are better pleased with the charming amusement of forming hypotheses than the toilsome drudgery of making observations.

The emptiness and uncertainty of all those systems, whether venerable for their antiquity, or agreeable for their novelty, he has evidently shewn: and not only declared,, but proved, that we are entirely ignorant of the principles of things, and that all the knowledge we have is of such qualities alone as are discoverable by experience, or such as may be deduced from them by mathematical demonstration.

This discourse, filled as it was with piety, and a true sense of the greatness of the Supreme Being, and the incomprehensibility of his works, gave such offence to a professor of Franeker, who professed the utmost esteem for des Cartes, and considered his principles as the bulwark of orthodoxy, that he appeared in vindication of his darling author, and spoke of the injury done him with the utmost vehemence, declaring little less than that the Cartesian system and the Christian must inevitably stand and fall together, and that to say that we were ignorant of the principles of things, was not only to enlist among the Sceptics, but sink into Atheism itself.

So far can prejudice darken the understanding, as to make it consider precarious systems as the chief support of sacred and invariable truth.

This treatment of Boerhaave was so far resented by the governors of his university, that they procured from Franeker a recantation of the invective that had been thrown out against him; this was not only complied with, but offers were made him of more ample satisfaction; to which he returned an answer not less to his honour than the victory he gained, "that he should think himself sufficiently compensated, if his adversary received no further molestation on his account,"

So far was this weak and injudicious attack from shaking a reputation not casually raised by fashion or caprice, but founded on solid merit, that the same year his correspondence was desired upon Botany and Natural Philosophy by the Academy of Sciences at Paris, of which he was, upon the death of count Marsigli, in the year 1728, elected a member.

Nor were the French the only nation by which this great man was courted and distinguished; for, two years after, he was elected fellow of our Royal Society.

It cannot be doubted but, thus caressed and honoured with the highest and most publick marks of esteem by other nations, he became more celebrated in the university: for Boerhaave was not one of those learned men, of whom the world has seen too many, that disgrace their studies by their vices, and by unaccountable weaknesses make themselves ridiculous at home, while their writings procure them the veneration of distant countries, where their learning is known, but not their follies.

Not that his countrymen can be charged with being insensible of his excellences till other nations taught them to admire him; for in 1718 he was chosen to succeed Le Mort in the professorship of chemistry; on which occasion he pronounced an oration " De Chemiâ errores suos expurgante," in which he treated that science with an elegance of style not often to be found in chemical writers, who seem generally to have affected not only a barbarous, but unintelligible phrase, and to have, like the Pythagoriens of old, wrapped up their secrets in symbols and ænigmatical expressions, either because they believed that mankind would reverence most what they least understood, or because they wrote not from benevolence but vanity, and were desirous to be praised for their knowledge, though they could not prevail upon themselves to communicate it.

In 1722, his course both of lectures and practice was

interrupted by the gout, which, as he relates it in his speech after his recovery, he brought upon himself, by an imprudent confidence in the strength of his own constitution, and by transgressing those rules which he had a thousand times inculcated to his pupils and acquaintance. Rising in the morning before day, he went immediately, hot and sweating, from his bed into the open air, and exposed himself to the cold dews.*

The history of his illness can hardly be read without horror; he was for five months confined to his bed, where he lay upon his back without daring to attempt the least motion, because any effort renewed his torments, which were so exquisite that he was at length not only deprived of motion, but of sense. Here art was at a stand: nothing could be attempted, because nothing could be proposed with the least prospect of success. At length having, in the sixth month of his illness, obtained some remission, he took simple medicines in large quantities, and at length wonderfully recovered.

His recovery, so much desired, and so unexpected, was celebrated on Jan. 11, 1723, when he opened his school again, with general joy and public illuminations.

It would be an injury to the memory of Boerhaave not to mention what was related by himself to one of his friends, that when he lay whole days and nights without sleep, he found no method of diverting his thoughts so effectual as meditation upon his studies, and that he often relieved and mitigated the sense of his torments by the recollection of what he had read, and by reviewing those stores of knowledge which he had reposited in his memory.

This is perhaps an instance of fortitude and steady composure of mind, which would have been for ever the

"Succos pressos bibit Noster herbarum Cichoriæ, Endiviæ Fumariæ, Nasturtii aquatici, Veronica aquatica latifoliæ, copiâ ingenti, simul de lutiens abundantissimè gummi 'ferumlaceâ Asiaticâ."-Orig. Edit.

boast of the stoick schools, and increased the reputation of Seneca or Cato. The patience of Boerhaave, as it was more rational was more lasting than theirs, as it was that patientia Christiana which Lipsius, the great master of the Stoical Philosophy, begged of God in his last hours; it was founded on religion, not vanity, not on vain reasonings, but on confidence in God.

In 1727 he was seized with a violent burning fever, which continued so long that he was once more given up by his friends.

From this time he was frequently afflicted with returns of his distemper, which yet did not so far subdue him, as to make him lay aside his studies or his lectures, till in 1726 he found himself so worn out that it was improper for him to continue any longer the professorship of botany or chemistry, which he therefore resigned April 28, and upon his resignation spoke a "Sermo Academicus," or oration, in which he asserts the power and wisdom of the Creator from the wonderful fabrick of the human body; and confutes all those idle reasoners, who pretend to explain the formation of parts, or the animal operations, to which he proves that art can produce nothing equal, nor any thing parallel. One instance I shall mention which is produced by him, of the vanity of any attempt to rival the work of God. Nothing is more boasted by the admirers of chemistry, than that they can, by artificial heats and digestion, imitate the productions of nature. "Let all these heroes of science meet together," says Boerhaave; "let them take bread and wine, the food that forms the blood of man, and by assimilation contributes to the growth of the body: let them try all their arts, they shall not be able from these materials to produce a single drop of blood. So much is the most common act of Nature beyond the utmost efforts of the most extended science!"

From this time Boerhaave lived with less publick employment indeed, but not an idle or an useless life;

for, besides his hours spent in instructing his scholars, a great part of his time was taken up by patients which came, when the distemper would admit it, from all parts of Europe to consult him, or by letters which, in more urgent cases, were continually sent to enquire his opinion, and ask his advice.

Of his sagacity, and the wonderful penetration with which he often discovered and described, at first sight of a patient, such distempers as betray themselves by no symptoms to common eyes, such wonderful relations have been spread over the world, as though attested beyond doubt, can scarcely be credited. I mention none of them, because I have no opportunity of collecting testimonies, or distinguishing between those accounts which are well proved, and those which owe their rise to fiction and credulity.

Yet I cannot but implore, with the greatest earnestness, such as have been conversant with this great man, that they will not so far neglect the common interest of mankind, as to suffer any of these circumstances to be lost to posterity. Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult. The skill to which Boerhaave attained, by a long and unwearied observation of nature, ought therefore to be transmitted in all its particulars to future ages, that his successors may be ashamed to fall below him, and that none may hereafter excuse his ignorance by pleading the impossibility of clearer knowledge.

Yet so far was this great master from presumptuous confidence in his abilities, that, in his examinations of the sick, he was remarkably circumstantial and particular. He well knew that the originals of distempers are often at a distance from their visible effects; that to conjecture, where certainty may be obtained, is either vanity or negligence; and that life is not to be sacrificed, either to an affectation of quick discernment, or of crowded VOL. XII.

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