amusing letter to his niece Lady Barrymore, who had heard a report that he had been lately married.

“*** It is high time for me to hasten the payment of the thanks I owe your ladyship for the joy you are pleased to wish me, and of which that wish possibly gives me more than the occasion of it would. You have certainly reason, madam, to suspend your belief of a marriage celebrated by no priest but fame, and made unknown to the supposed bridegroom. I may possibly, ere long, give you a fit of the spleen upon this theme; but at present it were incongruous to blend such pure raillery, as I ever prate of matrimony and amours with, among things I am so serious in as those this scribble presents you. I shall, therefore, only tell you, that the little gentleman and I are still at the old defiance. You have carried away too many of the perfections of your sex, to leave enough in this country for the reducing so stubborn a heart as mine, whose conquest were a task of so much difficulty, and is so little worth it, that the latter property is always likely to deter any, that hath beauty and merit enough to overcome the former. But, though this untamed heart be thus insensible to the thing itself called love, it is yet very accessible to things very near of kin to that passion; and esteem, friendship, respect, and even admiration, are things, that their proper objects

fail not proportionately to exact of me, and consequently are qualities, which in their highest degrees are really and constantly paid my lady Barrymore by her

"Most obliged humble Servant,

"And affectionate Uncle,

"ROBERT BOYLE."

In person, Mr. Boyle was tall and slight, his countenance pale, his eyes weak, his constitution delicate, and demanding, throughout the greater part of his life, simple and regular habits, an exact regimen, and the most scrupulous temperance in diet. Under such circumstances, his prodigious acquisitions and unwearied labours show, in a striking manner, how the energies of a noble mind can triumph over the infirmities of a feeble body.

To characterize or even to enumerate the various philosophical works which Mr. Boyle published during his long career would far exceed the limits of the present Essay, and would be wholly foreign from its design. Suffice it to say, there are few topics connected with any of the branches of natural philosophy, on which he did not at one time or other touch.-It is more to the present purpose, to mention his theological writings. The principal, besides those contained in the present volume, are his "Christian Virtuoso ;"

c

"Seraphic Love;" a tract, entitled, "Greatness of Mind promoted by Christianity;" and his "Excellency of Theology, or the Preeminence of the Study of Divinity above that of Natural Philosophy." Most of these pieces,—and the same remark applies in great measure, to his philosophical writings, appeared under singularly disadvantageous circumstances. Some of them were written or commenced in very early life, though they were not published for many years after; and then in such haste and amidst the pressure of so many engagements, that the noble author had not time to revise and correct them as he would otherwise have done, or even to purify them from those juvenilities which occasionally disfigure his "Seraphic Love," and one or two other of his theological pieces. Some of them were mere sections and fragments of larger works, which the author never found time to complete; and most of them were composed while he was still prosecuting, with his characteristic ardour, his researches and studies into almost every branch of literature and science. It may be added lastly, that most of his writings were published as peculiar exigencies demanded or leisure afforded opportunity.

No complete collection was made during his lifetime, though it appears that he was earnestly solicited by the celebrated Cudworth, to allow such an

edition to be put forth.

After his death, they were

all published, together with his life, and some few posthumous pieces, by Birch.'

We must now say a few words of the character of this great man.

Though chiefly known to the world as an experimental philosopher, Boyle possessed powers which were almost equally adapted to several different departments of human pursuit. To him belonged all the noblest qualities of intellect, and none of them in scanty measure; aptitudes for almost every branch of science and of literature, and a capacity to excel in them all. His was none of those mutilated intellects, whose tendencies are so exclusively in one direction, that, although almost more than men in some respects, they are scarcely better than children in others, and who present to us a spectacle of strength and weakness, power and imbecility, as humiliating as it is instructive. The limits of any one science, however ample, could not circumscribe him. In a word, he was distinguished by that comprehensiveness, that compass of mind, which, more than any other quality, has characterised the greatest of our British philosophers, and which, while fitting them for taking the highest station in those particular departments of

They were published in five volumes, folio, and afterwards in six volumes quarto.

science to which they have respectively devoted themselves, has enabled them to attain no mean eminence in widely different directions.

In Boyle, this happy versatility of talent found its proper stimulus, for he conjoined with it the most ravenous appetite for knowledge. The severe sciences, experimental philosophy in all its branches, -pneumatics, hydrostatics, chemistry, physiology, anatomy, the study of plants and animals, -history, theology, the learned languages, more especially Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee, and sacred criticism, of which he was no mean master-all these he prosecuted with an ardour scarcely second to that with which he watched the processes of the crucible and alembic.

Though he cultivated poetry and polite literature only in early life, his whole writings show that he possessed imagination and taste in a degree which would have secured him no mean place in these departments, had not circumstances determined him to pursuits still more important.

Perhaps, considered simply as an experimental philosopher, great and just as is the fame he acquired, the multifarious objects of his pursuit prevented his attaining that reputation, which a more exclusive devotion to some single branch of science would have insured him. It has been well remarked by an eminent philosophical writer of the present day, that "Boyle seemed animated