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if it be of striking interest and importance; it is a hard thing for any man to do more than keep pace with his own generation; and those who have spent any time in reading the works of Harvey's contemporaries, will best appreciate the difficulty he must have had in setting himself free from the influence of the idola theatri referred to.

I pass from this reflection to an exposition of the claims which have been put forward on behalf of Walter Warner, the editor in 1631 of Harriott's Algebra, to the discovery of the circulation of the blood; and I do this by a natural transition, Walter Warner having been a man in whose mind, all his mathematics notwithstanding, the idola in question greatly abounded. Warner's claims are alluded to by Dr. Willis in a note to his excellent Life of Harvey (see p. lxiv). They are put forward by Anthony Wood, upon the authority of Dr. Pell, a man distinguished as one of Oliver Cromwell's diplomatists, and afterwards as an assiduous supporter of the then young Royal Society; and upon that of Dr. Morley, some time Dean of Christ Church, and afterwards Bishop of

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