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Harvey himself had called that individual ' anatomicorum coryphaeum' in 1649 ; and, in the very year and letter we are dealing with, he calls him ' celebrem anatomicum.' And Pecquet, the discoverer of the thoracic duct, in his work, also of this selfsame year 165 1, the Experimenta Nova Anatomica, a work spoken of by Haller (Bihliotheca Ana- tomica, i. p. 443) as 'nobile opus et inter praecipua saeculi decora/ has the following remarkable passage : ■ Ita sentiunt non vul- garis peritiae medici Harveius, Veslingius, Conringius, Bartholinus, aliique complures ; nee melior ipse Joannes Riolanus (quod mi- rari subit pro eximia viri, qua in rebus anatomicis caeteros anteivit sagacitate). Audi hanc in rem illius sententiam.' p. 4, I. c. This, I think, I will spare you ; but I will remark that, after this singular — or perhaps, alas ! not singular — instance of the blundering judgments which contemporary writers may pass upon each other, no young man, nor indeed any old one — for Harvey was in his seventy-fifth year when he first read Pecquet's work (see Ep. Tert. p. 620, ed. 1766; p. 604, ed. Willis) — should overmuch