Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/10

vi making of my task a labour of love, I had soon completed a new translation of the Exercises on the Heart and Blood, with equal pleasure and profit to myself.

The work on came next under review. The English version of this I had heard it positively asserted was the original, was Harvey's own; here therefore my business of editor would properly begin. But I had not gone through a couple of pages of the text, before difficulties like those already experienced met me again. That the statement above referred to was erroneous, speedily became apparent; and a little inquiry enabled me to discover that the English version of the Exercises on Generation was the work of a physician named Llewellen. Though not incorrect generally, there was, nevertheless, a great deal that I wished had been otherwise rendered; and then the scientific and professional language of two centuries back looked strangely when examined by the eye, and had an unusual sound when tried upon the ear. Only anxious to present to my brethren in the most appropriate and attractive form possible, the writings of him who had still met me in his Works and with his contemplative look in his Portrait as a kind of divinity in medicine, I even girded myself up for the long and laborious enterprise of translating anew into our mother tongue the work on Generation, and at length achieved my task, not without difficulty.

The short paper on the of  appears in the Philosophical Transactions in English; but it stands there as a translation; and having now translated so much myself, I even thought it would be well to translate that also, and so it was achieved.

The, though frequently quoted, have never