Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/12

 sphere of civil strife, a witness, and a sufferer by, one of the fiercest struggles between throne and people, between power and prescription on the one side and aggressive liberty on the other, that the world has ever seen. And this state of excitement, be it recollected, was but the carrying forward of the agitation of men's minds that had arisen out of the events of the Renaissance and the Reformation.

Harvey, as I have said, had for contemporaries many great thinkers and discoverers. He might have known both Shakspeare and Milton; for he was thirty-eight years old when Shakspeare died, and thirty when Milton was born. He was well acquainted with Lord Bacon, who died when Harvey was forty-eight years of age. Lord Napier, the inventor of Logarithms, Hobbes of Malmesbury, author of the “ Leviathan" Robert Boyle, Dryden, Cowley, and rare Ben Jonson were among his contemporaries. The Marquis of Worcester was busy with his water-compelling engine, and “Century of Inventions" Sir Hugh Middleton was at work with the New River; John Woodall, author of “ The Surgeon's Mate," was commending lemon-juice as preventive and cure of Scurvy; and Sydenham (thirty-three years of age