a certain Italian enthusiast composed twenty-six stanzas of unqualified praise, one of which Oldenburg committed to memory and sent triumphantly to Boyle—
“Heroic constellations dispense
One ray of your celestial influence
That with the telescope I may descry
The sacred treasures of your Pansophy!”
Perhaps the prettiest compliment of all came from a Parisian friend of Oldenburg’s, who was so charmed with Mr. Boyle’s writings, and so desolated to hear of Mr. Boyle’s delicate health, that he begged Oldenburg to suggest to Mr. Boyle that he should migrate into the sweet air of France. “Proposez-luy la chose: il pourra philosopher par tout, et faire provision de santé pour philosopher plus longtemps.”
The message was duly delivered; but Boyle’s philosophising was to go on at home, and praise and blame seem to have had small effect upon him. “I freely confess,” he wrote, “that the great difficulty of things, and the little abilities I find myself furnished with to surmount it, do often, in general, beget in me a great distrust even of things, whereof my adversary’s objections give me not any.”[285]
The year 1663 saw the publication of three of Robert Boyle’s books. Some Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy, collected from the work of the previous year or two, was published at Oxford. Some Experiments and Considerations touching Colour was published in London; and in the same year he published, also in London, Some Considerations touching the Style of the Holy Scriptures. This last, originally suggested to him by Broghill at Marston Bigot, had been the work of some years; and at the time of its publication he was interesting himself in a scheme for the translation of the New Testament for use in Turkey. Oldenburg “rejoiced hugely” over this scheme. “I confess,” says the Puritan secretary of the Royal Society, “it will be troublesome and dangerous to spread such a book as the Bible in Turkey; but yet it ought to be attempted.”
The summer vacations, when Oxford was deserted, seem to have been spent by Boyle partly in London with Lady Ranelagh and among the virtuosi, and partly in the various family country houses, where he was always welcomed as at once the hero, the puzzle, and the pet of this great family. Delicious Leeze, in Essex, where Charles and Mary lived, was not far from London. “You shall be absolute master of your own time,” Mary assured him—conscious, no doubt, that Charles did not know much about the New Philosophy. And at Marston Bigot, in Somersetshire, dear Broghill and Lady Pegg, when they were in England, were most excellent company. Marston was not far from Stalbridge, and though Boyle did not now often stay at his manor-house, he liked to keep it in perfect order, for Frank’s sake, who might have it after him. The “fruit-nurseries” of Stalbridge, especially, were well known in the neighbourhood. “I hear you have that way also a large charity for the public good of England,” wrote Dr. John Beale of Yeovil, in one of his delightful screeds to Boyle.