attended the meetings kept before the Restoration, had to be regularly proposed and balloted for. A list, however, was now drawn out of "such persons as were known to those present, and judged by them willing and fit to be joined with them in their design, and who, if they should desire it, might be admitted before any others;" among whom we find the names of Lord Hatton, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Brereton, who had been a member of the old club, Sir Kenelm Digby, Mr. Evelyn, Mr. Slingsbey (another attendant at the meetings before the Restoration), Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Denham, Dr. Ward, Dr. Wallis, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Ent, Dr. Bate (author of the Elenchus Motuum), Dr. Willis, Dr. Cowley (the poet), Mr. Ashmole (founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford), Mr. Oldenburg (long secretary), &c. At the next meeting, on that day week, Sir Robert Moray informed the members, from the king, that his majesty had been made acquainted with their design, and that he highly approved of it, and would be ready to give it his encouragement. It appears to have been principally through Moray, who held the office of a sort of private secretary to Charles II., that the society acquired and was enabled to keep up its interest at court. Burnet, who knew him well, calls him "the first former of the Royal Society," and adds that "while he lived he was the life and soul of that body." "He was," says the bishop, "the most universally beloved and esteemed by men of all sides and sorts of any man I have ever known in my whole life. He was a pious man, and in the midst of armies and courts he spent many hours a day in devotion, which was in a most elevating strain. He had gone through the easy parts of mathematics, and

knew the history of nature beyond any man I ever yet knew. He had a genius much like Peiriski, as he is described by Gassendi."*. On the 16th of January, 1661, we find the king sending the society two loadstones by Sir Robert Moray, with a message, "that he expected an account from the society of some of the most considerable experiments upon them." Charles seems to have taken much interest in the society from the first; in the account of the meeting of the 4th of September this year, it is noted that "a proposition of Mr. Hobbes, for finding two mean proportionals between two straight lines given, was delivered into the society by Sir Paul Neile from the king, indorsed with his majesty's own hand, and was ordered to be registered;"‡ and on the 16th of October Sir Robert Moray acquaints the society that he and Sir Paul Neile had kissed the king's hand in their name; on which he was desired to return their most humble thanks to his majesty "for the favour and honour done them, of offering himself to be entered one of their society."§ "When the society first addressed themselves to his majesty," Bishop Spratt tells us, "he was pleased to express much satisfaction that this enterprise was begun in his reign. He then represented to them the gravity and difficulty of their work; and assured them of all the kind influence of his power and prerogative. Since that he has frequently committed many things to their search; he has referred many foreign rarities to their inspection; he has recommended many domestic improvements to their care; he has demanded the result of their trials in many appearances of nature;

* Own Time, i. 59. + Id. p. 42.

+ Birch, i. 10. § Id. p. 50.

he has been present, and assisted with his own hands, at the performing of many of their experiments, in his gardens, his parks, and on the river.”* On the 15th of July, 1662, a charter was passed incorporating the society under the name of the Royal Society, and constituting William Lord Brouncker the first president; Moray, Boyle, Brereton, Digby, Neile, Slingsbey, Petty, Drs. Wallis, Timothy Clarke, Wilkins, and Ent, William Areskine, Esq., cup-bearer to his majesty, Drs. Goddard and Christopher Wren, William Balle, Esq., Matthew Wren, Esq., Evelyn, T. Henshaw, Esq., Dudley Palmer, Esq., and Oldenburg, the first council; Balle, the first treasurer; and Wilkins and Oldenburg the first secretaries. And some additional privileges were granted by a second charter which passed the privy seal on the 22nd of April, 1663.† From a list drawn up on the 21st of May, in that year, it appears that the number of members was then a hundred and fifteen.‡ Among them, besides the names that have been already mentioned, are those of James Lord Annesley, John Aubrey, Esquire (the author of the Miscellanies), George Duke of Buckingham, George Lord Berkeley, Robert Lord Bruce, Isaac Barrow, B.D., Walter Lord Cavendish, Dr. Walter Charleton, John Earl of Crawford and Lindsay, Henry Marquis of Dorchester, William Earl of Devonshire, John Dryden, Esquire (the poet), John Graunt, Esquire (author of the Observations upon the Bills of Mortality), Mr. Robert Hooke

*History of the Royal Society, Lond. 1667, p. 133.

See the first Charter in Birch, i. 88-96; the second, 221-230.

Birch, i. 239.

(already a very active member, although the only one whose name stands thus undecorated by any designation either civil or academic), Alexander Earl of Kincardine, John Lord Lucas, John Viscount Massareene, James Earl of Northampton, Dr. Walter Pope (author of the well-known song called the Old Man's Wish, and other pieces of verse), Edward Earl of Sandwich, Thomas Spratt, M.A. (afterwards Bishop of Rochester), Edmund Waller, Esquire (the poet). The Royal Society, we thus perceive, besides the array of titled names which it doubtless owed in part to the patronage of the court, had at this time to boast of a considerable sprinkling of the cultivators of poetry and general literature among its men of science and experimentalists.* It had however been specially constituted for the promotion of natural or physical science: Regalis Societas Londini pro scientia naturali promovenda, or the Royal Society of London for improving natural knowledge, is the full title by which it is described in the second royal charter, and in the English oath therein directed to be taken by the president.†

* On the 7th of December, 1664, "it being suggested that there were several persons of the society whose genius was very proper and inclined to improve the English tongue, and particularly for philosophical purposes, it was voted that there be a committee for improving the English language and that they meet at Sir Peter Wyche's lodgings in Gray's Inn once or twice a month, and give an account of their proceedings to the society when called upon." A committee of twenty-one members was accordingly appointed for this purpose: among them were Dryden, Evelyn, Spratt, and Waller.-Birch, i. 499, 500.

In the first Charter it is called simply the Royal Society (Regalis Societas); but its object is there still farther limited to mere experimental science-" ad rerum naturalium artiumque utilium scientias experimentorum fide ulterius promovendas."

We have a curious account of the Royal Society at this early date from Louis XIV.'s historiographer, M. Samuel Sorbiere, who came over to this country in 1663, and after his return to France published a narrative of his adventures.* Sorbiere's book is on the whole a somewhat coxcombical performance, and, of course, in a hastily written description of a foreign country, in which he spent only a few months, he has made several mistakes as to matters of fact; but he may be trusted at least for the outside appearances of things which he saw with his own eyes, and which he evidently does not intend to misrepresent. One of his principal objects in visiting England, he states, was to renew his acquaintance with some old friends, and to be introduced to other learned persons here. One of those whom he had formerly known was Mr. Hobbes, whom, he tells us, he found much the same man as he had seen him fourteen years before," and even," he adds, "in the same posture in his chamber as he was wont to be every afternoon, wherein he betook himself to his studies after he had been walking about all the morning. This he did for his health, of which he =ought to have the greatest regard, he being at this time seventy-eight years of age. Besides which he plays so Long at tennis once a week till he is quite tired. I found ery little alteration in his face, and none at all in the vigour of his mind, strength of memory, and cheerfulness of spirit; all which he perfectly retained." Hobbes,

*Relation d'un Voyage en Angleterre, 1664: translated under the title of A Voyage to England, containing many things relating to the state of learning, religion, and other curiosities of that kingdom,' 1709.

+ English Translation, p. 27.

VOL. IV.

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