120 
LINNAEUS 
and favour to one who had recently, in dire want, 
undergone banishment from the University. 
To leave the enquiry, one may hope that the whole 
story of the duel, dismissal, etc., may be looked upon 
as completely refuted. But it does not follow, that 
as already mentioned (p. 98) no dispute took place 
between Linnaeus and Rosen, although in the 
earliest Linnean autobiographies there is no account 
of it. This is related in somewhat contradictory 
terms as happening in two different years, 1733 or 
1734, the later date being the more probable. The 
more extensive report is as follows : 
Rosen, who perfectly realized that the young 
fellow had a considerable collection of recorded 
observations, and saw that if he were not repressed, 
he would in time become a formidable competitor for 
the botanic chair after the aged Rudbeck, went to 
Linnaeus and asked him to lend him his manuscripts. 
When he was refused, he had recourse to threats, 
cursing and swearing, that if Linnaeus did not lend 
them, he would persecute him as long as he lived. 
Linnaeus, scared, lent the first volume, but when Rosen 
had copied it, he refused to give it back unless he 
received the second. This was a thunderbolt. Lin¬ 
naeus, though realizing that his whole system and 
collections would be ruined if that single volume 
were missing, after long thought, decided not to con¬ 
sent, although Rosen begged, promising that the first 
volume should be given back on loan of the other. 
Poverty and oppression quickly made Linnaeus 
take a resolution. He determined that as Samson 
took his revenge by killing himself and his enemies, 
so he might thus act against his unfriendly acquaint¬ 
ance, whose slander he felt painfully every hour. But 
Professor Oelreich from Lund, at that time a pupil of 
Linnaeus in botany, “ dissuaded him, showing that no 
evil happened without the Lord’s permission, that to 
endure it was the safest, and that though He punished, 
He comforted. Linnaeus changed his mind, praised 
