His horse would carry him between Oxford and London at any time: each night, on the road, he might lie under some hospitable roof of friend or relative, in mansions set in shady parks, amid flower-gardens and fishponds. And once in London, his sister Ranelagh’s door in the Old Mall was always open to him. And Gresham College, and Mr. Hartlib, and Mr. Clodius, and the rest of the Invisibles would receive him with ecstasy. The Hartlib family had moved to Charing Cross; and Hartlib and his “very chemical son” were excessively happy in their new abode.
“As for us, poor earthworms, we are crawling in my house about our quondam back-kitchen, whereof my son hath made a goodly laboratory; yea, such a one, as men (who have had the favour and privilege to see or be admitted into it) affirm they have never seen the like for its several advantages and commodiousnesses. It hath been employed days and nights with no small success, God be praised, these many weeks together.”[187]
London was labyrinthine: there was an undeniable fascination about Hartlib’s quondam back-kitchen; but Oxford beckoned. And so, at the age of twenty-seven, Robert Boyle went to Oxford; a student always, already known as a scholar and philosopher, one of the chief of the Invisibles,—a ready-made Don.
CHAPTER XII
OXFORD: A LEARNED JUNTO
“... I see no cause to despair that, whether or no my writings be protected, the truths they hold forth will in time, in spite of opposition, establish themselves in the minds of men, as the circulation of the blood, and other, formerly much contested, truths have already done. My humour has naturally made me too careful not to offend those I dissent from, to make it necessary for any man to be my adversary upon the account of personal injuries or provocations. And as for any whom either judgment or envy may invite to contend, that the things I have communicated to the world deserved not so much applause as they have had the luck to be entertained with; that shall make no quarrel betwixt us: for perhaps I am myself as much of that mind as he; and however I shall not scruple to profess myself one of those who is more desirous to spend his time usefully, than to have the glory of leaving nothing that was ever written against himself unanswered; and who is more solicitous to pursue the ways of discovering truth than to have it thought that he never was so much subject to human frailties as to miss it.”—Robert Boyle: Preface to A Defence of the Doctrine touching the Spring and Weight of the Air.
Several of the original Philosophical Society had migrated to Oxford before Robert Boyle joined them there. Dr. Wilkins had been appointed Warden of Wadham at the Visitation and Purgation of the University in 1648; Dr. Wallis, at the same time, had been made Savilian Professor of Geometry; and Dr. Goddard, of Wood Street celebrity, had become Warden of Merton. Robert Boyle does not seem to have been in Oxford during the Encænia in July 1654. There is, at least, no mention of him in Evelyn’s description of “the civilities of Oxford” during that happy week; and the friendship between Boyle and Evelyn, that was to last “neare fourty yeares,” was not to begin till a little later. But Evelyn has described Oxford society exactly as it was when Robert Boyle entered it.
Mr. and Mrs. Evelyn arrived in Oxford “on the eve of the Act,”[188] and next day, after midday dinner, “the Proctor opened the Act at St. Marie’s (according to custome) and the Prevaricators their drollery. Then the Doctors disputed. We supp’d at Wadham College.” On Sunday, Dr. French, Canon of Christ Church, the preacher at St. Mary’s, had his little fling at the Philosophers. “True wisdom,” he said, “was not to be had in the books of the Philosophers, but in the Scriptures alone.” He based his observations on a text from St. Matthew xii. 42: “And, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.” On Sunday afternoon the famous Independent, Dr. Owen, now “Cromwell’s Vice-Chancellor,” preached a wonderful sermon, “perstringing Episcopacy”—a sermon that Evelyn and some others present must have found particularly trying to listen to. They dined that day with Dr. Seth Ward, who had been one of the “Prevaricators” himself, when he was at Cambridge, and was so alarmingly witty on the occasion that he nearly lost his degree. And at night they supped in Balliol College Hall—Evelyn’s own college.
On Monday they sat through the whole Act in St. Mary’s;[189]—the long speeches of the Proctors, Vice-Chancellors and Professors, and the creation of Doctors “by the cap, ring, kisse,” etc. The Inceptor[190] made a most excellent oration, “abating his Presbyterian animosities which he could not withhold.” And after all this paraphernalia “there were but 4 in Theologie and 3 in Medicine,” which was thought not bad, “the times considered.” And again there was a magnificent supper with Evelyn’s “dear and excellent friend,” Dr. Wilkins of Wadham.
Happy days, two hundred and sixty years ago! There was music at All Souls, “voices and theorbos,” performed by “ingenious scholars.” And Dr. Barlow, the learned Librarian,[191] took them over the Bodleian, and showed them all the treasures, including the 800-years-old manuscript of the Venerable Bede. The Divinity School vied with the Physical and Anatomical School in entertaining the visitors; and, at St. John’s, the Library was almost eclipsed by poor Laud’s gift of mathematical instruments, and by “2 skeletons, finely cleaned and put together.” New College Chapel, much to Evelyn’s satisfaction, was still in statu quo, “notwithstanding the scrupulosities of the times”; and at Christ Church they saw the “Office of Henry VIII,” the gift of Cardinal Wolsey, with its wonderful miniatures and gilding, and the famous painted windows of the Cathedral, now “much abused.” In Magdalen Chapel, everything was in its “pontificall order,” except that the Altar had been “turn’d table-wise;” and there the famous musician, Mr. Gibbon, kindly played to them upon the double organ. The Physick garden was visited, “where the sensitive plant was shewed us for a greate wonder.” Canes, olives and rhubarb grew there, “but no extraordinary curiosities, besides very good fruit, which, when the ladys had tasted, we return’d in our coach to our lodgings.”