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 part, the expense of printing the Indian, Irish, and Welsh Bibles (1685-86); of the Turkish New Testament, and of the Malayan version of the Gospels and Acts (Oxford, 1677). As governor of the Corporation for the Spread of the Gospel in New England, and as director of the East India Company (the charter of which he was instrumental in procuring), he made strenuous efforts, and gave liberal pecuniary aid towards the spread of Christianity in those regions. He contributed, moreover, largely to the publication of Burnet's 'History of the Reformation,' bestowed a splendid reward upon Pococke for his translation into Arabic of Grotius' 'De Veritate,' and during some time spent 1,000l. a year in private charity. Nor was science forgotten. Besides his heavy regular outlay, and help afforded to indigent savants, we hear in 1657, in a letter from Oldenburg, of a scheme for investing 12,000l. in forfeited Irish estates, the proceeds to be devoted to the advancement of learning; and a looked-for increase to his fortunes in 1662 should have been similarly applied, but that, being 'cast upon impropriations,' he felt bound to consecrate it to religious uses.

On the Restoration, he was solicited by the Earl of Clarendon to take orders; but excused himself, on the grounds of the absence of an inner call, and of his persuasion that arguments in favour of religion came with more force from one not professionally pledged to uphold it. This determination involved the refusal of the provostship of Eton, offered to him in 1665. He also repeatedly declined a peerage, and died the only untitled member of his large family.

In 1668 he left Oxford for London, and resided until his death in Lady Ranelagh's house in Pall Mall. The meetings of the Royal Society perhaps furnished in part the inducement to this move. Boyle might be called the representative member of this distinguished body. He had taken a leading part in its foundation; he sat on its first council; the description and display of his ingenious experiments gave interest to its proceedings; he was elected its president 30 Nov. 1680, but declined to act from a scruple about the oaths, and was replaced by Wren. His voluminous writings flowed from him in an unfailing stream from 1660 to 1691, and procured him an immense reputation, both at home and abroad. Most of them appeared in Latin, as well as in English, and were more than once separately reprinted. In the 'Sceptical Chymist' (Oxford, 1661) he virtually demolished, together with the peripatetic doctrine of the four elements, the Spagyristic doctrine of the tria prima, tentatively substituting the principles of a ' mechanical philosophy,' expounded in detail in his 'Origin of Forms and Qualities' (1666). Founded on the old atomic hypothesis, these accord, in the main, with the views of many recent physicists. They postulate one universal kind of matter, admit in the construction of the visible world only moving atoms, and derive diversity of substance from their various modes of grouping and manners of movement, Boyle added as a corollary the transmutability of differing forms of matter by the rearrangement of their particles effected through the agency of fire or otherwise; referred 'sensible qualities' to the action of variously constituted particles on the human frame, and declared, in the obscure phraseology of the time, that 'the grand efficient of forms is local motion' (Works, ii. 483). He acquiesced in, rather than accepted, the corpuscular theory of light, but clearly recognised in heat the results of a 'brisk' molecular agitation (ibid. i. 282).

In 'Experiments and Considerations touching Colours' (1663) he described for the first time the iridescence of metallic films and soap-bubbles; in 'Hydrostatical Paradoxes ' (1666) he enforced, by numerous and striking experiments (presented to the Royal Society in May 1664), the laws of fluid equilibrium. His statement concerning the 'Incalescence of Quicksilver with Gold' (Phil. Trans. 21 Feb. 1676) drew the serious attention of Newton (see his letter to Oldenburg in Boyle's Works, v. 396), and a widespread sensation was created by his 'Historical Account of a Degradation of Gold ' (1678), the interest of both these pseudo-observations being derived from their supposed connection with alchemistic transformations. Boyle's faith in their possibility was further evidenced by the repeal, procured through his influence in 1689, of the statute 5 Henry IV against ' multiplying gold.'

Amongst Boyle's numerous correspondents were Newton, Locke, Aubrey, Evelyn, Oldenburg, Wallis, Beale, and Hartlib. To him Evelyn unfolded, 3 Sept. 1659, his scheme for the foundation of a 'physico-mathematic college,' and Newton, 28 Feb. 1679, his ideas regarding the qualities of the aether. Nathaniel Highmore dedicated to him in 1651 his 'History of Generation;' Wallis in 1659 his essay on the 'Cycloid;' Sydenham in 1666 his 'Methodus curandi Febres,' intimating Boyle's frequent association with him in his visits to his patients; and Burnet addressed to him in 1686 the letters constituting his 'Travels.' Wholesale plagiarism and theft formed a vexatious, though no less flattering, tribute to his fame. Hence the '