Page:The Hunterian Oration,1838.djvu/10

2 philosophic a mind; but curiosity is a genuine gossip, and seizes with the same impertinent avidity upon the domestic microcosm of an illustrious citizen and of one notorious for his crimes.

The best life of a philosopher is contained in his works; these are his veritable autobiography, by which alone his powers and his place in the history of his species can be determined. The circumstances of Hunter’s life, if we except the direction and example of his justly celebrated brother, presented no richer opportunities than fall to the lot of most hospital surgeons: it was his mind, and not his circumstances, which made him great. His reputation, like his Museum, was the gathering of his own genius and labour. Had we unfortunately been deprived of all Hunter’s writings, or had he never written a line, the Collection which bears his name would have abundantly recorded the scope of his vast design, the originality and the philosophical spirit of his researches. I do not by this observation mean to imply that any mode of transmitting to future ages the most valuable of all our possessions, offers a substitute for that divine art which can so multiply and diffuse its treasures as indeed to constitute a memorial “ære perennius.” “Books,” says a great authority, “are the legacies that genius leaves to mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as