the wounds 
which they inflicted.” 
He was most humble in spirit. He was compared, even 
during his life time, to Columbus, by his previous know¬ 
ledge foretelling the discovery of another hemisphere; to 
Newton, compelling even heaven itself to reveal the motions 
of its hosts; to Bacon, looking forward to futurity for the 
fruition of the seed that he had sown; and to Harvey, 
whose marvellous discovery of the circulation of the blood 
transcended everything then accomplished in medicine; and 
it had justly been said that in real results he transcended 
them all. Despite this, he considered himself as merely 
an instrument in the hands of an ever benevolent God. Rev. 
Rowland Hill, in introducing Dr. Jenner, once said : “Allow 
me to present to your Lordship my friend, Dr. Jenncr, who 
has been the means of saving more lives than any other 
man.” “Ah!” instantly replied Jenner, “would that I, like 
you, could say souls." 
He was consistently devout, ever conscious of and quick 
to acknowledge the omnipresence of Deity and his own 
direction thereby. Till fourteen years of age, his whole 
life had been passed in an ecclesiastical atmosphere. His 
father, one of his grandfathers and his three early teachers, 
one of whom was his brother, were all clergymen. His 
father-in-law and his two brothers-in-law proved also such. 
He has left a picture of his state of mind during the long 
years of thoughtful preparation for his discovery. “While 
the vaccine discovery was progressive,” he says, “the joy 
I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument 
destined to take away from the world one of its greatest 
