BOOK I, THE FOUNDERS OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM. SLOANE AND Newton Correspondence and Papers; cited by Brewster, in Memoirs, &c. (2nd Edit.), vol. ii, ff. 185, 186. Transactioneer, with some of his Philosophical Fancies.' The author of the satire was Dr. William KING, but, for a considerable time, the authorship was unknown. There was great anxiety to discover it, not only on SLOANE'S part individually, but on the part of the Council at large. The whole affair was trivial, and would be unworthy of memory but that it led to some dissensions within the Society itself, which for a long time left marks of their influence. SLOANE Conceived that The Transactioneer was the production of Dr. John WooDWARD-the author of Natural History of the Earth-who was himself a member of the Royal Society's Council. WOODWARD, in denying the imputation, endorsed the satire. Whether there was not some occasion given,' he said to the Council, may be worth your consideration. This I am sure of: The world has been now, for some time past, very loud upon that subject. And there were those who laid the charges so much wrong, that I have but too often had occasion to vindicate the Society itself, and that in public company.' The ill feeling thus excited lasted a long time. It seemed at length, that the Society must lose either the services of its laborious Secretary or those of his active-tongued opponent. The petty dissension came to a height when SLOANE chanced to make some passing medical comment on the words the bezoar is a gall-stone,' occurring in a paper which he was reading to the Society, from the Memoirs of the Parisian Academy of Sciences. SLOANE's casual remark drew from WOODWARD the offensive words, 'No man who understands anatomy would make such an assertion.' On another occasion he interrupted some observation or other made by SLOANE, by exclaiming Speak sense, or English, and we shall understand you.' A friend or two Chap. VI. FOUNDERS OF THE of WOODWARD tried hard to back him by enlisting the Book 1, illustrious President on their side. They reminded NEW- THE TON that he had been often himself impatient under the medical dissertations, and they praised Dr. WooDWARD'S SLOANE acquirements in philosophy. For a seat in the Council,' replied Sir Isaac, a man should be a moral philosopher, MUSEUM. the Royal as well as a natural one.' Eventually, it was resolved: Records of That Dr. WOODWARD be removed from the Council, for society. creating a disturbance by the said reflecting words upon Dr. SLOANE. The latter was of a very forgiving temper, and he soon sought to be reconciled with his adversary. His professional course, meanwhile, was steadily upward. A friendship which he had contracted in 1705 with Dr. SYDENHAM greatly aided his progress. SYDENHAM was retiring from practice, and gave to SLOANE his cordial recommendations. In 1712* he was made Physician Extraordinary to the Queen, whom he attended, two years afterwards, on her death bed. He filled the office of Physician-in-Chief to GEORGE THE FIRST, by whom, on the 3rd April, 1716, he was created a Baronet. He was, I believe, the first physician who received that dignity. In 1719 he became President of the College of Physicians. In 1727 he received the crowning honour of a life which, to an unusual degree, had already been replete with honourable distinctions of almost every kind. He was placed in the chair of the Royal Society, as the next successor of NEWTON. Eighteen years before, he had been welcomed into the illustrious Academy of Sciences, the establishment of which at Paris had followed so quickly upon the foundation of the Royal Society. Both academies had worked with con * History of Europe [the precursor of the Annual Register], for 1712. Book I, FOUNDERS OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM. THE HISTORY OF spicuous success. Both had been adorned by a long line of eminent members. They had frequently, and in many ways, interchanged friendly communion. To SLOANE himself, the reception at Paris had been the prelude of many like invitations from other learned societies in various parts of Europe. No man of his time had a worthier estimate of the dignity involved in the freemasonry of science, nor had any a more conscientious sense of the duties and responsibilities which it entails. As President of the Royal Society, one of his earliest proposals to the Council was that, for the future, no pecuniary contribution should be received from foreign members whose fellowship it invited as an honour. He urged this step, notwithstanding that the Society was at the time in debt from an unusual arrear of subscriptions,-an arrear so great that he felt it to be right that the Council should be recommended to sue their offending brethren in the law courts. His third proposal, like both the others, had for its object the incontestible advantage and honour of the Society. He checked some nascent abuses in elections by making it necessary that there should be an express approval of every new candidate by the Council, on the recommendation of not less than three fellows, before proceeding to a ballot in the Society at large. The work by which SLOANE holds his chief place in the literature of science, the Natural History of Jamaica, was the work of no less than thirty-eight years. Its materials, as we have seen, were collected in the years 1687 and 1688. The first volume was not published until 1708. Seventeen additional years elapsed before the completion. of the second. The fact indicates how crowded with avocations its author's life was, as well as the marked con 1 scientiousness and thoroughness which from youth to age Book 1, characterized his doings. Chap. VI. MUSEUM. The Jamaica book cannot be opened without some appreciation, even at first sight, of this faculty of thoroughness. SLOANE For it is shown not more by the elaboration and beauty of the illustrations, than by the copious citation of authorities, on all points in relation to which authority is valuable. That all previous labourers in his field should have their full meed of acknowledgment is with SLOANE a prime anxiety. SLOANE'S TURE. The West Indian Voyage of 1687-89 had had, it may here be remarked, other results besides that of exciting new ARBORICUL emulation-at home and abroad-in the study of natural history, and in the amassing in cabinets and presses of the dried and preserved objects of that study. It gave a marked impulse to arboriculture, both in England and in Ireland. What SLOANE had to show, and to tell of, led to the sending oversea of vessels expressly prepared for the transport of living trees; and several noble ornaments of our parks and pleasure grounds date their introduction to English and Irish soil from the expeditions so set on foot. Corresp. of Sloane and Brinsson; in MS. Sloane, The Natural History of Jamaica excited considerable interest abroad, as well as at home. Bernard de JUSSIEU offered to undertake the editorship of a French translation, and BRIASSON, a Parisian bookseller of some eminence, wrote to SLOANE that he was willing to incur the charges and risk of publication, on condition that the author would 4039, f. 136send the copper plates of the original work to Paris, for 140. use in the new edition. Sir Hans, however, objected to incur the risk of this transmission across the channel, but was willing to have the needful impression worked off in London; an arrangement to which the Parisian, in his Book 1, THE OF THE SLOANE GROWTH OF MUSEUM. turn, was disinclined to assent, being of opinion-perhaps not unjustly that, in 1743, the art of copperplate printing was better understood in Paris than in London. On these grounds the negotiation was broken off. Amidst these varied avocations, the growth of the library THE SLOANE and museum went on unceasingly. Friends and foes contributed, in turn, to its enrichment. The year 1702 saw the incorporation with the original gatherings of the West India voyage of the splendid collections of COURTEN, the friend of SLOANE's youth. In 1710, Sir Hans acquired the valuable herbaria of his old assailant, Leonard PLUKENET. In 1718 he purchased the extensive collections, in all departments of natural history, of another friend of early years, James PETIVER. The herbarium of Adam BUDdle, a botanist little remembered now but of note in his generation, came to SLOANE, as a token of friendship, from the MS. Sloane, death-bed of its collector. The scientific possessions of Dr. Christopher MERRET were purchased from his son, and from time to time, when valuable collections were known to be on sale upon the Continent, agents went across to buy. 4069, passim. THE HISTORY Of these numerous sources of augmentation the museum of PETIVER was next in importance to that of COURTEN -but with a considerable interval. It is said (in the contemporary correspondence, as I think) that its cost to SLOANE was four thousand pounds. But remembering what four thousand pounds was a hundred and fifty years ago, there is reason to suspect some exaggeration in the statement. James PETIVER, when Sir Hans first became acquainted with him, was serving, as an apprentice, the then apotheCOLLEC- cary of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He afterwards became apothecary to the Charter House. He had, in one way TIONS OF |
