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HEROES OF INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.

ROBERT BOYLE.

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RHAPS the best example we can adduce of the manner in which wealth may be made subservient by its possessor, not only to the acquisition of knowledge, but also to its diffusion and improvement, is that of our celebrated countryman The Honourable ROBERT BOYLE. Boyle was borne at Lismore, in Ireland, in 1627, and was the seventh and youngest son of Richard, the first Earl of Cork, commonly called the Great Earl. The first advantage which he derived from the wealth and station of his father was an excellent education. After having enjoyed the instructions of a domestic tutor, he was sent, at an early age, to Eton. But his inclination, from the first, seems to have led him to the study of things, rather than of words. He remained at Eton only four years, "in the last of which," according to his own statement, in an account which he has given us of his early life, "he forgot much of that Latin he had got, for he was so addicted to more solid parts of knowledge, that he hated the study of bare words naturally, as something that relished too much of pedantry, to consort with his disposition and designs." In reference to what is here insinuated, in disparage

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ment of the study of languages merely as such, we may just remark that the observation is, perhaps, not quite so profound as it is plausible. So long as one mind differs from another, there will always be much difference of sentiment as to the comparative claims upon our regard of that, on the one hand, which addresses itself principally to the taste or the imagination, and that, on the other, which makes its appeal to the understanding only. But it is, at any rate, to be remembered that, in confining the epithet useful, as is commonly done, to the latter, it is intended to describe it as the useful only preeminently, and not exclusively. The agreeable or the graceful is plainly also useful. The study of language and style, therefore, cannot with any propriety be denounced as a mere waste of time; but, on the contrary, is well fitted to become to the mind a source both of enjoyment and of power. So great, indeed, is the influence of diction upon the common feelings of mankind, that no literary work, it may be safely asserted, has ever acquired a permanent reputation and popularity, or, in other words, produced any wide and enduring effect, which was not distinguished by the graces of its style. Their deficiency, in this respect, has been at least one of the causes of the comparative oblivion into which Mr. Boyle's own writings have fallen, and, doubtless, weakened the efficacy of such of them as aimed at anything beyond a bare statement of facts, even in his own day. It was this especially which exposed some of his moral lucubrations to Swift's annihilating ridicule.

On being brought home from Eton, Boyle, who was his father's favourite son, was placed under the care of a neighbouring clergyman, who, instructing him, he says, "both with care and civility, soon brought him to renew his first acquaintance with the Roman tongue, and to improve it so far that in that lan