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dis,’ which was published at Frankfort-on-the-Main.[1]
I know few scientific treatises so interesting as this; whether one reads it in Harvey’s own Latin, or in the most excellent translation of Dr. Robert Willis, whose early kindness to me I desire here publicly to thank him for, while I congratulate him on the not inglorious learned leisure of a ripe old age.
What first strikes one in reading Harvey’s essay ‘On the Motion of the Heart,’ and still more in his two letters written years afterwards to the younger Riolanus who had attacked his doctrines, is the exquisite courtesy of his tone towards his opponents. It is the more remarkable since it was so little the custom of the time. He mentions no adversary’s name except to couple it with praise, and the hardest words I find him use are in the commencement of his second letter to Riolanus,[2] which I venture to render thus:—
‘Some there are, detractors, mountebanks, foul-mouthed, whose writings I have made it a rule to myself never to read, since I should
