le behaviour in
his long illness was an incontestable proof; and he concluded his
life, which had been illustrious for many virtues, by exhibiting an
example of true piety.

Of his works we have not been able to procure a complete catalogue: he
published, Quintilianus, 2 vols. 4to; Valerius Flaccus; Ovidius, 4
vols. 4to; Poetae Latini Minores, 2 vols. 4to; cum notis variorum.
Buchanani Opera, 2 vols. 4to [51].

SYDENHAM [52].

Thomas Sydenham was born in the year 1624, at Windford Eagle, in
Dorsetshire, where his father, William Sydenham, esq. had a large
fortune. Under whose care he was educated, or in what manner he passed
his childhood, whether he made any early discoveries of a genius
peculiarly adapted to the study of nature, or gave any presages of his
future eminence in medicine, no information is to be obtained. We
must, therefore, repress that curiosity, which would naturally incline
us to watch the first attempts of so vigorous a mind, to pursue it in
its childish inquiries, and see it struggling with rustick prejudices,
breaking, on trifling occasions, the shackles of credulity, and giving
proofs, in its casual excursions, that it was formed to shake off the
yoke of prescription, and dispel the phantoms of hypothesis.

That the strength of Sydenham's understanding, the accuracy of his
discernment, and ardour of his curiosity, might have been remarked
from his infancy by a diligent observer, there is no reason to doubt;
for there is no instance of any man, whose history has been minutely
related, that did not, in every part of life, discover the same
proportion of intellectual vigour; but it has been the lot of the
greatest part of those who have excelled in science, to be known only
by their own writings, and to have left behind them no remembrance of
their domestick life, or private transactions, or only such memorials
of particular passages as are, on certain occasions, necessarily
recorded in publick registers.

From these it is discovered, that, at the age of eighteen, in 1642, he
commenced a commoner of Magdalen hall, in Oxford, where it is not
probable that he continued long; for he informs us himself, that he
was withheld from the university by the commencement of the war; nor
is it known in what state of life he engaged, or where he resided
during that long series of publick commotion. It is, indeed, reported,
that he had a commission in the king's army, but no particular account
is giv