Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/59

 53 I should have thought it worth while to in- vestigate Walter Warner's claims at all. I will shelter myself, in the first instance, behind the example of Sir George Ent, who, feeling and acting by Harvey as Launcelot in his better days felt and acted by Arthur, took similar pains to set aside the similar fable as to Harvey's indebtedness to Father Sarpi. And, in the second place, I will remind my hearers that it was but as recently as 1838 that an article appeared in the London and Westminster Review, in which the claims of the Italian monk just mentioned were once again brought forward with surprising con- fidence, plausibility, and ignorance. It was possible, I thought, that the same paltry but evil spirit which animated Dutens in writing his Inquiry into the Origin of the Discoveries attributed to the Moderns (1767 k), and in coming to the conclusion k Dutens was as well acquainted with the excellent work of William Wotton, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, published in 1694, on the other side of the question, as a little bitter mind can ever be with a work or the working of a noble and generous one. His repeated references to it show this, as also the unim- provable character of his shallow poverty-stricken spirit.