character, the unflagging enthusiasm of his researches, combined to lend dignity and currency to their results. These were coextensive with the whole range, then accessible, of experimented investigation. He personified, it might be said, in a manner at once impressive and conciliatory, the victorious revolt against scientific dogmatism then in progress. Hence his unrivalled popularity and privileged position, which even the most rancorous felt compelled to respect. No stranger of note visited England without seeking an interview, which he regarded it as an obligation of christian charity to grant. Three successive kings of England conversed familiarly with him, and he was considered to have inherited, nay outshone, the fame of the great Verulam. -CLERKE, MISS A. M., 1886, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. VI, p. 121. GENERAL The excellent Mr. Boyle was the person who seems to have been designed by nature to succeed to the labours and inquiries of that extraordinary genius I have just mentioned (Bacon). By innumerable experiments, he in a great measure filled up those plans and outlines of science, which his predecessor had sketched out. His life was spent in the pursuit of nature through a great variety of forms and changes, and in the most rational as well as devout adoration of its Divine Author. -HUGHES, JOHN, 1712, On Men of Genius in the Arts and Sciences, The Spectator, No. 554. Dec. 5. Here was a noble soul; a true philosophical mind, well seasoned with humanity, beneficence, and goodnesss. After he had led us through all the regions of nature, considered her various productions, showed us their uses and the manner of converting them to our several purposes, convinced us that we live in a world most wisely contrived wherein numberless good designs are at once carried on with unceasing variety and manifested that all the beings and all the bodies we know jointly conspire, as one whole, in bringing about the great ends of nature. -SHAW, PETER, 1725, Robert Boyle's Philosophical Works, Abridgment. Perhaps Mr. Boyle may be considered as the first person, neither connected with pharmacy nor mining, who devoted a considerable degree of attention to chemical pursuits. Mr. Boyle, though, in con.mo.. with the literary men of his age, he may be accused of credulity, was both very laborious and intelligent; and his chemical pursuits, which were various and extensive, and intended solely to develop the truth without any regard to previously conceived opinions, contributed essentially to set chemistry free from the trammels of absurdity and superstition in which it had been hitherto enveloped, and to recommend it to philosophers as a science deserving to be studied on account of the important information which it was qualified to convey. His refutation of the alchemistical opinions respecting the constituents of bodies, his observations on cold, on the air, on phosphorus, and on ether, deserve particularly to be mentioned as doing him much honor. We have no regular account of any one substance or of any class of bodies in Mr. Boyle, similar to those longing exclusively to the science of which at present are considered as bechemistry. Neither did he attempt to systematize the phenomena, nor to subject them to any hypothetical explanation.THOMSON, THOMAS, 1812, History of the Royal Society. To Boyle the world is indebted, besides some very acute remarks and many fine illustrations of his own upon metaphysical questions of the highest moment, for the philosophical arguments in defence of religion, which have added so much lustre to the names of Derham and Bentley; and, far above both, to that of Clarke. I do not recollect to have seen it anywhere noticed, that some of the most striking and beautiful instances of design in the order of the material world, which occur in the sermons preached at Boyle's Lecture, are borrowed from the works of the founder. STEWART, DUGALD, 1815-21, First Preliminary Dissertation, Encyclopædia Britannica. The peculiar merits of Robert Boyle, have, in later times, been more praised, than known: canonized, rather, by the discerning few, than justly estimated, by the unreflecting many. His works, indeed, still occupy a space, though seldom frequented, in the collections of the learned.―JEBB, JOHN, 1833, ed., Burnet's Lives, Characters, and An Address to Posterity, Introduction, p. i. The metaphysical treatises, to use that word in a large sense, of Boyle, or rather those concerning Natural Theology, are very prespicuous, very free from system, and such as bespeak an independent lover of truth. His "Disquisition on Final Causes" was a well-timed vindication of that palmary argument against the paradox of the Cartesians, who had denied the validity of an inference from the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the universe to an intelligent Providence. Boyle takes a more philosophical view of the principle of final causes than had been found in many theologians, who weakened the argument itself by the presumptuous hypothesis, that man was the sole object of Providence in the creation. His greater knowledge of physiology led him to perceive, that there are both animal and what he calls cosmical ends, in which man has no concern.-HALLAM, HENRY, 1837-39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iv, ch. viii, par. 8. The value of his contributions to the cause of science, to the province of Natural Philosophy especially, cannot be too highly esteemed. More than two-thirds of his works are composed of the results of his investigations in Pneumatics, Chemistry, Medicine, and kindred subjects. The philosophers of the day and of succeeding times acknowledge their obligations to Boyle in the strongest terms. What a splendid eulogy is that of the great Boerhaave! "Mr. Boyle, the ornament of his age and country, succeeded to the genius and enquiries of the great Chancellor Verulam. Which of all Mr. Boyle's writings shall I recommend? All of them! To him we owe the secrets of fire, air, water, animals, vegetables, fossils: so that from his works may be deduced the whole system of natural knowledge." -ALLIBONE, S. AUSTIN, 1854-58, Dictionary of English Literature, vol. 1, p. 233. After the death of Bacon, one of the most distinguished Englishmen was certainly Boyle, who, if compared with his contemporaries, may be said to rank immediately below Newton, though, of Newton, though, of course, very inferior to him as an original thinker. With the additions he made to our knowledge we are not immediately. concerned; but it may be mentioned that he was the first who instituted exact experiments into the relation between colour and heat. It is also to Boyle, more than to any other Englishman, that we owe the science of hydrostatics, in the state in which we now possess it. He is the original discoverer of that beautiful law, so fertile in valuable results, according to which the elasticity of air varies as its density. And, in the opinion of the most eminent modern naturalists, (Cuvier) it was Boyle who opened up those chemical inquiries, which went on accumulating until, a century later, they supplied the means by which Lavoisier and his contemporaries fixed the real basis of chemistry, and enabled it for the first time to take its proper stand among those sciences that deal with the external world.BUCKLE, HENRY THOMAS, 1857, History of Civilization in England, vol. 1. In Robert Boyle the fresh study of nature quickened love of God; his scientific thought was blended with simple and deep religious feeling.-MORLEY, HENRY, 1879, A Manual of English Literature, ed. Tyler, p. 464. Enjoyed in the reign of Charles II. the same European reputation which Bacon had posssesed in that of James I. He wrote on so many subjects, and some of them so trifling, that Swift made fun of him in his "Meditation on a Broomstick;" and his "New Philosophy," his trimming system of natural religion, has gone the way of all intellectual makeshifts. But in the field of physics he was on safer ground, and some of his chemical and pneumatical discoveries have proved of lasting value. His style is wearisome and without elevation. Cudworth, who urged him to translate his voluminous treatises into Latin and destroy the originals, may possibly have been ironical as well as pedantic in so advising.—GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 81. We find in them still the note of impatience of form: he had not time to be brief. There is scarce a trace in him of the first quality of an artist in prose, rejection. Now and again a well-turned phrase strikes the reader, but, given a certain condition of language, the phrase is found to be that which would have occurred at once to a certain order of intellect. Happily for Boyle the English of his time was comparatively free from the more vulgar sort of stereotyped phrase; but still a full and sonorous tone. But from the greater masters of sonorous English, Boyle was as far removed as from the clear-cut simplicity and directness of Swift. His style is not involved, and is not affected; it is merely rarified and verbose. In his religious writings the same thing is noticeable as in his scientific. Here again he was deeply interested in his subject, a sincerely pious man applying his best powers, or trying so to do, to the subject he deemed of first importance. And here again he is essentially impatient of form; his sincerity gave him an infrequent warmth of phrase, the general and vague nature of his reflections an occa- scholar, while they impelled him to at- An admirable natural philosopher, but feeble and diffuse as a natural theologian.-GARNETT, RICHARD, 1895, The Age of Dryden, p. 229. George Fox 1624-1691 Born at Fenny Drayton (Drayton-in-the-Clay), Leicestershire, July, 1624: died Jan. 13, 1691. The founder of the Society of Friends. He was the son of Christopher Fox, a Puritan weaver, and in his youth was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Nottingham. About the age of twenty-five he began to disseminate as an itinerant lay preacher the doctrines peculiar to the Society of Friends, the organization of which he completed about 1669. He made missionary journeys to Scotland in 1657, to Ireland in 1669, to the West Indies and North America 1671-72, and to Holland in 1677 and 1684, and was frequently imprisoned for infraction of the laws against conventicles as at Lancaster and Scarborough 1663-66 and at Worcester 1673-74. He married in 1669, Margaret Fell, a widow, who was a woman of superior intellect and gave him much assistance in the founding of his sect. An edition of his "Works" was published at Philadelphia in 1831.-SMITH, BENJAMIN E., 1894-97, The Century Cyclopedia of Names, p. 405. PERSONAL "Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern History," says Teufelsdrockh, "is not the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honourable Mastership in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind: but ever amid the boring and hammering came tones from that far country, came Splendours and Terrors; for this poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him."-CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1831, Sartor Resartus, bk. iii, ch. i, p. 202. He exhibits, in his own example, that the attainment of sincere and spiritual piety, is far more profitable than the learning and knowledge required to maintain the controverted points of religious practices; and proves, in his own case, that the study of the holy writings, assisted by divine grace, is of itself sufficient to produce newness of the heart, without any reliance upon the observances of outward forms and ceremonies.-JANNEY, SAMUEL N. (JOSIAH MARSH), 1853, Life of George Fox, p. 38. I think it will be admitted that we have here the portrait not only of a strong, but of a lovable man. That keen and piercing eye of his was not always sparkling with indignation against hypocritical "professors"-it could also shed tears of sympathy with the sorrowful, and there was something in his face which little children loved. To sum up in fewest possible words the impression made by his words and works upon one who studies them across the level of two centuries: he was a man of lion-like courage and adamantine strength of will, absolutely truthful, devoted to the fulfilment of what he believed to be his God-appointed mission, and without any of those side-long looks at worldly promotion and aggrandizement which many sincere leaders of Church parties have cast at intervals of their journey. The chief defect in Fox's character will perhaps be best described in the words of Carlyle "Cromwell found George Fox's enormous sacred selfconfidence none of the least of his attainments."-HODGKIN, THOMAS, 1896, George Fox (Leaders of Religion), p. 278. GENERAL One assertion I will venture to make, as suggested by my own experience, that there exist folios on the human understanding, and the nature of man, which would have a far juster claim to their high rank and celebrity, if, in the whole. huge volume, there could be found as much fulness of heart and intellect, as bursts forth in many a simple page of George Fox.-COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1817, Biographia Literaria. I have read quite through the ponderous folio of George Fox. . . . Pray how may I return it to Mr. Shewell, at Ipswich? I fear to send such a treasure by a stagecoach; not that I am afraid of the coachman or the guard's reading it, but it might be lost. Can you put me in a way of sending it in safty? The kind-hearted owner trusted it to me for six months; I think I was about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I skipped a word of it.-LAMB, CHARLES, 1823, Letter to Bernard Barton, Feb. 17, Letters, ed. Ainger, vol. II, pp. 64, 65. For my part, born and educated in this Society, I have seen enough to induce me to confess, that for its peculiarities I have little respect; for its great leading principles, the highest veneration. Amongst all the various society I have mingled in, I have nowhere seen a greater purity of life and sentiment; a more enviable preservation of a youth-like tenderness of conscience; a deeper sense of the obligations of justice; of the beauty of punctuality; or so sweet a maintenance of the domesticities of life. A thousand memories of youth, and youthful actions now past a thousand happy and tender associations-bind me in affection to it. I look with a grateful complacency on the luminous views of truth which George Fox drew from the great archives of Christianity, as a glorious legacy to the world; which has already received mighty benefits. therefrom, and is now prepared to reap still greater.-HOWITT, WILLIAM, 1834, George Fox, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, n. s., vol. 1, p. 585. John Sterling is interesting himself much about George Fox, whose life he means to write. He sadly misses his earnest, prophetic spirit in the present day, and thinks Carlyle the only one who at all represents it. Sterling has finished George Fox's Journal, which has interested him much, though he does not find it as remarkable as he had expected,-less originality and outflashing of the man's peculiar nature.-Fox, CAROLINE, 1842, Memories of Old Friends. He was so far from knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can the most corrupt passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned, than his English often is to the most acute and attentive reader.-MACAULAY, T. B., 1843, George Fox, Critical and Historical Essays. The influence of the career of George Fox is best appreciated by considering the subsequent character and action of the Society of Friends, of which he was the organiser. For few religious sects have been more thoroughly molded by their early leaders, and, so to speak, stereotyped as to their future constitution, than that Christian body. TALLACK, WILLIAM, 1868, George Fox, The Friends, and the Early Baptists, p. 1. An illegitimate son of the Church in a time of religious excitement, one of the most extraordinary men of genius in this eccentric generation. He was a grave, sober, reflective man, with no outgoings of volatile imagination, buoyant egotism, or healthy energy in any shape; as passive, unexcited, vacuous, as Bunyan was active, excitable, teeming with creative energy, -not pouring out force, but letting the world flow in upon him, judging and measuring the traditions and opinions floating about him, and striving in a calm way to reduce the bewildering mass to consistent clearness. Probably the more he pondered, the more he entangled himself in perplexing mazes, and he finally ceased to ponder, and took refuge in a set of arbitrary dogmas. . . His style is more compact, and has greater graphic felicity of plain language, than Bunyan's, but it has none of the Pilgrim's figurative richness.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 298. The most enthusiastic admirer of Fox need feel no sensitiveness at the exposure of his greatest defects, for after all deductions there will still remain in any fair characterization enough to fill the candid observer with highest respect. -Fox, NORMAN, 1877, George Fox and the Early Friends, Baptist Quarterly, vol. 11, p. 452. The bibliography of Fox's writings fill fifty-three pages of Smith's Catalogue. There can be no question of the healthiness and strength of his moral fibre. It is remarkable that Wesley, who was acquainted with Barclay's "Apology," never mentions Fox. Yet the early quakerism anticipated methodism in many important points, as well as in the curious detail of conducting the business of meetings by means of answers to queries. The literary skill of the "Apology" has drawn readers to it rather than to Fox's amorphous writings; but for pure quakerism, not yet fixed (1676) in scholastic forms, it is necessary to go to Fox.-GORDON, REV. ALEXANDER, 1889, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XX, p. 121. He is deficient in imagination and poetry. Stern, bare facts are his province, and he lays them before the reader with absolute impartiality. Of much the same religious opinions as John Bunyan, he differs widely from him, looking upon life with the eye of a moralist, and not of a poet. There are no flowers of imagination in his writings. He is no genius, no great writer. A plain earnest man, thinking only of his mission and never of himself, he tells us the story of his life in plain earnest words, without selfconsciousness and without effort. He is a man of sound common sense, great readiness of wit and undaunted courage. He, here and there, displays a certain grim humour and occasionally a touch of pathos. The main charms of his journal seem to consist in its sincerity and truthfulness. George Fox's style is emphatically the right sort for his matter. The interest of the reader is sustained but never inflamed. He carries conviction and arouses our sympathies by his unaffectedness and simplicity.-FITZROY, A. I., 1894, English Prose, ed. Craik, vol. III, p. 54. Fox was in prison oft in days when prisons were sickening receptacles of indescribable filth. His teaching, directed as it was against the intellectual formalities of Puritanism, was as effective as had been the Puritan attack upon the ceremonial formalities of Laud. Moreover, Fox's uncomplaning acceptance of every evil that befell him, and, above all, the sincerity exhibited by his refusal to strive with the ruffians who struck him gained him many a disciple who would not have been won over by the most attractive preaching. His sobriety of judgment— within certain limits-was as remarkable as his spiritual exaltation, and after thousands of excitable converts had swelled the numbers of the society it was George Fox who was the restraining influence in their midst.-GARDINER, SAMUEL RAWSON, 1897, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, vol. II, p. 24. In spite of his extraordinary interpretations of Scripture, he had in all practical matters great shrewdness and common sense. . . . Nor is it fair to judge him by his ungrammatical English, which had to be corrected for publication by bettereducated Quakers. . . . Even to this day one cannot read Fox's "Journal” without feeling the wonderful power and spirit of the man, and at times the homely beauty of his words.-FISHER, SYDNEY GEORGE, 1900, The True William Penn, p. 75. |