Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/164

This page needs to be proofread.
BOYLE.
153

His lordship is known to the literary world as author of "Discourses and Essays, useful for the vain modish Ladies and their Gallants; as also upon several subjects, moral and divine, in two parts, a work which is now very rare.-In Park's edition of Orford's Royal and Noble Authors, is a list of the titles of the different essays which compose this work, some of which are curious: as,

"8. Against maids marrying for mere love, &c.
9. Against widows marrying.
10. Against keeping of misses," &c

Aubrey, from Dr. Walker's funeral sermon on Lady Warwick, speaks of a publication by Lord Shannon, entitled, his “Pocket Pistol," "which may make," says the preacher, "as wide breaches in the walls of the Capitol as many cannons."



HONBLE. ROBERT BOYLE,

This celebrated and accurate investigator of nature, equally distinguished for the extent of his knowledge and the purity of his morals, was born at Lismore, in the province of Munster, on January 25, 1626-7. He was the seventh son and the fourteenth child of Richard Boyle, the great Earl of Cork. When nine years of age, having been already taught to write a good hand, and to speak French and Latin with great fluency, (the former with so much accuracy, as to pass frequently when on his travels for a native of France,) he was sent by his father to England, to be educated at Eton school, under the care of Sir Henry Wotton; who discovered so much ability in the son of his old friend, combined with so anxious an inclination to avail himself of every opportunity to increase his acquiremenss, that he soon became accustomed to regard him as one of the most promising youths in that establishment.

During his stay at Eton, he met with several accidents, which had nearly proved fatal to him. Being once