Plate IV
NEHEMIAH GREW (1701)
Portrait of Nehemiah Grew after the portrait by R. White which is reproduced in the Cosmologia Sacra, 1701
Before turning to Grew's botanical work, it may be worth while to refer very briefly to his writings on other subjects, showing as they do the remarkable versatility of his mind. He produced a series of chemical papers, and also pamphlets on the method of making sea-water fresh, and on the nature of the salts present in the Epsom wells. In 1681 appeared his Musæum Regalis Societatis, a catalogue raisonné of the objects in the Museum of the Royal Society, with which were bound up some contributions to animal anatomy. The Catalogue is a bulky volume, and it is hard to forbear a smile on reading that Grew dedicated it to one Colwall, the founder of the Museum, in order that the Royal Society "might always wear this Catalogue, as the Miniature of [his] abundant Respects, near their Hearts." As we should expect, this Catalogue is far more discursive than such a work would be if it were drawn up at the present day, though Grew takes credit to himself for not "medling with Mystick, Mythologick, or Hieroglyphick matters." He manages, however, to introduce some general remarks which are of interest. He realises, for instance, that it is possible to group living creatures in a way which has some significance, and that it is the business of the biologist to discover this grouping. He blames Aldrovandus for beginning his history of quadrupeds with the horse, because it is the most useful animal to man, and points out that Gesner's arrangement, which is purely alphabetical, is even less satisfactory. "The very Scale of the Creatures," he concludes, "is a matter of high speculation." It is tempting to quote largely from the Catalogue, but I will confine myself to one other remark of Grew's which is perhaps particularly applicable to-day, when the quotation of authorities is apt to become almost an obsession: "I have made the Quotations," he says, "not to prove things well known, to be true; ... as if Aristotle must be brought to prove a Man hath ten Toes."
Grew's last work was the Cosmologia Sacra[4], a folio volume occupied with a defence of Christianity, and an explanation of the author's views on the nature of the Universe. There is a copy in the British Museum, the earlier part of which is crowded with marginal and fly-leaf notes, in some cases initialled or even signed in full by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. One cannot help recalling Charles Lamb's humorous complaint that books lent to Coleridge were apt to be returned "with usury; enriched with annotations tripling their value ... in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not unfrequently, vying with the originals." Coleridge seems to have accepted Grew quite seriously as a thinker. In one of his manuscript notes we read, "It is from admiration of Dr N. Grew, and my high estimate of his Powers, that I am almost tempted to say, that the Reasonings in Chapt. III ought to have led him to the perception of the essential phænomenality of Matter." That these reasonings did not so lead him, must, I think, be attributed to the fact that Grew was above all things a naturalist, and Coleridge a philosopher, and that between the two an intellectual gulf is often fixed.
After this somewhat lengthy introduction, it is more than time to turn to our main subject,—the study of Nehemiah Grew's work as a botanist.
Botanical science was in a decidedly decadent condition when Grew entered the field. The era of the herbal was closing. The last English book of any importance which can strictly be included under this head, Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum, was published the year before Grew was born, and a lull in this kind of work followed. It is true that Culpeper's Herbal appeared later, but this bombastic work was of no botanical value. It was reserved for Morison and Ray to open a new era in British Systematic Botany. At the same time, fresh inspiration was being breathed into the science from quite a different quarter. The herbalists studied plants primarily with a view to understanding their medicinal properties. Nehemiah Grew also approached Botany in the first instance from the medical standpoint, but it was his knowledge of anatomy which opened his mind to the possibility of similar work, with the bodies of plants, instead of those of animals, as the subject. He tells us that he was impressed by the fact that the study of animal anatomy had been carried on actively from early ages, whereas that of vegetable anatomy had been scarcely so much as contemplated. "But considering," he continues, "that both came at first out of the same Hand, and are therefore the Contrivances of the same Wisdom; I thence fully assured my self, that it could not be a vain Design, though possibly unsuccessful, to seek it in both."