Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/85

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stola Secunda ad Riolanum; p. 613, Ep. ad Slegelium), will see, I think, that he had Greek in abundance at his command, and used it just when it helped him to express his thoughts more clearly and concisely than any other words at hand at the moment. He used it, in fact, like a man of sense and real learning, when the use of it would save him time or trouble—two things, of one of which he had all too little, whilst of the other he had all too much for his and our good. Let me add that, in the one authentic MS. which we now possess of Harvey's (No. 486, Sloane Coll., British Museum), a MS. never intended for publication, and consisting but of rough notes for lectures to be delivered, I find that he employs Greek words in several places (e.g. pp. 65, 66 and 87)[1].

  1. I have no sympathy with the eagerness which scientific men sometimes (see Fritz Müller, Für Darwin, p. 28; Dallas' Engl. Trans. p. 42) show in repudiating a knowledge of Greek, but on the other hand I should be sorry to be thought to overrate its value. I am so far from doing this that I incline to thinking that, when through want of leisure or of means, or through some other deficiency, a young man cannot add on more than a second