Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/24

 anyone to play unconsciously with the handle of a small dagger which he wore.

For the rest, unwearied in his pursuit of knowledge, most rapid in its acquisition, so that his diploma of Doctor of Medicine, which he obtained at Padua at the early age of twenty-four, is not worded in the common language of those documents, laudatory of course, though they always are, but well-nigh exhausts the Latin language of its superlatives, and speaks of how all listened with intensest pleasure to his clear and most appropriate answers, and how most astonishingly and most excellently ‘mirifice et excellentissime’ he had borne himself.

The knowledge thus attained he was always as ready to impart as he was eager to increase; while nothing tried him half so much as the loss of time spent in defending his discoveries or in answering captious critics, to whom he yet was always ready to give credit for candour and a love of truth like his own. He seems to have found his chief relaxation when alone in Virgil, whose mediæval character, half-wizard, half-dim unconscious prophet of a coming