Page:The Harveian Oration1876.djvu/16

 see a great chemist not only devising very complete apparatus, but getting at the composition of bodies in the most roundabout ways by substitution or residues, so that one is doubtful which most to admire, the marvellous result or the skill which has attained it. There is not much trace of this in Harvey's works, for the subjects perhaps hardly admitted it; he was an anatomist and naturalist, and had only to procure his animals and to make his observations, but there are some parts in his writings which prove he could have shown ingenuity had it been wanted. Yet on the whole I should say he was not an imaginative man, and when Dr. Willis calls him so because he uses some poetical expressions, the fact is overlooked that such expressions are merely the result of culture. Imagination is shown in other ways, and there is little trace of it in Harvey’s writings; he bent his mind on the thing before him, and he kept it to objects of sense, and did not attempt, perhaps would not attempt, any flight which led him from the earth, except.