The letter to Vlackveld was written the very year, within a few weeks indeed, of his death. It is even touching—it is in vain, he says, to his correspondent, that he would apply the spur; he has already felt his right to demand his release from duty; yet would he still be honorably considered by his contemporaries, and he begs his friend Vlackveld to love him to the last.
We have taken occasion from time to time in the course of our narrative, to glance at the mental and moral constitution, and also at the personal character, of Harvey, principally by way of inference from his conduct on particular occasions, and from what appears in his writings. Happily we have in addition a few particulars from the pen of a contemporary, John Aubrey,[1] which, though perchance they do not harmonize in every respect with the facts in his public life and the portrait he gives us of himself in his works, are nevertheless extremely interesting, and cannot be left unnoticed in a Life of Harvey.
"In person," Aubrey informs us, "Harvey was not tall, but of the lowest stature; round faced; olivaster (like wainscot) complexion; little eye, round, very black, full of spirit; his hair black as a raven, but quite white 20 years before he died." The portrait we have of Harvey by Cornelius Jansen, in the library of the Royal College of Physicians, as well as of one, we presume by Bemmel, now in the possession of Dr. Richard Bright, corresponds with this account: the temperament is nervous-bilious; the forehead is compact and square, and of greater width than usual between the temples; the expression is highly intellectual, contemplative, and manly.
"In temper," Aubrey says, "he was like the rest of his brothers, very choleric, and, in his younger days, he wore a dagger, as the fashion then was, which he would be apt to draw
- ↑ Letters and Lives of Eminent Persons, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1813.
