to build (which now serves as a porch) Stephen Hales is buried, and the stone which covers his body is being worn away by the feet of the faithful. By the piety of a few botanists a mural tablet, on which the epitaph is restored, has been placed near the grave.
Horace Walpole called Hales "a poor, good, primitive creature" and Pope[1] (who was his neighbour) said "I shall be very glad to see Dr Hales, and always love to see him, he is so worthy and good a man." Peter Collinson writes of "his constant serenity and cheerfulness of mind"; it is also recorded that "he could look even upon wicked men, and those who did him unkind offices, without any emotion of particular indignation; not from want of discernment or sensibility; but he used to consider them only like those experiments which, upon trial, he found could never be applied to any useful purpose, and which he therefore calmly and dispassionately laid aside."
Hales' work may be divided into three heads:
| I. | Physiological, animal and vegetable; |
| II. | Chemical; |
| III. | Inventions and miscellaneous essays. |
Under No. I. I shall deal only with his work on plants. The last heading (No. III.) I shall only refer to slightly, but the variety and ingenuity of his miscellaneous publications is perhaps worth mention here as an indication of the quality of his mind. It seems to me to have had something in common with the versatile ingenuity of Erasmus Darwin and of his grandson Francis Galton. The miscellaneous work also exhibits Hales as a philanthropist, who cared passionately for bettering the health and comfort of his fellow creatures by improving their conditions of life.
His chief book from the physiological and chemical point of view is his Vegetable Staticks. It will be convenient to begin with the physiological part of this book, and refer to the chemistry later. Vegetable Staticks is a small 8vo of 376 pages, dated on the title-page 1727. The "Imprimatur Isaac Newton Pr. Reg. Soc." is dated February 16, 1726⁄7, and this date is of
- ↑ With a certain idleness Pope reduces him to plain Parson Hale, for the sake of a rhyme in the Epistle of Martha Blount, I. 198.
