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think them unworthy of answer. They may indulge their spleen for me; few right-minded persons will care to read what they have written, nor will they obtain that greatest and most desirable of all gifts, the wisdom which God, the giver of all good, grants not to the evil.’
Harvey lived in an atmosphere too pure for clouds from the lower world to reach him, or if, remembering his famous conversation with Sir George Ent,[1] to which we owe the fragment of his other great work, we cannot deny that strife vexed, and detraction pained him, he at any rate, in spite of his choleric youth, had learnt well the lesson of which there is no better nor terser version than the Psalmist’s, ‘Fret not thyself in any way to do evil.’
The same calm temper shows itself all through his essay. There is nothing in it for
- ↑ Opera; p. 162, and Willis’s translation, p. 147.
‘And would you be the man,’ said Harvey smiling, ‘who should recommend me to quit the peaceful haven, where I now pass my life, and to launch again upon the pathless sea? You know full well what a storm my former lucubrations raised. Much better is it oftentimes to grow wise at home, and in private, than by publishing what you have amassed with infinite labour, to stir up tempests that may rob you of peace and quiet for the rest of your days.’
