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Akenside, and in more recent days, Latham and Hawkins and Rolleston, had reclaimed their own, I should stand before you like the painted daw in the fable. I sought in the Orations, and especially in the earlier ones, for something that might have enabled me to set the man Harvey before you, ‘in his habit as he lived;’ for while but few are gifted with any measure of his deep insight, or can follow even at a distance the track of his genius, it would profit all of us to learn the lesson of his patriotism, his loyalty, his open-handed bounty, his forgiveness of injury and detraction, his deep religious feeling.
But my search has yielded little fruit, partly, I suppose, from Harvey’s own character. The man who needed the cannon-shot at Edge Hill[1] to arouse him from his studies and to make him remove for the sake of the Princes committed to his care to a safer place, lived too entirely in his own pursuits to take much heed of life beyond them. It was with him much as it has
- ↑ This, and many other familiar traits in Harvey’s life, we owe to Aubrey. ‘Letters by Eminent Persons, and Lives of Eminent Men,’ vol. ii. part ii. 8 vo., London, 1813. ‘Life of Dr. W. Harvey,’ pp. 376–386.
