urdities; he therefore collected the absurdities. I feel sure
that Hill was a benefactor of the Royal Society; and much more than he
would have been if he had softened their errors and enhanced their praises.
No reviewer will object to me that I have omitted Young, Laplace, etc. But
then my book has a true title. Hill should not have called his a review of
the "Works."

It was charged against Sir John Hill that he had tried to become a Fellow
of the Royal Society and had failed. This he denied, and challenged the
production of the certificate which a candidate always sends in, and which
is preserved. {25} But perhaps he could not get so far as a
certificate--that is, could not find any one to recommend him; he was a
likely man to be in such a predicament. As I have myself run foul of the
Society on some little points, I conceive it possible that I may fall under
a like suspicion. Whether I could have been a Fellow, I cannot know; as the
gentleman said who was asked if he could play the violin, I never tried. I
have always had a high opinion of the Society upon its whole history. A
person used to historical inquiry learns to look at wholes; the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the College of Physicians, etc. are
taken in all their duration. But those who are not historians--I mean not
possessed of the habit of history--hold a mass of opinions about current
things which lead them into all kinds of confusion when they try to look
back. Not to give an instance which will offend any set of existing
men--this merely because I can do without it--let us take the country at
large. Magna Charta for ever! glorious safeguard of our liberties! _Nullus
liber homo capiatur aut imprisonetur ... aut aliquo modo destruatur, nisi
per judicium parium_ ....[8] _Liber homo: frank home_; a capital thing for
him--but how about the _villeins_? Oh, there are none _now_! But there
were. Who cares for villains, or barbarians, or helots? And so England, and
Athens, and Sparta, were free States; all the freemen in them were free.
Long after Magna Charta, villains were sold with their "chattels and
offspring," named in that order. Long after Magna Charta, it was law that
"Le Seigniour poit rob, naufrer, et chastiser son villein a son volunt,
salve que il ne poit luy maim."[9]

The Royal Society was founded as a co-operative body, and co-operation was
its purpose. The early charters, etc. do not contain a trace of the
intention to create a _scien