Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/182

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BOYLE God continue your life and healthy that you may still enrich the world with more. You have much outdone Sir Francis Bacon in your natural experiments; and you have not insinuated any thing, as he is thought to have done, tending to irreligion, but rather the contrary" In 1685 he published "Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters, with directions as to the several methods of trying them""An Essay on the great Effects of even, languid, and unheeded Motion whereunto is annexed an Experimental Discourse of some hitherto little regarded Causes of the Salabrity and Insa- lubrity of the Air, and its Effects;" which was received with the greatest applause; and also, "Of the Recon- cileableness of specific Medicines to the corpuscular Philosophy; to which is added, a Discourse about the Advantages of the Use of simple Medieines." In addition to these philosophical works, he obliged the world with a theological one, "Of the high Veneration Man's Intellect owes to God, peculiarly for his Wisdom and Power." At the commencement of the following year, his “Free Inquiry into the vulgarly received Notion of Nature" appeared; a work which was so highly and justly admired as to be reprinted in the following year. In June 1686, his friend Dr. Gilbert Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, transmitted to him from the Hague the manuscript of his travels, which he had drawn up in the form of letters, addressed to Mr. Boyle; who, in his answer, expresses great satisfaction in “finding, that all men do not travel as most do, to observe buildings and gardens and modes, and other amusements of a superficial and almost insignificant curiosity; for your judicious remarks and reflections may hot a little improve both a statesman, a critic, and a divine, as well as they will make the writer pass for all three." About this time also, Mr. Boyle was compelled, though very anwillingly, to complain to the publie of some inconveniences under which he had long laboured; which he did in "An adver-