Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/73

 67 his companions, who still feel and advance upon the bottom beneath them. The line by degrees narrows into a column, and the column, after a longer interval, narrows into a single file. To the foremost horseman courage is necessary, as imagination is to the discoverer, and, impelled by this feeling, he may put a wide interval between himself and his companions, and reaching the opposite bank long before them, may have leisure to look down upon them, may be looked up to by them and by the rest of the world, whilst for some time in solitary occupation of that vantage ground. Such I conceive to be a fair representation, in the way of metaphor, the best and shortest way, perhaps, of re- presenting such complex relations, of the relations held by Harvey, and indeed by most or all discoverers, to their contem- poraries, to their compeers, and to the con- ditions whereby they are surrounded. It may be expected, perhaps, that, coming from Oxford, and having been recently elected a Fellow of the College — the Warden- ship of which Harvey held for something more than a year (April 1645 t° midsummer F 2