Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 109 June to November 1904 . , indeed, the reading ofQuintus Curtius, so he says, had startedBoyle u in the unsatisfied love of knowl-edge, but he began his scientific experi-ments in the melancholy solitude of 102 HARPERS MONTHLY MAGAZINE. his own country house of Stalbridge, inDorsetshire, where he buried himself forthat purpose in his nineteenth year. Weread of the great earthen furnace whichhe set up there, of his limbecs and recip-ients, of his wind-gun and his magnetics,and we form an impression of him thusyouthful, but with the freshness fa-ding from
Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 109 June to November 1904 . , indeed, the reading ofQuintus Curtius, so he says, had startedBoyle u in the unsatisfied love of knowl-edge, but he began his scientific experi-ments in the melancholy solitude of 102 HARPERS MONTHLY MAGAZINE. his own country house of Stalbridge, inDorsetshire, where he buried himself forthat purpose in his nineteenth year. Weread of the great earthen furnace whichhe set up there, of his limbecs and recip-ients, of his wind-gun and his magnetics,and we form an impression of him thusyouthful, but with the freshness fa-ding from him, all the natural joys oflife neglected, wholly absorbed in, andas it were blighted by, his vain scien-tific passion. From Stalbridge, Robert Boyle wasaccustomed to come up to London to at-tend the meetings of the Invisible Phi-losophers, and, young as he was — nottwenty years of age at the beginning,—his ardor made itself felt at once. Heseems at first to have had little ambitionto produce his results, and none to daz-zle the world with publications—. Portrait of Seth Ward, Bishop of SalisburyFrom an engraving by David Loggan Oh, such a life as he proposed to live, When he had learned it,When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. The fortune of Robert Boyle, as aseventh son, was not large. He spentall the income of it on his experiments; itwas said of him that his whole life wasabsorbed in the pursuit of nature, asa hound pursues a hart without a mo-ments deviation of purpose through thelabyrinth of the forest; he neglectedlove and politics and sport, all the legit-imate pleasures, that he might devoteevery hour of his existence to the dis-covery of natural causes. Such was thecharacter of the extraordinary man whopresented himself, like an atom of con-suming radium, in the midst of the littlecircle of Invisible Philosophers. In 1049 the Invisibles underwent animportant transforma-tion. So many of themwere now engaged atOxford that it was de-te
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