His professional course, meanwhile, was steadily upward. A friendship which he had contracted in 1705 with Dr. Sydenham greatly aided his progress. Sydenham was retiring from practice, and gave to Sloane his cordial recommendations. In 1712[[50]] he was made Physician Extraordinary to the Queen, whom he attended, two years afterwards, on her death bed. He filled the office of Physician-in-Chief to George the First, by whom, on the 3rd April, 1716, he was created a Baronet. He was, I believe, the first physician who received that dignity. In 1719 he became President of the College of Physicians. In 1727 he received the crowning honour of a life which, to an unusual degree, had already been replete with honourable distinctions of almost every kind. He was placed in the chair of the Royal Society, as the next successor of Newton.
Eighteen years before, he had been welcomed into the illustrious Academy of Sciences, the establishment of which at Paris had followed so quickly upon the foundation of the Royal Society. Both academies had worked with conspicuous success. Both had been adorned by a long line of eminent members. They had frequently, and in many ways, interchanged friendly communion. To Sloane himself, the reception at Paris had been the prelude of many like invitations from other learned societies in various parts of Europe. No man of his time had a worthier estimate of the dignity involved in the freemasonry of science, nor had any a more conscientious sense of the duties and responsibilities which it entails.
As President of the Royal Society, one of his earliest proposals to the Council was that, for the future, no pecuniary contribution should be received from foreign members whose fellowship it invited as an honour. He urged this step, notwithstanding that the Society was at the time in debt from an unusual arrear of subscriptions,—an arrear so great that he felt it to be right that the Council should be recommended to sue their offending brethren in the law courts. His third proposal, like both the others, had for its object the incontestible advantage and honour of the Society. He checked some nascent abuses in elections by making it necessary that there should be an express approval of every new candidate by the Council, on the recommendation of not less than three fellows, before proceeding to a ballot in the Society at large.
The Natural History of Jamaica.
The work by which Sloane holds his chief place in the literature of science, the Natural History of Jamaica, was the work of no less than thirty-eight years. Its materials, as we have seen, were collected in the years 1687 and 1688. The first volume was not published until 1708. Seventeen additional years elapsed before the completion of the second. The fact indicates how crowded with avocations its author’s life was, as well as the marked conscientiousness and thoroughness which from youth to age characterized his doings.
The Jamaica book cannot be opened without some appreciation, even at first sight, of this faculty of thoroughness. For it is shown not more by the elaboration and beauty of the illustrations, than by the copious citation of authorities, on all points in relation to which authority is valuable. That all previous labourers in his field should have their full meed of acknowledgment is with Sloane a prime anxiety.
Sloane’s services to Arboriculture.
The West Indian Voyage of 1687–89 had had, it may here be remarked, other results besides that of exciting new emulation—at home and abroad—in the study of natural history, and in the amassing in cabinets and presses of the dried and preserved objects of that study. It gave a marked impulse to arboriculture, both in England and in Ireland. What Sloane had to show, and to tell of, led to the sending oversea of vessels expressly prepared for the transport of living trees; and several noble ornaments of our parks and pleasure grounds date their introduction to English and Irish soil from the expeditions so set on foot.
The Natural History of Jamaica excited considerable interest abroad, as well as at home. |Corresp. of Sloane and Briasson; in MS. Sloane, 4039, ff. 136–140.| Bernard de Jussieu offered to undertake the editorship of a French translation, and Briasson, a Parisian bookseller of some eminence, wrote to Sloane that he was willing to incur the charges and risk of publication, on condition that the author would send the copper plates of the original work to Paris, for use in the new edition. Sir Hans, however, objected to incur the risk of this transmission across the channel, but was willing to have the needful impression worked off in London; an arrangement to which the Parisian, in his turn, was disinclined to assent, being of opinion—perhaps not unjustly—that, in 1743, the art of copperplate printing was better understood in Paris than in London. On these grounds the negotiation was broken off.
Growth of the Sloane Museum.