Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/86

 80 His style has been spoken of as being more or less inelegant and unadorned ; and the Latin tongue which he used lends itself but grudgingly and awkwardly to the purposes of science, being strictly a political language, habituated and framed to describe the march of the legions, the disputes of the forum, or the denunciations of the moralist. Still, Harvey's style has always an impres- siveness and solidity of its own ; and some- times, as for example in the glorious eighth chapter, De Motu Cordis, it rises into real eloquence where a great occasion justifies the use of repetitions, of antitheses, and abundance of metaphors. But, though the use of stilted phraseology was common enough among Harvey's contemporaries, and though his imagination was vivid and active enough, his study (for to this perhaps we may ascribe it) of the excellent models mentioned saved him, as such a study can foreign language to his acquirement of Latin (which I presuppose), that second foreign language should, in the case of Englishmen, be, for linguistic and educational, as well as for more lowly practical reasons, not Greek but German.